The Fleethaven Trilogy (47 page)

The Harrises and Esther struggled towards them. As they did so, with a cruel irony the wind dropped suddenly. Now they could hear another dreadful sound.

The sound of Beth’s shrill screaming that went on and on and on . . .

M
ATTHEW’S
body was washed up three days later, ironically on the place which Esther had called her own; the place where so often she had found comfort in her solitude and yet the place where she too had almost lost her life – the end of the Spit.

The storm had blown itself out. It had calmed almost at once after the tragedy, as if it had exhausted its cruelty and was appeased.

Beth and Robert Eland were safe, yet Beth, they told Esther, had retreated into a world of her own, neither speaking nor eating. She sat in Ma Harris’s kitchen just staring out of the window at the river, at the place where her home had been. At the place where Matthew had died.

Esther was tormented by feelings of guilt. I should have stopped him, she told herself over and over, and even voiced her feelings to Will. ‘I should have gone up after him . . .’

‘Aye, then there’d have been two deaths, lass. Where would me pretty little Katie have been then, without father or mother?’

‘But . . .’

‘But nothing, lass. I’ve heard it all from Ben Harris. He says you’d have gone up if he hadn’t held on to ya.’

‘I should have stopped him here, before he went out. He – he wouldn’t listen, Will. I tried to tell him they’d have come off the boat, but – but he didn’t even seem to hear me, let alone believe me. He was gone so quick, before I really realized what he meant – what he was going to do.’

Will, not often given to displays of open affection, put his arms about her, and likewise Esther, not used to giving way to emotion, laid her head against his chest and her voice was muffled as she said, ‘Oh, Will, I feel so – so guilty.’

Will stroked her hair and she heard his words deep from within his chest as he said, ‘Dun’t blame yourself, lass. We all feel guilt when someone dies. It’s not his death you feel the guilt about, it’s the life, all that went before. All the things you’ve done or haven’t done. Now you’re denied the time to put it right.’

Esther listened to his wise words of comfort. ‘You shouldn’t need to feel the guilt, lass, because since you brought him home from the war, no one on this earth could have been a more devoted wife than you.’

His voice dropped to a whisper as he added, ‘An’ I know, more than anyone else, just how much it’s cost you to do it, lass.’

She heard the catch in his voice and she lifted her head a little and, her own eyes brimming with tears, she looked up into his face.

‘Thank you . . .’ the name she longed to call him hovered on her lips but she ended, ‘Will.’

*

They all came to his funeral. Everyone from the Point, and from the surrounding farms: the Harrises, the Willoughbys, the Souters and the Squire.

And Beth came.

Supported by her husband, she stood at the end of one of the pews half way down the aisle, her eyes fixed upon the coffin. By her side stood Danny, solemn and white-faced.

The young boy had lost his friend, a man he had helped towards recovery. The man he knew as Kate’s father.

Would he ever know, Esther thought, just how much more he had lost?

Following the coffin out of the church as chief mourner, with Kate on one side and Will Benson on the other, Esther paused in the aisle as she came level with Beth. She felt a soft sigh run through the congregation and knew they were watching herself and Beth in this moment.

Esther glanced at Robert Eland – this compassionate man who had borne so much in the face of his wife’s love for another man. Yet even now she read the silent consent in his eyes to her unspoken question. She put out her hand towards Beth and Danny and gestured that the Eland family should take the place in the funeral procession directly behind herself, Kate and Will.

It was a gesture she knew might find censure amongst some and would certainly cause gossip amongst many. But as always Esther Hilton flouted convention, cared nothing for how things looked or what others might say or think. She owed this to Beth and to Danny.

Most of all, she owed it to Matthew.

The two women in his life, who had loved him each in their own, but very different, way, stood side by side as the coffin was lowered into the ground.

Esther heard a sob and she reached out and took Beth’s hand in hers. It was like ice. She held it between her own, trying to warm it, trying to comfort the woman at her side. There was nothing she could say that would lessen Beth’s pain, nothing that could turn back time and make everything different.

The vicar intoned the words over the grave and then Matthew’s family and friends threw handfuls of earth on to the top of the coffin.

Danny and Kate stepped forward, their faces solemn, feeling the importance of the moment. They stood close together and Esther saw Danny take hold of Kate’s hand. Together they bent and picked up a handful of earth and together they threw it on to the top of Matthew’s coffin. They stood in silence for a moment and then Danny turned to look at Kate, concern for her on his young face.

They were only children, Esther told herself fiercely, and yet in that look there was something she had feared to see. There was a closeness between them that had grown innocently, unaware as they were of their blood relationship.

It was a closeness that put dread into Esther’s heart.

The house was strangely quiet without Matthew, and Kate was doleful and lethargic. Esther too felt listless and tired. All the spirit and energy that was her nature had been drained out of her. The hard work and the worry she had known since she had brought Matthew home were now reaping their own toll upon her vitality and strength of will. To say nothing of the sadness locked within her own heart. There was no doubt that she had drawn on her reserves of strength this last year – and long before that too, if she were honest.

She walked along the shore deep in thought. Part of her longed to go to the place she had loved. The end of the Spit. But she could not yet face the spot where they had found Matthew’s body. She feared her special place despoiled by the tragedy in a way that it had not been by her own traumatic experience there. That, she could rise above, but with this last disaster she was not so sure – not yet.

She had not seen her husband’s body in death – the men had told her she should not. In her imagination she had visualized it bloated and battered, and shuddered at the thought. To think that he had survived the horrors of the trenches only to die in the place that was his home.

Matthew had died trying, so he had thought, to save the woman he loved and his own son. But in that last split second, he had seen Beth on the bank and had known she and Danny were safe. Esther believed that was all he had wanted. He could have saved himself then, he could have jumped towards the willing arms stretched out to help him. Instead he had just stood there, gazing down at Beth. He had indeed gone back to her just as Beth had always predicted. At the moment when death was inevitable – and he must have known that it was – hers was the last face Matthew saw.

Esther sank down on to the sand and gazed out across the calm water. How deceptively tranquil and innocent the sea looked now, as if it could never been the foaming fury that had taken Matthew.

She stayed there a long time, until the winter afternoon grew cold and dusk came creeping across the water. Then forcing her cramped legs stand, she turned her back on the sea and lifting her head she turned homeward – back to Kate and the farm.

Always, there was Brumbys’ Farm.

T
HREE
weeks after the funeral when the demands of the farm had forced Esther to return to her routine, she steeled herself to open the big doors of the barn that housed the contraption, as she still called it, which Matthew had bought in his moment of madness.

She stood, hands on hips, looking at the motor car, her mouth pursed with indecision. A shadow fell across the doorway and she looked up to see the squire standing there. It was the first time she had seen him since the day of Matthew s funeral.

He cleared his throat – nervously, it seemed to her. ‘Good morning, my dear. I – er – I’ve been meaning to come and see you, but well, I thought it only respectful to leave – ahem – matters of business, for a little while after . . .’

His voice trailed away. Esther stared at him. At his words, cold fingers of apprehension touched her and her heart began to beat a little faster.

Matters of business! That could mean only one thing. The farm! Now that her husband was dead – and known to be dead – was he going to force her to leave the farm, just because she was a woman?

Where could she go? What could she do? What about Kate . . .?

The squire was speaking again. ‘I realize I was partly to blame for Matthew squandering your hard-earned money on – ’ he gestured towards the motor car – ‘this. I wondered – if it is of no use to you – if you’d like me to try and sell it for you, my dear? I know someone who deals in motor cars and I’m sure I could get a good price for it. If not quite all your money back, I could certainly recoup most of it.’

Esther felt herself smiling as relief flooded through her. Was this the ‘business’ he had meant? He had not come to throw her out of Brumbys’ Farm after all, but to put right a folly in which he had played no little part.

She felt sorry for the squire in that moment. He looked so anxious, so genuinely concerned. All he had tried to do all along was appease his own conscience and loss by taking Matthew out with him. Yet his kindly actions had backfired when Matthew had become obsessed by the motor car.

‘I’d be very grateful, Squire, for anything you could do. This – thing – is no use to me. I couldn’t drive it, and even if I could, well, it’s not quite what people of my class ride about in, is it now?’

The squire had the grace to smile. ‘I tell you what,’ he said, as an idea came to him. ‘What you could well do with is a smart little pony and trap. You could drive that, Esther. You could drive into the market, and take your little girl to school. What about it? Will you let me sell your car and sort out a nice little pony and trap? Needn’t cost very much,’ he added hastily, as her face showed doubt.

She smiled again. ‘Very well, Squire, and thank you.’

‘My pleasure, my dear, my pleasure.’ He bowed a little towards her, put on his hat and marched away across the yard, more purpose in his step than she had seen for some time.

Esther stood in the doorway of the barn, her hand on the rough wood of the jamb, and watched him go.

He had said nothing about the tenancy of Brumbys’ Farm. The way he had talked – about her driving to market and taking Kate to school – it sounded as if he took it for granted she would be going on living here at the Point.

But would she be the legal tenant of the farm?

Now that the thought was in her mind, it would not let her rest and so it was that, three days later, she put on her best black costume and walked up the lane towards the Grange.

When she was shown into his study, the squire rose from a deep leather armchair by the long window overlooking the lawns and held out his hand to greet her. ‘My dear, come and sit down. I haven’t forgotten about the car, but I have not yet had the opportunity to strike a deal . . .’

Esther shook her head and remained standing in the centre of the room. ‘It isn’t about that, Squire.’

‘Then what is it, my dear? There’s nothing wrong, I hope? Please, do come and sit down here.’ He indicated a similar chair to his own set on the opposite side of the window.

Esther hesitated and then did as he bade.

How very different was her reception now, she was thinking as she settled herself in the chair, to the first time she had come into this room with wild, flying hair and muddy boots. She smiled inwardly at the memory, remembering her belligerence, her youthful indignation. Now she was older, and more than a little wiser, yet the sense of injustice was as strong as ever.

‘Squire.’ she began, picking her words carefully, surprising even herself at her deliberate tactfulness. ‘Like you I thought a lapse of time was appropriate, but I’m sure you will understand that I must know what my position is now.’

‘Your position, my dear? I don’t quite understand.’ He seemed genuinely puzzled.

She leant forward a little, towards him. ‘As regards the tenancy of Brumbys’ Farm, Squire. The agreement was in Matthew’s name.’

The squire’s expression cleared. ‘Oh, that. Oh yes – well – of course. Yes, I see what you mean. I really hadn’t given it a thought. In fact, I’d forgotten all about it. You see,’ he sighed heavily, ‘with Matthew going to the war, and you carrying on so admirably on your own, I accepted the fact that you were running the farm.’

He lifted his shoulders in an apologetic shrug. ‘With Matthew being posted missing, then coming home and yet not being well enough to run things, well, I’d completely forgotten we hadn’t legalized things from your point of view.’

Esther bit her lip, stopping the words from bursting out. But what’s going to happen? she wanted to cry. What’s to happen now I’m really alone?

At his next words, all her questions were answered and all her fears allayed.

‘The war changed a lot of things for us all, Esther my dear. The biggest change it has brought about has been for women. They’ve proved they can do men’s work when the men are no longer there. And you, more than most, have proved you can run that farm, single-handed if need be.’ His keen, knowing eyes met hers and then he glanced away and cleared his throat.

So, Esther thought, the squire had known all along how her neighbours had ostracized her over her affair with Jonathan. He had known how she had struggled to cope alone. Yet he had never censured her, never used his power to oust her as he could well have done.

Now the jovial man in front of her was slapping his knees and beaming at her. ‘Well, my dear, I intend to put all this right. You shall have the tenancy of Brumbys’ Farm in your own name. Just as you wanted it all that time ago.’