The Fleethaven Trilogy

by Margaret Dickinson

  Kate cast a despairing glance towards Danny, still standing on the very point of the land, motionless, just staring out to sea. Matching his stillness, Robert Eland stood silently by his side.

  Kate gave a sob, drew in a shuddering breath and ran down the Hump. ‘Mam – Mam . . .’ She caught up with Esther and grasped her arm roughly, pulling her mother round to face her. ‘What do you mean – he’s my half-brother? I don’t understand.’

  Esther’s jaw was clenched, her eyes angry, defiant.

  ‘Ya father – Matthew Hilton – got Beth pregnant before he married me.’

  Kate gasped and stared at her, eyes wide. ‘Didn’t – didn’t he know?’

  Esther twisted her arm from Kate’s grasp, turned and began to walk swiftly away again. ‘No,’ she said shortly.

  Kate took little running steps to keep up with her. ‘But Mam . . .’

  Esther put up her hand as if to fend Kate off physically. ‘I dun’t want to talk of it. You can’t marry Danny. Not ever. I’ve tried to warn you, all these years. But you wouldn’t listen. Now you know and there’s an end to it.’

  Kate stopped and stood watching the slim figure of her mother walking towards the farm, her back rigid, her face turned away from her daughter.

  Kate bit down hard upon her lower lip, drawing blood. The pain she caused herself was almost a relief. Then, tears blinding her, she turned towards the dunes and began to run.

  ‘I want to die. I don’t want to live any more. Just let me die!’

  She was standing at the end of the Spit, at the very tip of the promontory of land that jutted out into the Wash. It was the place where the land, the sea and the sky all seemed to meet. Like the end of the world . . .

  The water of a high tide was swirling around her. Dropping to her knees on the shingle, she wrapped her arms around herself. She closed her eyes, screwing up her face in an agony that was a real pain in the pit of her stomach.

  ‘Kate – Kate, don’t.’

  He was there, picking her up, turning her unresisting body towards him and enveloping her in a fierce embrace. Danny was stroking her hair and murmuring words which made no sense to her, for she was crying hysterically, sobs shaking her body.

  ‘I – don’t want – to live – any more.’

  ‘Shush, shush. You must live – for me. What would I do if you were no longer in the same world as me?’

  Her arms slipped around his waist and she buried her face against his chest. Beneath his shirt she could feel the rapid beating of his heart. It matched her own.

  Her sobs lessened and, muffled against him, she said, ‘It isn’t true, is it? Tell me it isn’t true.’

  His hand stroked her hair gently. ‘I – can’t, Katie. But – oh, how I wish I could!’

  She raised her head then and looked up into his troubled face. Tears glistened in his eyes too and he pressed his lips together as if to prevent their trembling. For a long moment they gazed at each other whilst the water lapped at their feet and seagulls screeched mournfully overhead.

  Haltingly, she began, ‘Me mam won’t tell me much, but she said my dad – me real dad – and your mam . . .’

  Danny nodded. ‘This is going to kill her!’ he murmured and then added bitterly, ‘Your mam has got a lot to answer for.’

  Kate pulled back a little. ‘My mam? Why, what has my mam got to do with it?’ Her voice became harsher in her frustration at still not being able to understand fully. ‘Danny, what do you mean?’

  ‘Me dad ses . . . ‘ he began and then hesitated, as if suddenly realizing the enormity of the revelation. Robert Eland, the man who had loved him, reared him, been everything to him that anyone could wish for in a father, was not his natural father; was not, in fact, even a blood relative.

  In his agitation, Danny ran his strong fingers into his hair and grasped a handful, as if he would pull it out by the roots. He took a deep breath to steady himself and yet, when he spoke, his voice still shook. ‘It seems,’ he said slowly, as if he still couldn’t – or wouldn’t – believe what he was telling Kate, ‘Your dad – Matthew – and my mam were walking out together when your mother arrived here to work for old Sam Brumby on the farm. Matthew was after anything in skirts, me dad ses.’ Still Danny could not break the habit of a lifetime. Robert Eland was, to him, his father. He cleared his throat and went on. ‘Matthew chased after Esther and when Sam Brumby died, they got married and he moved into the farm with her – and left me mam pregnant with me.’

  Kate gasped. ‘Oh, how could he?’

  ‘Evidently – very easily,’ Danny said bitterly.

  ‘But yar mam wouldn’t . . . I mean . . .’ Kate began, then stopped.

  They stared at each other. ‘I suppose,’ he said slowly, ‘she was young and – and in love.’ His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. ‘Just like us, Katie.’

  Kate’s eyes widened and she gasped. ‘We almost did, didn’t we?’

  He nodded. ‘Thank goodness we stopped in time.’

  Kate shivered suddenly as a chill wind blew in from the sea. Her voice broke on a sob. ‘I – wish we had done it!’

  He held her close again, resting his cheek against her ruffled hair. ‘Now – we can’t – ever.’ His arms tightened around her as if he would never let her go.

  ‘I still don’t understand it all,’ she murmured.

  ‘Nor me. All I know is,’ he added grimly, ‘what they did has wrecked our lives even all this time after.’

  ‘You’re only a few months older than me. It can’t be true. I won’t let it be!’

  His tone was flat with misery. ‘I – think it is, Katie. If you think about it – looking back – it explains a lot of things.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why your mam and mine never speak to each other; why she sent you away to school and why, when that went wrong and you came home, she still tried to keep us apart.’

  Kate was silent now. He was right. About everything. And there was something else that even Danny didn’t know. The solemn promise which her mother had extracted from her that she would never – ever – let Danny touch her. Behind that promise had been the awful truth her mother had known.

  ‘God, how I hate her!’ she muttered through her teeth. ‘It’s all my mother’s fault. If she hadn’t come here – if she hadn’t married Matthew, then – then . . .’

  ‘Then,’ Danny said softly, ‘you wouldn’t have been born.’

  Gently, he cupped her face in his hands. ‘Oh, Kate,’ he said, his voice deep with emotion, ‘we can’t ever marry, or be lovers . . .’

  ‘Why? Why not? We could go away where no one knows us. We have different names. We’re not related in the eyes of the law.’ She was clutching at straws.

  ‘You know we can’t!’

  She drew back from him suddenly, pushing him away. ‘You don’t care. You don’t love me. Not as I love you. You can’t, or you wouldn’t be giving in so – so easily.’

  He flinched as if her words were physical blows. He caught her by the arms and held her fast so that she could not turn away from him, held her so tightly that she was forced to listen to him. ‘Katie, don’t say that to me. Not to me. Me dad wouldn’t lie to me. He must know . . .’

  ‘Mr Eland, ya mean,’ she said cuttingly. ‘He’s not ya dad, is he? Any more than Mester Godfrey’s mine. We’ve both got stepdads – now.’

  Danny winced and Kate was immediately contrite. She was lashing out blindly in her pain, and hurting the one who was already suffering along with her.

  She closed her eyes but fresh tears forced themselves from under her eyelids and coursed down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Danny, Danny. I can’t bear it. It – hurts so much.’ She flung herself against him, wrapping her arms around his waist, burying her head against him again.

  ‘I’ve always loved you, Katie, and I always will,’ he said gently.

  ‘But – but can’t we be together? Somehow?’ She raised her head to look into his face, her mouth slightly open, hanging on to his words l
ike a drowning woman reaching for the hand of her rescuer, willing him to make it come right.

  But Danny could not make it come right; there was only one thing he could promise her and it was all they had left to cling to. With dreadful finality, he said again, ‘We can’t marry, but they can’t stop us loving each other. Not ever, Katie, not ever!’

  ‘Oh, lovey, do you hate me?’

  The back door of the Elands’ cottage had opened to Kate’s knock. Beth stood there, her eyes red and swollen. Kate threw herself against the older woman, her arms clasped around Beth’s thickening waist, and buried her head against the comforting bosom. She could feel Beth trembling.

  ‘Oh Katie, Katie, can you ever forgive me?’

  Kate lifted her head and looked into the older woman’s face. She didn’t know what to say.

  Gently, Beth steered Kate towards the range. She sat down in the chair while Kate sank down on to the rug, her head resting against the older woman’s knees. For a long moment Beth stared into the flames and then, in her soft voice, she began, haltingly, to explain. As the memories, both happy and sad, came flooding back, her voice became stronger.

  ‘I loved Matthew,’ Beth began simply, ‘I think I always had – right from a child . . .’

  Like me and Danny, Kate thought bitterly, but she remained silent.

  ‘ . . . Even though he was a bit of a flirt . . .’ A fond smile curved Beth’s mouth. It was a kinder judgment than Robert Eland had given to Danny, and despite all the unhappiness that flirting had caused, Beth still loved Matthew enough to forgive him.

  ‘When Esther arrived at Sam Brumby’s farm – well – it was in his nature to try his luck with her. She was a very pretty girl and so fiery, she was a challenge to him. He could never resist a challenge.’

  Kate looked up. ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘For a time, Esther would have none of him, but the more she held him off, the more he wanted her.’ Beth’s voice dropped to a whisper as she admitted, ‘That’s where I made my mistake . . .’

  Kate pressed her cheek closer to Beth’s knee but could think of nothing to say.

  ‘She wouldn’t give in to him, told him she wouldn’t give in to him – nor to any man – till she was wed.’

  Kate was silent, knowing all this must have been true. It was her mother’s strict code of life – it still was! ‘Ya don’t give ya’sen to a man till you’ve a wedding ring on ya finger, girl,’ she’d told Kate repeatedly. ‘Dun’t ever bring a bastard into the world!’

  Beth was sighing softly, but continuing. ‘Then Sam Brumby died and – to be fair – I don’t think ya mam had anywhere else to go.’

  ‘What about me grandad? Why couldn’t she go to him?’

  Beth looked down at Kate’s upturned face. ‘Ya’ll have to ask ya mam about that, lovey . . .’

  ‘She won’t tell me anything.’

  ‘Well, perhaps ya grandad, then. Maybe – maybe he’s the one to ask.’

  Yes, Kate thought grimly, she would certainly have some questions to ask her grandfather. Intuitively she knew that there was more to all this than even Beth Eland was telling her.

  ‘The Squire would only let her stay on the farm if she were married – so that the tenancy agreement could be in a man’s name. So – she and Matthew were married all quicklike. I dun’t know to this day how they managed it without any of us knowing.’

  ‘You – you didn’t know!’ Kate was appalled.

  ‘No. I didn’t know till Matthew moved his things from – from this very house.’

  ‘He lived here? In this cottage?’

  Beth smiled sadly. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘He was born here and lived here with his parents till they both died. Then, for a while, he lived on his own. Of course, Grannie Harris next door and me saw he was all right for food and his washing . . .’

  ‘Where did you live?’

  ‘Next door.’ Beth indicated the adjacent cottage on the other side, where her father, Dan Hanley, the coastguard, still lived.

  ‘And Mester Eland?’

  Beth’s eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘On – on a boat on the river bank.’ She glanced out of the cottage window to the place on the river bank where the huge hulk of a boat had once rested, shored up on poles and sleepers, half-in, half-out of the water.

  Vague pictures, fleeting and disjointed, were flitting through Kate’s mind. Memories from childhood that she could glimpse in her mind but not quite hold on to and understand.

  ‘Did Matthew marry her to get the farm, then?’

  Beth shook her head. ‘No – no, I don’t believe he understood what – what ya mam was up to.’

  Kate’s head jerked up. She felt the coolness of Beth’s deep sigh brush her cheek. ‘He wanted her – lusted after her and she – she took advantage of that to get him to marry her so she could get the farm.’

  ‘You – you mean it was her fault?’

  ‘In a way but – but try not to be too hard on her, Katie. It’s very difficult for us to understand how someone – a young girl of eighteen or so – must have felt with no family, no home. Ask yourself what you would have done in the same circumstances.’

  Kate stared up at Beth in surprise. ‘You’re – you’re taking her side.’

  ‘I’m – trying to tell you it fairly. But it’s not easy for me.’

  ‘So – all this – all that happened – that’s why you never speak to each other. You – you must be very bitter?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m bitter all right.’ Beth’s mouth tightened and for a moment there was a flash of fire in her dark brown eyes, but it was gone in a moment as she sighed and added, ‘It’s funny though, if things had been different – we might have been friends, yar mam and me.’ A wry smile twisted the corner of her mouth. ‘And despite everything, we always seem to come together if one of us has trouble.’

  ‘How – how d’ya mean?’

  ‘Matthew went off to the war and was reported killed. Ya mam brought me a photograph of him. I – I still have it. It was a kind gesture. I’ve never forgotten that.’

  Kate frowned. ‘But I – I thought me dad drowned. Here – at the Point?’

  ‘Matthew came back from the war a broken wreck of a man. Pitiful to see him, it was. Ya mam was wonderful then. She devoted herself to caring for him and he improved beyond what any of us ever thought possible. And that was down to Esther; with her strength and determination, she pulled him through. But she – she sacrificed her own chance of happiness to look after Matthew. I thought then, that somehow, in her own way, she must have loved him to do that.’

  ‘What do you mean, “her own chance of happiness”?’

  Beth avoided Kate’s direct gaze, reluctant to answer. ‘She – she’d met Jonathan in the war – when ya dad was away.’

  ‘Oh – I see.’ Kate said flatly. She didn’t see it all, at least not clearly, but she could sense that Beth would not be drawn on that part any further. ‘And me dad – me real dad? Did he drown?’

  Beth’s voice was a hoarse whisper. ‘There was a dreadful storm in the winter of nineteen-twenty. Matthew knew the boat we lived on wouldn’t stand up to the gales and the surging tide. He – drowned trying to rescue us – his son and – and me.’ Beth bowed her head and covered her face with her hands.

  Kate gasped. This woman’s love for Matthew Hilton was still, even now, as strong as ever. Tentatively Kate put out her hand and touched Beth’s arm.

  ‘What about Mester Eland? Where – how does he fit into all this?’

  Now there was a tender, loving smile on Beth’s mouth, a smile tinged with gratitude. ‘He loved me, he’d always loved me. As great a love as any man could have for a woman, Kate. When he knew I was expecting Matthew’s child, he married me to give Danny a name.’

  Kate’s own voice broke. ‘He must have loved you very much to do that.’

  Beth nodded. ‘Oh, he did. He still does. And I have loved him, truly I have, but in – in a very different way to the way I loved Matthew.�
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  She sighed deeply. ‘Robert’s been a good husband and a wonderful father to Danny, but he’s always been very resentful towards Matthew – and towards your mam. That’s why I’m glad to have been able to tell you about it mesen.’

  Kate nodded. She was glad too, for the version Danny had heard from Robert Eland treated her mother and father far more harshly than did Beth – the woman who had been hurt most of all. Yet, it was understandable, Robert Eland, too, had suffered.

  So it was told – the whole sorry tale. And now Kate understood, if not every little detail, then enough to know that what they said was true.

  She and Danny were indeed half-brother and sister.

  ‘Has she told you it all, then? What’s she said about me, eh? ’Spect I’m the bad woman in it all . . .’

  ‘Why . . .?’ Kate’s voice was a whisper, but her eyes held her mother’s gaze relentlessly. ‘Why didn’t you all just tell us the truth? If we’d grown up with it – knowing – we’d have accepted it. Been just friends, been,’ the bitterness crept into her tone, ‘been brother and sister!’

  She was standing facing her mother across the kitchen table.

  Esther, hands on hips, her mouth a grim line, said, ‘There’d have been no need for you to know, if you’d done as I’d told you . . .’

  ‘You didn’t want us to know ’cos it was your fault . . .’

  ‘Oh aye, I thought as much! Trying to set you against ya own mother . . .’

  ‘Who? Danny’s mam? Oh no, dun’t blame her. She even told me not to think badly of you; said I should understand how it must have been for you with no family and nowhere to go . . .’

  ‘She had no right to tell you anything about me . . .’

  ‘She stuck up for you, Mother! Her, of all people!’

  Esther blinked.

  ‘Yes, that’s shocked you, ain’t it? And she wouldn’t tell me much about you, either. Said I’d to ask you or me grandad.’

  ‘Ya’ll do no such thing. Ya’ll not say anything to ya grandad. It’ll upset him.’

  ‘Then you tell me. Go on, you tell me.’

  ‘No,’ Esther said through gritted teeth. ‘It dun’t concern you. You know now all ya need to know, an’ that’s too much! Ya’ll learn no more from me.’