Nobody's Child

by Val Wood

  He went towards Laura and took hold of her hand. ‘If you’ll accept me,’ he said softly, ‘we are free to marry. Joseph Ellis isn’t my grandfather after all. He wasn’t my father’s father, though he thought he was. He and my grandmother, it seems, have been confessing their sins – except that I don’t think they were sins. They just happened to have loved other people before they met each other.’

  Laura felt she was going to faint; which is ridiculous, she told herself, before sinking into a chair. She looked at her mother, who was quietly smiling, although her eyes were moist.

  ‘Well, Laura.’ There was a tremble in Susannah’s voice. ‘Are you going to put the young man out of his misery?’

  The doorbell rang again and she got up. ‘I’ll leave you for a moment,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Perhaps this might be Freddie after all.’

  She closed the door behind her and Edmund drew Laura up to him. ‘You heard what your mama said,’ he murmured. ‘Are you going to put me out of my misery? You know that I love you?’

  ‘You hardly know me,’ she prevaricated. ‘We have only met a few times.’

  He gazed tenderly into her eyes. ‘Then I’ll wait,’ he said. ‘And I’ll pay my addresses to you as polite society decrees that I should.’

  ‘How long will you wait?’ she teased, and then laughed as he drew out a pocket watch from his waistcoat and looked at it.

  ‘A quarter of an hour,’ he said. ‘May I be permitted to sit down?’

  Susannah and Freddie returned to the sitting room fifteen minutes later and found Laura and Edmund standing side by side.

  ‘Well?’ Susannah asked. ‘What is it to be?’ Though she could tell already by Edmund’s expression of sheer joy.

  ‘Yes,’ Laura said, her face alight. ‘I’ve put Edmund out of his misery and said yes.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Susannah walked with Joseph along the Humber embankment towards Welwick Thorpe where he told her she had been born. She was wearing a shawl which had been bought for her mother, and had felt sad and emotional when Joseph had told her how Mary-Ellen had at first refused it, but had later said she would wrap their child in it. He asked Susannah if she would accept it, for her aunt Lol had given it back to him as a keepsake. She had been glad to, for she had nothing else belonging to her mother.

  It was a fine autumn day and the tide was running high. Joseph had said that he would drive her in the trap into Welwick village from Skeffling and they could walk from there, but she told him she would rather walk all the way so that they could talk. She had been staying with him and Arlette at Burstall House for the last few days. Freddie hadn’t come with her as he was trying to finish off some urgent work before their wedding in October.

  Laura and Edmund were holidaying in France after their wedding. France was chosen because Edmund wanted to brush up on his accent now that he was a bona fide Frenchman. Laura chose to go because she wanted to recall some memories of her own.

  In their time together, Joseph wondered how it was that Susannah, with her sweet, gentle nature and serenity, could have been born from such a passionate relationship as his and Mary-Ellen’s. She is nothing like her mother, he had mused; but her daughter Laura, she has fire, just like her grandmother. She will lead Edmund a merry dance. He won’t get everything his own way with such a wife. But he obviously totally adores her.

  ‘This is it,’ he said, as they came to a gap in the hedge. ‘It’s very wild and overgrown. Mind you don’t slip. No-one ever comes here.’

  Once they did, she thought, recalling that she had come with Thomas when they were children and they had searched amongst the rubble and bricks of an old cow stall. Joseph had taken her to meet Thomas, who was the Ellises’ waggoner. He was a short man, but strapping, with a broad back and hard muscles. ‘How do, Susannah,’ he’d grinned, and the years had rolled back for both of them.

  ‘I’d have come to see you,’ he explained, ‘but when Wilf Topham was waggoner he’d never give me enough time off. He allus found me some job or other that I had to finish. Then, when he married our Jane, I didn’t want to come. Didn’t want to see him at home as well as at work.’ He bit his lip and glanced at her. ‘After you left, he gave Jane a right beating; nearly killed her and she lost ’bairn she was carrying.’

  She was shocked. ‘I didn’t know. What happened to him? Where did he go?’

  Thomas had looked about him. Joseph Ellis had gone back to the house, leaving them to reminisce.

  ‘Mr Ellis told Jack Terrison what had happened to Jane and he told me. I asked for time off and went to look for him, but first of all I searched out Daniel. I hadn’t seen him for a bit – he was working over at Halsham – but I thought he might know where Topham was. And I wanted to ask him about all ’things he used to hint at when we were bairns: you know, about you being born down at Welwick Thorpe in that burned-out house and not having a da and that. But when I told him about Topham giving Jane a hiding, and how you’d run away, he fetched his coat and said, come on, we’ve a score or two to settle; nobody treats anybody belonging ’us like that. And when I said, but what about Susannah, he said there was nowt to tell. That he’d just been stirring things up.’ He’d grinned. ‘But seemingly there was, after all, but whether he knew ’truth I can’t say.’

  ‘But what happened?’ she insisted. ‘Did you find Topham?’

  Thomas’s cheeks flushed. ‘Oh, aye, we found him all right. Down on Hull docks. Going to board a ship, he was.’ He screwed up his mouth. ‘Missed it, though,’ he added wryly. ‘I mean – really missed it. Tripped over a bollard and fell in ’dock.’

  Susannah drew in a breath. ‘You didn’t—’

  ‘Push him?’ He gazed stolidly at her. ‘Well, mebbe it was just a little push. That was after we’d told him what we’d do if he ever set foot back in Holderness again; but he was walking back’ards at ’time and not looking where he was going!’ He laughed. ‘No need to be afeared, Susannah. We whistled on somebody and they fished him out. Like a drowned dog, he was.’

  ‘And Daniel?’ she asked. ‘Where’s he?’

  He rubbed his chin. ‘Well, seeing as Topham had missed his ship, Daniel said that he’d allus had a mind to travel, so he took his place and sailed off to London docks. Last I heard he was taking a ship to America. Lots o’ cheap land for settlers over there. He sent me a postcard asking if I wanted to join him, but I didn’t. I’m all right here.’

  He’d grinned again and she knew that he was.

  She had gone also to see Aunt Jane. Jane had refused to move out of Welwick when the poorhouse fell down, and Joseph, wanting to keep the link with the family, had put her into one of their tied cottages. She had whispered to Susannah that she was charged only a peppercorn rent and the parish paid that. ‘I manage all right,’ she’d said, with a nod and a wink. ‘Jack comes to see me and brings me a few eggs ’n’ that from time to time.’ When asked who Jack was, she’d said, ‘Jack Terrison, o’ course. He used to be sweet on your ma.’

  When she told Joseph this he’d laughed and said he knew. He’d also asked Terrison years ago to keep an eye on Jane, and he still did, even though he didn’t need to.

  They slithered down the grassy bank and Joseph caught hold of Susannah’s arm to save her from falling. ‘The cottage was well down this track,’ he said, ‘but Mary-Ellen – your mother – used to come to the estuary. She told me that sometimes she would take her father’s boat out and catch fish; and she caught shrimps and eels and trapped rabbits. Her mother had died in childbirth, but Mrs Marston, your aunt Lol, had raised Mary-Ellen until she was old enough to come here and look after her father, Isaac.’

  ‘It must have been a lonely kind of life for a young girl,’ Susannah murmured.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘And I think that’s why she was as she was. Fiercely independent. Contrary and quite untamed.’ He sighed. ‘I said I would love her for ever, and I have. Her life was so short. I knew her for only a year, and I often wonder if our love would
have survived had she lived. Or would our differences have made a difference?’ He took a wistful breath. ‘I’ll never know, of course. I only know that I have carried the image of her and our love within me all my life.’ He turned to Susannah, and, as if she was the older and wiser, asked, ‘Can love conquer all?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered simply. ‘It can, if it’s strong enough.’

  They came to a clearing where the grass was flattened. ‘Someone has been here.’ He frowned.

  ‘Village children,’ she said, remembering. ‘Playing games.’ She looked round the open space. There was nothing there, no spar or piece of wood to show that the area had once been inhabited. ‘There’s a fine view of Patrington church,’ she commented. ‘You can see ’spire from here. There’s nothing left of the house though. I was told that it had burned down.’

  ‘Yes. I set fire to it.’ He stared around. ‘But this is where it was. See the hawthorn?’ A large hawthorn tree, covered in berries, cast a shade. ‘Roughly there. I came back after Mary-Ellen’s funeral.’ There was pain in his eyes as he spoke. ‘I was distraught. I didn’t know what to do or who to speak to. I came back here and saw where – saw where she had been so alive, and where she had given birth to our child.’ His voice was choked, his memories still raw as he told her.

  ‘So I made a fire and set it alight: everything. The house – well, it was little more than a hovel, so it didn’t take much burning. The cow stall, where I’d waited all night because I wasn’t allowed indoors when she was giving birth. It all went up in smoke. A funeral pyre. A testimony to my grief.’ He took a breath. ‘I didn’t want anyone else living in it. I knew if it remained empty somebody would move in, tramps or gypsies, and I wasn’t having that. I wanted my memories left intact.’

  The air was still. There was hardly a breath of wind, just a slight swaying of the grasses. ‘I can’t feel anything,’ Susannah murmured. ‘I thought that I’d be able to sense her presence. But I can’t.’

  ‘That’s because you didn’t know her,’ Joseph said.

  ‘And that is my sadness,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘One I have to bear.’

  ‘But you have your daughter,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen her grow up and marry.’ He clasped Susannah’s hand. ‘I told Mary-Ellen that I would love her for ever and I shall. I promised too that I would love our child, you, and I will. I do.’

  He put his arm round her as they walked back to the estuary, and she leaned her head against him, her skirts trailing in the mud and becoming caught amongst the brambles. When they reached the top of the embankment she looked back down the grassy slope.

  ‘Why don’t you build a house here?’ she suggested. ‘For Mary-Ellen’s granddaughter and Edmund? Young people need a house of their own – not to live side by side with their grandparents.’

  Joseph thought of Arlette, who had said she would stay with him. They had agreed to try to make a life together, and they would, he believed. I remember now how she used to make me laugh, how spirited she was, even though I now know that she was suffering too. And he thought of his sister Julia who had asked him if she might have a house of her own. Just a small one, she had said, where I can take in one or two waifs or strays. Which left Amy, who would live with them until she too married.

  He looked back down the slope. Swifts and swallows darted overhead, preparing for the long flight south. By next week they would be gone. A skein of geese flying in short formation were flying in off the estuary, calling their croaking anxious cry. A salty breeze was beginning to rise, causing tree branches to sway, rustling and whispering the grasses. An owl, awakened early, hooted, and he thought he could hear laughter. Was it an echo from the past or the sound of the future? Susannah was right. He should build a house there so that the voices of young people and children could be heard. His mouth turned up. Great-grandchildren! Now that was something to think about.

  ‘But I still miss her,’ he murmured, hardly aware that he had spoken aloud.

  ‘She lives on, Father,’ Susannah said softly, and his throat tightened at the loving name. ‘She lives on through me, and through Laura and James, and whoever might come after.’ She tucked her arm into his. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘Don’t let’s look back. We must now look forward.’

  THE END

  About the Author

  Val Wood was born in Yorkshire, where she still lives. Her first novel, The Hungry Tide, was the first winner of the Catherine Cookson Prize for Fiction.

  For more information on Val Wood and her books see her website at www.valeriewood.co.uk

  Also by Val Wood

  THE HUNGRY TIDE

  ANNIE

  CHILDREN OF THE TIDE

  THE ROMANY GIRL

  EMILY

  GOING HOME

  ROSA’S ISLAND

  THE DOORSTEP GIRLS

  FAR FROM HOME

  THE KITCHEN MAID

  THE SONGBIRD

  FALLEN ANGELS

  THE LONG WALK HOME

  RICH GIRL, POOR GIRL

  and published by Corgi Books

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

  61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  A Random House Group Company

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  NOBODY’S CHILD

  A CORGI BOOK: 9780552152211

  Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446436325

  Originally published in Great Britain by Bantam Press,

  a division of Transworld Publishers

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Bantam Press edition published 2006

  Corgi edition published 2007

  9 10 8

  Copyright © Valerie Wood 2006

  The right of Valerie Wood to be identified as the author of this

  work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance

  to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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