The River Folk (41 page)

Swept along on the tide of his passionate pleading, and fearing that so very soon she might lose him, just like she had lost her dear uncle, Lizzie heard herself saying, ‘Of course, I will.’ And then he was kissing her so ardently that all thoughts of her father, her grandmother, even of Tolly, were driven from her mind.

Lawrence gave her no time for second thoughts or for doubt of any kind. He planned it all with such meticulous care that nothing could go wrong.

‘We won’t tell Aunt Edwina,’ he decided later. ‘She’s such a one for truth and honesty that she might disapprove, not of what we’re doing, but the way we’re doing it. Now, are you sure there’s nothing else you want? I’ve bought you a pretty dress . . .’ He grimaced. ‘Not a white one, darling, I’m afraid, but a very pretty one nonetheless. And flowers. I’ve ordered you a bouquet. And afterwards . . . oh darling, afterwards, I’m taking you away to a lovely little hotel in the country, where we can be completely alone. There’ll be no bombs, no talk of war. Just the two of us, I promise.’

As she slipped home through the dusk of early evening, a shadow loomed from the entrance to the alleyway leading to Waterman’s Yard.

‘Tolly! What on earth are you doing skulking about in the dark? You frightened the life out of me.’

‘Sorry,’ he muttered.

There was silence between them before she said, ‘Why are you here? Is something wrong?’

‘You tell me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What do you think I mean?’

‘Oh, do stop being so irritating,’ she snapped.

She heard him take a deep breath. ‘All right, if that’s the way you want it. You’ve been seeing him again, haven’t you?’

Her voice rising, Lizzie said, ‘What’s that got to do with you?’

‘Ah, so I’m right.’

‘I didn’t say so.’

‘You didn’t deny it either and since you ask, it’s got everything to do with me. Do you think I want to see you throw yourself away on someone like him? Someone who’ll cast you aside like an old shoe when he’s . . . he’s had his way with you and then tired of you. He’ll never marry you, Lizzie . . .’

‘Well, that’s just where you’re wrong.’ Angry beyond reason now, Lizzie’s tongue began to run away with her. ‘We’re getting married this coming Saturday, so there.’

With that parting shaft, she strode away from him down the alleyway. His voice echoed through the darkness, ‘Oh Lizzie, no. Think what you’re doing. Please.’

Tolly must have been waiting on the wharf the following morning when her father’s ship docked. Or he might even, Lizzie thought bitterly, have rowed downriver to meet him.

‘What’s this all about?’ her father thundered, when he stepped over the threshold of Bessie’s house in Waterman’s Yard, without a word of greeting to her after two days away. ‘Is this true what Tolly tells me? That you’ve been seeing young Marsh again and that you’re going to marry him?’

‘Dad . . .’ Lizzie began, but Dan was in no mood to listen.

‘Well, just let me tell you, my girl, it’ll be over my dead body if you do. Haven’t I had more than enough trouble from that family? Hasn’t his father caused me enough grief? To think that you could do this to me, Lizzie.’ His anger seemed to die as he shook his head and said sadly, ‘I thought you were different, but I see you’re not. You’re just like her. In looks, in everything. You’re just like your mother.’

‘Dad, don’t say that.’ Lizzie was crying now as she flung herself against him, trying to wrap her arms around his big frame, but, hurt beyond understanding, he flung her away from him as if he could not bear to touch her. ‘Why won’t you listen to me?’ she cried. ‘Why won’t you try to understand?’

‘’Ere, ’ere, what’s going on?’ Bessie appeared in the doorway leading from the kitchen into the scullery where they were standing. ‘What’s all the shouting about?’

‘She reckons she’s going to marry young Marsh, that’s what’s the matter,’ Dan shouted. ‘I thought you were going to keep an eye on her. Are you behind it? Has she wheedled her way around you, just like Mary Ann used to do?’

‘Don’t you take that tone with me, lad,’ Bessie wagged her finger at him, some of her old spirit returning. ‘Besides, she’s isn’t old enough. Without your consent,’ Bessie added, calmly matter-of-fact, ‘it wouldn’t be legal.’

‘I shouldn’t think that’d bother
him
for a minute,’ Dan sneered. ‘It’ll make divorcing her all the easier, won’t it?’

‘Doesn’t anyone care about me?’ Lizzie almost stamped her foot with anger. ‘Don’t you want me to be happy? He’s joined up. He’s going in the RAF in a few weeks. Going to be a bomber pilot. Don’t you think he deserves a little happiness? Don’t you think we have to snatch what happiness we can, while we can?’

She saw them glance at each other, but now they were silent, as if each were thinking the unspoken words. Had poor Duggie snatched what happiness he could in his life, cut short by an enemy torpedo?

Dan ran his hand distractedly through his hair. ‘Oh Lizzie, it’s because we love you so much and because there’s so much you don’t understand.’

‘I’m sorry, Dad. The last thing I want to do is to hurt you, or Gran, but I’m going to marry Lawrence.’

His expression hardened again as he stared at her. Then through tight lips, he said, ‘Then you’d better get on with it, but don’t come running back to me when he casts you off like an old shoe.’

She shuddered at his words. They were the very same ones that Tolly had used.

Lizzie refused to let the rift between her and her family spoil her wedding day. The April sun shone brightly on the tiny church set high on a Yorkshire hillside as, dressed in her finery and carrying a bouquet, Lizzie walked up the narrow path, clinging to Lawrence’s hand.

‘However did you find it?’ she asked.

He chuckled. ‘It wasn’t difficult. The church is on land belonging to my mother’s family, to her brother now, actually. And he pays the vicar, who’s as deaf as a post and can’t see too well either. He hasn’t even asked awkward questions about our ages or anything. So, there’s no problem. Although making several trips up here to arrange it all did take rather a lot of my father’s precious petrol coupons.’ He looked down at her and any doubts she had were swept away. There was no denying the look of love and desire in his eyes.

They were wrong, she told herself, her heart singing with happiness. They were all so wrong. Lawrence loved her and they would be so happy together that her father and her grandmother would see it for themselves. And then they would forgive her. Lizzie was so confident in their love for her – she knew they were only concerned, like they said, for her happiness – that she knew they would all come around one day.

The old man in a dirty surplice shuffled forward to meet them. Twice during the service, he dropped the book and Lizzie had to bend down to retrieve it and place it back into his shaking hands. He stumbled through the words, squinting through grubby spectacles whilst the organist thumped out a hymn on the wheezing organ.

‘I don’t know who is the oldest,’ Lawrence whispered. ‘The vicar or that organ.’

‘Ssh,’ Lizzie hissed, but was soon in danger of being overcome with a fit of the giggles.

The service was over far sooner than she had expected and, once the register had been signed – the verger and the gravedigger having been commandeered as witnesses – they were outside in the sunshine.

‘Could I prevail upon you to take a picture of us?’ Lawrence stopped the organist as he hurried out of the church.

‘Oh – er – yes, of course, but I am in rather a hurry.’

The man fumbled with Lawrence’s camera. ‘What do I press? Oh yes, I see.’

Quickly, he snapped three photographs and then said, ‘That do? I really must be going.’

‘Thank you,’ Lawrence said, taking the camera, and then whispered to Lizzie, ‘We’ll take some more at the hotel. I’ll take some nice ones of you. They’ve got a lovely garden there, with a little bridge over a stream . . .’

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ Lawrence said, as he rolled away from her after their first attempt at making love. ‘I just wanted you so badly. It’ll be better the next time . . .’

As he drifted into sleep, Lizzie lay, tensed and unsatisfied. If that was all there was to making love, she thought, all that heaving and pushing and grunting, then she didn’t know what all the fuss was about. In the early hours, when Lawrence stirred and woke her, he whispered, ‘It’ll be better for you this time, darling, I promise.’

But still, despite his efforts to think of Lizzie’s feelings, wanting her to experience the heights of passion along with him, he came to a shuddering climax long before her body had begun to respond to his caresses.

He tried to make light of it and pretended to leer as he murmured, ‘It’s going to take a lot of practice. An awful lot of practice . . .’ Again, he slept.

By the fourth day of their honeymoon, Lawrence said, ‘Things’ll be better when we get home. We’ll be among familiar surroundings then.’

Familiar to you, maybe, Lizzie thought, but she said nothing.

‘And I expect you’re still upset about your family,’ Lawrence added. ‘Once you’ve made up with them, you’ll feel more relaxed.’

‘Are you saying it’s my fault?’

‘Of course not, darling. You’re just tense, that’s all. It’s only natural.’ He took her in his arms and kissed her gently. ‘I do love you so much, Lizzie. I just want everything to be so perfect.’

She kissed him in return and said, ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps it is my fault. I . . . I mean it is the first time, for me. You’re right, things will be better when we go home.’

He caught at her hands. ‘Then let’s go. Right now. Let’s go home and begin our proper married life. With you as mistress of The Hall.’

Lizzie caught her breath. ‘Don’t be silly. Your mother is mistress of The Hall.’

Lawrence shrugged. ‘In name only. Rather like their marriage. I think it’s been “in name only” for years.’

‘But she still lives there. And your father.’

‘Supposedly. But he’s hardly ever at home. God only knows where he goes. I think he’s got a fancy woman somewhere.’

Lizzie gasped. ‘And . . . and doesn’t your mother mind?’

‘No, she couldn’t care less.’ He grinned. ‘Maybe she’s got a fancy man somewhere too.’

‘Well, I hope you don’t think you can do that when you get tired of me,’ Lizzie said, her eyes flashing.

‘Oh darling.’ He stroked her hair. ‘I’ll never get tired of you. For as long as I live.’

Their homecoming was unheralded and, consequently, devoid of welcome, although Lizzie doubted there would have been much of one anyway.

At dinner that first evening, when Lawrence had instructed her on how she was expected to dress, Lizzie was seated on one side of an enormous table, with Lawrence’s father and mother at opposite ends, with far more than the length of the table between them.

The meal passed almost in silence, the rattle of cutlery and the chink of china the only sounds in the vast, cold dining room. If it hadn’t been for the pressure of Lawrence’s foot against her own beneath the table, Lizzie would have fled.

At the end of the meal, Lawrence cleared his throat and said, ‘Father, Mother, there is something I have to tell you.
We
have to tell you.’ He reached across the wide table to take her hand as he said, ‘Lizzie and I were married last Saturday.’

Randolph stood up so suddenly that his heavy chair crashed to the floor and his red wine spilled over on to the table, the glass rolling towards the edge. Deakin hurried to catch it before it smashed on the floor. Then the manservant picked up the chair and set it behind his master before retiring to stand discreetly in the shadows of the corner of the room. He stood like a statue, ready to serve if needed, but more likely, Lizzie thought shrewdly, anxious to hear this latest piece of scandal with which he could regale the other servants.

‘You did what?’ Randolph, purple with rage, shouted.

Lizzie’s fingers trembled but Lawrence’s hand, she noticed, was warm and firm and steady. At a slight sound from the other end of the table, Lizzie turned to see that his mother was leaning back in her chair and holding her ribs. To Lizzie’s amazement, the woman was laughing. ‘Well done, Lawrence, my dear. You’ve finally shown you have got a spark of spirit in you after all. I was beginning to wonder.’

‘Have you taken leave of your senses, boy? Married at your age. And about to go into the forces. What on earth were you thinking of?’ There was a pause before Randolph added, ‘Oh I get it. In the family way, is she?’

Quietly, Lawrence said, ‘No, father, she isn’t. Though I hope . . .’ He smiled across the table at Lizzie. ‘That she might be very soon.’

He released her hand then and stood up, turning to face his father. ‘Wouldn’t you like a grandson, father?’

‘Of course I would,’ the man thundered, and then flung out his arm towards Lizzie. ‘But not with
her
as its mother.’

Randolph turned, pushed the chair that Deakin had so carefully placed behind him out of his way so that once more it toppled to the floor, and then he strode from the room. The only sound that followed him was his wife’s laughter.

‘He hates me. He doesn’t think I’m good enough for you,’ Lizzie said mournfully, when they were alone in their room later.

Lawrence sat beside her on the bed and put his arm about her shoulders. ‘Well, your family hate me, don’t they?’

‘Perhaps they’re all right. Perhaps we do come from such different worlds that it’ll never work.’

‘Lizzie, please don’t say that. We’ll make it work. We’ll prove them all wrong. You do love me, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do.’

His lips were against hers. ‘Then prove it, Mrs Marsh. Prove it.’

On 29 April 1942, a bright, moonlit night and only days after Lawrence and Lizzie had returned to The Hall after their marriage, Elsborough suffered one of its worst air raids of the war. A Dornier dropped bombs on the centre of the town, killing thirteen people and injuring many more. Gas pipes were fractured and fires broke out. Smashed water pipes gushed water into the streets and hampered the efforts of the rescue services.

Huddled in the deep cellars below The Hall with Lawrence, his mother and the servants – of Randolph, there was no sign – Lizzie could only listen to the distant thuds and worry about her family in Waterman’s Yard. ‘Dad’s probably away,’ she murmured to Lawrence, ‘but what about Gran and Grandpa?’