The River Folk

by Margaret Dickinson

  Mary Ann allowed the boy to clasp and unclasp her finger and only resisted when he tried to draw it towards his mouth. ‘No, no, you’re not going to chew my finger,’ she laughed.

  ‘He’s still teething. See how he dribbles,’ Edwina said adoringly.

  Mary Ann’s face sobered. ‘Does she . . . does Mrs Marsh know who I am?’

  Edwina shook her head again. ‘If you mean does she know about your . . .’ She paused briefly struggling to find an appropriate word. ‘Association with Randolph. No, she doesn’t.’ Then she added wryly, ‘At least, not unless Randolph has told her himself and I doubt that very much.’

  Mary Ann said nothing, her gaze on his child as the boy played with her fingers and smiled playfully up into her eyes.

  ‘He is a lovely little boy,’ she murmured, but now Edwina was trying to draw the conversation away.

  ‘Tell me, how is Lizzie, and, of course, Dan and Duggie? And do you see anything of poor Susan?’

  Susan Oliver had become known, all along the river-bank, as ‘poor Susan’. Though Dan and Mary Ann had probably been the first to know, it was now common knowledge that her husband Ted was wildly and irrationally jealous of her. She was a virtual prisoner in the cottage near the ferry, which Ted operated between the two villages on either side of the Trent, appropriately named Eastlands and Westlands. The ferryman’s cottage was at Eastlands and so it was always known as Eastlands’ Ferry.

  Susan had no friends and saw little of her own family. It was a disastrous marriage, but Susan was trapped. Her father would not countenance the scandal of a divorce.

  ‘He’s a hard man, that Jack Price. Thank God I don’t work for him any more,’ Dan said often. ‘He seems to blame Susan. Says she must be giving her husband cause for jealousy. What chance has she got, locked away in the middle of nowhere?’

  Mary Ann would glance at him and wonder. Whenever they passed by the tiny white cottage on the riverbank, Dan would be on deck, and she knew he stood looking across the expanse of water hoping to catch sight of Susan.

  But Susan was never to be seen. Very occasionally, as they had come upriver, they would see her in the distance, pegging out the washing on the line, but by the time the Maid Mary Ann drew level, Susan had scuttled indoors.

  Did Ted see Dan watching out for his wife, Mary Ann thought, and did he, too, wonder?

  In answer to Edwina’s question, Mary Ann shook her head. ‘Not much. I haven’t seen her to speak to since the night Lizzie was born.’

  ‘She’s got a little boy now, hasn’t she?’

  Mary Ann nodded. ‘Yes. Tolly. He was born about ten months after Lizzie. When was Lawrence born?’

  ‘Two months after Lizzie.’

  ‘And I never knew,’ Mary Ann murmured.

  For a moment, Edwina looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. I should have told you. But – it was, well, awkward.’

  ‘Is that why no one told me? Not even Bessie.’ Mary Ann looked straight into Edwina’s eyes. ‘She knew, I suppose?’

  Edwina nodded and said again, ‘I’m sorry, Mary Ann, we should have told you.’

  As she walked home, back to the wharf where she knew Dan would be waiting, anxious to catch the tide, Mary Ann pondered on the strange quirk of Fate that had brought three children into the world within the space of a year. Three children, who were linked in a strange way by their parents’ pasts. What did life hold for each of them? Mary Ann wondered. Would their paths cross? Would they even know one another? Perhaps Lizzie and Tolly would, she mused. As long as his father didn’t guard him as jealously as he did his wife. But would Lizzie ever know Lawrence?

  A smile played mischievously upon Mary Ann’s mouth. If Edwina was to look after her nephew on the nanny’s day off, she thought, then she must try to bring Lizzie to visit her godmother on one of those days.

  Thirty-Seven

  Lizzie was almost nine when Mary Ann met Randolph Marsh again.

  The intervening years had been kind to Mary Ann and her little family, although there had been no more children. She had found a kind of contentment with Dan and, after the shaky beginning, had grown to love her daughter although her displays of affection towards the child were spasmodic. One moment she would lavish kisses and cuddles upon Lizzie, the next she would be offhand with her and lost in a world of her own memories. To a less confident infant, such erratic behaviour would have been disastrous, but Lizzie, sure in the love of a large, extended family, appeared to take her mother’s mood swings in her stride.

  Lizzie was a delight to all who knew her. In looks, she resembled her mother: dark hair, deep brown eyes and dimples in her cheeks, which seemed ever present for the child smiled constantly. She was bright and intelligent and quick to learn. In her character, she took after the Ruddick family. She was forthright, even from an early age, in her opinions like her grandmother, Bessie. Yet any bossiness was quickly dispelled by her lively, teasing manner which echoed her Uncle Duggie’s nature.

  Her father, her grandfather and her two uncles, especially Duggie, doted on her and spoiled her. In their eyes she could do no wrong and any necessary correction had to come from Mary Ann or Bessie.

  Lizzie learnt to walk on the deck of the Maid Mary Ann and to swim under Duggie’s tuition, not in the river for the currents were too strong and treacherous, but in the town’s swimming baths when they moored for a few hours at one of the wharves.

  ‘She’s not to swim in the river. You must teach her that, Mary Ann,’ Dan commanded. ‘Folks throw all sorts of rubbish and muck into the river.’ Before she reached school age, he had built her a miniature cog boat of her own. He taught her to scull in the shallow waters of the River Trent, paying out the rope from the ship with the little craft attached to it. Then, with a mixture of concern and pride, he and Duggie hung over the side as the tiny hands manoeuvred the oar with a deftness that was in her blood.

  When she reached school age, Mary Ann was adamant that Lizzie should attend Edwina’s school.

  ‘She’s going to be a lady when she grows up,’ Mary Ann declared, and even Bessie, who normally despised anyone trying to ‘rise above their station’, backed the decision. If she had been fully aware, however, of all that lay behind Mary Ann’s scheme, Bessie might not have been so ready to agree. But wanting the very best for her granddaughter, Bessie even persuaded each member of the Ruddick family to contribute to the fees.

  Dan missed his little girl dreadfully from the moment she stepped off the ship in her smart new uniform. Mary Ann, holding Lizzie’s hand, had known that Dan was watching them as they walked the length of River Road that first school morning.

  ‘Turn and wave to your daddy,’ she had said to Lizzie before his tall, still figure was lost from their sight.

  Lizzie had turned and blown him a kiss from her tiny hand. Then she had skipped ahead of her mother, anxious to begin her new life.

  Edwina, Lizzie’s godmother, had loved her from the first time she had seen her, and now having the child in her charge, she found it difficult not to favour her over her other pupils.

  ‘She’s so bright and quick,’ Edwina extolled Lizzie’s virtues to anyone who would listen. Then she would smile fondly and say, ‘But she’s a little mischief at times and is often in trouble with her teacher. It’s difficult to be angry with her for long, though. She makes you laugh just when you’re trying to be stern with her.’

  Mary Ann’s secretly cherished hope that Lizzie would meet Lawrence Marsh did not happen. Often, when they were small, Mary Ann would take her daughter to see Edwina hoping they might meet the boy by chance. But Fate never decreed their meeting. And by the time Lizzie attended the school, Lawrence already had a tutor at home and then, at the age of seven, he was sent away to boarding school. In the school holidays when perhaps he visited Edwina, there was no plausible reason for Lizzie to be there.

  Lizzie did, however, know Tolly Oliver.

  Almost from the time she could walk, she would stand at the ship’s rail and wave to the b
oy who lived in the ferryman’s cottage.

  ‘That’s Tolly,’ Mary Ann had heard Dan tell her. She had watched Lizzie staring at the boy and then dimpling as she laughed and waved to him.

  It became a ritual that every time they passed by on the river, Lizzie would run to the side and wave.

  ‘Wave to Tolly, Mamma,’ Lizzie would shout. ‘We must all wave to Tolly. Daddy, wave to Tolly.’

  ‘Poor Tolly,’ Dan would murmur, but it wasn’t until Lizzie grew a little older that she asked her mother, ‘Why does Daddy always call him “poor Tolly”? Is it because he always looks so lonely? Or is it because they haven’t much money?’

  Mary Ann looked down at the young child and marvelled at her perception.

  ‘A bit of both, I think,’ had been her answer. Mary Ann could not explain to the child that because Tolly’s mother was ‘poor Susan’, it seemed natural to call her son a similar name.

  ‘He looks so thin, doesn’t he?’ Lizzie mused, with an unusual understanding from one so young.

  Hearing their conversation Dan had come to stand alongside them. In his hand he held a potato from the cargo they were carrying.

  Thoughtfully, he tossed it up and down in his hand like a huge cricket ball.

  ‘Wants feeding up a bit, poor lad. Shall we throw him this?’ Dan smiled down at his daughter and then, above her head, he caught Mary Ann’s glance.

  Quietly, Mary Ann said, ‘They say, in the wash-houses, that Ted hasn’t much time for his lad.’

  Dan pulled a face. ‘Doesn’t surprise me. The man’s so eaten up with jealousy, I don’t think he’s got a loving bone in his body. He can’t stand anyone to come between himself and Susan – not even his own son.’ And he said yet again, ‘Poor Tolly.’

  Mary Ann glanced at him and was sure that secretly her husband was also thinking, ‘Poor Susan.’

  ‘Throw it, Daddy. Throw that big potato to Tolly. His mam can cook it for his dinner.’

  Dan raised his arm, drew it back and hurled the unusual missile across the rippling water to the bank. The garden of the ferryman’s cottage came down to the river with no fencing or hedge between it and the slope of the bank. They watched Tolly stare in surprise as the potato landed close by him and rolled almost to his feet.

  Lizzie jumped up and down and clapped her hands. ‘It’s for your dinner, Tolly,’ she shouted, her piping voice bouncing on the breeze to him. ‘It’s for your dinner.’

  Slowly the boy bent and picked it up. He stood a moment with it in the palm of his hand and then, even from a distance, they could all see the broad grin on his face. He waved and then turned and dashed into the house. They heard him calling, ‘Mam, Mam, look . . .’ But the rest of his words were lost.

  Even Mary Ann was touched by the boy’s pleasure. She smiled at Dan. ‘That was a nice thing to do, Dan Ruddick.’ She reached up and touched his cheek. Dan caught hold of her hand and kissed her fingers tenderly.

  ‘Look, there’s Tolly’s mam,’ Lizzie said, and Mary Ann and Dan turned back to see Susan standing in the doorway of her home. She was holding the potato and as her hand fluttered briefly in a nervous gesture of thanks, Mary Ann felt Dan let go of her hand.

  It became another ritual that, as long as Ted Oliver was not around to see, every time the Maid Mary Ann passed Ferry Cottage, they would throw something to Tolly if the cargo they were carrying was suitable. In winter, if they were carrying house coal to the Co-op’s yard in Elsborough, both Dan and Duggie would pelt enough coal to keep the cottage fire burning for a week. They watched with amusement and delight as Tolly scurried about the grass picking up the coal and putting it into a bucket.

  ‘The lad can hardly carry it,’ Duggie would laugh, but Dan would only smile and say, ‘It’ll keep him warm for a day or two.’

  Potatoes and other vegetables were regularly hurled across the water and sometimes they even carried canned fruit, imported into Hull and distributed via the rivers and canals. Lizzie would laugh aloud as she watched Tolly picking up the cans and staring at the labels in amazement.

  ‘Are you sure you’re not making more trouble for Susan?’ Mary Ann asked. ‘How is she going to explain the appearance of canned fruit on her pantry shelves to a man like Ted Oliver?’

  Dan shrugged. ‘She’ll think of something,’ he said confidently.

  ‘Well, I’m not so sure. I don’t think a tin of pineapple or peaches is worth a black eye or a broken jaw.’

  She turned away to go below, but she knew Dan was looking after her thoughtfully, trying to gauge whether his wife’s comment was justified or whether it was really because she didn’t like him giving presents to Susan.

  ‘He can work that out for himself,’ Mary Ann muttered to herself as she sat down in the cabin and picked up her embroidery. She sighed and gave a wry smile. She wasn’t even sure of her motives herself, so how was Dan to guess?

  As soon as she could scull safely, Dan allowed Lizzie to take her little cog boat along the shallows of the river as long as the current wasn’t running too strongly, keeping pace with the ship but always in sight of her father. It was on one such day that Mary Ann, watching her from the slowly moving ship, saw Tolly standing on the bank near his home. She watched Lizzie manoeuvre her little boat towards the muddy riverbank. Above the breeze and the flapping of the square sail above her, Mary Ann heard her daughter’s clear voice. ‘Hello. You’re Tolly, aren’t you? I’m Lizzie.’

  Mary Ann could not hear the boy’s reply, but she saw him nod and she could only guess at the conversation that followed as the Maid Mary Ann moved on upriver. ‘It’s a funny name, Tolly, isn’t it?’ Mary Ann knew her daughter well enough to be sure of that first question.

  His cheeks would redden as he admitted, ‘It’s short for Bartholomew.’ He grimaced. ‘I’m called after me dad’s father.’

  Lizzie’s laughter rang out and Mary Ann watched her daughter gesticulating with her small, capable hands towards the ship and then to her own little boat. Mary Ann smiled. Now Lizzie was proudly telling Tolly how her father had made the craft himself, especially for her. The boy moved closer, right to the water’s edge, so that he could see the boat properly.

  Mary Ann cupped her hands around her mouth and called, ‘Lizzie. Lizzie.’

  When the girl looked up, Mary Ann beckoned. But the child only waved and turned her head away to talk to Tolly again.

  ‘The little minx,’ Mary Ann murmured. ‘She’s deliberately ignoring me.’

  The ship moved on and there was nothing Mary Ann could do as she watched the boy hold out his hand to help her daughter step ashore. Then giving a little laugh herself, Mary Ann shrugged. Oh well, she thought, if that’s what she wants to do, she’d better get on with it.

  Mary Ann turned away and went below and it wasn’t until half an hour later that she heard Dan calling frantically. ‘Mary Ann, Mary Ann. Where’s Lizzie? I can’t see Lizzie.’

  Mary Ann climbed the ladder. ‘She’s with Tolly. I called to her and beckoned her but the little madam took no notice.’

  ‘And you left her there?’

  ‘She’ll be all right. She’ll—’

  ‘Why didn’t you take the cog boat and go after her? You know she’s to stay in sight of the ship. I don’t want her sculling on the river without one of us watching her.’

  ‘The last I saw of her she was climbing out of the boat and on to the bank,’ Mary Ann told him. ‘They’ll be playing together. She’ll be all right.’

  ‘How’s she going to catch up with us or hadn’t you thought of that?’

  Mary Ann blinked. She hadn’t.

  ‘I thought not,’ Dan muttered and his face was dark with anger. ‘You’d better take the cog boat and go back for her.’

  ‘I haven’t time . . .’ she began, but Dan said harshly, ‘Now, Mary Ann.’

  Irritated by both her daughter’s misbehaviour and what she saw as Dan’s fussing, Mary Ann sculled back downriver towards the ferryman’s cottage. Lizzie’s cog boat was tied t
o a post set in the riverbank at the bottom of the garden, but there was no sign of the children.

  Mary Ann drew level with the cottage. ‘Lizzie. Lizzie!’ she called, balancing herself in the small boat, her hand on the oar. Susan appeared in the doorway. ‘Why, Mary Ann. Is something wrong?’

  Exasperated, Mary Ann answered sharply. ‘Lizzie stopped to talk to your boy and now they’ve disappeared. I’ll tan her backside for her when I catch up with her.’

  Susan stepped out into the sunshine and, shielding her eyes, glanced up and down the river. A little way downstream, the ferry, with Ted Oliver at the winding gear, was leaving the opposite bank, bringing its passengers from Nottinghamshire into Lincolnshire. Swiftly, Susan stepped back into the doorway of her home so that she could not be seen from the ferry.

  ‘He . . . he might have taken her salmon fishing, Mary Ann.’ She pointed in the direction of the approaching ferry. ‘Further downstream, beyond the ferry crossing. At the bend in the river. D’you know where I mean?’

  Mary Ann nodded. ‘Thanks, Susan.’ She looked again at the woman. It was years since she had seen Susan this close and she could see, even from this distance, that the woman, who was still only young, had changed noticeably. She was thinner. Her hair, drab and untidy, was pulled back into an unbecoming bun at the back of her head. Beneath the apron she wore, the hem of her dress was uneven, as if part of it had become unstitched and she had neither the time nor the energy to mend it.

  Mary Ann’s clever fingers itched to repair the garment and then she laughed at herself for wanting to help the girl who had always been a rival for Dan’s affection. Well, she didn’t look much of a rival now, poor thing, Mary Ann thought, with a rare moment of genuine sympathy for Susan.

  ‘I’d better go and look for them,’ she called and then, pausing only to allow the ferry to pass by and the ripples it made to subside, she began to scull further downstream.

  She found the children side by side, lying flat on a ledge over a shallow part of the river, their gaze intent on the water. Mary Ann sculled closer and saw them look up in disgust as her paddle disturbed the stillness.