The Fleethaven Trilogy (111 page)

With a sob, Ella ran back through the kitchen, dragged
open the back door and raced across the yard towards the
barn. She heard them calling her but she ran on.

It was Rob who found her a little later burrowed beneath
the straw in the loft above the big barn at Rookery Farm.
He said nothing but sat down beside her, wriggling into
the straw to make himself a little nest too.

He held out a plate towards her. ‘I’ve brought you some
sandwiches. Thought you’d be hungry.’

She shook her head, clenching her teeth together stubbornly,
though her stomach was now rumbling with
emptiness.

‘Oh, well, I’ll eat ’em, then.’ He picked one up and took
a huge bite, munching with deliberate pleasure.

She reached out swiftly and grabbed one, stuffing it into
her mouth. What would her grandmother say if she could
see her now, she thought with glee. The plate wobbled and
two sandwiches fell into the straw. ‘Butterfingers.’ Rob
grinned, picked them carefully out of the straw and put
them back on to the plate.

The two youngsters ate in silence in the deepening
gloom of the hayloft.

‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ he said airily. ‘They want you
back at the house. Yar grandpa and grannie are leaving
soon.’

‘I’m not going back with her.’

‘Well, you can’t stay up here for ever.’

‘I’m going back to Lincoln with Aunty Peggy or – or
with . . .’ She bit her lip, half wanting to confide in Rob
and yet years of covering up the bald truth made her
hesitate still. She wanted to blurt out, Have they said any
more about the man in the churchyard? Have they said
who he was? The thoughts were burning inside her head.
Was he – could he have been my father? Instead, she sat
silently, digging her hands into the prickly straw and
gripping handfuls of it in frustration.

‘I don’t reckon you’re goin’ back to Lincoln. They’ve
been arguing half the afternoon.’

‘Who?’

‘All on ’em. Even your aunty Peg and – er – Isobel and
Mavis, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, them an’ all. And me dad and mum. Even my
grandma put her two penn’orth in till your grannie told
her to mind her own business and stay out of her affairs.
Dun’t tek ’em long to get back to their feudin’, does it?’

‘Your grandma was good when we first got the news,
though,’ Ella said in a small voice. There was another
pause then she asked, ‘What did Aunty Peggy say? Did she
say I could go back with her?’

She heard the straw rustle as he moved. ‘Er, well, not
exactly. See, she – they all agreed that with her not bein’
married and going out to work ev’ry day, well, she won’t
be at home to look after you—’

‘I bet she never said that,’ Ella defended Peggy hotly. ‘I
bet that was
her
– Gran.’

‘No, as a matter of fact, it was your grandpa who said
it wouldn’t be fair on either Peg or you.’

Another silence.

‘And Aunty Isobel and Aunty Mavis? What did they
say?’

‘We-ell, er . . .’ He hesitated and then asked, ‘Which is
the posh one in uniform who smokes?’

‘Isobel.’

‘She said she can’t take you ’cos she’s still in the forces.’

‘Are you sure they didn’t say any more? I mean, about
anybody else?’

He stared at her through the gloom. ‘Who else is there?’

There was a pause until, in a small voice, she said, ‘No
one, I suppose.’

At his next words, her hopes leapt. ‘But the other one,
she said you could go to her. “Won’t notice her among my
rowdy three,” she said.’

Oh, good old Aunty Mavis. Ella scrambled up. ‘That’s
it then. I’ll go with Aunty Mavis.’

But her hopes were short-lived. As she entered the
kitchen with Rob behind her, her grandmother’s voice was
the first to greet her.

‘There you are. Go and get yar coat. We must be off
home now.’

In front of them all, ranged around the big room, Ella
faced her grandmother. ‘I’m not staying here. I want to go
home with Aunty Mavis.’ She glanced beyond her grandmother
and caught Mavis’s glance. ‘I can, can’t I, Aunty
Mave?’

‘Well . . .’

In a voice that would tolerate no argument, either from
Ella or from anyone else, Esther said, ‘You’ll do nothing of
the sort, Missy. You’re coming home with me. You’re my
responsibility now.’

The storms raged on for days. Not the elements now, but
the tempest between Ella and her grandmother.

‘I won’t live here in this God-forsaken place.’

‘Mind your language, Missy.’

‘I don’t belong here.
You
don’t want me. You don’t
love me.’

‘Don’t be so silly, child. You’re my flesh and blood. It’s
my duty to look after you.’

Ella stared at her, waiting, willing her grandmother to
say the words she so desperately needed to hear from her.
But Esther turned away and poked the fire vigorously,
muttering only, ‘We’re stuck with each other, Missy, so
you’d best get used to it.’

Ella swallowed the lump of disappointment that rose in
her throat and hardened her resolve. ‘Well, I don’t like it
here,’ she said, stubbornly determined not to be cowed. ‘I
want to go back to Lincoln.’

‘There’s nowhere for you to go back to.’ Esther’s words
were harsh, but sadly, the truth; even Ella had to acknowledge
that fact now.

Peggy, with troubled eyes, had quietly explained that
she, a single woman with a full-time job, could not look
after a ten-year-old properly. ‘Maybe they’ll let you come
in the holidays and spend a few days with me,’ she added,
and had touched Ella’s cheek gently. ‘When I can get time
off work.’

The girl had nodded, clenching her teeth together,
willing herself not to cry, not in front of Peggy, not in front
of anyone and certainly she would never, ever, let her
grandmother see her tears.

Even Mavis, in the end, had reluctantly admitted that it
would be best if Ella went to live with her grandparents. ‘I
– I’m not sure what the law is, pet. Your grannie will have,
what do they call it, custody of you?’

It sounded as if she were going to prison and to Ella
that’s exactly what it felt like.

The only occasion when the girl had felt a surge of hope
had been when Jonathan had said quietly one supper time,
‘It’s another very high tide again this weekend, Esther. We
ought to go inland. Maybe we could go to Peg’s for a few
days.’

‘Oh, Grandpa, yes!’

‘We’re not going anywhere, Jonathan. I’m not leaving
my farm to the mercy of the sea or to looters. If the flood
comes again, then we’ll be in it again.’

And Ella’s brief spark of hope was snuffed out.

Only two weeks after her mother’s funeral, all their
belongings from Lincoln, pathetically few it seemed,
arrived on a removal van to be dumped in the corner of
the big bedroom upstairs where Ella now slept. Kate’s
clothes, her precious sewing machine and a square, polished
box. Ella tried to lift the lid, but the box was locked
and there was no key. Perhaps it had been in her mother’s
handbag; that would have been with her in the car . . . Ella
shuddered and pushed the box away from her.

With tears prickling her eyelids, she fingered her mother’s
favourite dress, held a warm, woolly cardigan to her
cheek. Kate’s perfume still lingered and in the privacy of
her bedroom, Ella buried her face in its softness, breathing
in the closeness of her mother and wept bitter, lonely tears.
Then she ran her hands over the smooth lid of the sewing
machine with which Kate had earned their keep as a
dressmaker, using the front parlour as a workroom in the
terraced house in Lincoln. Ella gave a gulp. Never again
would she hear the whir of the machine from the front
room where pins and paper patterns and lengths of fabric
littered every surface, even the floor; or hear her mother’s
merry laughter as she talked with her customers who called
for fittings. She had thought the house they lived in was
theirs or at least that it belonged to both her mother and
Aunty Peggy, but now it seemed that they had only been
lodgers: the house belonged solely to Peggy Godfrey.

Ella could still not quite believe that Peggy really did
not want her to live with her and she clung to the thought
that it was all Esther Godfrey’s fault. Her grandmother
didn’t want her, Ella thought, not really, but she saw it as
her duty to look after her daughter’s orphan; her bastard
orphan.

So it seemed she would have to stay at Brumbys’ Farm
at least for the present, but she clung to the vow she had
flung in a final fury at her grandmother, ‘One day I’ll run
away . . .’

‘Where would you run to?’ had been the disparaging
answer, whilst poor Jonathan had stood helplessly between
them.

‘Anywhere. Anywhere away from here. Away from
you!’

‘How? There’s no buses out here.’

‘Then I’ll
walk
if I have to!’ Ella had set her firm jaw in
a hard, determined line.

For a moment she saw her grandmother looking at her
strangely, nodding slowly. ‘Aye, Missy, I believe you
would, an’ all.’ Her tone then had been soft, wondering,
and Ella had seen the look that passed between her
grandparents.

‘More like me than I care to admit,’ Esther had said
quietly.

Jonathan had spread his hands and shrugged his
shoulders in a gesture of helplessness, beaten by the wilful
strength of the two with whom he must now share his
home.

About three weeks after Kate’s funeral, Rob arrived at
Brumbys’ Farm one morning, carrying the black and white
kitten, now a fluffy, wriggling ball of mischief with wide
open eyes.

‘I’ve asked yar grannie if you can have a kitten and she
said yes.’

‘She did?’ Ella was startled for a moment.

‘Well, why shouldn’t she? A cat’s no trouble to keep on
a farm and, besides, I told her I thought it’d be company
for you.’

‘Oh.’ For a moment the disappointment that the kindness
had not come from her grandmother was acute. For
the first time since the dreadful news about her mother had
reached them, Ella’s smile was genuine as she took the
wriggling little kitten into her arms. Its tiny claws sticking
through her jumper, the kitten climbed up Ella’s chest and
nuzzled her neck, licking her with its rough tongue and
greeting her with a high-pitched, frantic purring.

‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

‘Boy.’

‘Oh, he’s lovely. What’s his name?’

‘Hasn’t got one. You can call him what you like.’

Ella wrinkled her brow. ‘I don’t know what sort of
name you call a cat.’

‘Well, there’s – um – er – well, anything really.’

‘Let’s ask Grandpa. He’s swilling out the cowshed.’

As they walked towards the building, Rob said, ‘How’s
things in the house? I mean, all the muck the sea left.’

‘Oh, we’ve about got it clean but a lot of her things are
ruined. She keeps setting me on to wash the floors and the
walls.’ Ella grinned again and mimicked her grandmother’s
Lincolnshire dialect to perfection. ‘Ses it’s time Ah made
mesen useful.’

Rob laughed. ‘Mind she dun’t hear you. She’ll clip your
ear.’

Ella grinned again. Strangely, she didn’t resent being set
to work. At the moment it kept her busy, gave her
something to do and stopped her thinking about her
mother quite so much.

Only at night in the big, lonely bedroom, did she bury
her head beneath the covers so that no one should hear
and sob herself to sleep.

‘She’s thrown out all her peg rugs,’ she went on to tell
Rob now. ‘Grandpa tried to wash them but he couldn’t get
the sand and mud out. Everywhere’s so damp and the
walls are all drying out white. It’s the salt water, Grandpa
says. And all the wallpaper’s peeling off right up the wall,
even higher than the water actually came.’

The boy nodded, but could think of nothing to say. The
flood had caused far more tragedy to this family than a bit
of peeling wallpaper and ruined rugs. It would be a long
time before the house recovered from its soaking, but even
longer for the pain of their terrible loss to ease.

‘Grandpa, look. Rob’s brought me a kitten. Isn’t he
lovely?’

Jonathan straightened up and pressed his hand to his
back as if to ease an ache. Then he came to them and
reached out his work-worn fingers to tickle the kitten
under its chin. The kitten clutched his forefinger with its
tiny paws and nibbled at it with its sharp teeth, but the
action was playful not vicious, and Jonathan did not
withdraw his fingers in pain.

‘Can you think of a name, Grandpa? He hasn’t got one
and I don’t know what to call a cat. Mum . . .’ Her voice
shook a little. ‘Mum always said we couldn’t have one in a
town ’cos of it getting run over.’

‘Quite right too,’ Jonathan said. ‘Now then, let’s think
about it.’

After several suggestions, the name Ella liked was Tibby
but her grandmother’s first words were, ‘No sneaking him
indoors, Missy. He’ll sleep in the barn and mek ’issen useful.’

Ella heard Rob, still at her side, quickly stifle a giggle
and turn it into a cough. Esther glanced at him sharply,
but went on, ‘We dun’t have pets on a farm. He can earn
his keep by keeping the rats and mice down.’

‘Rats!’ Ella’s eyes widened. ‘Are there rats in the barn?’

Her grandmother’s expression was scathing. ‘Course
there are. What do you expect on a farm where there’s
meal?’

As the two youngsters went outside again into the yard,
Ella whispered, ‘What’s she mean “meal”? What meal?’

‘It’s stuff we feed the animals on, the pigs, an’ that.’

Ella looked down at the kitten in her arms. The little
thing was still purring loudly. ‘He’s not big enough to
catch rats yet, is he?’

‘No,’ Rob said, and, understanding Esther’s command
better than Ella did, added, ‘No, but he’ll grow.’

*

The police brought back the items found in the car. In a
kind and sympathetic gesture someone had dried and
cleaned everything. When Esther laid them out on the
kitchen table, Ella picked up Kate’s handbag and hugged it
to her chest. Somehow the handbag, more than anything
else, symbolized her mother. She had carried it everywhere
and the contents in its voluminous depths represented
Kate’s life: the keys to their home in Lincoln, her identity
card, an old ration book, a handkerchief, a packet of
sewing needles, a diary, a nail-file, lipstick and powder
compact; and, lastly, a letter. The pages had been separated
and dried out and then carefully replaced in the envelope.
Ella glanced at it, but the writing was illegible, the ink
running in blue blotches all over the pages.