The Fleethaven Trilogy (57 page)

Coming back through the kitchen Will took hold of Kate’s arm and led her out into the yard. ‘Come and see me off,’ he whispered. When they were outside he stood before her and put his hands on her shoulders, looking down at her with what looked suspiciously like tears glistening in his eyes.

‘Katie love, there’s nowt more Ah can do.’

Kate shook her head sadly. ‘Dun’t worry, Grandad. You tried.’

‘Now listen to me, lass. The village where I live – Suddaby – you know it, dun’t ya?’

Kate nodded.

‘Well, it’s between here and Lincoln. If ever you need help, you send me word and I’ll come to ya.’ He gave her a gentle shake as if to emphasize his words. ‘Remember now, won’t ya?’

Kate looked up at his worried face, feeling suddenly the older of the two, as if it were her grandfather who needed the reassurance that she would be all right. She forced a smile to her mouth and said as brightly as she could manage. ‘I’ll remember, Grandad. Dun’t you worry. Mebbe me mam’s right and I’ll love it when I get there.’

They were brave words but there had been a hollow ring to her feigned confidence.

Now it was the morning she must go.

She took a last look around the big bedroom that had been hers alone until now, for only last night her mother had talked of moving the baby into the big room, ‘Now that Kate will only be home in the holidays’.

So, already it was no longer ‘her’ room. Kate’s glance roamed over her well-loved toys; the rocking horse standing in the corner, forlorn and neglected for Kate had long since outgrown him. No doubt Lilian would soon be big enough to ride him again and she’d soon have her fingers into all Kate’s other toys too; the doll with the china face, the wooden doll’s house her stepfather had made for her. The whole of the front opened in two big doors revealing four rooms, hallway and landing. Two miniature pot dolls inhabited the house and the tiny furniture was all made to scale.

The girl turned away and went downstairs feeling strange and awkward in her new school uniform; a long-sleeved winceyette blouse with a tie in the school colours of brown and gold and a brown pleated gym-slip falling straight from her shoulders to just below her knee. The matching braid girdle tied around the waist made her feel bulky and shapeless.

‘I feel like a sack of ’tates tied round the middle,’ she muttered gloomily. Thick brown woollen stockings held up by suspenders buttoned on to a Liberty bodice made her legs hot and in her sturdy winter boots her feet were sweating.

At the bottom of the stairs she turned to the right and went into the best parlour with its plush chairs and polished brass fender. An organ stood in the corner, but no one ever played it. In the middle of the floor her trunk stood open all neatly packed and ready to be closed when the last-minute things had been added.

Her mother had been sewing for weeks making blouses, pyjamas and even the serge gym-slip. ‘Three of everything!’ Esther had exclaimed when the list had arrived. ‘I can’t afford them fancy prices to be buying all ya need ready made. My sewing’s as good as anyone’s – I’ll have to make as many things as I can.’

Now everything was packed in a huge trunk ready to be loaded into the trap. Her stepfather was to drive Kate and her mother to the station in Lynthorpe where they would catch the train to Lincoln. ‘Be sure to get a porter to organize taking her trunk up to the school when you get to Lincoln,’ he told them.

‘I don’t need to be tipping no porter to carry something we can carry oursens . . .’ her mother began indignantly.

‘Esther,’ Jonathan said quietly, ‘it won’t look good at the school. Believe me. If you want your daughter to become a “young lady”, she’s got to start acting like one.’

‘Dun’t mean she’s got to be idle,’ her mother muttered but as Jonathan opened his mouth to speak again, she put up her hand palm outwards. ‘All right, all right, we’ll do as you say.’

And now there was only an hour left before they must leave.

Kate turned and left the parlour and walked back through the narrow hallway, the stairs leading up on her left, and to her right was the front door which opened out on to the garden. Then she passed through the living room, pausing only to glance round, just looking at all the familiar things as if for the last time. The furniture was old-fashioned but everything was polished and sparkling. A red chenille cloth covered the table and red velvet curtains hung at the window. On the mantelpiece brass ornaments shone and twinkled. Slowly she came to the kitchen.

Huge hams from the last time they had killed a pig hung from hooks in the ceiling and to her left was the door leading down two steps into the pantry where all the dairy work and the butter-making was carried out. In the centre stood a plain, scrubbed table and on the far wall was the huge range, the centre of the home almost, Kate thought. It heated the water, boiled and cooked all their food, and its fire warmed them on cold winter days and nights. They even bathed in turn in front of it every Friday night in the tin bath that hung on a peg in the wash-house.

Her mother had let down the clothes airer on the rope from the ceiling and Kate paused a moment to watch her hanging freshly ironed clothes over the wooden slats.

Kate moved on out of the kitchen and through the back scullery. She opened the back door and stepped into the yard.

Her mother’s voice followed her. ‘Dun’t you go getting ya new uniform messed up.’

‘No, Mam,’ came the automatic reply.

It was a soft, September morning when the heat of the summer was gone and there was a freshness in the air. Kate lifted her head and breathed in all the smells of the farmyard, the scents of home. The cows, the horses, even the pigs and always the breeze carried a hint of the sea as a background perfume.

‘Goodbye, Boxer, goodbye, Bonnie.’ She patted each of the heavy horses in turn and they nudged at her shoulder over the half-door of their stable. ‘I ain’t no sugar,’ she apologized and added ruefully, ‘Not in this stupid dress, I ain’t.’

She looked in at the pigs and then wandered round the side of the house past the pond with the huge weeping willow tree bending over and trailing its fronds in the water and round to the front of the house which faced westwards. She stood a moment among the fruit trees laden now with the fruit which usually she helped to pick.

This year she would not be here.

She gazed out across the flat fields beneath the huge expanse of sky. Stooks of corn stood sentinel in the fields waiting to be collected and brought to the farmyard to be stacked. She would not be here to hear the familiar cry, ‘Harvest home, harvest home’, when her mother placed the last sheaf on the last load. She would not be able to join the gleaners who scoured the fields for every last wisp of corn.

She turned away and went back through the yard and out into the lane. She stood for a moment poised on her toes, holding her breath. She glanced back over her shoulder but there was no one in the yard. Then she began to run.

‘I’m sorry, lovey. Danny’s not here. He’s at work.’

‘I was afraid he might be. I – I came to say goodbye.’

‘Oh,’ Mrs Eland said. ‘Oh, I see.’ She was looking at Kate with her brown, sad, eyes. Her black hair was drawn severely back from her face into a bun at the nape of her neck. Already there were wisps of grey at her temples even though, Kate guessed, Beth Eland must be a similar age to her mother, – only in her early thirties.

Returning the woman’s steady gaze, Kate thought – and not for the first time – that Danny’s mother could be really beautiful, as striking as her own mother, if she were to take a little trouble over her appearance. She had a lovely face, with high cheek-bones and dark eyes fringed with long black lashes. Her figure was a little too buxom to be fashionable, but to Kate it made Mrs Eland seem all the more warm and motherly. She was reaching out now and touching Kate’s face in a gentle gesture. ‘Tek care of ya’sen, lovey.’

Kate nodded and said flatly, ‘I’ll see you at – Christmas.’ It seemed an age away and though Danny’s mother said, ‘It’ll soon be here,’ even her tone lacked conviction.

At the cottage next door, Kate found herself swept against Grannie Harris’s ample bosom. ‘Eh me lass, we’ll miss you, all on us. ‘Specially Rosie. There’s nobody like Kate Hilton in young Rosie’s eyes.’

Kate’s summer had been spent with Rosie. The child had been her constant companion.

‘Let’s go and find her. She’d never forgive me if I let you go without seeing her.’

Rosie’s tears almost shattered Kate’s resolve not to cry. ‘Don’t go, Katie, don’t go ‘way. Who’m I going to play with? Who’s goin’ to take me to school?’ She wound her chubby arms around Kate’s neck, almost strangling her, and sniffled pitifully.

‘I must go, Rosie. Really I must. Me mam’ll be waiting for me,’ Kate pulled herself out of the child’s grasp, turned and ran.

She could still hear Rosie’s sobs as she crested the Hump and plunged down the other side towards home.

‘There you are. It’s time to go. Mek haste, Kate.’ Her mother was dressed in her best costume, with a smart new hat perched on top of her hair which, as always, was piled high on her head, luxuriant and thick – a rich auburn colour like Kate’s own. There was not a trace of grey showing in her mother’s hair, Kate thought.

Her stepfather was still in his working clothes for he was only coming as far as the station.

‘Aren’t you going to say goodbye to your sister?’

Dutifully, Kate bent over the cradle and kissed the baby’s forehead. Lilian’s tiny fingers clutched at Kate’s flowing hair and tugged at it.

‘Ouch!’

The baby crowed with delight, but when Kate prised open the small hand and stood up, Lilian began to whimper at the removal of her plaything. Kate stood looking down at the child with distaste. She’d rather have little Rosie for a sister any day!

‘We’re all loaded up,’ Jonathan Godfrey came into the kitchen, ‘and Enid’s just arrived to take Lilian till I get back.’ His voice had a forced joviality that did not deceive Kate. But far from upsetting her, it actually comforted her to think that he cared.

As the trap rattled down the lane towards the town, Kate watched Brumbys’ Farm become smaller and smaller. She bit down hard upon her lower lip. She refused to let her mother see her cry.

What hurt most of all was that she had not seen Danny. The one person she loved best in all the world and she had not even been able to say goodbye to him.

She pushed her hand into the pocket of her coat and felt the reassuring wrinkled surface of the whelk shell he had given her.

T
he school was a tall grey building set in a row of imposing town houses. From the street, stone steps led up to the heavy front door and the long windows seemed to be watching their approach.

It had been raining when they stepped off the train, and although Esther had tried to hold the umbrella over both of them as they walked from the station, by the time they reached the school Kate’s long hair was straggling down her back in untidy wet strands. There was a peculiar fluttering feeling inside her stomach, just below her ribs, like a captive bird struggling to get out.

A maid opened the door; a young girl in a long black dress with a white apron and mob cap covering her short hair. Her face was pale and pinched. She was young enough to be a pupil, but obviously she was not one of them.

‘Wait here. I’ll tell Miss Denham.’

They were left standing in a hallway that stretched up and up three storeys high. From the centre of the hall the stairs rose to the first floor and divided into two and then again up to the second floor, dividing again. On each level the landings ran around the open square so that even from the topmost floor it was possible to peer down and see who was standing in the hall below.

Kate heard the echo of whispering and looked up to see herself being observed by three pairs of curious eyes, their owners leaning over the balustrade on the second floor. Somewhere a bell sounded and the three girls scuttled down the stairs to the first floor and disappeared.

The maid returned. ‘This way,’ and they followed her through a huge oak door at the left-hand side of the hall and into a book-lined study.

From behind a wide, leather-topped desk rose the tallest woman Kate had ever seen. She towered above both Kate and her mother and her height was accentuated even further by her grey hair scraped up from her face into a bun on the top of her head. Miss Denham stood tall and straight-backed, and her shape looked as if her body were trussed up in a corset, moulded by bones and padding, all tightly laced. Her bosom was high and rigid and her waistline, though by no means slim, curved in and then out again to generous hips. Her hairstyle and dress, a grey striped close-fitting gown with a white collar and a small velvet bow at the neck, were out of date for the shapeless fashion of the twenties. But if intimidation of the girls in her charge was her endeavour, then, in Kate’s wide eyes, Miss Denham succeeded.

‘Good morning, Katharine. I am Miss Denham, and I am the Principal of this school.’ The voice was deep, almost masculine, but it fitted the frame from which it issued. Kate felt the woman’s cold grey eyes taking in every inch of her appearance from the top of her very wet head right down to the muddy toes of her lace-up boots. The woman was pointing now at Kate’s feet.

‘I trust, Mrs Godfrey, that you have equipped your daughter with something more appropriate in the way of footwear than – those?’

At her side Kate felt her mother almost bristle with indignation. ‘Naturally, Miss Denham, I have – equipped – her with every item on the list of requirements ya gave me.’ Esther Godfrey was standing stiffly before the woman and staring fearlessly up at her. In that moment Kate was fiercely proud of her mother until she remembered that it was her mother’s fault that they were here in the first place!

Miss Denham pulled a bell-rope and before the tassel on the cord had stopped swinging the little maid appeared in the doorway.

‘Say goodbye to your mother, Katharine, and go with Mary.’

Kate gave a little gasp, turned and flung her arms around her mother, pressing her face into Esther Godfrey’s bosom. ‘Mam, dun’t go. Not yet.’