A Safe Harbour (4 page)
Authors: Benita Brown
Tags: #Technology & Engineering, #Sagas, #Fisheries & Aquaculture, #Fiction
‘I had such a battle with her over that dress, you know.’ It seemed as if the shocking news of Jos’s drowning was too much for Jane to assimilate and she was hanging on to emotions and events she could understand – her recent tussles with her friend over her gift of a wedding gown.
‘Wedding dress?’ Kate had said, incredulously. ‘No, Jane, I shall wear my best dress with a bit of lace here and there – you can sew it on for me – and a bit of orange blossom in my hair, just like the other lasses round here.’
‘But you’re not just like the other lasses round here!’ Jane had exclaimed. ‘And don’t you know how beautiful you are? Besides, you’re my friend, and I want to do this for you.’
‘But the expense of it . . .’
‘There’s no expense involved. Mrs Coulson gave me the silk and the tulle that was left from Geraldine’s wedding. I helped the dressmaker, you know. And I learned so much from her. Oh, Kate, do let me make you a wedding gown!’
‘But I look dreadful in white!’
‘Mm, perhaps you do . . . that flame-coloured hair of yours might be too much of a contrast.’
‘Well, thank you very much!’
Jane remembered how Kate had flushed and, rising quickly from the sofa in the Harrisons’ parlour, been about to flounce out. ‘Kate, don’t go,’ Jane had said and she’d laughed at her friend’s indignation. ‘Your hair is gorgeous; it’s your crowning glory with those shades of copper and bronze and even gold. And those green eyes make you look like . . . like a picture in the art gallery – you know, the one with the lady standing at the window of a castle?’
Kate had sat down again at this point, her eyes widening. No doubt she was remembering the day they had gone to the art gallery in Newcastle together and how much they had both admired that particular picture.
‘Don’t you know I’m teasing you?’ Jane had continued. ‘Oh, Kate, you’re so quick to rise to the bait. But you must let me make a dress for you. I need to practise my skills.’
‘So that’s it. I’d be doing you a favour, would I? Especially as I’m pretty sure there’s enough bonny fabric left to make a dress for my beautiful bridesmaid, too.’
‘Well, of course.’ They’d looked at each other and laughed. ‘I’ve brought a piece home with me – let me show you.’
How long ago had it been, that day when they’d opened the brown paper parcel and spread the bits of fabric out on the parlour table? ‘Look,’ Jane had said, ‘it’s not true white – it’s ivory; just perfect for your creamy complexion. And the tulle – see,’ she’d held up something light and filmy, ‘there’s enough of this left to make you a full-length veil.’
‘And cover my face to hide my embarrassment.’
‘Embarrassment?’
‘For goodness’ sake, Jane, did you ever hear of a fisherlass getting married in a silken gown, with a veil of . . . what did you call it?’
‘Tulle.’
‘Well, did you?’
Jane had sensed victory slipping away. ‘Proper wedding gowns are becoming fashionable, you know. They’re not just for society ladies. You only have to look in Jerome’s window in Newcastle.’
‘The photographer’s?’
‘Yes. Go and have a look at the wedding portraits. Oh, Kate, why shouldn’t you be the first in the village? Lead the way?’
And after that it hadn’t taken too much persuasion. What young bride could have resisted the samples of fabric and the silk flowers she’d brought to show Kate, along with the sketches she’d made, copied from the latest fashion magazines?
‘And now what shall I do with the dresses?’ Jane asked her mother. ‘Kate’s and mine?’
‘Sell them, I suppose.’
Jane was shocked by the matter-of-fact way her mother said this, but she knew she ought not to have been. Her mother was just as shocked as she was and just as sorry for Kate. She’d had tears in her eyes when she had broken the news to Jane. But Florence Harrison was a practical woman and she would not want to see such fine dresses go to waste.
Jane’s parents had worked hard and they had scrimped and saved to make sure their daughter would never have to work as hard as they had. Jane had gone to the village school with the rest of the village children, but she had had extras such as elocution and deportment lessons. And how Kate had mocked her when she had begun to ‘talk proper’ – until the day Jane had asked her to help with one of the little rhymes she’d been given to learn. Kate had enjoyed the novelty of it so much that Jane and she always did Jane’s elocution homework together after that. Mrs Harrison had often mused ruefully that her husband’s hard-earned money was paying for Kate Lawson to be made a lady, too. But impatient Kate would never have been able to learn to sew the way Jane had.
That had always pleased Mrs Harrison, who couldn’t help being piqued that Kate, a fisherman’s daughter, so outshone her own daughter in her school work. Jane had been a good little pupil who worked hard but never quite caught up with her brilliant friend – except in the needlework class where no one could match her.
Her mother had been overjoyed when Jane had shown she had an aptitude not only for plain sewing but for embroidery, too. Those skills along with her passion for clothes had deemed her suitable, in her mother’s eyes, for work in a big house, and as a lady’s maid at that. Well spoken and well dressed, Jane had had no trouble securing a position first as an upstairs maid and very soon as personal maid and companion to the daughter of the house. And now that Miss Geraldine had married and left home, Jane had become maid to Mrs Coulson herself.
The house where she worked was the Jesmond mansion of Ralph Coulson, an eminent Newcastle solicitor. Jane loved it there. And she never tired of bringing home tales of the beautiful furniture and draperies, the fine china and the paintings on the walls. Commissioned by a ‘real’ artist, she had told her mother.
‘Well, one day, I may sell the dresses,’ Jane said now. ‘But meanwhile I’ll sew them into a couple of old sheets and leave them in the cupboard in my room here.’
‘All right, pet. But don’t leave it too long. Fashions change, as you keep telling me. Let a respectable time go by and then you could advertise them in the newspaper. I’ve seen it done.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And it would be a shame for such bonny frocks to be wasted – to never see the light of day – wouldn’t it?’
‘You’re right.’ Jane finished her tea and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. Her mother had always set a nice table. Not for her the bare scrubbed table or the oilcloth to be found in the fisherfolk’s cottages. Florence Harrison had poured all her energies into her home and Jane had been brought up in comfort and a certain amount of style.
Florence had seen how hard the other lasses of the village had to work and she was determined her daughter’s life would be different. She hoped that in town there would be opportunities to meet a different sort of young man from the lads Jane had grown up with. Perhaps another servant, but a superior servant, of course. Or a shopkeeper who owned one of the smart little shops in Jesmond, or a clerk from Mr Coulson’s office. She hoped that, eventually, Jane would see the advantages of such a marriage – if only her daughter could forget her old fascination with William Lawson, good lad though he was.
‘Here,’ her mother said, ‘aren’t you going to put your hat on?’
Jane stood before the mirror in the hallstand as she tucked in a stray wisp of hair. ‘No, I don’t think so. It’s a little . . . a little frivolous, don’t you think?’
She turned to smile anxiously at her mother. Florence Harrison held the small straw hat in her work-roughened hands and gazed wonderingly at the sprays of tiny artificial blue and white flowers and the matching satin ribbons. ‘Yes, pet, I know what you mean.’
Jane turned back to the mirror and adjusted the hyacinth blue satin bow at the neck of her white blouse. The ribbon was the same shade as her skirt and the buttonless jacket, which was cut away to reveal the self-coloured rows of piping on the blouse.
‘Gan on, you’ll do.’ Her mother smiled as she fell into the local way of talking. She didn’t do it often as she had always striven to speak a little less broadly than her neighbours. Not because she was a snob – she never thought of herself as superior to the hardworking women of the village – but because she had wanted a better way of life for Jane and she’d believed it was no use paying good money for elocution lessons if she wasn’t going to try to set some sort of example herself.
‘Right . . . I’ll go now. See if there’s anything I can do to help.’
Everything looked so normal, Jane thought as she made her way to the Lawsons’ cottage. It was still early and the men hadn’t returned from the fishing, although it wouldn’t be much longer now. Children played in the cobbled lanes and on the boat field on the headland. Cats slept, dogs foraged in the gutters and the gulls, as always, swirled and screeched above the cliffs.
The door of the cottage was open and Jane stood for a moment in the sunlight, her eyes adjusting to the dimness inside before she raised a tentative hand to knock.
‘Come in, Jane, hinny,’ a woman’s voice said softly.
Jane stepped inside and saw that Kate’s mother, Nan, was standing at the table rolling pastry.
‘Meat pie,’ she said and got on with her work.
Jane glanced round the room. So clean and neat, but so very different from her own home. And if she now felt out of place in her mother’s modest but attractive parlour, how much more at odds with her expectations of life would a fisherman’s cottage be? No . . . much as she loved Kate’s brother William, she could never live as a fisherman’s wife . . .
A slight sucking sound made her glance towards the bed against the wall. The old woman, Sarah, lay there as usual, her clay pipe moving up and down in her mouth; that was what the sound was. Jane was startled to see that she appeared to be staring at her. Her rheumy old eyes were open and focused instead of half closed. Her face was so wrinkled that there seemed to be no room to harbour an expression, either a smile or a frown.
It was hard to tell what old Sarah was thinking. Did she think about anything now? Perhaps she was simply staring into space, her mind adrift amongst a jumble of memories. But then Jane noticed that the old woman’s bony fingers were picking restlessly at the ends of her shawl.
‘You’ve heard, then,’ Mrs Lawson said. It was a statement rather than a question.
‘Yes. I’m sorry. It’s dreadful.’
‘Dreadful?’ There was a hint of scorn in Kate’s mother’s voice as if ‘dreadful’ was too meagre a word to describe the situation.
Jane felt herself flush and she saw the lines of the older woman’s face soften. ‘Don’t mind me, pet. Our Kate’s taken it hard.’
‘Of course she has.’
For a moment nothing was heard except the slap of the pastry on the tabletop and the rhythmic thump and roll of Nan Lawson’s wooden rolling pin. She paused to dust her hands with flour before lifting up the pastry and draping it over the pie dish. ‘Kate’s on the beach,’ she said. ‘Will you go to her?’ There was a break in her voice. Jane saw that there were tears in her eyes.
‘Yes.’
‘I canna help her,’ the older woman said. ‘There’s nothing I can say, nothing I can do. But I don’t want her to be alone. You’re her friend.’
‘I’ll go,’ Jane said. She turned swiftly and hurried out of the cottage.
A few minutes later she stood on Bank Top and stared down in puzzlement. There was a lone figure on the shoreline kneeling down and leaning forward as if washing something in the sea. Jane watched the jerky movements until a sudden toss of the figure’s head revealed the red hair. It was Kate. Jane began to hurry. As she sped down the bank she began to call Kate’s name, but her friend either didn’t hear her or didn’t care. To Jane’s dismay she saw a wave wash right over Kate but still she didn’t stop what she was doing.
Never as fleet of foot as Kate, Jane stumbled as she hurried over the rough sand and shingle and, mindful of the hemline of her skirt, she stopped just short of where the waves washed in. She stared in horror as she watched her friend lean forward again and again and, with both arms outstretched, make scooping motions in the water. What was Kate trying to catch? The waves?
‘Kate!’ she called. ‘Kate, what are you doing?’
Jane lifted her skirt and walked gingerly over the damp sand. She tried not to think of the salt marks the water would leave on her shoes. She was relieved when Kate suddenly sat back on her heels and looked round.
‘Jane?’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’
Jane was shocked by the other girl’s appearance. Kate’s glorious hair had escaped all restraint and was hanging down in ragged witch’s locks. Damp strands of it were plastered over her face, which held an expression of bewilderment tempered with rage. She didn’t seem to care – or perhaps she wasn’t aware – that the waves were washing around her, making the folds of her skirt float and lift as they rushed in and then receded.
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