The Fleethaven Trilogy

by Margaret Dickinson

Ella stepped into the house. In the scullery, the draining board was littered with dirty pots, the sink stained brown. In the kitchen, no fire burned in the grate and there was no sign of food on the table.

  Her grandmother shuffled towards the wooden Windsor chair by the cold range and sat down. Closer now, Ella could see that the skin on her hands was wrinkled and mottled, her nails cracked and broken. She was thinner and her shoulders sagged dejectedly.

  For a moment Ella gaped in horror at her grandmother, the sight of the pathetic old woman tearing at her conscience. ‘Oh, Gran. If only I’d known. I should never have gone. I should never have left you . . .’

  Tears blurred her vision, but now, panic-stricken, she brushed them aside and went towards the living room, into the hall and up the stairs. She felt sick with fear. He was dead; she was sure he was dead. He must be; that was the reason her gran looked like she did.

  Holding her breath, she pushed open their bedroom door and peered round it, knowing she must look, but afraid of what she would see.

  Her grandfather was propped up in the bed against three pillows, his eyes closed, his breathing laboured. His face was strained and white, uneven stubble covering the lower half. She moved to the bedside and bent over him. ‘Grandpa . . .?’ When he did not respond, did not even open his eyes, she touched his hand. His skin was cold and slightly clammy to her touch and she almost recoiled in panic.

  Then she was running, down the stairs, through the living room and back into the kitchen. She stood before her gran, leant over her as she sat in the chair.

  ‘I’m going to phone for the doctor. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Don’t need no doctor. Can’t do no good.’

  ‘Well, I’m going . . .’

  The old woman flapped her hands. ‘Aye, go. You go. Just let him die in peace . . . an’ me an’ all!’

  ‘He’s not going to die. I won’t let him.’ Ella felt like shaking the old woman. ‘Nor you either, ya daft old beezum!’

  There was the ghost of a smile on Esther’s mouth, a spark in the green eyes that had seemed so dead. And the words, when she spoke, were an echo from the past; a past the old woman was trying desperately to cling on to. ‘I’ll have none of your chelp, Missy!’

  ‘You’ll have a lot more of my chelp before I’m finished, Gran.’

  The old woman leant her head back against the chair and closed her eyes as if even that brief exertion had exhausted her.

  Ella was running again, out of the house, through the hole in the hedge, across the field where the corn had never been cut and lay in flattened waste.

  ‘Oh, Gran,’ she sobbed as she ran. ‘Oh, Gran, what have I done to you?’ Where had that strong, resilient, feisty woman gone, with the bright hair and flashing green eyes; the woman who took on the world, fearless and independent? Where, oh where had she gone? It was like looking at a ghost, a shadow of the woman she had been. As she ran, panting painfully, memories haunted Ella. Esther taking her hand at Kate’s funeral, ‘You’re coming home with me.’ She hadn’t been obliged to take the girl into her home. How many women of sixty-odd would have done so? Esther teaching her to sew, to cook and bake. Oh, yes, at the time, it had all seemed like hard work, drudgery; as if she were being used as no more than a skivvy. But mentally Ella ticked off all the skills she had learned under Esther’s watchful eye: she could milk cows, she could drive a tractor, she knew when the bloom on the grass meant it was ready for cutting, she knew when to harvest wheat, barley, oats. She could ‘put away’ a pig; she could pluck and draw chickens, turkeys, even skin and draw rabbits . . .

  And then she remembered other times; her grandmother smoothing crushed dock leaves on to the nettle stings; her greying head bent over the tiny stitching, sitting up far into the night to finish making Ella’s skirt for her to go out dancing . . .

  ‘Oh, Gran, I’m so sorry,’ she wept.

  ‘Uncle Danny, Uncle Danny,’ she cried, breathless and red in the face, as she reached the yard at Rookery Farm. But it was Rob who emerged from the cowshed. She stopped, shocked by the thrill of joy that ran through her even in this desperate moment. She felt the urge to run to him, this friend of her childhood, and yet, perversely, she was suddenly shy. He had been a boy when she left, but now, before her, stood a man. The year at college, and his return home to farm the land he loved side by side, an equal, with his father, had turned Rob from a good-looking, though gangly, youth into a handsome man. His black hair glistened in the pale October morning light and beneath his open-necked shirt, his shoulders were broad and muscular. He seemed to have grown taller too. The very sight of him caught at her breath. He was staring at her, gaping almost, as if he too were taking in the changes the year’s absence had wrought in her. They had not seen each other in all that time. They had spoken once, but only on the phone, and now there was no time to talk, not even time to greet him properly . . .

  ‘Can I use your phone? It’s urgent.’

  ‘Course ya can. Come on.’ As they walked quickly towards the back door he said, ‘Dad said you were coming. When did you get here?’

  She pulled a face. ‘Middle of the night. There were floods at Horncastle. We got trapped there for hours . . .’

  ‘Ya kidding?’

  She shook her head. ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ll say . . .’ He opened the door and raised his voice. ‘Mam, it’s Ella. She needs the phone – quick.’

  ‘Oh, Ella, love.’ Rosie was hugging her quickly, but catching some of the anxiety in Ella’s face led her at once into the hall and to their telephone.

  ‘Do you know the doctor’s number?’ and when Rosie flipped open a notepad, Ella lifted the receiver.

  Minutes later she put down the phone. ‘He’s coming straight away.’

  ‘You’d better get back, then. Come back later, when you can, and see us.’ Rosie kissed her cheek again, squeezed her arm and whispered, ‘I’m so glad you’ve come home, Ella.’

  ‘I’ll pop back tonight. I must ring Peggy, if you don’t mind, Aunty Rosie.’

  ‘You know we don’t, love.’

  ‘I’ll come back with you,’ Rob volunteered, and Ella nodded gratefully.

  As they jogged back across the fields, Rob told her, between breaths, what had been happening.

  ‘We had no idea what was going on, El. Me dad’s blaming himself now, saying he should have done something sooner, but every time we went to the farm, all ya gran said was, “He’s resting,” or “He’ll be all right in a day or two,” and to be honest, for a time, we believed her. We tried to help with the work. Cut some of her hay and stacked it. Some of the corn, an’ all, though we didn’t get to this one . . .’ He waved his hand to indicate the field through which they were running. ‘Shame it’s gone to waste. Then the day before yesterday me dad insisted on seeing ya grandpa. And then he got a right shock, I can tell you. That’s when he tried to ring you.’

  ‘And I was in York,’ she murmured, feeling a fresh wave of guilt.

  ‘Dad tried to get the doctor in yesterday, but ya gran seemed to get real – well – odd. Ranting and raving at us to mind our own business and let her mind hers. Even my grandma went across, but she couldn’t get any sense out of your gran either. She came back mumbling to herself about stubborn old women who ought to let bygones be bygones. Your gran had shaken her fist at her shouting, “You keep away Beth Eland,” and saying she didn’t need any help, specially not hers. That they’d all gone and left her, Kate, Lilian – and you. But she didn’t need anyone. She could manage. She’d look after him, she said. And when I went last night . . .’ He paused as they negotiated the narrow plank bridge and ran on. ‘She gave me a right turn. D’you know what she said to me?’

  Ella shook her head.

  ‘“I don’t need you here, Matthew Hilton, I can look after Sam . . .”’

  Ella stopped in her tracks and stared at him. ‘She had gone a bit funny, then. Gone back into the past. Matthew was your – our – grandfather, wasn’t he?’<
br />
  Rob nodded. ‘Aye, and he came to the farm to help her nurse old Sam Brumby when he was dying. That’s when all the trouble started . . .’

  Ella nodded grimly. ‘Yes, and we’ve got trouble again now. Come on . . .’

  *

  The doctor arrived within half an hour and examined both Jonathan Godfrey and, though much to her disgust, Esther too.

  ‘They’re both undernourished. They’ve been neglecting themselves, Ella. I really ought to have them removed to hospital. Your grandfather might have had a slight heart attack, but I can’t be sure unless I can do some proper tests.’

  Ella shook her head. ‘I think it would finish them off, Doctor. As long as you tell me what to do, I’ll look after them.’

  ‘Right then . . .’ He dusted a chair and sat down at the kitchen table. ‘I hope you’re ready for this, lass,’ he said in his bluff but kindly way, ‘because it’s not going to be easy.’

  ‘I could come and stay here to help,’ Rob, hovering in the background, volunteered and Ella looked up to meet his steady, concerned gaze.

  Suddenly, time seemed to tilt, and ghostly shadows shifted in the dusty corners.

  ‘Full circle,’ she murmured, though only for Rob to hear. ‘We’ve come full circle.’

  In the days that followed, Ella didn’t think she had ever worked so hard in her life; not even as a child under her grandmother’s bidding. And yet, as she worked, it was as if Esther’s voice followed her everywhere, ‘Scrub it, Missy. Get some elbow grease into it,’ even though now the woman herself was a sick, weak old lady confined to her bed.

  Without the willing help of Rob Eland and the rest of his family, Ella doubted she would have coped.

  ‘What happened to her cows?’ she asked as she scrubbed, black-leaded and relit the kitchen range, the warmth filling the cold, dank kitchen, rekindling life.

  ‘There’s only two left,’ Rob told her. ‘The others died. We’ve got ’em with our herd and we bring her the milk across each day.’

  Ella glanced up. ‘And a bit more besides, I reckon.’

  Rob grinned. ‘Well, it’s the least we can do,’ he said as he banged at an upholstered chair and raised a cloud of dust.

  ‘I don’t know how this place has got like this in such a short time,’ Ella muttered.

  Rob did not answer and when she looked up, she found him looking at her strangely.

  ‘What?’ she asked. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s not been a short time, Ella, now has it?’ he said quietly. ‘Only none of us knew. Me dad reckons they must have been struggling to cope for months, maybe ever since you left, if truth be known. But they never said anything. I should’ve come across more often when I was home at weekends but, well . . .’ His voice faded away and his glance avoided her eyes.

  Out every night on his motorbike, with the girls, she thought grimly. But it was only a fleeting pang of jealousy. He was here with her now, helping her when she most needed a friend and she was grateful for that.

  ‘But Grandpa used to write to me,’ Ella countered. ‘He said they were fine. It . . .’ She hesitated again feeling the guilt because she had brushed aside Peggy’s intuitive concern. ‘It was only recently his letters were late and – and different.’

  ‘Of course he kept writing to you.’ A note of impatience was creeping into Rob’s tone now. ‘He wouldn’t want you to feel obliged to come back. He knew you hated it here, had always hated it; that all you’d ever wanted was to get back to the town. And from your letters he knew you were happy, specially when you’d found your father and had a new family.’

  ‘But Gran? I mean, she didn’t care about me that much . . .’

  Rob stared at her and then said roughly, ‘Well, if that’s what you think, Ella Hilton, then you ain’t got the sense you were born with.’ And with that parting shot, he marched out into the yard carrying an armchair and began banging it with the cane carpet beater until he had to stop as clouds of dust set him coughing.

  Ella bent over the range once more, pondering on his words. They certainly didn’t help to ease the weight of guilt she already felt.

  Not one bit.

  The following day she found clean sheets in the huge blanket chest in the bedroom that had once been hers, but where her grandmother was now in the bed.

  ‘I thought they might be better sleeping separately for a bit,’ she had told Rob. ‘One’s disturbing the other at the moment.’

  After warming the bed-linen on the clothes-airer in the kitchen for a few hours, she changed all three beds. She was sleeping in the tiny room with the sloping ceiling leaving the doors open between the rooms so that she could listen out through the night.

  Carrying the bundle of dirty laundry out to the washhouse, a musty, unclean smell assailed her nostrils as she opened the door and once again her heart contracted to think that Esther Godfrey – proud, defiant Esther – had come to this.

  Oh, Gran, her heart moaned again, and guilt swept through her afresh.

  Rob stayed at Brumbys’ Farm sleeping on an old settee in the best parlour.

  ‘She’d have a double duck fit, ya gran, if she could see me sleeping here on her best chaise-longy thing.’ He laughed as he folded the blankets.

  Ella giggled. ‘I don’t think she’ll mind as long as you’re down here and I’m safely upstairs in the little bedroom with her between us.’

  Playfully, Rob adopted a suggestive leer. ‘Afraid I’ll have my wicked way with you, is she?’ Then suddenly his expression sobered and in his dark brown eyes there was something more, a look that made Ella catch her breath and her heart start to thump.

  But he turned away and bent over the settee, snatching up the pile of blankets and sheets and placing them in a neat pile on a nearby chair. When he turned round again, he avoided looking at her directly. ‘Ya grandpa needs shaving,’ he said brusquely. ‘That beard of his looks awful.’

  ‘Oh, er, yes,’ Ella said, swallowing hard. ‘D’you think you could have a go?’

  ‘Ooh, I dunno. I’ll ask me dad to come over. He’ll not mind.’

  And when Danny had come and shaved him, although Jonathan still looked thin and tired, he looked so much better. Ella kissed his wrinkled cheek. ‘That’s more like my grandpa.’

  His hand reached out and touched hers. ‘I’m glad you came back, love. Don’t go away, lass, will you? Not till we’re both well again.’

  Ella leant forward and whispered something in her grandfather’s ear. The old man’s eyes watered and he clasped her hand in his and held it to his cheek, before he sank back against the pillows with a huge sigh, closed his eyes and slept.

  ‘What did you say to him?’ Rob asked as they crept downstairs.

  ‘Never you mind,’ Ella answered, but she was smiling as she said it.

  Rob grinned back. ‘Well, whatever it was, it seemed to work.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ella whispered, and her smile was pensive for a moment. ‘It did, didn’t it?

  Thirty-Three

  In the tiny bedroom with its sloping ceiling only inches above her head, Ella lay awake. Though she was tired and every limb ached from a day spent cooking, cleaning and washing, she found sleep elusive. She was aware, so vibrantly aware, of Rob sleeping downstairs, only feet away.

  She stared into the blackness, listening to the creaking of the timbers in the roof, the wind rattling the loose catch on the small window. Had she imagined that special look in his eyes because she wanted to see it there? Oh, how she wanted Rob to look at her like he looked at other girls, like young men looked at the girl they were falling in love with. With a groan she buried her face in her pillow. No, it wasn’t possible. She must stop being so foolish, building up her hopes. He was here to help her because it was her gran he’d always admired and loved. Soon, she told herself fiercely, he’d be off again on his motorbike with Janice, not her, on the pillion.

  In the grey light of early morning, when Ella emerged, yawning, from her tiny bedroom into the larger room wher
e her grandmother was sleeping, she stopped and stared at the bed. The rumpled covers were pushed back and the bed was empty.

  She gave a click of exasperation and, crossing the landing, poked her head round the door of the bedroom where, for the moment, her grandpa was alone. He was still asleep, his mouth slightly open.

  Ella hurried downstairs: there was no one in the kitchen and the back door stood wide open, the late October morning blowing coolly into the house. Her glance raked the yard and she listened.

  There was neither sight nor sound of her grandmother.

  Ella sped back through the house and almost fell through the door into the front parlour where Rob was sleeping. Dragging open the curtains to let in the pale light, she turned to see Rob sprawled on the couch, his arms flung wide, snoring gently.

  ‘Rob! Rob! Wake up. Gran’s gone from her bed . . .’

  ‘Eh? What?’ He was awake in an instant and throwing back the covers. Startled, Ella gave a shriek and turned away. Rob was completely naked. As she hurried from the room she heard his low chuckle.

  In the kitchen she shook the fire into a glow.

  ‘Where d’you think she’s gone?’ Rob asked, buckling his belt as he came up behind her. He grabbed his boots from under the scullery table and began pulling them on.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Ella bit her lip. ‘You go and look in all the sheds and the barn. I’ll go round the front of the house.’

  Checking first that Esther was not in the lavatory, Ella ran round the corner of the house, past the pond, through the orchard and squeezed through the hole in the hedge. Early-morning mist clung to the hedges and shrouded the fields.

  ‘Gran,’ she called, and her voice echoed in the stillness.

  She ran back into the yard to see Rob emerging from the barn. ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘Did you check the loft?’

  When he nodded, Ella bit her lip. ‘Where can she be? Where would she go?’