Emily (3 page)

She decided to return home, for she wanted to get back before Granny Edwards awoke from her sleep, but she had mistaken the time it had taken her to come and the time she had spent by the river, and as she pulled and tugged her wet boots back on to her cold red feet, she realized that the light was going, the mist was getting thicker and that she must run if she was not to be found out.

Behind her she could hear the rush of the tide as the waters of the estuary travelled their journey, but in front of her, as, frowning, she endeavoured to locate her path home, there seemed to be only a
lonely silence in that isolated vista. She shivered, the stillness wrapped around her, cocooning her in a thick, damp curtain. She shook her head to dispel it and turned again to the river to welcome its rushing sound, but the gesture increased her isolation as she realized that her only way was forward, to march into the silence and break it by her own presence.

‘Sam,’ she called bravely, ‘Granny Edwards! It’s me, Emily. I’m coming.’ Her words echoed around her, swirling like the mist, which was becoming thicker by the minute. She stepped forward. She must run. But which way? She had lost the defined path and the dyke which she had followed here, and there was only hummocky grassland and patches of watery waste, which once more sucked and snatched at her boots.

She wandered for what seemed like hours and the darkness descended and the mist became thicker and colder. She stumbled straight on at first, but not coming across the dyke she then veered right, searching for the slight incline which would indicate its presence, but she heard again the sound of the river, louder now than before and a faint
creak, creak
which was eerie to her ears, and peering through the darkness she saw the outline of masts and a huddle of small boats moored in a creek, their masts and rigging creaking as they swayed gently in the water. On the far side of the creek a dim light glimmered, but she couldn’t see a bridge or road and she was afraid of falling into the water. She shouted again and again, but there was no answering shout and she turned and struck
out once more back the way she had come.

Tears started to fall, but she stumbled on. She was cold and hungry for it was long past her suppertime. Her hands still clutched the driftwood which she had collected and her wet skirt rubbed against her legs making them cold and sore.

‘Sam,’ she shouted, ‘Granny Edwards! It’s me, Emily!’ She listened, but heard nothing. ‘Da! Da! I need thee. Come and get thy little Em. I’m onny a little bairn.’ She sank down on to the wet grass and started to sob. ‘Da. I want my da!’

She laid her head down on the grass and as she did, found that it rose in a slight incline. She reached out with her hands, discarding the driftwood, and stretching up realized that the ground rose higher. She clambered on hands and knees up the incline and came to the top. Below her lay the dyke, the waters rushing and gurgling from the river through the fields and wetlands and towards home.

She hurried on, slipping and sliding, but keeping to the edge nearest the field so that if she fell she would fall into the land rather than into the water. Then she stopped. There was a sound. Muffled, but there it was again. Someone was shouting. Voices were shouting her name.

‘Sam,’ she shrieked, ‘Sam! It’s me, Emily!’

Again came the call. ‘Emily! I can’t see thee. Keep shouting!’

‘I’m on ’dyke. Come quick.’ Her voice rose in sudden panic now that help was near. ‘Come and get me. I’m lost.’

The voices grew louder and soon she could make
out distant shapes looming through the fog. Lanterns sent out an eerie, fluctuating light and soon she saw the broad figure of Sam running towards her. ‘Emily! Come on, tha’s all right now. I’ve got thee.’

He picked her up, crushing her in his arms. ‘Don’t cry, Em. Tha’s safe now. We’ll soon have thee home.’

Another man wrapped a blanket around her and two young lads with him gazed at her curiously. ‘Tha should have asked us,’ one of them said. ‘We’d have taken thee down to ’river if that’s where tha’s been.’

She didn’t answer, but looked with streaming eyes at the small crowd who had been searching for her and started to shake, with cold and fear at what might have happened to her and relief at being found.

‘Will Gr-Granny Edwards be mad at me, Sam?’ she whispered as they neared the cottage. ‘I never told her where I was going.’

‘Aye, I expect she will be,’ he answered bluntly, ‘but she’ll be glad that tha’s safe, so don’t bother too much if she rattles on at thee.’

But Granny Edwards didn’t rattle on at her, she seemed curiously subdued as she took off her wet things, Sam turning his back as she stripped Emily down to nakedness, and with a rough towel rubbed her vigorously all over until she was glowing, then, wrapping her in a warm blanket and with her feet in a mustard bath, she sat her by the fire. ‘Here now, drink this down and tha’ll soon be right as rain.’

She put a spoonful of honey in a small tankard
and half-filled it with ale, then taking the poker from the coals she plunged it into the liquid. It sizzled and steamed and withdrawing the poker she grated a nutmeg into the ale and handed it to Emily. ‘Tha’ll mebbe not like ’taste, but drink it down anyway.’

Emily sipped it, the taste was bitter but with an overlying sweetness and she felt the heat trickling down her throat, warming her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, ‘I didn’t mean to be a bother.’ Tears started to spout again and her mouth trembled as she spoke, ‘I wanted my da. I shouted for him, but I knew he wouldn’t hear. He’s too far away.’

Granny Edwards drew her chair nearer to Emily. ‘Aye, he is far away, but I reckon maybe he did hear thee and that’s why tha was found.’

Emily looked at her, not understanding. ‘I might as well tell thee ’news now, as wait till ’morning,’ the old woman said and looked at her with sorrow in her eyes. ‘I got ’message this afternoon. They woke me up from my nap and I knew tha’d gone off somewhere, but I had to wait till Sam came home to look for thee, even though I called and called.’

Emily hung her head; so she would have been found out even if she hadn’t got lost and been late home.

Granny took hold of her hand in an unaccustomed show of affection. ‘I got ’message to say that thy da died two days ago. He’s in heaven now I have no doubt, for he was a good man. And thy ma and brother have gone to ’poorhouse.’

Emily’s grief was deep, for now she knew that she wouldn’t see her dear da again, whereas, if she had previously thought about it at all, which she meditated guiltily hadn’t been very often, she had felt that her stay with Granny Edwards would be temporary and that she would eventually return home.

‘If tha’s good and say tha prayers every night,’ she was assured, ‘then tha’ll meet him again at heaven’s door.’

Emily sniffled. ‘Does that mean I have to be good every day for ever, Gran?’ she asked doubtfully, for if that was the case then she feared that she would not be there to greet him. It was very hard to be good all of the time.

‘Tha shall go to chapel wi’ me on Sunday,’ Hannah said determinedly. ‘We’ll pray for his soul and for thy ma and brother’s bodily comfort and trust in God. And, we’ll ask Him to look down on thee,’ she sighed deeply, ‘and me too, to give me patience and fortitude to bring up yet another bairn.’

Emily looked skywards when she was out of
doors. She wasn’t sure that she wanted someone watching her the whole time. Just suppose, she thought, just suppose I do something bad by accident, will God think I did it on purpose and still punish me?

She was dressed in a clean dress and warm shawl on the following Sunday and followed Hannah, who in her best black dress and cloak strode out down the four-mile road towards the village of Thorngumbald, where she attended chapel every Sunday, wet or fine, sun or snow. She had never suggested taking Emily before and neither did Sam attend. Emily was quite excited. Perhaps there would be other children there whom she might play with or talk to, perhaps those who visited the river, though, she considered, perhaps she had better not mention that subject just yet or Granny would start muttering again that ‘she might have drowned and in my care at that’.

Hannah shook her umbrella in the air. ‘We’ll have a fresh going on now that tha’s here for good.’ She looked down at Emily. ‘Thy ma sent word to ask if I’d be thy guardian. Well, what could I say?’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Can’t see this bairn going to ’poorhouse along with ’other one.’

‘Tha’d rather have had our Joe, I expect?’ Emily ventured.

The old lady stopped abruptly. ‘Why, I never said that! When did I say that?’

‘When I came. Tha shouted at Sam and said he should have brought Joe.’

‘Huh! Tha’s got sharp ears for a little ’un.’ She walked on and then glanced down. ‘No, I reckon
tha’ll be all right. Tha’s willing enough and not a bad lass. I expect we’ll get along.’

Emily smiled and skipped along after her. The praise was sweet. She’d try to remember to include Granny Edwards in her prayers.

As she came out of the chapel clutching her new prayerbook, she looked curiously at the small group of children who were gathered there waiting for their parents to finish their conversation with other members of the congregation. They were scrubbed and clean, the boys with well-brushed hair and shiny faces and the girls neat in black stockings with starched pinafores over their dresses. Emily waited for Granny Edwards, who was in earnest discussion with the minister. She kept nodding over to Emily and the minister too looked her way and shook his head in a commiserative kind of way. He shook a finger as he spoke and they both turned their heads towards the building next door.

A young boy came across to Emily. ‘Thou’s little lass that got lost down by ’river!’

Emily nodded in agreement. ‘I shan’t get lost again,’ she said defensively. ‘It was only ’cos it was foggy.’

‘It’s allus foggy down there.’ He looked down at his boots. ‘If tha likes, we’ll tek thee next time we go. Mebbe next Sat’day if it’s fine.’

She looked towards Granny Edwards, who was bearing down on her. ‘I’ll have to ask,’ she whispered. ‘If she says I can, I will.’

The boy scooted off towards the group of other boys and girls who were waiting for him and she
turned to ask the question, but was forestalled by Granny, who was saying, ‘Well, that’s got that settled. Minister says he’ll put in a word for thee wi’ schoolmistress. Now our Sam is in regular work we’ll be able to manage. Tha’s nearly six, so all being well tha’ll start school after Christmas.’

She couldn’t wait to start. Some of the children who called for her the following Saturday said that they went to the Thorngumbald school. The boy, Dick, who had spoken to her outside the chapel, another boy, Jim, and two girls, Dora and Jane. The girls were both aged seven and were only allowed so far from home under the safe keeping of the boys, who were eight and had been threatened with the strap if they came to any harm. The other boys in the group said that they didn’t go to school because their parents hadn’t any money, but in any case, said one, ‘Larning is a waste o’ time, I already know how to plough.’

Granny agreed that Emily could go with them as long as they were back before dark. The morning was sharp, frost lay across all the marshland and when Emily took a deep breath she could feel the icy air freezing her nostrils.

That winter morning was the start of friendships and quarrels and of a discovery of life on the river bank, when they dug in the mud for crabs and shrimps, fished for flounders and gudgeon with homemade rod and line, or stole eels from the baskets laid out on the mudflats. They chased foxes and rabbits and whispered together if they spotted a solitary heron or stood silently watching the mass influx of wildfowl, brent-geese and waders.

They clambered in and out of the small boats moored in Stone Creek, which in daylight was peaceful and no longer threatening as it had been on the night she had been lost. They made believe that they were sailing away over vast oceans and the girls had to be lookouts and bailers whilst the boys were captain and mate who planned the voyage. They were only disturbed by the shouts of men on the shore to, ‘Get off those boats, tha young peazans!’ and they scuttled away laughing to find other pleasures on those lonely shores.

That first winter came on hard and fast and the other children stopped coming for almost a month when the fields were thick with snow and the road was impassable and even Granny couldn’t make her usual visit to chapel. Sam stayed on at the farm, for he couldn’t get home and Emily and Hannah made the best of their time together. The pump in the yard froze and to get water for their cooking they had to break off icicles which hung from the door lintel.

They brought in more wood and kindling which Sam had stacked by the house wall and the cottage was warm if smoky. Hannah taught Emily to knit and to bake, and sat during the long winter evenings and spoke of her own childhood spent much as Emily was doing, in the depths of the Holderness countryside. She told her that after she married, her husband was made manager of a farm and she had taken over the running of the house, feeding as many as eleven to fifteen men three times a day as well as bringing up her own daughter.

‘Old Mr Francis ran the estate then and later,
when his father died, young Mr Francis said I’d allus have a roof over my head, and even after Mr Edwards died he kept his promise. He let me have this house for onny a peppercorn.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know what’ll happen to our Sam, though, when owt happens to me.’ She glanced up from her knitting. ‘And let’s trust in God that afore I go tha’ll be in service or wed.’

As soon as the road was clear, Emily was prepared for school. She was wrapped in new flannel bodices which Granny had made and in thick wool vests, which she had helped to knit and which itched and tickled as she got warm. Two new pinafores were made from cotton sheeting and new boots ordered from the cobbler in the market town of Hedon were delivered by the carrier.

‘I’ll tek thee this once and meet thee half-way home this afternoon,’ Granny said as they set out on the long trek. ‘So tek notice of which way to go.’