The River Folk (42 page)

‘You’ve an uncle still living at home, haven’t you?’ Lawrence said, sounding unconcerned. ‘He’ll look after them.’

‘No,’ she said worriedly, feeling a fresh stab of guilt. ‘Now I’m not there, he’s gone with my dad aboard the
Maid Mary Ann
to take my place as mate.’ She chewed her lip as anxiety gnawed at her. ‘They’ll be on their own.’

‘Well, there’s plenty of folk around who’ll look after them.’ Lawrence chuckled. ‘That Horberry fellow, for a start. Time he did something useful instead of stirring it for others, eh?’

She was irritated by his seeming lack of concern for her elderly grandparents, but she had to admit that what he said was true. There were plenty of people in Waterman’s Yard who would look after Bert and Bessie Ruddick. They didn’t really need her.

Strangely, the thought hurt her.

Her mother-in-law’s voice, coming through the gloom, interrupted Lizzie’s thoughts. ‘What did you say your father’s boat is called?’

‘The
Maid Mary Ann
.’

‘Shouldn’t it be the
Maid Marian
?’

‘It was,’ Lizzie explained, pleased to have something to talk about; something to take her mind off the thud of bombs still falling somewhere above them. ‘But because my mother’s name was Mary Ann, the owner allowed my father to change the name slightly.’

‘Mary Ann, you say?’ Although Celia Marsh still spoke with her usual, seemingly disinterested, drawl, there was suddenly a different edge to her tone. ‘Your mother’s name was Mary Ann?’

‘Yes.’ Now Lizzie’s answer was short. She had no wish to be drawn into searching questions about her mother.

‘How strange,’ Celia murmured. ‘How very strange.’ Then, with definite interest now, she asked, ‘And where is your mother now, dear? Still aboard the boat named after her?’

‘Er . . . no, she . . . I mean . . .’ Lizzie floundered, knowing that in the shadows The Hall’s servants were listening intently.

Lawrence came to her rescue smoothly. ‘Lizzie lost her mother some years ago. She doesn’t like to talk about it.’

‘Lost, you say? You mean, she died?’

‘Lizzie was very young. Her people just told her that her mother had “gone away”.’

‘Ah,’ Celia said. ‘I see.’

And to Lizzie, flushing uncomfortably in the darkness, it sounded very much as if Celia Marsh understood perfectly, perhaps even better than Lizzie herself had ever done.

With the dawn came Lizzie and Lawrence’s first real quarrel.

‘I’m must go to Waterman’s Yard.’

‘You’re not going. It’s too dangerous. I forbid it.’

‘You . . . what?’ Lizzie was scandalized. ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’

‘Of course I dare, you’re my wife. And, if you remember, not many days ago you promised to obey me.’

‘That has nothing to do with it . . .’

‘It has everything to do with it. I won’t allow you to go running back to the yards. They don’t want you, they’ve said as much, and now that you’re my wife, your home is here, at The Hall. And soon, with the help of my mother, you will have something of a position in the town.’

‘A position? What sort of a position?’ Lizzie was aghast, horrified at what his words implied. That she was to cut herself off from her family and, worse still, regard herself from now on as one of the gentry.

‘A position in society. Mother knows everyone in the town who is worth knowing. She’ll make sure you meet all the right people . . .’

‘Lawrence, do you know what a prig you sound?’ she flung at him, turned and walked out of the room, slamming the huge door behind her. Around her the old house seemed to creak in protest.

‘Darling, I’m sorry.’ That night, in bed, Lawrence took her in his arms. ‘Please, don’t let’s quarrel. I have to go away next week. I’m to report to training camp.’

‘Oh Lawrence.’ Lizzie, contrite now, kissed him and put her arms around him. ‘So soon? I thought you weren’t going for another month. Darling, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

‘Well, my eighteenth birthday’s next week, so I suppose the RAF think a few days doesn’t make any difference.’

‘You mean you won’t be at home for your birthday?’

‘No.’

‘Oh Lawrence . . .’ Full of remorse now for her behaviour, she gave herself to him, thinking nothing of her own needs now, only of his.

‘You’ve made yar bed, lass, now you’ll have to lie in it. It’s no good coming back here because he’s gone away to war and your ma and pa-in-law won’t speak to you.’

Lizzie was in her grandmother’s kitchen watching the older woman standing at the table kneading bread. Every so often Bessie winced and shifted her feet, trying to ease the pain.

‘Let me do that, Gran. You sit down.’

‘I’m not a cripple yet, thank you,’ Bessie snapped and glowered at Lizzie. ‘Hadn’t you better be about your wifely duties? Aren’t there luncheon parties and good works you should be attending to in your smart new clothes?’ Bessie glanced resentfully at the new, well-cut costume Lizzie was wearing.

‘Oh Gran, how long are you going to keep this up?’ She sat down at the table and leant her elbows on it, though she was careful to avoid the scattering of flour.

‘Who asked you to sit down, Mrs Marsh?’

Lizzie gaped at her and then stood up slowly. ‘Well, if that’s how it is. If I’m not welcome here . . .’

‘That is how it is.’ Bessie wagged her finger towards Lizzie, sending a further shower of flour over the table. ‘You’ve hurt your dad more than I can find the words to tell you. It was bad enough what Mary Ann did to him, but you . . .’ Words did, indeed, seem to fail her for the moment. ‘You were the apple of his eye. He thought you could do no wrong. And you’ve done about the worst thing to him you could have done. Now he’s all alone with his memories. And what bitter memories they are, an’ all.’ She shook her head. ‘Poor Dan. My poor Dan. And don’t you go running to him, either. He doesn’t want to see you.’

Lizzie felt the tears spring to her eyes. ‘I love Dad, he knows I do. I love all of you.’

‘Well, you’ve a funny way of showing it, that’s all I can say.’

Now anger spurted in Lizzie. ‘And you’ve all a funny way of showing you care for me. You don’t seem to want me to be happy.’

With that, she whirled around and ran out of the house and across the yard, almost bumping into Amy Hamilton coming down the alleyway loaded with heavy shopping bags.

‘Oh morning, Mrs Marsh, ma’am. Doing a bit of slumming, are we?’

Lizzie gave a sob, dodged around her and hurried on, the sound of Amy’s laughter echoing down the passageway after her.

Lizzie felt as if she didn’t belong anywhere now. At The Hall, Randolph Marsh ignored her completely and the servants were barely civil to her. To their minds, as well as to her own family’s, she had betrayed her class. She was no longer one of them, but neither did she belong to the family she had married into. If only Lawrence had not gone away, Lizzie thought, things might well have been different.

Edwina might have become her friend, for she alone out of all of them had not been against the marriage. But Edwina rarely came to The Hall and Lizzie hesitated to visit her home.

Almost daily, Lizzie found herself going down to the river to stand on the wharves, watching the ships coming and going. Sometimes, she saw the
Maid Mary Ann
and her father or Ernie in the distance, but not once did they raise their hand in greeting or come to speak to her, even though she was sure they had seen her standing there. She longed to go aboard. Her need for sight of the cabin, so recently her home, for the feel of the ship beneath her feet and to breathe the damp smell of the river, to feel again its every mood, was like a hunger within her.

At nights, alone in her bed, Lizzie slept fitfully, dreaming that she was back on board in the middle of the River Humber on a calm, sunny day. Out there, away from everything, there was such peace and tranquillity, the only sounds the ship carving through the water, the wind billowing the sails and the seagulls calling overhead. She could hear her father’s commands, ‘Rise ya tack’ and his long, drawn-out ‘Let gooo’, so clearly that she awoke with a start, her limbs already tensing to obey him. Then, with a sense of disappointment, she realized where she really was.

She was homesick for the river and its folk, but she was no longer welcome there.

At other times she wandered along the riverbank until she was opposite the shipyard. Once, she saw Tolly rowing homewards but, though she waved and shouted his name, he did not even glance towards her.

She felt so bereft, so cut off and alone.

Strangely, it was Lawrence’s mother, Celia, who, in her cool, offhand manner, extended the hand of friendship. ‘If you’ve nothing to do, my dear, there’s plenty of voluntary work in the town you could help with. The WVS could certainly use another pair of hands.’

The ‘good works’ that her grandmother had spoken about so scathingly, Lizzie thought. She sighed inwardly, but summoned a smile. ‘I’d be glad to help. Please tell me what I have to do.’

For the first time since Lizzie had known her, Celia became animated. ‘You can join the local branch of the WVS. There are all sorts of jobs they do.’ She ticked off a list on her fingers. ‘Helping out at the rest centres and mobile canteens, providing hot drinks and food for Civil Defence workers. Then there’s all the work we do for people who’ve been bombed out. Some of them have lost everything, all their possessions, clothes, absolutely everything. So we have a centre for the collection of clothes. You could help sort the bundles that come in there, perhaps.’

‘I had been wondering whether to join up, too,’ Lizzie murmured.

‘Oh no,’ her mother-in-law said swiftly. ‘Lawrence wouldn’t want you to do that. But he wouldn’t mind you helping out in the town. I’m sure he wouldn’t. Just so long as you’re always here when he comes home on leave . . .’

Lizzie found the women volunteers were a mixed bunch: from the smart, town ladies, dressed in their fitted costumes with padded shoulders and pork-pie hats with long, curling feathers, to the housewives from the terraced street who came along to the centres in their aprons and their overalls. Yet there was camaraderie amongst them.

‘We all muck in together,’ Barbara, a young housewife from the backstreets of the town, told Lizzie, and she nodded towards one or two of the grander ladies, who were delving their well-manicured hands in amongst the grubby second-hand clothing without turning a hair of their neat heads. ‘Who’d have thought it, a few years back to see the likes of them working alongside us, eh?’ Then she laughed. ‘’Spect I shouldn’t say such things to you, should I? You’ve just married Mrs Marsh’s son, ain’t you?’

Lizzie nodded.

‘Bet you miss him, love, don’t you? Ne’er mind, he’ll soon be home on leave again. My old man’s coming home next week.’ She winked broadly at Lizzie and said, ‘So I won’t be here for a day or two. I’ll be flat on me back giving comfort to the troops. Well, one of ’em, anyway.’

The raucous laughter echoed around them and Lizzie smiled.

‘I’m off into town this dinner to get some frilly underwear,’ Barbara went on. ‘There’s a man on the market selling knickers made out of parachute silk. That’ll give my Harry a thrill. Why don’t you come too, Lizzie? Give that new husband of yours a nice surprise when he comes home, eh?’

Lizzie thought about the fancy underwear that Lawrence had bought her for their honeymoon. Her lips tightened a little as she remembered his words. ‘There’s everything you need, my dear. I didn’t think you’d be used to going into such shops.’ It had been kind of him, she told herself, but she would have liked the chance to choose her new clothes for herself. With a spark of rebellion now, Lizzie nodded. ‘All right, I will,’ she told Barbara.

‘Oho, madam from The Hall buying frilly knickers off the market. Whatever will Lady Celia say?’ said a voice close by.

‘You shut it, Vi. She’s all right, is Mrs Marsh.’ Barbara glanced at Lizzie and grinned. ‘Both the Mrs Marshes are.’ She linked her arm through Lizzie’s. ‘You stick with me, gal, I’ll show you how to put a bit of spice into your marriage.’

‘She don’t need it,’ said someone else. ‘They’ve only been married a few months. They’re still at the dewy-eyed stage.’

‘Then she’ll be ready to keep her old man from straying when the time comes, won’t she?’ Barbara countered, refusing to be shouted down. ‘Come on, Lizzie, take no notice of them. We’re going knicker shopping.’

‘What on earth are you wearing?’ Lawrence said, as they dressed for dinner on the first night of his leave.

Turning from the dressing table with a smile, Lizzie told him about her shopping expedition with Barbara. ‘I was lucky to get them.’

‘Lucky? I wouldn’t call it that. Take them off this minute.’

Misunderstanding, Lizzie giggled. ‘Oh Lawrence, not now, we haven’t time.’

‘I don’t mean that,’ he snapped. ‘Get them off and put something decent on.’ He strode across the room to the chest and dragged open one of the drawers. ‘Where is all the nice underwear I bought you? That’s real silk. Mind you,’ he glanced at her over his shoulder as he added scathingly, ‘I suppose I can’t expect you to know the difference.’

Lizzie sprang to her feet. ‘How dare you . . .?’ she began, but he was walking calmly towards her holding out the undergarment of his choice. ‘Here, put these on and mind you throw that rubbish where it belongs.’

For an instant Lizzie contemplated rebellion, but his eyes were suddenly so cold that she knew he was utterly serious. Remembering that he only had a few precious hours at home, she gave way and removed her knickers and put on the pair he had brought her.

‘Is that better?’ she asked tartly, and began to turn back to the dressing table.

He stepped close to her and put his arms about her, nuzzling his face against her hair. ‘Much,’ he murmured, and she could hear in his tone that at once his good humour had been restored. ‘I shan’t be able to eat for thinking about you dressed in those beneath your demure dress. And those stockings and suspenders. Oh,’ he pretended to groan in ecstasy. ‘Oh Lizzie . . .’

With a swift movement he picked her up in his arms and carried her to the bed.