by Val Wood
‘It’s just,’ Peggy continued, ‘well, there’s the matter of ’cottage and ’smallholding. Who it belongs to.’
Delia looked at her. ‘I don’t know. It might be rented, though I never saw anyone call at the house.’ She shrugged. ‘Not that I care. I don’t want it.’
‘Mebbe you don’t,’ Peggy said persuasively, ‘but ’rumour is that Deakin bought it cheap for cash when they first came here.’
Delia frowned. ‘Rumour? What rumour?’
‘Aye.’ Peggy nodded. ‘It’s been talked about for years. Somebody spilt the beans, and buying a property for a wodge of cash isn’t something that folk would forget easily, even after nearly thirty years; not in a small village like this one.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And even if you don’t want it, mebbe it’d be a good nest egg for your son?’
Delia licked her lips. She didn’t want any part of it, but for Robin? If it had been her parents’ property it could be sold to ensure his future. ‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘I suppose so. What should I do, Peggy? The property would be in his name, I expect, and if he hasn’t been found …’
‘Mebbe have a look round ’cottage, if you can face it? See if there’s any place where deeds would be kept.’
Delia gave a dry and ironic scoff. ‘He kept money under the floorboards. Under a rug in the kitchen. I stole from it when I left. I would have been completely destitute if I hadn’t.’ She remained silent for a moment as she considered. ‘Will you come with me?’ she asked. ‘I daren’t go in alone; too many shadows from the past.’
Jenny and Arthur were waved off after a fish luncheon at midday on Good Friday. Peggy had baked a large cod and served it with a batch of shrimps and parsley sauce. Arthur and Giles agreed that they had never before eaten such tasty fish.
‘That’s because it was swimming in ’estuary only this morning and brought home by Aaron before you were out of bed,’ Peggy told them.
Aaron grinned and bashfully agreed that she was right. ‘Tide had been high,’ he said. ‘Though I sailed almost to ’mouth of ’Humber to catch it. Plenty o’ fish about. No need for anybody to be hungry.’
After Jenny and Arthur left, Giles agreed that he’d join the children at the kitchen table to paint eggs and to the children’s amusement wore one of Peggy’s aprons to cover him; Aaron went out into the fields to find Jack, and Delia had already whispered to Giles that she was going with Peggy to look at the burnt-out barn and didn’t want Robin there. He nodded in understanding and pressed her hand.
Delia shivered as they opened the gate into the Deakins’ yard; it felt to her that it was like a ghost farm, quite unreal and nothing to do with her. When she’d first come back with Robin that dark night in November, she hadn’t seen anything but a chink of lamplight at the window and a mere slit of light at the door when her mother had opened it.
Now she saw it as it was: the cottage looked derelict, with cracked window panes and unpainted window frames and door; the yard had weeds growing through the cracks of paving slabs and puddles of dirty water they had to step over. The grass in the paddock was uncut and two thin goats bleated at them. Was it always like this? she thought. Did I not see it before or did I simply accept it?
There was still a strong smell of burning wood and straw and an underlying aroma of something else, a pungent sweetness that Peggy said Aaron thought was tobacco. ‘But something else too,’ Delia said, sniffing the air.
They crossed to the barn and saw the damage. ‘It’ll have to come down,’ Delia remarked, ‘and I’ve been thinking that if the property didn’t belong to them, why hasn’t an agent or the owner come to look at the damage? Everyone must have heard about the fire.’
‘It was ’talk of ’village for a couple of days,’ Peggy told her, ‘and you’re quite right, I don’t recall anyone saying that it belonged to anybody else, and somebody would have known. If you can’t find any documents we’ll have to mek enquiries wi’ authorities.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘Have you seen enough here?’
‘No.’ Delia stepped into the barn. The floor was still wet from when the locals had doused the fire with river water. ‘That smell? It’s alcohol, isn’t it? Brandy! I remember now; sometimes he – Deakin – smelled of it. He’d go outside of an evening and when he came back in we could smell it on him.’ She turned to Peggy. ‘He was smuggling, wasn’t he? How else could he afford brandy? Not from shrimping.’
Peggy nodded. ‘Yes, that’s what we thought. Me and Aaron. Do you think that’s why he came to live here on ’estuary? Because of being nearer to ’Netherlands? Brandy and tobacco? Aaron said there were casks and crates in here that were going off like Chinese crackers once ’fire had tekken hold.’
‘I don’t know,’ Delia admitted. ‘I know nothing of his life; he barely spoke to me except to tell me to fetch him something, or clean his boots.’
She walked carefully to where the metal trunks were stacked. Some had collapsed on to their sides as if they’d fallen over; a pile of soft grey ash was scattered over the floor. ‘They used to have an old rully,’ she said. ‘And boxes and trunks were always stacked on top of it. I never knew what was in them and I didn’t dare look.’
A spanner was lying on the floor and she bent to pick it up and hit the bolt on one of the upright trunks to open it. It didn’t budge and she hit it again and still it wouldn’t move.
‘There used to be a can of oil for oiling hinges or shears,’ she said, looking about her, ‘but I expect that went up in flames too.’ In exasperation she held the spanner with both hands and hit the bolt again and this time it slid across. ‘Hah,’ she said. ‘Now let’s see.’ She lifted the lid and her hands were immediately black with soot. There were layers of cardboard and beneath that several sheets of paper. With the tips of her blackened fingers she lifted those and beneath found two metal boxes. She lifted out one of them and raised the lid. Inside was a stack of white five pound notes, and beneath that another wad of ten pound ones.
Delia said nothing but looked at Peggy, who stood staring. Then she lifted the other box. It was heavy and locked. She shook it and it rattled. ‘Coins,’ she whispered. ‘Ill-gotten gains. What do I do with these? I don’t want them. They haven’t been come by honestly.’
‘You don’t know how they’ve been come by,’ Peggy murmured. ‘So who would you give them back to?’
Delia shook her head; she only knew she didn’t want them.
Then Peggy said slowly, ‘There’s a young fisherman in ’village deprived of his living because somebody took his boat out and it’s apparently now lost. You could give some of it to him to buy another, or give him one of Deakin’s boats that were left behind.’
Delia looked about her. ‘Yes,’ she said vaguely. ‘I could do that. But what if he comes back? And I still don’t understand why he would take a boat that wasn’t his. Or maybe it wasn’t him; maybe it was my mother who decided to leave him and didn’t realize it was the wrong boat. But if so, where is he and where is the boat?’ She sighed. ‘We’ll never know. Help me, Peggy. We’d better take these to the cottage and hide them.’
‘Not safe there,’ Peggy said. ‘We’d best tek them to our house. Nobody would think of looking there and we’re allus about the place. Shall I fetch Mr Dawson to carry them? Do you trust him enough?’
Delia gave a wistful smile. ‘With my life, Peggy,’ she said. ‘With my life.’
CHAPTER FIFTY
Delia rose early the next morning. Robin was still sleeping and she gazed at him before dressing and going down. Peggy was already up and putting bread in the oven, and looked in surprise at Delia.
‘I thought you’d have had a sleep-in this morning. Would you like tea?’
‘No, thank you, not just now. I’m going across to the cottage. If I don’t go now, then I won’t go at all.’
Peggy put her hands on her hips. ‘On your own?’
‘Yes; I thought about it in bed last night, and decided it’s what I have to do.’ Delia gave a little huff of breath. ‘Ge
t rid of the final ghosts.’
Peggy slung the oven cloth over her shoulder. ‘Sometimes we have to be brave enough to do things on our own, but you don’t need to prove anything any more, Delia. You’ve shown your courage since you were seventeen years old and made a future for yourself and your son. Now you have friends and family who’ll stand by your side.’
Delia went towards her and kissed her. ‘I know,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘But this is the very last thing and then I’ll know that I’m whole again.’
Buffeted by a brisk wind, white clouds scudded across the sky above the estuary, which still showed silver and gold streaks of dawn. The estuary too was running fast, and white-crested waves tossed and churned on their irresistible journey to the sea.
Delia crossed the yard and over into old Foggit’s farm. The fence dividing the two properties had been taken down by Aaron and Jack and she didn’t see Jack straighten up from behind the pigsties as she passed through. She came to the fence where a wooden gate led onto the track and paused for a moment, then went through and closed it behind her and walked down the track to the old cottage with the squeaking gate.
The smell of burnt timbers still lingered but she didn’t look towards the barn and went purposefully towards the cottage door. Peggy had told her that the key was under a stone and she’d given a slight nod; that was where it had always been hidden.
The iron key was large and heavy in her hand but it turned easily enough though the door creaked as she pushed it. A heavy dusty curtain hung behind it and she wondered if it was the same one that had always been there. She hesitated before entering the kitchen, almost expecting to see her father sitting by the fireside, but the room was empty and cold and any fire that had been there had burned down to a muddy grey ash.
Her eyes went to the cupboard at the side of the range; she had spent many hours in there in her childhood until she grew too big to sleep in it, when she had rebelled and asked her mother for a cotton sheet so that she could stuff it to make a mattress she could use on the floor. It was sleeping here that she had discovered the loose floorboard and what lay beneath it. Too late, her father must have been fearful of her discovering his secret hoard of money and had made her a place in the roof space.
Slowly she mounted the stairs to the small square landing and glanced into her parents’ bedroom, which looked exactly as it had always done and had the same stale odour. She then took the three steps up and bent her head as she pushed open the low door to the loft which had eventually become her bedroom. It had been draughty and freezing cold in the winter, but this place had felt like her private abode. Here she’d kept a sparrow with a broken wing, making it a box filled with straw and bringing breadcrumbs every day until one morning she found it dead, when she had cried and buried it under a hedge.
Her mother sometimes came up here when she was at school; she always knew when she had been for things had been moved. A rickety cane chair which sat against the wall was shifted mere inches, but Delia always knew. There were two small cupboards built into the base of the wall; one of them was crammed with old curtains and sheets, the other was empty apart from a wooden button box filled with all kinds of paraphernalia: string, bobbins of strong thread, pieces of frayed ribbon and unfinished tatting, but no buttons. But this cupboard was the one blocked by the chair and therefore, Delia had reasoned, the one her mother had always looked in, but she had never fathomed out why.
She shifted the chair away now and took a curtain from the other cupboard, spreading it on the dusty floor to sit on; it seemed as if there hadn’t been a duster or brush up here since she had left. She opened the cupboard door and took out the button box and gazed at the empty space. Then she noticed for the first time that the flooring in this cupboard was higher than in the other, as deep as a step and made from a different kind of wood, thinner and more pliable, with a narrower plank and a gap at the back just wide enough to fit in a screwdriver or a chisel.
Delia pulled the button box towards her and opened it again, rummaging in it until she found what she was looking for. A small thin chisel lay at the bottom of the box as it always had, and she took it out, leaned inside to the back of the cupboard and slotted the chisel into the gap. Perfect!
She got on to her knees and prised the tool towards her, jiggling it about to get purchase, and although it was a tight fit she drew up the plank, put her hand inside the gap and brought out a parcel of some kind, wrapped in a cloth that might once have been part of a curtain.
‘So, Ma,’ she murmured. ‘What fine thing have we here?’
She carefully unwrapped the cloth and drew out a roll of documents fastened with a ribbon; she unfastened it and smoothed out the parchment. These, she thought, and confirmed as she scanned them, were the property documents. Davis Deakin’s name was on them and they were copies of those held by a Hedon lawyer. Her eyes widened when she saw the amount the farm cottage and buildings were bought for and paid in full.
‘So it was true, he did pay in cash!’ she muttered. ‘Money from smuggled goods?’ But not from round here, she considered. He must have brought the money with him from his former fishing ground; perhaps he had the Customs men looking for him down Devon way and decided to come to fresh waters, and Ma came with him.
She carefully rolled up the documents again, laid them to one side and put her hand inside the aperture again; she searched about with her fingers and brought out a large envelope. Inside were letters and some early grainy and faded photographs. One showed a group of young people near a harbour wall, and in the middle of them a tall handsome fisherman with a dark beard and hair and a big smile on his face holding a huge tunny fish within both arms. Above him someone had marked in pencil a small x. A dark-haired girl dressed in a man’s fishing smock stood smiling to one side of him and it looked as if she had her arm round him; on his other side stood a fair-haired pretty girl in a summer dress. Other young men were holding fishing rods, and an older man had turned his head and hidden his face from the camera; all wore long fishermen boots.
Delia turned the photograph over. Written in pencil, so faded she could barely make it out, she read, Me with x – my sweetheart Tom Evans, and the other fisher lads, and his soon to be wife Sally Morris. Deakin hiding his face as usual.
Then there was a studio photograph, clearer than the other, with just the dark-haired girl wearing a long dark skirt and white blouse and the handsome fisherman with their arms around each other’s waist and a message on the back reading, Saying goodbye to my lovely Tom. I think my heart will break.
She looked closely at both photographs. So who were they? She had never heard of Tom Evans or Sally Morris, but the man who had covered his face could well have been her father; she recognized a similarity in his bearing. But the dark-haired girl? Was it her mother?
She tipped out all the contents on to her lap and at the bottom was a small notebook, not a diary, but dates were written in it in what was clearly her mother’s hand. The first page was dated 1850 and written beneath were the words:
The deed is done, my father is put to rest and I’m tying my life to Deakin, leaving behind my sweetheart Tom. I’m taking with me his most precious gift and the memory of his beautiful lilting Welsh voice which has so often sung love songs to me. What else can I do? He’s promised to another and needs her father’s wealth and my father has left me none.
If Deakin should ever discover this he’d kill me. That he can’t read is to my advantage. He has to leave soon or he’ll be caught and jailed and I’ll have no option but the workhouse, me and my unborn child. He’s offered me a chance of a new life away from all I’ve ever known, but from what motive? Not for love. He doesn’t care for me nor I for him. We sail tomorrow.
Delia felt breathless, confused. Did it mean what she thought it meant? She turned several blank pages, others with scribbling on them relating to a good catch, or a bad one, and then another at the back of the notebook, which read:
The child has got herself into t
rouble. There’ll be no hiding it and he’ll turn her out. It’s best that she goes; she’ll have the chance of a better life than one with us. We’ve never done right by her and I’d rather she left, for each day she reminds me of the man I loved and lost, and there’ll come a time when I might have had more than I can bear with Deakin.
She heard the rattle of the cottage door and jumped, suddenly fearful, as she had been when a young girl, that it was Deakin returning, but then she heard an anxious voice calling, ‘Delia! Delia! Where are you?’
She went to the top of the staircase. ‘Up here, Giles,’ she said. ‘Come up.’
He bent his head as he came in through the low door. ‘What are you doing up here all on your own?’ His voice was concerned. ‘I was worried about you. Mrs Robinson said you’d come here an hour ago and Jack said he’d seen you pass by.’
She gazed at him. ‘Is it so long?’ She looked down at the documents and the jumble of papers and photographs.
‘What was this room?’ Giles looked round. ‘A storage room? A glory hole? Everyone needs somewhere to put things they can’t decide whether to keep or not.’ He looked out of the small roof window and murmured, ‘A good view of the estuary, though.’
‘A good description of my bedroom,’ she commented.
He turned to look at her. ‘Your bedroom? No, surely not?’ His expression was troubled. ‘You’re not serious, are you?’
‘It’s a better room than the cupboard I had before it.’
He stared at her and then said, ‘Come on,’ and gathered up all the papers, documents and photographs. ‘We’ll take them and you can look at them at the Robinsons’. The kettle’s on the boil and the children are all waiting to show you their painted Easter eggs, and so am I.’