The River Folk

by Margaret Dickinson

  She felt Lizzie glance at her. ‘No, Mam,’ the girl said quietly.

  ‘It would be best not to mention that we met Mr Marsh and his son. That way, you can’t let it slip, can you?’

  ‘No, Mam,’ Lizzie agreed, but there was reluctance in her tone. She hated deceit of any kind and not being truthful with her father especially would cause her pain, Mary Ann knew. But she could not take the risk of the child letting out her secret.

  As they climbed into the car, Lawrence was asking eagerly, ‘Can we take Mrs Ruddick and Lizzie out again, Father?’

  Coyly, Mary Ann glanced at Randolph. ‘Well, I don’t know about that. I expect Mr Marsh has better things to do than take us for rides in the country.’

  She heard his low chuckle and then as he swung the starting handle and climbed back in beside her, beneath the noise of the engine he said, ‘I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing.’

  He took them back to the wash-house and even helped to load the heavy basket of washing into Mary Ann’s cog boat. Already, Lizzie was sculling ahead down the river and Lawrence had remained in the car.

  ‘When will I see you again?’ he whispered.

  ‘Next week,’ she replied.

  ‘A whole week,’ he moaned. ‘Oh, I can’t bear it.’

  ‘No. Neither can I.’ For a moment as he handed the basket down to her, their eyes met each other’s and held. There was such passion in his eyes that it seemed to burn into her. ‘I know,’ she breathed. ‘I know. But there’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘There must be,’ he whispered intensely. ‘There has to be.’

  ‘I must go,’ she said, desperate to stay but knowing she had no choice.

  ‘Mary Ann,’ he said urgently, but already the boat was inching away from the bank.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Marsh,’ she called out for the benefit of Lawrence’s young ears. ‘Thank you for your kindness.’

  As she sculled away, she knew he stood watching her, but she dared not look back.

  If she had, she might well never have returned to the ship.

  Forty

  ‘Wherever have you been?’ was Dan’s greeting as they climbed aboard the Maid Mary Ann, weighed down with wet washing to be dried. ‘I was worried. I thought something must have happened. I nearly had to anchor.’

  ‘Oh, what a catastrophe that would have been,’ Mary Ann snapped. ‘Well, you can thank your daughter. She ran off playing and I couldn’t find her.’ She avoided looking at Lizzie, knowing that the girl would be gazing open-mouthed at her mother’s lies. ‘I shan’t take her again.’

  ‘But, Mam, I . . .’ Lizzie began, but Mary Ann rounded on her. ‘Not another word, miss, if you know what’s good for you.’

  She picked up the basket and walked along the deck away from them, praying very hard that her daughter would not give her away.

  ‘Never mind, love,’ Mary Ann heard Dan say behind her. ‘You stay with me and Uncle Duggie.’ He laughed, indulgent as ever. ‘You can’t run away far on board, can you?’

  Their meetings went on through the summer and, despite her threat, Mary Ann was obliged to take Lizzie with her. Sometimes, Randolph brought Lawrence, at other times he came alone, but on those occasions there was no opportunity for a jaunt to the woods; there was no one to keep Lizzie occupied. On such days, Mary Ann could see her own frustration mirrored in Randolph’s eyes but there was nothing they could do. One day, when Lizzie had been in mischief, Mary Ann used her naughtiness as an excuse to leave her with Dan, hoping to snatch a brief time alone with Randolph. But, not knowing, he brought Lawrence along.

  They both heaved a sigh of relief when the school holidays were over and they watched in amusement as the two young people said goodbye to each other.

  ‘I’ve got to go away tomorrow,’ Lawrence told Lizzie haltingly. ‘Back to boarding school.’

  Lizzie pulled a face. ‘Poor you. I go to your auntie’s school. I stay with me grandma in the week when Mam and Daddy are away. It’s nice there. Do you like school?’

  Mary Ann saw the boy glance towards his father. With obvious diplomacy, Lawrence said, ‘It’s all right.’ Then he turned back to Lizzie and in a low voice, added, ‘But I’ll miss you. We’ve had a great time this hols, haven’t we?’

  As the children continued to talk, promising to write to each other, Randolph murmured, ‘Do you think this is the start of a romance? Is it going to be the romance of the century?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Mary Ann whispered, touching his hand discreetly. ‘No, ours is the romance of the century.’

  Randolph grasped her hand impulsively and said, ‘Next week when we’re alone, try to stay as long as you can. I want to take you for a drive.’

  ‘I’ll be here,’ she promised. ‘Same time, same place.’

  But the following week, when she knew Randolph would be waiting for her in the shadow of the trees, she was aboard the ship in Grimsby docks waiting whilst a cargo of barley was loaded to be ’livered to a malt kiln in Elsborough. She was angry and frustrated, but there was nothing she could do. She could not send a message and all she could do was hope and pray that he would be there the next week.

  ‘I don’t like to be made a fool of, Mary Ann,’ Randolph said stiffly.

  ‘Would you have liked me to have sent a telegram to The Hall?’ Her tone was brittle, hiding her own fear that he would not come to meet her again. ‘ “Sorry, can’t meet you on Monday. Love from your mistress.” ’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mary Ann,’ he snapped.

  ‘Ridiculous, am I? Randolph, I am at the mercy of the tides, the wind, Dan’s cargoes and where they have to be loaded. It’s a miracle that we have been able to meet as often as we have. It’s only because he usually has a regular run on a Monday, and we pass here at about the same time each week, that I’ve managed it until now.’

  ‘So what went wrong last week?’

  Mary Ann shrugged. ‘An urgent delivery that they were prepared to pay over the odds for.’

  ‘And, of course, your thrifty husband couldn’t miss such an opportunity, could he?’

  ‘No,’ Mary Ann said shortly, disliking the sarcasm in Randolph’s tone that was directed at her husband. It was quite bad enough that she was deceiving Dan. In spite of all her faults – and she knew there were many – she couldn’t bear to hear Dan ridiculed too. He didn’t deserve that. In fact, Mary Ann realized in a fleeting and rare moment of honesty, he didn’t deserve any of it. Dan Ruddick was a good man, too good for the likes of Mary Ann Clark.

  ‘Come . . .’ Randolph was holding out his hand to her, all smiles now. ‘Don’t let’s waste our precious time together in quarrelling. How long have you got?’

  She couldn’t resist him. As he had said, so long ago now and so prophetically, he only had to crook his little finger and she came running.

  Pushing away uncomfortable thoughts, Mary Ann smiled impishly now. ‘I told him I had a lot of extra washing to do this week, with having missed my turn at the wash-house last Monday.’

  Randolph’s returning smile was wolfish. ‘Good, because I am going to take you on a long car ride.’

  They took the country lanes and back roads where there was less likelihood of being seen by anyone who knew them. The car was bouncing down a long, rutted cart track towards a small, white cottage, on the far side of Raven’s Wood, set against a backdrop of trees. They came to a halt outside the door and switched off the engine. Leaning back in his seat, he said, ‘Here we are.’

  Mary Ann looked at the cottage. It was painted white with a pretty garden and a climbing rose tree around the green-painted front door. Then she looked at Randolph. ‘Here we are – where?’

  ‘Home,’ he said.

  Her heart was racing and the blood was pounding in her ears. ‘What . . . what do you mean?’

  He leant towards her and took hold of her hand. Softly, he said, ‘This could be yours, Mary Ann, if only you’ll say the word.’

  ‘You mean – it’s yours?’

>   ‘Of course I do. It’s part of the estate. It’s really a gamekeeper’s cottage, but I don’t have need of as many gamekeepers as I used to have. So, it’s been empty for a while. Oh, Mary Ann, Mary Ann . . .’ He moved nearer and began to kiss her neck, urging her, tempting her between his kisses. ‘Leave him, Mary Ann. Come to me. Be mine. You know how I need you, how I want you . . .’

  For a while she gave in to his passion but afterwards, in the cold light of reason, she said, ‘You know I can’t.’

  It was over Sunday lunch in Waterman’s Yard that the trouble began.

  ‘Have you seen Randolph Marsh’s new car? It’s a monstrosity of a thing.’ Duggie, still interested in all things mechanical, laughed. ‘But what I’d give for a ride in one.’

  Mary Ann glanced worriedly at Lizzie, but she was concentrating on eating her favourite pudding – treacle sponge that Bessie always made for her – and didn’t appear to be listening to the adult conversation going on around her.

  ‘It’ll have set him back a pretty penny. I think it’s a Rolls Royce.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ Lizzie took another mouthful before she said, ‘It’s a Bentley.’

  Duggie laughed. ‘How do you know that, our Lizzie?’

  Lizzie scraped the spoon around her bowl to get the last drop of treacle. ‘Lawrence told me.’

  There was silence around the table as all eyes turned to look at her. Suddenly, Lizzie was motionless. Then her spoon clattered into her dish as she gazed, horrified, at her mother.

  ‘Lizzie, go below.’

  When they arrived back at the ship, Dan’s voice was stern. Nothing more had been said around the dinner table, but there had been an awkward silence. Bessie had opened her mouth and Mary Ann had felt her heart begin to thump with fear. Nothing got past her mother-in-law, but then she saw Bert put out his hand to touch his wife’s. Bessie had glanced at him, met his steady gaze, seen the slight shake of his head and had closed her mouth. But she had got up quickly from the table and began to clear away the pots, crashing them dangerously together so that Mary Ann was in no doubt that Bessie smelt trouble.

  Even Duggie, usually blithely unaware of undercurrents, kept silent and, when the time came for them to return to the ship, he made an excuse that he was meeting some cronies in The Waterman’s Arms.

  Now Mary Ann was alone on deck with her husband.

  ‘What’s been going on?’ Dan demanded. There was a tension in his voice, but she could tell that he was struggling to remain calm. ‘How does my daughter – a child of ten – know the difference between a Rolls Royce and a Bentley? And how come she knows the boy?’

  Mary Ann’s laugh was brittle as she tried to bluff her way out. ‘She’s met him. Just once.’

  ‘When? How?’

  Mary Ann shrugged. ‘That day she ran off and I couldn’t find her. You remember? Well, that’s where she was. They’d been driving past and stopped to speak to her. Mr Randolph and his son.’ Embellishing her story, Mary Ann went on. ‘They took her for a ride in their motor car.’

  Dan was appalled. ‘Took her . . .? She got in a car with strangers?’ He paused and Mary Ann glanced away from him, her resolve wilting under his keen scrutiny. Now he was shaking his head. ‘Oh no. I don’t believe it. She wouldn’t do that. Not my Lizzie. Not after all I’ve told her. She wouldn’t get into a car with complete strangers.’ He paused and said slowly, ‘Not unless she knew them.’ There was a long pause before he asked, his voice now deceptively quiet, ‘Did she know them, Mary Ann?’

  ‘Of course not. How could she?’

  ‘Mary Ann, I want the truth and I mean to have it. Either you tell it to me or I shall ask Lizzie. She will tell me the truth, I know she will, but I don’t want to have to put a child in the awful position of having to tell me her mother’s secrets.’

  There was silence between them, the only sound the lapping of the water against the side of the ship, a fitful moon their only light in the darkness of the night.

  ‘Mary Ann?’

  Her resolve snapped. Her voice was a high-pitched shriek. ‘All right. All right. You want the truth. All right. I’ve been meeting him. Randolph. He’s my lover.’ She paused and then, plunging the knife in even further, added, ‘Again.’

  He lunged at her and, grabbing her shoulders, shook her. He was shouting now. ‘Why? Why, Mary Ann? Haven’t I been good to you? Haven’t I looked after you and cared for you?’

  ‘I love him,’ she screamed at him. ‘I always have. And he loves me.’

  ‘No. No. You can’t believe that. He’s just amusing himself with you. How can you allow yourself to be taken in by him? How can you be so stupid?’

  Mary Ann pulled herself free of his grasp and ran to the side of the ship. ‘Let me go. What do you know about it? What do you know about love?’

  ‘How can you say that to me, Mary Ann? I gave up Susan for you.’

  Appalled, they stared at each other through the darkness. He moved towards her. ‘Mary Ann, I didn’t mean it. I love you. Really I do. Forget about him. We’ll say no more about it, if you promise me not to see him again.’

  ‘No, no,’ her cry was anguished. ‘I can’t live without seeing him. I’m sorry, Dan. I don’t mean to hurt you, but—’

  ‘Listen to me. He’ll leave you again, just like he did before, when he tires of you.’

  Her voice rose hysterically. ‘It’s not like that. It wasn’t his fault. He had to marry Celia. His family made him.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. A man in his position can’t be made to do anything he doesn’t want to.’

  A seed of doubt crept into her mind, rooted itself there and began to grow. But instead of gratitude, Mary Ann hated the person who had sown it.

  She flew at Dan and pummelled his chest shrieking at him. ‘I hate you. You don’t want me to be happy. You want to keep me a prisoner on this blasted boat.’

  Dan tried to catch hold of her, but she struggled free, crying hysterically. He raised his hand and slapped her face, not in fury, but to bring her to reason.

  She fell back against the rail and at that moment the Aegir, moving majestically upriver, lifted the ship at its moorings.

  Mary Ann, caught off balance, felt herself falling backwards over the side. Her arms flailed helplessly and her mouth opened in a terrified scream as she splashed into the black, swift flowing water.

  She rose to the surface and heard, just once, the desperation in Dan’s voice as he called her name.

  ‘Mary Ann. Maaary Aaan!’

  Then the dark waters closed over her head.

  Part Three

  Lizzie

  Forty-One

  1939

  The rowing boat bumped gently against the side of the ship and Lizzie heard Tolly’s voice calling, his face upturned as her father leant over the side. ‘Mr Ruddick? Can Lizzie come fishing with me?’

  ‘Where are you going, lad?’

  Stifling her giggles, Lizzie watched as her uncle, Duggie, joined his brother to peer down at the boy, too. For a moment, Tolly seemed fazed by the two stern, weather-beaten faces staring down at him and his stammer became suddenly more pronounced. ‘N-not far. Just – just to the bend in the river.’

  ‘The Aegir’s due soon and it’ll be a big one,’ Duggie warned.

  ‘I know. That’s why it’s a good time. C-can Lizzie come, Mr Ruddick?’

  The two men exchanged a glance. Lizzie, at fifteen, was a child of the river. Born and bred on the water, it had never held any fears for her. And now Dan, although still protective of his pretty daughter, was obliged to accept that, with her knowledge of the river and all its moods and her innate common sense, he should allow her a greater freedom.

  ‘As long as you promise to be extra careful,’ he said. ‘Then, all right.’

  Lizzie, already dressed for the expedition for she had known Tolly would come, climbed the last few steps of the ladder from the cabin and stepped on to the deck. The two men turned at the sound and Duggie laughed out loud.
‘You little minx,’ he said, holding out his arm and drawing her to him to hug her. ‘You’ve arranged all this, haven’t you? What if your dad had said, “No”?’

  Lizzie, so like her mother in many ways, with dark unruly curls and dancing dark eyes, laughed, ‘I’d have gone anyway,’ she teased, although they all knew she would have done no such thing. Already, the girl seemed older than her years, far more mature than most girls of her age, and it seemed as if she had been blessed with the best traits of character from each of her parents. She had her mother’s looks and her sunny nature and impish ways, but from Dan she got her honesty and, although this was probably a throwback to her grandmother, Bessie, she was forthright and afraid of no one.

  ‘I’ve fried you a piece of steak each and there are potatoes, swede and carrots in the boiling pan.’

  ‘Now, don’t be late,’ her father frowned. ‘I want you home before dark.’

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ Lizzie called gaily as she swung herself over the side and down the rope ladder towards Tolly’s boat. ‘I’ll bring you back a salmon.’

  She sat in the bows of the small boat, whilst Tolly rowed strongly away from the ship and, reaching the middle of the river, rested a moment on the oars, allowing the boat to drift with the current. Lizzie gave a contented sigh, leaning back in the boat and allowing her hand to trail in the water. It was a balmy evening, a quiet time, when everyone seemed to be waiting for the swell of the Aegir surging up the river. The willow trees planted along the riverbank to strengthen it, the ducks swimming in convoy, the ships and the smaller boats, moored at the wharves or at the landings all seemed to be waiting for the great wave.

  ‘I’ve got a job,’ Tolly told her. Now that they were alone, all sign of his stammer had vanished.

  Lizzie sat up and clapped her hands. ‘That’s wonderful. Is it with Mr Bryce, the basketmaker?’

  On the Nottinghamshire side of the river, near the shipyard, were the workshops of Harry Bryce. Harry had served in the Great War and had been blinded, but he now ran a small cottage industry, weaving willow baskets with intricate skill. It was the root of the willow that strengthened the bank, the tree itself only serving as nature’s ornament. So, with the permission of the authorities, Harry Bryce harvested the willow he needed from along the side of the Trent. Because of his blindness he was unable to do that work himself and so an army of schoolboys worked for him in their spare time, and to some, like Tolly, he had taught the rudiments of his trade.