The Fleethaven Trilogy

by Margaret Dickinson

  Jonathan had nailed a thick strip of rubber on to a piece of wood and in turn attached it to a broom handle; a ‘squee-gee’ he called it, and showed Esther how to push it along the floor to sweep away the thick, muddy silt left by the sea.

  On Saturday, exactly a week after the floods had come, for the first time Ella awoke to look out of her window and see that the water had finally soaked away leaving only puddles here and there and overflowing dykes as a reminder.

  Now, she thought, Mum will come home. She must.

  Pulling on the pair of rubber boots she had virtually claimed as her own, Ella went out into the yard, where Jonathan had all the rugs from the ground floor of the house spread about. He was carrying buckets of water from the pump and swilling them over Esther’s peg rugs trying to wash away the sand and mud.

  ‘I don’t think I’m doing much good with these.’ He glanced ruefully at Ella. He set the bucket down on the ground and bent double, resting his hands on his knees, as a fit of coughing racked him.

  Ella went up to him. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this, Grandpa. You should be indoors resting.’

  Jonathan took a deep breath and stood up slowly. He was smiling. ‘You sound like your grannie.’

  Her smile flickered briefly and then died. ‘Grandpa, can I go to Rookery Farm now the water’s gone?’

  ‘Well . . .’ He hesitated, doubtful, and then glanced about him. Then he looked down again at the girl. ‘I suppose so, if you promise to keep to the lane. No going into the fields, mind. Why do you want to go?’

  ‘I want to be there when Mum comes back. She’ll come back today, now the water’s gone. I know she will.’ The words came out in a rush, tumbling over themselves in her eagerness; an excitement that hid her deep-rooted anxiety.

  Jonathan touched her unruly curls with a tender gesture and his voice was husky as he said, ‘Yes, love, of course she will. Off you go then, but tell your grannie first where you’re going.’

  ‘I will.’

  As she left the yard and turned into the lane, trudging along in her over-large boots, the young girl felt the anxiety of the last few days lift a little. Today Mum would come back. She must have stayed somewhere in town and not been able to get home because of the floodwater.

  But Uncle Danny had been into town and back by the road leading past the Grange inland, a niggling little voice reminded her. Why hadn’t Mum come that way then? Perhaps she hadn’t got back as far as Lynthorpe, Ella continued to argue inside her head. Perhaps she was still somewhere where the water had only just gone, like here at the Point. But today, she would come home.

  She must find Uncle Danny. Perhaps he had some news.

  *

  ‘I’ve tried everything I can think of.’ Danny stood facing Ella, her own anxiety mirrored in his face. He swept his hand up into his hair and grasped a handful, almost as if he would pull it out by the roots. His feeling of dread was every bit as great as Ella’s and just as obvious. Behind him, Rosie fiddled with the corner of her apron, her troubled eyes going from one to the other.

  ‘He’s been up into town every day since the floods came,’ she put in. ‘And Rob’s there now, asking round. You know, to see if anyone . . .’ Her voice faded away and she cast an anxious glance at her husband, afraid perhaps her tongue might say too much.

  They were standing in the warm kitchen at Rookery Farm and now, from the corner near the range, seated in a rocking chair with a shawl around her shoulders, came Grandma Eland’s gentle voice.

  ‘Come here, lovey, and sit with me. Rosie, get the child some hot soup. She can’t have had anything warm inside her for days. If Esther weren’t so stubborn . . .’

  ‘Now, Mam,’ Danny turned, forcing a laugh, ‘dun’t you start.’ But he put his hand on Ella’s thin shoulder and urged her towards the fire.

  Moments later she was sipping at thick vegetable soup, not really hungry but not wanting to refuse their kindness, when the back door was flung open and Rob burst into the kitchen.

  ‘Dad – Dad . . .’ His face was red, his eyes wide and his coat flying open. As always, his socks were wrinkled around his ankles.

  He did not see Ella sitting in the corner beside the range before he blurted out, ‘Dad, they’ve found your car.’

  The four people in the room stared at him and then the boy became aware of Ella’s white face, her eyes, wide with terror, staring at him.

  ‘Oh, heck,’ she heard him mutter. ‘I – I didn’t know you was here.’

  Danny was the first to speak, his voice a hoarse, strangled, whisper. ‘Kate? What about Kate?’

  The boy dragged his gaze away from Ella’s face back to his father’s. ‘They – Sergeant Darby wouldn’t tell me.’

  ‘You – you went to the police station?’

  Rob nodded. ‘I thought they might be the people most likely to know owt. He – he said I was to ask you and the mester . . .’ Rob jerked his head in the vague direction of Brumbys’ Farm, ‘to go an’ see them. He – he wouldn’t tell me any more,’ he added again, leaving the listeners well aware, as Rob himself had heen, that there was more to tell.

  Under his breath, Ella heard Danny say, ‘Oh – my – God!’ and he passed his hand across his forehead and up into his hair again.

  Swiftly, Rosie was at his side, touching his arm. ‘Go straight away, love, and find out. Get the—’ She clapped her hand to her mouth to stop the words she had been going to say – ‘get the car out’. The phrase had come automatically to her lips before she had stopped to think. But, of course, their car was not here.

  Ella was staring at Danny, biting her lower lip to still its trembling, swallowing the lump of fear rising in her throat and threatening to choke her. Tears prickled behind her eyes and she blinked rapidly to stop them falling. Not yet, she told herself fiercely, don’t let them see you cry again; at least, not yet.

  They had indeed found Danny’s car. They presumed it had been travelling along the coast road some miles north of Lynthorpe where it ran along an embankment just below the sand-dunes. Then the sea had broken through, ripping aside the sand and vegetation, bearing aloft anything in its path and hurling the car over and over, plunging it down the bank until it had come to rest upside down in a deep dyke, where it lay undiscovered until the floodwater had subsided.

  And they had found Kate.

  She had been trapped inside and possibly, from the bruising on her head, knocked unconscious. ‘From the position we found the car, we think she was coming back towards home,’ the kindly policeman told them. ‘Do you know why she was travelling on that particular road and at that time in the evening?’

  Ella saw her grandparents exchange a glance. Her grandpa’s voice came huskily. ‘We think she was going to meet someone that afternoon, but she didn’t say who it was or where exactly she was going.’

  ‘So you don’t know whether she actually met whoever it was, or not?’

  Grandpa Godfrey shook his head and sighed sadly, ‘Maybe we’ll never know now.’

  The policeman’s sympathetic gaze came to rest on the young, white-faced girl. He seemed to guess, without being told, who she was, for he squatted down in front of her and held out his huge hands towards her. ‘Your mum, was it, love?’ and when Ella nodded, he added, ‘She could hardly have known what was happening. She wouldn’t have suffered . . .’

  But the sensitivc child thought differently, and for many nights to come and even intermittently through the years, her nightmares would he haunted by the thought of her mother trapped in the car, alone and hurt, with the water rising relentlessly . . .

  Of course they would not let her see her mother, not even when they brought her back to the local chapel of rest at the undertakers’ whilst a funeral was arranged. Danny and her grandfather had been obliged to identify the body and though they had tried to prevent Esther seeing her, their efforts had been in vain.

  ‘I’ll see me daughter and no one’s goin’ to stop me, not even you, Jonathan.’ So she had gone, resolute
ly walking into town alone to the undertakers’, forbidding anyone to accompany her.

  She came back white-faced and sat down in the wooden Windsor chair near the range, her hands clutching the arms until the knuckles showed white just staring into the fire, yet her eyes were glazed, unseeing. She forgot the house and clearing up the mess left by the sea, she ignored the needs of her farm and the animals; she didn’t even seem to realize her granddaughter was still there, needing her, at this moment, more than anyone or anything else. She sat like that for so long that Jonathan became concemed.

  ‘If only she would cry – let it out,’ Ella overheard him telling Danny. Perhaps more than any of them, though only young, Ella knew how her grandmother was feeling, for she felt the same. The grief was so deep, too deep for tears. There was a misery locked away inside that would not, could not find release. It was like a solid, aching mass of suffering in the pit of her stomach. She could not reach her grandmother and the older woman could not comfort the girl. So alike were they that they were both tormented in the same way and yet could not help each other.

  For once Jonathan could do nothing with Esther; trying to cope with his own personal grief over Kate, whom he had loved since her childhood – and still suffering from the effects of his drenching in the cold floodwater – took all his energy. He was exhausted and devastated himself.

  And then Beth Eland came to the farm.

  Ella watched in astonishment as Beth came waddling into the house, heaving her heavy frame into the kitchen and coming to stand in front of Esther. Jonathan stood by the door, like Ella just watching and waiting.

  The girl had gathered that there was some long-standing family feud between Esther and Rob’s grandmother. What was it she had overheard her mother say to Uncle Danny at that old man’s funeral? ‘There’s so much between them, Danny,’ Kate had said. ‘So much they can’t forget, yet they always come together when there’s trouble.’

  And so now, in the greatest trouble that Ella could ever imagine happening, here was Grandma Beth Eland coming to Esther to try to help her.

  ‘Well, lass . . .’ Beth began, and Ella felt an hysterical giggle rise suddenly inside her. To hear these two old women call each other ‘lass’ would have been so funny if the reason for it were not so tragic. ‘. . . this won’t do. It won’t do at all, Esther.’

  There was silence as Beth paused but there was no response. Beth tried again. ‘Come along, Esther. The bairn needs you now. She’s grieving. Much as we all loved Kate, and you know we did, her little lass has lost everything – everything. Ella needs to know you love her, Esther.’

  Still, there was no answer and the thought came unbidden into Ella’s mind. She can’t say she loves me, because she doesn’t. She doesn’t love me, I know she doesn’t love me and she never will, not like Mum loved me. No one could. The tears prickled at the back of her eyelids, but would not fall.

  Ella saw Beth glance across towards Jonathan just once as if in mute apology for what she was about to do, for what she felt compelled to do. Then she leant over Esther, resting her hands on the arms of the chair, trying to force Esther to look up at her, to meet her gaze. Her voice was sharp. ‘Where are you burying her, Esther? Next to her own father? Or out at Suddaby beside yar dad – and yar mam?’

  Esther’s head snapped up and her eyes focused, staring straight into Beth’s dark brown, troubled gaze. Her voice was full of harsh bitterness. ‘Aye, I’ll tek her out to Suddaby all right. But I’ll put her beside my mother. Two of a kind, they’d be, wouldn’t they? Both brought bastards into the world! I spent all me young life, never allowed to forget what I was. And now, I’ve to face it all again.’ With an almost violent gesture she flung out her hand towards Ella.

  The girl heard her grandfather gasp. ‘Esther, how can you say such a thing?’ He was staring at his wife, a strange expression on his face; a mixture of anger, disgust and, yes, pity too. ‘How can you?’ His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper.

  Esther stood up with a swift, angry movement. ‘Oh, I can. I can,’ she almost screamed at him and then suddenly, the floodgates of her tears broke open and she gave a howl of such misery that no one present was left in doubt any longer as to the depth of her suffering at the death of her daughter. Anger, resentment, bitterness, all the tumult of emotions were there, yet deep down Esther was heartbroken. She raised her arms to Beth who took her into her warm embrace. ‘How – could she – do it to me? To me?’ she wept against the other woman’s shoulder.

  Beth made no reply now, but rocked her like a child, only murmuring, ‘There, there, lass. Let it come. Let it all come out.’

  As release came to her grandmother, Ella too broke down and turned blindly to her grandfather, who picked her up in his strong, comforting arms and carried her outside towards the warm dryness of the loft above the barn.

  ‘We’ll leave them alone for a while, Ella love. You and me, we’ll go up here and we can have a little talk.’

  They didn’t say much for some time until Ella’s sobs had subsided. He set her down in the warm, prickly hay and lowered himself to sit beside her, wrapping his arms around her to still the shivering that came more from her distress than from the cold. She snuggled into his chest and he stroked her hair, saying nothing until at last she raised her head and asked, ‘What did she mean about her own mother?’

  ‘Oh, Ella,’ he sighed. ‘It’s a long, long story. Things that happened so many years ago now, yet your grannie can’t forget, nor, I’m afraid, quite forgive.’

  ‘To do with my mum, you mean?’

  ‘Well, partly, love, yes,’ he said gently.

  She hiccuped and sniffed, brushing the back of her hand across her swollen eyes. Her grandfather fished into his pocket and pulled out a clean handkerchief and she blew her nose hard.

  ‘What?’ she asked again.

  He sighed. ‘I can’t tell you it all, love, not now. It’s really something your grannie ought to tell you about when you’re older.’

  Ella stared at him through the gloom of the hayloft. ‘That’s what Mum . . .’ Her voice trembled afresh at the mention of her beloved mother who was lost to her for ever now. ‘That’s what Mum always said when I asked questions. “I’ll tell you when you’re older,” she always said. But—’ The tears spouted again. ‘She won’t be here now to tell me, will she?’ Ella laid her head against his shoulder and wept again.

  At the funeral neither Ella nor her grandmother cried; they refused to do so. They set their faces against a show of emotion, each with her jaw clamped firmly shut against the lump burning in her throat.

  They did not take Kate to Suddaby. She was buried in the churchyard in Lynthorpe.

  Ella travelled in the leading funeral car, sitting between her grandparents, feeling overawed and lost amidst all the black clothes and sad-faced people. She wished she could have been allowed to travel in the third car bringing Peggy Godfrey and Mavis and Isobel, her mother’s friends from her days in the WAAF just before Ella herself had been born. All three were Ella’s godmothers; she and her mother lived with Aunty Peggy, and Mavis and Isobel had visited often. Aunty Mavis was married with three children of her own, all several years younger than Ella, but Aunty Isobel had made a career in the service and was now quite a high-ranking officer. She was in her smart blue uniform today.

  Ella would even have preferred riding in the second car, carrying the Eland family, to sitting in silence between a stiff-faced Esther and Jonathan whose own grief seemed today overwhelming, though he held Ella’s hand, clutching it tightly. She sensed that today he needed her comfort more than she had need of his.

  As the slow procession drew to a halt outside the church gate, Ella glanced up at her grandmother who returned her gaze. Today, of all days, Ella thought, I must be a good girl and not annoy Gran, if only for Mum. For a moment they stared at each other and then Esther, almost as if able to read Ella’s thoughts, gave a slight nod, for once approving of the way the young girl was conducting herself.

>   The service was taken by a vicar who had known Kate well in her childhood and therefore the address he gave was personal and full of loving memories of the woman they had all lost. His words brought comfort, but the worst moment of all was when they stood in the draughty, windswept churchyard and watched the coffin being lowered into the ground. The vision of the old man lying in his coffin danced before Ella’s eyes and merged to become her lovely mum, lying in the deep darkness of the ground, her eyes closed, her face alabaster white, her hands neatly folded; so still and silent for ever. The girl shuddered and a soft moan escaped her lips. It was the final parting, the last goodbye, and Ella found herself clutching not only her grandpa’s hand, but in that terrible moment she reached out and grasped her grandmother’s too.

  She heard a sob and glanced up to look at her grandmother. But Esther was dry-eyed, staring down at the coffin.

  Beyond her the Eland family stood huddled together and, with a shock, Ella saw that it was her uncle Danny, supported by Rosie and his mother, who was sobbing as if his heart would break.

  Ella had never, ever, in her life seen a man cry and the sight of Danny Eland crying openly and unashamedly at her mother’s graveside was to be engraved in her memory for ever.

  Nine

  Back at Rookery Farm it was a little easier. There seemed to be a sense of relief that the time they had all dreaded – the funeral – was at least over. But now there was the future to face without Kate and that wasn’t going to be much easier.

  ‘We should be at home,’ Esther said, as she allowed herself to be ushered into the front parlour at Rookery Farm by Beth, her reluctance obvious for everyone to see.

  ‘Now, Esther, I know it goes against the grain for you to accept help . . .’

  Esther shot her a look, but Beth only smiled. ‘But you can hardly put on a spread at your place with the house in the state the flood’s left you.’ She shook her head. ‘At least we’ve been spared that. This is little enough we can do to help. Besides,’ Beth’s voice dropped low, ‘we need to do something, Esther. We’re grieving for her too, y’know. Why Danny, he’s beside hissen. I dun’t think he’ll ever get over it – not properly.’