The Hungry Tide (3 page)

Annie stopped her wailing and stared at Maria. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, love. I’d forgot’ poor Will, and thee – tha must go home and rest a while, think on thy ’babby.’ Conscience stricken, she put her arms around Maria and Mrs Bewley, and together the three women walked out into the bright morning sunshine.

Maria left Annie and Mrs Bewley in the Market Place. There was a crush of people for it was Tuesday and market day. The long thoroughfare was filled with shops and trades of all description. Shoemakers, bakers, grocers and tea-dealers traded side by side with saddlers and pawnbrokers, sailmakers and tallow chandlers.

Outside the draper’s shop, rolls of cloth were propped up against the window. Irish linen, soft silks and velvets, were fingered fastidiously by ladies of quality whilst the draper fawned obsequiously and arranged folds of material about his person.

Miss Rebecca Brown the milliner was placing the latest fashionable hats on to tall stands in her window, and trying to ignore the jeers and grimaces of the dishevelled urchins who pressed their dirty hands and faces to the glass as they watched her.

Maria walked on towards the towering Holy Trinity Church. There was a confusion of canvas-covered stalls clustered around the church side and spilling out into the wide road. Vendors selling cereals, country cheeses, eggs and vegetables shouted out their wares. There were live chickens and ducks squawking and quacking in wicker baskets, goats bleating, and horses and carts trying to get through the multitude of people milling there. The sun shone warmly and the heat increased the smells of the town. The aroma of ripe fruit, fish, animals and their excrement mingled with that of unwashed bodies and the heavy stench of processing blubber and seed oil.

She pushed her way through the crowd towards the front of one of the stalls and elbowed out of the way the unruly, grimy children who always hung around waiting for their chance to steal an apple or a pie, or even a purse from the unsuspecting. She bought a bag of barley for making broth, and today because she was weary she paid the market price without haggling, as she would normally have done. Then she went to the next stall for a sack of potatoes and turnips and a bunch of marjoram and rosemary which the stallkeeper, a country man, had brought in with him, and hoisting the sack over her shoulder she set off back through the town towards home.

‘What news of Will, Maria?’ a voice called to her as she crossed the long row of shops in the Butchery. Will Foster was well known to the tradesmen as an honest customer who always paid his bills, and in this close-knit community word was already out of the
Polar Star
’s return.

‘He’s in ’Infirmary,’ she paused to reply. ‘Mr Masterson has sent him. He told me not to worry, but I can’t help it. He won’t be whaling any more.’

‘They’ll look after him all right.’ The butcher nodded sympathetically. ‘They’ll be behodden to him, ’account of what he did. I hear tell he saved ’master’s nephew. Would that be right?’ He waited for confirmation of the morning’s news, his cleaver poised in his hand.

Maria shuddered. ‘Aye, summat like that,’ she agreed. Will wouldn’t want people talking about him, even if it was complimentary. ‘I’ll take a bit of scrag end o’ mutton while I’m here,’ she added, ‘and make Will a drop of broth.’

When she lifted the sneck of the door to her home in Wyke Entry she found a small bright fire burning in the grate, and yet the room felt cold and damp in contrast to the warmth outside.

Tom was sitting on the bed with his arms around his sister, gently rocking her. ‘She’s badly, Ma, she’s got a cough.’

Alice was flushed, her eyes bright and feverish and her dark hair damp on her forehead.

‘Mrs Morton lit ’fire. I found wood down by ’river,’ Tom went on eagerly, ‘and I’ve drawn ’water, but I couldn’t lift ’pot on to ’fire.’

Mrs Morton lived in the room upstairs, with her husband when he was home from the sea, her aged parents, and a large brood of children which increased yearly, and Maria was grateful that she would take the trouble to keep an eye on her own children.

‘Tha’s a good lad,’ she said. ‘Now fetch me some more wood and I’ll put ’broth on to boil.’

She put the fatty meat, a handful of barley, the vegetables and the bunch of pot herbs into a large iron cauldron and lifted it on to the fire. The potatoes she put at the side of the grate where they would cook in the hot ash, and then sat down wearily on the bed, drawing Alice to her.

When Tom returned with another armful of kindling, Maria explained what she knew about the
Polar Star
and its disastrous voyage, how it had been in great danger of being crushed as the ice closed in and of their father’s accident.

‘Shall I go to work now, Ma, if Fayther can’t go whaling?’ Tom was very anxious to start work and become a man like some of his friends, but Will and Maria had always insisted that he wouldn’t until he was at least ten, which was still two years away, and Will was adamant that he wouldn’t be allowed to go whaling, that he would find him a job in the shipyards when the time was right.

Maria sighed. ‘I hope not, but we’ll have to wait and see. Now, Tom, listen, tha must come with me to see thy fayther, but first I want thee to go to ’apothecary in ’Market Place and ask for summat for Alice’s cough. Tell Mr Dobson I sent thee.’

She gave him a coin from her pocket. ‘Be quick now and don’t dally.’ Holding Alice close, she lay down on the bed, drawing the thin blanket over them. There would be no work at the staith side for her today, even though she would lose a day’s wages.

‘Try to rest now,’ she said to the child. ‘Tha’ll feel better when tha wakes,’ and she too closed her eyes as a great tiredness and exhaustion came over her. With their arms around each other for comfort, they slept.

A large section of the ancient crumbling gates and walls of Hull had come tumbling down in 1775 as work commenced on the building of the New Dock. The medieval walls, which were constructed of local brick and stone, had been built to repel invaders and to keep the waters of the Humber from drowning the low-lying town. In centuries past the town had opened its gates in welcome to kings and noblemen, and closed them in defiance as well.

Maria had lived and played beneath the shadow of those town walls. Broken, dilapidated and overgrown as they were when she was a child, they had been a refuge from the stinking alley which was home. She used to stand with her brothers on the top of the old Humber wall, her hand shielding her eyes against the brightness of the sun on the water below, watching the great ships of the world coming in to the crowded port, their huge canvas sails creaking and billowing in the east wind.

The shimmering brightness, though, was an illusion, for beneath the turbulent surface lay the glacial deposits of sand and gravel, while silt and clay held the rotting corpses of mangy dogs and the refuse of humanity. Infection lay in perilous wait for the people of the town as they took the river water for their drinking, washing and cooking.

There was good spring water coming into the town from the country district of Spring Head, but for the destitute people living down by the old walls, this was their river, the waters which brought them their scanty livelihood and where some of them ended their days. Here too at the old South End sat the ducking stool, a grim reminder of what would happen to scolding, shrewish wives who didn’t keep their place.

On 19 October 1775, Maria had been taken by her father to watch the first stone of the dock ceremonially laid by the Mayor, Mr Joseph Outram, and within four short years the work was finished. With an air of great festivity the first fishing vessel, the
Manchester
, entered the dock. The bands played and the flags and banners flew and the townspeople cheered enthusiastically and proudly.

Maria had stood in awe watching as the shipping merchants, local aristocracy, and members of the Dock Company arrived for the occasion, alighting from their fine carriages with their handsome wives whose feet were clad in softest leather, and whose elegant dresses were of the finest fabrics that money could buy. She could recall too her father saying with great emotion that this dock, the largest in the kingdom, and this historic day would be a great turning point for Hull and its shipping industry.

His words were true, for the shipping and fishing trades increased and the merchants grew rich. They became discontented with their homes which were cheek by jowl with the insanitary hovels of their workforce and, repulsed by the foul smells of the industry which had brought them their wealth, they moved out of the town in their hundreds leaving the poverty-stricken unfortunates to fend as best they could for shelter, fire and food.

The town, so long insulated against its enemies by the ancient enclosure of fortifications, battlements and moats, started to spread and open up, and within a few years, wide streets of grand houses and fine buildings for commerce and trade stretched like slender fingers northwards from the old town into the countryside beyond.

As Maria grew into womanhood and then became a wife, she rarely ventured out into the country, and then only when Will escorted her. She was a town woman and felt uneasy when she was outside her boundary, vulnerable and fearful. She had no fear of being alone in the town, nor even traversing the dark unlit alleys and wharves which bounded the great River Humber.

She was glad therefore of the company of young Tom as they set off out of the town towards the Infirmary, having left Alice in the charge of Mrs Morton. She had fed the children with the steaming broth and potatoes and put the remaining broth into a jug to take to Will.

She wiped Tom’s dirty face and tied her own long thick hair into a plait, and then, because she wanted to look her best for Will, she searched around in a cupboard and brought out a clean white collar, which was kept for special occasions, and placed it neatly around the neck of her dress.

The bright morning sunshine had disappeared and low, dark cloud hung menacingly above them as they made their way out of town. They approached Charity Hall, where poor children of the town were given shelter and work, and where Maria as she went by gave silent prayers of thanks that Tom and Alice were more fortunate than some. They passed the courtyard of the Seamen’s Hospital where Mrs Bewley would make her home, and out through the boundary where once stood the Beverley Gate, the ancient gate which had guarded the town for centuries and which now was overgrown with elder and nettles, and a tangled mass of bramble and dog rose.

Tom ran ahead of her, his young body leaping and jumping, skipping and bounding with the sheer joy of freedom, exulting in the span of unconfined space.

‘Come here, Tom,’ she said at last, ‘Come and walk by me, we’ll soon be there.’

She could see the outline of the Infirmary less than a mile away. It was a large imposing building and stood alone in a quiet green meadow, surrounded by tall trees and with the waters of the Spring Ditch running nearby. She began to shiver with anticipation at the thought of seeing Will and anxiety at how she would find him.

The rain was just starting to fall as they walked through the huge iron gates and into the entrance porch. Tom stood on tiptoe and pulled the bell rope at the side of the wooden door. They heard the peal jangling and echoing down the corridors and presently the sound of heavy footsteps approached and the door opened. A uniformed porter stood there, smart and imperious in his navy coat and shining buttons.

‘Yes,’ he asked with an air of authority. ‘What is it?’

‘I’ve come to see my husband, sir,’ Maria explained. ‘Will Foster. Mr Masterson sent him in.’

The porter, with some sniffing and complaining that this wasn’t the right hour for visiting, reluctantly let them inside. They stepped into a wide entrance hall and Maria marvelled at the size of the place as she gazed at the great staircase and marble columns. A fire was burning in a grate with a large wooden chimneypiece, and Tom left his mother’s side and went to warm his hands.

‘Come with me.’ The porter crossed the hall and they followed him up the staircase and down a long corridor and through several doors until Maria was sure that they would never find their way out again. Finally he opened a door and said, ‘There he is, missus, in there.’

Slowly she walked past the row of beds, anxiously looking at the faces of the patients lying there, then to her joy heard a familiar voice saying, ‘Now then, lass, doesn’t tha know me?’

And there was Will, his face pale and creased with pain, but alive and with a loving smile on his lips.

Will’s emotions were mixed as he surveyed his wife and son at his bedside. He was thankful to see them again but felt a helpless despair that fate had dealt him such a blow. How would he support them? How could a man with such a disability hope to get work and earn enough money to pay the rent and feed his family?

Maria looked pale and tired, he thought. The work at the staith side was hard with long hours and he had planned that with enough money from this voyage she could have taken on less arduous work. Now it would seem that she would have to support them all. Tom too would have to start work soon: Will sighed, for he had wanted a different life for his son from the one he had had himself.

‘Will?’ Maria’s soft voice interrupted his thoughts and she gently stroked his hand. ‘Mr Masterson told me he had thee sent here, and that we wouldn’t have to pay.’ Her voice faltered. ‘Not for ’surgeon or medicine or owt like that.’

‘I know that,’ he answered. ‘Masterson is a benefactor of ’hospital. He’s rich enough to pay a subscription. Ten guineas it cost him, ’nurse told me when I asked who was paying.’ He nodded towards the beds opposite. ‘All o’ them, they’ve all been recommended by somebody, except that poor devil over there. He was crushed under some carriage wheels and was brought in this morning, but I doubt he’ll last ’night. Rob Hardwick went home today,’ he added. ‘He lost two fingers with ’frost.’

He shuddered. ‘It’s been a terrible voyage, this one, Maria. We must thank God that we got home at all.’

‘Just get well, love,’ said Maria, her grey eyes swimming with tears. ‘We’ll manage somehow and I know how worried tha’ll be, but I’ll work until my time.’