The Hungry Tide

by Valerie Wood

  He watched with quiet amusement as his cousin Lucy and Sarah tottered unsteadily by Lizzie’s side. One silky fair head and one tangled mop of red curls played happily together in the room at the top of the house which had been designated a nursery.

  As he recovered, fed on quantities of Mrs Scryven’s Yorkshire Pie, the topping of thick crust hiding deep layers of tender pigeon flavoured with sweet bay and lovage, a cure, she assured him, for a weary traveller, he began to have qualms of conscience. He thought of his companions from the ship who had no such comfort as this, and of the widows who had been left to fend for themselves, and one fine morning he rose and packed his bag and returned to Hull. His aim was to improve conditions for the seamen who sailed in Masterson ships, that their life on board, though perilous, might have some little comfort, and in this he had his uncle’s full support.

  Will saw little of his former shipmate, and John’s visits to Monkston were less frequent as he became more and more involved in the whaling industry. Isaac made him a partner, and their company prospered with the addition of his youthful enthusiasm and as the need for blubber and whalebone continued to rise. More industries sprang up to produce oil for lighting and heating, lubricants for machinery, household goods like brushes and blinds, as well as the accessories of fashion, stays and corsets and parasols.

  Increasingly, decisions were left to Will with regard to the running of the farm. Though Dick Reedbarrow decided when to plough and when to sow, Will found that he could strike a good bargain in the buying of stock and grain, and his reputation increased with the local farmers. He had regular fortnightly discussions with Isaac Masterson when he would report on problems and policies, and yet he never met his master’s wife face to face until Lucy and Sarah were four years old.

  He walked one day alongside the coppiced woodland, where the hazel was sending up a dense mass of thin straight shoots which soon they would split and use for sheep fencing and securing thatch to the cottage roofs, or making supports for hay ricks. He could smell the sweet aroma of hay as he turned towards the meadow. The weather had been fine and dry and the men had turned the hay, exposing it to the sunlight and ensuring a good crop of dry winter feed for the livestock.

  He smiled as he heard the sound of childish laughter and looked over the hedge into the garden where Lucy and Sarah were playing. Lizzie was nearby and she waved to him cheerfully.

  ‘Chase me, Sarah,’ Lucy called. ‘Chase me, and then I’ll chase thee.’

  He stopped to watch them as they ran around the garden, laughing as Lucy took a tumble head over heels into the shrubbery. She started to laugh and then her laughter turned to tears and she started to scream shrilly in pain.

  ‘It bit me, it bit me,’ she screamed as an angry cloud of wasps flew up from the ground where she had fallen and buzzed menacingly around her head.

  Will ran round the side of the hedge and into the garden and scooped up the hysterical child, then came to a sharp stop in front of Mrs Masterson.

  Isobel had been strolling idly on the terrace, her cream parasol held above her head to keep away the sun and the insects which were such an annoyance to her. She heard the children calling and descended the stone steps into the garden, calling to Lizzie in admonishment at the clamour they were making as they chased around the lawn, when Lucy fell and she found herself face to face with Will Foster.

  ‘She’s all right, ma-am. Just a wasp sting. She must have fallen on to a nest. I’ll get ’gardener to smoke them out.’

  Isobel gazed at him in confusion, her cheeks flushing slightly. She had avoided him for so long, not daring to face his disability, and now he was standing in front of her, tall and straight and her own child clinging to him with her arms around his neck. For the need of something to do she put her hand up to comfort the fretful child, although the crying exasperated her.

  ‘Don’t want Mama. Want Maria,’ Lucy cried and petulantly pushed her mother’s hand away. ‘Maria make it better, Will?’

  ‘I’ll take her in, ma-am, and they’ll put some vinegar on it.’ Will didn’t smile at the woman who employed him and from whose sight he had been barred, but merely displayed a politeness which was natural to him but which he didn’t at this moment feel.

  He carried Lucy across the wide lawn towards the back of the house, tickling her face with his rough beard to make her laugh, and leaving Isobel staring after them. Lizzie took Sarah by the hand and dropping a curtsey turned to go. Sarah too gave a little bend of her knee and then waved her hand at Isobel. ‘Mama make Lucy better,’ she smiled sweetly.

  ‘I met ’mistress today.’ Will remarked to Maria later when they were alone. ‘I think she was surprised to find that I hadn’t got two heads.’

  ‘Don’t be bitter, Will. She can’t help being ’way she is.’

  ‘Happen not,’ he replied. ‘She’s a fine looking woman. Could be handsome if only she smiled more!’

  It was later that evening, after Lucy was brought down to say good night to her father, that Isobel broached the subject which had occupied her thoughts for most of the day.

  ‘We must get a governess for Lucy, Isaac,’ she said firmly. ‘It is time she was taught to read and write, and how to behave.’

  ‘She behaves beautifully,’ answered the indulgent father. ‘Though I agree she could learn to read. She is a very intelligent child and it wouldn’t go amiss.’

  ‘Her behaviour is not all it might be,’ Isobel replied. ‘If you could have heard her this afternoon!’

  ‘She might well make a fuss. Very painful are wasp stings, especially for such a little mite.’

  ‘I’m not talking about the wasp sting,’ she answered sharply. ‘I’m talking about her language. She does not speak as a lady should, she has picked up a lot of rough expressions from the servants.’

  ‘She spends most of her time with them.’ Isaac answered back in the same tone of voice, for he was quite aware of how little time his wife devoted to their daughter, like most other ladies of their society. This pained him for he was devoted to Lucy and showered her with gifts; a hobby horse was made for her, a windmill on a stick, and colourful puppets and dolls were brought from foreign lands.

  ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘And now it is time for her to leave them, and her education to begin. We will employ a well-spoken young woman, not a country girl, who will teach her good English and then later perhaps French.’

  Isobel began to plan out loud, and Isaac with a quiet sigh surreptitiously picked up his newspaper. ‘Lizzie can stay on to help in the nursery: she’s very patient with Lucy and usually makes her behave. Yes, that’s what we will do. Will you advertise in the newspapers, Isaac? The sooner we start the better.’

  But it took longer than she had anticipated. Several young women came that winter, took one look at the bleak, harsh landscape and felt the brunt of the east wind and declined the offer. Others who came Isobel didn’t care for, and one forbidding, dictatorial widow induced in Lucy a screaming fit after which she wouldn’t go near her.

  Finally, there came to Garston Hall an amiable woman of thirty, whose husband had died leaving her in straightened circumstances when they had been married less than a year. That she was fond of children was obvious from her gentle manner, though she was firm and expected obedience, and though her accent was northern, her home formerly being in a village near York, there was no trace of the wide vowels customarily used by the inhabitants of that pleasant city.

  Isobel was delighted to employ Mrs Love and she could start immediately, the only hindrance being that Lucy flatly refused to stay for lessons in the nursery unless Sarah was there as well.

  ‘It would not be a bad thing, Mrs Masterson,’ explained Mrs Love to a harassed Isobel. ‘In my experience, children often work better with other children, it gives them stimulation and competitiveness.’

  Isobel reluctantly agreed for the sake of harmony. ‘As long as you are sure that Sarah won’t hold Lucy back,’ she said. ‘She is after all a servant’s chi
ld and cannot be expected to have the same degree of intelligence.’

  Mrs Love smiled tolerantly at her employer’s reasoning and said she would see that she didn’t.

  Lizzie brushed their hair, tied Lucy’s long straight strands with a silky ribbon and put Sarah’s unruly curls beneath a bonnet. They both wore aprons over their dresses, Lucy’s of soft blue silk and Sarah’s of crisp white linen, and were presented to Mrs Love to start their formal education.

  Lucy could no longer follow Sarah into the kitchen to be petted and spoiled by Mrs Scryven, she was confined to the nursery or the garden when fine, and brought to the drawing room in the evening to say good night to her beloved Papa, and recite to him the lessons she had learned.

  Maria missed her a great deal and shed a tear or two, though she was rewarded with a hug whenever Lucy saw her. ‘She’s been almost like my own,’ she explained to Mrs Scryven, ‘and now I’ve lost her.’

  ‘She’ll grow apart, though she’ll not forget thee who nursed her, no matter how great a lady she becomes.’

  ‘And our Sarah taking lessons, whatever next?’

  ‘Next is Sarah taking lessons from me. It’s time she started.’

  ‘Whatever does tha mean, Ma, taking lessons from thee?’ Maria laughed. ‘Tha’s never going to teach her to cook, she’s far too young.’

  ‘Not to cook,’ exclaimed the old lady impatiently, ‘anybody can see she’s not big enough to reach ’range nor strong enough to lift a pan, but she’s old enough to come with me, come summer, to gather herbs and flowers and get to know their uses. To tell by ’smell and colour and shape what they are and what they’re used for, and she can help me to gather them for drying and for making simples.’

  ‘But why not teach Alice, she’d be more use to thee than young Sarah?’ Maria looked searchingly at her friend.

  She shook her head. ‘It’s got to be Sarah,’ she answered. ‘I made me mind up ’day she was born that she would carry on ’craft after me.’ She looked sideways at Maria through narrowed eyelids. ‘It isn’t everyone who has ’gift,’ she said softly, ‘but Sarah has it and she’ll have all ’knowledge by ’time I’m gone.’

  ‘What nonsense tha talks sometimes.’ Maria laughed uneasily. Her own mother had walked for miles along the river bank gathering nettles and cowslips, primroses and meadowsweet to concoct into soothing cough syrups, sedatives or salve for weeping sores, but she never passed on the lore to Maria apart from teaching her the use of pot herbs to enhance their simple cooking.

  ‘And teach Alice how to sew,’ added Mrs Scryven firmly. ‘She’s too frail for rough work, but there’ll always be a place for her if she turns a neat hem.’

  Maria agreed. Her eldest daughter was always a source of worry to her, for although her health had improved since coming to Monkston, she had a fragile look and too many feverish colds. When the rest of the household gathered in the fields to help bring home the harvest, Alice stayed indoors fighting for her breath, or helping Mrs Scryven to bake large quantities of food for the hungry harvesters who sat to eat at the huge table, and who brought into the kitchen with them the choking dust which filled her lungs and reddened her eyes.

  She proved to be a nimble and tidy worker, and as she sat painstakingly over her needlework her sister Sarah was taken by the hand when she wasn’t at her lessons and shown where to find wild herbs and grasses, and splashed her chubby hands and tiny feet in the Holderness drains and streams where marsh marigolds and yellow iris and water lilies grew.

  Mrs Scryven led Sarah and Maria one afternoon to her own thatched cottage. The thick walls were built of mud, brick and pebble and the windows were closely shuttered against the elements. She opened up the door with a heavy iron key, unfolded the wooden shutters and led them inside. The two small rooms smelt dank and fusty, and one was empty but for a metal trough and feathers strewn about the floor.

  ‘I kept a pig in here last winter,’ said Mrs Scryven, ‘but, by, he did stink, so I shifted him out and just kept ’hens inside.’

  The other room was barely furnished with a plain wooden table and two chairs, but the walls were lined with cupboards, and as she opened the doors, a sweet scent of aromatic herbs drifted round the room. Boxes of rose petals, blue borage and purple lavender were stacked on the shelves, and Sarah clapped her hands in delight and ran her fingers through their delicate, perfumed contents.

  The small garden had a profusion of lavender bushes and roses, foxgloves and crab apple, larkspur and the creamy, heavily scented flowers of the elder, and the air was filled with their perfume and the hum of bees. They crossed the perfumed grass of chamomile, to bend and breathe in the scent of purple thyme and marjoram, mint and sage, and Sarah measured herself against the giant smiling sunflowers, grown for their edible seed and the glorious yellow dye from the petals.

  ‘This is all mine,’ said Ma Scryven. ‘My very own, not tenanted like Reedbarrows’ yon.’ She pointed to the adjoining land where Martin and his father rented the farmhouse and land from a local landowner.

  ‘And one day it will be thine,’ said the old lady to Sarah, ‘for I’ve nobody else, so mark well what I tell thee.’

  And Sarah looked at the garden and at her mother and at Mrs Scryven; she gazed abstractedly out at the sea, shimmering and glinting beyond them, and with a sob hid her head in her mother’s skirts and wept.

  Lucy made a fuss when Sarah went off without her, and in order to humour her, her father came home with a pony and little trap which she learnt to drive around the meadow. Isobel had made for her a green velvet riding coat and a hat with feathers, and she stood proudly in the trap showing her skill and flicking her whip, whilst her admiring father applauded.

  She fussed too when she saw Sarah with a cloth, polishing the furniture. Sarah generously went to fetch one for her and both were found by Mrs Love on their hands and knees under the dining room table, their hands and faces sticky with beeswax. Lucy screamed furiously when told by Maria that she wasn’t allowed to join in these pleasures, that only the servants could do so, whilst Sarah looked on in confused bewilderment and wondered why grown people should spoil their games.

  16

  ‘This is ’last time that I’ll fetch thee back, Jimmy.’ Will was furious with the boy. ‘I haven’t ’time to be chasing all over ’countryside looking for thee. I’ve got work to do.’

  Four times in the last year Jimmy had collected his few belongings and left home, and each time Will brought him back.

  Jimmy looked down sullenly at his feet and made no reply.

  ‘This is ’last time,’ Will repeated. ‘Next time tha can take thy chance and go, but remember there’ll be no apprenticeship for thee with Masterson’s, they’ll not take anybody who’s unreliable.’

  Jimmy kicked a tuft of grass. He never got very far before being discovered: the first time he went in the wrong direction and headed towards Hornsea up the coast instead of down to the port of Hull where, he told Tom, he had been hoping to find a ship which would take him on. This time he had reached the village of Aldbrough, but as he sat on a stone at the side of the road pondering whether to continue on his journey or give in to the pangs of hunger and return, Will had overtaken him.

  He had started work on the land under Tom’s command, but he hated every minute of it and argued with Tom about the work to be done until Tom finally complained to Dick Reedbarrow, and he was given the menial tasks of collecting and bundling brushwood for kindling, and raking and weeding the circular drive around the house.

  ‘I don’t want to work on ’farm,’ he muttered sullenly as he climbed up into the cart and they turned back for Monkston.

  ‘What tha wants has nowt to do with it,’ Will replied sharply. ‘Tha has to help out, everybody does, even young Sarah has started with little jobs.’

  Jimmy made no answer but sat peevishly silent behind Will, his lips curled and his tongue stuck out at Will’s broad back.

  ‘Another year, and then Masterson’s will take thee,�
� Will said, looking over his shoulder. ‘’Mister said he would, when tha reaches twelve, but only if tha behaves. If tha’s going to be a seaman tha has to obey ’rules, other lives might depend on it.’

  Will’s patience was sorely tried by Jimmy’s behaviour. He expected pranks and scrapes from a lad, Tom had done his share as he had himself, he remembered, but Tom had settled down now that he was working, whilst Jimmy seemed to be getting worse. His behaviour was aggressive and he could be cruel. In a fit of temper he’d trampled down Tom’s vegetables of which he was so proud, but he refused to admit to it, complaining that he always got the blame, and it was widely suspected that he and Paul Reedbarrow were the culprits when a hayrick on Martin’s land caught fire. Paul had been given a leathering by his father and told to keep away from Jimmy, but Jimmy swore that it wasn’t him and Maria insisted that they must believe him.

  ‘He misses his ma, I expect,’ she said in mitigation as Will had let him off with a warning.

  Will exploded. ‘What makes thee think that Annie would do better than we do by him?’ he roared, his face flushed with anger. ‘There’s hundreds of lads far worse off than him, and they don’t go round setting fire to other folk’s property. I tell thee, Maria, one more prank like that and he’ll get such a tanning he won’t sit down for ’rest of week.’

  Maria sighed. They had made allowances for Jimmy because he wasn’t their own. He wasn’t like Lizzie, who had never been a trouble to them. She was affectionate and kind, and was like a little mother to Sarah. Will was right, something would have to be done about Jimmy.

  * * *

  Lizzie swept the floor at Field House and strewed fresh rushes. She loved to do these jobs for Maria and today, because Mrs Love had taken Miss Lucy and Sarah out walking down by the sea to collect shells and pebbles, she had an hour free.