The Fleethaven Trilogy (109 page)

They were all staring at each other now in horror, trying
to take in the enormity of the destruction that had swept
their county’s coastline.

‘What about the town?’

‘I don’t know. Later today I’m going to go up past the
Grange and out that way and see if I can get news.’

Ella moved forward. ‘Are you going to try and find
Mum, Uncle Danny?’

The man looked at her and even the young girl could
see the depth of suffering that was suddenly naked in his
eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said hoarsely. ‘That’s why I’m going.’

There was silence and then he looked back at Esther
again and said, ‘At least let me take the child back home
where it’s warm and dry.’

‘No,’ her grandmother said firmly. ‘She stays here. With
me.’

From the tone in her grandmother’s voice, Ella knew
argument would be futile.

Over the next day or so, news filtered through gradually
regarding the extent of the flooding; how the relentless
waves had rolled inland, taking lives, destroying homes
and livelihoods in one powerful, ruthless invasion. All the
coastal holiday resorts of the county had suffered a terrible
battering and now an army of mechanical vehicles moved
in to fill up the breaches. Lorry load after lorry load of slag
and stone was trundled hour after hour to the stricken
coast and men worked day and night to hold back the sea.

With growing horror the people of Fleethaven Point
heard of the devastation and counted themselves fortunate
in comparison.

Yet they were not unscathed, for still there was no news
of Kate Hilton.

By Thursday the water was gone from the house leaving a
carpet of sand and sludge that Esther attacked with
resentment. ‘How dare it?’ she muttered. ‘I’ve loved the
sea, ever since I first came here as a young lass, and
this
is
what it does to me!’

Jonathan had nailed a thick strip of rubber on to a piece
of wood and in turn attached it to a broom handle; a
‘squee-gee’ he called it, and showed Esther how to push it
along the floor to sweep away the thick, muddy silt left by
the sea.

On Saturday, exactly a week after the floods had come,
for the first time Ella awoke to look out of her window
and see that the water had finally soaked away leaving
only puddles here and there and overflowing dykes as a
reminder.

Now, she thought, Mum will come home. She must.

Pulling on the pair of rubber boots she had virtually
claimed as her own, Ella went out into the yard, where
Jonathan had all the rugs from the ground floor of the
house spread about. He was carrying buckets of water
from the pump and swilling them over Esther’s peg rugs
trying to wash away the sand and mud.

‘I don’t think I’m doing much good with these.’ He
glanced ruefully at Ella. He set the bucket down on the
ground and bent double, resting his hands on his knees, as
a fit of coughing racked him.

Ella went up to him. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this,
Grandpa. You should be indoors resting.’

Jonathan took a deep breath and stood up slowly. He
was smiling. ‘You sound like your grannie.’

Her smile flickered briefly and then died. ‘Grandpa, can
I go to Rookery Farm now the water’s gone?’

‘Well . . .’ He hesitated, doubtful, and then glanced
about him. Then he looked down again at the girl. ‘I
suppose so, if you promise to keep to the lane. No going
into the fields, mind. Why do you want to go?’

‘I want to be there when Mum comes back. She’ll come
back today, now the water’s gone. I know she will.’ The
words came out in a rush, tumbling over themselves in her
eagerness; an excitement that hid her deep-rooted anxiety.

Jonathan touched her unruly curls with a tender gesture
and his voice was husky as he said, ‘Yes, love, of course
she will. Off you go then, but tell your grannie first where
you’re going.’

‘I will.’

As she left the yard and turned into the lane, trudging
along in her over-large boots, the young girl felt the anxiety
of the last few days lift a little. Today Mum would come
back. She must have stayed somewhere in town and not
been able to get home because of the floodwater.

But Uncle Danny had been into town and back by the
road leading past the Grange inland, a niggling little voice
reminded her. Why hadn’t Mum come that way then?
Perhaps she hadn’t got back as far as Lynthorpe, Ella
continued to argue inside her head. Perhaps she was still
somewhere where the water had only just gone, like here
at the Point. But today, she would come home.

She must find Uncle Danny. Perhaps he had some news.

*

‘I’ve tried everything I can think of.’ Danny stood facing
Ella, her own anxiety mirrored in his face. He swept his
hand up into his hair and grasped a handful, almost as if
he would pull it out by the roots. His feeling of dread was
every bit as great as Ella’s and just as obvious. Behind him,
Rosie fiddled with the corner of her apron, her troubled
eyes going from one to the other.

‘He’s been up into town every day since the floods
came,’ she put in. ‘And Rob’s there now, asking round.
You know, to see if anyone . . .’ Her voice faded away and
she cast an anxious glance at her husband, afraid perhaps
her tongue might say too much.

They were standing in the warm kitchen at Rookery
Farm and now, from the corner near the range, seated in a
rocking chair with a shawl around her shoulders, came
Grandma Eland’s gentle voice.

‘Come here, lovey, and sit with me. Rosie, get the child
some hot soup. She can’t have had anything warm inside
her for days. If Esther weren’t so stubborn . . .’

‘Now, Mam,’ Danny turned, forcing a laugh, ‘dun’t you
start.’ But he put his hand on Ella’s thin shoulder and
urged her towards the fire.

Moments later she was sipping at thick vegetable soup,
not really hungry but not wanting to refuse their kindness,
when the back door was flung open and Rob burst into the
kitchen.

‘Dad – Dad . . .’ His face was red, his eyes wide and his
coat flying open. As always, his socks were wrinkled
around his ankles.

He did not see Ella sitting in the corner beside the range
before he blurted out, ‘Dad, they’ve found your car.’

The four people in the room stared at him and then the
boy became aware of Ella’s white face, her eyes, wide with
terror, staring at him.

‘Oh, heck,’ she heard him mutter. ‘I – I didn’t know you
was here.’

Danny was the first to speak, his voice a hoarse,
strangled, whisper. ‘Kate? What about Kate?’

The boy dragged his gaze away from Ella’s face back to
his father’s. ‘They – Sergeant Darby wouldn’t tell me.’

‘You – you went to the police station?’

Rob nodded. ‘I thought they might be the people most
likely to know owt. He – he said I was to ask you and the
mester . . .’ Rob jerked his head in the vague direction of
Brumbys’ Farm, ‘to go an’ see them. He – he wouldn’t tell
me any more,’ he added again, leaving the listeners well
aware, as Rob himself had heen, that there was more to
tell.

Under his breath, Ella heard Danny say, ‘Oh – my –
God!’ and he passed his hand across his forehead and up
into his hair again.

Swiftly, Rosie was at his side, touching his arm. ‘Go
straight away, love, and find out. Get the—’ She clapped
her hand to her mouth to stop the words she had been
going to say – ‘get the car out’. The phrase had come
automatically to her lips before she had stopped to think.
But, of course, their car was not here.

Ella was staring at Danny, biting her lower lip to still
its trembling, swallowing the lump of fear rising in her
throat and threatening to choke her. Tears prickled behind
her eyes and she blinked rapidly to stop them falling. Not
yet, she told herself fiercely, don’t let them see you cry
again; at least, not yet.

They had indeed found Danny’s car. They presumed it had
been travelling along the coast road some miles north of
Lynthorpe where it ran along an embankment just below
the sand-dunes. Then the sea had broken through, ripping
aside the sand and vegetation, bearing aloft anything in its
path and hurling the car over and over, plunging it down
the bank until it had come to rest upside down in a deep
dyke, where it lay undiscovered until the floodwater had
subsided.

And they had found Kate.

She had been trapped inside and possibly, from the
bruising on her head, knocked unconscious. ‘From the
position we found the car, we think she was coming back
towards home,’ the kindly policeman told them. ‘Do you
know why she was travelling on that particular road and
at that time in the evening?’

Ella saw her grandparents exchange a glance. Her
grandpa’s voice came huskily. ‘We think she was going to
meet someone that afternoon, but she didn’t say who it
was or where exactly she was going.’

‘So you don’t know whether she actually met whoever
it was, or not?’

Grandpa Godfrey shook his head and sighed sadly,
‘Maybe we’ll never know now.’

The policeman’s sympathetic gaze came to rest on the
young, white-faced girl. He seemed to guess, without being
told, who she was, for he squatted down in front of her
and held out his huge hands towards her. ‘Your mum, was
it, love?’ and when Ella nodded, he added, ‘She could
hardly have known what was happening. She wouldn’t
have suffered . . .’

But the sensitivc child thought differently, and for many
nights to come and even intermittently through the years,
her nightmares would he haunted by the thought of her
mother trapped in the car, alone and hurt, with the water
rising relentlessly . . .

Of course they would not let her see her mother, not
even when they brought her back to the local chapel of
rest at the undertakers’ whilst a funeral was arranged.
Danny and her grandfather had been obliged to identify
the body and though they had tried to prevent Esther
seeing her, their efforts had been in vain.

‘I’ll see me daughter and no one’s goin’ to stop me, not
even you, Jonathan.’ So she had gone, resolutely walking
into town alone to the undertakers’, forbidding anyone to
accompany her.

She came back white-faced and sat down in the wooden
Windsor chair near the range, her hands clutching the arms
until the knuckles showed white just staring into the fire,
yet her eyes were glazed, unseeing. She forgot the house
and clearing up the mess left by the sea, she ignored the
needs of her farm and the animals; she didn’t even seem to
realize her granddaughter was still there, needing her, at
this moment, more than anyone or anything else. She sat
like that for so long that Jonathan became concemed.

‘If only she would cry – let it out,’ Ella overheard him
telling Danny. Perhaps more than any of them, though
only young, Ella knew how her grandmother was feeling,
for she felt the same. The grief was so deep, too deep for
tears. There was a misery locked away inside that would
not, could not find release. It was like a solid, aching mass
of suffering in the pit of her stomach. She could not reach
her grandmother and the older woman could not comfort
the girl. So alike were they that they were both tormented
in the same way and yet could not help each other.

For once Jonathan could do nothing with Esther; trying
to cope with his own personal grief over Kate, whom he
had loved since her childhood – and still suffering from the
effects of his drenching in the cold floodwater – took all
his energy. He was exhausted and devastated himself.

And then Beth Eland came to the farm.

Ella watched in astonishment as Beth came waddling
into the house, heaving her heavy frame into the kitchen
and coming to stand in front of Esther. Jonathan stood by
the door, like Ella just watching and waiting.

The girl had gathered that there was some long-standing
family feud between Esther and Rob’s grandmother. What
was it she had overheard her mother say to Uncle Danny
at that old man’s funeral? ‘There’s so much between them,
Danny,’ Kate had said. ‘So much they can’t forget, yet they
always come together when there’s trouble.’

And so now, in the greatest trouble that Ella could ever
imagine happening, here was Grandma Beth Eland coming
to Esther to try to help her.

‘Well, lass . . .’ Beth began, and Ella felt an hysterical
giggle rise suddenly inside her. To hear these two old
women call each other ‘lass’ would have been so funny if
the reason for it were not so tragic. ‘. . . this won’t do. It
won’t do at all, Esther.’

There was silence as Beth paused but there was no
response. Beth tried again. ‘Come along, Esther. The bairn
needs you now. She’s grieving. Much as we all loved Kate,
and you know we did, her little lass has lost everything –
everything. Ella needs to know you love her, Esther.’

Still, there was no answer and the thought came unbidden
into Ella’s mind. She can’t say she loves me, because
she doesn’t. She doesn’t love me, I know she doesn’t love
me and she never will, not like Mum loved me. No one
could. The tears prickled at the back of her eyelids, but
would not fall.

Ella saw Beth glance across towards Jonathan just once
as if in mute apology for what she was about to do, for
what she felt compelled to do. Then she leant over Esther,
resting her hands on the arms of the chair, trying to force
Esther to look up at her, to meet her gaze. Her voice was
sharp. ‘Where are you burying her, Esther? Next to her
own father? Or out at Suddaby beside yar dad – and yar
mam?’

Esther’s head snapped up and her eyes focused, staring
straight into Beth’s dark brown, troubled gaze. Her voice
was full of harsh bitterness. ‘Aye, I’ll tek her out to
Suddaby all right. But I’ll put her beside
my
mother. Two
of a kind, they’d be, wouldn’t they? Both brought bastards
into the world! I spent all me young life, never allowed to
forget what I was. And now, I’ve to face it all again.’ With
an almost violent gesture she flung out her hand towards
Ella.