The Fleethaven Trilogy (43 page)

‘Why, you ’aven’t fastened your collar stud, Matthew. Here, let me.’

‘It’s – stiff,’ Matthew murmured, but Esther knew his fingers, still without strength, could not cope with fastening the collar on to his shirt.

‘It’s me starching,’ she laughed. ‘I always get yar collars too stiff. Now put yar jacket on.’

She held it for him whilst he struggled to put his arms into the sleeves. Then she stood back to look at him. ‘Let me brush it down for you. It’s a long time since you’ve worn this. I hope the moths haven’t got at it.’

Matthew stood meekly whilst she flicked the clothes brush over his shoulders and down his back. ‘There now, that’s better.’

She stood watching them go until the car disappeared around the bend in the lane, listening while the chugging grew fainter.

Esther was preparing supper in the scullery by the time she heard the chugging sound of the motor car coming nearer and nearer. Outside it was almost dusk and Kate had been in bed over two hours.

Esther glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf above the range. Almost nine o’clock. Where on earth had they been until this time? She heard the car stop at the gate, and watching from the small scullery window, she saw Matthew climb out and lurch unsteadily towards the gatepost and lean against it. The car reversed into the gateway and then, with a grating of gears, it swung out again and up the lane towards the road leading off to the Grange.

Esther opened the back door. Matthew was still standing clutching the gatepost as if he needed its support to keep him upright.

Esther clicked her tongue in exasperation and walked towards him across the yard. He was lolling against the post, his arms wrapped around it and as she drew near, she realized just why. Even from a few feet away she could smell the ale on him!

She pursed her mouth. Now she knew why the squire had driven off so quickly. He had not wanted to face her anger.

She sighed heavily. What’s the use, she thought. He’s in no fit state to understand anything I say. Aloud she said, unable to keep the sharpness from her tone, ‘Come on with you. Let’s get you to bed.’

In his drunken state, the nodding and the shaking had returned. The squire might be trying to help, Esther thought grimly, but he was doing Matthew no favours at all by getting him like this. No favours at all.

Nor her either.

T
HE
Friday jaunts into town with the squire continued and there was nothing Esther could do to prevent them – though she tried.

‘You’re doing yourself no good, Matthew,’ she railed at him. ‘The drink makes you bad again.’

‘Shut up,’ Matthew growled, struggling to fasten his collar, too angry and proud to ask for her assistance. ‘Ain’t I – a right – after what I’ve been through?’

‘You’re getting so much better – when you don’t drink.’

He raised his hand and swung round as if to strike her. It was a long time since anyone had hit her, yet Esther stood her ground. Quietly, she said, ‘Aye, go on then. Hit me if it makes you feel better. If it makes ya feel a man again.’

She knew the words were cruel, after all he had been through, yet she had to try to make him see sense.

Before her, Matthew swayed, his arm dropping uselessly to his side. There was no strength in him now to deal her any kind of a blow.

The gesture had been a futile one and they both knew it.

A bright spring turned into a warm summer and with each day Matthew improved – at least in some ways. He still refused to do anything remotely connected with work and spent his days between the two children, the Seagull and the squire and his contraption, as Esther called it.

He would sit outside the pub in the early evening and watch the children playing on the stretch of grass. Esther found this out because almost every evening she was obliged to go and stand on the Hump and shout her daughter home for bed.

‘Why dun’t you come when you know it’s your bedtime? I won’t let you go playing up at the Point again if you’re not going to come home on time,’ Esther said, almost dragging the reluctant child home.

‘Aw, Mam, but I’m looking after me dad.’

‘Danny Eland, more like,’ Esther muttered to herself. Her daughter’s sharp hearing had caught the name.

‘Yes, he looks after me dad an’ all. He likes me dad, does Danny.’

Esther’s mouth became a thin line as she compressed her lips together to prevent the words tumbling from them. Of course he likes your dad, she wanted to shout. He’s his dad an’ all!

But the words remained unspoken; they were words that must never be spoken – at least not to Kate.

Aloud she said, ‘Yar dad can look after himself now.’ Her tone was laced with a bitterness she could not prevent.

‘He still dun’t walk properly sometimes, Mam.’

‘Huh,’ Esther gave a disapproving grunt, opened her mouth to explain and then closed it again. Inwardly she sighed. How could she tell Kate that Matthew’s unsteadiness was caused not by his illness now, but by drink?

The child must have felt her mother’s controlled anger for she said no more and walked meekly beside Esther.

Each evening Kate slipped away to play with the Harris children and Danny Eland and however much Esther upbraided her, she could not stop her daughter, short of locking her up somewhere.

So time after time Esther had to leave her work and climb the Hump and shout to Kate. Then one evening as she crested the rise in the lane and stood on top of it, she saw the children playing on the grass near the cottages and her husband sitting on a bench seat outside the pub. Standing motionless on the deck of her boat home, looking down on the scene below her, was Beth Eland. Esther swivelled her glance to look at Matthew and saw that his face was upturned and his gaze was fixed upon Beth. Below, on the grass, quite oblivious of the grown-ups, Danny bowled a ball to Kate who hit it high in the air, shrieking with laughter.

‘Catch it, Enid, oh, catch it!’

Esther turned away and, unobserved, returned to the farm. For once she would let Kate come home of her own accord.

Back in her kitchen, Esther set the kettle on the hob and sat down at the table. For a long time she just sat there, staring out of the window that faced out over the front garden and across the flat land she now farmed. Her gaze was unseeing, for before her mind’s eye was the poignant picture of Matthew and Beth.

There was a dull ache of loneliness inside her, but the release of tears would not come. It was a pain – like Matthew’s and Beth’s – too deep for tears.

When at last Kate came home, Matthew was with her, leaning heavily on the child’s shoulder. Esther, busying herself in the pantry, stayed out of the kitchen until she had heard Kate scuttle quickly upstairs to her bed. When she stepped into the kitchen it was to find her husband sitting in the wooden chair at the side of the range, his head lolling back. His mouth wide open, he was snoring noisily.

The summer was well advanced. The hay was gathered and the corn ripening. Soon they would have to think about the next harvest, Esther thought, and her mind fluttered back to the harvest when Jonathan had been here. Working all day side by side in the fields and then lying together in the soft hay . . .

Esther wandered through her fields of corn, splitting open an ear of wheat here and there. Almost ready, but not quite. She heard the rattle of cart wheels in the lane and glanced up in surprise. Today was not one of Will’s days for a call. As she shaded her eyes against the glare she could see that it was Will’s carrier cart right enough, but he had not blown his whistle to announce his arrival.

He saw her in the field and waved. She returned his greeting and went towards the gate where he pulled the cart to a halt. He climbed down stiffly and leant over the gate waiting for her to reach him.

She smiled a greeting. ‘This is a nice surprise, Will. What brings you out here today?’

There was no answering smile on his face. ‘Esther lass,’ he said at once. ‘It’s yar aunt. She passed away last night.’

Esther laid her hands upon the gate, feeling the rough wood beneath her palms. She could think of nothing to say.

‘Yar uncle wanted me to come and tell you. He asked me specially to ask you to come to the funeral . . .’

Esther drew in a sharp breath.

‘He asked me special-like,’ Will insisted, and Esther found her eyes held by his intense gaze. Softly, he said, ‘Ya’ll not refuse yar uncle, lass, will ya?’

Slowly, almost against her will, Esther found herself shaking her head. For a moment a look of anger flitted across Will’s face, but as she said, haltingly, ‘No, no, Will, I’ll not refuse him, this time,’ his anger died and he covered her hand with his own as it lay on the gate.

‘I knew you’d not let me down, lass. I knew it.’

They stood a few moments like that until Will seemed to rouse himself and opened the gate for her to pass out into the lane. Briskly now he made the arrangements, and Esther found herself with no chance to withdraw her promise.

‘I’ll come for you early on Friday morning and bring
you back again when it’s all over.’

‘But Will, it’s one of your busiest days, a Friday . . .’

‘I’ll work the Sunday, then. The Lord’11 not mind for
once.’

Esther felt the corner of her mouth twitch. There was no arguing with Will when he was in a determined mood.

*

Dawn on the Friday morning found Esther climbing up on to the seat of the carrier’s cart beside Will. She was dressed in a new black costume, with a neat black hat to complete the outfit.

‘Eh, lass, if it weren’t the wrong thing to say on such a sad occasion, I’d tell you that you look right bonny!’

Esther had bought the outfit the previous day on a rare visit to the town. She had pondered long and hard, biting her lip in indecision, counting her savings coin by coin, trying to justify the expense. She still kept her money in the box Sam had left under the bed. Over the years, little by little, she had added to the hoard. Every penny had been hard earned, every coin represented a tiny achievement on her part. She had scrimped on new clothes for herself, making do and mending, as Ma Harris put it. As for Kate’s dresses, Esther made most of them herself, sitting up far into the night stitching tiny neat seams by hand as her aunt had taught her until her eyes ached in the flickering lamplight.

There was quite a sum now and it gave Esther a feeling of security.

Now, as if in honour of the woman who, Esther was obliged to acknowledge, had taught her all the practical capabilities she possessed, she had spent a small part of her savings on a mourning outfit to attend her aunt’s funeral.

‘I ain’t never spent any of this money – not even when we bought the ’osses,’ she told Matthew as she pushed the box back under the bed. ‘I’ve been saving it all these years. Even when it were tough in the war, I managed not to dip into it. I want to hang on to it just in case we gets a bad harvest, or – or . . .’

Matthew was sitting on the edge of the bed to pull his boots on. ‘For that rainy day, eh, Esther? Dun’t feel you have to – explain it to me,’ he added and then hesitated, as if feeling suddenly awkward. If anyone deserves a new dress – I reckon it’s you.’ He paused again as he still did when striving to put sentences together. ‘Pity it’s got to be black though.’

Esther rose from crouching down to shove the box back into its hiding place, and stood looking down at him. He was a strange mixture of moods and temper, this husband of hers, and it wasn’t all down to the shell-shock either.

One moment he was laughing and jovial, swinging Kate up into his arms now that daily he was growing stronger, or kicking a ball about with Danny and the next he would be growling in anger, raging against the unfairness of his life as he saw it. His mood swings were like the see-saw that Kate and Danny had made in the meadow across the fallen trunk of a tree.

Still Matthew made no effort to work. Today though, Esther had deliberately asked him to try to do the milking for her. ‘Enid’ll be over later, but try, Matthew, won’t you?’

He had held out his hands to her, spreading his fingers wide, frowning down at them. ‘How can I – with this shaking?’ he had asked her morosely.

She had sighed and bitten back the retort that sprang to her lips. She had the sneaking feeling that Matthew often played upon his disabilities now; that he wasn’t really as bad as he still liked to male out when it suited him. His hands didn’t shake when he climbed into the squire’s car and bowled away to the town to get drunk, she thought resentfully.

‘You’m quiet, lass.’ Will’s voice broke into her thoughts now and she turned to give him a quick smile.

‘You’ve no need to feel – well – awk’ard, Esther,’ Will went on. ‘Yaw Uncle George is looking forward to seeing you again.’ She felt Will take a sly look sideways at her and knew he could not resist adding, ‘Pity it’s taken this to mek you go back to visit.’

Esther said nothing.

A
S
Esther climbed down from Will’s cart in the yard of the low cottage that had been her home for the first sixteen years of her life, time seemed to spin around her. It was all so familiar and yet at the same time so strange.

Little about the place had altered, except the people. When the door opened and Esther found herself staring into the eyes of her uncle, she scarcely recognized him. The huge bulk of the man she remembered seemed to have shrunk away. His clothes hung loosely on his thin frame, and he stooped now, his shoulders hunched. His face, the skin yellow and wrinkled, was drawn and careworn. It seemed he did not recognize her either for it was not until she said tentatively, ‘Uncle? Uncle George?’ that his expression lightened and tears welled in his faded eyes.

‘Esther, oh, Esther. How – how you’ve changed. Come in, come in. The children are all in the parlour.’

Esther followed him through the kitchen she remembered so well. Here she had stood on a stool at the sink to wash the dishes. Here she had blackleaded the range and polished the brass fender. These rugs were the ones she had shaken each week and the red stone flags were the same she had scrubbed. And all the time her aunt had scolded her. She could almost hear her Aunt Hannah s shrill voice now in this room.