The Fisher Lass

by Margaret Dickinson

  Eight

  Robert weaved his way amongst the fish troughs ignoring the raucous shouts from the girls until he found himself standing opposite a tall, slim girl with her bright red hair tied back. Her hands never slowed in their movements, yet he was aware of her glances. He could not fail to see the anger and resentment in the flash of those green eyes that told him she knew exactly who he was and what he had done.

  Surely this couldn’t be the girl he had supposedly attacked? She looked too feisty, too spirited to have . . . And then suddenly he knew. She was the one who had flown to the other’s rescue. This was the girl who had shouted at him and hauled him away.

  Ever since the day of his wedding he had promised himself to come down to the docks to seek her out. But now, standing before her, Robert’s mouth was suddenly parched. He ran his tongue around his lips and when he tried to speak his voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. ‘Excuse me. Might I – er – have a word with you in private?’

  ‘I canna leave me work,’ was her curt reply.

  Robert was immediately aware that close by all the chatter and noise had ceased and though the work never slowed, he knew that all who could overhear were listening hard.

  He swallowed and tried again. ‘I would like to speak to you. Could I meet you somewhere when you finish work?’

  ‘Meet me? Meet me?’ Suddenly the sharp blade of the knife she was wielding with such effect on the fish, was being held threateningly only inches from his face. ‘Like to meet me in a dark alley, would you?’

  He stepped back to find himself up against one of the girl packers at the next trough.

  ‘Mind where yer treadin’, mister.’

  There was laughter all round. ‘Aye, he wants to mind where he’s treadin’ all right.’

  His face reddening, Robert turned and blundered away, the sound of their suggestive taunts following him.

  ‘I’ll meet you round the back, mister, if she won’t.’

  ‘Fancied a bit of rough, did you?’

  Jeannie bent her head over her work, thrusting the blade into the fish with a vicious delight. How she would like to have slashed at his face; marred those godlike good looks, that smooth, boyish skin.

  Then suddenly a wave of shame swept through her. She had always known she had a quick temper, but until this moment she had never experienced such a passionate hatred for anyone. The violence of her feelings shocked her.

  She paused a moment and glanced up to watch him hurrying away, his shoulders hunched.

  She felt Flora’s elbow dig her in the ribs. ‘That the one who attacked Grace Lawrence, then?’

  Jeannie turned wide eyes on her team-mate. ‘How on earth . . .?’

  The girl laughed. ‘Och, news travels fast on the fish dock, Jeannie. You canna keep a secret round here for long.’

  Jeannie said nothing until Flora prompted again, ‘Well, was it him?’

  In a quiet, flat tone, Jeannie answered. ‘Aye.’

  Flora nodded towards the corner of the building around which Robert had disappeared from their sight. ‘You should have given him a chance to explain, maybe to apologize even. He’s only a wee laddie, Jeannie. You should have given him a chance.’

  ‘Him and his friends weren’t giving poor Grace “a chance”,’ Jeannie retorted bitterly. Yet she was honest enough to admit that now she had seen him close to and in daylight, he was much younger than she had expected.

  ‘Aye well,’ Flora was saying, her tone philosophical. ‘From what I heard, if Grace Lawrence goes visiting Aggie Turnbull’s, then she can expect all she gets.’

  ‘You two goin’ to gossip all day,’ came the truculent voice of their packer from behind them. ‘I’m waiting.’

  Jeannie guessed that Mary had seen what had happened and overheard every word, had learned the truth about the young man she had so admired from a distance. And Mary didn’t like it.

  ‘Sorry,’ Jeannie said at once and again her knife blade flashed, but this time only upon the fish.

  He was waiting in the shadows on the corner of Baldock Street when Jeannie and Grace made their way home.

  ‘Excuse me . . .’ When he stepped out in front of them, both girls jumped and Grace gave a little scream.

  He glanced briefly at Jeannie but now it was upon Grace that his gaze rested.

  ‘Please . . .’ He put out his hand to catch hold of her arm and Grace screamed again, the sound echoing along the street.

  ‘Don’t you dare to even touch her,’ Jeannie hissed and stepped between them.

  ‘Please, you’ve got it all wrong. I’ve come to apologize – to explain—’

  ‘What is there to explain, mister? You attacked an innocent young lass. A gang of you. What chance had she got, eh?’

  Even in the fading light, she could see that he turned white. ‘I was drunk. I can’t even remember clearly what happened. I would never – ever – have done such a thing in my – my right mind.’ He swallowed painfully and again he looked directly at Grace. ‘Did – did I hurt you?’

  Mutely, Grace shook her head but fiercely Jeannie said, ‘Only frightened her out of her wits. And who’s to know what might have happened . . .’ She didn’t add ‘if I hadn’t come along’ for even to her own ears, it would have sounded boastful.

  He was putting his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Please, let me . . .?’ He opened a leather wallet and extracted a five-pound note and thrust it towards Grace, but before the girl could even reach out, Jeannie wrenched the piece of paper money from his fingers and tore it into shreds, casting it into the gutter. ‘How dare you? How dare you insult her like that?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I only wanted—’

  ‘We ken what you wanted.’ She grabbed Grace’s arm now and hauled her along the street, calling back over her shoulder, ‘You and your like! Think the fisher lasses are good for only one thing.’

  Robert stood staring after them whilst, as Jeannie dragged her away, Grace twisted her head round to watch the little pieces of white paper float along the gutter and disappear down a drain.

  Jeannie was still seething about the incident when they arrived home but Nell, her fingers still busy braiding a net, seemed to accept the news calmly. In fact, to Jeannie’s annoyance, Grace’s mother seemed almost to be taking the young man’s part.

  ‘I canna understand you.’ Jeannie spread her hands, palms upwards, in a gesture of exasperated disbelief. ‘Any of you. Just because he’s the son of the owner of the ships, you’re going to allow him to get away with what he did to Grace.’

  ‘He didna do anything to Grace, did he? Not really?’ And as Jeannie opened her mouth to retaliate, Nell held up her hand. ‘Och I ken, lassie, what he – and all the others – might well have done if you hadna come along when you did.’ For a moment, Nell actually dropped the length of sisal she was holding and moved towards Jeannie. Taking her hands between her own, Nell said gently, ‘I ken how you feel, hen, and what you’d like to do to those – those . . .’ The word to fit the description of what she felt for them defeated her and her sentence ended in a sigh. ‘And I feel just the same . . .’ She balled her hand into a fist and smacked her own plump chest. ‘In here. Really I do. But there’s nothing – nothing we can do. It’s best left.’

  ‘But to come down to the dockside today. To seek her out in front of everyone and offer her money. The final insult. How could he do that?’ Jeannie burst out.

  Grace, who had stood nearby quietly listening to every word, spoke up now. ‘He was going to give me five pounds, Mam. A whole five-pound note, but – but Jeannie tore it up under his nose and threw it into the gutter.’

  For a fleeting moment even Nell blinked and glanced from one to the other, a moment’s unguarded hesitation on her features. Five pounds to a fisherman’s family, even a skipper’s family, was a lot of money. She gave a little sigh and a tiny shrug of her shoulders as if to dismiss it from her mind and then, looking once more directly into Jeannie’s eyes, she said softly, ‘Ha
ve you stopped to think, hen, what courage it must have taken for that young man to come amongst all the lassies on the docks today? They’re the salt of the earth, all of them, I’ll never say different, but they wouldna have been beyond turning on him if they’d all known the full story. He could easily have found himself rolling in the mud, his clothes torn from his back. They might even have thrown him into the water. Son of an owner or not, if they’d all done it, there’d have been precious little anyone, including the police, could have done about it.’

  Jeannie, still unforgiving, her mouth a straight hard line, leant a little closer to Nell and said, with quiet deliberation, ‘Aye, an’ if I’d known that this afternoon, Mrs Lawrence, I’d have led them on mysel’.’

  Nell gazed at her for a long moment and then nodded slowly. Her eyes softened as she smiled. ‘Aye, I do believe you would have done, hen. For you’re a brave, feisty girl, and I’ll thank God every day of my life that you came along at that moment. But you know something, Jeannie lass . . .?’ The older woman patted the hand she still held. ‘You’re always going to be the one that others lean on. Because you are so strong, you’re always going to be the one they all come to. All your life, lass, you’re going to have to carry the burdens for those nearest to you.’ For another moment she held Jeannie’s gaze and then she turned away, bustling back to her work. ‘What am I doing standing here blethering on as if next week’ll do. I’ve this net to finish by the morning and I’ll be up half the night as it is.’

  ‘I’ll help you, if you like,’ Jeannie volunteered and Nell glanced at her again, this time with surprise in her eyes.

  ‘You know how to braid?’

  Jeannie nodded and a lump came into her throat as she said hoarsely, ‘I had a very good teacher. The best. My father taught me.’

  Aware that the girl was perhaps reliving painful memories, deliberately Nell pulled a comical face. ‘Is there anything you canna do, lass?’

  Now Jeannie laughed as she moved towards the net to watch Nell’s quick fingers for a moment. ‘Plenty,’ she said and added wryly, ‘I’m no great shakes in the kitchen. The man who takes me on’ll have to have a strong stomach.’

  The two women laughed together and behind them even Grace smiled as she turned away, the one, by the sound of it, to cook the meal again that evening.

  Nine

  ‘Tell me about your home, hen,’ Nell said softly. ‘Your mother and father and where you come from.’

  They were sitting by the fire late one evening, just the two of them, waiting for Grace to come home.

  ‘We lived in a small fishing village on the Fife coast,’ Jeannie began and suddenly she could almost feel again the wind on her face as she had stood on the wall watching her father’s boat becoming a mere speck on the horizon as he sailed away. A wave of homesickness for the whitewashed, gabled cottages that clustered around the harbour, the ever-open doors of friendly neighbours in the tiny community where everybody knew everyone else, washed over her.

  Faltering a little at first, Jeannie went on to tell Nell’s sympathetic ear about her childhood, the loss of her mother, but when she spoke of her father there was a catch in her voice. ‘My father’s sister took care of me when he was at sea but I used to live for his time ashore. He’d take me into Kirkcaldy and buy me clothes and presents or even to Edinburgh. Och, he used to spoil me rotten. Once he took me on a real holiday to the Trossachs. D’you know, if I close my eyes . . .’ she did so to demonstrate, ‘I can still see the wet rocks and hear the rushing water of the Falls.’

  She sighed and opened her eyes bringing herself back to the tiny, cramped kitchen that was miles from her homeland. She forced a smile and said, ‘Mr Lawrence reminds me of him in so many ways. He even looks a bit like him.’ She laughed. ‘He has a beard like him.’

  ‘Aye, he’s a good man is my George,’ Nell said dreamily as if she too were thinking back. ‘The first time I laid eyes on him, Jeannie, I knew he was the man for me. I just never went home.’

  ‘Have you ever been back to Scotland? For a visit?’

  Nell pressed her lips together and shook her head. ‘We couldna afford it, specially when the bairns came along. And now all ma family in Scotland are gone. There’s no point in going home. I’ve been homesick many a time. But you see, hen, I loved George Lawrence. And he,’ she ended simply, ‘was here.’

  ‘But you still call Scotland “home”?’

  The two women exchanged a glance. ‘Aye well,’ Nell said. ‘You never forget your roots, do you, hen?’ She paused a moment and then asked gently, as if already half-guessing the answer, ‘And your father?’

  Mutely, Jeannie shook her head and then the words came haltingly. ‘He – he didna come back from his last trip. He was with the fleet – the herring fleet. He has . . .’ She hesitated and then deliberately said, ‘Had – his own little steam drifter.’ She bit her lip and fell silent.

  ‘How long since his boat went missing?’ Nell’s soft, lilting voice was a balm to Jeannie’s tormented heart. The sound of home and yet far enough away to lend a remoteness that in itself was a comfort.

  ‘It’s – it’s been four months now. I know it must sound foolish, but that’s why I came further south. I thought he might have put into another port for a wee while for repairs and then maybe moved on, following the herring fleet, y’ken . . .? Her voice trailed away. Then Jeannie pulled in a deep breath and with a determined effort, she said, more strongly, ‘But I know I ought to face the fact that he – he’s gone. If he’d been all right, I’d have heard by now. He wouldna have let me go this long without a word from him.’

  ‘Aw lassie, I’m sorry.’ Nell had reached out and gripped the girl’s hand, but she probed no further.

  The room was silent for a moment save for the ticking of the clock and the spitting of a log on the fire.

  ‘How long was it before you married Mr Lawrence? After you’d met him, I mean?’

  ‘Och well, I went on with the fisher lasses right down the coast to Yarmouth, but instead of going back home at the end of the season, I came back here and we were married on his next shore leave.’ She smiled impishly at the memory. ‘There were a few too many local girls with their eye on George Lawrence for my liking.’ A slight shadow crossed her eyes as she murmured, ‘One in particular . . .’ Then she cleared her throat and was smiling again, ‘And I couldna let him escape my net, now could I?’

  As they laughed together, Nell glanced up at the clock and her expression sobered. ‘It’s time Grace was home. Surely she can’t be working as late as this again?’

  ‘Would you like me to go and look for her?’

  ‘No, no, Jeannie. I’ll wait up. You be away to your bed. Tomorrow’s a big day . . .’ Her face was wreathed in a happy smile again. ‘The men will be home again.’

  As Jeannie rose Nell reached up and patted her cheek affectionately. ‘Sleep well, hen.’

  When George Lawrence stepped into the house, Nell came alive. The big man brought light and laughter into the little terraced house and even the ever-present net lay limply, half-braided, against the wall whilst Nell bustled about after her husband. It wasn’t that she was miserable when he was at sea, but the moment he came home there was a sparkle in her eyes, a smile on her lips and an extra spring to her step.

  ‘Get yar bonnets on, girls. I’ve been for me settlings . . .’ He spilled a bundle of notes and coins on to the table. ‘It was a good trip, so I’m taking you into the town. You too, Jeannie.’ He reached out and gathered most of the notes together. ‘Here’s your housekeeping, Nell. And this . . .’ he picked up the remaining money, ‘is to spend.’

  He took them to Main Street, Nell, Grace and Jeannie.

  ‘It’s lucky there were no herring boats in today, else you’d have missed this,’ Grace said, linking her arm through Jeannie’s, but her new-found friend’s reply was a heavy sigh.

  ‘The shoals of fish are moving south. The girls will be going too soon.’

  ‘Shall you g
o?’

  Jeannie shrugged. ‘I dinna ken.’ Then she smiled. ‘Let’s no’ think about it today. Let’s enjoy ourselves.’

  ‘Yes, let’s,’ Grace agreed.

  And enjoy themselves they did. They had dinner in a fancy restaurant and George took them round the shops and insisted on buying each one of them a new winter coat.

  ‘Och no,’ Jeannie resisted. ‘I couldn’t possibly.’

  ‘Go on, hen.’ Nell nudged her and winked. ‘Our Tom’ll be home soon and I know he wants to take you out. You’d look lovely in that dark green coat with your pretty hair.’

  Jeannie felt a lump come into her throat.

  Spending lavishly after a good trip, George Lawrence reminded Jeannie even more of her father. Thinking of him, she felt the familiar ache in her chest. The only difference was when he spoke, for George’s Lincolnshire dialect was nothing like the brogue of Angus Buchanan. But for today, she could imagine she had her father back with her, so she lifted her chin, smiled and thanked the big, generous man.

  ‘I told you, didn’t I?’ Flora said. ‘There he is.’

  ‘Who?’ Jeannie looked up, her gutting knife still for a few seconds.

  ‘Francis Hayes-Gorton.’ Mary nudged her from behind. ‘Look, over there. Oh, but he’s handsome. Just look at his fine clothes.’

  Jeannie’s eyes narrowed as she studied the man. He was, as Flora had predicted, strolling about on the edge of the area where the girls worked, idly swinging his cane, his thumb hooked into the pocket of his waistcoat.

  ‘I wouldna trust that one,’ Flora put in. ‘Now, if you’d told me that he was the one who had attacked Grace Lawrence, I’d have believed it.’ She shook her head. ‘But, you know, I still canna believe it was the other one. Robert.’

  ‘He was there.’ Jeannie nodded her head towards Francis.

  ‘Was he trying to stop what was going on then?’ Flora probed.

  ‘Well . . .’ Jeannie hesitated. ‘I think it was him who was the ringleader but, to be truthful, I dinna ken. I just waded in. I didna wait to see who was doing what exactly.’ She grinned ruefully. ‘Me and my temper.’