A Haven on Orchard Lane

by Lawana Blackwell

  “Aw, lovely pup you are.” She leaned to pat her head gingerly; she had had very little contact with dogs in her lifetime, Aunt Vesta preferring cats. Many cats. “What breed is she?”

  “Some Spaniel, some Labrador retriever . . . with a fair dose of anyone’s guess.”

  Either Jinny did not care for that description, or she had had enough of the head patting. Her paws clicked against the floor on her return to her spot before the counter.

  “Are you recovered?” the man asked Rosalind.

  “I think. But I can’t say the same of your handkerchief. I’ll replace it.”

  “Please don’t. I have enough hankies for the whole town’s sniffles, as well as the rare nosebleed. My grandmother never took to knitting or to embroidery but needed something to do with her hands in the evenings.”

  “You’re very kind . . . Mr. Pearce?”

  “Why, thank you. And yes, I’m Jude Pearce.”

  “I’m Rosalind Kent.”

  “Are you visiting Port Stilwell?”

  “Just for a bit. I teach in Cheltenham, so I will be there during school terms.”

  “What subject, might I inquire?”

  “Mathematics.”

  “Very good. Are you staying in the inn?”

  “My mother and I have taken rooms at Mrs. Aurora Hooper’s cottage. Are you acquainted with her?”

  “I am,” he said with no change of expression.

  A display rack upon the counter caught Rosalind’s eye. “Why, you do carry postal cards.”

  “I always have. Along with an assortment of stationery and art supplies. Books alone would not bring quite the profit to keep this place going.”

  “She must have been misinformed.”

  “She? Meaning Mrs. Hooper?”

  “I asked if there was a bookshop that sold them.” She kept the rest to herself.

  “Interesting.” His eyes were smiling now. “Rosalind . . . from As You Like It?”

  “My mother is fond of Shakespeare.”

  “As was my grandfather. He read to us evenings. The Bible and Shakespeare.”

  “While your grandmother hemmed handkerchiefs.”

  “A woman on a mission.”

  He had mentioned both grandparents in past tense. She wondered where his parents fit in. “And what did you do?”

  “As little as possible, I’m afraid. I was a shamefully lazy boy.”

  She motioned to the rows of books “You seem to have caught on.”

  “When it dawned upon me that avoiding work was more tedious than actually working.”

  She laughed. “I think that epiphany comes to most of us at some time.”

  “Thankfully so,” he said, “as I have this affinity for food and shelter.”

  Rosalind was enjoying the repartee; however, she was keeping him from closing shop. Besides, it was not proper to be chatting like schoolmates with a man she had just met, albeit a chivalrous one. She could almost see Aunt Vesta’s frown.

  “Well, good day, Mr. Pearce.”

  “And to you, Miss Kent.” He moved to the door, opened it, and looked out. “It’ll be dark very soon. Please allow me to escort you to Mrs. Hooper’s cottage.”

  “Thank you, but I’ll make it there. I walk fast.”

  “But wait,” he said and moved over to the counter. He brought back a postal card of the beach and the cliffs beyond. “This is a good one.”

  “I shall have to buy it another day.”

  “My welcome to Port Stilwell gift. Do go home straightaway. It would be best to go northward to Fowler Lane, then turn eastward and continue on to Fore Street.”

  “Thank you. I know the way from Fore Street.”

  “Very good. And I hope you’ll stop by again.”

  As a customer, she thought. She thanked him again and set out.

  Past Saint Michael’s, where the shops of Fore Street gave way to cottages, she slowed her steps at the sight of two young boys scrubbing a picket fence before a two-storey cottage on her left. She drew her wrap tighter. They should be indoors, not out in the chill dusk sloshing water from a bucket.

  She paused and cleared her throat. Both heads whipped around.

  “Um, can you give me directions to Orchard Lane?”

  “It’s but one lane beyond, miss,” said the elder, motioning with dripping rag. He seemed but ten, with brown hair and ears that stuck out a bit.

  The younger, copper-headed and freckled, nodded. “Are you lost?”

  “Not anymore, thanks to your help.” Taking advantage of this brief communication, she said, “Shouldn’t you be at your supper?”

  “I said a naughty word, miss,” the youngest said.

  “Albert . . .” cautioned his brother.

  The younger sniffed, swiped his sleeve under his nose. “Didn’t know it was. I heard a fisherman say it when his cartwheel broke. Mum said if Teresa says it, she’ll skin me like a hare.”

  “That’s enough, Albert!” the elder boy hissed. “Please go, miss.”

  Rosalind continued on, sick at heart. But perhaps it was not as it seemed. Boys were more prone to mischief than girls, or so it appeared from casual observation. And as to the threat, exaggeration often accompanied anger. It was very likely that the boy had been warned not to swear.

  A shiver went through her. His punishment is to catch pneumonia?

  She turned. The two gave her stricken looks as she approached.

  “I’m sorry, but your parents surely don’t realize your clothes are wet. I can’t go to a warm cottage whilst you’re out here.”

  “We’ve almost finished,” the elder pleaded. “Please go.”

  The cottage door opened. A woman stepped out, haloed by lamplight behind her. “Danny! Albert! What’s going on?”

  Rosalind swallowed her anger, waved a hand, and chirped, “Hello . . . I was asking directions.”

  She dared not look at the boys but could feel their relief.

  “I shall go now. Good evening!”

  As she walked up Orchard Lane, the moon sailed out from behind heavy clouds, making the apple trees ghastly in the silver light, as if prepared to uproot themselves and skulk toward her. Gravel crunched beneath her feet. And then in the distance, a figure moved. Rosalind’s breath caught in her throat.

  A masculine voice called, “Miss Kent?”

  “Yes?” Rosalind called back, weak with relief.

  Amos White drew closer.

  “I carried supper over. Your mum’s frantic over your whereabouts.”

  Rosalind thanked him and walked faster. Light shone from every window in the yellow cottage. Mother and Mrs. Deamer stood outside the gate in the glow of the lantern Mrs. Deamer held.

  “Rosalind!” Mother cried.

  Surprised and moved by the distress in her voice, Rosalind found herself saying, “I’m sorry I worried you.”

  “I wondered if you’d decided to return to school.” Her mother sniffed. “But Mrs. Deamer reminded me that you would not have left your bag. Then I thought of the cliffs.”

  “They can be slippery,” said the housekeeper.

  “I’m fine.” Impulse prompted her to lift her hand, yet Rosalind stopped herself from patting her mother’s arm. “Let’s go indoors.”

  In the dining room, she told the women of the nosebleed and then the boys.

  “At this hour?” Mother asked.

  “Perhaps they were being punished?” Mrs. Deamer suggested. “And the parents did not realize they were soaked?”

  “Perhaps,” Rosalind conceded. At least they weren’t being beaten. Or worse.

  Mrs. Deamer served from the sideboard a clear gravy soup, beef rib roast, sea kale, and potatoes. She placed a small silver bell near Mother’s bread plate. “I shall be in the kitchen. Please ring for dessert.”

  “Is it on the sideboard?” Mother asked.

  “Yes. Mrs. Lightman’s excellent rhubarb tart.”

  “We’ll serve our own. Take your supper at your leisure.”

&nbs
p; “Why, thank you.” Mrs. Deamer left the room.

  Rosalind could not help but grudgingly admire her mother’s kindness, enough to engage her in conversation. She took a spoonful of soup and said, “I passed several men queued to vote.”

  Her mother gave her a blank look.

  “For prime minister.”

  “Ah.” She nodded. “I lost all sense of time in the hospital.”

  “We’ll subscribe to a newspaper or two. You can catch up.”

  “You mustn’t waste any more money on me.”

  “They aren’t expensive.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” Her mother moved her spoon through her soup.

  “What is it?” Rosalind asked, once again annoyed at herself for caring.

  Looking up again, her mother said, “I don’t want to seem ungrateful. Please subscribe for yourself if you wish, but I would rather not read the London news.”

  “Very well. There may be a local newspaper. But . . .”

  She stopped herself from saying, “Surely the critics have moved on.” To her knowledge, Mother did not know of the scathing reviews. While she felt justified in the fiction of Aunt Vesta’s doting nature, Rosalind had no wish to inflict more pain. Mother was, after all, a human being.

  Another thought came to her. “Should you not be aware if Lord Fosberry makes more accusations?”

  “No.” Her mother gave a little shudder. “There is nothing I can do if he does. He haunts my dreams. I can’t allow him to rob my waking moments.”

  Rosalind watched the spoon moving, the pain upon her mother’s face. She softened her voice. “The soup is good.”

  Her mother leaned to taste. “Quite good.”

  They finished their soups. Setting aside her bowl and picking up fork and knife, Rosalind said, “May I ask why you stayed five years? You’ve divorced before.”

  After a moment, her mother replied, “Having divorced makes the thought of a second more difficult. You feel a failure once again. In any case, by the time he revealed his true nature, my money and any courage I thought I possessed were gone.”

  You could have written to me, Rosalind thought. But would she have responded?

  Yes. Sent money at the very least.

  Or would she have? Perhaps not the Rosalind she was of just days ago, carrying the mental image of a mother who had not lived up to the duties God had assigned to her.

  Not everything is black and white, she realized.

  “Everything will be all right,” she found herself saying.

  Her mother’s eyes glittered. “Thank you, Rosalind. And for rescuing me.”

  “You’re welcome.” But she was not accustomed to so much sentiment. She busied herself by cutting up a potato. “We should finish supper before it grows cold.”

  10

  On Tuesday morning, ten-year-old Danny Fletcher opened his eyes and noticed the tepid sunlight slanting through the curtains. Pulse quickening, he rolled over and shook his brother’s shoulder.

  “Albert!”

  Albert’s lashes trembled, but soft snores continued from the mouth bowed against the pillow.

  Another shake, and this time Danny’s whisper was more urgent. “Wake!”

  The six-year-old’s blue eyes opened, blinked at him. Filled with tears.

  Danny groaned. “No . . .”

  Albert’s voice was small, thick. “I’m sorry.”

  Danny released his grip to pat the bony shoulder. “No matter. I should have woken. But hurry!”

  Two sets of feet eased to the chill floorboards. Danny tugged off the bedding and went around to his brother’s side. With soft grunts, they folded and flipped the thin mattress.

  From behind the chest of drawers, he pulled the wadded sheet he had taken from a clothesline weeks ago. He was certain that stealing a sheet was a more serious sin than stealing food. He could only hope Mother would have the chance to explain to God that he had to protect Albert.

  They made the bed again. There was no disguising the odor, but the room had smelled this way since Albert was four and their stepmother declared him too old to wear nappies to bed.

  Danny shoved the damp sheet behind the chest. He would wait for an opportunity to spread it out in the attic. She never went up there.

  He and his brother climbed back into bed. Only the hem of Albert’s nightshirt was damp. He knew without being told to lie on that side.

  They stared at each other. Danny could hear the faint chatter of Teresa, aged eighteen months. He smiled to himself, picturing her latest achievement, patting the garden door and saying, “We go?”

  He could not smile at her, not without risking his stepmother accusing him of motives he did not understand.

  Albert’s eyes filled again. “What if she feels my shirt?”

  “She won’t.”

  She was loath to touch them, even while using the stick. She had her ways, however. Almost every corner of the cottage had nicks in the cob walls.

  Albert had it the worst. Danny knew in his heart that the bedwetting wasn’t the only reason. How many times, back when they used to go to church, had people exclaimed over Albert’s freckles and red curls? Over how much he resembled Mother? Stepmother’s lips would press together as if she had tasted vinegar.

  Why this was so, Danny could not fathom.

  Oddity upon oddities, he could recall when his stepmother was kind. That was back when she arrived because Mother’s stomach was growing too big and her ankles too puffy for her to keep house.

  He kept Mother’s image in his mind. Gentle, smiling, embracing. Her face was sober in the photograph he had discovered last year in a snuff tin tucked into the toe of an old skate on a cellar shelf. Though she did not smile, her eyes danced.

  Father was the only person who could have hidden the photograph. Danny dared not ask. Not that Father had ever lifted a hand to him. He was a clerk at the bank and naturally soft-spoken. But absent in a way that Danny could not understand.

  Did Father blame Albert? After all, by some mystery, his infant brother had appeared the same day Mother died. But surely not, because Father treated both sons with equal indifference.

  His shoulders could still feel the touch of his father’s soft hands when Albert was still an infant. Miss Sabrina Walsh was to become his mother, he had said. “We need her and may as well make it proper. Besides, she lost her own mother as a child, so will help you to cope.”

  Three sharp raps and his stepmother’s voice broke into his reverie. “Wake up!”

  Fortunately, she did not open the door.

  They dressed quickly. Danny helped Albert bathe with a flannel and cold water from the pitcher, then ran a comb across both their heads.

  As happened more and more lately, Father had left when they entered the kitchen. Stepmother was preparing their lunches at the table: shilling-sized spots of jam on slices of bread that she dropped into treacle buckets.

  She looked up and said, “Eat your porridge. You’ll be late.”

  They had plenty of time, but she wanted them away. Still, she seemed of a pleasant enough temperament, though that could change in an instant. Danny was careful to ignore little Teresa. Plump, pink-cheeked, and with her mother’s blond hair and violet eyes, she played with a stack of wooden blocks, hooting with laughter when they fell. One look from him would bring her toddling over, babbling and hoping to play.

  The porridge was cold, and worse, had burnt spots. As ravenous as he was, it was all he could do to choke it down without allowing it to touch his tongue. His warning look to Albert was not necessary, for his brother spooned in mouthfuls and gulped, eyes tearing.

  At least their stepmother was as stingy with the porridge as with the lunches. Danny carried bowls and spoons to the sink, thanked her again, and took up the buckets.

  “Thank you, Mother,” Albert said as well.

  “Does my little mite need a clean nappy?” she cooed to Teresa.

  The bells of Saint Michael’s were chiming nine o’clock when the boys re
ached the weathered stone Augusta Silcox School, named after the founder years before they were born. Children were assembling at the steps before the two front doors, the left leading to the two classrooms of the infant school. Danny handed Albert his bucket and admonished him to be good for Mrs. Fairburn. The warning was not necessary, for Albert adored his schoolmistress, even though she was old and had a shrill voice. She was equally kind back when Danny was in her class. He wished he had some way to repay her. If only he had fishing lines! He would catch her the biggest fish in the bay!

  He took his time shuffling over to the grammar school door, waiting until most were inside before joining the end of the queue.

  Would that he could run off and hide in the cliffs! His classmates gave him wide berth and made up taunts such as “Jug-ears” and “Louse-head,” even though, to his knowledge, he had never had lice.

  Worse was “Stinky,” for he suspected it was true. Elsewise, why would the schoolmaster always be so cross with him?

  “All at attention for ‘God Save the Queen’!” Mr. Clark barked from the front. He would not sing until he had absolute silence.

  Danny’s stomach pinged like a rusty spring. Someone giggled, and Mr. Clark scowled at the entire class.

  The sleepiness, the taunts, the slaps, the worries for his brother, and the longings for his mother were more than Danny thought he could bear at times.

  The grinding hunger was worse. His stomach growled again. More giggles, and this time Mr. Clark’s scowl found its mark.

  11

  Coral Shipsey arrived at the yellow house at ten past eleven, and mental images of the plump, rosy-cheeked, mature cooks of Charlotte’s past evaporated.

  Nineteen, she was, with wide hazel eyes and a fair complexion marred only by a faint strawberry mark between her cheek and left ear. She was short, with a shapely figure. Honey-colored curls spilled from a ribbon.

  “If you could bear ham sandwiches for lunch, I’ll make it up to you at supper with stewed eels and pork cutlets,” she said in a girlish voice after Mrs. Deamer made introductions in the parlor.

  “But of course.” Charlotte smiled. “I wasn’t expecting someone so young.”