by Val Wood
Rosa put her fingers to her mouth and contemplated. ‘Is he a learned man, this Somerville? I mean – would he know languages, do you think?’
Fred considered. ‘Don’t know. Mebbe. Aye.’ He shook a finger. ‘He mebbe does when I think about it. He’s got a bit of Latin up on a wall in his room at any rate. I noticed it last time I was there. Why?’
Rosa looked enquiringly at Matthew and wondered if he remembered the foreign papers they had found in her box. He frowned for a moment as he caught her eye, then his face cleared and he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why not!’
‘I’ve got some foreign papers in my box up in the loft,’ she said, in answer to Fred. ‘I don’t know what they are.’ She looked towards the door as it opened and Jim came in. He was wet and muddy and late for his dinner. ‘Jim!’ she said. ‘We’d given you up. I’ve kept your dinner hot.’
‘No hurry.’ He leant against the back of a chair and nodded towards his sister and Fred. ‘I need to get this muck off me first.’
Rosa turned again to Fred. ‘I think they might have belonged to my father. His name was on them anyway.’
Jim straightened up. ‘Your da? His name on what?’ His eyes flashed piercingly between Rosa and Fred.
Rosa blinked and thought what an odd question when Jim had only caught the tail end of a conversation.
‘Some papers I found,’ she said briefly. ‘They had my father’s name on them.’
‘Oh!’ Jim ran his hand over his whiskery chin. ‘I see. I’ll just go and get cleaned up,’ he muttered, and went out of the room.
‘What’s ’matter with him?’ Maggie began. ‘He allus looks as if he’s just lost a shilling!’
‘Shall we bring the chest down from ’loft and put it in your room?’ Matthew interrupted to ask Rosa. ‘Seeing as Fred and Jim are both here.’
Rosa looked at him, remembering that they were going to ask Henry to help them bring it down, and merely nodded as she realized that Matthew’s thoughts were elsewhere and not on his dead brother.
‘By heck, but it’s heavy. What’s in it?’ Jim stood halfway up the ladder with his back to the trap door whilst Matthew eased it down from the loft space onto Jim’s back, with Fred waiting with arms at the ready to balance it and take some of the weight.
‘Only linen and china,’ Rosa said from the bottom of the ladder. ‘My gran packed it, she said she’d put in things I might need one day.’
Jim grunted. ‘She put in ’stone sink by ’weight of it, and her smoothing iron.’
‘We’ll shift it into your room, Rosa,’ Matthew said, once it was down, ‘then you can look for your papers again.’
She smiled her thanks. ‘I know where they are.’ She had been up into the loft several times on her own, when the men had been out on the farm and Mrs Drew asleep. She had fetched a ladder from outside and climbed up, pushing the heavy trap door open, and had sat by the side of the chest with a lighted candle in her hand, fingering the linen or holding the sheets of parchment with the foreign lettering up to the candle flame, trying to decipher what the words meant. Then when she had finished she had always carefully tucked them away again under the folds of linen, so that she would know where to find them the next time.
She thanked the men for their efforts and closed her bedroom door to take the papers from the chest in private, and wondered why Jim was shuffling his feet and hovering around when she’d said she would only be a minute.
‘I’ll take care of ’em,’ Fred said, when she gave them to him. ‘They look official.’ He glanced through them and Jim came to peer over his shoulder. ‘Might be a last Will and Testament like I’m going to do.’
‘That’s what we thought, didn’t we, Matthew?’ Rosa said vaguely, wondering if she was doing the right thing by letting them go.
‘Why, have you seen ’em afore, Matthew?’ Jim asked and when Matthew said that he had, commented, ‘You never said owt!’
‘Why should I?’ Matthew rebuked sharply. ‘They’re not mine to discuss. They belong to Rosa.’
Jim lowered his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean owt. I just wondered why they’d not been mentioned afore, that’s all. Squeeze box was brought down and talked about.’
‘I forgot about them, Jim.’ Rosa suddenly felt sorry for him. He seemed such an abject forlorn figure. ‘We were going to bring ’chest down and then, what with Maggie getting married and Henry—’ she faltered. ‘It didn’t seem so important.’
‘Ah!’ Jim turned away. ‘Da’s not seen ’em, I suppose?’
She stared at him in surprise. ‘Why no. Of course not! No-one has, not until today.’
‘Ah!’ he said again and stood pondering, one hand on the doorknob. ‘Not worth mentioning really,’ he mumbled. ‘He wouldn’t be interested. Not in some old papers.’
Rosa stared at him. What was he trying to say? She glanced enquiringly at Mrs Drew, who in turn was watching Jim with such a look of grief etched on her face that it was as if tears were not far away.
‘I hadn’t thought of mentioning them, Jim,’ Rosa said. ‘As you say, your da wouldn’t be interested.’
Jim went out of the room, muttering something about seeing to the horses, and there was a sudden potent silence.
‘He’s a funny fellow, that brother of mine,’ Maggie declared. ‘I never could make him out. Except when I was very young,’ she added. ‘When I was just a bairn. He used to look after me then, didn’t he, Ma? It was after he left school that he changed.’
Mrs Drew gave a deep deep sigh. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘When he started work with your father and when the Irish were here working on ’embankments and digging dykes and drains and laying sluices. It was a period of great change on Sunk Island.’ She looked at Rosa. ‘It was during ’time when your ma met your father and brought him here to meet Mr Drew.’
‘To meet Da?’ Maggie exclaimed. ‘Why ever would she want to do that? Da is hardly welcoming to strangers.’
Her mother suddenly became nervous and confused. ‘I have often wondered that myself,’ she said. ‘But she did. I remember distinctly, when I went to answer ’door as she knocked. ‘‘Mrs Drew,’’ she said. ‘‘This is Mr Carlos from Spain.’’ Her eyes were shining like stars and I could see that she was very taken with him by ’way she looked at him. ‘‘I’ve brought him to see Mr Drew.’’ That’s what she said.’
Mrs Drew looked around at them all. At Maggie sitting with Fred, at Rosa and Matthew. ‘It was later that Jim became moody.’ She sighed again and her fingers played distractedly around her mouth. ‘I think his father worked him too hard. He forgot that he was just a boy and he gave him a man’s responsibilities.’ Then she lowered her head as if in contrition that she had unwittingly criticized her husband.
Fred broke the tension. ‘Come on then, Rosa, I’ll play this old squeeze box and you can give us a dance before Maggie and me make tracks for home.’
She gave him a swift smile and asked him to wait a moment, and dashing out of the room returned a few moments later with her thick plait unbraided, and her mother’s silk shawl which she draped not around her shoulders but around her waist, so that as she swayed to the rhythm the fringes around the edge of the shawl rustled and whispered against her skirt.
‘Make her some castanets, Matthew,’ Fred laughed as he urged a tune out of the old music box. ‘She’ll look like a proper Spanish dancer then.’
Rosa closed her eyes and clicked her fingers high above her head and her black hair drifted around her shoulders, and Matthew, watching her, knew that he had lost her; that she was gone elsewhere, to her father’s mythical castle in Spain, to a dreamland that was warm and colourful, full of flowers and music and happy laughing people who sang and danced and kissed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JAMES DREW PRAYED all the long way home. He prayed for forgiveness and for salvation. He also prayed most fervently that he would never see the two Irish brothers again, particularly the younger one.
He had almost forgotten the e
xistence of John Byrne over the years, and only when Henry had told him that he had met Seamus, on the day when Rosa had played truant from school, had he even thought of them. He had the ability to forget conveniently anything that was abhorrent to him, able even to convince himself that any wrongdoing on his part was not his fault at all but due to the negligence of others.
For a month after his visit to Hull he was in good humour, the weather was fine, the drilling and sowing were finished and he and Jim and Matthew went out rook shooting. Though there were few trees on Sunk Island, the rooks flew in daily from Holderness to peck and pull at the burgeoning growth of corn. On the salt marsh a colony of black-headed gulls were breeding, and cormorants and herons were a frequent sight flying across the land.
Along the divisions of farmland, the few hawthorn hedges were smothered with creamy white blossom which filled the air with its sweet scent and provided shelter for hedge sparrows, wrens and fieldmice. Bees buzzed in the blossom and butterflies, peacock, tortoiseshell and white, opened their wings and fluttered on the warm air.
Early one morning after he had eaten his breakfast, Drew stood at the farm door looking out at the greening acreage, listening to the bleat of lambs and the incessant call of a cuckoo. There was a feeling of renewal, of reanimation, and he gave a silent prayer of thanks that they had survived the harsh winter.
He had lost a son, it was true, but he considered grimly that Henry wouldn’t have died if he hadn’t been drinking and lost his way. They had also lost a cow which had strayed and fallen into a dyke, but there had been no flooding, most of the dykes had held and the roofs of the house and barns were secure. But even as he contemplated the coming summer, he felt the stirring of his own blood, a physical energy and agitation which was setting him on fire.
He went back inside and climbed the stairs to the bedroom he shared with his wife, opened the door and stared down at her. ‘Ellen,’ he murmured. She didn’t stir, her face was white and her lips were bloodless and he knew that she was in pain. ‘Ellen!’
She opened her eyes and gazed at him. ‘What is it?’ She attempted to rise but the effort was too much and she fell back against her pillow. ‘Is there some trouble?’
He sat on the side of the bed. ‘No. No trouble.’ He stared out towards the window. He could see the gleam of brown river beyond the pasture-land. ‘I might have to go into Hull again. I – I need to get this business of ’corn merchant sorted out.’
‘Yes.’ She gazed at him, her pale eyes expressionless. ‘If you must.’
‘I thought I might go today. Lads can manage without me for a couple o’ days.’
She didn’t answer but continued to gaze at him.
‘They’re both out now. Will you tell them when they come back at dinner time? Or tell Rosa to tell them. Where is she anyway? She’s not in ’kitchen or in ’yard.’
His wife shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Maybe helping with ’milking or collecting eggs.’ Her voice was low, as if it was an effort to speak.
‘Are you very sick?’ he said suddenly, turning towards her. ‘Shall I send for ’doctor?’
‘No. Not yet,’ she breathed. ‘I can manage for a bit.’
‘All right.’ He stood up and looked down at her. ‘If you’re sure? I don’t mind ’expense.’
She shook her head again and he felt a guilty sense of relief that he didn’t have to make a diversion to Patrington to call the doctor. He quickly changed his clothes into something suitable for the ride and to wear in town and hurried downstairs. His breathing was rapid and he stumbled as he went out of the door.
Rosa came across the yard towards the house. She was carrying a basket of eggs. ‘Going somewhere, Mr Drew?’
‘Aye.’ His voice was terse and defiant. It was nothing to do with her where he was going. ‘You’d better get inside,’ he said. ‘Mrs Drew isn’t well.’
‘I know that,’ she said boldly. ‘She needs the doctor.’
‘She can have one,’ he said angrily. ‘As soon as I get back I’ll send for him.’
‘It might be too late,’ she muttered and turning towards the door she went through it and closed it behind her.
She put the basket down beside the sink and pumped in some water, then carefully laid the eggs into it to wash them. She raised her eyes to the ceiling as she heard a sound and listened intently. She ran swiftly upstairs, holding up her skirt hem so that she didn’t fall, and into Mrs Drew’s bedroom.
‘Are you all right, Aunt Ellen? I thought I heard—’
Mrs Drew was sitting up but with her head bent low over the bed and her hands clasped together. She looked up and Rosa saw the pain in her face and saw too that she had been weeping. ‘Are you hurting?’ she said anxiously. ‘Shall I send Matthew for ’doctor?’
‘No, my dear,’ she said softly. ‘The doctor can do nothing for ’kind of affliction that I’ve got, and there’s a sickness in my heart that he can’t cure.’
Rosa sat on the bed and took hold of her hand. ‘Shall I send for Maggie to come? Or Flo? They can be spared I’m sure and they would cheer you up.’
‘No, don’t bother them. They have enough to do.’ Mrs Drew attempted a smile. ‘I’m quite happy with your company, but – but I would like to talk to ’parson. I haven’t been to church in a long time and there’s something I’d like to discuss with him.’
Rosa went in search of Matthew or Jim and found Matthew saddling up a horse in order to visit John Gore. ‘Can you go on to Patrington after you’ve been there?’ she asked. ‘Your ma wants to talk to the vicar.’
Matthew’s face changed colour. ‘She’s not worse, is she?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she admitted. ‘She’s been crying, but doesn’t want ’doctor to come.’
He came and stood in front of her. ‘But do you think ’doctor is needed?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do, but your da said he would send for him when he gets back.’
‘Gets back? What do you mean? Where’s he gone?’
‘He didn’t say, but he was dressed ’same as he was when he went into Hull last month.’
Matthew lashed his whip in the air with a sudden spurt of anger. ‘Damn and blast him! What on earth is he doing?’
Rosa remained silent for a moment, then said, ‘When you’re in Patrington seeing ’vicar, will you call on Flo? See if she can come over for a day. Gran won’t mind.’
He said that he would and, digging his heels into the horse’s flanks, rode off to Patrington to ask the vicar to call.
The incumbent of the church on Sunk Island also served the parish of Patrington and had made the journey on horseback across the marshes for many years. It was no hardship for him therefore to saddle up immediately and set off to visit one of his most faithful parishioners.
‘Dear lady,’ he said, when he arrived that same afternoon and was shown upstairs, ‘I should have called before!’
‘Not at all.’ She smiled, for she was fond of this gentle man. ‘I know how busy you are and I know that I was in your thoughts.’
‘Indeed you always are, my dear. You are one of my most steadfast parishioners, as is Mr Drew. Is he not at home today?’
‘He has had to go into Hull, on private business,’ she said softly, ‘and it is of my husband that I wish to speak.’
She folded her hands together and murmured, ‘I am dying, Mr Metcalf,’ and she raised her hand to grasp his as he exclaimed in dismay. ‘But I don’t wish to speak of myself. Not yet at any rate, though your prayers will be welcome when ’time comes.’
The vicar put his hands together and closed his eyes.
‘I want you to pray for Mr Drew,’ she said quietly. ‘He is in great need of salvation. His soul is in peril and I am afraid that he will descend into Hell without the power of prayer.’
The vicar opened his eyes and gazed at her in astonishment. ‘Dear lady!’ he said. ‘He is a most devout man. A regular worshipper at church!’
‘He is a hypocrite,’ she whispered, ‘a
nd he must not be allowed to influence others. He pays lip devotion only and you must relieve him of his duties as churchwarden. Please,’ she said earnestly. ‘I beg you, he has committed many wrongs. Pray for him now before it’s too late. I pray for him every day, but I’m getting weaker and I’m afraid that when I’m gone he will be past redemption.’
Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I once had great love for him, even though I knew he was a sinner. Now I have to make my own peace with God, to ask forgiveness for my sin of overlooking my husband’s weaknesses.’
‘You cannot take on the burden of another’s sins,’ he urged. ‘Your husband must take the responsibility of exculpating them himself.’
‘You won’t tell him that I have discussed this with you?’ she begged. ‘He will deny everything.’
‘Then if he has sinned so grievously as you say, and yet denies everything, he is lost,’ he murmured, and knelt at the side of the bed. ‘But we will pray together now that he sees the error of his ways, and for the mercy of his soul.’
Flo came later that evening and said that Mrs Jennings insisted that she should stay for a day or two. ‘She said you must visit her, Rosa, she hasn’t seen you for weeks.’
‘I know,’ Rosa said. In spite of her telling Matthew that there would be changes after Maggie had gone and that she wouldn’t be at everyone’s beck and call, she found that she had so little time to spare now that Mrs Drew was ill that the days just flew by. She hadn’t been to the riverbank or walked along the side of the dykes to watch for frogs and newts, nor had she seen her favourite bird, the heron, for weeks, and her grandmother must feel sorely neglected without a visit from her, she thought.
‘Go on, go out for some fresh air. Take a walk. I know that’s what you like to do,’ Flo urged.
Rosa fetched her shawl and said that she wouldn’t be long.
‘No hurry. I’ll see to Ma and to supper. It’s a lovely evening. Make ’most of it.’
Rosa saw Matthew and Jim coming towards her. ‘Flo’s here,’ she called. ‘She’s seeing to supper, but not yet. You’ll have to wait till she’s had a chat with your ma.’
