Every Mother's Son (2 page)

Mrs Hart had led them towards the tables where ale and tea and lemonade were being dispensed, stopping to talk to several people on the way. Presently, though, she asked Charles to point out the woman who had made the remark about Daniel, and had taken them right up to where she was standing with another cluster of guests.

‘Good afternoon,’ she’d said graciously. ‘I don’t think we’ve been introduced; you are …?’

The women in the group, who were from tenanted farms in the district, had dipped their knees and given their names. Mrs Hart had nodded and introduced her son, Charles, who gave a polite bow of his head, and then she had put her hand on Daniel’s shoulder and said, ‘And this is Charles’s friend, Daniel Orsini– Tuke.’

Daniel had glanced at them all and, taking his cue from Charles, he too had given a short polite bow and touched his forehead.

He heard one young woman murmur, ‘What a handsome boy.’ Mrs Hart had smiled at Daniel, who had blushed, and said, ‘Indeed, he’ll be breaking several hearts before long,’ before moving away to another group.

Now, as he ran up the steep daisy-covered bank towards home, he wondered why Mrs Hart had taken him and Charles to greet the woman, who had seemed rather uncomfortable and startled by the encounter, and what Mrs Hart had meant when, on their return to his mother and Beatrice, she had said in a low voice, ‘I am so sorry you should have been embarrassed while a guest at our party, Harriet. I’m afraid there will always be curiosity. But let them speculate, and in time Daniel will answer their questions himself. However, you should prepare him.’

It was something to do with the grave in the churchyard, he was sure. They went to lay flowers every Christmas. In the grave was someone called Noah Morley Orsini Tuke, his mother’s first husband, who had died when Daniel was only a few weeks old. His mother had told him that this man Noah was his father and that Fletcher wasn’t, even though he called him Da. She must have meant that Noah had sired him, he thought, with a country lad’s innate knowledge, and perhaps that was what the old woman had meant, but why had Mrs Hart been so cross?

‘Where’ve you been, Daniel?’ His mother was in the kitchen preparing food when he arrived home. ‘Your da’s been looking for you. He wants you to help clean up ’field hosses cos Uncle Tom’s had to go down to Brough. When you’ve done you can both come in for supper.’

‘Where’s Jack? Can’t he help?’

Harriet flourished her thumb for him to get going. ‘He’s probably feeding ’pigs, I don’t know. Come on, look sharp, and find Lenny,’ she called after him as he headed for the door, ‘and tell him to come in.’

Daniel’s sister Maria, who was nine, was setting the big wooden table with plates and cutlery for supper, and eight-year-old Dorothy, whom everyone called Dolly, was sitting on the floor playing with two kittens. She looked up at Daniel as he passed and put her tongue out at him. He put his thumbs in his ears and waggled his fingers at her, then lifted the door sneck and went out.

He found his young brother Leonard in the pigsty, helping Jack the hired help feed the pigs and their young. Although he was only seven, Leonard had already announced that he was going to be a farmer and help Da and Uncle Tom. Tom Bolton wasn’t their proper uncle, but Da’s longtime friend and partner. Between them they had scraped enough money to buy the land over ten years before, and they were at last making a small profit, earning sufficient for them all to live on. Tom was still a bachelor and lived in a small cottage in the lower dale, whilst Fletcher with Tom’s help had built the farmhouse for Harriet and Daniel and now their own growing family and called it Dale Top Farm.

Fletcher was in the stable yard removing the gear from one of their four working horses. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Did you give Johnson my message?’

‘I did. He said he’d be up first thing on Monday and give you a couple more days in ’week.’ He hesitated. ‘Sorry I took so long, Da. I, erm, came back by ’meadow instead of ’road and sat in my tree.’

Fletcher shook his head but gave a laconic smile and said, ‘So what was more important than coming straight back home? Here,’ he added, handing him the reins. ‘Check her over while I bring Duke out.’

Daniel ran his hands over the mare, checking her feet and legs for bites or wounds. ‘I needed to think,’ he continued, when Fletcher came back leading the stallion. He knew that Fletcher would always want to know his motive before telling him that he should have come straight back from an errand.

‘About?’ Fletcher asked.

‘Well, about my future I suppose.’ He thought it sounded very grown up when he said it. ‘Because it’s nearly here. I’ll be thirteen in December so I ought to be mekking plans.’

‘I see.’ Fletcher glanced at him. ‘And does your future include us, your ma and me, and your sisters and brothers? Or is it summat you’re planning for yourself?’

‘Well, that’s just it, you see.’ Daniel took a stiff-bristled brush from a bucket and began cleaning the mud from the mare’s feet and checking her hooves. ‘I can’t decide. Do I stay here and work wi’ you and Uncle Tom, or do I become a seaman like my grandfather?’

‘But you didn’t know your grandfather,’ Fletcher said mildly. ‘You never met him, so what meks you think you’d like to be a sailor like him?’

‘I don’t know.’ Daniel wrinkled his forehead. ‘It’s onny that Granny Rosie told me he came from somewhere else – somewhere not England, I mean – and I thought it would be interesting to go there.’

Fletcher smiled. ‘And so it might. But first, let’s finish here and go back to the house for our supper, or your mother will be feeding it to the pigs.’

CHAPTER TWO

Fletcher turned to Harriet in bed that night and said, ‘We’re going to have to speak to Daniel about his beginnings. About Noah and Rosie, I mean, and my mother.’

She snuggled up close. ‘He knows about Noah. We visit his grave every Christmas. I don’t think he’s concerned about it. We’ve never concealed the fact that Noah was his father.’

‘I don’t know.’ Fletcher sounded dubious. ‘He’s growing up and thinking more. When he was little he probably didn’t understand what we meant. But Rosie has been telling him about his grandfather … Marius.’

‘Marco,’ Harriet interrupted. ‘You mean Marco.’

‘Well, yeh.’ Fletcher exhaled. ‘Him. But I don’t want Rosie telling Daniel about her former life. I think it’s better coming from us. You,’ he told her. ‘It has to be you.’

Harriet sat up, leaning on her elbow, and gazed down at him. ‘Are you serious? Are you worried about it?’

‘Yes, I am,’ he said emphatically. ‘I don’t want him getting to the age where he thinks he knows everything, like lads do, and then discovering it from somebody else. And ’other bairns should be told too,’ he added. ‘I know they’re young, but we could tell Maria and Dolly at least, though mebbe not Lenny.’

Harriet put her head back on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ She turned and kissed his cheek. ‘You usually are.’

It was not going to be easy, Harriet thought the next day. In fact, it was very complicated. How would she explain to a boy not yet thirteen that his father, not Fletcher but Noah, had had such a strange upbringing and hadn’t known the truth about his own background or parentage until he was a grown man and a father himself?

I needn’t tell all, she decided as she hung washing on the line in the paddock and stood with her hands on her hips, watching the sheets and shirts flap in the breeze. No need to say too much about Fletcher’s embittered mother, Ellen Tuke, who had been compelled by her husband to bring up a child who was not her own, and the part she had played in turning Noah into such an angry, hostile man.

Harriet often wondered how Ellen, a resentful and uncaring woman, had given birth to a son as mild and loving as Fletcher, a man of strength and reasoning; it was a puzzle she could never understand.

She walked to the edge of the garden and looked down the fertile valley. She folded her arms and pondered on how lucky she was. Sometimes she couldn’t believe it, to have a loving husband, a clutch of beautiful children and a home of which she was so proud.

Behind her sat her house, their house, hers and Fletcher’s, who had built it brick by brick, stone by stone. Built it for her and Daniel and the children who had come later. Doublestoreyed, of brick and limewashed stone, its windows gazed down the valley towards the Humber, the river that she had known all her life, from her poverty-stricken birthplace in Hull to the farm at the edge of the estuary salt marsh near Broomfleet where Noah had brought her as his bride, and where a year later the waters had claimed his life as he tried in vain to save Nathaniel, the man he had thought was his father.

Harriet’s marriage to Noah had been a convenience and a necessity for her at a time when she was desperate and at her wits’ end. She had lost her job at the mill and was working part time in a Hull hostelry, which was where she had met him. Her mother was sick; dying, although Harriet hadn’t realized it. Noah’s offer was the result of an arrogant bet with his brother Fletcher that he would find a wife before he did, and came shortly after her mother had died, leaving her all alone. Her father Joseph and her brothers had died at sea many years before, except for Leonard, her favourite, who had gone off to seek his fortune but had never returned, which had left her with feelings of anger as well as loss.

What would have happened to me if Noah hadn’t made me that offer? she thought now, as she so often did. I’d have gone into ’workhouse, I expect; no work, no home, no family. She gave herself a shake and turned to go back inside to prepare the midday meal. Then she smiled. Who’d have thought that such a bad beginning would have turned out as it did: meeting Fletcher, Noah’s brother as they’d assumed he was before knowing the truth, and falling instantly in love. A love that they never imagined could be fulfilled. And it never would have been but for poor Noah’s death. A shadow of sadness fell upon her; she understood Noah’s anger and bitterness so much better now than she ever did when she was married to him.

As Harriet served up their dinner, Fletcher said to the children, ‘I thought I’d go to Brough on Sunday to see Granny Tuke. Who’d like to come with me?’

No one answered immediately until Lenny said, ‘Can we go fishing in ’Haven?’

‘Erm – no, not this time,’ his father answered. ‘I shan’t stay long. I’ve to prepare for ’harvesters coming on Monday.’

Maria shook her head. ‘No thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m going to help Ma with Sunday dinner. I’m going to mek an apple pie.’

‘Oh, very nice,’ her father said, trying not to sound disappointed. ‘Daniel, what about you?’

Daniel finished what he was eating. Then he looked down at his plate. ‘I don’t think Granny Tuke’d want me to go. She doesn’t like me very much. She doesn’t talk to me.’

Harriet drew in a breath of anger. How dare her mother-in-law give that impression to her beautiful boy? She glanced at Fletcher and thought that Ellen Tuke didn’t really like anyone except her own son.

‘I’ll come if you like, Da,’ Dolly said quietly. ‘We could take Joseph; he likes to ride in ’trap.’

‘You’d watch him, wouldn’t you, Dolly?’ Harriet interrupted hastily. ‘I wouldn’t want him going near ’water.’

She knew that Mrs Tuke wouldn’t bother to watch over the toddler, and thought that the woman would probably like the children more if they had been born to someone other than her. Ellen had never forgiven Harriet for marrying Fletcher.

‘Well, we’ll see.’ Fletcher pushed his chair back from the table. ‘No need to decide now. Come on, Daniel, let’s get back to it. We’ll turn ’sheep into ’hayfield to graze.’

‘Where’s Tom today?’ Harriet asked. ‘I thought he’d be up for some dinner.’

‘He will be. He’s in ’threshing yard.’

‘I’ll keep it hot for him.’ Harriet set about plating up meat pie and vegetables for Tom and putting them in the side oven.

‘Right then, Da.’ Daniel rose from the table. ‘Thanks, Ma. See you after.’

Harriet smiled. Daniel never failed to thank her for a meal. It was as if he knew that cooking and keeping them all well fed was her job of work just as his was helping Fletcher.

Fletcher nodded and mouthed his thanks too, and put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder as they went out into the yard.

‘Sorry, Da, you know, about not wanting to go to see Granny Tuke,’ Daniel murmured.

‘What meks you think she doesn’t like you, Daniel? Has she said summat? I know she can be a bit crabby sometimes. I think it’s because she spends so much time on her own.’

Fletcher was making excuses for his mother; he couldn’t ever recall a time in his life when she had seemed pleased or happy to see them. Maybe occasionally if he called by himself she might greet him with a nod, but she never asked about the welfare of his family and always grew silent again when he made his departure.

Daniel shrugged and his voice dropped even lower. ‘She – erm, she once said I was nowt to do wi’ her. It was when Joseph was just a little babby and we took him to show her, an’ I said, you’ve got three grandsons now.’ He stopped as if unsure whether to go on. ‘And she said,
two
, I’ve got two. You’re Rosie Gilbank’s grand-bairn, not mine.’

Fletcher cursed beneath his breath at his mother’s insensitivity. How could she be so cold and cruel? It’s because I treat Daniel as my own. He’s just ’same to me as those born to me. She’s so unforgiving; she thinks life has treated her badly, but it hasn’t. There are others who have had a harder life than her, but they don’t hold grudges in the way that she does. He thought of Rosie Gilbank, Daniel’s grandmother by blood. She had had a much worse life, but she was loved by all the other children and considered to be their grandmother too, and it made her happy to be treated as part of their family.

His own mother had never visited his home, never seen how successful he had become, and she never would, because of her animosity towards Harriet.

‘Why isn’t she my gran?’ Daniel asked. His smooth forehead creased into a furrow and he pushed away a lock of dark curly hair. ‘Is it because of Noah in ’churchyard being my father? But he was your brother, wasn’t he, so wouldn’t she still be my grandmother?’