The River Folk (8 page)

‘Come on,’ Bessie said, ‘let’s try them on. Minnie – Mrs Eccleshall – brought them across. She has a daughter. She’s away working in service now. But Min’s a terrible hoarder and she hasn’t thrown her daughter’s old clothes out. They’re not new, of course, but there’s plenty of wear left in them. Put your arms up. That’s it.’

Bessie sat back on her heels to look at the girl. ‘Fits you a treat. I thought it might be a bit big, but Min’s girl was tiny so it’s not bad. Not bad at all. Now let’s rub your hair dry.’

Towelled dry, Mary Ann’s hair fell in curls and waves to her shoulders.

‘Black as a raven’s feathers and just as shiny now. You’ve got lovely hair, lass. You ought to learn how to take care of it yourself. Still, enough for now . . .’ Bessie pulled herself up. ‘I must get the tea. My Bert and the boys’ll soon be home.’

‘And Dan? When will Dan be home?’

‘He’s gone back on his ship. Up to Newark this time, I reckon he said. He’ll not be back for a day or two.’

‘Oh,’ Mary Ann said and put her thumb into her mouth.

After tea, when Bert had gone for his nightly pint and Ernie and Duggie had disappeared, Bessie glanced at the clock on her mantelpiece and said, ‘Come on, Mary Ann, I’ll take you to see the Aegir. Tonight’s a big one. So come on. I don’t want to miss it.’

When they arrived at the Miller’s Staith, there were already several people lining the steps that led right down to the water’s edge.

‘There you are, Bessie, I thought you wouldn’t miss tonight’s tide,’ a voice called.

‘Saved me a place, have you, Min?’ Bessie lumbered down the slippery steps to stand beside her neighbour. ‘I thought you’d have called for me.’

‘I would’ve,’ Minnie said, ‘but I’ve only just got here mesen on me way back from town. If I’d come home first, I’d have missed it.’

‘Oh well, in that case,’ Bessie’s eyes twinkled with mischief, ‘I forgive you.’

‘Ta very much, I’m sure.’

The two women smiled at each other and then, as someone shouted, ‘It’s coming,’ they turned, like everyone else, to look downriver, leaning dangerously forward to get a better view.

Bessie grabbed hold of Mary Ann. ‘Don’t you go falling in the water and get swept away. We’d never find you.’

‘’Course the best place to see it,’ Minnie said, ‘is Bourton corner.’

Bessie nodded excitedly. ‘Yes, yes, it is. It swirls round that corner and you think it’s going to come up and over the bank.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time,’ Minnie muttered and then, her excitement rising too, she clutched Bessie’s hand and said, ‘Here it comes, Bessie. Here it comes.’

The tidal wave, foaming at the crest, swept majestically up the river, rippling up the banks on either side and rocking the boats moored at the wharves. Behind the first wave front, which raised the level of the whole river until the tide ebbed, came smaller ripples, the whelps, like young following their mother.

‘I don’t like it,’ Mary Ann cried, clinging to Bessie.

‘Don’t be silly, it won’t hurt you.’ For once Bessie was irritated by the girl’s childishness. Nevertheless, she held on tightly to the girl’s hand, afraid that Mary Ann might try to get away and, in so doing, topple into the water. ‘Don’t you think it’s lovely? Just look at that big wave. Come all the way from the North Sea, that has, Mary Ann. Right up our river for miles and miles.’

The water surged just below where they were standing and splashed up the steps, sending spray on to their feet.

‘I don’t like it,’ the girl wailed. She pulled herself out of Bessie’s grasp, turned to scramble back up the steps and pushed her way through the watchers.

‘Mary Ann, wait. Wait for me,’ Bessie cried and turned to follow her, but felt Minnie’s hand restrain her.

‘Let her go, Bess. She’ll find her way home. It’s only across River Road. Don’t let her spoil your fun. We shan’t see another one like this for a while. Just you enjoy it.’

Bessie turned back towards the river, but Mary Ann being so silly had spoiled her excitement and her pleasure, and the wave was gone now, leaving only ripples in its wake. The onlookers began to disperse.

‘I suppose,’ Bessie said to Minnie, thinking aloud, her generous nature forgiving the girl’s foolishness already, ‘I shouldn’t have expected her to love the river like we do, Min. The Aegir can be a bit frightening if you’ve never seen anything like it before.’

‘I ’spect she’s not used to the water,’ Minnie suggested.

Bessie shook her head. ‘Probably not. She told me she’d never even seen the sea.’

‘There you are then,’ Minnie said, as if that explained everything.

The two friends reached the top of the steps and turned to smile at each other.

‘I’d better go and find her and see if she’s all right,’ Bessie said as they approached Waterman’s Yard.

Minnie sniffed. ‘She’ll be all right, Bess. Do you know, I’ve never seen you fuss after anyone so much in all me life? An’ that’s saying summat.’

‘Mebbe it’s because I’ve never had a little girl of me own,’ Bessie said wistfully.

‘That little madam’s got you wrapped around her little finger, Bess. You want to watch it.’

But Bessie only smiled.

A week later, Elsie Clark was still not home from the hospital and Mary Ann continued to stay with the Ruddick family.

‘What gets me, Bert,’ Bessie murmured sadly as they lay side by side in bed, ‘is that Mary Ann doesn’t seem bothered about either of them. Her dad or her mam. Now ’im, I can understand, but you’d’ve thought she’d have wanted to go to see her mother in the hospital.’

‘I thought you took her on Sunday afternoon?’ Bert murmured sleepily.

‘I did, but I nearly had to drag her there.’

‘Wasn’t she pleased to see her mam when you got there then?’

There was a moment’s silence whilst Bessie lay staring into the blackness, thinking. ‘I suppose so,’ she said at last. ‘But it was odd. Not like I’d have expected a young girl to act when she hadn’t seen her mam for several days. I mean, I wouldn’t have liked my lads to act like that if I was in hospital, Bert.’

Bert’s soft chuckle came through the darkness. ‘Bess, my angel, if you were ever in hospital – God forbid,’ he added with fervent reverence, ‘me and the lads would be camping outside that hospital door, I can tell you.’ Then he went on, ‘And was her
mam
pleased to see
her
?’

‘Well, yes,’ Bessie said slowly. ‘Sort of, but even then it wasn’t how I would have been if I hadn’t seen one of me own for a few days. Elsie thanked me for looking after Mary Ann and told her to be a good girl and that, but there wasn’t the affection there, the love. You know?’

‘Mm, I can guess what you mean.’ He turned on his side, preparing for sleep. ‘Ne’er mind, Bess, we’ve enough love in this house to spare a bit for that little lass, haven’t we?’

Not for the first time in her life, Bessie thanked the good Lord who had brought Bert Ruddick to her. As a young girl Bessie had been obliged to leave the river to go into service, yet she had always hankered to return to life afloat. Her marriage to Bert had put an end to those dreams, but her happy years with him had been worth the sacrifice. Although, Bessie chuckled to herself softly in the darkness, it wouldn’t do to tell him that too often.

One afternoon, Edwina accompanied Mary Ann home from school, stepping into Bessie’s kitchen and sitting down, completely at ease in surroundings that were very different to her own home.

She drew off her gloves and said, ‘I’m lending Mary Ann an embroidery frame. May we fix it to the edge of your table, Bessie?’

‘Of course you can.’

From her bag, Edwina took out a small circular frame with two rings of wood, which fitted over each other, the outer one with a tightening screw. She fitted the frame to the table by means of a clamp and then she stretched a piece of canvas over the smaller of the two rings and placed the larger one over it so that the material was trapped between the two and stretched tightly.

‘That leaves you free to work with both hands,’ she explained. Taking a blunt-ended embroidery needle, she threaded it with coloured silk and took a couple of running stitches through the fabric to secure it.

‘Now, Mary Ann, watch carefully. We call this cross-stitch or gros-point. You make a diagonal stitch like this and then you bring your needle back up through there and then down again through that tiny square, crossing over the first stitch you’ve just made,’ Edwina explained. ‘But all the top stitches must lie the same way, usually from the bottom left to the top right corner. See? Now you try.’

The young girl’s black hair, which Bessie had washed again earlier that day, was shining, tied back now from falling in unruly curls around her face. Her expression was one of rapt concentration as she followed the gentle guidance of the young woman sitting beside her. Edwina’s fair head bent close to the young girl’s and Bessie was pleased to see that the sombre black which Edwina had worn for more than a year following the deaths of her brother and her fiancé had now been replaced by a smart, close-fitting costume of deep purple. It was still too dark a colour for Bessie’s liking, but it was a start, she told herself. She liked to see Miss Edwina in royal blue, a vibrant colour that complemented her hair colouring and accentuated the colour of her eyes. But those eyes had not sparkled with joyous laughter for a long time now. Edwina was still the gentle, kind young woman she had always been, but the light had gone out of her eyes and out of her life.

Bessie sighed. So many lives lost in that dreadful war with scarcely a family untouched by its tragedy.

She fervently hoped that what they said was true, that it was the war to end all wars.

‘That’s very good, Mary Ann,’ Edwina was saying. ‘Come and see, Bessie, how neat Mary Ann’s stitches are.’

Bessie stood behind them, peering over to see the girl’s work. ‘They are,’ she said, unable to keep the surprise from her tone. ‘Have you done sewing before? Has your mam taught you?’

Mary Ann shook her head.

‘I reckon you’ve got a natural talent then, lass. What do you say, Miss Edwina?’

‘It’s a little early to say that, I think, but she’s certainly a fast learner.’ Edwina smiled. ‘At least, at sewing and embroidery.’

The girl looked up and her own smile transformed her face. Her brown eyes sparkled with mischief and the dimples in her cheeks deepened. ‘I like doing this much better than horrid sums and reading stuffy books. And who’d I want to be writing to anyway? Only Dan.’ She giggled. ‘And the postman doesn’t deliver to his ship.’

Edwina laughed and, as she rose from her chair, she touched the girl’s hair in an affectionate gesture. ‘Well, as long as you promise me you will still try hard with your sums and your reading and writing, I’ll promise to teach you all I can about embroidery. How’s that, eh?’

The girl pulled a wry face, but then smiled. ‘All right, as long as you promise that I’ll be able to sew as good as you. I’ll be able to make an altar cloth like the one Auntie Bessie showed me in the church that you’d done, won’t I? I’ll be able to dedicate to all sailors like Dan?’

For a moment Edwina’s eyes were bright with tears. Bessie held her breath. The child had unwittingly touched a raw nerve.

During the time Mary Ann had been staying with them, Bessie had taken her into the parish church to see the beautiful altar frontal that Edwina had worked.

‘She did it after she lost her brother and the young man, Christopher, she was going to marry,’ Bessie had told Mary Ann as they stood admiring the beautiful purple brocade material with intricate embroidery worked in gold thread. ‘They were killed in the war and she presented it to the church in their memory.’

The girl had been silent as they walked down the long path from the church. As they crossed the road, Bessie had pointed and said, ‘And that’s where Miss Edwina’s family lives.’

The Hall was a large, timber-framed medieval manor house, the centre of which was the great hall, with wings of smaller chambers to the east and west. At one corner stood a brick tower with turrets and ramparts and arched leaded glass windows.

‘They reckon Henry the eighth once slept there.’

‘Who’s Henry the eighth?’

‘Ah well, now, you’d better ask Miss Edwina that, lass. All I know about him is that he had six wives.’

‘Six? All at once?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ Bessie had scrabbled back in her mind, trying to recall her scant lessons in history. Failing to remember more, she took refuge in Edwina’s name again. ‘You ask Miss Edwina. She’ll know.’

Mary Ann had glanced back before the church disappeared from their view as they turned a corner. ‘I’d sooner she learnt me how to ’broider,’ Bessie had heard her murmur.

‘I’m sure she will if you ask her nicely.’

That was how it had started. Since that day Mary Ann’s only interest in her education had been centred solely on learning how to embroider. Bessie and Edwina contrived together to encourage the girl as much as they could and yet at the same time coax her to try harder at her other lessons.

Now, they moved away from Mary Ann, whose head bent over the frame and whose nimble fingers threaded the needle in and out of the canvas with amazing sureness.

‘I think you’re right, Bessie,’ Edwina said in a low voice as the two women moved into Bessie’s back scullery so that the girl should not overhear their conversation. ‘I think she could well have a natural talent. I noticed it the very first time I gave her some sewing to do at school.’ Edwina smiled. ‘It’s just a shame that her interest in writing and sums isn’t as great.’

‘Oh well, we can’t be good at everything. I’m not much good with sums mesen.’ Bessie smiled broadly. ‘I leave all that to Bert. He’s the clever one.’

‘Now come, Bessie, don’t belittle yourself. You’re a wonderful wife and mother. A marvellous homemaker and . . .’

‘Go on with you, Miss Edwina,’ Bessie laughed.

‘It’s not flattery, I assure you. Mary Ann could do a lot worse than follow your example.’

Bessie sighed. ‘Well, I’ll try to help the little lass as much as I can as long as they’re here, ’cos I’ve really taken to her. And so have Bert and the lads.’