The Hungry Tide (52 page)

Will grew angry, his temper swift to rise. ‘And is tha too good for that, miss? It seems to me that tha’s getting ideas above thy station.’

‘No, Fayther, you know that isn’t true! And you were the one who said that I would be wasted just being a servant, remember?’

He did remember, and he recalled, too, how proud they had all been of her intelligence and cleverness and her ability to read and write.

‘I know, lass,’ he said more gently. ‘But tha can go no further, at least, not unless tha leaves Monkston, and tha won’t do that.’

No, she wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t do that. Especially not now, not whilst there was a possibility of seeing John. And that was another difficulty. When he came to visit Garston Hall they had to be so careful not to be seen alone together, but sometimes their eyes would meet and it was as if there was no-one else in the room; when she felt as if his lips were touching hers and she could hear his soft whispered words in her ears. But she knew that Lucy had eyes like a hawk and sooner or later she or Mrs Masterson would start to become suspicious.

‘Sarah? Tha won’t leave Monkston?’ Her father repeated himself as he saw an obscure shadow flit across her face.

‘What? Oh no, never. Fayther – what if I should want to get married?’

He laughed. ‘Tha can’t do that, lass. Tha’s too good for most of ’men around here.’

‘So!’ She laughed back, sharing the joke with him, her lips smiling but her eyes anxious. ‘I’ll have to choose a gentleman then, someone rich and handsome?’

His smile died away and he shook his head. ‘I’m right sorry for thee, Sarah, tha’s fallen between two stools. There’s no gentleman will have thee to wed, not without becoming a laughing stock.’ He put both his hands around her face and lovingly stroked her cheeks, and she could smell the blood of the rabbits on his fingers. ‘And don’t ever think on becoming somebody’s doxy – for I’d kill thee first, and him as well.’

It was a cold, bleak February before she finally made up her mind. She had spent many long, lonely hours over the last few weeks walking along the cliff top, buffeted by the strong winds which blew in vigorously from across the sea and which whipped her skirts and cloak with such ferocity it was as if they were trying to tear them from her. It was almost like a battle and she leaned into the icy gusts, forcing herself on and defying the elements to do their worst. At times she cried out aloud, ‘You can’t deny me, I belong here. This is mine.’

She took shelter when the weather was particularly bad in the doorway of Ma Scryven’s cottage, crouched down in the corner so that the drips from the bedraggled old thatch didn’t run down her neck, and it was as she was there one wild and gusty day, looking seawards at the pitching and plunging of the white seahorses on the boisterous grey water, that she remembered that she had been given the key, that the cottage now was hers, to do with as she wished.

She got up from her uncomfortable position on the doorstep and gathering her cloak around her went into the garden. It was wild and overgrown, and swathes of bramble smothered what had once been the old woman’s flourishing glory of colour, scent and herbal splendour. She sadly ran her fingers through a battered lavender hedge and the perfume rose up towards her, invoking memories of her first visit here with her mother, when she’d scattered sprigs of lavender and sweet smelling rose petals and delighted in their faded and delicate colours.

‘Tha must take my place,’ Ma Scryven had said. ‘Put aside thine own desires.’ Sarah sighed deeply. She had made herbal preparations for her mother and Mr Masterson when they were ill; she had been hesitant about doing so for it had been a long time since she had made any remedies, but it had come back to her, easier than she had thought it would, as she remembered Ma Scryven’s instructions from a long time ago.

‘We buy it in the market.’ She remembered the comment from Rose, Miss Pardoe’s maid, as they’d unpacked the lavender-fragrant gowns from the travelling trunks. ‘We don’t have the bother of growing it.’

Well, it’s no bother to me, she thought excitedly, her heart thumping furiously as an idea grew into a positive thought. She looked more closely at the dishevelled land. Many of the shrubs had died from the harsh winters, others were straggly and neglected, but some were struggling to survive with a hardiness that came from being reared in the blustering east wind.

She’d whispered a word to John on his following visit, asking him to meet her by the old church, that she needed to talk to him, and his face had brightened at the prospect. He was there before her, a dark shadow in the church porch as she arrived breathlessly, having run all the way after being held up by some whim of Lucy’s.

He didn’t wait for her to speak, but gathered her up into his arms and kissed her yielding mouth and upturned throat, and with a sigh buried his face in her soft hair, breathing in the warm fragrance of her body as she clung to him.

‘Oh, Sarah, I can’t go on like this. I need you so desperately. We must go away. Away from here, where no-one knows us, or cares. We’ll go abroad where it won’t matter who we are, and start a new life together.’

She hushed him then with a kiss and held her fingers over his lips, and he opened his mouth and gently bit them. She groaned softly as she felt the warmth of his tongue on her finger tips and the strength of his body close to hers. She pulled away. ‘This is madness, John. You know that I love you and always will, there will never be another, but you know that we can’t go away. You can’t leave Mr Masterson, he needs you, he’s old now and can’t run the company alone – and the men who work for you, they need you.’

He answered her sharply. ‘The men would find other work, whaling is booming, there’s always a ship for a good man.’ But he knew as he spoke that it would be on his conscience to leave his uncle who now relied on him totally, and who had supported him and been his guardian throughout his childhood.

‘I’m sorry.’ He stroked her cheek. ‘We’ll think of some way that we can be together. But these stolen moments are not enough for me, Sarah. I think of nothing else but being with you. You fill my mind night and day; you take over my thoughts so totally that I can’t work, I can’t sleep. It’s as if I am not in charge of my own life any more.’

She drew back in dismay, her hand to her forehead. ‘That’s my fault,’ she breathed. ‘I’ve thought of you so much these last few weeks that my mind has spun out to meet yours.’

He laughed at her. ‘What a darling goose you are. It’s not just your mind that bothers me, it’s the whole of you, the completeness of you which has captured me.’

He held her close again and kissed her tenderly, but she pushed him away. ‘It wasn’t meant to be funny, John, I mean it. I have tried to picture you – where you are, what you are doing, trying to make you think of me. That’s why you can’t think of anything else. I don’t know how, but I have linked your mind to mine, tied it as securely as if it was bound by thread.’

He smiled down at her indulgently. ‘You’re a witch,’ he whispered teasingly, ‘and you have me in your power!’

‘Hush, don’t say that, not ever. You don’t know how superstitious country folk are.’ She hesitated. ‘And especially not when I tell you what I am going to do.’

‘Wait,’ he said softly, putting his hand up in warning. ‘I thought I heard something. Footsteps!’

They stood silently, holding their breath, but nothing could be heard above the sound of the wind and the waves.

‘I could have sworn that I heard someone,’ he breathed, ‘but I must have been mistaken.’

‘No-one comes here any more,’ she whispered. ‘Ma Scryven’s funeral was the last service. They’ve removed the altar and the silver and taken it to Tillington.’ She shivered violently and he put his arms about her, thinking that she was cold. Her voice dropped low and she spoke in hushed, ominous tones. ‘The church will soon be in the sea – drowned, along with all the scattered bones of the poor dead souls in the graveyard.’

He shook her gently for he could see by the grey light filtering into the porch that she was nervous and uneasy. ‘That’s enough of such morbid talk. Now tell me what it is you are going to do.’

She shook her head to rid her mind of vague, melancholy thoughts and said impulsively, ‘I’m going to be a herb woman, like Ma Scryven. I’m going to make potions and oils, so that the villagers can come to me when they are sick. But more than that, I’m going to sell what I grow in the markets at Hull and Beverley.’

He gazed at her in astonishment. ‘What will you sell?’

‘Oh, lavender and rosemary, sage and comfrey. Things that townspeople can’t grow themselves.’

‘But you can’t, Sarah.’ He was aghast. ‘How can you think of it? How can you think of standing in a market selling wares? There are villains and thieves there. I know it, don’t think that I don’t. Men who would cut your throat for a copper. You haven’t been brought up to it, you won’t survive!’

She drew away from him and surveyed him coldly, then her eyes flashed. ‘Don’t tell me that I’m too good for that sort of life. That I have been too gently brought up!’

‘That
is
what I’m saying,’ he replied heatedly. ‘You’re not like your mother or father, or even Lizzie. They survived because that was all they knew. You have had a kinder existence!’

She gave a small sob. ‘It seems then that I am just a misfit. Too good for one kind of life and not good enough for another.’ She held up her head defiantly. ‘But as I can’t seem to please anybody, then I shall please myself. I shall live alone in Ma Scryven’s cottage where I shall bother no-one, and I shall survive, you’ll see. I have the strength!’

‘Sarah, please, don’t talk like that,’ he pleaded. ‘I need you, we need each other. We shall be nothing if we are apart – and I shall never have a moment’s peace if I know that you are alone here with no-one to protect you.’ He looked around at the ravages that the winter had wrought on the coastline, at the cracked and falling stonework of the church, at the dilapidated buildings hanging on the edge, waiting for the final crack that would precipitate them into the sea.

‘My cottage won’t go yet, not for some time.’ She smiled as she made the decision. ‘I shall be safe enough.’ She stepped outside and the wind caught her cloak, billowing it out behind her like a black sail.

‘You’ll be lonely, there’ll be no-one to talk to.’ Harshly he spoke to her though he sensed that her mind was made up.

She stretched out her arms to encompass the waters lashing below. ‘How can I possibly be lonely? Not here. Not when the sea is my friend, my companion.’

Will was set firmly against it. He said it was wrong that a young woman should live alone. ‘If tha so much as allows a man over ’doorstep, then tha reputation is in shreds.’

‘But you said that no man would marry me, Fayther, so what does it matter about my reputation?’ she replied sharply.

Her mother worried about her being alone but had not decried her plan. ‘There is a need, Will.’ She tried to pacify him. ‘Folks around here are lost without Ma Scryven. Oh, they’ve got their own remedies but sometimes they need something more.’

‘And somebody to blame if owt goes wrong,’ he grumbled.

‘Make her a good stout door and shutters and she’ll be all right,’ Maria continued practically, ignoring his remark. ‘I’ve some linen and fustian blankets tha can have, Sarah, and thy fayther will bring thee rabbits and game, and when Tom gets going he can supply thee with flour.’ Swiftly she dispensed with minor difficulties. ‘’Only problem that I can see,’ a small frown creased her forehead, ‘will be with ’Mastersons. They’re not going to like it at all.’

Sarah gave notice to Mr Masterson first. She guessed, rightly, that he would be easier to talk to.

‘We shall miss you, Sarah.’ He sat hunched over the fire, a blanket around his knees. He felt the cold in his bones and had decided to stay at home until the worst of the winter was over. ‘But I’m glad that you are going to do something useful, and I dare say we shall call on you when we need something.’ His rheumy eyes looked at her kindly and he blew his nose on a soft white handkerchief. ‘I wouldn’t like to think that we were not going to see you again.’

She smiled at him and curtsied. He was a good man and she was fond of him. ‘I shan’t be far away, sir, and if ever you need me you only have to ask.’

‘Have you any money, Sarah?’

‘Just my wages, sir, when they are due. But it is enough,’ she added quickly as he reached for his pocket. ‘I’ll grow what I need and my wants are few.’

He nodded understandingly. ‘Yes? Well, you too only have to ask.’

She thanked him for his generosity. She would miss his kindness and she wished that she could kiss his tired old face.

She realized with a sudden pang that she would miss this house which had always been home, more so even than Field House, her parents’ home, where she felt cramped and confined under the low smoky beams after the elegance and charm of Garston Hall. She would no longer enjoy the warmth and comfort of the huge kitchen or a walk in the rose garden, and she felt saddened at the impending loss.

Mrs Masterson and Lucy were appalled. ‘How can you even think of it, Sarah?’ Lucy said in a shocked tone. ‘Whatever will people think? And you realize of course that I can never visit you. It wouldn’t be proper.’

‘I don’t see why not, Miss Lucy, if you wish to. I shall still be the same person as I am now. I’m not going to change, except that I shall be independent.’

‘It will be quite unthinkable for you to call on her, Lucy,’ said Mrs Masterson after Sarah had left. Her voice was cold, but her eyes glittered. At last she was rid of her, this servant girl with her gentle manner who had come to pose a threat. ‘You have your future to think of. It will not do for you to mix with such a person.’

She couldn’t do anything in the garden until the spring, when the gales would die away and the wet earth started to sprout fresh green growth, so she spent her time clearing out the cottage, sweeping out years of cobwebs and birds’ nests and bringing in wood for the fire which she lit and then had to retreat, coughing and choking as the blocked chimney cast down thick black smoke.