Every Mother's Son (38 page)

*

The next day, Stephen saddled up his horse and rode off towards Elloughton Dale, ostensibly to meet Fletcher Tuke face to face so that there was no embarrassment between them when they started to work together. His mother had explained what she had agreed with Fletcher, and his father had said he knew nothing about the arrangements but would go along with whatever Melissa had decided. He’d added that he and Fletcher had had a discussion to clear the air before Ellen Tuke had died, but he hadn’t seen him since.

But Stephen’s visit was really to see Maria. He had admired her and thought her a sweet girl when he’d met her at the twins’ party all those years ago, and on subsequent occasions when he’d seen her at the Tukes’ house. He remembered the time he’d gone especially to see her and found that she had left home to work in Brough. He’d thought it odd at the time, for surely she hadn’t needed to work elsewhere, but now he wondered if the Tukes had sent her away deliberately so that they wouldn’t meet.

He knocked on the door but no one answered; he tried the sneck and looked in. A fire was burning merrily and there was an appetizing aroma of meat and onions, but no one was there. He tied up his horse and went looking for someone, and heard men’s voices from far down a field. Haymaking, he realized. Then he heard the clatter of a metal bucket from one of the sheds and followed the noise.

‘Hello,’ he called. ‘Is anyone there?’

‘I’m in ’cowshed,’ a female voice called back. ‘I can’t stop, we’re in full flow.’

He put his head round the door; there was a sweet smell of hay and milk and Maria was sitting on a low stool with her back to him milking a cow, the milk flowing in a fast stream into a white bucket.

She half turned towards him. ‘We can’t stop, as you’ll see. Who is it?’

Stephen quietly stepped inside, not wanting to disturb the cow. ‘It’s me. Stephen.’ He moved so that she could see him. ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’

She gazed up at him from beneath her lashes. ‘Been milking for a while,’ she explained. ‘Ma showed me how. She said it might come in useful one day, if I ever …’ Her voice tailed away. ‘Are you looking for my da?’

‘Not really,’ he said, continuing to watch her as she rhythmically squeezed the animal’s teats. ‘I was looking for you.’

He saw alarm shoot across her face. ‘It’s all right,’ he said quickly. ‘I know – about what’s happened.’

A slow flush crept up his neck and he saw that Maria’s cheeks flushed too. ‘I, erm, I just wanted to ask if we could still be friends, you and I, even though …’ He shrugged. ‘I mean, just because we’re – well, sort of related …’

‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘I’d like that.’ She kept her face turned away from him, her head bent against the cow’s belly as she concentrated on the milking. ‘I’d like that very much. To be friends.’

‘Oh, good,’ he said. ‘That’s good. Thank you. I was hoping that’s what you’d say. All right, I’d better go and look for your father after all, so – well, goodbye then. I’ll see you again soon, I expect?’

‘Yes, I expect so,’ she said softly, her eyes on his. ‘Goodbye, Stephen.’

‘Goodbye,’ he said, and afterwards wondered how he had plucked up the courage, for the first and probably the last time, to bend down and kiss her gently on her cheek.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Beatrice and Charles were in agreement with Daniel about going home. Beatrice felt that she should return soon and face her parents after having taken the unprecedented step of coming on this momentous tour with her brother and Daniel without their approval or permission.

‘I don’t know if they’ll be angry or not,’ she said, as they walked back to the lodging house. ‘But I do know that I would not have missed this experience for anything.’

‘And I must go home and tell Father that I definitely won’t be going to university in England, but mean to study in Italy,’ Charles said uneasily. ‘We’ll have to have a discussion about the estate too, of course. I hope there won’t be too many complications, because I’m fairly sure that Stephen will be pleased to take over the running of it in time, though not yet of course. And, I don’t know whether or not to tell Mama that I’ve fallen in love and want to get married.’

‘They’ll say you’re too young,’ Beatrice told him. ‘You’ll have to wait until you’re twenty-one in any case, because that’s when you’ll get your inheritance, unless of course Papa disowns you,’ she said smugly, raising her eyebrows, which made Daniel hide a smile and mouth
Cruel
.

‘He won’t, will he?’ Charles said anxiously. ‘Of course, he’ll see things differently because he’s from another generation entirely. He married his first wife because it was expected of him, not because he loved her but because she was suitable.’ He sighed dramatically. ‘He will probably think that Calypso is totally unsuitable, being foreign.’

‘Here, hold on,’ Daniel said in mock severity. ‘You’re speaking of my cousin,
old chap
.’

Charles glanced at Daniel, ready to apologize until he saw his lips trembling with laughter, as were Beatrice’s. ‘Gosh, yes.’ He grinned. ‘Do you realize, Daniel, that when Calypso and I are married, you and I will be related?’

‘Yes,’ Daniel agreed, ‘I had realized that, but have
you
thought that you haven’t asked her yet?’

Beatrice didn’t comment, but her sharp mind was busy calculating, assessing and planning.

They spent two more days in Rome looking at the ancient sites, admiring St Peter’s from afar, gazing through the locked gates of the Vatican where the Pope and his cardinals had resided since the unification of Italy; they visited museums and the Colosseum and read some of the history; but as there was so much and it was so hot and Beatrice and Charles had to take cover so often, they decided that it was time to move on.

‘When I come to live here,’ Charles said, fanning himself with his hat, ‘you’ll be able to come and stay for a longer period during, say, spring or autumn.’

Daniel laughed. ‘Thank you, Charles,’ he said. ‘How very kind of you. But you’re assuming that I’ll have no work to do, and will be able to take time off whenever I want to.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Charles said, glancing lazily at Beatrice. ‘Yes, sorry, so I was.’

They had taken a unanimous decision that as they had money left to travel by train they would do so for part of the journey, take a coach at other times, and occasionally, when the mood took them, walk. They all had good walking boots and Beatrice wore her divided skirt, which she said was comfortable for walking in as well as riding. They all wore hats, Beatrice carried her parasol all the time, and both Daniel and Charles acquired stout sticks for walking.

Their first train journey was to Florence, the city of art and culture, where they spent two days. They were able to get about quite easily, as it appeared that the locals took to the hills in the summer to escape the heat, and so they visited the Duomo, walked across the medieval Ponte Vecchio, where Beatrice stopped to gaze into the enclosed shops selling gold and silver, and viewed the art galleries, where they stood in awe before the paintings and sculptures of Michelangelo and da Vinci.

The next rail journey took them through Genoa on the way to Turin, and Daniel gazed out of the windows down towards the Mediterranean, wishing that he might have seen his grandfather just once more; he wondered what he was doing, inspecting the grapes or the olives and assessing the quality, or sitting on the terrace drinking coffee with his straw hat over his eyes.

From Turin they took the coach to Bardonecchia and up to the entrance of the Fréjus rail tunnel, which would carry them through the Alps and into France. Beatrice was nervous and said she didn’t like to be enclosed. The alternative would be to travel by coach, a perilous journey on the narrow and steep roads over the Alps, hire horses, or walk, all of which would take them much longer.

‘It’s up to you, Beatrice,’ Daniel said. ‘We can walk or ride, which we’ve done already, or we can take a short cut through the Alps, and even then we still have a long journey ahead of us.’

‘All right, I’ll be brave,’ she said. ‘I’ll close my eyes and pretend to be asleep. But you must both hold my hands.’

‘Gladly.’ Daniel smiled. That would be a bonus, he thought, for he was longing for the experience of travelling deep below the Alps on a railroad that had only been built ten years before.

As it happened they were all very tired after the days of travelling, and as the train entered the tunnel and the sunshine disappeared, with Daniel and Charles sitting on either side of Beatrice holding her hands as promised, one by one they fell asleep, Daniel gently stroking Beatrice’s hand with his thumb as she slept and thinking he had never been happier.

They awoke as the train rumbled to a halt in the border town of Modane. The sun was still shining but it wasn’t as hot as it had been in Italy; the clusters of houses were painted in bright colours and potted plants adorned the balconies.

‘It’s lovely,’ Beatrice said. ‘Shall we stay a day or two?’

‘I think that’s a good idea,’ Daniel agreed. ‘We could rest and then mebbe walk a while down the valley. ’Weather’s good for walking.’

They could also write postcards home, they all agreed, and let everyone know they were on the homeward journey.

After two days they ventured forth again and rode for many miles through the mountains on hired horses; they caught local omnibuses or rode in carriers’ carts from village to village and finally decided to travel by train to Lyon, then by boat down the Loire from Roanne, spending lazy days gazing at the
châteaux
and wildlife along the banks. Daniel and Charles in the prow steered the barge under the casual eye of the accommodating captain, or drifted slowly along the canals while Beatrice lounged in a deck chair in warm sunshine with a hat over her eyes and wrote a letter home to her mother, until they reached Orléans ten days later.

They shook hands with the captain, who had sung in a hearty voice for most of the journey, had fed them on French bread and ham and strong local wine, and spoke no English, so that they had once more had to rely on Beatrice to translate. He wished them a cheery
au revoir et bonne chance
, goodbye and good luck, as they set off to catch the train to Paris and Le Havre on the final leg of their journey.

The sight of the English Channel both cheered and deflated them. All three knew that their freedom would be curtailed once they returned to a normal life. Daniel was eager to see his family again and pass on the messages from Leo and Marco. Yet it all seems like an improbable dream, he thought, and once I’m back working on ’farm again it’ll seem as if it happened to somebody else. I’ll miss those lovely ponies too, and much as I love my Shires I wish I could have brought the Haflingers home.

His thoughts were also on Beatrice; he knew full well that she would be lost to him once they were home. She would live a life that wouldn’t include him. She would do whatever a young woman of her status did, which was unknown to him; visiting other young women, he supposed, going to parties and balls, meeting eligible young men who might seek her hand in marriage. He was not a contender for that, the son of a small farmer, a ploughman who knew nothing but farming, horses, farrowing, sowing and reaping.

He swallowed hard and leaned on the ship’s rail, letting the cold wind blow into his face as if it could prepare him to accept his lot. Come on, he told himself, you’ve had ’pleasure of her company, heard her laughter, held her hand; nobody can take that away. And surely he would still have her friendship, the friendship they had shared from childhood.

He felt a small hand on his shoulder. Beatrice. He turned and looked at her.

‘What are you doing out here all alone?’ she asked. ‘Charles is in the saloon fast asleep and you have deserted me.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I’d never do that; I was just looking out to sea and thinking of all that we’d done and seen. It’s been a chance in a lifetime for me, and now it’s back to real life. Not that I’m complaining,’ he said with a forced laugh. ‘I’ve a good life, doing what I like doing.’ He smiled at her, seeing how the breeze caught her hair and flushed her cheeks. ‘And it’ll be good to see everybody again and hear what they’ve been up to while we’ve been away. I wonder if Da – Fletcher – brought in another lad to help out with ’harvest? They’ll be turning ’stock out to graze in ’fields now, if they’ve got harvest in, that is; if they’ve had good weather.’

He was talking for the sake of it, he realized. Talking of everyday things so that he didn’t make a fool of himself and say what he really wanted to say, which was that he’d miss her, miss seeing her every morning with her face freshly washed and glowing and her hair hanging down her back before she plaited it. And seeing her every night, languid and sleepy before she retired to bed. But of course he couldn’t say any of it.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

The ship docked in Dover as dawn was breaking and they rushed to catch the early train into London. They took the train to Hull and steamed into Brough station just as the sun was setting. They collected their luggage and stood on the station platform, looking round as if uncertain what to do next.

A railway porter saw them, and recognizing Beatrice and Charles, came towards them. He tipped his hat. ‘Good evening, sir, good evening, Miss Hart.’ He glanced at Daniel, but didn’t appear to recognize the dark-haired, sun-browned stranger. ‘Will you require a cab, sir?’ he asked Charles. ‘I can arrange one in ten minutes.’

Charles and Beatrice both glanced at Daniel. He smiled. ‘I’m walking. We’ve been sitting for hours.’

‘We’re walking,’ Charles and Beatrice both said. ‘Thank you,’ Beatrice added.

The porter seemed startled, but nodded politely and moved away.

‘We’ll be home before dark,’ Daniel said. ‘I’d like to see ’sunset.’

‘So would I,’ Beatrice agreed. ‘And it’s only a short walk home compared with what we’ve done.’

They hitched their rucksacks and sleeping sacks on to their backs and set off, the railway man gazing curiously at the young gentleman and lady from the manor as they left the station dressed like peasants and accompanied by a foreigner.