The Fleethaven Trilogy

by Margaret Dickinson

  She was quite impressed by the size of the farmhouse; to have a living room and a best parlour was richness indeed. And yet, Esther felt a sadness sweep over her. It was obvious that this house had once been inhabited by a loving family. Poor Sam, she thought, these neglected rooms echoed his loneliness.

  For some reason she could not quite explain, she found herself tiptoeing up the stairs and quietly lifting the latch of a door to her left at the top of the stairs. It was Sam Brumby’s bedroom. Her heart pounded in her chest with nervousness. It was one thing to arrive at the farm and worm her way into a job and a place in a dusty attic; it was quite another to prowl about Sam Brumby’s home and go into his bedroom to search for his personal washing. Even Esther, for all her boldness, felt this might be going just a little too far.

  The room was surprisingly tidy, though dusty. Sam’s Sunday best suit stood on a hanger in the corner, and two faded photographs in silver frames stood on the chest of drawers. Esther bent closer. One was of a man and woman; the woman seated, stiff and straight-backed, her face stern and serious. It was the same face that stared out of the larger picture hanging in the living room. The man, his hand on the back of her chair, had the likeness of Sam about him. Yet it was not Sam. In the other photograph was a solemn little boy, his arm protectively round a smaller girl with a sweet face surrounded by a mass of dark curls.

  Esther straightened up and went to the bed. The covers were pulled straight, though the patchwork quilt needed washing. She pulled back the top coverlet and saw that there were no sheets on the bed, only a rough blanket that smelled a little sour. There was no pillow-case on the rough ticking of the pillow either. Her fingers hesitated over a heavy oak chest standing at the foot of the bed. She had no wish to pry into Sam’s belongings, but if she were to care for him properly she needed to find fresh bedlinen. Taking a deep breath, she lifted the lid. Inside were sheets and pillow-cases, yellow with age, but neatly folded. She pulled out two of each and bundled them under her arm. The lid dropped with a dull thud and as she was going out of the room she noticed a shirt on the floor behind the door. She scooped that up too. At that moment she heard the back door bang and she scuttled down the stairs without stopping to look at the other upstairs rooms.

  Sam was in the kitchen. ‘Now what are ya up to, wench?’ His words followed her as she rushed past him out to the wash-house.

  ‘Weshing, mester,’ she called back over her shoulder. ‘Just a bit o’ weshing.’

  When the sheets, pillow-cases and shirt were bubbling in the copper, Esther went into the barn to search for a length of line to string between two trees in the garden at the front of the house. A good blow in the fresh air was what all these clothes and the linen needed. She glanced down at the coarse skirt and dirty pinafore she was wearing. She wished she could wash her own clothes, but she had nothing to change into and with that cheeky Matthew about, she dare not risk it.

  She was possing the clothes in the rinsing tub when he appeared again, startling her as she caught sight of him standing silently in the doorway. She dropped the posser suddenly and cold water splashed her face.

  ‘Oh – ya made me jump!’ she said with annoyance. ‘What ya doing here? Shouldn’t ya be at work?’ Sweat plastered strands of hair to her forehead. Her cheeks were red with exertion.

  ‘I’ve come back to see you.’ Matthew grinned and took a step nearer.

  She raised her hands, palms outward, as if to fend him off. ‘No, there’ll be trouble – I dun’t want to lose this job. I’ve come a long way and there’s nowhere for me to go back to, so – so don’t spoil it for me, please?’ she pleaded.

  Teasing, he said. ‘It’ll cost you, seeing as ’ow you’ve taken it from under Beth’s nose,’ and without giving her a chance to argue, he walked away across the yard, a new arrogance in his stride. He turned once, shouted, ‘I’ll see you later,’ gave her a saucy wink and a wave and then he was gone.

  Esther felt herself hot all over and knew it was not the steaming water and the activity of wash-day that had caused it.

  Five

  HE was waiting in the yard when she finally finished in the wash-house that evening.

  ‘What are you doin’ here? You haven’t finished milking, have ya?’

  ‘Haven’t started,’ he replied boldly, and stood before her to bar her way back into the house.

  Esther gasped at his audacity and her green eyes glittered. ‘You’ll have Mester Brumby after you. It should’ve been done hours ago!’

  ‘I can handle Sam Brumby.’

  Esther was at once sceptical. ‘Now you’re bragging, Master Matthew.’

  ‘Well now,’ he said softly, his eyes roaming over her face. ‘At least you’ve stopped calling me “boy”.’

  She could feel his breath warm upon her cheek as he added, ‘I thought mebbe we could take a little walk. I could show you around, like. I could show you where it’s safe to walk on the beach – and where it’s dangerous.’

  ‘And how do I know you’re not the biggest danger out there?’

  Matthew threw back his head and laughed. ‘You don’t,’ he said. ‘You really don’t know.’

  Esther made no attempt to rebuff him further. She felt like taking a walk and she was curious to find out more about this place. Since the morning she had arrived at Fleethaven Point she had not left Brumbys’ Farm. But now Sam was some distance away in the field which lay adjacent to the neighbouring farmer’s – Top End, he called it. He would not return until after dark. She could spare half an hour . . .

  She fell into step beside Matthew. Whistling through his teeth, he swaggered jauntily across the lane and led her beneath the trees growing on the dunes. They climbed to the highest point and paused to catch their breath whilst Esther looked about her, soaking up the feel of the land. Already, she felt an affinity with this place. She shaded her eyes against the red glow of the evening sun and let her gaze travel round, trying to gauge the extent of Sam’s holding.

  Brumbys’ Farm lay with its front windows facing the flat land that stretched westward. About a mile inland were the tall chimneys of a large house surrounded by trees.

  ‘What’s that place?’ she asked Matthew. He came and stood close behind her placing his hands lightly on her shoulders and putting his cheek against her hair.

  Following the line of her pointing finger he said, ‘That’s the Grange where Squire Marshall lives. He owns most of the land around here.’

  ‘And over there – those buildings?’ Esther was pointing to the north-west now.

  ‘That’s Tom Willoughby’s place – Rookery Farm. Lives there with his wife and her sister. He’s a grand chap – you’ll like him.’

  To the south-west she could see another farm but it was further away – a good two miles at least. That’s Souters’ Farm,’ Matthew told her.

  Directly below where they were standing was the lane running alongside the dunes leading from the town of Lynthorpe to Fleethaven Point.

  ‘Come on,’ Matthew said, grabbing her hand and pulling her down the other side of the dunes. ‘I’ll show you the sea.’

  Esther found herself following him across squelchy marshland, jumping the creeks, wading through green spiky grass and skirting stagnant pools until they came to a lower line of sand dunes. Close by them a skylark rose into the air, hovered above its territory and then glided gently down trilling its song, plunging at the last moment towards the ground.

  ‘These dunes are just forming,’ Matthew was telling her as they climbed them. ‘A few years back the sea used to come right up here. There you are . . .’ As they reached the top, he waved his arm, triumphantly encompassing the view before them as if it were all his own handiwork. ‘There’s the sea.’

  The breeze was cool, but Esther lifted her face and sniffed the salt air and listened to the gentle lap-lap of the waves.

  They walked along the shore until they came to the place where the sea curved in to form the mouth of the Wash. Matthew led her along the dunes
which ended in a promontory of land sticking out into the water. ‘We call this the Spit,’ he told her. ‘The tide’s high at the moment so the water comes right in on either side.’

  Esther found herself clutching his arm, afraid of slipping off the sandy bank and into the swirling water.

  ‘It’s what they call an intertidal marsh,’ Matthew told her loftily, airing his knowledge. ‘When the tide’s out, all this – ’ he waved his arm – ‘is thick mud.’

  Matthew let go of her hand and bent down at the water’s edge, cupped his hands together and sluiced the cold sea water over his face and head. His black curly hair shone. He shook his head, the droplets of salt water flying everywhere. Then he grinned at her and bent to pick up a flat shell.

  ‘Watch,’ he said and then holding the shell between his thumb and forefinger, he skimmed it across the water, the shell bouncing three or four times before it sank into the waves.

  ‘Here,’ he said, bending to pick up another. ‘You try.’ He took her hand in his own, shaping her fingers around the shell. ‘Now lean down slightly to one side and flick your wrist so that the flat side of the shell hits the water.’

  Esther tried to do as he told her, but the shell merely plopped into the sea and disappeared.

  ‘Look, I’ll show you again. Like this . . .’

  He made her practise until she could get the shell to skim the surface of the water a couple of times before sinking.

  ‘There you are,’ he said jubilantly, ‘now you can play ducks and drakes as good as the rest of us. Come on, now I’ll show you the Point where I live.’

  They walked back along the Spit and retraced their steps across the marsh coming out into the lane once more, but nearer the Point than Brumbys’ Farm. This line of dunes – formed many years before and now with trees and bushes well established – curved and formed a solid bank over which the road had been forced to rise.

  ‘We call this the Hump,’ Matthew grinned. ‘Poor old Will Benson always has a job getting his cart up here. Some days in winter, if its slithery, he dun’t make it and the women from the Point have to traipse across here to meet him when he blows his whistle.’

  They stood together on the top of the bank and Esther let her gaze take in the view in front of her. Matthew pointed to a building only a few yards to the left below the rise of ground on which they were standing.

  ‘That’s the pub – the Seagull. That’s where us fellers all get drunk on a Saturday night.’

  ‘I can imagine!’ Esther said drily, but Matthew merely grinned again and swung his pointing finger round slightly.

  ‘And that’s where I live, in them cottages.’ A stretch of grass in front of the row of cottages sloped gently down towards the river bank. ‘The Harrises live in the far end one with all their brood – seven kids there were at the last count,’ Matthew went on.

  Her mouth tightened. Same number as her aunt’s large family. If Mrs Harris was anything like her Aunt Hannah, then Esther had no wish to meet her.

  ‘I live in the next one,’ Matthew continued. ‘Then Beth Hanley lives next door to that with her dad. He’s the coastguard and has a look-out station built on the East Dunes. Last cottage this end nearest to us is empty at the moment.’

  Esther’s glance travelled around until her gaze rested upon the twisting river to their right.

  ‘Whatever’s that?’ she asked. A boat – a large, black hulk – was set up out of the water close to the river bank on poles and wooden sleepers.

  ‘What’s what? Oh, that boat, you mean? That’s where Robert Eland lives.’

  ‘Lives? Somebody actually lives in a boat? But it’s sort of half on the land and half in the river!’

  Matthew laughed then wrinkled his forehead. ‘I suppose I’ve never thought about it before. I’ve lived here all me life and Robert’s parents lived in it before him, so,’ he shrugged his shoulders, ‘I never thought about it bein’ odd.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘Who, Robert Eland?’

  Esther nodded.

  ‘He’s the lifeboat coxswain. The lifeboat’s moored about a mile up the road nearer to the town. All the men that live round are in the crew – Mester Harris, Percy Holmes from the pub, and then two or three from the town. Me too, I’m a launcher at the moment, but one day I’ll be in the crew.’

  ‘Is there much need for a lifeboat here?’

  He looked at her incredulously. ‘Don’t you know nothing about the sea?’

  Esther shook her head. ‘I’ve come from inland.’

  ‘Ah, that explains it, then. This Point is right on the edge of the Wash and the North Sea and you get a lot of boats coming into the Wash to the ports, an’ there’s lots of sandbanks and tricky currents, and . . .’ He shrugged, finding it difficult to explain to someone what he had known from childhood.

  ‘Is that all they do then? Just man the lifeboat?’

  ‘Course not!’ Matthew said scornfully. ‘They work on the land – for Squire Marshall, mostly. I told you, he owns nearly all the land hereabouts. And Robert Eland, he helps Dan Hanley with coastguard duties, an’ all.’

  Esther listened, learning more about the people who lived so close to the sea that it was part of their lives just as much as the land. Sea and land, their life was ordered by the two. To a country girl the sea was a mystery, yet it held a fearsome fascination.

  ‘I’ll have to be going,’ Matthew said, as the dusk deepened around them, ‘else I’ll have old Sam after me.’

  Before she could stop him, he had planted a kiss on her cheek and had dodged out of the range of her hand, raised at once to deal him a stinging slap. As he broke into a run down the slope of the Hump and back along the lane towards Brumbys’ Farm, she could hear him chuckling.

  Her swift anger at his audacity softened and she found herself smiling. He was just a cheeky lad with an eye for a pretty girl, she told herself sternly, but the feel of his lips on her cheek still tingled and the thought that he found her pretty warmed her.

  She took a last look around from her vantage point, then stretched her arms above her head and breathed deeply in the soft air. What a beautiful, beautiful place! Such a feeling of space and freedom. Such stillness and silence – and peace!

  Such a peace as she had never known before in her young life.

  She gave a final sigh of contentment and let her arms fall to her sides. She ran lightly down the slope towards the farm.

  Home to Brumbys’ Farm.

  Esther had arrived on the last day in April and by the end of May she sensed that Sam was watching for the bloom to appear on his crop of grass. For a small farmer, a good hay harvest together with the corn harvest and root crops which came later meant feed for his stock through the winter.

  On the day hay-making began, Esther followed Sam out to the meadow. The morning was bright and clear. Later they would swelter under a hot sun in a clear blue sky.

  In one hand Sam carried his scythe and in a holder attached to the back of his leather belt was a honer for sharpening the long, curving blade.

  ‘You bring the forks and rakes out to the field, wench.’

  Esther was amazed at the number of workers who arrived. Men, women and even children, from the neighbouring farms and from the cottages at the Point, came to help Sam Brumby bring in his hay. Then in turn Sam, Esther and Matthew would go to work on the other farms. Esther worked alongside the women and children from dawn to dusk and beyond, shaking and spreading the cut grass out to dry during the day and then just before dusk raking it into long rows down the field so as to collect less dampness through the night.

  Esther watched Sam at work as he scythed the long grass with easy rhythmic sweeps, moving steadily down the field. The grass seed flew everywhere; it buried itself in Esther’s hair and even blocked her nose and made her throat dry and husky.

  The next day they spread the cut grass out and collected it again at dusk, until the whole field was cut. Then, after the grass had lain in the field for a f
ew days to dry, it was collected into haycocks.

  When all Sam’s meadows had been cut into neat rows of haycocks, which were then left to dry in the wind for a while, the time came for loading the hay on to the wagon to be taken to the farmyard. Matthew stood on top of the growing load on the wagon, spreading the grass evenly and expertly as it was thrown up to him on the ends of their long pitchforks by three men below. Under the hot sun Matthew had stripped to the waist, the black hairs on his chest and back glistening with the sweat of his hard work. But he still found time and energy to flirt with the women – young or old, it didn’t seem to matter to Matthew Hilton.

  Esther, matching his teasing tone, shaded her eyes as she looked up at him. ‘Fancy ya’sen up there, don’t ya?’

  ‘I’d rather you fancied me, lovely Esther.’ He grinned down at her, but she noticed that he never paused in the rhythmic swinging of his hay fork, deftly catching the hay as it was swung up to him. For the first time since she had met him, Esther found herself admiring his skill.

  Esther herself blossomed under the workload that harvest time imposed and now she felt Sam had really accepted her.

  From now on this was her home, this was her land.

  When the other helpers left the farm in the evening, Esther went into Sam’s kitchen to bake and cook for the next day. Her cheeks were flushed with the heat from the range, her hair straggling in wet wisps around her forehead. Swaying with weariness, late at night she climbed the ladder to her little room.

  But the morning found her the first out to bring in the cows and have the milking done before the visiting workers arrived. Mid-morning she would leave the fields and hurry back to the farmhouse to bring out baskets laden with freshly baked meat pies and fruit pasties to the workers in the fields.