Every Mother's Son

by Val Wood

  I’d heard of brothels; there were a few in Hull, some quite well known ones in Leadenhall Square, for instance, where the respectable neighbourhood wanted ’houses pulling down; my ma had always told me to keep well clear of that area.

  Rosie shifted a bit in the chair and Joseph sleepily protested. I was innocent then, she thought, but not for much longer. Mrs Stone was very kind to me and made me comfortable, gave me supper and offered me a bed for ’night, and she had a lovely home. It was when some of her girls started to arrive that I became suspicious, but it was getting dark by then and I’d no means of getting back to Hull that night or even ’following morning, so I stayed and then ’next day she put the proposition to me.

  Rosie breathed deeply. I sometimes think it all happened to somebody else, but I can’t deny it, it was me, and I stayed with her for a couple of years and it was there that I met Marco and fell in love with him and had his child, which foolishly I thought I could keep. But of course I couldn’t; Mrs Stone wouldn’t allow it. She said it wasn’t a suitable place to bring up a child, and it wasn’t, but I thought that one day Marco would come back for me, as he said he would. But he didn’t.

  Nathaniel Tuke had been a regular visitor to the house. Poor man, we felt sorry for him, although some of the meaner girls used to laugh at him. But I didn’t. I felt sorry that his wife Ellen kept him from her bed and he had to visit such a place as ours. But unbeknown to me, he’d asked Mrs Stone if one of us would give him a child, a son. He told her it was what he wanted, and that he was willing to pay and ’child would be well looked after and given a good home, so after I’d had Noah Mrs Stone suggested that we say Noah was his, even though I knew very well he wasn’t. I didn’t want to part with him, I wept over him but Mrs Stone said that he couldn’t stay, and I’d have to leave if I didn’t agree.

  Rosie stirred herself and opened her eyes; the dinner smelled good. She sighed again. It was difficult reliving the past, and it would be even more difficult explaining to her grandson Daniel, the son of Noah who hadn’t lived long enough to know him, just what had happened. And I can’t tell all, she thought, it wouldn’t be right; it’s not ’sort of discussion for such a young lad. That would have to come when he was grown up and able to understand.

  But some good has come out of it after all, for me at any rate. Noah married Harriet and she gave birth to Daniel, but ’saddest thing was that Ellen Tuke hadn’t treated Noah as her own as I thought she would, and he was never told that he didn’t belong to them, or that Fletcher wasn’t his brother, not until it was too late, and so he never knew he’d been born to someone who had really loved him.

  ‘We’re about ready to eat, Rosie.’ Harriet bent over her and picked up a sleepy Joseph. ‘You’ve had a nice nap, haven’t you?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t asleep. Just dozing, you know, and thinking.’

  ‘What were you thinking about?’ Harriet smiled down at her.

  ‘Well, about what I was going to tell Daniel about his father – about Noah. I don’t want him to think ’worst of me,’ she added in a whisper.

  ‘He won’t do that,’ Harriet said gently. ‘Not my boy. And besides, we won’t tell him everything.’

  They all sat down at the big wooden table, which was covered in a large white cloth: Fletcher and Harriet, Rosie and the four older children, and Tom Bolton, who often had Sunday dinner with them. Elizabeth sat in a high wooden chair and banged the tray with a wooden spoon.

  The pork was tender and the crackling crisp and succulent. Dolly had done well with the Yorkshire pudding and apple sauce, and Rosie commented that Harriet had taught her daughters well.

  Harriet nodded. ‘It’s so important,’ she said. ‘My ma never had enough money to buy food for cooking or baking and we didn’t have an oven anyway. We ate ready-made bread and pies, which were ’onny things we could afford.’

  Maria and Dolly gasped at the thought and Daniel too raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Were you very poor as well, Gran?’ he asked. ‘As poor as Ma, I mean.’

  ‘Not when I lived with my ma and da,’ she said. ‘But after they died I was. It wasn’t until I married Mr Gilbank that I had a house of my own and a bit of money to spend.’

  Rosie could see that Daniel was chewing this over as well as the pork, and waited for the inevitable question.

  ‘So how is it that Noah’s got Morley, Orsini and Tuke on his gravestone?’ he asked after a moment. ‘But not Gilbank? Was it because there wasn’t enough room for another name?’

  ‘There are rather a lot of names, aren’t there?’ she said. ‘But no, that’s not ’reason. Rosie Morley was my name and Marco Orsini was Noah’s father’s, but Marco went away and didn’t come back, you see, and after some years had gone by I met Mr Gilbank and he asked me to marry him. I didn’t want to live by myself so I said I would.’

  Dear man, she thought. He saved my life if he did but know it.

  ‘So,’ Daniel’s forehead creased, ‘why wasn’t Noah living with you? And why was his name Tuke?’

  Rosie hesitated, unsure of what to say, and Harriet jumped in. ‘When your grandfather went away, Granny Rosie didn’t have any money and had to go out to work, so your Granny and Grandad Tuke looked after him for her.’

  Daniel thought about that for a minute, and then turned back to Rosie. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but couldn’t you have asked for Noah back when you married Mr Gilbank, instead of leaving him with Granny Tuke?’

  ‘Oh, but he was quite grown up by then,’ Rosie said, ‘and …’ She was looking pink and flustered, and this time it was Fletcher who came to her rescue.

  ‘And besides,’ he interrupted, ‘I’d have missed Noah if he’d left Marsh Farm, just as Lenny and Joseph and ’girls would miss you if you went away.’

  Daniel tucked into the rest of his dinner, and said, ‘Yeh, but I’m not going anywhere. Not yet anyway. I might later on, mebbe when I’m grown up, say,’ he paused as if calculating, ‘fifteen.’ He thought for a moment, and then said, ‘Tom, can we go out in your boat sometime, just to get ’feel of the water?’

  Tom grinned. He’d been a barge man on the estuary before taking up farming with Fletcher, and he’d been primed that there might be a question and answer session at this meal. He knew as much about Noah as any of the other adults round the table.

  ‘Yeh,’ he said. ‘Course we can.’

  ‘And then, Gran,’ Daniel continued, ‘if I’m all right, not seasick or anything, then I might get a job on board ship for a year or two and go off on voyages, and mebbe …’ He took another forkful of pork and chewed it thoughtfully. Daniel did nothing without considering it carefully first. ‘And mebbe I’ll go and try to find Marco Orsini and tell him who I am, and ask him if he’d like to come back home wi’ me and see Rosie again.’ He grinned at the company seated around the table and then turned his attention back to Rosie. ‘What do you think about that?’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Below Elloughton Dale and nearer the estuary, in the vicinity of Broomfleet, sat Hart Holme Manor, the home of landowner Christopher Hart, his wife Melissa and their four children.

  Melissa was Christopher’s second wife, his first wife Jane having died many years before he met Melissa, who was twenty years his junior. Jane had given him a daughter, Amy, now married and living in London with children of her own.

  He and Melissa had been married for five years before she had the twins, Charles and Beatrice. Stephen was born two years later and George followed a year after, and that was quite enough sons for any man over fifty, Christopher thought, though with a wife only in her early thirties they might not be the last. But it was very tiring looking after a large estate, even with a bailiff to organize the general running of it, and an early evening in bed, to read or sleep, was very desirable. Charles would not be twelve until December, and even supposing he begins helping out on the estate as early as eighteen, when he finishes school, Christopher thought, sighing, I will be sixty, with little chance of retiring early.


  Charles had gone away to school when he was ten, much later than his father had wanted, but Melissa couldn’t bear to part with him and had said adamantly that eight was far too young for a boy to be sent away from his mother. Melissa liked to have her children at home and hadn’t entertained any thought of sending Beatrice away to school even though she was the one who was always climbing trees and had been the first to ride a pony; having taken her first tumble when she was five, she had run after and caught her pony and climbed back on again, whilst Charles after his first fall had gone hopping to Nanny Mary to have his knee bandaged.

  School, however had toughened Charles up, and although he didn’t get into fights with other boys he refused to be bullied and often went to the aid of those who were, and could fell his opponents with a glare or a few well-chosen words; when it was time for Stephen and George to join him, Melissa was quite sure they would be looked after by their older brother.

  Charles was like his father in looks, tall, fair-haired and slim, but whilst Beatrice was also fair she was beginning to develop curves like her mother and had her angelic features, which hid much mischief. Both children had a special friendship with Daniel even though they saw less of each other now that Charles was at school and Beatrice wasn’t allowed out of the grounds on her own; but unbeknown to either set of parents the twins and Daniel met frequently during the school holidays, and if Beatrice could have sneaked away from her governess to trek up the dale on her own and find Daniel at home she would have.

  Harriet was awake an hour earlier than usual and knew as soon as her feet touched the floor, as soon as she felt the nausea rising, that she was pregnant again. Well, she thought philosophically, at least there’ll be a reasonable gap between Elizabeth and the next one. Elizabeth will be nearly three by then and able to do more things for herself. She swallowed hard and hoped that she could manage to get outside before she was sick and so keep the news from Fletcher for a little longer. It would have to be today of all days to discover it, she thought; one of our busiest weeks of the year.

  She knew she could rely on Maria to help out, but she wanted her eldest daughter to enjoy her childhood and not be tied to the kitchen chores or looking after the younger children. Nor be like me at that age, already trying to find work to help out with ’family finances … and then she laughed at herself: listen to me, finances, a pittance more like, that my mother brought home from the mill.

  Fletcher had raked the ash beneath the fire and set the kettle over it to boil. She loved him for those little touches and for the fact that he didn’t expect her to do everything for him. She stood by the open door and breathed in the fresh morning air and thought that perhaps she wouldn’t be sick after all, that the nausea was subsiding, so maybe, but only maybe, she wasn’t pregnant after all.

  ‘Good morning, my lovely.’ Fletcher crossed the yard and came towards the house. ‘Did I wake you?’ He kissed the tip of her nose, and then, with his hands on her shoulders, said, ‘You look beautiful this morning.’

  She smiled. ‘You allus know how to get round a woman.’

  ‘Not just any woman,’ he said. ‘Onny one.’ He smacked her rump. ‘Now get inside,’ he joked, ‘and cook my breakfast.’

  It was as she was cooking the bacon and sausage that she felt queasy again, and moving the pan off the heat she rushed outside. Fletcher’s gaze followed her, but he went to the bottom of the stairs and called up, ‘Maria! Daniel! Time you were up.’

  They were both downstairs in ten minutes and by then Harriet was back inside. She’d swilled her hands and face under the outside pump and was back cooking again, but she knew without doubt that she wouldn’t be eating any of it. She saw Fletcher’s eyes upon her and he raised his eyebrows questioningly, and so she nodded. He would guess anyway; no need now to try to keep the news from him.

  There was no further chance to talk as Tom Bolton arrived as she was dishing up and sat down to join them for breakfast; then they heard the clatter of wheels, the rattle of carts and the sound of men’s voices, and the first day of harvesting began.

  Although Tom’s working life had begun as an apprentice on the barges that plied the estuary, whenever he was able to he had worked on the local farms at harvest time or filled in as a general labourer to earn extra money. He had known the farmers in the district since he was a lad, and they regarded him as reliable; it was through one of them that he had heard of the piece of land that was coming up for sale in Elloughton Dale. At a hundred and fifty acres it was too small and too far from his home farm to be of use to the farmer who had told him of it, but to Tom, who, having no wife or dependants, had managed to save some of his earnings, and Fletcher, who was desperate for a fresh start away from the waterlogged marshes where his parents had scraped a living, it was a gift from heaven. Fletcher too had saved money during a period when he’d worked in America.

  After laying drainage pipes on the land they had decided on a mixed farm, growing some crops and keeping livestock, and what Tom didn’t know about cows, pigs or sheep he more than made up for with a head for figures and a practical knowledge of building barns, sheds or fences, as well as understanding the workings of the new machinery which was being invented week by week, but was at present beyond their reach. They had paid good money for a plough, and the next thing on the list to buy when they could afford it would be a manure spreader, which would save them much time and effort. Meanwhile, with one or two exceptions such as the harvest which they couldn’t tackle without the help of friends and neighbours, the two of them could manage just about everything else.

  At midday, Harriet and Maria came out with baskets containing bread and beef, meat and potato pasties, some sweet cake and jugs of cold tea. Many of the local men brought their own dinner or lowance as they called it, an expression that had amused Harriet when she had first heard it, and Fletcher had laughed and called her a townie.

  When they had distributed the food and were turning to go back to the house, Maria said suddenly, ‘What’s Dolly doing, Ma? I thought she was looking after Elizabeth and Joseph.’

  Harriet looked across to where Maria was pointing towards a dozen or more horses that had been resting and drinking from a wooden trough, but were now shuffling and stamping their big legs and feet.

  ‘What’s she doing? She’ll get trampled!’ Harriet raised her voice. ‘Dolly! Come away! Don’t disturb ’hosses.’

  Dolly looked up. ‘Help me,’ she shouted. ‘Joseph is under ’hosses’ feet. He can’t get out.’

  Harriet gave a startled cry and began to run. ‘Fletcher!’ she screamed. ‘Fletcher!’

  Fletcher, standing with Tom and Daniel and taking a drink of cold tea, looked up. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Summat wrong wi’ hosses,’ Tom said.

  But Daniel, being shorter, had spotted somebody or something in the melee beneath the horses’ legs. ‘Come quick, Da,’ he shouted. ‘It’s our Joseph. He’s under ’hosses’ feet.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  On the track above the dale and looking down on the harvesting scene were three figures on horseback. Beatrice, Charles and the apprentice groom Aaron were out riding. The twins were not allowed out of their home grounds without someone older and responsible in attendance.

  ‘Which is not fair,’ Beatrice had argued with her mother. ‘Aaron is no better on horseback than either of us, and besides …’ she’d hesitated, as she liked Aaron and didn’t want to say anything against him, ‘he’s only sixteen and rather slow.’

  ‘You’re not going out for a gallop,’ her mother said. ‘You must keep to the tracks and bridleways.’

  ‘I didn’t mean slow at riding,’ Beatrice muttered.

  ‘She means he hasn’t got much in the top attic,’ Charles grinned.

  ‘Do not let me hear that kind of language,’ Melissa said sharply. ‘Aaron hasn’t had the benefit of an education as you have, but he’s perfectly capable, and if there should be any kind of accident he’d be able to ride for help, whil
st one of you would stay with the other.’

  ‘But Mama,’ Beatrice protested. ‘There isn’t going to be an accident.’

  But now, as they looked down on the men and women scurrying across the fields, they both wondered if there was and whether they should send Aaron home for help.

  ‘That’s Daniel!’ Charles said. ‘Look how he runs. He’s so fast.’

  ‘There’s something under ’hosses feet that’s scaring ’em.’ Aaron narrowed his eyes. ‘Looks like a nipper, a young bairn.’

  ‘Oh!’ Beatrice moaned. ‘I hope it’s not one of Daniel’s brothers. But he’s calming them; look, he’s trying to settle them. Should we go down, do you think?’

  ‘No, miss,’ Aaron said quite firmly. ‘Not yet anyway. There’re plenty o’ folks to give a hand. We’d onny be in ’way. Besides, we ought to—’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure we wouldn’t. Do you think we’d be in the way, Charles?’

  ‘Don’t know. Maybe we should wait, but Daniel’s gone between their legs. Goodness,’ he exhaled. ‘They’re such big brutes, he could get trampled on.’

  ‘They’re not brutes, Master Charles,’ Aaron intervened. ‘They’re gentle animals, but they’ll be scared—’

  ‘I didn’t mean that – oh, but look! Daniel’s got the boy out. Is he all right, do you think? I think we should go down. Come on!’

  Charles dug his heels into his mount’s flanks and was off down the hillside with Beatrice behind him before Aaron could stop them.

  They dismounted when they reached the scene and handed their reins up to Aaron, who had reluctantly followed, then went towards the small crowd gathered about Harriet, who was kneeling on the ground and cradling the toddler.