The Harbour Girl (6 page)

Mary smiled at their enthusiasm, though she felt emotional at being once more with her Scottish companions. They were jolly women full of laughter and anecdotes and worked hard all day often in difficult conditions; it was not always sunny as this morning was. If it was raining they continued as usual, trying their best to earn enough money to pay for lodgings, food and a ticket home at the end of the season.

The herring were unloaded from the ships’ baskets, tipped into troughs and covered with rough salt so that they weren’t so slippery to handle, and the girls began their job of sizing and gutting each fish, a task which took only seconds. In their team Mary had taken on the role of packer with her mother and Nola as gutters and hoped she hadn’t lost her skill as she arranged the herring in tiers, slit bellies uppermost and heads towards the barrel edge, and sprinkled each layer with salt. Each barrel held about seven hundred fish, and the cooper who was watching Mary as she worked ensured that all the barrels were properly packed and salted.

Jeannie made herself useful by going on errands for the girls; sometimes running to the bakery to buy them bread or scones, fetching water from the pump, or carrying messages from one to another. Tom, she knew, was with the other barefoot lads, dashing to pick up the fallen fish and scooting off to hawk them.

At the end of the day, when they had packed thirty barrels of herring, Fiona’s crew, as she called them, packed up for the night. It had been a reasonably good day, they agreed, but maybe it would be even better tomorrow. They rinsed off their aprons and boots and hung them to dry outside Mary’s door, then went inside for supper.

Jeannie climbed into bed at Tom’s side at about seven o’clock. They were both tired after the early start, but Tom was jubilant for he had made a shilling from his catch.

‘I’ll give you a penny to spend, Jeannie,’ he said sleepily, ‘and I’ll keep tuppence cos I was the one to work for it, ’n’ I’ll give the rest to Ma.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and as she drifted into sleep the last thing she heard was her grandmother saying, ‘Have ye not found another man to wed, Mary?’ and her mother’s reply: ‘No, Ma. I’m not looking. Have you?’

Fiona glanced towards the bed. Seeing the children asleep, she said softly, ‘Aye, as a matter of fact I have.’

‘What!’ Mary said, and Nell and Nola both grinned. ‘You’re joking!’

‘No, I’m not.’ Fiona flushed a little. ‘I said I’d give my answer after this trip and I will. It’ll be aye, I will; so this will be my last season with the silver darlings.’

Mary was speechless; then she swallowed. ‘Who?’ she said. ‘Who are you going to marry?’

‘Andrew Duncan. You don’t know him. I met him at a ceilidh about three years ago.’

‘A ceilidh! Three years ago?’ Mary was aghast. ‘What do you know about him?’

Fiona laughed. ‘Wheesht, lassie. He’s not marrying me for my money, that I can tell you.’ Then she patted her daughter’s knee. ‘You’re a long time deid, Mary, and I’m getting tired,’ she said soberly. ‘I can’t keep on with this work for much longer. Andrew wants me to give it up and live with him. He’s got a nice little croft with a few sheep and a mite o’ money put by. Enough, he says, to last us out our days. He’s nice,’ she added. ‘You’d like him.’

Mary was astonished. Not only that her mother was considering marrying again, but also that she had been at a ceilidh when Mary would have thought her dancing days were over.

‘Did you two know?’ she asked Nell and Nola.

They hummed and hawed. ‘We guessed,’ they said in unison.

‘So you don’t have to worry about me any more,’ Fiona added, ‘for I know that you do. And the wee bairns can come and stay with us sometimes.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Nola whispered as they bedded down for the night. ‘We’ll report back to you on how she is. We’ll still be coming with the fleet, and the three of us can be a crew.’

But it means I shan’t see her again, Mary thought the next morning as she checked the previous day’s barrels and topped up those that had settled. The only time I get to see my mother is when she comes for the herring season; I can’t afford to visit her in Scotland, any more than I can send the children. She felt happy for her mother, but sad for herself as the last link with her homeland seemed to be dissolving.

When Tom reached twelve he told his mother he would rather be a boat builder than a fisherman. He had been out on a few fishing trips and been very sick. The skipper who had offered him a place with his crew had expressed his doubts to Mary.

‘If he’s sick when the weather’s calm,’ he explained, ‘he’ll be a liability when it’s rough. I don’t want to disappoint the lad – I know he’d set his heart on following in his father’s sea boots, so to speak – but I think you should talk to him about it.’

She asked Tom plainly what he wanted to do.

‘I’m sick as a dog, Ma,’ he said. ‘Last time I went out we got as far as the Dogger Bank and I thought I was going to die! I’d rather build boats than sail in ’em.’

‘You’d still have to go out in them to try them out, surely.’

‘Aye, I would, to make sure they were seaworthy, but not so often, not like fishing for a living and staying out at sea for a week or more.’

It turned out that Tom had already been to a boatyard to ask if he could do any work after school and had been given odd jobs of clearing up and polishing brasses. He had been complimented on his ability and it was suggested that his mother went in to see the owner.

‘You’re not mad at me, are you, Ma?’ he asked. ‘Not disappointed that I won’t be a fisherman like my da?’

She ruffled his hair. ‘Not a bit.’ She smiled. ‘It’ll be one worry less if I know you’re safe on dry land.’

For Jeannie’s ninth birthday Mary had given her a pair of scissors and a mending needle and then a lesson in how to pick up the broken strands of torn net and loop and knot the new twine to repair the hole. At first Jeannie had found it difficult and the net heavy but eventually she mastered it; her mother had been pleased with her progress and the fact that Jeannie would have some means of earning money when she was old enough. Then, as she had promised, when Jeannie was ten she taught her how to gut fish. ‘The secret is a very sharp knife,’ she told her daughter as she showed her how to bind up her fingers. ‘But that can slice fingers as well as fish bellies, so you have to be very careful.’

Mary’s mother had married her Mr Duncan and Mary had received a postcard from him, saying that he hoped he would meet her one day and that she and the children were always welcome to visit them, at which Mary had sighed, knowing that she never would.

Nell and Nola had come the following year for the herring, but they hadn’t seen Fiona since her marriage and so had nothing to report.

‘Wish someone would come along and tek care of me,’ the unmarried Nell had complained when they returned to Fraserburgh. ‘I’d have him like a shot.’

‘But you don’t want to wait until you’re forty,’ Nola had said, ‘so out on the town we’ll go tonight and find a couple of Scottish fisher lads.’

Which they did, and married them, but they still came to Scarborough for the silver herring.

Jeannie joined her mother and Nola when she was fourteen and made up the third in the crew, for Nell was pregnant with her second child. She was now quite swift with the knife and also adept as a packer, and out of the herring season she sat with her mother by the harbour and mended nets. When she was fifteen she began to walk out with Ethan.

It happened quite naturally. He never asked her especially to meet him, but whenever all the girls and boys congregated around the harbour or the sands the two of them paired off instinctively. He never held her hand as they walked, as she had seen other boys do with their girls, and she was too shy to take the initiative herself. He had never kissed her either, and she wanted him to do that too.

At nineteen he was tall and blond, with blue-green eyes and dark lashes. She knew that she loved him, but deduced that he had no feelings for her except for friendship. And I suppose, she thought hopelessly, I’ll have to be content with that. But it was not enough; that much she knew.

‘Is Ethan your beau?’ her mother asked her one day as they sat together mending nets.

Jeannie gave a little shrug but didn’t meet her mother’s eyes. ‘He’s a friend,’ she murmured. ‘Always has been.’

‘He’s a good lad,’ Mary responded. ‘Very steady. Very reliable. His da says he’ll soon have his own smack.’

‘I know.’ Jeannie looked up this time. The sun was warm on her head and she gazed at the tossing white crests as they washed up on the sandy beach. ‘But …’ She didn’t want to put her feelings into words, not to her mother, that Ethan, although she cared for him, didn’t respond to her in the way that she wanted him to. He didn’t show any emotion. ‘I don’t know how he feels about me,’ she added lamely. ‘He never says.’

‘He’s probably shy,’ her mother said. ‘Some lads are, even with girls they’ve known a long time. You’ve to beware of men who are all promises and kisses and other things to sweet-talk a lassie.’

Jeannie shook her head. ‘Well, that doesn’t happen with Ethan, Ma, so you don’t need to worry about it.’

Mary hid a wry smile. She hadn’t really been worrying about Ethan Wharton, just thinking that the calm and constant lad was an ideal prospect for her daughter. He was reliable and bound for a worthwhile life, according to his father, and she really hoped that Jeannie was prepared to wait for him to declare himself. And that really was the worry; for Jeannie, despite appearing to be placid and self-possessed, had, she felt, inherited her own youthful waywardness as well as the headstrong determination of her father.

CHAPTER SIX

THE BRACING AIR at Scarborough was considered to be beneficial to health, and as well as the gentry who came to take the medicinal waters, listen to the music in the Spa Hall or walk by the mere and flower gardens, the employees of manufacturing companies in the West Riding towns enjoyed a day at the seaside for their works outings. Men polished their boots and looked out their straw hats or bowlers; women and girls dressed up in their best hand-me-down gowns and decorated their hats with ribbons and flowers. They paddled in the sea, the men rolling up their trousers to their knees but never removing their hats, and the women drifting down to the edge in groups, egging each other on to lift up their skirts as far as their knees to splash in the ice-cold water. Often they strolled towards the Spa, where there might be a travelling show on the sands, or else visited the harbour to see the ships and watch the women mending nets, and stopped to buy a dish of cockles, or a crab or a lobster or a smoked herring to take home.

Mid-afternoon one day in the summer of 1887, Mary broke off her work to take a stroll along the quay. Jeannie stayed where she was; sometimes visitors stopped to talk and she enjoyed listening to the different forms of speech: the friendly charm of the West Riding folk who called her
luv
, the blunt tone of farmers’ wives from the North Yorkshire Moors, and the softer flatter style of the East Riding. All of us from Yorkshire, she mused, and all sounding so different.

She put her head back and breathed in deeply, closing her eyes. A slight breeze fanned her face; the herring gulls were screeching overhead and she could hear their wings flapping as they swooped. They seemed to know when the visitors were here and spent more time searching for the titbits they threw for them than they did wheeling over the sea.

A shadow fell across her face and she opened her eyes. Someone was standing over her and it wasn’t her mother. She put her hand to her forehead to see who it was. It was a man. A young one.

‘Sorry,’ he said, moving to one side. ‘Were you tekking a rest?’

Jeannie picked up the twine again. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No time for that.’

‘Wish you’d mend my nets!’ His voice was teasing.

‘Bring them then and I will. For a price,’ she added, looking more closely at him. He wasn’t anyone she knew and he wasn’t wearing working clothes so she guessed he was a visitor.

‘Too far to come, though I reckon it’d be worth it.’ He grinned down at her and she smiled back.

‘How do you know?’

He crouched down beside her and handled the net, brushing against her hand. ‘Looks pretty good to me.’

‘Are you an expert then?’ She gazed at him, so close to her. He was dark-haired and clean-shaven, with brown eyes and a smiling mouth, and as he stood up she saw he was of medium height and strong build. He was also weather-browned and she guessed he might be a fisherman, but not from round here.

‘Expert? Well, in a manner o’ speaking I am, not on mending nets but on filling ’em.’

‘Where are you from?’ she asked curiously. ‘Where do you fish from?’

He continued to look at her and she turned her eyes away from his scrutiny and began working on the net. ‘Hull,’ he said. ‘That’s my home town and where I earn my living.’

‘Having a day off, are you?’

‘Aye. ’Ship’s being overhauled so I thought I’d tek ’train and come to Scarborough for ’day. I’ve not seen it from ’land side afore. I like it,’ he added. ‘Though I don’t reckon there’s much work when ’visitors have gone.’

‘There’s the fishing,’ she told him. ‘And the herring season.’

‘Oh aye, I know that. Are you a herring girl?’