Daughter of the River

by Daughter of the River (retail) (epub)

  ‘Beg pardon, Mrs Cutmore?’ She became aware of the shopkeeper waiting expectantly.

  ‘A block of salt you asked for. Would that be a large or a small?’

  ‘Large, please.’

  Maddy paid for her own purchases along with the few goods she had got for Annie, and set off home. She was constantly on the lookout for any sign of Patrick, but there was none, and a niggling nameless fear worried at her. Then, as she passed the back of the Church House, she heard Mrs Ford’s voice call, ‘Patrick, boy, be you’m going to shift this barrel today or next Christmas?’

  His voice replied cheerily, ‘For you, Mrs Ford, I’ll do it this instant.’

  Immediately Maddy relaxed and began to smile. His reply was typical, full of charm and humour, even when the subject was nothing more remarkable than a barrel. She smiled at her own foolishness too. Why on earth should Patrick leave the village? The two landlords had nearly come to blows because they both wanted his services, not because they wanted to get rid of him. Walking along the lane, her fingers strayed to the shape of the Janus ring Patrick had given her, hidden beneath the calico of her dress. She had bought some ribbon specially to hang it about her neck, blue ribbon, chosen because it was exactly the same colour as Patrick’s eyes. She smiled at her choice. A few weeks ago such an idea would never have occurred to her, but a few weeks ago she had not met Patrick and had not experienced the new awakening of her senses.

  Listening to him, she had become aware of the thickness of her own accent. Patrick had laughed when she had said she wanted to speak like he did.

  ‘Nothing fancy, just nice and proper,’ she had insisted.

  ‘But what will happen to my Rustic Damozel?’

  ‘I don’t reckon there’ll be that much of a change if rustic be countrified. I can’t see me losing my Devon tongue altogether, I idn’t sure I wants to, any road, but if I could have the rough edges rubbed off. There’s some as talks proper, yet you knows they’m Devon the minute they opens their mouths.’ She was thinking of Cal Whitcomb. She could never learn to speak as well as Patrick, he was almost as good as the vicar, but the way Cal Whitcomb spoke, that was a different matter. She was confident she could be as good as he was any day.

  ‘If you’re sure that’s what you want then I’ll help you.’ Patrick had been smilingly reluctant. ‘But the instant I begin to suspect I’m losing my Rustic Damozel I stop. Is that understood?’

  ‘’Tis understood,’ affirmed Maddy.

  ‘It is,’ corrected Patrick gently. ‘It is understood. There, that is your first lesson.’

  He was a good teacher, and Maddy, with her quick ear and her sharp intelligence, proved to be such a good pupil that he cried in protest, ‘We must stop this. You’re progressing too well. I haven’t heard a “wadn’t” nor an “idn’t” nor a “where be to” in ages, and I miss them.’

  They did not stop, of course, and Maddy continued to watch her speech. Her family mocked and her friends smiled, not that she cared. Patrick had opened one more horizon for her.

  Just because she had been a country bumpkin did not mean she had to remain one. She could change herself. She could be anything she wanted – if she discounted the existence of her father and brothers.

  Her family was uncharacteristically silent on the subject of Patrick. They must have known she was seeing him frequently, everyone else in the village seemed to, but fortunately they were too wrapped up in their own affairs to do more than comment, ‘You’m been with that damned mountebank again?’ They could think of nothing these days except their grudge against Cal Whitcomb. It had been so ever since they were prosecuted, and it occupied their minds to the exclusion of nearly everything else.

  They came stamping in for their dinner, mucky boots trailing river mud across the clean floor. Maddy had left her copy of Jane Eyre on a chair. Bart remarked, ‘You’m a fool, addling your brain with such rubbish,’ before sitting down. Not so long ago he would have thrown the book on the fire or at her head, but such was his absorption in his grievances that he just flung it on the settle. Grateful for the lack of interest in her private life, she decided not to grumble about the filthy floor and concentrated on dishing up the meal.

  ‘Cal Whitcomb idn’t eating plain boiled pudding for his dinner, you can bet that,’ declared Jack.

  ‘No, he’m sure to be cutting gurt slices off a saddle of mutton, or maybe a bit of beef,’ agreed Bart. ‘He idn’t bothered about the poor souls he’m driven to near starvation.’

  The large portions of pudding Maddy was putting on their plates hardly constituted ‘starvation’; as for the description ‘plain’, she had managed to flavour it well with home-grown leeks and a bit of bacon. But Bart had a point: life for the Shillabeers was not going to be easy.

  The netting season was a short one, lasting from March to August, then her father and brothers would have to take what work they could get. Surprisingly, they were content to leave the financial arrangements to Maddy, not only the household budget but the money they made from the salmon too. It was she who kept a tally of how many fish were sent up to Totnes, she who kept a sharp eye on market prices, and she who controlled the money they received. She dealt with the expenses too – the purchase of the annual fishing licence, of new nets and tar to preserve them, and the materials needed to keep the boat well maintained. All this was Maddy’s responsibility.

  Spreading an uncertain family income over an entire year involved careful budgeting at the best of times. Paying her brothers’ fines was going to make things more difficult than ever, and Maddy considered how to cut her already slender housekeeping even more. Apart from potatoes and bread, fish was going to be the mainstay of their diet. Not salmon. That was far too valuable to put on the family table. No, it would be coarser fish such as pollack or mackerel which sometimes got trapped in the net. If the worst came to the worst she would have to take the boat out herself and hand-line for whatever the river had to offer. As she totted up the figures on a piece of old sugar bag, trying to work out how to feed five hungry men on next to nothing, Maddy joined her brothers and heartily cursed Cal Whitcomb and his harsh ways.

  Slow footsteps announced the approach of Annie, and Maddy rose to her feet. It had to be something important for her friend to disturb them during their dinner. One look at Annie’s grave face betrayed serious news.

  ‘You habn’t heard then?’ she said.

  ‘Heard what?’ asked Maddy.

  ‘About Biddy. Her’m been drowned. The miller found her by the dam.’

  ‘Poor soul,’ said Maddy sadly. ‘Perhaps it’s for the best. She did naught but suffer while she was living. It was an accident?’

  ‘Who knows? My William rowed Mrs Bond, the miller’s wife, across the river not half an hour since – her goes over to see her sister to Dittisham, the one as is bedfast – and her were moaning because her were late. Her said there weren’t no telling what happened.’

  ‘Which side of the dam were her found?’ demanded Bart. ‘The river side or the pool?’

  ‘The river side. That’s how her wadn’t noticed earlier. Her were caught up underneath one of the boats as is moored there.’

  The sigh that went round the table was one of relief. The brothers were not interested in the other details of Biddy’s death, just where it had occurred.

  ‘We’m safe for the rest of the year, lads,’ said Jack.

  ‘That’s what my William says. The river have got its due for this year, the rest of us can bide easy. And perhaps ’tis better it were Biddy than some other poor soul,’ said Annie. ‘Mind, there’m those as say ’tis naught but nonsense, this notion that the Dart claims a heart every year.’

  ‘Then they be danged idiots,’ stated Jack firmly. ‘Every year there be someone as goes to the river and don’t come back. It have been so way back, afore anyone can remember. One body be what un claims and no more. Now it have got Biddy this year, it’ll be content.’

  Like the others, Maddy had been conscious of a fe
eling of relief at the news of the drowning, sad though it was. She, too, believed implicitly in the ancient superstition that the Dart demanded one victim a year. Those who mocked at the notion did not know the river as she did, and they did not have loved ones who wrested their living from its capricious waters. The tricky currents could catch the boats of the unwary and overturn them in an instant, the Dart could suddenly change from a serenely flowing river into a heaving, raging torrent which could defeat even the strongest, most experienced boatman. She had never been able to think of the river as an inanimate thing, it was too unpredictable. To her it was a living creature, by turns gentle, generous, and savage.

  Patrick did not scoff when Maddy told him of it.

  ‘And why shouldn’t water have a spirit?’ he asked. ‘It moves, it changes, it has life, it’s never still. Yes, why shouldn’t your lovely Dart have a spirit, albeit a cruel one at times? It is what the ancient peoples believed, people like our friend Janus, and even further back than him.’

  ‘How is it you knows such stuff?’ asked Maddy, lost in admiration at his cleverness.

  ‘Because I like to find out things, I suppose. I’m interested… and at the moment my sole interest is in you!’

  He pulled her towards him unexpectedly, causing her to shriek with surprise, but once his lips were on hers there was no chance of shrieks or words. All she wanted was to be there in his arms, savouring his kisses, enjoying his presence.

  ‘You are happy?’ he asked softly, when at last their lips parted.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said without hesitation. ‘I didn’t know it was possible to feel like this. It is as if every day I am… am flying inside.’ Then she felt embarrassed, as she always did when she expressed her emotions.

  But Patrick was pleased with her description. ‘Flying inside! I’ve never heard it better put. Yes, that’s it exactly. Flying like a swallow.’

  ‘Or a skylark,’ said Maddy.

  ‘That’s even better,’ he cried with delight, ‘for that is a soaring thing, that’s lifted up and up to disappear into the blue heaven.’

  Maddy wished she had not suggested the image of the skylark. Any notion of disappearing made her uneasy, especially where Patrick was concerned.

  ‘And are you happy?’ she asked, to drive away the faint shadow.

  ‘Extremely.’ Patrick fell back on the grass, pulling her with him. ‘I came back to Stoke Gabriel out of curiosity, nothing more. I did not expect to find so much. This place is more beautiful than anything I ever expected. I have found work and I have found you. What man could want more?’

  Listening to his words with her head against his chest, Maddy felt that she, too, could want nothing more. Her days were golden, with nothing spoiling them. For a while they lay without speaking, content to be in each other’s arms.

  ‘I hear you was being fought over the other day,’ Maddy remarked eventually.

  ‘I was? Who were the lucky women?’

  ‘It weren’t – wasn’t women, it was Harry Ford and Sam Watkins.’

  ‘Oh them! They didn’t actually come to blows that I heard of, but it’s pleasing to be appreciated.’

  ‘Did Sam Watkins really offer you an extra two and six a week to work down the Victoria and Albert?’

  ‘No.’ Patrick smiled the mischievous smile which so delighted her. ‘He offered me two shillings. It was Harry Ford who offered me half-a-crown to stay put.’

  Maddy laughed. ‘You’ll soon have your own carriage at this rate,’ she chuckled.

  ‘There’s certainly plenty of work for an able fiddler round here. I’ve been asked to play at more weddings and celebrations than I can manage.’

  ‘That’s because the only fiddler we’ve had till now was Henry Beer. Poor Henry, he was never too able, and now he’s getting on in years we can’t hope for improvement. You knows what it’s like singing hymns when he’s playing. Can you imagine what it’s like trying to dance to him?’

  ‘I’d rather not, thank you.’ Patrick sat up and gave an exaggerated shudder.

  Maddy sat up too. ‘Poor soul, I suppose he’s noticing the difference these days with folks not wanting him to play any more.’

  ‘You think I should refuse to play at weddings and such in favour of Henry?’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘You can’t go turning down a chance to make an honest penny. Besides, I don’t think folks would be satisfied with Henry any more. You see, until you came most of us hadn’t heard decent playing afore. We didn’t realise how bad old Henry really was. We know now, though, and there’s no going back.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve spoiled things for Henry, but I must admit I’m glad to be so much in demand. But let us forget Henry for the moment. I have something more important to discuss. Would you kindly give me an opinion upon this trifle?’

  He reached for his fiddle. There was nothing out of the ordinary in him having his violin with him for he was seldom without it. He had admitted that he was uncomfortable if it was not within reach, and she understood his possessiveness. Taking it from its canvas bag, he tuned it.

  The melody which flowed from his violin made Maddy think of many things, of sadness and of joy, but in some strange way the cadence of its notes reminded her mainly of the beauty in life that she had so recently found. She had never known that music had the power to move her, not until she realised her cheeks were wet with tears. When he finished playing she was reluctant to speak for a moment, lest she broke the spell.

  ‘That were beautiful,’ she said at last, forgetting her carefully attained speech in her emotion.

  ‘Then you like it?’

  ‘Indeed I do. I’ve never heard anything as beautiful, saving the once…’ Her voice faded away. He seemed pleased with the tune, it was obviously special to him, and she was suddenly afraid she was being tactless.

  ‘Saving the once?’ he prompted.

  ‘That first day when you came and you played for me and I felt proper foolish,’ Maddy hurried on uncomfortably. ‘You played something like it then, only it wasn’t as good.’

  He seemed delighted. ‘What a memory! What a natural ear for music you possess! You’re right, of course. I did play it then, or rather a very raw unfinished version. It had just come to me as I was walking. As I worked on it I knew it was something special, which is why I give it to you, Maddy.’

  ‘Just come to you? You mean you thought up that tune out of your head?’ Maddy gazed at him in awe.

  ‘Don’t look at me with such amazement,’ he laughed. ‘Lots of people think up tunes.’

  ‘No, they don’t.’ Maddy was adamant. ‘Leastways, no one I’ve ever known. I thought such things were for grand folk up in London or maybe Exeter, yet here you be saying you made up a tune as calm as you please. I always knew you were different from the other menfolk round here, more clever and such, but I never realised how clever. Have you thought up other tunes?’

  ‘Yes, I do it quite often, but not like this one. This is my very best, which is why it is for you.’

  ‘For me?’ She regarded him blankly. Slowly the nature of his gift began to sink in. ‘That beautiful tune is for me?’

  ‘Yes, it is dedicated to you, my Maddy. Every note is for you alone.’

  ‘Oh!’ The wonder of it almost took her breath away. ‘I’ve never been given anything like that… anything so special… The tune’s for me, you say?’ She paused, trying to gather her bemused wits. ‘Please, please would you play it once more for me?’

  ‘With pleasure.’ Taking up his bow he began to play, and again the beauty of the music took hold of Maddy.

  When the last notes faded away she was too convulsed with sobs to speak.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to gulp at last. ‘I’m happy, truly I am. I don’t know why I’m bawling like a babe, save that I never heard anything so beautiful before…’

  ‘I’ll take your tears as a compliment.’ Patrick smoothed her damp cheek with gentle fingers. ‘Any musician would be gratified to mo
ve his listener so.’

  ‘Then you aren’t angry because I blubbed at your music? To hear such music is a marvel in itself, but to know that it is for me… Has it a name?’

  ‘Of course I’m not angry, and certainly the piece has a name. It is called “Miss Madeleine’s Air”.’

  ‘“Miss Madeleine’s Air”.’ She said the words aloud, relishing their rhythm. That sounds grand, too grand for me. But if you think it is fitting then I do too,’ she added hurriedly at his gently reproving look. ‘And just to say thank you doesn’t seem enough.’ To emphasise her words, she held out her arms to him.

  Patrick put aside his fiddle and enfolded her in an embrace. ‘Oh Maddy, Maddy, Maddy, what a remarkable creature you are! So sweet, so honest and so sincere.’

  He held her close, until she could hear the beating of his heart. Not content to wait for his kisses, she drew his face down to hers. Their lips met with tenderness at first, then with increasing passion. Even in the midst of the mounting emotions which gripped her, Maddy was aware of relief within her. For the first time she felt secure, sure of Patrick’s love. Of late she had been almost certain of his feelings, only in her blacker moments did it bother her that he had never spoken his love aloud. Now he did not need to. In his music, and in his gift, he had declared his love for her more clearly than with any words.

  Later, as Maddy made her way home, in a cloud of blissful daydreams, she sang the air that Patrick had composed for her. She was not afraid of ever forgetting it. It was enmeshed too firmly in her head and in her heart.

  * * *

  At church next Sunday there were stirrings of drama in the air. In the minutes before the entry of the vicar and the choir, a shocked whisper went round the congregation that Henry Beer had left the church band. Details were scarce, and everyone waited in eager anticipation as the band struck up. Sure enough, there was no Henry, and in his absence, as the only remaining violin, Patrick led the small group of musicians. There were only five of them, including him, but they blended superbly – cello and fiddle, flute, clarinet and bassoon. It was not only Maddy’s biased opinion that the music was the best heard in the church for a long time. Many other people expressed the same view as they filed out.