The Fleethaven Trilogy

by Margaret Dickinson

  ‘What happened?’ It was Kate now whose voice was a husky whisper.

  ‘She – died giving birth to Esther.’

  ‘And then?’ she prompted gently. She wanted to know it all. It was important that she knew everything.

  He sighed heavily. ‘Poor little lass. She was brought up by Connie’s older sister, Hannah. She was married to George. A nice chap, but slow. They had seven bairns of their own. But she was a shrew of a woman and only took Esther in out of duty to her dead sister. She never showed young Esther a shred of affection and never let her forget the facts of her birth. So ya see, ya mam does understand, knows only too well, but from the other side, lass, from the other side of things. She knows what it’s like to be the bastard. That’s why she fought like a she-cat for her own place, that’s why she married Matthew Hilton when he offered. And he did ask her, Kate.’ Will’s voice was firm now. ‘Whatever anyone tries to tell you different, Matthew did want to marry her. He was mad to have her, ’cos she wouldn’t give hersen to him without a wedding band, see? It was only when he found out afterwards that he’d left Beth Hanley pregnant with Danny that he was resentful towards ya mam and tried to put the blame on her. And her only fault was that she wanted to be respectable and have a home she could call her own. That was her only fault, Kate, her only fault.’

  ‘And that’s why she’s so mad at me,’ Kate murmured, her gaze still on her grandmother’s headstone, ‘for bringing another bastard into the world.’

  They were silent, then Kate put her hand through the crook of his arm again. Hugging him to her, she said, ‘I’m so glad you’ve told me everything, Grandad. It helps me understand things a lot better. And why my mother’s – well, like she is.’

  ‘We don’t realize,’ he murmured, ‘when we’re young and foolish how the mistakes we make are going to affect those who come after us . . .’

  ‘But you don’t regret having loved Connie, do you?’

  He pursed his frail mouth and shook his head. ‘Never, I’ll never regret that.’

  ‘Or having Esther?’ she asked, suddenly feeling the wiser one of the two.

  Again he shook his head. ‘I’m proud to be her father.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Kate said rationally. ‘I’m going to be proud to have my child. I’ll look after it, love it and never regret having it.’

  ‘What about the father, lass, can he really not marry you?’

  Kate looked down again at Connie’s grave, sharing for a moment the same feelings she must have known so long ago. ‘No, Grandad, he can’t,’ she told Will simply. ‘There are other – complications.’

  ‘Does he know about . . .?’

  ‘I can’t tell him, Grandad. It – wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘So, ya’ve to bear it on ya own then?’ He looked back down at the gravestone and his whispered words were more of an apology to the love of his youth than sympathy with Kate in her present similar, predicament. ‘Aw, lass, I’m sorry, so sorry.’

  Thirty-Eight

  Kate missed Philip more than she would have believed possible. She longed to have his arms about her, to rest her head against his shoulder and to be able to tell him about the child. She needed his reassuring strength, too, to cope with her fears for Danny. But Philip had burdens enough of his own.

  It seemed particularly cruel that she should lose both the men in her life so suddenly – and when she needed them most. She felt a young girl again; alone and lost, with no one to turn to for help.

  The man who took his place as Station Commander was older than Philip. Thin, with a balding head and wearing steel-rimmed spectacles, he was tall, but stooped slightly and was very round-shouldered. He was also thin-lipped and humourless, so that the pleasure Kate had enjoyed as Philip’s driver – quite apart from her more personal relationship with him – was gone. This man showed no concern for her as a human being and he extended that lack of concern to all the personnel on the station.

  If he had shown a caring attitude towards his aircrews then Kate could have forgiven his brusque treatment of her. As it was, his indifference was universal.

  ‘He’ll not last,’ Mavis said. ‘You can’t have the man at the top as cold as ice. He’s not human.’

  ‘Well, for the first time, I’m quite pleased I’ll be leaving before long,’ Kate said feelingly. ‘I hate the job now.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have liked whoever came in his place, now would you?’ Isobel said reasonably. ‘Mind you, I have to agree – this one’s a bastard.’

  Hearing her friend use the word as an insult made Kate shudder inwardly. Instinctively she put her hands protectively over her stomach, feeling the growing roundness. It was what her mother was and it was what her mother called the child she was carrying.

  ‘When are you planning to leave?’ Mavis asked.

  Kate’s two friends had been as good as their promise; even Isobel had relented and they helped her whenever they could. Although her driving work was not heavy, if she was suddenly asked to do something that might be harmful for her or the child, one of them would step in immediately and cover for her.

  Kate smiled thinly. ‘I’ll have to see Ma’am soon. My skirt’s getting too tight for me now. I’ll be showing before long.’

  ‘Are you going home?’ Isobel asked.

  ‘I—’ Kate hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. Me mam’s mad as hell. I’ve got a seventy-two-hour pass this weekend. I’m going home to see – well – how the land lies.’

  And, she thought to herself, this time I’ll have to tell Rosie and Danny’s mam.

  Kate entered through the back door and put her bag down in the scullery. As she stepped into the kitchen, her mother looked up from where she was rolling out pastry on the kitchen table. Lilian sat at one end, her school books open on the scrubbed surface.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ Esther said, and banged the rolling pin down hard upon the pastry.

  Lilian’s glance went immediately to Kate’s stomach. With a mumbled ‘Hello’, the girl lowered her eyes, her face red with embarrassment, and concentrated on the exercise book lying open in front of her. Her pen moved swiftly across the page as she wrote.

  ‘Hello, Mam – Lilian,’ Kate said brightly and moved round the table to kiss her mother’s cheek.

  But Esther leaned away. ‘Dun’t you “mam” me, me girl, coming in here all brazen and bold as ya like. You’re no daughter of mine. Thought I made that clear last time you come.’

  Kate gasped. She had known her mother was furious but she hadn’t realized just how deep her outrage was. Like Jonathan, Kate had believed that given time her mother would at least stand by her.

  She made to move towards the door leading into the hall and to her grandfather’s room.

  ‘And dun’t go whining to him. I’ve telled ’em both, I ain’t having you back home. Ya’ve made ya bed, ya can lie on it!’

  Kate swung round. ‘Is that what you’d have wanted folks to say to your mother – if she’d lived?’

  Esther’s mouth pursed and she rolled the pastry viciously until it was too thin and tore. She gave a click of exasperation and bundled it up into a ball again to begin rolling it out once more. ‘So I was right. That’s where he took you that last time, did he? Meant you knowing all about my shame. As if that excuses you.’

  More gently now, Kate said, shaking her head in disbelief, ‘I’d have thought you’d be more understanding, that’s all.’

  ‘Understanding? Expect me to understand when me mother died and left me to the mercy of me Aunt Hannah all me young life till I was old enough to get out and come here? Aye, an’ me troubles didn’t end there, did they? I got mesen a whole lot more with Matthew Hilton and Beth – and Danny.’

  ‘Your mother couldn’t help dying, Mam,’ Kate said quietly. ‘She’d have loved you and looked after you if she’d lived.’

  ‘Aye, well, mebbe so . . .’ for a moment there was a fleeting uncertainty about Esther, as if she would dearly like to believe what Kate was saying, and
yet the resentment surrounding the circumstances of her own birth was too deep-rooted to forgive the years of hardship it had caused.

  ‘And him,’ she flung out her hand towards the direction of Will Benson’s room, ‘even he didn’t acknowledge me as his daughter till after his wife ’ad died.’

  ‘Well, he couldn’t really, could he? But he’s always cared about you, always been on your side. He explained more about – well, how things happened here. It made me see things . . .’

  ‘I dun’t need no one to mek excuses for me. I dun’t need no one on my side, ’cept p’raps yar dad . . .’ She paused and then added pointedly, ‘Yar stepdad.’

  Kate came back and stood on the opposite side of the table, leaning across it. ‘Mam, why are you still so bitter?’

  ‘I wasn’t – at least, I thought I wasn’t. But you – this—’ She jabbed a floury finger towards Kate’s stomach. ‘It’s brought it all back. Everything I’ve tried to live down, everything I’ve tried to do to make sure you never made the same mistake. All for nothing! It’s in the blood. It must be.’ She nodded her head towards Lilian. ‘’Spect she’ll do the same, an’ all.’

  Lilian’s head snapped up, goaded at last. ‘Oh no, I won’t, Mam. I’ve got more sense than that. Besides, I’m staying on at school, going to better myself and get an education. Go to university, if I can. I’m not going to wreck my life . . .’ She stopped short of actually voicing the words, but they hung in the air between them, ‘ . . . like Kate!’

  ‘There you are, see?’ Esther said triumphantly. ‘At least one of me daughters ‘as got a bit of sense, a bit of my ambition.’

  Kate looked at Lilian; at the short-cropped mousy hair, the owlish spectacles she wore, the smug expression on her plain face. Rather than feeling resentful towards her younger sister, Kate pitied her. She could visualize Lilian, with that attitude, being lonely all her life.

  Kate sighed and turned away. There was no point in continuing to argue. She walked out of the house and stood in the yard. She pulled her coat closely around her and her collar up against the blustery wind which swept in from the sea, even today when it was supposed to be summer. She looked around, but could not see her stepfather. She pushed her hands deep into her pockets and felt the whelk shell. Since the night Danny had gone missing, she had carried it everywhere with her.

  She sighed again. She’d better get it over; she would go and see Beth – and Rosie.

  ‘Why, lovey, how grand it is to see you.’

  The greeting was the same as ever from Danny’s mother. Rosie hugged her warmly and smiled brightly, though the worry never quite left her eyes. Kate was saddened to see that Rosie was no longer the bouncy chatterbox; Danny’s disappearance had caused that.

  They can’t know about me, Kate thought, as she allowed herself to be ushered into the kitchen and pressed into the chair near the range. Kate looked around. ‘Where’s – the baby?’

  ‘Robbie’s asleep in the back garden,’ Rosie said. ‘Me Uncle Georgie brought one of those big baby cars home. He’s buried in it, poor little mite.’ She held back the curtain at the kitchen window and Kate looked out to see a black perambulator in the middle of the strip of grass outside the window. It was so deep that only the covers were visible. From here she could see no sign of the baby in its depths.

  ‘He’ll wake up soon. Always hungry, he is. I’ll fetch him in then for you to see him. He’s growing so fast, ain’t he, Nan? We call her Nan now. She loves being a grandma, don’t you?’

  Beth smiled gently, her brown eyes soft with love for her grandson. Then, in her quiet, concerned way, she asked Kate, ‘How’ve you been then, lovey?’

  Kate glanced from one to the other of them. Did they know? They were looking at her, but their expressions gave nothing away.

  ‘Er – well . . .’ She hesitated, twisting her hands together in her lap.

  Beth touched her hand lightly. ‘It’s all right, Katie, we know about the bairn.’

  The gentleness in her tone touched Kate more deeply than her own mother’s wrath. Tears sprang into her eyes and there was such a lump in her throat that for a moment she couldn’t speak.

  She brushed the tears away from her eyes with the back of her hand, like a child. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that – me mam’s that mad . . .’

  ‘Oh, we know all about yar mam being mad,’ Beth said grimly. ‘I’ve heard her.’

  ‘She’s told you?’

  Beth shook her head. ‘Oh, no. She’s not speaking to me again now. I heard her through the wall when she comes to see Grannie Harris next door. Ranting and raving, she was, one day. I could hear ev’ry word.’

  Kate sighed with resignation. ‘I might have known you two wouldn’t be speaking again by now! I really thought it might be different – I mean, after the bomb, and then how she came at once to Rosie when Robbie was born. Didn’t need asking twice . . .’

  Beth nodded. ‘She’s a strange woman, ya mother. She was kindness itself when Robert was killed, I can’t deny that. But – well – we’ve had this all our lives. There’s that much between us. We can’t be friends – not ever – but, whenever there’s trouble, we can’t be enemies either.’ She smiled a little self-consciously and added, ‘I s’pose I’m as much to blame as she is. In the early years, it was me who was bitter towards her.’ She shrugged, but the years could not be shrugged off so easily. ‘Never mind about that now, lass. What about you?’

  ‘I – I don’t know. I’ll have to leave the WAAFs soon, and me mam, it seems, doesn’t want me to come home.’

  The two women gasped, their eyes wide. ‘Not want you to come home?’ they chorused in surprise.

  ‘Oh, she’s going too far this time,’ Beth muttered, at once like a mother hen with ruffled feathers. ‘I’ll go and tell her what I think . . .’

  ‘No – no, don’t,’ Kate said swiftly. ‘I’ve caused enough trouble. Besides,’ she added, and although she spoke bravely, she couldn’t keep the doubt from her tone, ‘I’m hoping Dad will be able to bring her round in time.’

  Her feathers smoothed a little, Beth said, ‘Well, if anyone can make her see sense, it’s Jonathan . . .’

  From the garden came a wail and Rosie rushed out to bring in her son. ‘Here you are.’ She came back in and placed the baby in Kate’s arms. ‘Here’s ya Auntie Kate to see you.’ And Kate found herself looking down into the solemn brown gaze of Danny’s son.

  The baby gazed back at her and then a broad smile stretched across his chubby face and his fat little hands wavered towards her face.

  ‘Oh, Rosie, he’s lovely!’ she exclaimed, and the little fellow’s mother and grandmother stood watching, beaming proudly.

  ‘I won’t have her here and that’s an end to it.’

  ‘Very well,’ Jonathan said, his mouth tight and a deep frown on his forehead. ‘If that’s your final word, Esther, so be it. But I think you’re wrong – and I think you’ll regret it.’

  ‘Where would you’ve been if ya Aunt Hannah had said the same all them years back?’ Will Benson raged. ‘Answer me that!’

  ‘A lot better off, probably,’ Esther retorted, unrelenting.

  ‘Don’t talk daft, girl,’ her father snapped back.

  Despite the family quarrel Kate had caused, she almost laughed to hear her mother addressed as ‘girl’. But then, she supposed, to a parent their child is always a child.

  ‘Ya’d have been in the workhouse but for her,’ Will went on.

  ‘It weren’t no better than the workhouse. I might have fared better there.’

  ‘Oh, Esther, that’s not fair . . .’ Jonathan began.

  ‘What do you know about it?’ She rounded on him. ‘You’ve always had a loving, close family. A mother, a father and a sister. You’re spoilt with family! I was nothing but a skivvy to the lot of them and never allowed to forget the circumstances of my birth. Never! “Me sister’s bastard!” – that’s what me aunt used to call me.’ She turned then on Kate. ‘That’s why I’m bitter.
I’m bitter for what you’re doing to an unborn mite with no choice in the matter. It’s not the poor bairn I’m against, it’s you for causing it. You should have known better.’

  Jonathan was staring at Esther.

  ‘And what’s up with you?’ She rounded on him.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. You’ve just given me what could be a very good idea,’ he said thoughtfully.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ah – now that, for the moment, is my secret.’

  He got up from the kitchen table and went through into the living room. They heard him open his bureau in the corner of the room, heard the rustle of paper and the scrape of a chair, and then there was silence. Intrigued, Kate peeped through the doorway into the room.

  His head bent, her stepfather was seated at the table, busily writing a letter.

  Thirty-Nine

  A week after her return to camp, during which she had expected that each day she might be summonsed to Ma’am’s office to be confronted with the words, ‘You’re pregnant, Hilton, aren’t you?’, Kate received a letter from her stepfather, containing one from his sister Peggy, in Lincoln.

  In his letter, Jonathan merely said, ‘I think, my dear, that the enclosed letter will be the answer for you, at least for the time being . . .’

  Kate unfolded it and began to read.

  ‘My dear Jonathan, Of course Kate can come back to us. We should love to have her – it will be like old times – and she would be company for mother, who although still lively in her mind, is increasingly confined to the house and, indeed, to her sofa.’ Did Peggy really understand what she was offering, Kate wondered. Would Mrs Godfrey be so happy to have her if she knew she was going to be an unmarried mother? But as she read on it became clear that Peggy and her mother understood the situation exactly.

  ‘As you know, since Father died, Mother has slept downstairs in the living room, and so Kate, and her little one when it arrives, could have Mother’s bedroom upstairs. I’m still in my own room anyway, so it won’t be putting us about at all! And there’s still the tiny bedroom Kate had before, when the little one gets older . . .’ Peggy, bless her, seemed to be offering Kate a long-term home, not just a temporary stop-gap. ‘Besides,’ she went on, ‘it will be lovely for Mother to have more company in the day when I have to be at work – she gets very lonely. Do give Kate our best love and tell her to come and see us as soon as she can and we can talk everything over . . .’