Mary's Child (45 page)

Forthrop said, ‘We’re going to have a bit of fun before we hand her over to the Dane.’ He stepped forward and stooped over Chrissie, untied the rope around her legs and threw her skirts up over her face. She kicked out frantically and Forthrop stood back but only grinned. The wildly flailing legs and the white flesh above the stockings only excited him further.

Then Chrissie wrenched one hand free, tore away the gag and pushed down the muffling skirts. She shrieked, ‘
Help!
Help!
Help!
’

The screams echoed across the dark and silent river. Forthrop swore, stooped swiftly to try to slam a hand on the girl’s mouth but her heel caught him in the face and he staggered back. Chrissie curled her legs under her, then with her back against the engine housing and despite the bouncing, rocking boat, she managed to shove herself on to her feet. All the time she was screaming, ‘
Help!
Help!
Help!
’

But now Forthrop threw himself on her. He took a savage kick on the shin and yelled for Parnaby, ‘Give me a hand here!’ He still lurched forward, grabbed Chrissie’s free hand in one of his and clamped his other over her mouth. She braced her legs against the engine housing and shoved. Forthrop staggered back but she went with him, the pair of them swaying wildly together as the boat rolled from side to side.

Parnaby was already coming to Forthrop’s aid and walked into him as he stepped back. Parnaby bounced off him, staggered sideways and automatically grabbed at Forthrop to save himself. Instead his weight only pulled the other two further off-balance. Their combined weight tipped the boat on its side and all three plunged into the river together in a tangle of arms and legs.

As Forthrop fell he was suddenly intensely aware, in one camera blink of perception, of his surroundings. The boat was slipping away through the black water behind him and in the distance cranes and wharfs lined the banks of the river. He realised he was not far from the place where his wife had perished. Then as the water closed over his head he shoved the girl away from him and left her to drown.

Chrissie tried to swim – her lessons with Bessie all those years ago bore fruit – but she was hampered by her clothes and the arm still caught up in the rope behind her. She trod water and paddled with her one free hand but kept sinking, surfacing for only occasional snatched breaths. She knew she was losing the fight for her life. Then hands seized her and she no longer had the strength to fight them, too. She let them lift her and rose into the air, took a great whooping breath and stared into the face of Jack Ballantyne.

He gasped, ‘Lie still! I’ve got you!’ And he towed her on her back to the boat and shoved her in over the stern with a hand on her behind. He panted, ‘Start yelling again!’ Then he struck out once more, heading back to where the water was churned into foam.

Forthrop had been shocked but was not afraid – at first. He had rid himself of the girl and was a strong swimmer, at home in the water. But Parnaby was not, could not swim a stroke and was possessed by blind terror now. As Forthrop rose to the surface Parnaby came with him and clung to his back. Forthrop tried to shout, ‘Let go, you fool!’ but the hands around his neck choked off the cry and then they were sinking together.

He shut his mouth and tore at the hands while still kicking to take himself up again. His fingers prised the others apart but they left his throat only to clamp on his shoulders. He tried to turn to strike out at Parnaby but Parnaby turned with him. He realised he was living a nightmare memory, as if the clock had turned back six years. However, that time he had fought to hold his struggling wife under the water while the watchers thought he was bent on rescue.

In panic now, he lashed out behind him but the pressure of the water robbed the blows of their force and he only pushed at the other man’s thrashing legs. His lungs were bursting for air, his struggles growing feebler while Parnaby seemed still to have a maniac strength. Forthrop reached up inside the legs then, found the bulge of testicles at their top with his clawing hands, grabbed and twisted. The other hands fell away from him at last, he was free and struck out for the surface.

He broke out into the air, opened his mouth to draw in great breaths of it but Parnaby’s groping arms caught at his legs and yanked him under. Instead of air, water rushed into his mouth and he sank again. The two bodies turned lazily. Parnaby, far gone and dying, lost his grip on Forthrop, but as he fell away his foot, still kicking as he tried to climb on nothing more substantaial than water, slammed into Forthrop’s face, smashing lips and teeth. Forthrop knew one more agony added to his suffering. Then he saw a kaleidoscope of pictures of his life and finally the face of his wife smiling at him. That faded as he died.

The last kick took Parnaby drifting to the surface. He was barely conscious, just holding on to life, but Jack Ballantyne came on him then. Jack knew about drowning men, grabbed him by the back of his jacket and towed him to the boat. Before he reached it there was help at hand. The crew of a tugboat on its way downriver had heard Chrissie shouting for help as he had asked her. Now the tug’s big paddle-wheels stopped threshing and she drifted to a halt alongside as the way came off her. The men aboard her climbed over the bulwark, stood on the six-inch-wide rubbing strake that ran down her side and clung there with one hand to haul Chrissie and Parnaby on to her deck.

Jack stayed in the water and asked, ‘Were there any more?’

Chrissie, wet hair tangled across her face, called, ‘One. Another man.’

Jack swam back to the spot where he had found Parnaby, as near as he could judge it, and dived again, and again, until the tugboat’s skipper, holding his craft on station against the current with her paddle-wheels turning slowly, leaned out of his wheelhouse and bellowed, ‘You might as well give it up, lad! He’ll be out atween the piers by now!’

Jack Ballantyne did not know this river as well as did the tugboat captain, but he recognised the truth of the skipper’s shout and swam slowly back to the tug.

He and Chrissie wound up below in the cabin of the tug that smelt of coal smoke, tar and tobacco. They sat swathed in blankets and sipping at mugs of hot tea laced with rum. Parnaby was held prisoner in the crew’s quarters.

Jack explained, ‘My ship put into Hartlepool last night – just for a few hours, she’s sailing in the morning – and I wanted to come and see you.’ He glanced at Chrissie and said simply, ‘I don’t know when I’ll get another chance, you see.’ He sipped at his tea and went on, ‘I caught a train and at the Railway Hotel they said you’d gone to the Bells  . . .’ He told how he had seen her kidnapped, pursued the Humber and finally found it on the wharf. ‘Then I heard you scream, saw the boat out in the river and some commotion. I pulled off my shoes and uniform and dived in.’

Chrissie gazed ahead of her primly. She remembered him climbing out of the river, dressed only in his cotton underwear that left little to the imagination. She murmured, ‘Well, you’ve seen me.’ She blushed, well aware that the same could be said of the dress she wore that had clung wetly to her body.

Jack grinned at her and said only, ‘Yes,’ but that sent the blood mounting to her face again. Then he became serious. ‘What were these people up to?’ So Chrissie told him all about Forthrop and Parnaby, how she had outmanoeuvred the former to buy the hotel, and his threats. She told him that Andrew Wayman was dead, of his bequest to her. She wept and Jack held her. He did not connect the captain he had known at Gallipoli as just ‘Andy’ with Wayman.

Later all three made statements to the police. A doctor ordered Chrissie to bed and, exhausted by her ordeal, she obeyed. Jack found a room at the Railway Hotel and Parnaby was locked in a cell.

Next morning a maid brought a breakfast tray into Chrissie’s room. On it was a note from Jack and the maid informed her, ‘Mr  Ballantyne left at the crack o’ dawn, miss. The old gentleman went with him.’

Chrissie asked, ‘Which old gentleman?’

‘His grandfather, miss, the old Mr  Ballantyne.’

Chrissie opened the note and read: ‘Last night’s cabbie found my clothes! No goodbyes. Wait for me. Jack.’

The police had brought word of his grandson’s adventure to George Ballantyne. Dawn was not far off so he had dressed and got his elderly chauffeur to drive him down to the Railway Hotel. He had found Jack, bleary eyed but elated, eating a hurried breakfast.

Jack said, ‘Hello!’ They shook hands and he invited, ‘Have some coffee.’

George poured himself a cup and listened as Jack told his tale in a few short sentences and finished, ‘I’ll buy another cab for that chap. It’s the least I can do; I wrecked that one last night.’

George said, ‘I’ll see to that.’ Then he asked, ‘You say the girl’s name is Chrissie Carter. Have you known her long?’

Jack looked him in the eye. ‘Long enough . . . years, in fact. Since I was a boy – off and on.’ He recounted what he knew of Chrissie’s life and background and concluded, ‘But now she owns this place.’

‘And her mother is a ‘theatrical’ and her father a seaman.’

‘He was in the Australian Army but he was killed in Flanders.’ Jack’s eye was still on his grandfather and he was remembering the rows between them on account of his girls over the years. He asked bluntly, ‘What about it?’

But George Ballantyne trusted this young man totally now and the rows were in the past. Just as importantly, he knew something of the girl – told to him in confidence by Arkenstall – though he had never met her. He recalled the mistake he had made with Richard and Sally Youill. So he would wait and see. He only smiled at Jack, ‘Just making sure I’ve got the right of it. You must introduce me to her.’

Jack stood up. ‘Next time I come home. Now I have to go.’

They left the hotel together, the old man walking straighter now, as if a load had been lifted from his shoulders.

A week later Fred Burlinson, the policeman, called in at the Railway Hotel and told Chrissie, ‘I think you’ll remember that Parnaby feller from years ago.’ Chrissie nodded and he went on: ‘When we charged him with being an accessory to attempted abduction he broke down and told us everything. His boss, Forthrop, had been smuggling in food off Danish ships. He had a shed down on the North Dock that was full of eggs, butter, cheese and sides o’ bacon – piles of it. Parnaby will go down for a stretch, o’ course. His boss would ha’ done an’ all, if he’d lived. We’ve found his body, by the way. It was fished out of the river last night.’

Chrissie managed to say, ‘Thank you for letting me know.’ But after he had gone she shuddered at the memory of that night. And while she would not rejoice at anyone’s death, she could not help feeling a surge of relief now the threat was lifted from her. She reflected that the sea and the river gave life to this town but they also brought death. Harry and Mary Carter, Sylvia Forthrop – she had read the newspaper account of her drowning at the time – Frank Ward, Richard Ballantyne, and now Max Forthrop.

The next day another name was added to the list. Chrissie was making her evening rounds of the hotel and looked into the public bar. Arkley was in there, talking with the barman, their heads together over a newspaper.

Chrissie asked, ‘Something interesting?’

Arkley started, seemed about to shake his head, then pushed the paper along the bar to her. ‘Did you see this? The Ballantyne lad’s been lost at sea. His ship was torpedoed off Spain.’ Chrissie stared at the report under his pointing finger but she could not read it. Her eyes would not focus and she clutched at the bar for support. Arkley said anxiously, his voice distant, ‘Here! Are you all right, Miss Carter?’ He remembered Chrissie lunching with Jack Ballantyne and the gossip that had caused. He wondered, were they  . . .?

But Chrissie managed to answer, ‘I’m fine. I think I’ve been dashing about too much. I’ll put my feet up for a bit.’

She made her way back to her room on wavering legs. Once there she shut the door behind her and collapsed into a chair. No tears came then; she was numb with shock. But later she wept. She did her grieving in the privacy of her room. When she went out again at closing time to face staff and customers she was smiling, seeming her usual self. But she did not sleep until the small hours and then only out of exhaustion and her pillow was wet.

Chapter 25

November 1918

Chrissie moved through the next days like an automaton. She worked as hard or harder, made the right decisions, smiled brightly at staff and customers alike. She felt as if she watched herself acting a part.

On a quiet Sunday morning she was crossing the empty foyer when old George Ballantyne pushed in through the swing doors. Chrissie paused and he took off his hat. She saw his mop of hair was now white as snow. He asked, ‘Miss Carter?’

‘Yes.’

He held out his hand. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you. My grandson spoke a lot of you when I saw him last on leave.’ He hesitated, then said awkwardly, ‘Jack Ballantyne. Did you know that he—’

Chrissie put in quickly, ‘Yes, I know. I’m very sorry.’

That brought a slow nod of his head. ‘Yes. I gather you were – friends.’ He thought they might have been more than that. He also remembered the child that had been Chrissie Carter so long ago. And Ezra Arkenstall telling him recently that she was not his grandchild but the daughter of Andrew Wayman. George looked at her and thought that she was a lovely young woman. And she owned this hotel. Looked the part, too. So much for all this rubbish about breeding. He would have been proud to welcome this girl into his house if she and Jack  . . .