The Fisherman's Girl

by Maggie Ford

  They’d all be back there on time, poor young Tibb puffing from having to run one way up the road and then the other to say the pressure was good and the tanks full with fresh water.

  But once in the shed Dad pulled his weight well enough, lifting the steel nets full of raw cockles into the cooking pot, fastening down the lids for the shellfish to cook at a pressure of fifteen pounds for six minutes. Six minutes to rest his foot, his expression betraying the pain that sometimes plagued him. Then the cockles, still in their nets, must be lifted out and Dad was the first there, allowing his brothers no time to do it for him. He’d have none of their humiliating sympathy. He’d tip them into the de-sheller, the sieve hanging over the large sieving tank full of cold water, lifting their weight with a grunt of pain. There he’d stand watching the sieve shake back and forth, quick to spot any unopened shells as the cockle meat fell through the mesh. The empty shells left on top of the machine he’d take his turn with his brothers to toss through the open hatch on to an already formed mountain of them waiting to be taken away by lorries for crushing.

  If small-shelled cockles fell through the finer sieve he at least left Tibb Barnard to fish them out of the sifting tank. It was Tibb who put them into a smaller tank to stir round and round until the meat flowed free as their shells sank to the bottom.

  It was a long day after the gathering, three or four washes, and the rubbish had to he removed from the tanks to allow the process to begin all over again with a fresh batch. At the end of it Dad would look grey with pain but he would never give up, growling irascibly should any of them suggest he take a rest.

  At the moment he was resting, his foot up on a stool. To Danny’s eyes it looked a little swollen under the thick socks, but it was more than he dared to mention it. Dad would grit his teeth and suffer.

  Instead, Danny glanced across to where Connie was sitting staring out of the back window at the setting sun. She did a lot of staring of late. She’d become oddly reclusive at home, gone that light happy way she once had. She hardly ever went out after work except to travel down to Bethnal Green in London to Ben’s parents, spending Saturday evenings with them just as though she were their daughter-in-law and family. (Whether they welcomed her or not, for maybe she awakened a hurt they’d rather forget, Danny was uncertain.) Sunday mornings she’d invariably go to church. She had begun attending the week after Ben’s funeral, never inviting anyone to go along with her. Unnatural, Danny thought as he regarded the back of her head and shoulders framed in the shaft of evening sunlight through the window, elbows on the windowsill, chin supported by her cupped hands, her head very still, her mind … God alone knew where her mind was.

  Danny stopped thinking about Connie and thought about himself instead – him and Lily. Lately he could hardly stop thinking about Lily. Even now, turning his thoughts to her, he felt his insides twinge with excitement. Lily had begun to be very generous with her body, that they would one day become one was now a foregone conclusion. Though he had never proposed as such, it was understood, and in dark corners they were as good as man and wife already.

  He thought now what it might be like actually making love on a bed, properly, instead of in isolated places, standing up, or in a deserted park just before it closed, hurriedly, agitatedly, lying on his coat behind a clump of shrubbery, half their attention distracted by fear of being caught in the act by someone coming by. The risk of discovery, contrary to belief, did nothing to heighten the experience of making love. Not only that, the use of a French letter and the haste with which they were compelled to culminate their deed did little to stimulate a climax and they often came away vaguely disappointed, Lily in sulks and not far from weeping, leaning miserably on his arm as he saw her home. They would talk of the day when they could go to bed together in their own home and they would make up fantasy stories of how they would make love until he would feel himself harden afresh, but unable to take her as he wanted, he would himself be made miserable and frustrated.

  They’d been going out together for a while now and he wondered if he should soon propose properly or just drift into it as they had been doing. The ring that would officially announce their engagement was an important item, but what ring? He couldn’t afford much. What was Lily expecting? She often dragged him back in the midst of strolling along the road to gaze into a jeweller’s. Her eyes would go immediately to the ring trays and she would point out those that had caught her eye, to his dismay mostly the expensive ones on the ten, fifteen, twenty-pound trays. His eyes would go guiltily to the three-to five-pound rings.

  He wondered now, should he buy a ring and surprise her, or would she prefer they seek a suitable one together? The latter, he imagined. Lily was very particular. Tall, lithe, long-necked, graceful, beautiful of course, she took care with her appearance. Her nails were well manicured and never without pretty pink varnish, her lips tastefully rouged, eyebrows plucked. She wore delicate perfume, had her hair marcel-waved, suffering her locks to be tightly wound in hot metal curlers and strung up by wires to the electric gadgets on the hairdresser’s ceiling for hours while the perm took. She chose her clothes with care and looked like a million dollars in them. He was proud to have her on his arm, delighted to see other men’s heads turn as they passed, and women’s too, their eyes brilliant with envy at her looks, her graceful movements.

  Yes, Lily liked beautiful things, expensive things. Couldn’t afford them, of course, but she made damned sure that what she did have came pretty well near to looking expensive. Resourceful to a point of fanaticism, she’d study all the latest fashions in magazines, then go out and buy the material and make them up. Lately she had taken up dreaming what sort of house she would like when she got married – the perfect house, nothing too ostentatious of course, but a nice little house she could furnish and titivate to her own taste. Well, he would do his best for her, but saving for a house like that started with not buying too expensive an engagement ring. Maybe tomorrow or Sunday he’d pop the question, formally. Then they might talk of money, sensibly.

  Josie sat at the table reading her newest cowboy book she’d bought for her usual shilling every pay day. Mum said she was too old for such stuff and by now ought to have extended her reading to a bit of better literature. But cowboy books were full of handsome heroes doing marvellous adventurous things in the romantic Wild West, righting wrongs, seeing off the baddies, riding off into the sunset with the girl of their choice. They were strong, good, courageous characters and Josie loved to steep herself in their deeds.

  Having helped Mum clear the table after Dad and Danny’s dinner and helped wash up, her time was now her own. Coming to the end of a short exciting chapter, she glanced across at Connie. Instantly her eagerness to start the next chapter to see if Ward Gainer would struggle free of his bonds before the Indians returned to bury him up to his neck in sand for ants to devour, evaporated.

  ‘It’s time she snapped out of this brooding of hers,’ Mum kept saying, not unkindly, only wanting her daughter to be happy again. ‘It’s not as if Ben had been her husband, even though she did love him so.’

  Josie couldn’t agree to that last bit. Ben had been as near to being Connie’s husband as anyone could be. But she did agree to the first bit. Connie ought to snap out of it, for her own good. But it wasn’t her business. Connie would come round in time. Shrugging off contemplation of Connie, Josie bent her head to her book again. But the tale had palled with the interruption. Her mind turned on to herself and the acknowledgement that she was feeling more than little fed up.

  Friday and nowhere to go. None of her friends were going out tonight, at least not with her. It had been like this for several weeks, because all of them had settled down with boyfriends now. Gone were the days of going out in a group looking for likely boys, and she was the only one left without a steady boyfriend. Of course there were plenty willing to take her out. She could have had her pick still. But somehow it wasn’t the same any more.

  It had been a couple of months si
nce she’d last set eyes on Arthur Monk. She kept telling herself she’d got over him, but none of the boys she’d met since had pleased her, not one of them looked as handsome as Arthur. For all she tried to convince herself she had got over him, she thought of him all the time and kicked herself for having lost him the way she had. Numerous times she had nearly gone to humble herself and write to him but each time had quailed at the thought of his reply – if he replied at all. While she wasn’t writing to him there was at least the lingering hope that when she did he’d ask her to go out with him again, but to get a negative, perhaps nasty reply would have dashed all those hopes once and for all.

  A thumping on the back door brought her thoughts to an end. Danny sprang up from the settee, Dad hoisted himself out of his chair to retrieve his muddied boots from the outhouse. Josie could hear him grunting as he thrust his stockinged feet into them.

  ‘See you later,’ Danny called from the rear door, which closed with a bang. The two men made their way back down to their cockle shed from whose open door steam would be issuing along with the steam from many of the others, a gathering of cocklers already calculating the profit from their day out on the mud flats. At this moment the fishy smell of steaming cockles from those sheds already operating was wafting on the air past the small row of houses. The men would work into the night, coming home Sunday morning.

  By Sunday afternoon a different crowd would gather, the August trade, holidaymakers and day trippers savouring the delicious feast from little crude pottery bowls with pepper and vinegar or bearing away a bagful for their Sunday tea back home. August trade was always a good one for cockle people, and made up for the slightly leaner winter months when the only customers were from Billingsgate Market in London. But the tiny shellfish were always in demand. Cockling families never really had poverty staring them in the face, not like the shrimping families whose existence these days was far more precarious.

  The reflection made Josie think momentarily of Pam and wonder for a moment how she was. But her book became suddenly more important, lying there still open at the next chapter. She couldn’t go bothering herself with other people’s problems. She even steeled herself determinedly against her own, and buried her head again into her book.

  Ward glanced around him, saw the jagged edges of rock lying scattered around the foot of the nearby butte … if he could wriggle to them, sever the bonds on his wrists – he might tear flesh from his arms in doing so but it was a better fate than that awaiting him. Would he do it in time before those savages returned? Ward began to ease his prone body towards the butte …

  Josie shivered deliciously, savouring her hero’s courage in the face of pain and danger; all else forgotten.

  Alone on this lovely Sunday morning, Connie trudged up the steep hill amid a scattering of other early worshippers going towards St Clement’s church. Alone among the as-yet sparse congregation she entered, eyes down lest she glance inadvertently to distant Southend with its long jutting pier beyond which Ben had lost his life. The water looked as still and benign on this day as on that one, the resort as busy and joyful as ever in August, life there going on oblivious to that one beloved life it had taken from her. Had she swam that day he might still be alive …

  Grateful for the dimness of the church interior, Connie found a pew and knelt on a ready hassock, its hand-embroidered cover faded from long use. It felt dusty, grubby, unwashed. The church smelled dusty too, overlain by the taint of ancient wood, old bibles and stale incense. People still entering immediately lowered their voices to a whisper so that the air sighed with what they had left to say to each other.

  Connie remained silent. She had no need to speak, no one to speak to. Lowering her head upon her clasped hands, closing her eyes in dark absorption, she sought to pray. But for what? Pray for Ben that he was in heaven? Where else would he be – good, honest, generous Ben? Pray for his parents that they would be succoured in their grief? But grief was natural and they shouldn’t be deprived of it by a well-meaning girl seeking to ask God to forbid them that human luxury. Pray for her own family? They hardly needed her prayers, except perhaps Pam. She prayed for Pam, that her child be born whole and well, for her to be delivered of it safely, for her and George to be a little better off, for Mum and Dad’s hearts to be softened by the birth enough to take her back into the bosom of their family.

  And herself? What did she want other than to have Ben back with her again? That was impossible. Pray to follow him and be with him instead – that too was futile. A small voice inside her whispered: You aren’t ready to die, and she hated the voice because it was the truth and the truth wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

  To avoid it, she opened her eyes and looked up quickly, sensing someone’s gaze on her. But she was shocked to note that someone’s gaze was indeed riveted on her – that of the young curate she’d first seen when she and Ben had come to rehearse the wedding ceremony. He had been present during her every attendance since, but he mostly took no notice of her. He looked hastily away as she lifted her head and continued putting out the rest of the hymn books. She wondered now, had he not so much ignored her on earlier occasions as avoided her? It provoked a small shiver to be so much in someone’s eye when all she wanted was to be left in peace to think her own thoughts, indulge in her own loneliness.

  Bad enough Mum having a go at her every Sunday.

  ‘You’re doin’ too much on this religion business,’ she said in a voice of disapproval as Connie left this morning. ‘You never used to go to church so often. It ain’t natural for a girl your age, goin’ to church every second of the day. It ain’t good for you, Connie.’ She might as well have been saying, find yourself another chap.

  Connie sat back in her seat as the organist began softly to play and more people filed in to the pews, the air filling with their whispering and the rustling of hymn and prayer hooks. The smell of dust mingled with the faint perfume of rose water and lavender, of Sunday best brought out of moth-balls for this one day of each week. The curate had finished doling out his hymn books and was putting up the hymn numbers for this Sunday.

  Connie watched him reaching up to the wooden slots, his arms raised to slot in the numbers. He looked tall and lithe, the black cassock he wore making him seem thinner than he was. He had a nice face, open, smooth, gentle. Connie looked away as he turned, settled her gaze on the chancel as the organ music swelled and she stood with the others to receive the priest and choir now moving with measured and swaying dignified grace down the aisle towards the altar, the great cross held before them. She watched it pass, and so began this morning’s service and she thought no more about the curate.

  ‘George!’

  He sat up in bed, suddenly, coming awake with a start. ‘What?’

  Pam knew he was constantly on edge and alert these final days of her pregnancy, but his abrupt rise from deep sleep made her start for all the moment was urgent.

  ‘What is it? Has it started?’

  ‘No, love. But the alarm didn’t go off. You’re late for work.’

  It hadn’t needed an alarm to awaken her, the kick the baby had given her had been responsible. Such a kick it had made her instantly wonder if this was her time. But it hadn’t been. Just that one kick low down in her stomach and then a lot of lazy flexing of tiny limbs, unseen but imagined.

  Smiling at the thought of the life inside her that two weeks from now would be lying in her arms, she had glanced at the clock and been shattered that it was quarter to seven. George should have been up and washed by now.

  He no longer helped his dad on the boat except for Sundays. There was little enough money in it lately for his parents to live on, let alone him and her. When a little job had come up, a bit of building work, he’d jumped at it first and thought about it afterwards. His father had been somewhat taken aback, hurt even, but had understood that with a baby on the way, money was needed. The shrimping business had suffered after a cold winter and spring. The shrimps sought deeper, warmer water, eve
n burying themselves in the sea floor out of reach of nets. The Wall Street Crash of last year had begun to make itself felt in Britain; unemployment was growing.

  George had been lucky to land this job. But being late could cost him that job as easy as winking with dozens waiting in the queue to jump into it. Nineteen thirty hadn’t so far been a good year for the working man. If George lost this job what would they do, the baby coming and all?

  Panic had consumed her. Her first impulse had been to leap out of bed, calling to him as she hurried to put the kettle on for a cup of tea and start on his breakfast. But she was too large in the stomach for that, too cumbersome, too near her time to take chances.

  George had sunk back. ‘Oh, God, that all? I thought you’d started.’

  ‘No such luck.’ She laughed briefly, then sobered, glancing again at the alarm clock that hadn’t gone off. ‘Come on, love, hurry up. You mustn’t be late.’

  He was out of bed in an instant, urgency taking the place of relief that she was still not ready. She was having the baby at home. Hospital treatment had to be paid for. A midwife and one visit from the doctor if needed was far cheaper. He had the money for it saved in a biscuit tin, along with the rent, neither to be touched at any cost.

  Pam struggled slowly to a sitting position, eased her legs out of bed. They were swollen, as they had been all this last month. They worried her a bit but the baby seemed lively enough, so she cast aside the concern for her own self. So long as George’s baby came whole into the world, it was all she wanted. She often thought that if anything bad should happen with the birth, all the sacrifice she had made in marrying the man she loved, hoping to mend the rift between two families, would have been for nothing. Then she’d push the thought aside angrily. George was all she really wanted and they could always have another baby. But this one seemed more important than anything else.

  Now she came to life. Getting to her feet she waddled in her nightdress to the stove and lit the burner under the kettle.