by Jean Chapman
Then Belle was asked and, surprised, could think of nothing at all to offer, feeling a rare embarrassment at being the centre of attention. Cato came to her help. ‘Let’s sing a duet.’ He pulled himself a little more erect on the long wooden bench, and began in a deep melodious bass, ‘Just a song at twilight, When the lights are low… .’ Belle joined in, but felt her voice was too light and spoiled the resonance of Cato’s, and fell silent, until spontaneously the others built up a gentle, melodious humming accompaniment, which she carefully joined. It made a rare and beautiful version of ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song.’
A mood of quiet nostalgia - for what perhaps they knew not – overtook them all as Cato came to the last lingering notes, and they all fell into a sighing silence, every eye seeming to rest on the little coal stove which glowed now almost as brightly as the lamp. The hearth was the home, Belle thought, wherever a family gathered. She looked at Mrs Long; the old lady still sat shaking her head at the beauty and pathos of the song.
Belle could have wished her future as secure as this family’s, and she felt a sudden chill of apprehension tingle upwards from the base of her spine to the nape of her neck, as she thought of the woman waving the message after them. What would tomorrow bring? Involuntarily she wondered if tonight was going to be the last she and Cato would spend together.
14
The words of Cato’s solo echoed and re-echoed in her mind with growing mournfulness long after Cato slept. ‘Once in the dear, dead days beyond recall, When at the dusk the mists began to fall… .’ The phrases went around in her brain, the verses and chorus becoming muddled, but she could not rid herself of them, or of an awareness that Cato’s caresses had contained a lingering firmness, as if he laid hands on her and silently swore, ‘This girl is mine, and no matter how long it takes, I’ll fight to have her.’ In the feeling was the implicit knowledge that there was both fight and separation coming. Instincts and imaginings could be dispelled by action and scoffed at in the daylight hours, but all through the night a certainty grew that some disaster was about to overtake them.
Perhaps, she thought, it could be the trap. Had the man fishing retrieved it and given it to the police? Were they even now looking for her? Had Mordichi Evans died? Or was it her father? Had he taken his gun and gone to Cato’s house and… killed somebody? The fear that turned her heart then was for her father. He cared too much — that was his Achilles heel. What of her mother? Was she already on her way to find, and take, her daughter home - like a schoolgirl bundled backwards and forwards to town?
She tried not to toss and turn when Cato slept, merely creeping closer to him, nestling for comfort, but lying wide-eyed, imagining ever more awful possibilities.
‘Want to be into Yarmouth and set up well before the streets are aired. Catch the customers before they have time to spend their money anywhere else, that’s my motto!’ Mr Long roused them all well before first light, and Belle felt fragile and unreal as they trundled into town.
Along the deserted promenade a string of lights pulled in a desultory fashion between the lamp standards. The beach, and a grey sea rolling in with ponderous, regular waves flanked their left side, and rows of four-storey guest-houses and the dignified Royal Hotel their right.
The mobile china stall was brought to rest on the promenade, midway between two of the largest seafood stalls with their painted signs for mussels, cockles, whelks, winkles, oysters and Yarmouth bloaters (for dispatch to friends at home). A stall which sold morning cups of tea for early walkers already had several customers.
Belle quickly appreciated why the women were so physically agile and strong, as canvas covers were rolled back from the wagons, sides let down, and wicker skips of china unpacked for display on trestles and planks brought out from their storage place slung underneath the wagons. It was all hard, physical work, carried out with the minimum of fuss by people who knew exactly what they were doing. Belle was soon busily unpacking dinner-plates, dessert-plates, soup dishes and enormous tureens of all kinds, making displays of blue willow pattern, green willow pattern, the brilliant blues, reds and gold leaf of Royal Denton (the poor man’s Royal Derby), and new designs, slender lines of geometric patterns of gold and orange on a creamy ground.
Belle was soon totally involved, and when a further skip revealed statuettes in the art nouveau style — girls with long swirls of hair and flowing clothes — she was quite entranced. Then came the pretty dressing-table sets: china trays with powder-bowls, scent-sprays, ring-trees. Belle exclaimed particularly over one set decorated with delicate sprays of violets. This she put in the middle of the display she had made, sure that it would be sold in no time. But she was disappointed, for, just as Mr Long had predicted, his major customers were the landladies of the area, eager to replace the items broken during their summer season.
Mr Long and his family were just as eager to sell to them, while they still had the bulk of their season’s profits intact - the major reason he made this late, last stand at the seaside, before travelling inland to the autumn fairs and Christmas markets. Then the family went “in”, resting over the worst of the winter months before setting out again the following spring.
Trade became brisk as the sun rose and the morning warmed. Belle and the two Mrs Longs were soon putting aside woollens and rolling up their blouse sleeves as they sought out and wrapped the huge brown and cream mixing-bowls, enormous white pudding basins, breakfast cups and saucers, a three-quart brown teapot, chamber-pots (plain and patterned). Many customers were obviously almost old friends, and many asked for items such as they had bought in previous years. The banter was fast and friendly, as was the service. Belle became entirely engrossed and animated. Cato had gone back with his engine to make a further assessment of the work to be done on Mr Long’s machine, before he wrote to his father giving exact details and requesting a further driver and steam-engine to tow the Fowler back to their yard at Loncote.
It was as she reached up for a kitchen-size milk jug that she glimpsed a man’s figure towards the rear of the crowd; he stood still and was definitely not part of the scene of bustling shoppers enjoying buying from the china man’s mobile shop. He was obscured now by many broad-beamed and ample-bosomed landladies, but Belle’s heart thumped. Surely it was only a remnant of the night’s imaginings drifting over her consciousness! She looked away as she handed over the jug for inspection, then as the woman rejected it for a smaller one, she glanced again, and drew back, her skin prickling with goose-pimples. He was at the front of the crowd now. The jug slipped from her fingers, crashing down on to the dressing-table set she had so carefully displayed.
All conversation stopped for a moment, then came calls of ‘That’s your wages gone, my gel.’ ‘Having a smashin’ time at Yarmouth!’ While the others went on selling, the senior Mrs Long came over to her, and saw that the distress she felt was nothing to do with the broken china dressing tray and pots, but with the man who stood motionless before the stall.
‘My father,’ Belle breathed in explanation, and felt all the awe of one who stands before a figure who had always represented the ultimate discipline in her life. His hard compression of mouth and steady steely gaze told of a harshness and an unswerving intention so potent they must have sprung from way, way back in his growing years.
‘I’ve come to take my runaway, underage daughter home,’ he said, addressing no one in particular. Yet in one sentence Belle realised he had both stated his case and fairly eliminated opposition. The women around him drew back a little as if to assess this man, and Belle found space to admit he was not unimpressive.
Sam drew back and stood a little way off, waiting for her to go to him. He would not want a public harangue, she knew. She stooped and began to pick up the broken pieces of china. Her offer to pay was brushed aside by Mrs Long. Then, with a soft exclamation of impatience, she placed the pieces in the older woman’s hands, and they nodded mutual acceptance of the fact that she would have to go to talk to her father. As she went towards
him, he turned and walked even further off, standing close to, but not allowing himself the luxury of leaning on, the promenade railings, pretending to look out over the sea.
She felt anger rising and marched up to him, not waiting for him to turn. ‘I’m not coming home,’ she declared.
He swung round so sharply she stepped back automatically, but then aggressively retook the step, and repeated her words with a lift of her chin: ‘I’m not coming home’ — and awaited his onslaught.
Sam felt all the emotions of any parent who had at long last found a lost and wilful child: the relief from anxiety for her safety, as she stood there so obviously well; and the urge to punish for causing so much alarm, of which she seemed quite oblivious. He felt a swift surge of temper, which he struggled to keep in check as she stood so defiantly before him.
She took the moment to restate her case. ‘I love Cato Abbott.’
‘Yes,’ he answered ironically, his control trembling the quiet tone. ‘You must do.’
His quietness she knew for the still eye of the whirlwind, but like a small ship determined to put out in a storm, pressed on to make the next point of her argument. ‘Then… .’
‘Oh! then… nothing!’ Sam snapped up her slight pause. His mind betrayed him for a moment, finding a parallel to the situation in a sudden picture of Meg combing her hair, and he repeated viciously, ‘Then… nothing! We can’t have a young girl chasing off around the countryside after any young man who takes her fancy.’
‘It’s not any young man… .’
‘No.’ The single word was heavy with finality, confirming Cato Abbott was the one young man she should never aspire to.
‘You’ll never stop me, you know!’
‘I can stop you doing anything I like until you’re twenty-one, he began but, at the same moment as his daughter, turned, attracted by the noise of a steam-engine coming from the far end of the promenade. He added, ‘And make no mistake, until you come to your senses, I intend to.’
‘I’m a woman now!’ She turned back to him, her amber eyes more tiger than kitten. ‘Cato will have something to say about this!’
‘He’ll have no say… .’ But he stopped, her blatant assertion of having slept with the Abbott boy, volunteered as if she was proud of it, shocked even him who knew her ‘stories’ well enough. He remembered her tale of having regularly walked the boundary path, and hoped this admission was no more true than that public announcement had been. ‘He’ll keep a still tongue’ — his voice rose as he made his threat - ‘if he knows what’s good for him.’ Her glance came sharply back from the approaching steam-engine again, as he added quietly, ‘I’ll involve the law if I have to.’
‘Then I’ll tell the law your nephew set that mantrap!’
The ingenuity of the lengths she would go to in her determination to have her own way almost made him gasp, but in this she could not win. ‘Don’t bandy words with me, girl!’ He had no intention of taking up her latest threat, or fabrication, and he was diverted by the sight of Cato Abbott athletically swinging down from the engine, then, following the pointed finger of one of the men on the stall, striding towards them.
Had this man slept with his daughter? Sam watched his approach and felt he knew what a mixture of wormwood and gall might taste like, for his mouth was parched with bitterness. He could have killed at that moment, with as little compunction as wringing a bird’s neck to provide a meal for a hungry family. Tired after a ten-hour, halting train journey and confused about his own emotions — since the gipsy woman had so infiltrated herself into his thoughts — he resented the certainty with which Cato Abbott now faced him and aligned himself by Belle.
‘So!’ Sam’s anger raced away from him now. ‘You burn and destroy my property, and now abduct my daughter!’ He raised his voice higher over Belle’s protest of ‘He didn’t.’ ‘My family, my daughter, are my concern. You and yours seem to think they can ride roughshod and take what is neither offered nor given.’ He laid each word, one hard upon the other, building his argument.
‘Belle won’t always be yours to order, or to give,’ Cato answered, standing protectively next to Belle, as seemingly irremovable as a brick wall.
‘But while she is, make no mistake, she’ll never be yours.’
‘I have been his.’ Belle leapt forward to spit the words at her father. ‘Don’t you understand, I am his.’
‘Be silent!’ Sam ordered. ‘At best you’re a liar… .’
‘And at worst?’ she demanded.
‘A slut!’
‘Yes, that’s what I am,’ she shouted back.
Cato put out a hand as if to keep father and daughter apart, to restrain Belle, and Sam, thinking Cato was about to touch her, leapt forward without thinking and caught the younger man’s arm. The moment, time, seemed to be still, awaiting the outcome. The older man felt the breadth of forearm beneath his stretched fingers and realised he risked making a fool of himself. Cato knew nothing could be achieved by rousing this man of unpredictable temper and actions further. Mutual contempt and reservation made both men jerk away, the contact between them mutually repulsive.
‘Whatever she is, or says she is’ - Sam felt his lips exaggerated into a snarl of frustrated fury - ‘she goes back with me by the afternoon train, or I’ll swear out a warrant for your arrest as a kidnapper.’
‘For goodness sake!’ Belle’s words slapped as violently back at him. ‘I came willingly, don’t you understand? I hid in his van. He didn’t even know I was there.’
Sam ignored his daughter. ‘And I’ll make the Abbotts wish they’d never seen Glebe Farm, never violated my path.’
‘Mrs Abbott’s a lady, comes from Oakholm Manor, landed gentry!’ Belle leaned forward to shout at him. ‘Which is more than can be said for you. You had to marry to.. ’
‘That will do!’ Sam lashed out hysterically with both voice and hand, catching Belle on the shoulder.
Cato snatched his hand, and Belle’s, as she seemed to be coming forward, her hands clawed, with the intention of attacking her father. He held them apart like two recalcitrant animals, cat and dog, and in a tone which added the verbal equivalent of a shake by the scruff of the neck, said, ‘We’ll be on the train, Mr Greenaugh. We’ll meet on the station.’
‘I’ll wait here.’ Sam freed his hand with a violent downwards wrench. ‘My daughter’ll come with me to the station.’
‘As you like, but I shall be travelling with her,’ Cato said. ‘There’ll be no slapping around while I can prevent it. I don’t trust your temper, Mr Greenaugh.’
‘And I don’t trust your morals, Abbott!’
Belle wept tears of angry frustration, but not until she was out of sight in the living-van. She wondered how Cato could be so controlled, but as he held her close and hushed her, she knew his restraint to be as of a steel spring tight wound, power enough to protect and avenge — but she could not override his sense of expediency.
He patiently and gently explained that for the time being the only thing for them to do was to return home. He was convinced his father would be sympathetic, and might eventually help establish him in a small steam-engineering business somewhere away from Loncote. He would forego any wages, and take as much extra work of any kind he could find, to try to establish a little capital.
The torment of ‘eventually’, the eternity of three years and the threat of being sent to Derbyshire, perhaps even for those three years, Belle seemed totally unable to convey to Cato. He was so sure he would always be able to find a way to see her. She was equally sure she could not wait, and that her father would find some way of keeping them permanently apart.
Cato left her briefly to hurry into town and send a telegram to his father, telling of his return with Belle and her father, and the need for another engine and driver to be dispatched to Yarmouth. She felt she was squirming under the foot of defeat: she could run away on her own, but there seemed little point in that; she could - she looked wildly around the van and ran to pick up the hea
vy old walking-cane and held it above her head as if threatening the whole world, then sighed and threw it down on the bunk; no, she decided, what she would do was to be better prepared next time she ran away - she and Cato must plan it all together! She went to the door of the van. The early sun had given way to a heavy sea-mist which came rolling up from the beach. She could not make out which way Cato had gone, but the dour figure of her father, now standing near the refreshment stall, seemed even more unyielding as the wind whipped the long black overcoat he had put on, but swayed the man not at all.
‘But Cato and I can make a force that moves mountains,’ she whispered, as a heavier, colder bank of fog enveloped her father, obscuring everything from view for several minutes. Unexpectedly, her heart turned with a sudden sympathy for her father. He had never known a love such as theirs, a love that could sweep away conventions. He was too… she searched for a word… too self-conscious, too self-centred, too frightened.
When the time came, they said a reluctant goodbye to the family on the china stall. Mrs Long thrust a carrier-bag of carefully wrapped items into Belle’s hand, hushing questions and thanks, and whispering as she kissed Belle’s cheek, ‘For your bottom drawer,’ giving her a reassuring, positive nod at the same time.
Belle felt they must have looked like a trio of dispossessed people, with their miscellaneous collection of string and cloth bags, her father’s black coat and their solemn, silent manner. No one stood near them on the station platform, and the family who bustled into the same compartment on the train and settled bags, cases and children, decamped in a very short space of time. The woman had raised her eyebrows at her husband and he had nodded to the door. Bags, cases, children were all re-collected, the compartment door slammed and the party moved down the platform to find more congenial quarters for their journey.