Maddy went on her way conscious that Cal had at least one ally in his home.
She was nearly at the turning to Duncannon Lane when she saw the unwelcome figure of Victoria Fitzherbert coming towards her on horseback. Of late Maddy had ceased to be wary of her approach, she had had other, more serious things to worry about. She saw Victoria rein in her horse and deliberately manoeuvre it across the narrow lane. Maddy refused to be intimidated. She held her ground.
Victoria’s smile, from her higher position in the saddle, had a strangely triumphant air about it.
‘You are the Shillabeer creature, I believe,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I recognise the plain face and the shabby clothes.’
‘You know perfectly well who I am,’ replied Maddy, tensing herself for whatever was to come. ‘There is no need to play games with me.’
‘I should think not!’ Victoria pretended to be shocked at the idea. ‘I would not even consider associating with you. I am only speaking to you now in order to relieve my curiosity.’
Maddy had no intention of asking the cause of Victoria’s curiosity.
‘Don’t you want to know why I am curious?’ Victoria demanded.
‘No, though I dare say you’ll tell me anyway.’
‘I want to know how you have the nerve to walk abroad in daylight. Most folks would be too bowed down with shame to leave the house if they had had a brother hanged for murder.’
Maddy refused to flinch. ‘I have every right to walk abroad, in daylight or the middle of the night if I choose,’ she said.
‘But to have a brother hanged,’ persisted Victoria. ‘Did you see him dangling from the end of the rope? Oh no, such things are carried out behind closed doors now, I believe. I understand the face goes purple first then quite black, and the tongue protrudes most fearfully.’
Maddy was forced to grit her teeth to control herself. ‘You have an over-lurid imagination,’ she ground out. ‘I’m surprised your mother doesn’t dose you with something to cool the blood. The juice of watercress is very effective, I’m told.’
Victoria gave a tinkling laugh. ‘I’ve no need of your filthy remedies,’ she said. ‘I was merely telling you what actually happens.’ Then she said in an arch voice, ‘I suppose you want to get by.’
‘I presume it amuses you, getting in other people’s way,’ Maddy retorted. ‘It’s surprising what trifling things entertain some folk.’
‘Oh, I have no difficulty in entertaining myself,’ replied Victoria. ‘And not in any trifling way, either. I have discovered that this place is much more amusing than I had realised. Much, much more amusing.’ And she laughed aloud, as if at a private joke. But she moved her horse to let Maddy pass.
Maddy seized the opportunity, walking past with all the dignity she could muster. Victoria’s attitude puzzled her. Apart from taunting her about Davie, there had been something more in her manner. Gloating… Yes, that was it. Victoria had been gloating over something. But what? Maddy could not understand such strange behaviour and before long she ceased to try. Let Victoria Fitzherbert do what she liked. She was just a silly, spoiled creature, not worth thinking about.
* * *
The winter seemed interminable. After weeks of unseasonable mildness the weather deteriorated with a vengeance. Torrential rain fell and bitter winds swept down the valley. Jack and Charlie returned from the quarry each day soaked, cold, and tired. As for Lew, there was never any knowing when he would come in from wherrying; the only certainty was that he would be totally exhausted after grappling with the gales and the fierce tides. Closer to home, the river lapped over the garden wall more than once, and life for Maddy became a constant round of heaving sandbags to keep the water from the house and mopping up and drying out when her preventative measures failed.
‘It takes so long to get rid of the smell, that’s what I hate,’ she declared, sniffing irritably at the dank stench of saltwater that continued to hang about the kitchen after the most recent inundation. ‘I lifted the rug and moved as much furniture as I could before the water came in, but it’s made no difference. This place still stinks and there’s no getting rid of the damp.’
‘There, that might make a difference.’ Lew, who had just arrived home, slung a couple of extra logs on the fire. ‘As for the smell, all I notices be that meat pudding on the hob. I be ready for un, I can tell you.’ He slumped wearily by the fire.
‘You look tired,’ said Maddy.
‘Is it any wonder? Three hours or more it must have taken us to tack down Long Reach, with the wind and tide against us. There idn’t a muscle in my body as don’t ache.’
’This won’t last much longer,’ said his father confidently. ‘Spring’ll be on us afore us knows it.’
Jack’s words echoed the thoughts that had been in Maddy’s head for some time. She waited until they had eaten and were taking their ease by the fire before she fetched her little black accounts book from the dresser drawer.
‘What’m you doing, getting that thing out for?’ protested Jack mildly as she put it on the table.
‘Because it’s necessary,’ replied Maddy, pressing the stiff pages open. ‘You said yourself that spring’s on its way. We’ve a few things to see to before that. There’s the net licence for a start.’
‘All right,’ said Jack resignedly. ‘As soon as the sailing’s a bit easier us’ll go to Totnes and see about un.’
‘Good.’ In pencil Maddy wrote down the licence fee. ‘How about the nets? Do you think they’ll do?’
‘I don’t know why you’m asking, maid. Habn’t you checked yourself?’
‘I did have a look at them,’ admitted Maddy. ‘They need some repairing but I think we’ll get through the season with them. I’d like your opinion though. You’re the expert.’
Jack gave a derisive snort. ‘So you tries to tell me.’ Then he gave a grin. ‘As it happens I did give them a going over the other day, and I agrees. Put down tar on that list of youm and a couple of balls of twine to begin. Then there’ll be caulking for the boat – I reckon us’ll have paint enough put by. There, what’s that come to? Can us afford to start the season?’
It was a question he asked every year. Maddy did her brief calculations and checked them with the money they had in hand.
‘We should manage,’ she said.
‘They salmon, they’m had their sea-year and they’m coming home to spawn,’ said Jack confidently. ‘I reckon they’m going to be early this season.’
How he could know about the movements of the salmon out in the Atlantic they did not know, but no one questioned his pronouncement. They had grown accustomed to relying upon his instincts bom of a lifetime on the river and having the blood of countless generations of salmon fishermen in his veins. He was seldom wrong.
‘It won’t be easy this year, with one thing and smother,’ said Maddy. ‘We’ll do it, though, with a bit of luck.’ Deliberately she closed the accounts book and looked at the others. Now came the part she was not relishing.
‘You know what I’m going to say,’ she said. ‘We’re two men short for the net. Who are we going to get to…?’ She tried to say ‘… replace Davie and Bart’ but the words stuck in her throat.
A brief silence followed, charged with emotion. The Shillabeers had always fished together. It had been a matter of pride to them. Maddy looked questioningly at Jack, but unexpectedly it was Charlie who spoke.
‘Best look for a third man while you’m about un,’ he said, staring steadfastly at the scrubbed surface of the table. ‘I got a place on one of they boats carrying stone from the quarry. Thought I’d take a look at Lunnon, like. It be only for a couple of trips,’ he added defensively when no one spoke.
But it would be for more than a couple of trips; Charlie was the one with wanderlust, inherited no doubt from Greatgrandfather Shillabeer. Now Maddy thought about it, she wondered that he had stayed at home so long.
Jack’s mind must have been working on similar lines, for he expressed no surprise. He said, ‘I suppose ’tis on
ly natural to want to see a bit of the world at your age.’
‘When do you go?’ asked Maddy.
‘Monday. On the morning tide.’
So soon! Another one of her brothers going! Maddy’s heart ached at the thought.
‘We’ll miss you,’ she said.
‘Us won’t have time to miss un,’ broke in Lew. ‘They quarry boats be to and fro all the time. He’ll be back in no time, bawling for his dinner as usual, won’t you, boy?’
Maddy shot a grateful look at Lew. ‘Trust him to find some cheerful comment.’
‘When did you fix this up?’ she asked Charlie.
‘Some time back.’ He seemed reluctant to discuss his new life, but that was typical of Charlie. Quiet and taciturn, he always kept his thoughts to himself.
‘We’ll have to make sure you’ve got everything you’ll need,’ Maddy said, being practical. ‘Thank goodness I’ve almost finished that new pair of stockings.’ She paused. ‘In the meantime, perhaps we should get back to the question of who we are going to get to make up our crew. We daren’t leave it any longer or the best men will have found places.’
‘George Davis, he’m a cousin of your mother and a good enough man, if us can get him,’ suggested Jack. ‘And he’m got a boy coming up to the right age too. They be family, more or less.’
‘Who for the third?’ asked Lew. ‘How about that Lennie, as were a friend of Davie’s?’
‘Not that useless article!’ Jack objected. ‘Us’d never know if he were coming till he got yer.’
For a good hour names were put forward only to be rejected. Finally they decided on a nephew of William’s.
‘Always supposing they’ll come with us,’ said Jack gloomily. ‘If not, I suppose us’ll have to take who us can get.’
The days before Charlie left home were filled with hectic activity. Fortunately the men approached to complete the crew were agreeable. Then there was the trip to Totnes for the net licence.
‘You don’t need me to come with you,’ protested Maddy. ‘I’ve got Charlie’s things to iron.’
‘I do need you,’ insisted her father. ‘You’m better at the reading than me. ’Sides, I don’t know why you’m being so particular about Charlie’s things for. No one on the quarry boat’ll care if his drawers be crumpled or no.’
‘I suppose not,’ Maddy smiled. She knew that, as ever, her father needed reassurance over anything official.
‘And afore that boy goes traipsing off to Lunnon us’d best get the nets tarred. ’Tis a heck of a job at the best of times, without being one pair of hands short. Thank goodness we’m in for a dry spell.’
Before the tarring could commence, the nets had to be repaired. They were spread out along the foreshore, above the tide-line, the better to see the tears and the frayed patches. As Jack had said, they were in for a dry spell, and to make the most of it all three men worked on the repairs when they could. With the twine they painstakingly refashioned areas of net which were worn or tom. Jack was meticulous over his salmon nets. It was not unusual for him to insist upon repairs being done again if they did not meet his exacting standards.
‘That idn’t going to hold no weight of salmon,’ he would declare angrily. ‘There idn’t no point in catching fish only to see them burst free ’cos you can’t braid up a bit of net proper.’
When Jack was completely satisfied, the tar boiler in the old thatched shippen was lit. And he took full charge as the sharp familiar smell filled the air. Boiling tar was a dangerous occupation, and anyone fooling about in the proximity of the boiler got a hefty clout, no matter who it was.
Once each long hempen net was soaked with tar, it was a tricky job to hang it from the drying frames on the foreshore. Heavy and sticky-wet, it all too easily became entangled and covered everyone within range with melted tar. Every spare pair of hands was needed to carry the nets. Even Maddy, well swathed in sacking, joined in, helping to hook up the nets using poles, so that they hung up to dry like swathes of coarse black lace. A hard task, but a necessary one, for it was the tar that preserved the hempen twine. When dry, the nets were stored in the room above the boat store, filling the cottage with the clean pungent scent that to Maddy meant the approach of the salmon season.
‘Just in time,’ said Jack, as a drift of rain swept across the river. ‘There’s the boat to see to now, but I can manage un in the boat store.’
Charlie left on the Monday morning’s tide. Jack and Lew were already at work, but Maddy stood on the garden wall and waved as he sailed by.
How quiet the house was without him, which was strange, because Charlie had never had much to say for himself. Jack, too, became more silent, spending his spare time in the boat store working on their small craft, making it watertight for the coming season. Usually the approach of March brought with it a sense of excitement as everyone awaited the opening of the season, but not this year. Maddy knew that, without three of his sons and with a new and untried crew, for once Jack was not looking forward to snaring the great silver fish.
Nevertheless, promptly on the morning of the fifteenth of March, the first day of the season, he was up betimes, the net stowed in the stern of the boat, his attention divided impatiently between the lane at the back of the cottage and the river at the front.
‘Where’m they to?’ he demanded irritably. ‘Dang it, they’m late.’
‘Who’m you on about? George Davis and the rest or the fish?’ asked Lew. ‘For if ’tis the salmon, I reckon they’m here bright and early. I saw one jump not ten minutes since.’
‘’Tis the crew as is late,’ retorted Jack, his irritation growing. ‘A grand start this be.’
‘Don’t be so impatient,’ said Maddy. ‘The river’s dropping fast but it’s got a way to go before you can set the net. George and the others’ll be here presently, you’ll see.’
She was right. Soon afterwards two men and a boy came down the lane. They called a greeting to her and went on down to the foreshore where Jack and Lew were already standing by with the boat. Within minutes Lew had tethered one end of the net to a stout beech trunk, and the men had pushed the boat, with Jack at the oars, further into the water. The new season had begun.
From time to time during the next few hours Maddy paused in her chores to watch as they made their systematic way downriver, though from her position in the garden it was difficult to judge how things were going. Once Lew looked towards her and gave a ‘thumbs up’ sign, but even at that distance she thought the gesture showed a lack of enthusiasm. Her heart went out to her father. The first time out together was bound to be difficult for any crew, but Jack would be finding this trip extremely painful. Last season he had fished with his sons, this year he was with comparative strangers.
Maddy continued to observe the river, but now she was watching for a change in its flow. She knew her father would stop fishing just before the tide turned, to have the net out on a rising tide caused all sorts of problems hauling it in. But Jack was far too experienced to be caught out. He would have the net stowed, and he and Lew would be home soon, wanting their meal. Busy in the kitchen, she heard George and the other two walk past. They did not shout any greetings in passing this time, nor did they speak to one another. Maddy thought this was ominous. When Jack came in, his face lowering like a thundercloud, her enquiry about how the day had gone died on her lips.
‘A parcel of danged fools, that’s what I be burdened with!’ declared Jack, sitting down and removing his boots with unnecessary energy.
‘Things wadn’t so bad,’ said Lew. He looked tired and dispirited. Maddy had a pang of conscience. Her thoughts and sympathies had been for her father, she had overlooked the fact that the morning’s fishing would have been just as painful for Lew.
‘Wadn’t so bad?’ protested Jack vehemently. ‘When I had to tell they idiots what to do every step of the way? The boy I expected to be green, but George don’t seem to know naught from nought. And as for that nephew of William’s, I be rare disappointed in h
e, and I don’t care who knows it.’
‘They’m good men,’ insisted Lew. ‘And George’s boy be as bright as they come. They just idn’t used to your ways yet. With us it were different. Us’d come with you since us was in petticoats, and us knowd what was wanted without telling. Give these new lads time, ’tis all they need.’
‘And what you two need is some hot food inside you,’ said Maddy, setting down the plates. She knew her tone was overbright but she could not help it. She felt she had to lift their spirits somehow.
Jack merely grunted, but Lew managed a smile. ‘You’m right there,’ he said. ‘Tasty! Just the job. Yer, stand back everyone, let me get at un.’
Maddy waited until they had eaten before she asked the vital question.
‘Was the catch any good?’
‘Nothing special,’ replied Jack, concentrating on his plate.
‘How many’s nothing special?
‘A dozen.’
‘A dozen salmon? Maddy regarded him in amazement. ‘You’re sitting there like a wet wash-day and you caught twelve salmon on the first day of the season!’
‘They wadn’t no size. Us’d only get about one and threepence each,’ replied Jack gloomily.
‘There’s no pleasing some folks,’ protested Maddy fondly. She looked across at Lew, who gave her a conspiratorial wink. They both knew that it was possible to go days, even weeks, without catching anything. A haul of twelve salmon, even small ones, was very acceptable.
As the season continued, Jack grew to accept his new crew and became less critical of them. The annual urge to hunt for salmon was too strong in him ever to think of giving it up, and if this meant that now he must have outsiders in his boat, then so be it. Something of the old pattern returned to the , days, but the evenings were a different matter.
‘Place be as quiet as a tomb,’ Jack complained. ‘And he don’t help.’
The object of his complaint was Lew who, trim and spruced up, was going out.
‘Why shouldn’t he go out? He’s going courting,’ Maddy protested.
Daughter of the River Page 27
