The Fleethaven Trilogy

by Margaret Dickinson

  ‘Oh, we’ve about got it clean but a lot of her things are ruined. She keeps setting me on to wash the floors and the walls.’ Ella grinned again and mimicked her grandmother’s Lincolnshire dialect to perfection. ‘Ses it’s time Ah made mesen useful.’

  Rob laughed. ‘Mind she dun’t hear you. She’ll clip your ear.’

  Ella grinned again. Strangely, she didn’t resent being set to work. At the moment it kept her busy, gave her something to do and stopped her thinking about her mother quite so much.

  Only at night in the big, lonely bedroom, did she bury her head beneath the covers so that no one should hear and sob herself to sleep.

  ‘She’s thrown out all her peg rugs,’ she went on to tell Rob now. ‘Grandpa tried to wash them but he couldn’t get the sand and mud out. Everywhere’s so damp and the walls are all drying out white. It’s the salt water, Grandpa says. And all the wallpaper’s peeling off right up the wall, even higher than the water actually came.’

  The boy nodded, but could think of nothing to say. The flood had caused far more tragedy to this family than a bit of peeling wallpaper and ruined rugs. It would be a long time before the house recovered from its soaking, but even longer for the pain of their terrible loss to ease.

  ‘Grandpa, look. Rob’s brought me a kitten. Isn’t he lovely?’

  Jonathan straightened up and pressed his hand to his back as if to ease an ache. Then he came to them and reached out his work-worn fingers to tickle the kitten under its chin. The kitten clutched his forefinger with its tiny paws and nibbled at it with its sharp teeth, but the action was playful not vicious, and Jonathan did not withdraw his fingers in pain.

  ‘Can you think of a name, Grandpa? He hasn’t got one and I don’t know what to call a cat. Mum . . .’ Her voice shook a little. ‘Mum always said we couldn’t have one in a town ’cos of it getting run over.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ Jonathan said. ‘Now then, let’s think about it.’

  After several suggestions, the name Ella liked was Tibby but her grandmother’s first words were, ‘No sneaking him indoors, Missy. He’ll sleep in the barn and mek ’issen useful.’

  Ella heard Rob, still at her side, quickly stifle a giggle and turn it into a cough. Esther glanced at him sharply, but went on, ‘We dun’t have pets on a farm. He can earn his keep by keeping the rats and mice down.’

  ‘Rats!’ Ella’s eyes widened. ‘Are there rats in the barn?’

  Her grandmother’s expression was scathing. ‘Course there are. What do you expect on a farm where there’s meal?’

  As the two youngsters went outside again into the yard, Ella whispered, ‘What’s she mean “meal”? What meal?’

  ‘It’s stuff we feed the animals on, the pigs, an’ that.’

  Ella looked down at the kitten in her arms. The little thing was still purring loudly. ‘He’s not big enough to catch rats yet, is he?’

  ‘No,’ Rob said, and, understanding Esther’s command better than Ella did, added, ‘No, but he’ll grow.’

  *

  The police brought back the items found in the car. In a kind and sympathetic gesture someone had dried and cleaned everything. When Esther laid them out on the kitchen table, Ella picked up Kate’s handbag and hugged it to her chest. Somehow the handbag, more than anything else, symbolized her mother. She had carried it everywhere and the contents in its voluminous depths represented Kate’s life: the keys to their home in Lincoln, her identity card, an old ration book, a handkerchief, a packet of sewing needles, a diary, a nail-file, lipstick and powder compact; and, lastly, a letter. The pages had been separated and dried out and then carefully replaced in the envelope. Ella glanced at it, but the writing was illegible, the ink running in blue blotches all over the pages.

  Ella put everything back into the bag and snapped shut the fastener. She gave a little sigh: the only thing she had hoped to find was not there. The key to the wooden box was not, as she had thought it might be, in her mother’s handbag.

  She looked up to find her grandparents standing on the other side of the table watching her.

  Esther’s voice was surprisingly gentle. ‘There’s a big blanket box in your room. I’ll clear it out and ya can put all ya mam’s things in there.’

  Tears sprang to Ella’s eyes but she bit her lip and nodded.

  Jonathan cleared his throat. ‘Ella, we – your grannie and I – we thought we’d ride out to – er – where it happened. Now, don’t come if you don’t want to.’

  But Ella was nodding firmly, pressing her lips together to stop the tears yet determined. ‘I want to come, Grandpa.’

  Slowly he nodded and his voice was hoarse as he said, ‘All right then, love.’ He cleared his throat, turned to his wife and said more strongly, ‘Dick Souter’s offered to lend us his car.’

  ‘Heavens!’ The expression on Esther’s face was comical. ‘You do surprise me. They’ve never had much time for us. Well . . .’ she put her head on one side and gave a small, wry smile, ‘me, really.’

  Jonathan lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. ‘People can be extraordinarily kind when there’s real trouble.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Esther nodded and there was a faraway look in her eyes. Then she seemed to shake herself and asked, ‘That reminds me, how’s Beth?’

  Ella saw the startled look in her grandfather’s eyes and there was an incredulous note in his voice as he repeated, ‘Beth?’

  ‘Yes, Beth. And dun’t look at me like that.’

  ‘She’s all right, but Danny was saying yesterday that they don’t think she’ll go back to live at the Point. The cottages are a mess.’

  ‘They’d clean,’ Esther said and sniffed with impatience to think that someone would not take the trouble and effort. She had worked tirelessly to restore the farmhouse from the ravages of the sea-water and was scathing of anyone else without her energy and devotion to home and land.

  Ella, listening to the exchange, saw her grandfather smile fondly at his wife. ‘Enid and Walter Maine, and the Harris boys, they’ll go back to their homes, of course, but Danny and Rosie want Beth to live at Rookery Farm. They’ve plenty of room there and there’s no reason for Beth to go on living on her own at the Point. Besides, she only rented the cottage from the old squire’s estate, didn’t she?’

  Esther nodded.

  ‘There you are, then.’

  Esther shrugged. ‘I’m surprised, that’s all. She’s so many memories in that little cottage.’ Her voice dropped so that Ella had to strain to hear the words. ‘It’s where Matthew lived, an’ all.’

  ‘Ah well,’ Jonathan said gently. ‘She’ll carry her memories with her, won’t she?’

  ‘Aye, I ’spect she will.’ Esther sighed. ‘Good and bad.’ And she raised her eyes to look directly into her husband’s steady gaze, while Ella’s puzzled glance went from one to the other and back again.

  On Sunday morning, Jonathan drove the Souters’ old Morris Eight into the yard.

  ‘Good grief!’ Esther exclaimed, staring at the mud-spattered exterior, at the running board hanging half-off on one side, at the cracked window, at the chicken feathers littering the back seat. ‘Those Souters are a mucky lot.’

  ‘Now, now, Esther,’ Jonathan admonished gently. ‘They’ve been kind enough to lend us the car.’

  ‘Mebbe so, but will it get us there?’ Esther muttered as she opened the door and brushed the torn leather of the seat. ‘Dust that seat afore you sit down, Missy,’ she added to Ella, who was climbing into the back.

  No one said much above the noise of the engine as Jonathan drove along the coast road, through Lynthorpe and northwards.

  ‘Oh, look,’ Ella heard her grandmother exclaim. ‘Just look!’

  Where the sea had broken through the sand-dunes, ripping aside the sand and vegetation, the land was a sea of mud made worse by the lorries, jeeps, tractors, bulldozers and all manner of mechanical diggers working with fanatical urgency to fill in the breach. Temporary walls of sandbags, hastily built by the tr
oops drafted in during the hours immediately following the storms, kept the sea at bay whilst the frenzied work to build a more permanent sea wall went on.

  As Jonathan drew the car on to the side of the road, well out of the way of the contractors’ vehicles, and switched off the engine, Ella leaned forward and asked, ‘Grandpa, what’s that noise?’

  Above the sounds of the traffic came a steady, rhythmic ‘thud-thud-thud’.

  ‘It’ll be the pile-driver.’

  ‘Whatever’s that?’ Esther asked.

  ‘They’re sinking groynes – breakwaters to us – into the sand.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The tides bring the sand down the coast. It’ll build up the level of the beach and, hopefully, be a natural sea defence.’

  ‘And in the meantime?’ Esther asked sceptically.

  ‘They’re also building a sea wall. Just look at the lorries bringing stuff in.’

  In silence they sat watching the stream of tip lorries piled high with Derbyshire stone, slag, gravel, rubble, sand; anything it seemed that would shore up the coastline against the next high tides.

  They drove on through a village where people dressed in boots, thick coats and with scarves around their heads were digging away the sand piled high against their front doors. In some places they could see a huge tube going in through ground floor windows attached to a machine on the outside.

  ‘They’re driers loaned by the army, I think. We could maybe get one, if you like, Esther. It’d help dry the walls out.’

  They drove out of the village and on to the coast road again, running along an embankment with a sand-dune above them on their right. On their left the ground fell away to the fields below. They came to the place where the avalanche of water had swept Danny’s car away on that dreadful night.

  Again Jonathan parked the car and this time they got out and climbed the bank on the seaward side of the road.

  ‘It’s like the marsh at home,’ Esther said, surprise in her voice. ‘Only they’ve built between the two lines of sand-dunes.’

  Though the flood waters had gone, below them the ground looked drenched. Directly in front of them only one bungalow remained standing forlornly amongst the piles of debris that were the only remains of shattered homes, demolished to matchwood in a few horrific moments by the might of the sea. They watched as a party of men in rubber boots, armed with spades, splashed through pools of water and began digging amongst the rubble.

  ‘What are they doing, Grandpa?’ Ella asked in a small voice. ‘They’re not looking for – for people, are they?’

  His arm came about her shoulder and his voice was husky as he said, ‘No, love, but I expect they’re looking for their possessions, things they hadn’t time to take with them.’

  Beside them Esther gave a snort of disbelief. Her lips tight, she nodded towards the searchers. ‘Looters, more like.’

  But Jonathan shook his head. ‘No, Esther, I’ve read about it in the paper. The authorities have organized officially supervised parties to search.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think there’s much to flnd now,’ Esther murmured, and now there was real sympathy in her voice. Just below where they were standing, washed up against the bank was a chair and, close by, a sodden, mud-stained length of material – someone’s curtains.

  ‘I wonder if they all got out?’ Jonathan said.

  ‘If it came as fast as it did with us,’ Esther said, ‘I doubt they had chance.’

  ‘Perhaps they got some sort of warning here . . .’ Jonathan murmured but his tone held little hope. ‘Look, that far line of sand-dunes has almost gone.’

  Ella lifted her eyes and looked towards the sea. In places, the sand-dunes had been completely swept away and she could even see the waves of the sea beyond. Only parts of the dunes had been left, little clumps of sand and trees, left standing like tiny islands in the ocean, and in the gaps between were the inevitable sandbags.

  ‘It’s like the war all over again, sandbags everywhere,’ Esther muttered.

  Jonathan sighed. ‘When you have an enemy as mighty as the sea, it’s like a war.’

  They turned back down the bank and stood at the side of the road looking westward now. Even on this side, pools of water still lay in the fields and the dykes were full and overflowing. Mud and sand, sea-grass and bushes torn from the sand-hills were strewn everywhere.

  ‘They’ll be years getting this land to grow owt,’ Ella heard her grandmother murmur and as if their previous conversation had triggered her memory, she added, ‘It’s as bad as France in nineteen-nineteen . . .’

  Jonathan nodded. ‘Well, there’s no trenches, but I know what you mean. It’s certainly grim.’

  ‘What’s that over there?’ Ella pointed. Two fields away from where they were standing on the embankment, there were three or four mounds lying on the sodden ground.

  ‘Dead sheep,’ Esther said.

  Ella gasped. ‘Do – do you mean they – they were drowned? Couldn’t they get away?’

  Her grandmother shook her head. ‘The water came so fast.’ She pointed to a field to the left. ‘There’s dead cattle in that one. Look.’

  Ella shuddered. Her poor mother had died out here, drowned along with the cattle and sheep. She pushed her hands into the pockets of her school mac and said in a small voice, ‘Do you know – where . . .?’

  Jonathan pointed below them to a place near a footbridge made out of sleepers across a dyke. ‘The car was found down there, just near that little bridge.’

  The three of them stood in silence just staring at the spot where Kate had died. Then Jonathan, putting an arm about each of them, said, ‘Come on, let’s go home.’

  Climbing back into the car Ella realized finally that there was no chance of going back. Her mother was dead; she had seen where it had happened.

  Her grandmother was her closest relative and, from now on, Brumbys’ Farm was her only home.

  But one day, she silently repeated the promise to herself, one day I’ll run away.

  Eleven

  As the new girl at the school in Lynthorpe, Ella was, for a time, the object of everyone’s interest.

  ‘Ella, come and play “I sent a letter . . .”’ In the playground, Alison Clark grabbed her arm and dragged her towards where the girls in her class were organizing themselves into a ring.

  ‘You can be first, Ella.’ The ring formed and Ella, taking her handkerchief from her pocket as the ‘letter’, stood on the outside ready to run round as the others chanted, ‘I sent a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it . . .’

  ‘Who you sending a letter to, Ella? Have you got a boyfriend?’

  The ring broke formation as the others clustered around her. Ella shook her head. ‘I don’t know any boys here yet. At least, only one.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Rob Eland.’

  The gasp rippled around the gathering and there was almost unanimous awe in their voices as they said, ‘Rob? Rob Eland?’

  Ella nodded. ‘I’ve come to live with my gran at the Point and he lives near.’

  They were staring at her now.

  ‘Is he your boyfriend? ’Cos you’ll have Janice Souter after you if he is.’

  Ella stared at the girl. ‘Why?’

  ‘She likes him, that’s why.’

  ‘It’s scrawled all over the lavvy doors. “JS loves RE true.” Haven’t you seen it?’

  Maybe she had, Ella thought, but trying to decipher all the scratchings on the insides of the doors in the girls’ lavatories would take a week and a half.

  She had been going to say, ‘No. Our families know each other, that’s all,’ but then her impish sense of mischief came bubbling up and, returning the stares of the other girls, instead she said, ‘Well, we’ll have to see about that, won’t we?’

  ‘Ooh-er, you’re in for it,’ Alison said and cast a gleeful glance towards a girl in the far corner of the playground who, every so often, jumped up, craning her neck to look over the hedge. ‘That�
��s her. That’s Janice. See what she’s doing?’

  Ella shook her head.

  ‘The boys are playing football in the field.’ Alison nodded in the direction of the playing field beyond the hedge surrounding the playground. ‘Rob’s ever so good at football an’ she’s watching him.’

  One of the girls from the group had run over to Janice and was now pulling on her arm and talking urgently to her. Then she pointed back towards where Ella was standing. The girl called Janice stared across the playground at Ella and then, slowly, she began to walk towards her.

  ‘So, you’re the new girl, a’ ya?’ Janice was standing before her, and though Ella was tall for her ten years, the other girl topped her by two inches. Freckles peppered her nose and high cheekbones and her long ginger hair was pulled back into a pony tail. Grey eyes stared directly in Ella’s.

  Facing her squarely, Ella said boldly, ‘And you’re Janice Souter.’ She was a striking-looking girl, even at this rather gangly, awkward age; one day she would be really pretty.

  Janice blinked and Ella guessed she was not used to being outfaced. This was only Ella’s second day at the town’s primary school and yet already she had gleaned that Janice Souter was a ring-leader in the class in which Ella had been placed.

  ‘She walks to school with Rob, Janice,’ Alison volunteered and then stood back to watch the effect her piece of information was having.

  Her gaze never leaving Ella’s face, Janice said, ‘You reckon he’s ya boyfriend then, do ya?’

  Someone in the group laughed. ‘Her? Get a boyfriend? With that mark on her face?’

  Ella felt her face turn red, but Janice ignored the jibe. Defiantly, Ella lifted her chin and answered Janice’s question. ‘Not really. I don’t like him much.’

  Now a surprised gasp rippled amongst the listeners. ‘Dun’t like him much? She must be blind – or daft.’

  ‘He’s the best-looking boy in the school, ain’t he, Janice?’

  Janice Souter was still watching Ella, her grey eyes narrowing slightly, a calculating look crossing her young face. ‘You live at Brumbys’ Farm, with ya gran, dun’t ya?’ Ella nodded and Janice went on, ‘Rob comes to Brumbys’ Farm a lot, dun’t he?’