The Oyster Catchers (16 page)

He led Eline down the drive and there indeed was the cab, the lights gleaming, the horses moving edgily on the cobbles.

Will helped Eline up into the coldness of the leather seat and she sank back, suddenly grateful to have all decisions taken out of her hands. She closed her eyes, seeing again the triumph on the face of Nina Parks, Joe’s old love who was still young enough to get with child by him.

Was it, as the old priest had said, just pride on her part that had made her walk out? But no, what woman would accept the presence of a rival in her home? It was asking too much of even the most forbearing of women.

‘What happened?’ Will said gently. ‘I know it must have been something dreadful to make you leave your home at this time of night.’

Eline opened her eyes and tried to see Will’s face but it was too dark. And yet she knew that his expression would be one of concern. He wasn’t asking questions from mere curiosity, he cared about her.

‘Joe brought home his mistress,’ she said in a flat voice. ‘She is going to have his child and yet she is old enough to be my mother. I have failed Joe, I realize that, I can’t work the oyster beds like Nina Parks and I can’t even give Joe children.’ She shook back her hair. ‘But whatever I have done to fail him, I just can’t put up with his mistress being under the same roof, I just can’t.’

Will was silent, but his hand found hers in the darkness
and held it gently. Eline felt a rush of mixed emotions, if only she was free, she would curl her hand into his, snuggle against him, close her eyes and feel his mouth on hers.

She stopped herself abruptly; whatever Joe had done he was her husband and she had no right to be thinking such wicked thoughts about another man.

‘I wish I’d been at home to look after you,’ he said quietly. ‘What made you come into Swansea to see Emily Miller?’

‘Desperation, I suppose,’ Eline replied. ‘Emily Miller promised me a job,’ Eline explained, ‘remember when I was in your shop that time? I suppose I thought she could take me in there and then.’ She bit her lip. ‘I don’t really know what I thought, I was clutching at straws.’ She swallowed hard.

‘Am I doing the right thing coming with you, Will? You know how angry Joe was to find me working in your shop that time.’ She rubbed at her eyes tiredly. ‘I don’t think I’ve thought clearly since the moment Joe walked into the house with Nina Parks clinging to his arm.’

‘Forget it all for now,’ Will urged, ‘things will look different after a good night’s sleep.’ The drive into Oystermouth was over very quickly and, as Eline alighted from the cab, she glanced around her nervously. Joe might well be making his way home from one of the public bars at any time and the last thing she wanted was a confrontation with him right now.

Will paid the cab driver, then unlocked the door and led the way into the house. It was silent and dark with just one gas lamp shining on top of the stairs.

‘It looks as if Mrs Marsh is in bed,’ Will said. ‘Come on, you can have my room for tonight and I’ll sleep in the sitting room.’

Eline was too tired to argue, in any case, what alternative did she have? She certainly couldn’t go home.

Will led her through his small sitting room and showed
her the bedroom and he stood there for a moment, pushing his fingers through his hair.

‘Is there anything you need?’ he said quietly and Eline shook her head. He moved to the door and she spoke his name softly.

‘Will, I can’t ever tell you how much your help means to me.’

He held up his hand. ‘Think nothing of it, rest now, you look worn out. Good night, Eline, we’ll talk in the morning.’

She sank on to the bed and stared at her small bag of belongings; a few clothes and a hairbrush was all she had to show for her marriage to Joe.

Suddenly, Eline was crying, unable to suppress the sound of her bitter sobbing. And even though she knew her tears were selfish and self-indulgent, she couldn’t stop them from running salt and bitter down her face.

The door opened and William hurried across the room and, without a word, he took her in his arms, cradling her as though she was a child, smoothing the hair from her hot, flushed face.

‘There, there, it won’t look so bad in the morning, I promise you,’ he said soothingly.

He was so good and kind, Eline thought abstractedly, how could Will know that his very touch set her alight with love and desire?

She moved away from him and poured water from the jug on the table into the matching bowl and splashed her hot face with the cooling drops.

‘I’ll be all right now,’ she said and her voice was muffled. ‘Please go.’

She didn’t turn as she heard his footsteps cross the room and then the sound of the door closing because if she had looked into his dear face she would have thrown herself into his arms and begged him to stay with her all night.

She undressed and climbed in between the sheets
breathing in the sweet scent of William; she buried her face in his pillow and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. It took all her control not to go to him in the other room.

But she was a fool, William was a fine gentleman, he needed a wife who could live up to his sort of life-style. In any case, even if William wanted her, Eline was not free, would never be free.

She seemed to toss and turn for hours and at last she gave up all attempts to sleep and glanced towards the window where the moonlight lingered in fragmentary shards. She watched until, at last, the blue darkness gave way to the pale morning light.

In the little house at the other end of the village Joe would be rising from bed, the bed he had no doubt shared with Nina Parks. Eline sighed heavily, what an awful mess her life had become. Would she ever find a way out of it?

At last she slept and she wasn’t aware of William putting a note on the table beside the bed or of him staring down at her with love naked in his eyes. But in her dreams she was in his arms, clinging to him, loving him and when she awoke, her pillow was wet with tears.

The sun was hot overhead, the sky a cloudless blue and the sea, spread out below on the edge of the town, shimmered in the summer heat.

From her vantage point up on the hill, Fon Parks looked down at the scene before her. She breathed deeply of the crystalline air and leaned against the dry-stone wall, fanning her face with her small, slender hand.

What was she doing? She had asked herself that a hundred or more times since she left Oystermouth earlier that morning. What did she know about farm life? All she knew was the sea and the oyster beds. But the oyster season was over and would not start again until September and that was two long months away. In any case, Fon felt she could not remain in Oystermouth and suffer the spiteful gossip of the neighbours who had blackened her mother’s name.

The gossip had spread swiftly enough round the small village and, in the telling, the story had been embroidered and exaggerated. Still, the facts were indisputable: Nina Parks was installed in Joe Harries’s house, expecting his baby while his lawful, wedded wife had been driven from her own hearth.

Fon felt the heat in her face intensify with the shame of it all and now her brother Tom was threatening violence, telling all and sundry that he would kill Joe Harries once he got his hands on the man.

Fon’s sisters seemed relatively unaffected by it all; Sal was happy living in at the Pascoe household and Gwyneth, who was spending more and more time at the
boot and shoe store, didn’t give a fig for the gossips. It was she, Fon, who was left at home with nothing to do, no more oysters to bag or take to market, and Fon, it was, who had to contend with Tom’s nightly drinking bouts after which he made all sorts of vile threats against the man who was his father.

Fon had seen the advertisement by accident, the newspaper had been wrapped around some cockles she’d bought in Swansea Market. It sounded easy enough, a young lady needed to look after a baby; it was something she could do, wasn’t it?

Fon had carefully written down the address, Jamie O’Conner, Honey’s Farm, Townhill. It sounded so pretty, so peaceful that Fon had written to Mr O’Conner at once, carefully scripting the note with her fine handwriting and for once, she was glad that she had taken the lessons at the free school that her mother had insisted upon.

The reply had come within a few days asking Fon to come for an interview. She picked out several spelling mistakes but the tone of the letter was friendly and open and Fon, who liked to think well of people, imagined an old man, tongue in cheek, laboriously composing his reply.

And so here she was, on the top of the world, it seemed, staring out over the sprawling streets of Swansea, breathing in the soft hillside air and feeling the heat of the sun through her crisp, clean, calico dress.

The farm was quite a small one with low buildings mellow in the sunlight and sheep grazing contentedly in the lush grass. Fon heard the plaintive sound of cattle from somewhere behind the house and she felt a flutter of apprehension, she knew nothing about farms or farming and she knew she would faint with fright if a cow came anywhere near her.

A dog ran barking towards her, tail wagging furiously and Fon instinctively backed away.

‘Sure there’s no need to be afraid of Duffy,’ a strong masculine voice said kindly. ‘He’s an old softie, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

The man was bare headed, his face tanned by the weather, his eyes startlingly blue. He smiled down at her.

‘You must be the young lady who answered my advertisement,’ he said gently. ‘I’m Jamie O’Conner. Do you know much about babies?’

Fon shook back her hair nervously. ‘I don’t know anything, really,’ she confessed, ‘but I love children and I’m willing to learn.’

‘Well, you seem to be the only one in the whole of Swansea that my dear wife Katherine will consider now, though many a young lady has had a try at the job.’ His smile widened. ‘Come and meet my son.’

He led the way into the farmhouse and the coolness of the kitchen struck a pleasant contrast to the heat outside.

‘The boy is having a sleep,’ Mr O’Conner said at once, ‘and his mammy is resting too. Mrs O’Conner is not very strong, not since she had the baby and that’s why we need help here.’

The infant was lying on his stomach, his dark hair clinging in curls around his forehead.

‘He’s lovely!’ Fon said in genuine delight and Mr O’Conner nodded, accepting the accolade as his right.

‘Aye, Patrick is a fine boy for a two year old, full of mischief so he is and wearing his mammy out.’ He looked at Fon’s slight figure doubtfully.

‘Can’t say that you look too robust, my girl, seems you need feeding up.’

‘Oh, I’m stronger than I look,’ Fon protested, ‘I used to work the oyster beds and that’s no job for a weakling.’

‘Jamie,’ the voice came from the other room light and breathless, ‘who is it, Jamie, is it the new girl?’

Mr O’Conner gestured for Fon to follow him across the landing. He seemed suddenly tense, his big shoulders hunched.

His wife was a faded woman, faded blue eyes stared out from beneath sandy lashes and pale lips stretched a little into a half-smile.

‘
Bore da
,’ Fon moved forward in sympathy at once with the woman in the bed who seemed too weak to lift her head.

‘Good-morning, Fon, is it? What a funny name to be sure. I’m Katherine, I’m glad to see that you look respectable and tidy, like.’

Fon realized that Mrs O’Conner had a poor opinion of the other girls she’d seen and must have proved a hard taskmaster. She wondered how many young ladies had come and gone from Honey’s Farm in the short life of Patrick O’Conner.

‘Sit down and talk to me,’ Katherine said easily. ‘Jamie, you are forgetting your manners. Bring us a couple of glasses of iced lemon, if you please.’

A look of surprise passed quickly over Jamie O’Conner’s face to be replaced by an expression of relief. He had been expecting opposition, it seemed, and was glad not to have found it.

‘Now, tell me about yourself,’ Katherine said in her dry, light voice. ‘I could see from your letter that you are nicely educated not like most girls these days.’

This Fon could agree to without hesitation. ‘Oh, yes, my mother made sure I went to school, I can read and write and work at figures quite well enough.’

‘Good and I’m sure your family is most respectable.’ Katherine fortunately did not wait for confirmation. ‘I know a tidy girl when I see one and I’ll be happy to leave the care of my little boy in your hands, my dear.’ She sat up a little straighter.

‘Now I’m sure you would like to know what your duties are?’ She saw Fon’s brief nod without pausing
and it was clear that whatever it was that ailed her did not prevent her using her voice to full benefit.

‘You will rise early but then I’m sure you are used to that. You must make breakfast for Mr O’Conner, he likes a bit of haddock and a poached egg most mornings and as for me, I shall take, as usual, nothing but a piece of dry, toasted bread. The baby has porridge but only after his bath.’ Katherine drew a breath but Fon could think of nothing to say so the silence lasted only a few moments before Katherine broke into conversation once more.

‘Patrick is well trained, he rarely has a little accident at night and providing you take him to the privy immediately upon rising you will have no problems with him.’

She smiled kindly. ‘Don’t look so worried, you’ll soon get used to our little ways.’

Jamie O’Conner entered the room with a tray bearing two glasses of lemon and Fon kept her eyes lowered as she took her glass. She felt suddenly shy as the realized the kindly man with the handsome, open-air ruggedness would be paying her wages.

‘You will, of course, have the benefit of a room of your own, something most young girls find a luxury.’ Katherine sipped her lemon and made a face. ‘To be sure you could have put in a little more sugar, Jamie! The drink is as bitter as vinegar.’

The distraction saved Fon from replying, though she would have had to agree with Katherine O’Conner, a room to herself would be a luxury. Up until the time Sal went into service the three girls had slept in the same bedroom, Tom having one bedroom and Mam having the main front bedroom that looked out over the sea.