The River Folk (23 page)

She felt him squeeze her hand even tighter. ‘We love you, Mary Ann. You know we do. All of us. Even,’ he smiled slightly, ‘that young rascal Duggie.’

‘I know. I know you do. But I meant . . . I mean I want someone to love me more than just . . . just like a brother.’

‘Mary Ann,’ he breathed and leant towards her.

She sat up suddenly and flung her arms around his neck, pressing her cheek to his face. ‘Oh Dan, why couldn’t you love me when I wanted you to? Why couldn’t you fall in love with me? If only you had, then this might never have happened. I would never have fallen for Mr Randolph. I just wanted someone to love me and take care of me.’

His arms were around her slim waist and she could feel the warmth of his hands on her body. ‘Mary Ann, Mary Ann,’ Dan whispered, burying his face in her hair. ‘I’ll take care of you. I’ll never let anyone hurt you again. I promise you.’

She felt a shudder run through him as he kissed her neck and she felt once more the shiver of delight run through her own body as his hands caressed her.

And then he was kissing her, cupping her face between his hands and murmuring, ‘You’re so sweet. You’re so pretty. My little Mary Ann.’ His lips were seeking her forehead, her eyes and, lastly, her lips.

Exhilaration coursed through her. Dan would love her. Dan would take care of her. Dan would never hurt her like Randolph had done. She would forget all about Randolph Marsh and, from this moment on, it was Dan she would love.

‘Now, lass,’ Bessie began briskly the following morning when Mary Ann at last appeared downstairs, bleary-eyed and yawning. ‘Bert and the lads have gone to their work, but they all said I was to give you their love. Feeling a bit better, are you?’

Mary Ann nodded and yawned again. She pulled the shawl around her shoulders and sat in Bert’s armchair, putting her bare feet on the warm brass fender.

‘Here, get this down you. A nice bowl of porridge. Put hairs on ya chest, will that.’

Mary Ann took the proffered bowl and spooned the porridge slowly into her mouth, hunching her shoulders and bending towards the fire.

‘Here, let me stir that fire up a bit, if you’re cold.’

Having done so, Bessie sat down in the chair opposite and Mary Ann felt the woman’s thoughtful gaze upon her. ‘Now, lass. What are you going to do? Miss Edwina called this morning. She says it’d be better if you didn’t go back to The Hall, but she can find you extra work at the school, if you’d like that.’

Mary Ann said nothing.

‘What about it, eh?’

Mary Ann shrugged, but still she remained silent.

‘Have you a better idea?’

Mary Ann shook her head.

‘Well, then?’

Mary Ann lifted her shoulders again and then, looking straight into Bessie’s eyes, she smiled as she said, ‘It won’t be for long anyway. Whatever I do.’

‘Aw now, come, lass,’ Bessie flapped her hands. ‘Don’t talk that way. You mustn’t think of—’

‘No, no, I didn’t mean that Bessie. What I meant was, I won’t be able to work for much longer.’

Bessie’s mouth dropped open and then she groaned and closed her eyes. ‘Oh no. Not that. I was afraid you might be. Aw lass, no.’

‘Dan’s told you? I didn’t think you’d mind. I thought – I hoped you’d be pleased.’

‘Pleased? How can I be pleased? You no more than a bairn yasen and now you’re going to bring another into the world.’ She frowned as if she had suddenly realized what Mary Ann had said. ‘Dan? What’s Dan got to do with it? Did you tell him last night? Does he know?’

Mary Ann shook her head. ‘Auntie Bessie, I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing. You think I’m carrying Mr Randolph’s child. Is that it?’

Bessie nodded.

‘Well, I’m not.’ That much she was sure of and now she hoped to bluff it out that she had ever lain with Randolph Marsh. That wasn’t the sort of thing Bessie would like if Mary Ann were to become her daughter-in-law.

Bessie let out a huge sigh of relief. ‘Oh, thank the good Lord for that.’ Then she frowned. ‘So if that’s not it, just what are you on about?’

Mary Ann set her empty bowl down on the hearth and then smiled at Bessie. ‘I’m not going to be able to work for Miss Edwina much longer because I’m going to be too busy looking after my husband.’

‘Oh now, look, Mary Ann. You must get it into that head of yours, he’s not going to marry you. His sort . . .’

Mary Ann shook her head. ‘I’m not talking about Mr Randolph. I don’t want to talk about him ever again. I don’t even want to hear his name mentioned.’

‘Then . . .?’

Bessie was clearly puzzled and Mary Ann’s smile widened as she added, ‘I’m going to marry Dan.’

If Mary Ann had hoped to drop a bombshell into Bessie’s lap, she had certainly succeeded.

‘Dan? Our Dan?’ Bessie blustered, her round face reddening. ‘But . . . but he’s courting. He’s walking out with Susan Price.’ She shook her head and then leant towards Mary Ann, taking the girl’s hand gently into her own. ‘Look, love. You’ve got it all wrong. Our Dan was just being kind to you last night. He loves you, yes. Like we all do. Like a daughter or a sister. But if he’s going to marry anyone, love,’ her tone became even gentler, ‘it’s Susan.’

‘No,’ Mary Ann shook her head firmly. ‘No. He’s going to marry me. I know he is.’

That evening when Dan stepped over the threshold, his mother’s tirade hit him with a force that was almost a physical blow. From the bedroom, Mary Ann heard the raised voices and crept downstairs to listen.

‘Whatever are you thinking of, Dan Ruddick? I’m surprised at you. Leading the poor girl on after all she’s been through. First, that rotten home life she had as a bairn and then that bastard at The Hall and his philandering ways, taking advantage of a young and vulnerable lass. But you! I’d have thought you’d have had a bit more sense.’

‘Hold on, Ma, hold on.’ Mary Ann heard his deep voice and could imagine him holding out his hands, palms outward, to fend off his mother’s onslaught. ‘What are you on about?’

‘You! That’s what I’m on about. Leading that little lass on to believe you’re going to marry her. How could you?’

‘Marry her?’ Dan sounded surprised, as if the thought had not even occurred to him.

‘That’s what she said, but how she’s got that idea into her head, I don’t know, unless you’ve put it there.’

There was a moment’s silence whilst Mary Ann held her breath before she heard Dan say again, ‘Marry her.’

Now the words were spoken softly, as if he was rolling the idea around in his mind, pondering, even savouring, the notion.

‘Well,’ Mary Ann heard him say at last. ‘Why not? Why shouldn’t I marry her, Ma?’

The wrangling within the Ruddick household went on for days. Whilst, in the main, the argument occurred when she was out of the room, Mary Ann was usually somewhere in the cramped house and could scarcely fail to overhear most of what was said.

‘You’re not serious, our Dan,’ Bessie persisted. ‘I don’t want you hurting her. She’s had enough broken promises to last her a lifetime. Tell her the truth now, lad, before it’s gone too far. Tell her that she misunderstood you. That you were just feeling sorry for her because she was so upset. She’ll understand. But tell her now, Dan.’

‘I’m telling her no such thing, Mam. Besides, she needs someone like me to take care of her.’

‘What about Susan, lad?’ Bert asked in his quiet and thoughtful way when he was being serious.

‘Oh, she’ll be all right.’ There was an unusual trace of bitterness in Dan’s tone as he said, ‘She’ll always have her
father
to take care of her.’ Gently, now, he asked them, ‘But who’s going to take care of little Mary Ann?’ Then his voice hardened as he added, ‘The likes of Randolph Marsh?’

To this, his family had no answer.

Bert shook his head sadly, ‘You’ll likely lose your job with old man Price if you jilt his one and only daughter. Besides, you’ve waited months, years almost, to get her back after that bit of trouble.’

‘It was she who came back to me, if you remember, Dad. And to be honest, if Susan had thought that much about me, she’d have stood by me at the time it all happened, never mind what her father said.’

‘Oh, now you’re being unfair, Dan,’ Bessie said.

At this moment Mary Ann stepped into the room and went straight to stand by Dan.

Keeping his voice low and his anger in check, although Mary Ann could see that his eyes were sparkling with defiance, Dan said levelly, ‘No, I don’t think I am, Mam. Susan knew very well that her dad was being unjust, that I had nowt to do with Sid Clark being aboard our ship.’

‘You can’t expect a lass like her to go against her father, though.’

Now Mary Ann, putting her hand on Dan’s arm, spoke up. ‘I would have done. I’d have run away with Dan sooner than do what me dad told me.’

Bessie and Bert glanced at her, looked at each other and then away.

‘Aye well,’ Bessie murmured. ‘’Appen you would, lass. But in your case, no one would have thought any the worse of you. But . . .’ Bessie bit her lip, hesitating to hurt this young girl, whom she loved like one of her own, any more than she had been wounded already. But it had to be said and Bessie Ruddick had never been one to shirk saying what needed to be voiced. Gently, she added, ‘But you do see, don’t you, that Susan comes from – well – a loving, caring home. Her father was bound to be cautious for her, and though I could have hit him mesen for not believing in our Dan, even I could see how Jack Price must have felt. D’you see?’

Mary Ann shook her head. ‘No. If Dan loves me and he doesn’t love Susan, then what’s the problem?’

‘The problem,’ Duggie, for once very serious, put in, ‘is that Dan will be without a job. And Price will see to it that he doesn’t get another round here.’ Then his impish sense of fun got the better of him, even in the midst of all the wrangling. ‘I think you’d do a lot better to marry me, Mary Ann, than this old sobersides, anyway.’ He leant across and tweaked her nose playfully. ‘What do you say?’

Coyly, Mary Ann put her head on one side. ‘Why, thank you, kind sir. But I must decline your offer. I am already spoken for.’

Dan, covering her hand where it lay upon his arm, smiled down at her. ‘There, it’s settled then. We’ll be married as soon as you’re sixteen.’

And they were. There was nothing Bessie or Bert or his two brothers could do to dissuade Dan from his decision. Even Susan, visiting Waterman’s Yard, her eyes red-rimmed from weeping, could not break his resolve.

Mary Ann, listening outside the door into the kitchen, overheard her pleading with him.

‘My father says he will give you your own ship. You can be a skipper, Dan.’

‘That’s bribery, Susan,’ Dan said harshly, his tone implying how shocked he was that Susan should resort to emotional blackmail.

‘It’s not,’ Susan cried. ‘If you were his son-in-law, there’s nothing my father wouldn’t do for you. He just wants me to be happy.’

‘It’s not so long back that he wouldn’t have had me as a son-in-law if I’d been the last man on earth.’

‘You can’t blame him for that. He was only trying to protect me.’

Mary Ann heard Dan’s deep sigh. ‘I know and I don’t blame him. Not really. Not any more.’

‘So why? Why are you marrying this girl? Everyone knows she’s been Randolph Marsh’s latest . . .’ She hesitated before adding scathingly, ‘Piece.’

‘Susan . . .’

‘Well, it’s true. She’s no better than she should be. Why are you marrying her? Because I know you don’t love her. Is she expecting his child? Is that it?’

‘No, she isn’t,’ Dan said sharply.

‘Are you sure?’ Susan asked quietly, almost pityingly as if she believed Dan was being duped by Mary Ann’s wiles.

Grudgingly, as if feeling disloyal in having to offer proof, Dan said, ‘I am sure because me mother told me she wasn’t. I don’t think she’s even – well, you know – been with him.’

Susan gave a humourless laugh. ‘If you believe that, Dan Ruddick, you’re even more gullible than I thought you were.’

‘Susan, please, try to understand. I have to take care of her. She needs someone to love her and look after her.’

‘And you’re the only poor fool around to do it, are you, Dan?’ Susan’s tone was filled with sadness now as she said, ‘If there’s nothing more I can say to you, I’ll go.’ Her voice softened as she added, ‘I wish you well, Dan. I hope you will be happy. I mean that, because I love you and I always will. You might not believe that it grieves me to say it, but I think she will only bring you unhappiness, my dear.’

Susan must have turned away from him, for the kitchen door opened so suddenly that Mary Ann was caught eavesdropping. Susan’s eyes narrowed as she looked into Mary Ann’s startled eyes. Then she leant closer and whispered so that Dan, still in the other room, would not hear. ‘Just you look after him, Mary Ann Clark, else you’ll have me to reckon with. You hear me?’

Then before Mary Ann could think of a sharp retort, Susan was gone, running across the yard, her hand to her face as if she could no longer hold back the tears.

Mary Ann watched her go.

Who would have thought that quiet little Susan Price would have had quite so much spirit? For a brief moment, even Mary Ann admired her.

Once the news got out, of course, the other residents of Waterman’s Yard had their say too. Battle lines were drawn with Bessie, now defending her son to outsiders, and Minnie Eccleshall on one side. Opposing them were Gladys and Phyllis. But most vociferous of all was Amy Hamilton.

Monday morning brought them all into the yard’s communal wash-house, face to face. And from Dan’s bedroom window where she was sleeping now, Mary Ann heard it all.

‘What’s it got to do with you anyway, I’d like to know?’ Bessie said, declaring war.

‘Can’t abide to see a good man go to waste on a little trollop like that,’ Amy said primly. ‘We all know what she’s been up to with
him
.’ She jerked her thumb in the direction of The Hall.

‘She’s not in the family way, if that’s what you’re thinking. She’s not having to get married.’ Bessie picked up her washing basket and turned to go indoors before her sharp tongue could say more.

‘You bitch, Bessie Ruddick,’ Amy muttered, her face fiery red.