Annie
Page 46
He blew his nose, loud and long. ‘So don’t tell the captain how he was, only that he died a hero’s death.’
‘You can tell him yourself,’ she smiled. ‘For he’ll want to come and see you when I tell him that I found you.’
‘Tell him, too, that I have got me a good woman.’ He pointed to the small woman in a brown bonnet and cloak who was sitting on a stool holding a drum.
‘Aye, she set me on the right path. She feeds me and takes care of me.’ He winked his eye. ‘Aye, and gives me a good deal more besides.’
‘So, you’re a respectable married landsman now? You’ve given up the sea for good?’ Annie nodded amiably at the woman.
‘Ah, well.’ He shuffled his feet. ‘The sea has given me up, I fear. I’m too old now for such a life, but the good Lord is happy to employ me. As for marriage,’ he dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘I was once married, ma’am, sanctified by church and law.’ He cleared his throat. ‘That good lady is still alive, but—,’ he raised his hands to the heavens. ‘We,’ he indicated the woman, ‘we have God’s blessing on us until such time that the first Mrs White departs this life. Which won’t be for some considerable time, I fear,’ he added in an undertone, ‘for she was very much my junior.’
Annie laughed and shook her head. ‘You are, I think, a hopeless case, Parson White. But I am so pleased, so very pleased to see you again.’ She grasped his hand and squeezed it.
‘And I you, dear lady, and your son. Your other son?’ he remembered. ‘He is well, I trust?’
‘Matt gave me five children,’ she said, drawing Tobias to her. ‘All healthy, and this one wants to be a seaman like his father.’
Parson White scrutinized Tobias. ‘He has the look of his father and the eyes of his uncle. He’ll make a good sailor, I’ll be bound.’ He drew closer. ‘Tell me, Mrs Linton, and then I will detain you no longer, for I see your coachie getting anxious in this melee. Captain Linton and yourself,—erm, though you were of course married in the sight of God and witnesses right there on the waterside, were you, that is to say, did you ever wed again in church to conform with society’s rules?’
She stared and stared, then slowly shook her head. She had always thought that she was a respectable married woman. Was this reformed reprobate parson telling her she wasn’t? She had never once questioned her married state and neither, as far as she knew, had Matt.
It was too ridiculous for words. She started to laugh. She laughed and laughed until her sides ached and tears ran down her face.
She was still laughing when she stepped into the carriage, and she waved to Parson White as they bowled away, and his wife, in God’s eyes, gave a rattling tattoo on her drum.
* * *
They climbed and dipped over the chalky downland and fell silent as they viewed the steep-sided grassy dales and the wooded dells. They could hear the rattling cacophany of pheasants and saw their bright plumage as they pecked in the ploughed earth. An owl, up early, called from the woods and Annie listened intently for an answering cry from its mate. There. The reply came clear and strong echoing over the valley.
Soon they would be home. They were almost on the edge of their own land, and the old house, hidden in a fold of the hill, would be waiting, waiting with a houseful of children, a father and a husband.
Annie pulled down the window and called to Grigson to stop. Joan gave a deep sigh and glanced significantly at Tobias.
‘I’m going to walk,’ Annie said. She took off her hat and threw it onto the seat and then bent down and unfastened her boots and slipped them off. She rolled down her stockings and took those off too and tucked them inside her boots. ‘I want you to drive on.’ She smiled at the relieved look on Joan’s face, she had never been over-fond of walking, ‘and tell Captain Linton where I am.’
‘Shall I walk with you, Mamma? There might be wild animals or robbers waiting to jump out at you!’ Tobias watched her anxiously.
She patted his cheek. ‘Wild animals and robbers are no match for your mother, didn’t you know that? No. You go on home and tell the others that I’m coming, and tell Cook we’ll have a celebratory supper tonight, and you can all stay up late.’
She watched as the carriage rattled away and waved her hand to Tobias’s outstretched arm hanging from the window. She put her hand to her head and pulled out her hairpins and combs and put them in her pocket. Her hair dropped long and free, lifting in the slight breeze. She walked on feeling the sharpness of the chalk road beneath her bare feet, not minding it, but enduring the self-imposed discomfort as it sharpened and intensified her thoughts.
This walk she had wanted to take alone. She needed a quiet time to consider her past as well as the future which lay in front of her; to try to recognize the person she had once been and had now become, and to know if they were one and the same.
At the top of a rise she took a rest; her heart was hammering from the uphill climb and her breathing was rapid. She undid the buttons on her tight wool jacket and let her gown beneath it flow free without restraint.
‘That’s better,’ she breathed, ‘now I can go on.’ But she paused a while longer to look back. She was overlooking a deep valley; to the right of the track she had walked up was a wood of mature trees. The leaves had turned to autumn gold; oak and ash glowed as the sun dipped, red and fiery behind her, and sycamore shed their crisp large leaves creating a yellow-brown carpet.
To the left of the track was a steep incline where the pasture land was cropped short by bleating sheep and scurrying rabbits. She narrowed her eyes as she saw the flash of a red bushy tail as a fox pounced on its supper and sped off with a screaming rabbit between its jaws.
But the view she was searching for lay in the far distance on the road she had just travelled. The scene which had always brought her comfort, even in the depths of her worst despair. The Humber, a brown river, flowing deep and strong and carrying the waters of other, lesser rivers, surged on without her, sweeping on in its inevitable rush to the sea.
‘If ever I come this way again,’ she whispered. ‘I shall not be alone.’ She took one more glance, the sky was darkening, the river was almost a trembling pencil line merging with the shores of Lincolnshire.
She turned away and looked up the valley towards the next rise. That was the place where she had waited once before, when Matt had come home. When she reached it this time it would be too dark to see the river again.
A figure sat on horseback atop the rise. It had to be Matt, come to fetch her home. She waved her hand and he waved back and urged his mount towards her.
He looked down on her from his horse’s back. ‘So, Mrs Linton. You came home after all?’ He joked, but she saw anxiety on his face.
‘Is all well at home?’ she asked. ‘Father? The childre’?’ Her old dialect slipped out and he smiled, and dismounted.
‘All’s well,’ he said. ‘Did you find what you were seeking?’
She nodded and felt a fleeting shadow of pain. He put out his arms. ‘We’ve missed you, Annie.’
She didn’t move into the shelter of his arms as she might have done, but stood back and studied him seriously. ‘Captain Linton! Wilt tha marry me?’
He gave a short laugh and his eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘What? How can I marry you? I’m married already. I have a beautiful wife, five handsome children, so how could I possibly marry you? Besides who would ever marry such a creature? Look at you – why, you’re no lady, with your hair hanging down your back and your coat undone and your feet bare!’
‘I’ve come up from ’gutter, Mayster,’ she croaked. ‘Take pity on me!’
He took one large stride towards her and enfolded her close in his arms. ‘Oh Annie, never leave again. I’ve missed you so much.’
She could no longer smell the sea or the river on him. She could smell the aroma of land, of hedgerow and meadow grass and the smoky fires of home.
With her arms wrapped tight around him she kissed him. ‘Wilt tha marry me, Captain Linton? How many t
imes do I have to ask?’
He laughed and returned her kiss. ‘All right, you scarecrow. I’ll marry you.’ He leapt onto his horse and put out his hand for her to come up. ‘Only tell me when we’ve had one marriage ceremony, why we should want another?’
She put her arms around his waist as they broke into a canter and whispered into his ear. ‘Well, it’s like this, Captain. When I was returning home from Hull, I met an old preacher – he’d once been a seaman and a smuggler—!’
His laughter and then hers resounded around the valley. It was echoed by the screeching of a barn owl which flew on silent wings across the hedges; was caught and repeated by the raucous cry of the pheasants, and the evocative bark of a fox. And where the chalk valleys descended gently into open flatlands and muddy shore, the mighty river Humber flowed ever onwards towards its destination.
THE END
About the Author
Valerie Wood was born in Yorkshire, where she still lives. Her first novel, The Hungry Tide, was the first winner of the Catherine Cookson Prize for Fiction.
Find out more about Val Wood’s novels by visiting her website on www.valeriewood.co.uk
Also by Val Wood
THE HUNGRY TIDE
ANNIE
CHILDREN OF THE TIDE
THE ROMANY GIRL
EMILY
GOING HOME
ROSA’S ISLAND
THE DOORSTEP GIRLS
FAR FROM HOME
THE KITCHEN MAID
THE SONGBIRD
NOBODY'S CHILD
FALLEN ANGELS
THE LONG WALK HOME
RICH GIRL, POOR GIRL
HOMECOMING GIRLS
and published by Corgi Books
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ANNIE
A CORGI BOOK : 0 552 14263 8
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446486238
First publication in Great Britain
PRINTING HISTORY
Corgi edition published 1994
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Copyright © Valerie Wood 1994
The right of Valerie Wood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
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