Candles in the Storm (10 page)
Read Candles in the Storm Online
Authors: Rita Bradshaw
Tags: #Romance, #Sagas, #Historical, #Fiction
Daisy looked at her grandmother, and as a pair of sunken old eyes twinkled back at her she found herself grinning weakly. Her granny was one on her own and no mistake.
Daisy’s slender shoulders went back and her chin lifted. She was blowed if she was going to let a little upstart like the one who had just walked out of that door get her down, even if his spitefulness had left her reeling for a moment. She wasn’t so naive she didn’t know some of the fishergirls who worked the docks in Sunderland and Tyneside were loose women, and that their activities had got decent fishing women a bad name, or that others who had lost their breadwinner to the sea were forced to take to the streets else let their bairns starve . . . but to tar them all with the same brush! She had done nothing to be ashamed of and nor would she, even if it meant working her fingers to the bone every twenty hours out of twenty-four, and she would tell Sir Augustus himself that very thing - should he ever condescend to put one elegant toe in such humble surroundings, of course.
Chapter Four
At exactly twenty minutes past eleven that same morning a further deputation from Greyfriar Hall arrived at the village. This consisted of Jack Mallard, first footman, and Jeremy Hopkins, second footman, in a carriage and pair, with Bernard McArthur, head coachman, and Bruce Fallow, groom, driving the covered coach behind, within which sat Josiah Kirby with the Misses Felicity and Cecilia Fraser.
Within three minutes of the coach pulling up outside the cottages William Fraser, wrapped in copious thick fleecy blankets and cradled as tenderly as any newborn babe by the two footmen and the groom, was deposited into the waiting arms of his sisters. They were the two younger daughters of Sir Augustus and Lady Fraser, the two elder being married women with homes of their own.
Josiah oversaw proceedings, and from the moment he entered Daisy’s home, without even the courtesy of knocking first, until the footmen and groom had left with the young master, uttered not a word to the young girl and old woman within. His body rigid and his face like stone, he issued monosyllabic orders to the other three men, following them closely and shutting the front door of the cottage firmly behind them.
‘Well!’ The exclamation from Nellie said it all, and she didn’t really need to add, ‘The ungrateful so-an’-sos. That lad wouldn’t have stood a chance without you, hinny, an’ to take him without as much as a by your leave . . . Still, that’s the gentry for you. An’ you lookin’ after him like you did an’ all. You’ll know what to do the next time you see someone drownin’ in front of your eyes leastways.’
‘It wasn’t his fault, Gran. Mr Fraser’s, I mean.’
Nellie looked hard at her granddaughter and when Daisy turned away to stare out of the window at the departing coach, her cheeks pink, the old woman said as though to herself, ‘Aye, he was a bonny lad, but bonny is as bonny does. I can still remember when I was a lass a mite younger than you, an’ a little lad from our village did a bit of night-time poachin’ in the grounds of a big house Harton way. The fishin’ had been bad, see, an’ he thought a rabbit or two’d keep the family goin’, but as it was he come across a pheasant that just sort of flew into his hands. But he got caught by the gamekeeper, didn’t he, an’ the young owner of the estate, a lad not much older than the one that was just carried out of that door if I remember rightly an’ just as bonny, he had the boy done for seven years’ transportation, an’ all for the sake of a bird.’
The coach had gone but Daisy still continued looking out of the window as she said, ‘Them times are gone, Gran. They don’t transport someone for poachin’ anymore.’
‘Mebbe not, but the gentry’d still have the last drop of blood out of such as you an’ me, an’ not give us as much thought as the horses in their stables or their favourite dog. It’s bred in ’em, lass, take my word for it, an’ all this talk about unions in the mines an’ the factories won’t make a scrap of difference. Your da’s right on that. It’s power the gentry’ve got, the power of land an’ money. This new party the unions got up a couple of months ago that your da an’ Tom were on about, this Labour Party, it’ll come to nowt. The mine owners an’ the factory owners’ll be havin’ none of it.’
Daisy turned restlessly from the window. She didn’t care about the unions or the Labour Party or anything else except seeing her da and Tom. Everything else, even William Fraser and his family, paled into insignificance beside that. But she hadn’t minded tending Mr Fraser. She pictured the handsome young face in her mind’s eye, remembering the feel of his hair against her flesh when she had lifted his head for him to drink, and she shivered, her heart giving a funny little twist. Anyway, that was that, he had gone and she would never see him again.
She breathed in deeply, flung her two thick braids of hair over her shoulders and set about putting the room to rights.
The next two days were unpleasant ones. Daisy and Nellie and the other womenfolk had to face the fact that their men were not coming home, and their grief was overwhelming.
Peter’s wife Tilly was inconsolable, and Daisy spent a number of hours each day helping her sister-in-law with the children and trying to keep things as normal as possible, while all the time each of them was waiting for confirmation of what they all dreaded. There had been some attempt by the authorities to salvage the big ship which had sunk off their coast, along with the grisly occurrence of several bodies being washed ashore amid other debris, but such was Daisy’s state of mind that these events did not make a deep impression on her.
On the afternoon of the third day the body of a fisherman was hauled up in the nets of a boat working at Holy Rock, off Sunderland, but of the other five missing men there was no sign. Alf and the fisherman who worked his boat with him, Henry Ingram, volunteered to go and look at the body the next morning, and as soon as Alf walked into the Applebys’ cottage on returning to the village Daisy knew the dead man was her da or Tom or Peter.
‘Who?’
She hadn’t needed to say anything more, and Alf had answered in like vein when he said, ‘Tom.’
Later that night Daisy’s three surviving brothers and their wives, along with Tilly, squeezed into the living room for a family assessment of what needed to be done. Daisy, her eyes still red and puffy from a bout of crying earlier, looked round at them all as George, the eldest and named after their father, began to talk.
He was thirty-eight years old, Ron thirty-four, and Art thirty-two, all three of them alive and well while Peter and Tom, the youngest two, were dead, she thought, the lump in her throat feeling as though it was going to choke her. It wasn’t fair, life wasn’t fair, they had still been so young. And yet could she have picked any one of the others to take Peter and Tom’s place, or her da’s come to that? Of course she couldn’t. She sat up straighter in her chair and blew her nose. It was no use thinking about fairness or unfairness, she cautioned herself grimly, she’d go stark staring barmy if she went down that road. And she forced herself to take in what it was George was saying.
‘So if we’re all agreed the waitin’ time is over there’s only one thing for it as far as I can see.’ George cleared his throat, glancing at his wife Martha before he continued. By, this was going to break them all, him and Ron and Art, but what else could they do? None of them would be able to sleep at night if Tilly and the bairns and Daisy and their gran weren’t given a roof over their heads, although they’d be taking the food out of their own bairns’ mouths to do it. ‘We can’t pay two extra lots of rent as well as our own’ - George included Ron and Art in the sweep of his head - ‘so we’re thinkin’ Tilly an’ the two youngest can move in with me an’ Martha, the other three’ll bed down with Ron an’ Rose, an’ Daisy an’ Gran’ll go to Art an’ Olive’s. All right?’
‘Don’t talk daft, lad.’ Nellie, never one for tact, spoke up from the platform bed. ‘You’re hand to mouth as it is, the lot of you. Where are you goin’ to find the extra to keep us?’
‘We’ll manage.’ This was from Martha, and said with a weary smile.
But they wouldn’t. Daisy gazed round the assembled faces, her mind racing. She knew for a fact that all three households were well behind with their rent as it was, the winter having been such a bad one. Even if she left the village and sought work in the town somewhere, that still meant her granny and Tilly and the bairns would have to remain and it wasn’t as if there was any spare room in her brothers’ cottages.
George had six bairns, the two eldest big hulking lads, they were all squeezed into their place like sardines in a can as it was. Ron and Art’s cottages were no better for space. And then there were all the extra mouths to feed and the bairns to clothe.
She rubbed her hand across her face, her stomach churning. If she married Alf he would take her granny too, there was no doubt about that. Her granny and Mrs Hardy would be tickled pink to live together most likely. Of course Tilly and the bairns would still have to be split up, which after everything that had happened was a blow to the family. The bairns would need to be close to their mam at a time like this and it wouldn’t be the same for them living in separate cottages. If she could find work she could help out a bit with bringing some extra money into her brother’s homes, she told herself, perhaps even enough to pay for Tilly and the bairns’ food, and their clothes and things like that. She knew what sort of work a bit fishergirl would get, down at the docks gutting and packing fish, or maybe something in one of the roperies clustered along the banks of the river. Either way it would be filthy, back-breaking labour among the coarsest of companions for a pittance in pay, and whether it was up the coast at South Shields or down at Monkwearmouth or Sunderland’s East End, she’d be treated as an interloper by her fellow workers without a doubt. But needs must. She couldn’t say anything now, not until she had seen Alf, but if she did marry him it would relieve the burden a little, wouldn’t it?
They all continued to talk for a while longer. By the time her brothers and their wives finally left Daisy knew there was no other option but for everyone to be divided up amongst the different houses. Their landlord, the owner of the brick and tile works situated west of Cleadon, would soon want them out once he found out their circumstances, and as George had said, there was no way her brothers could afford to pay two extra rents of two-and-six a week, or even one for Tilly’s place. The rent man was fond of telling them how reasonable the villagers’ rent was compared to some he had to collect for his employer, but two-and-six was two-and-six, and at the moment it could be ten shillings for all the chance they had of paying it.
Daisy looked round the cottage that had been the only home she had ever known, her heart heavy. They had enough food to tide them over for a week or so with her granny eating no more than a bird would, and with the wood and bits of coke and coal she’d collected from the beach the last couple of days they wouldn’t be cold during that time, there was that at least. A storm always provided plenty of fuel once it had wrought its destruction, she thought bitterly.
‘You all right, me bairn?’
Daisy was standing at the range warming some broth for her grandmother’s supper. She turned quickly, stitching a smile on to her face. ‘Aye, I’m fine, Gran. Don’t worry about me.’
‘We’ll get by, lass.’ Nellie’s voice was subdued and she wasn’t her normal chirpy self. ‘The Good Lord helps them as helps themselves, an’ we’ve never bin ones for sittin’ on our backsides in this family, have we?’
Daisy was prevented from replying to this piece of homespun wisdom by a knock at the door. It was opened the next moment and Alf stepped into the room. She stared at him and he stared back. She found she couldn’t say a word and it was her grandmother who said, ‘Hallo, lad.’
‘Hallo, Mrs Shaw.’ Alf turned to look at the old woman, his face grave as he said, ‘It’s heart sorry me an’ Mam are for your loss. But you know that, don’t you?’
‘Aye, lad, I know that.’
Alf nodded and then his kindly eyes came back to Daisy. ‘I . . . I wanted a word, lass. Perhaps you’d step outside a minute?’
She had known he’d come, but faced with the reality and the knowledge of what she was about to agree to Daisy wanted to run and hide.
‘Take your shawl, lass, it’s bitter out.’ This was from her granny, and Daisy knew it was the old woman’s way of telling her to hear what Alf wanted to say. For a second she felt a stab of resentment that she was being pushed into his arms and then she told herself not to be so silly, taking up her shawl and drawing it round her as she followed Alf into the night.
‘It’s a peasouper.’ He had stopped just beyond the cottage and Daisy nodded a reply as she joined him. The air was salt-sticky and opaque, the muffled sound of a foghorn echoing across the water somewhere. Daisy had always hated the murky grey fogs which fell swiftly and with blinding intent, but tonight the feeling was such that it caused the fine hairs on the back of her neck to prickle.
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