Gull Island

by Grace Thompson

  ‘You knew you were going to be thrown out and you did nothing?’

  ‘It was when she knew about another baby coming, see. You won’t say, will you? I thought the landlady would be too sympathetic to really chuck us out. Molly always pays the rent reg’lar. I was sure she’d change her mind.’

  ‘You knew at Christmas and did nothing?’

  ‘Sorry I am.’

  Barbara thought she would explode. She wanted to hit him for his stupidity in allowing his wife and children to reach the present situation, then she let out her fury in a long breath. What was the point? As she had told him, there was no sense in worrying about what had happened today, best to get on thinking about tomorrow.

  ‘The house on the beach will serve for a while. You’ll get something before next winter,’ she said softly. ‘It’s near enough for you to keep selling newspapers.’

  ‘It’s two miles! I’ll have to get a bike!’

  Temper flared at his selfish remark but she was saved from replying as the handcart, with Luke pushing a sleeping Richard on board, came back, the dog still in attendance. The rest of the goods were loaded on. It looked precarious but Luke and Richard stacked it as safely as they could.

  The night was dry and clear with stars making a pin cushion of the sky. There was no one to see them as they trundled along the silent lanes, except for a fox crossing their path and pausing to look at them curiously, and an owl gliding softly overhead.

  They all had a strange, heart-thumping feeling of invading someone else’s space as they entered and took possession. Mrs Carey shared blankets and the youngest children were given priority. Each one was wrapped into a cocoon of warmth, then they were rolled together like a row of sausages, giggling until sleep claimed them. By the time they were all settled to sleep in the cold and rather eerie house on the beach, dawn was showing pink and yellow fingers and a calm sea was touched with the glory of it.

  The children slept on, but Mr and Mrs Carey and Barbara rose early. Luke was sitting outside, waiting for them to wake. A fire burned close by and a kettle simmered at the edge of it. In an attempt to cheer them, Luke gave them Richard’s list of suggestions to improve the house.

  ‘He’s had some very good ideas. Give him a problem and he solves it so fast, quicker than me quite often! It’s hard to remember that he’s only six. He talks and thinks like an adult.’

  ‘Miniature adult is what he is.’ Henry smiled proudly. ‘Never one to play with other children, our Richard. Spends all his time with me or listening to grown-up talk.’

  ‘Then you’ll look at his ideas?’

  Mr Carey shook his head. ‘I can’t think straight, boy, and that’s a fact. Best we cwtch down here and see what happens. It’s all beyond me.’

  Henry seemed to Barbara to have shrunk. The responsibility for the disaster was his and no one else’s yet he hadn’t the glimmer of an idea how to deal with it.

  ‘Richard thought that if the floor was repaired above the porch there would be three usable rooms upstairs and, at the back of the house, a lean-to might make a useful storeroom for wood that can be gathered from the beach,’ Luke went on, determined to encourage the man out of his lethargy. ‘It wouldn’t cost very much, just a few planks of wood and a pound or two of nails.’

  ‘With two miles to walk to work before I start my paper round I’ll need shoes with some urgency.’ He seemed not to have heard Luke’s words as he stared at the battered shoes he was wearing. One had worn right through and was lined with cardboard.

  ‘I have an idea.’ Luke ran to his boat and returned with a pair of good-quality leather shoes, old but polished so his own face was reflected in the toecap. ‘You look as though you take the same size as I do. Take them, get them tapped and they’ll last a few weeks at least. You can get some second-hand boots when you get straight.’

  Mercifully, some of the window glass was still intact, although caked with mould and dirt, and Luke had mended others. The back door was missing, probably taken to replace one in another house, Luke thought. But with a screen made from a blanket nailed to the architrave, the house was already looking habitable. ‘Shut out the weather and it’s a home,’ Luke encouraged. There was even a high shelf above the empty hearth on which Mrs Carey placed her clock. Its ticking gave a feeling of comfort to them all and even Rosita slept on.

  The sun was well above the horizon, shining and giving warmth to the newly occupied house when Luke left them. He went first to the boat and changed from the scruffy clothes he seemed to prefer and put on his suit, tie, hat and scarf, carried an umbrella and a briefcase and walked to the station with his feet covered only by socks. If anyone noticed his lack of footwear he didn’t seem aware of it.

  After depositing his briefcase at the bookshop, shoeless and unshaven, he bought himself some shoes and stopped again at a barber’s shop for a shave. An hour later he returned to his office and asked his newly acquired and rather surprised assistant for a cup of tea to be sent in with the day’s post. Metamorphosis complete, he began to look at his diary and plan his appointments for the day.

  He kept losing the thread of what he was dealing with and allowing his mind to drift back to the family on the beach. Poor as they were, he envied them. Needing so much, yet self-sufficient in the things that counted in life, they were easily content. A full belly and the company of each other was all they required to be uncomplainingly happy. To be a part of a family like the Careys seemed to him to be the very essence of contentment.

  It was not the same for Barbara; she wanted more. There was a restlessness about her, that strange way she had of glancing around without moving her head as if she were looking at things secretly, unwilling to share her vision of the better things that only she could see. She wouldn’t be as easily pleased as the Careys. She coveted another, more comfortable life.

  He wondered whether he could help financially but thought not. For one thing, he had very little himself. The business of secondhand books was precarious. More so now he had taken on an assistant, a young woman called Jeanie, who had to be paid every week, however badly he did. There was the constant need for him to travel and buy stock and he used every penny he earned to replenish those shelves, keeping only the very minimum he required for basic expenses. The other consideration was that he wondered whether giving money would help or hinder.

  Sometimes giving money unconditionally only made things worse. A little extra gave a false security and that, added to the relief of having cash to spare, frequently led to further debts. And miraculously, debt was something Mrs Carey had somehow managed to avoid so far. A few pounds might give Mr Carey some ease and reduction of his worries but it might also persuade him he needn’t try so hard. The Careys’ lives were a precarious balancing act and the wrong kind of help might tip them into an abyss. Helping them to help themselves, that was the only way.

  There was also condescension in giving money, a feeling which he wouldn’t relish, and it rarely helped for more than a few euphoric moments.

  Pushing aside the work, he stepped over to the window. His office was on the north side and so shaded from most of the sun. The bright sunshine across the street made his own room seem even darker and he sighed. How he hated being indoors.

  Shadows gave his thin face an almost skeletal appearance; his eyes were clear, bright and far-seeing but now they looked deep-set and hooded. He was usually tanned by the weekends spent on the beach but after winter it had faded to a pale and rather sickly pallor. His long fingers pulled at his collar, longing to discard it, but convention insisted on a man in his position wearing one. Today it irked him more than usual, thinking of the Carey children, ragged and carefree, exploring their new home.

  He looked out on the busy scene below him. Women walking past with their shopping baskets filled with whatever food they had managed to buy that day, stopping occasionally to look in a shop window, always hoping for a bargain or something in short supply to eke out their rations. A newspaper seller on a corner, sp
eaking in gibberish only understood by other newspaper sellers, hoping someone would be curious and read what the headlines announced. A group of gypsies wandered past offering artificial flowers and hand-carved clothes pegs to passers-by, most of whom shunned them fearfully.

  A farm cart went along the street with dirty hay on the back and several net-covered boxes containing young chickens. He looked at the man guiding the horse through the busy mid-morning throng and thought of Graham Prothero. Barbara must do better than that. He took up pen and began writing the names of people who might be willing to help. There were regrettably few.

  Living on the beach was more difficult for Barbara. There were the two miles to walk into town and she had to take Rosita. Mrs Carey was engrossed with her newest child and had less time now for the crotchety Rosita. Twice she saw her father as she struggled to her first cleaning job, pushing the crying child in the broken old pram. He turned away, whistling, increasing his pace until he was out of sight.

  Once they came face to face, him in his going-out suit and white shiny collar and neat tie, her in ill-fitting clothes badly in need of a wash and strangers to an iron. She paused, wondering if he dared to look at her. The pavement was crowded with early shoppers and they were so close she could see the bristles on the point of his chin where the razor had missed. Rather than pass her he changed direction, head down, and hurried away.

  ‘You pig!’ she shouted in tearful rage. The small satisfaction of seeing his face and neck redden with embarrassment helped a little.

  Mrs Carey had reacted badly to the trauma of losing her home. With it went the washing and ironing she did for neighbours. It was impossible for her to carry washing to the house on the beach, even if she had the facilities there to deal with the work. And there were no extra children to mind as she was too far away from those she had previously helped. The loss of the few shillings she had earned was devastating. There were so many basic things she needed.

  She was still weak from the birth of Meriel and felt she was losing the battle to cope. There was nothing else for it, she decided, one cold, wet morning – she would have to use the money Barbara’s mother had given her over the months since Barbara had been thrown out of her home. It had been given, after all, to help as she saw fit.

  Amid the jumble of clothes and saucepans and general clutter, she unearthed a tin box. It had a picture of King George V and Queen Mary on the front and it had once contained tea. She opened it, surprised at how light it seemed, and found nothing more than the paper in which she had wrapped the precious coins. Someone had taken them.

  When Richard and Mr Carey came home that evening, they were bubbling with excitement.

  ‘Wait till tomorrow, Mam,’ Richard said, but he refused to be drawn on the reason for the secret smiles he and his father shared.

  ‘Tell me,’ Barbara pleaded. ‘I won’t say a word. Got a better job, has he, your father?’

  ‘No, but we’ve decided this will be our proper home. We’re not moving on. We’re staying here and making it comfortable, just like a real home.’

  The following day, Barbara was told at two of the places where she worked that she was no longer required. The baby, who still cried all day and half the night, was the reason she was given. One of them was The Anchor, where her father drank with his friends, and she wondered bitterly if he had persuaded the landlady to ask her to leave.

  She wandered around the shops and the large private houses where there were still likely to be servants or paid help. Door after door opened and quickly closed. There was nothing for her unless she left the baby with someone.

  Learning of the situation, Mrs Stock offered a solution. ‘Leave the baby with me. I’ll look after her while you work. You might get a more respectable job of work then, instead of clearing up filth after heaven knows who!’

  The cold voice seemed more a threat than an answer to Barbara’s problems and she shook her head and turned away. Bernard’s mother was not the company she wanted for her beautiful, if noisy, daughter.

  ‘Leave her with me tomorrow and you’ll have a better chance of finding somewhere,’ Mrs Carey offered, when Barbara went back to the beach house and told her what had happened.

  ‘I can’t, Auntie Molly Carey, you aren’t well.’

  ‘Better I am, and with nowhere to go, no washing and ironing to do, no neighbours wanting me to mind their children, I’m well placed for an extra one.’ She spoke with enthusiasm, guilt at losing Barbara’s money making her desperate to help.

  The sky was losing its brightness, everything around them fading into a quivering, floating blur so distances were confusing. Gull Island was nothing more than an indistinct outline that might or might not be real. Trees had lost their freshly sprouted greenness and became as grey as the rocks around the house. Rain began to fall, darkening the evening ever further when Mr Carey and a jubilant Richard returned home.

  They arrived on a horse-drawn cart borrowed, they told her, from the fruit and vegetable man. On the cart were lengths of wood to repair the room above the porch, together with bags of cement and some sand and a bag of assorted nails and screws, plus a few necessary tools.

  On top of the sacks Mrs Carey gasped to see a table, a rocking chair, a square of red and yellow matting and, last of all, an iron fireplace with a hob on either side on which to stand saucepans. Walking along in their wake was an elderly horse carrying an even more elderly man who wore a bucket hat and several layers of coats.

  While the children stroked and admired the horses, the old man, helped by Richard with Mr Carey watching with interest, fixed the fireplace. He warned them not to use it for a few days, then, attaching his mount to the back of the cart, he left them having said fewer than a dozen words and an equal number of grunts.

  ‘But where did it come from?’ a delighted Mrs Carey asked. Her eyes were shining as she touched and admired her treasures. ‘Where did the money come from?’

  ‘Let’s say the people who took our home from us helped us get started.’ Mr Carey grinned at his son. ‘Tell her, boy, tell what you found.’

  ‘It was when we were moving, Mam. They were throwing our stuff out on the road and taking their own stuff in and I found a box with money in it. I knew it couldn’t be ours. I thought they owed us that, chucking us out like that, so I took it. Look at all this! We’re rich!’

  Mrs Carey turned away in shock. The money didn’t belong to the new tenants. It was the money she had been given to save for Barbara.

  ‘Aren’t you pleased, our Mam?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Pleased? Of course I’m pleased.’

  ‘Stealing, mind, isn’t it, Mam, and we know that’s wicked,’ Idris said, his face angelic. ‘Richard is wicked. He stole the money and that’s wicked, isn’t it, Mam?’

  ‘Say wicked just once more and I’ll thump you!’ Richard growled.

  Mrs Carey glanced at Barbara in sorrow. ‘But there we are. In this world it’s a question of who needs it most, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s what our dad said,’ Richard agreed stoutly, glaring at his brother.

  One day I’ll tell her, Mrs Carey vowed. One day I’ll explain how I tried to save the money but with the eviction it just wasn’t possible. I will tell her, though, so she knows her mam and I did try.

  When the new possessions were carried into the house, Idris tried to persuade his father to go with him to see a castle he had built, but Mr Carey sank into the newly acquired rocking chair and ignored Idris as he usually did. He communicated little with his children, except Richard, who was his hard-working partner.

  On the following Friday, Barbara found a job, of sorts – a few hours cleaning in a public house, with the promise that one day she might be offered work in the bar. But the landlord firmly refused to allow her to take Rosita. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t ask the kind Mrs Carey to look after her indefinitely, not while she was so unwell.

  Determinedly she began knocking on doors to ask if there was anyone who would
look after Rosita for a few hours each day. The woman she found was already looking after three others but the house looked clean and tidy so Barbara agreed to bring Rosita to her the following morning.

  For a while it worked well, Rosita seemed happy to go in when they reached the woman’s door each day and always came out smiling. Then, a couple of weeks later, she went to collect her little girl and the woman smiled and said, ‘She’s with her gran. Called she did and took her to buy her a little present.’

  ‘What? D’you mean my mother has taken her?’ A bubble of painful joy burst in Barbara’s heart. At last Mam was willing to accept her granddaughter. She pressed her hands to her chest. She hadn’t realized just how much she had wanted this.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll go now and fetch her.’

  Filled with excitement, she ran to the door of the house she hadn’t seen for months and knocked on the door. When her mother answered it there was such excitement that she couldn’t get any words out. ‘Mam?’ she said in a whisper.

  The happiness was immediately wiped away as her father’s voice boomed, ‘Send her away. She doesn’t belong here.’

  ‘Rosita, Mam, I’ve called for Rosita.’

  ‘She isn’t here. Why should she be here?’

  ‘Clear off!’ her father shouted, hovering out of sight behind the door. ‘You and that bastard of yours.’ Barbara didn’t hear the hurtful words; she was filled with anxiety for Rosita.

  ‘But the woman who looks after her said – Oh my God, please help me. It’s Mrs Stock. Mam, Mrs Stock has taken Rosita! Help me, please, she’s taken my baby!’ Her father’s hand came and pulled her mother inside. As the door slammed, Barbara got a brief glimpse of her mother’s stricken face as her father shouted at her.

  She banged on the door, shouting, screaming, begging for help. Someone had to help her; she needed someone to go with her and make sure Rosita was returned to her. But the door remained firmly closed although she knocked and screamed until she lost all sensation in her knuckles.