Kitty did not hear the door open. Her first intimation of Amos Isherwood’s presence was his quiet voice. She jumped, and barely prevented a baking pan from slipping from suddenly untrustworthy fingers.
‘This kitchen hasn’t known such smells since my mother died,’ he said.
She smiled diffidently but neither replied nor looked at him. Like a boy he dipped his finger into the cake mixture and licked it appreciatively. When Jeremiah had done the same thing a few short moments before, Kitty had chased him around the kitchen in mock outrage, brandishing a wooden spoon. Now she turned her head, pretending absurdly not to have seen, bending to the baby and fussing with the child’s multi-layered clothes.
Amos walked to the small window and peered out into the wild December afternoon. ‘Well, Kitty Daniels,’ he said, directly and unexpectedly, ‘what d’you think of us all?’
‘I – I like it here. Very much,’ she stammered, taken aback.
He leaned by the window, watching her with those desperately disturbing blue eyes. She lifted Becca, perched her straddled upon her hip.
‘You’ll like it better in the summer,’ he said. ‘’Tis pretty then. The marshes full of flowers, an’ the seabirds flyin’—’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it was so in Suffolk.’
He half-perched on the table, long leg dangling. ‘There’s bathin’ machines on the hard in the summer. City folk come here on holiday—’ He grinned suddenly, white teeth gleaming. ‘If they don’t recognize anythin’ else I reckon they recognize the smells.’ He laughed outright at her questioning look. ‘London muck – the sweepings of the streets. We use it to fertilize the fields about here.’
She wrinkled her nose. He laughed again. ‘Grows good ’taters.’ He grinned. Then, restless, he slid from the table and walked to the window again. ‘It sometimes do seem that the winter’ll never end, don’t it?’
She allowed herself to watch him for a moment. The dull, rain-washed light shadowed a profile that was clear-cut and flawless, a golden head struck upon a coin of lead.
‘Amos, lad.’ Jonas stood, unsmiling as always, in the open doorway. ‘Given up for the day, have ye? Roof of the byre’s mended? Betsy fed?’
‘Why, no, Pa. I was just goin’ to do it.’ Amos reached for the heavy jacket that hung inside the kitchen door.
Jonas watched him shrug into it with austerely knitted brows and a forcefully displeased gaze that seemed to Kitty to be out of proportion to the deed. She had already noticed some tensions between the two men – the father a man of few words, hardworking, an authoritarian, the son perhaps a shade less than industrious, but easy-going and, it seemed to her, eager to please. It was strange too that this same sharp attitude was mirrored in Amos’ relationship with his difficult wife; several times over the past few days Kitty had found herself wondering what kept those two together.
Amos and Jonas gone, she settled Becca back on the floor, put the cake in the oven and swung the big black kettle onto the hob. Three days’ hard work had, she reflected, made an almost miraculous difference to the old house. The brass shone, the wooden furniture gleamed with polish, the whole place smelled differently, fragrant as it was with the mingled smells of soap and polish and the tang of woodsmoke from the warming fires she had lit in every room. She glanced about the great, warm kitchen. That too had been tidied and reorganized. She spent a small glow of satisfaction. Becca returned her smile and waved the wooden spoon in the air, to the grave peril of her left ear. The sight of the child reminded Kitty of poor Martha and her headache. A little guiltily she realized that it must be all of two hours since Martha had retired to her bed. She picked the baby up again. ‘Let’s go and see Mama, eh?’ she crooned, bouncing the child in her arms. ‘Poor Mama – let’s go see how she feels—’
The door of the bedroom stood slightly ajar. Kitty, arms clasped about the child, pushed it with her foot. ‘Mrs Isherwood?’
There was a small, surprised sound, half gasp, half exclamation. ‘J-just a moment—’
Too late. The door had swung wide. Martha Isherwood, still fully dressed, half reclined on the bed, her already cumbersome body, in the fourth month of pregnancy, propped up by pillows, her startled white face turned towards Kitty. In one hand she held a glass. The other, which pathetically and vainly she was trying to conceal beneath the pillows, held what Kitty instantly recognized as a gin bottle. There was a short, embarrassed silence.
‘I’m – I’m sorry—’ Kitty felt as if it were she who had been caught in indiscretion. Her cheeks burned. ‘I – came to discover – if you’d like a cup of tea—’
With the careful precision of drunkenness Martha leaned down and placed the bottle upon the floor on the opposite side of the bed from where Kitty stood. Then she sat bolt upright, still holding the half full glass, her untidy head held rigidly upon her skinny neck in a pitiful travesty of pride.
‘Yes, please,’ she said, voice and manner that of a child at a birthday party, ‘I should like that very much.’
Face still bright with embarrassment, Kitty beat a hasty retreat, closing the door quietly behind her.
As she turned from it she heard, unmistakably, the creak of the bed and then the unsteady clink of glass on glass.
(iii)
Matt’s silence throughout the Christmas period, though far from unexpected, nevertheless caused Kitty a heartache that she tried to assuage in hard work. She ran the surprised household like clockwork, receiving one day early in January dour thanks and congratulations from Jonas Isherwood that both astonished and delighted her. She had no idea if he knew of his wife’s drinking – for as the weeks went by she came to realize that the incident on Christmas Eve had not by any means been an isolated one – and did not feel it her place to broach the subject. Neither was it ever mentioned between herself and Martha. Her good sense told her it was none of her business and best left alone; but as time went on she discovered within herself a real if sometimes exasperated fondness for Martha Isherwood despite her slipshod, ineffectual ways and nervous manner, and she could not help but worry about her. For herself she was not unhappy. She got on well with and was extremely fond of the children who were her charges, her duties in the house were not so onerous as to cause her any problems. The strange bittersweetness of her feelings for Amos Isherwood – much as she tried to deny them, much as she castigated herself – did not at that time induce unhappiness. He was Maria’s husband, the father of her children. Nothing could possibly come from any warmth she might feel for him. But yet this was her first infatuation, and the sight of him, the sound of his voice, the glimmer of his smile could lighten a day and lift her heart, however much she might try to deny it. The only real cloud on her horizon was her worry for Matt. Several times she considered going in to Colchester on her free afternoon to find him, but each time pride prevented her: if he bothered to look for her he would find her – if he did not it could only be that he did not care what became of her. Stubbornly, each time she crossed the Strood in Jonas Isherwood’s cart going to Colchester to shop for the household she told herself that she would not go looking for him. He must come to her.
And to her unutterable delight, graceless and winning as ever, in the middle of frost-sharp February he did.
The day was crisp and clear. Jonas and Amos were at the oyster beds in the Girl May, the twins were at school in the village, Jeremiah and Daniel miraculously occupied at some task their father had set them to be finished by his return, and Becca was with her mother upstairs. Kitty devoutly hoped that the ‘medicine’ that Martha was undoubtedly taking for her ‘headache’ was not also being poured down the child’s throat to keep her quiet. She was drawing water from the well and filling the big tank that stood by the kitchen door when footsteps startled her and she looked up to see the familiar, lanky form, so long looked for, coming across the yard towards her. Very, very carefully she put down the slopping pail and stood waiting for him, head high, the pleasure that she felt at the sight of him fiercely suppres
sed.
Not so with Matt. Ignoring her lack of welcome, he grinned his wide, blithe, irresponsible smile and his arms went out to sweep her almost from her feet.
‘Kitty! Moi good owd Kitty!’ The Suffolk accent was comically exaggerated for her benefit. He gave her a smacking kiss, stood back, bright-faced, to look at her. ‘You’re thin,’ he pronounced. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t they feed foreigners on this godforsaken island?’
She could not, of course, resist him – could not resist his good nature, his utter refusal to take note of her displeasure, the breath of home and another life that he brought with him. He did not stay long that first time, but left promising to visit again soon which, much to her surprise, as bitter winter moved on into a cold and changeable spring, he did, and often. He rarely came into the house, except occasionally to perch, restless as some bird of passage resting in mid-flight, on the broad windowsill of the kitchen, watching her as she busied herself about her tasks. Often, despite the weather, they would stroll to the City hard and watch as the oystermen, in from the layings, unloaded their precious catch.
‘Why do they do that?’ Matt asked one day, idly, as he saw a crab crushed ruthlessly beneath a massive sea boot.
‘The crabs eat the young oysters.’ Kitty drew her shawl tighter about her shoulders against the bite of the inevitable wind. ‘Crabs, limpets, whelks, starfish – they call them five-fingers around here – they’re all the enemies of the oyster. Mostly they’re culled on board, as the men empty the dredges. The crabs they kill, as you see. But they’ll often bring the starfish in. They make good fertilizer, and the farmers will pay a fair price for a sackful.’
They stood in companionable silence, watching the men and boys working. By the water’s edge a group of small, dirty, tough-looking children played, intent upon the smooth pebbles they were using as five-stones. Two out of the three boys in the group wore soldiers’ uniform trousers, cut off at the knee, a common sight in an area where cast-offs from the garrison were a cheap source of clothing – and the only girl sported a bright red army jacket from the same source. Matt grinned. ‘Little tykes. I wouldn’t like to meet them in a dark alley.’
After the undeniable awkwardness of his first few visits almost the old easy relationship had been established between them, perhaps because by common consent whilst talking often of Suffolk and their shared past neither ever mentioned the particular chain of events that had brought them here, and by the same token neither did they discuss Matt’s present, obviously dubious, way of life. He looked well fed and was well, if flashily, dressed; and if the shadows beneath eyes that betrayed more of experience than his fourteen years should encompass spoke of lack of rest and perilously intemperate living, Kitty had the good sense to keep a still tongue and her worries to herself. He had come to her, and of his own accord. To probe and – inevitably – to censure would surely drive him from her, and that thought she could not bear. Only once did she ever mention, obliquely, her concern for him. Sitting in weak March sunshine in the shelter of a still locked and shuttered bathing hut, her eyes upon the Isherwood children as they roamed the hard looking for shells and small pebbles, she said into a long silence that had fallen between them, ‘Matt – I’m sorry that I don’t come to you as you do to me—’
He stopped her with a quick movement of his hand, the customary laughter fleetingly gone from his young face. ‘Don’t think of it.’ He paused. ‘It’s best you don’t.’
She knew how hard it must be for him to admit that to her. ‘Matt?’ she said again.
‘Hmm?’
‘If you should ever—’ She stumbled over the words, uncertain how to express herself. ‘That is – if you should ever find yourself in – well – trouble of any sort – you’d come to me, wouldn’t you?’
‘I won’t be.’ The voice was jaunty again, but she could not see his face as he leaned to toss a well-aimed stone at a great gull that had been strutting with arrogant unconcern nearby. The bird rose with an elegant lift of wing and a most inelegant and irritable squawk. ‘Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.’
‘Well of course,’ she said quickly, ‘I know that. But – just in case – you promise me?’
He regarded her, the dark, graceless eyes veiled. ‘I promise, moi owd Kitty,’ he said.
But if both knew quite well of the things that Matt kept from Kitty, only Kitty knew of the growing heartache that she kept from her brother; for as the months went by and the marsh flowers that Amos had spoken of budded and bloomed so did Kitty’s infatuation for the tall young man with the silver hair grow, painfully and frighteningly, and no amount of common sense or self-castigation could stop it. Thrown together as they so often were, she had little chance to fight it. Each glimpse of the cornflower eyes, the tall, wide-shouldered figure, the bright hair turned a knife of excitement in her that was, she knew, as absurd as it was unforgivable. She truly did her best to avoid him, was all but dumb in his presence, denied herself even the indulgence of fantasy; yet within her it seemed to her that the thought of him was always there, an ineradicable part of her. How it could have happened that this unknown young man who was husband to the sullen, flamboyantly lovely, but unloving Maria could have so effortlessly enslaved her was beyond her – his days were spent either on the Girl May or working in his father’s fields, hers in the house or with the children. Yet when he was there, she knew it with sure instinct, and when he was not she was bereft.
It was not until the beginning of a still-cold April that she discovered a delightful and unsuspected common ground with him.
The children were fractious – all day it had drizzled from leaden skies that had seemed to rest squarely upon the chimneys of the house, keeping spirits down and tempers up, and still with dismal darkness creeping across the flat, watery landscape the rain showed no sign of easing. Cooped up indoors all day the twins had become progressively more quarrelsome, Jeremiah more wilful, Daniel more put-upon and Becca more peevish. Long before, Martha – now a bulky and uncomfortable seven months gone in her pregnancy – had given up the unequal struggle and retired to her room and her own particular comfort. Kitty sent up one of her brief regular prayers that this child should not be born with gin in its veins instead of blood and set about entertaining her difficult charges. At last, after a quiet game had degenerated into a chaos of fisticuffs and name-calling and Jeremiah had determinedly wriggled his way through the telling of Little Red Riding Hood, thus spoiling the story not only for himself but for everyone else, she remembered the battered upright piano that stood, never to her knowledge used, in the front parlour. Briskly she sent Hannah to light the ready-laid fire and herself kindled the candles that were set each side of the music stand on the piano. The children, ready to be bored before she started, trailed into the room after her, Hepzibar dumping the unfortunate Becca onto the floor and leaving her to stagger on uncertain legs to a nearby chair upon which she attempted dangerously to clamber, while her sister gazed dolefully out of the window at the rain. Kitty ran her fingers experimentally over the keys. To her surprise the instrument was remarkably tuneful. With one finger she picked out a tune remembered from happy childhood days at the Grange.
‘Wass’ that?’ Jeremiah appeared at her elbow, one small fist poised above the piano keys which, before she could answer his question, he proceeded to thump discordantly. Her patience stretching like a very worn thread, Kitty slapped his hand away sharply. ‘It’s a song about a soldier,’ she said. ‘A not-very-nice soldier.’
Jeremiah brightened at that. ‘Sing it to us,’ he demanded. The day had not been one for pleases and thank yous. Kitty let discretion oust valour and ignored the peremptory tone. She struck a soft chord.
‘Oh, soldier, soldier, won’t you marry me, With your musket, fife and drum?’ She paused. ‘Oh – no, sweet maid, I cannot marry thee, For I have no coat to put on—’
Hepzibar had abandoned her disconsolate staring out of the window and had turned, interested. Jeremiah on the other hand
was put out by such girlish stuff. He sniffed, and banged the piano keys again, in a high, tinkling, discordant chord. Kitty determinedly drowned it with a strong martial one of her own and sang again, the tempo briskly marching. ‘So off they went, To her grandfather’s chest, And brought him a coat, Of the very, very best, And the soldier put it on. – Oh,—’
The other children were drifting towards the piano now, Hepzibar automatically stooping and swinging the baby Becca into her arms as she passed.
‘—soldier, soldier, will you marry me—’
By the third verse they were all singing. By the sixth they were making up unlikely articles of clothing so that the song should not come to an end. At last, laughing, Kitty slowed the accompaniment to a dirge. ‘Oh, no, sweet maid, I cannot marry thee—’ She paused. Her audience watched her with bated breath. ‘I’ve a wife and a child of me own!’
That brought the house down. ‘Sing us some more!’ shrieked Jeremiah, swinging from the piano lid.
‘Yes! Please, Kitty—!’
‘Well,’ Kitty said, ‘something a little quieter I think. Why don’t you be my little birds—’ She played a pretty, simple tune, sang softly, ‘I open wide my dove-cote door. The pigeons fly out and away they soar. They fly to green field and spreading tree – that’s right, flap your wings – fly about the room, and then come home to roost – But soon to their roost they fly once more, And then I close tightly my pigeon-house door.’ She caught hold of Jeremiah, the most enthusiastic of the little birds, and hugged him tight.
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