The Fisherman's Girl

by Maggie Ford

She hadn’t told Dan what she’d done – he’d have hit the roof. But men were able to hate far more easily than women. They did not have that maternal instinct natural to every woman to defend the fruit of her womb, even though she might deny it. Cast out her child in anger, ignore it all the days of her life, a mother would jump into a freezing river to save its life if the occasion called, and then paradoxically continue to ignore it so long as the hurt it had done lived.

  Knowing Pam’s time was only just a month away, Peggy had felt an instinctive pull in July to put aside all wrongs and make contact of some sort. The ache which had been slowly growing of its own accord practically from the moment Pam had walked out of the house, had suddenly become too much for her, and in a fit of impulse she had sat down and written the letter, seeing her daughter back with her again, all forgiven and forgotten.

  Pam hadn’t replied. The hope of a truce had been destroyed, and with it all Peggy’s hopes of ever contacting her daughter again. But today, here in the house on her own, she thought of Pam, and several times felt on the verge of putting on her hat and going to see how she was. She condemned herself for letting the girl go as she had, for not even attempting to go and see her even though she knew if anything dire should happen news would travel to her with the speed of light. But each time the prospect of what she’d say when she got there, how she’d be received, the danger of opening the wounds even more, stopped her.

  Peggy longed for her family to come back home and take the thoughts away in a round of busy family life, and by the time they did, it was too late to carry out all the intentions she’d had during the day.

  On Thursday morning the twinges which had been niggling all week came on in earnest. Getting out of bed, Pam doubled up as a great wrench convulsed her middle.

  Instinct alone would have told her this was the start of the baby’s arrival had it not been for her mother-in-law predicting it with certainty to be imminent. ‘I notice your stomach’s dropped a lot. I bet you’ll have it this week or I’m a Dutchman’s uncle.’

  So she knew this was the start. ‘George! Get up, love! The baby’s started.’

  George, who had been sleeping the exhausted sleep of the despondent, awoke reluctantly. ‘What d’yu’say?’

  ‘The baby. I think it’s ready to come.’

  Fully awakened and instantly in a panic, he was out of bed. ‘What do I do?’

  ‘You’ve got to go and fetch the midwife.’ It was all she could think for him to do. She too was on her feet, the wrenching pain already receding, leaving her to wonder if it had only been her imagination. Perhaps she only needed to go to the toilet. But the thought of getting herself down all those stairs to the lavatory on the floor below was daunting. Perhaps it was too soon to call out the midwife, who could charge for the wasted call.

  ‘Hang on for a while,’ Pam said, getting herself to one of the fireside chairs, still hanging on to her bulging stomach even though the pain had gone completely. ‘It could have been a false alarm.’

  The relief on George’s face was evident as was the peeved expression that immediately followed it that he had been dragged from a deep sleep for nothing, but, bless him, he kept his opinion to himself. ‘Shall I go back to bed again then? It’s only seven o’clock. After all, I’ve nowhere to go, have I?’

  She was about to say that he hadn’t when another, somewhat lesser wrench began to build up, not enough to make her cry out but enough to send warning signals again to her brain. ‘Oh, George, love, I don’t know. I really don’t. It’s come back again. Perhaps you should go for the midwife, just in case.’

  Visions of a child bursting from between her legs and damage – she wasn’t sure what – being caused to both it and her made her decide. In her ignorance she saw only the threat of something dire if just she and George were here should it happen.

  ‘No, get the midwife, George.’ She would feel safer. ‘Hurry!’

  By the time he’d scrambled into his clothes and run out of the house unwashed, unshaved, the pains had gone. She felt a fraud. The midwife would arrive, see nothing amiss, and put the cost of the inconvenience on her bill, small as it was. But there was nothing Pam could do. She got up, made a cup of tea, and was about to drink it when ghastly agony searing through her middle made her cry out and fall back in the chair, the tea spilling on to the lino.

  Entirely alone, she was in a state of terror. She should have sent George to get his mother before going to the midwife so there could at least have been someone here with her.

  A knock on her door brought a surge of grateful relief. ‘Oh, come in – door’s open.’ But it wasn’t the midwife. It was the woman who owned the house, her landlady, Mrs Carper.

  Mrs Carper was a widow in her forties. Her husband had been killed towards the end of the last war as she was fond of telling everyone; sent to the front one month before its end and killed after only two weeks there. A tragedy, but twelve years softened it. She was a sharp, lively woman, who took great pride in her looks, perhaps in the hope of one day finding herself another husband.

  ‘I saw your George running out of the front door,’ she said, coming forward to where Pam was sitting hunched in the creaky fireside chair, her arms still curled about her stomach. Gently she took the empty tea cup from her and put it on the table. ‘I guessed what it was. I wondered if there was anything I could do for you. Keep you company perhaps?’

  In gratitude, Pam looked up at the tall slim woman clad in a bright expensive-looking dress even at this time in the morning, her hair immaculate and her face made up as though she had spent hours on it. She even wore light orange nail varnish, the nails beautifully manicured, all the things Pam hadn’t indulged in since her marriage. Even in the midst of a fresh stab of pain that now caught her, she felt envious of the woman’s position in life, all but hated her for it where she herself had to exist in the squalid top flat of this house.

  Who was she to come up here with her offer of help? Who did she think she was coming up here …

  ‘Ohh …’ A long drawn out groan of pain escaped Pam’s lips, cut off all other thoughts. The woman’s carefully made up face took on a worried look.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed, my dear?’

  ‘I would … if I could get there,’ Pam sobbed erratically. ‘I don’t think I … I can m-o-v-e … ’The last word sounded torn out of her in a mixture of pain and fear.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I just … want to stay … where I am.’

  The pain was receding. Her breath coming easier, Pam wondered at herself for making such a fuss a moment before. She straightened in her chair, aware of the tea spilled on the lino. ‘Can you make me another cup of tea? I’m so thirsty. This came on as I was getting out of bed. I wish my mother was here.’

  ‘Shall I go for her?’

  ‘No! No,’ Pam added less harshly. ‘She can’t come.’

  ‘Why not, dear?’

  ‘She just can’t.’

  ‘What about your husband’s mother? You should have someone here with you, not just me. Where does your husband’s mother live?’ Unthinking Pam told her the address and found herself devastated to hear her say as though she had found her niche in life: ‘Oh, it’s not far away. I’ll go there myself and get her. We’ll be back in two ticks.’ And she was gone, the cup of tea Pam longed for unmade. She was alone again in the flat, terror beginning to fill her that if the pain started again she would have no one to help her.

  In fact, Mrs Bryant was the first to arrive. Mrs Carper, tactfully, perhaps gladly, withdrew to leave them to it.

  ‘Right,’ Milly Bryant announced. ‘Let’s get you into bed. Midwives take their time, but she shouldn’t be too long now. When did George go for her? I’m going to get you a cup of tea, with lots of sugar in it, help you keep up your strength. There now.’

  Pam settled between the sheets. The kettle began to sing as she watched her mother-in-law gather a sheet from the cupboard in the corner, pull out a piece of water-proof A
merican cloth used for lining.

  By nightfall Pam was still trying to deliver her baby. A concerned midwife had detected it to be a breech birth if she couldn’t turn it. All night she tried without success and by Friday morning Pam was in shock and growing weak with pain and the effort of it all. The doctor was sent for.

  He looked concerned, rolled up his sleeves, washed his hands and arms in soap and water and, setting out his instruments, bent to his task. Downstairs in the parlour by kind courtesy of Mrs Carper, George was beside himself, pacing to and fro, downing cups of tea she had made for him, trying to shield his ears against the cries of his wife above. His mother, banned from the scene, sat nearby, at a loose end. His father stood now at the open door to the garden taking in the morning sunshine and looking as if he wondered what he was doing here. His wife came to join him.

  ‘Pam’s exhausted. It don’t look good. The doctor’s working hard on her, but he’s not very happy.’ She was whispering, out of her son’s hearing. ‘Someone should go and let her people know. It’s not right how they’ve treated their own daughter, but her mother should be told. Say if something happens to her?’

  Dick Bryant gnawed his lip, worried that Milly was going to hurry off to bear the dire tidings, leaving him alone with his son should he find himself suddenly bereaved. He needed Milly by him. ‘Who’s to go?’

  ‘We can’t ask that Mrs Carper to do our errands for us. And I can’t leave George at a time like this. I think it’s best if you go.’

  ‘Me?’ Visions of meeting his old enemy flashed into his mind. But Dan Bowmaker would be out with his boat, though Dick as a fisherman was already reckoning the tides, which would be coming in by now. If he was quick, he’d get to the house before Dan Bowmaker, deliver his message to the mother and get off as quick as he could. Compared with being here alone with George, this choice might be the better of the two. ‘OK, I’ll go now.’

  His wife nodded briefly and went back into the house where George still paced listening to Pam’s weakening cries.

  It was unfortunate. Knocking on the Bowmakers’ door he received no reply. In a dither, unsure what to do, he knocked on the door of a neighbour. No reply there either. On a Friday the women had all gone out shopping for their weekend food, what else? In desperation he turned to go back up the hill via Billet Lane, though why he should take that route he didn’t know except that he was loath to go back and say he had failed to deliver his message.

  Dick felt desperate. He had to tell someone in Pam’s family. Perhaps he should have waited for her mother to come back from her shopping. But that could take a couple of hours, and God knows what would happen while he was waiting. Pam could die without one of her family being there. Milly would kill him.

  Dick felt his heart beating sickeningly against his chest wall. The only other course was to go and wait at the cockle sheds for Pam’s father to come in with his boat. Feeling physically sick, he retraced his steps and turned down the path that ran past the cockle sheds. There he made his way down to the water’s edge, empty cockle shells crunching under his boots, the familiar stink of rotting cockle flesh filling his nostrils.

  He stood there a second, his heart fluttering. The tide was flowing into Leigh Creek at walking speed, trickling into gullies, around raised patches of mud. Soon it would engulf them. A fleet of cockle boats was coming in too. They’d come to rest off shore and the men would put out long boards from the boats to dry land, then with a basket full of shellfish slung from a sturdy wooden yoke would negotiate those springy boards to the beach, no mean feat with the baskets weighing between them something over a hundredweight. Men like these had muscles. Dick thought of Dan Bowmaker’s muscles and felt his own quiver. But someone in Pam’s family must be told of her plight.

  He watched the Steadfast moor up in the fast-filling creek. No one on board seemed to have noticed him there. Almost grateful he stood his ground, though his knees shook. What he really wanted was to leave, but he didn’t.

  He was trying to make himself look small as Dan manoeuvred the yoke across his broad shoulders, the two wicker baskets at each end swinging heavily. Stepping on to the planks he swung his way along, head bent, watching his step, each hand supporting a well-filled basket as he came on.

  Dick felt a prick of envy that the pickings were always so good. No lean months for these people as there were for shrimpers, and shrimpers worked a lot harder, forever chasing the elusive shrimps, here today and Harwich tomorrow. And all people like Dan Bowmaker had to do was go out at low tide and bloody well scrape up a bit of mud for their livelihood. It wasn’t fair.

  He watched Bowmaker reach the centre of the springy planks, his son about to clamber overboard with his load. He saw Bowmaker look up briefly, heard the hiss of his intake of breath as Dick went forward to convey his urgent news. The man, taken off guard by the sight of him, let his foot go forward unguided. It caught the edge of the plank. Bryant saw him stagger under the weight of the baskets, topple forwards, then sideways.

  The movements were almost clownish. Bryant heard one or two men nearby chuckle a little. He too felt nervous mirth rise up in his throat, sweeping away his previous trepidation. The man did look comical, his old enemy tottering about like a comedian on a stage, baskets swinging wildly on their yoke as Bowmaker tried to regain his balance to no avail.

  He seemed to fall slowly, helpless under the weight of the baskets, until as though at last coming to a decision on which way to land, his foot slid over the opposite side of the plank sending him backwards across it, his legs in the mud on one side, his head plowing into it on the other.

  Bryant heard the chuckling die as the fallen man was seen not to be moving, the baskets lying on their sides half emptied of their contents, the thick heavy wooden yoke across his chest, his eyes staring, turbid fingers of tide beginning to cover the mud to seep gently around his head.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘Dad!’ Danny, standing at the gunnels of the boat, let his own load fall from his shoulders on to the deck. ‘You all right?’

  It was a silly question. No movement came from the man below him, the pale blue eyes staring apparently sightlessly up at the sky. In seconds he was over the side, dropping down into the mud beneath its thin covering of water with a splash, to plough through it towards his father.

  It hadn’t been a big fall, twelve inches or so, normally no more than an annoyance to a man measuring his length in soft mud. Dan would have reared up, roaring, ready to vent his fury on the man who’d sent him off balance with his sudden appearance. But with a heavy yoke on him burdened down by its unsteadily swinging baskets, each a dead weight, it had the power to snap a man’s neck as easily as if he’d fallen thirty feet.

  Danny’s shout had added to the concern of those offloading the other two bawleys, their laughter already falling silent. Dropping their loads, they hurried forward, coming to see what was up as Danny knelt in the slowly deepening water beside his father.

  Helping him push the yoke aside, several of them eased Dan off the planks so that he could lie flat. Danny lifted his father’s head on to his knees, clear of the incoming tide.

  On the shore, Dick Bryant was looking on helplessly. ‘Is he all right, son? Anything I can do?’

  Danny looked up, his eyes darkly brittle. ‘You’ve done enough, you. Go on, sod off! Or I’ll come an’ belt you meself.’

  ‘I only came to say your sister’s having her baby. It don’t look good.’

  ‘I said, sod off!’ Danny bent his head again to his father. ‘Come on, Dad, wake up.’

  The blue eyes focused, swivelled to the face of his son. The weather-battered lips twitched into a grin. The voice came low. ‘Looks like I made a bloody fool of meself.’

  ‘Are you hurt?’ Danny asked, full of relief, and saw the brows knit.

  ‘Legs feel a bit funny.’

  There were men all around them now. Whether Dick Bryant was with them or had made himself scarce, Danny wasn’t much caring so long as
his dad was all right.

  ‘What d’you mean, funny?’

  ‘Just funny. Can’t proper feel ’em. Jarred meself. But I’m OK. Just help me up out of this damned water.’

  As requested, Danny put his hand under his father’s shoulders, began to lift him to a sitting position where he’d be able to stand on his own, but the body felt heavy, limp, there seemed to be no muscle power there. He saw his father wince with pain and immediately stopped trying to move him.

  ‘Come on, Dad, help me get you up, or we’ll both drown sitting here.’ He said it in jest but already a light was dawning in his brain, one that had begun to put the fear of God into him. It echoed in his voice. ‘Dad, move yourself, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I can’t, son.’ There was fear in those words too.

  Someone crouched down beside Danny, the water around his ankles, and whispered in his ear.

  ‘We best get ’im on shore, lad. An’ one on us oughter go an’ call an ambulance. Yer dad’s bad hurt, I’d say. I’d say he could of broke his back.’

  It was only echoing what had already gone through Danny’s mind. He let his father lie back down again as several men moved forward, between them tenderly, gently, lifting the helpless body, a heavy man needing six of them to do the job with care, one of them supporting a suspected injured back as best he could. Laid carefully down on a flat piece amid the rattling, tinkling mountains of shells, they tried to make him comfortable. He, his teeth clenched against the pain that moving him had caused for all their care, his face a grey colour, kept his eyes screwed tight shut, perhaps not to reveal the knowledge they held as well as pain.

  ‘You’ll be all right, Dad,’ Danny kept saying, thinking of Mum, no doubt at this moment out shopping, blithely oblivious of the drama going on a few hundred yards from her home. Connie and Josie would come in at lunchtime, all unsuspecting of the prospect that possibly lay ahead with Dad in hospital, paralysed. And … Danny put aside the family feud that had encompassed his own sister Pam, who had thought she’d been doing something constructive in marrying George Bryant … Pam should at least be told.