Candles in the Storm Page 10

  ‘What am I doin’ here?’ George Appleby was a placid, easygoing kind of man like his father had been, so it said much about his state of mind that he shook his sister hard as he repeated, ‘What am I doin’ here?’

  ‘Stop it, George. Get off!’ Daisy kicked out in true sisterly fashion, her boot connecting with George’s shinbone. She glared at him as she said crossly, ‘What’s the matter with you anyway? I thought you were all out on the boats today?’

  ‘We were. A good haul brought me home early. But never mind that. Did he hurt you?’

  ‘Hurt me? Who?’

  George shut his eyes for a moment, beseeching patience under his breath. ‘Who do you think? Tom’s lass’s da.’ He didn’t add that he had felt his heart jump into his mouth when he had seen Daisy looking like death as she’d leant against the wall. ‘An’ what the hell made you come here by yerself anyway? Are you daft? Is that it?’

  ‘No, I am not daft.’ She would kick him again in a minute if he carried on. ‘But you all left too early for me to say about Margery comin’ an’ it needed sortin’ out. Anyway, I only wanted to talk to her da. That’s not a crime.’

  ‘Talk to him!’ George shook his head. ‘By, lass, you’re fair mental, you are straight. The man threw his own daughter out last night an’ was probably spoilin’ for a fight, then you turn up on his doorstep. I couldn’t believe it when I called in an’ Gran put us in the picture. He might’ve knocked you into next weekend.’

  ‘Aye, well, I didn’t get hurt.’ Daisy didn’t add here that it was because exactly the same thought had occurred to her that she had made sure she visited Margery’s parents before any of her brothers found out about Tom’s lass and went to see the Travises. It hadn’t seemed likely that a bit lass would inflame Margery’s da like the sight of a fisherman on his doorstep would, although as it happened she didn’t think he could have been much madder. ‘But I can tell you now there is no way he’s havin’ Margery back without doin’ away with her in the workhouse or somethin’. He made that perfectly clear. An’ she’s carryin’ Tom’s bairn, George, for right or wrong.’

  ‘Aye, aye, I know that, lass.’ By, did he know it. Tilly and the bairns and his grandmother were hanging like a lead weight round his neck, and now there was this other lass Tom had been messing about with. Where was it going to end? He didn’t know about Margery ending up in the workhouse - they’d all be knocking on its door at this rate. It hadn’t taken long for word to reach old Jefferson that two of his cottages were minus their breadwinner, although George hadn’t let on to Daisy and Tilly and the rest of them about the visit he’d had from one of Jefferson’s lackeys. Out by the end of the week, and that was being very reasonable, the man had said. Some landlords who weren’t as considerate as Mr Jefferson would have made sure folk were evicted the same day.

  It had been an uphill trudge leaning against the wind to the Travises’ house, but such was Daisy’s despondency on the way home that the walk seemed even longer. What were they going to do? How would they all manage? It was all very well for her to say Margery wasn’t going back to her mam and da, but the reality was that they were going to have to be out of the cottage soon. She knew that and she also knew poor George was worried sick. But Tom’s bairn being brought up in the workhouse? It couldn’t be, she wouldn’t let that happen, and she just knew Margery’s da had that in mind. There had to be a way out of this.

  Later that night, curled up under the blankets as she tried to get warm, Daisy knew she had only been putting off the decision that had been made the night before. She had listened to the other girl cry herself to sleep earlier, and had known then she had to go and see Alf in the morning. She would tell him she still felt the same, she couldn’t lie about it, but that she would marry him if he could see his way clear to Margery and her bairn living with them along with her granny. She would still follow through on her plan to get a job and bring in some money although now it would have to stretch further. They could scrape through, they would have to - that was if Alf agreed to her conditions. But he would.

  Daisy twisted restlessly in the bed, drawing her icy cold feet into her hands to warm them as she bent her knees. She had given her stone water bottle to Margery, and she was missing it.

  Could she do it? Could she let Alf touch her and lie with her and do the things married couples did? She wasn’t very sure about what happened in that realm, but she had heard enough talk among the women when they were all gutting fish or collecting mussels and such to know that some of them liked what went on and some didn’t. The only information her granny had proferred on the subject, when she had talked to Daisy the day she had started her monthlies, was that the love a woman felt for her husband made her want to please him.

  Daisy shut her eyes tight, her stomach churning. She wished, oh, she did so wish that the shipwreck had never happened. She wished she had never seen William Fraser because things would have been so much easier then. Her da and brothers would still have been lost of course, and Margery would still have turned up on their doorstep, but she could have married Alf not knowing . . .

  The thought brought her eyes wide open in the darkness. Not knowing what? And then she answered herself immediately with, How you could feel when someone just looked at you, or how touching someone’s flesh - even when they didn’t really know you were there - could create little shivers in your stomach, or how a stranger could suddenly become so important. Stop it. It was a command to herself, and if she had spoken it out loud her voice would have been harsh. William Fraser was gone, he had never been part of her life and never would be. He was as far removed from her as the man in the moon.

  She turned over on her stomach, putting her hands over her ears as though she could block out her thoughts that way. This would pass. She had often listened to the other lasses oohing and ahhing over some lad or other, and the next week they would be on to someone else. And she had more important things to worry about.

  Oh, she missed her da. She missed him so much, and their Tom. Even now she still expected the door to open and them to walk in. How they’d all get through Tom’s funeral in two days time she didn’t know, and then they would have to go through it all again and again when - or if - her da and Peter were found.

  It was another two hours before Daisy fell into a troubled nightmarish sleep, and even then she was still fighting against the images her subconscious conjured up - dark images, beings that wanted to subjugate and control her, to hold her and enclose her inside themselves.

  And they all had Alf’s face.

  Chapter Six

  The next morning was one of early sea mist followed by bright sunshine, the sort of day that spoke of a good summer ahead to the old-timers.

  April would soon be bowing out to May and the change in temperature proclaimed this. It was several degrees warmer outside, although it would take more than a morning’s sunshine to persuade the solid stone walls of the cottages to relinquish their damp grip on the occupants. Arthritis, pneumonia, influenza and chest infections produced a natural cull each winter on the old and very young, and the sea wasn’t chary about picking off prime specimens of manhood all the year round.

  It was still far too early to start the day when Daisy awoke. She lay listening to the distant pounding of the waves as she mulled everything over for the hundredth time. They probably had a few days’ grace left at the cottage but that was all, and then what? Tilly and her family would be separated and squeezed into her brothers’ cottages, and if Alf agreed to take Margery and her granny she would be beholden to him and his mother for the rest of her life.

  At six o’clock Daisy flung back the covers, and by half-past she had breakfast ready. At eight o’clock Hilda Travis knocked on the door.

  Daisy stood back a pace and surveyed Margery’s mother as Hilda said nervously, ‘Jacob is on the early shift from today so this is the best time for me to come. He mustn’t know. I . . . I had to see Margery. I’ve brought her things, her clothes an’ bits an’ piec
es.’

  ‘Come in.’ Daisy couldn’t bring herself to smile at the woman, but she kept her voice civil as she said politely, ‘I’ve just made a pot of tea if you’d like a sup?’

  ‘No - no, ta, I have to get back.’ As Hilda stepped into the living room Daisy saw her quickly glance round, taking things in, but she didn’t walk over to her daughter who was sitting on a chair by the range, and neither did Margery stand up and move towards her mother. The two stared at each other, and then Hilda bent down and deposited the two large cloth bags she had been carrying on the stone flags. ‘Here’s your things,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ll be needin’ ’em, won’t you, lass?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How . . . are you feelin’?’

  ‘All right.’

  Hilda nodded her head jerkily. And then she turned to face Daisy, her voice low as she said, ‘He . . . he’s got this thing, this mania, about bein’ looked up to, see? But he’s not a bad man. He was all for Margery goin’ to piano lessons an’ such, betterin’ herself. All we ever wanted was for her to make us proud.’

  There was silence for a moment, and then Nellie stirred on her platform bed as she spoke up with the privilege of age. ‘Strikes me no one ever asked the lass what she wanted.’

  Hilda looked at the scrawny old woman lying on the narrow bed. She stared at her blankly for a few moments, and just when Daisy was thinking it was going to turn nasty, Hilda turned to her daughter who had risen to her feet. ‘I’m sorry, lass, but that’s the way of it,’ she said, looking straight into Margery’s tense face. ‘We are what we are.’

  ‘Doesn’t that apply to me too, Mam?’ There was a note of deep bitterness in Margery’s voice. ‘All my life I’ve tried to be what you wanted me to be, tried and failed. Oh, you might not have said so in so many words but it’s been there right enough, in your eyes. When I wasn’t top of the class, when I wasn’t May Queen, when I wasn’t bright enough to go on and train as a teacher like you wanted, and especially when I didn’t want to start courting the lads you and Da picked out for me as “good enough”.’

  ‘Aye, an’ look where that’s got you now,’ Hilda shot back.

  Margery felt her stomach pulling itself tight as if recoiling from any contact with the woman who had given her life, and her voice reflected her feelings when she said, ‘If Tom were here I would be the happiest lass alive today, bairn or no bairn. I loved him, Mam. I’ll always love him, and I’m glad I’m carrying his child if you want to know. At least I’ll have something of him for always.’

  ‘How can you talk like that when you’ve shamed us all? An’ before you start I don’t mean because he’s a fisherman. I’d say the same if it was John Lindsay or the doctor’s son.’

  ‘Would you, Mam?’ Margery brought her head forward, her pale eyes piercing as they held those of her mother. ‘Would you really? I don’t think so, not for a minute. You’d be falling on my neck with thanksgiving if I’d said I was expecting and one of them wanted to marry me.’

  ‘That’s wicked.’ Hilda was trembling as if consumed with rage. ‘Wicked!’

  ‘I don’t want to argue with you, Mam, and I’m pleased you brought my things, but we’ll never see eye to eye on this, or anything else come to that.’

  ‘You’ve never said a truer word, girl.’ All thoughts of conciliation gone, Hilda was now every inch her husband’s wife. She turned on her heel, and as Daisy opened the door for her walked through without a nod or a goodbye. And then she paused, glancing over her shoulder at the white face of her daughter as she said, her voice harsh, ‘You’ve got all your things so there’s no need for you to come to the house again, not ever. As far as your da an’ me are concerned, we never had a daughter.’

  And then she was gone, marching off fairly bristling with self-righteous anger.

  ‘Don’t upset yerself, lass.’ Nellie spoke up as Daisy shut the door again and walked over to Margery to hug her. ‘She’ll likely come round when the bairn is born.’

  ‘I don’t want her to, Mrs Shaw. And I’m not upset about my mam and da, it’s not that. I knew when I first met Tom that I was making a choice between him and my parents and that wasn’t hard. It’s just that I can’t believe he’s gone and I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.’ Margery’s face crumpled and tears began to stream from her eyes.

  ‘Aye, I know, lass, I know. Life don’t play fair. An’ you’d better be after callin’ me Gran like our Daisy does now you’re part of the family, all right?’

  It was a massive peace overture by Nellie who had been covertly hostile since the moment the girl had arrived. As Daisy drew back from Margery and made a little face at the other girl, expressing amazement, Margery smiled through her tears. ‘Thank you . . . Gran, I’d like that,’ she said shyly.

  ‘An’ when you’re all finished blubbin’ I’d like me sup tea?’ Nellie added in her own indomitable style. ‘Me tongue’s bin hangin’ out the last half hour. Not that anyone’s noticed the poor old gal in the corner, of course.’

  If Hilda Travis had delayed her departure by fifteen minutes she would have been very surprised to see a smart carriage drawn by two fine chestnuts approaching the village. As it was, she missed the spectacle which set heads turning and curtains twitching.

  A tall neatly dressed woman was sitting at the front of the vehicle next to the driver which left the two long seats within the open carriage empty. As the driver said, ‘I reckon this is the one, Ellen. Bernard said it was the tenth along,’ the woman glanced about her with interest.

  So this was where the lass who had caused so much trouble back at the house lived, was it? Ellen Mullen nudged the first coachman, who was also her intended, as she whispered, ‘Pongs a bit of seaweed an’ that, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Aye, well, that’s mebbe because we’re yards away from the big stretch of water they call the sea, lass.’

  ‘Oh, you.’ As top-floor maid Ellen was privy to most of the intimate goings-on of her employers. Although Sir Augustus’s wife Gwendoline had her own personal maid, the two daughters remaining at home were assisted in their toilette by Ellen. She had learnt very early on to say nothing and to listen hard and both women chatted quite freely in front of her. Ellen knew, therefore, that once the young master had come to himself he had been furious that nothing had been done for the fishergirl who had rescued him from the water. Mr William hadn’t been satisfied with the suggestion that a sum of money along with a cursory note of thanks be delivered to the village. And once he got the bit between his teeth he was a devil for having his own way, was Mr William. Just like his father.

  And so here she was with a summons to bring the fishergirl to the house, but what made this whole episode really interesting was the fact that this lass had thumbed her nose at Mr Kirby by all accounts. By, but he’d been in a fit when he’d come back after visiting the village. They had all wondered what was what but no one had dared ask, though from what Bernard had heard when Mr Kirby was leaving the fishergirl’s cottage and then the snippets which had filtered through via Harriet, Lady Fraser’s personal maid, it appeared this Daisy Appleby was a right one. Aye, a little madam with a mouth on her like a cesspit, Mr Kirby had told Sir Augustus and his wife, according to Harriet.

  Ellen adjusted the collar of her serge coat nervously. ‘You coming to the door with me, Donald?’

  ‘Don’t be daft, lass. What’d I do that for?’

  ‘Because I want you to.’

  ‘Oh, get yourself down an’ don’t be so wet. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m not going nowhere. Just say what you’ve got to say an’ then get yourself back up here. I tell you one thing, if this lass has got half the sense she was born with she’ll be out that door an’ in this carriage like a dose of salts. An’ when all’s said an’ done she deserves something for her trouble. I’d think twice about throwing meself into the sea for me own mam, let alone a bloke I’d never met, I tell you straight.’

  Ellen sent her betrothed a look which would have quelled a lesser man
and flounced down from the carriage. Donald heard the door open after she’d knocked but kept his eyes studiously to the front the way Bernard, the head coachman, had taught him. In less than a minute Ellen had climbed up beside him again. He waited but she said nothing, so after a moment he glanced at her.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Ellen.’

  ‘Oh, all right, all right. She’s coming in a minute or two.’

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘Aye, but . . .’ Ellen’s voice trailed away, and when Donald said, ‘What’s up?’ it was a second or two before she answered and then her voice was puzzled. ‘She’s not what I expected, not from what Mr Kirby said anyway. She’s . . . nice.’

  ‘Nice?’ Donald wanted to throw his head back and laugh at her naivety, but he was here in the capacity of Sir Augustus’s coachman and propriety had to be maintained. He therefore contented himself with saying, his voice scathing, ‘Look, Mr Kirby reckons she’s as bold as brass and typical of some of the fishing girls down at the docks who’d go with anyone. ’Course she was nice, you’d brought her news the master wants to see her. Besides, that type know how to turn on the charm with men and women. There’s some as cater for both, you know.’