by Maggie Hope
‘How can you think of such things when Penny is so ill?’ cried Elizabeth. ‘Oh, if only Hetty had done as I asked, Penny would not be in hospital now, fighting for her life.’
‘Penny is not on the danger list, Mother! Haven’t I just rung the hospital to see how she is? The doctors are very hopeful she will recover completely. And don’t you ever suggest she should come here to live. Not unless Hetty comes with her.’
Elizabeth looked at him. Richard had never raised his voice to her before. Hetty must mean a lot to him. And perhaps she had been hasty in making such a suggestion. She had liked Hetty when she worked at the Hall, remembered her as such a sympathetic girl. If it hadn’t been for Matthew … and now there was Richard. What was it about the girl that both her sons fell in love with her?
She sighed and gazed out of the window at the moor, the sun lighting the heather in the distance, a curlew rising high, disturbed by a sheep. She imagined its mournful cry as it tried to protect its young. That was all mothers did, tried to protect their young, both she and Hetty.
‘If you marry Hetty, she and Penny will be living here then,’ she said with satisfaction.
‘Don’t take it for granted, Mother,’ he said shortly. ‘Hetty has a successful hotel chain. It may be that I will go to live in Saltburn.’ Always supposing she will have me, he thought, doubt rising in him. But he hadn’t time to think about it now, he had to go to Hetty.
‘Think about it, Mother. Get used to the idea. I love Hetty Pearson and I intend to make her love me.’
Brave words, he thought as he pulled round the corner into Morton Main. What would he do if she wouldn’t have him? He couldn’t even think of it.
Chapter 37
Audrey was one of those children who did not recover from the epidemic of diphtheria that summer. Hetty and Mr Jordan and all the staff of Pearson’s in Saltburn attended the funeral one bright and sunny day. It was held in the Methodist Chapel in Smuggler’s Cove where Audrey had been a Sunday School scholar before she moved to Saltburn.
Looking round the chapel from the pew where she sat with Richard, Hetty saw that Mrs Timms was there and Mr and Mrs Watts from Overmans Terrace. Peter was down from Northumberland and stood with his father and stepmother. He looked pale and drawn and his shirt was badly ironed so that the collar stuck up above the back of his blue serge suit. Hetty’s heart ached for him. Richard, standing beside her, took her hand and she glanced quickly up at him through tear-beaded lashes and was grateful for the compassion she saw in his face.
Hetty refused an invitation from Mr Hutchins to go back to the house for the funeral tea, though she asked Peter to call and see her before he went back to Northumberland.
‘I have to go to the hospital. I’ll see Charlie for you, take him something,’ she said to the Hutchinses.
Mrs Hutchins sniffed. ‘I’m sure he’d rather see you than me.’
I could scratch her eyes out, thought Hetty, though she was careful to keep her face expressionless. Mr Hutchins gazed at her, his eyes full of pain. Hetty wondered if he had regretted marrying again. And would her own life have been different if he had not? Would she have gone with Matthew? Well, what was done was done.
‘I’m grateful to you, Hetty,’ Mr Hutchins said, ‘for all you’ve done for the children.’
She nodded. ‘How are you, Peter?’ she asked the boy standing silently by. ‘Do you like Northumberland?’
‘It’s all right,’ he mumbled, his eyes on the ground.
‘He’s got good lodgings, I made sure of that myself,’ Mrs Hutchins put in. ‘I knew his landlady.’
Hetty hurried away with Richard, glad to go, glad she had Richard to go with her. These last few days she had come to rely on his support. She watched him as he started the car, loving him, revelling in loving him and yet afraid to, she had been hurt so often.
‘I’m taking up too much of your time,’ she said, turning away from him and staring out of the window at the dusty hedgerows for she couldn’t look at him and see the relief she imagined in his eyes. ‘I could drive myself to the hospital, you know.’
‘I want to go, Hetty.’
‘But you must have enough to do with your father’s business?’
‘Nothing is more important than this, my love.’
I must have misheard, thought Hetty. He didn’t say that. How could he say that? He thought she had ruined his brother, caused his death. He thought she had taken money from Jeremy Painter in return for favours granted. How could he call her ‘my love’?
They pulled into the entrance of the hospital and all her doubts and fears about Richard were pushed to the back of her mind. Penny was the only person who mattered now. No, there was Charlie too, he needed her. She picked up the parcels she had brought for the children, a picture book for Penny and The Water Babies for Charlie. Both children were allowed books now.
‘Hang on a minute, Hetty.’ Richard laid a hand on her arm. ‘I know this isn’t really the time, but I must talk to you.’
There was something in his voice which made her not exactly panic, but her pulse quickened and she didn’t want to hear, not now.
‘I can’t keep Penny waiting,’ she said, and hurried out of the car to walk swiftly up the path.
‘Hetty—’ he began, but she was already going along the side of the building to the window where Penny was. And there were the Pearsons, in a cluster round the window: Mam in her shabby grey coat, a black hat pulled over her hair, Da with his hands stuck in the pockets of his best suit, his grey hair cut in the old-fashioned miner’s cut, bending forward as he spoke to his granddaughter. And the way he spoke to her was so reminiscent of the times he had spoken to Hetty and Cissy when they were suffering from some childish complaint that she could hardly bear it.
‘You come over and stay with your grandda, pet,’ he was saying. ‘Just as soon as they let you out of this place. I need some help wi’ me pigeons, your Uncle Frank is about as much use as a man off. All he thinks about is his whippets.’
‘What’s the matter wi’ whippets?’ Frank demanded, and winked through the window at Penny. ‘Dandy’s had pups,’ he confided. ‘You’d better come over anyroad, I’ll need someone to watch over them while I’m down the pit. Make sure they don’t get out of the shed and on to the road to get run over. I can trust you to do that, can’t I?’
Hetty heard Penny laugh happily even before she saw her. The girl was so much more like her old self that her mother breathed a prayer of thanks to God for it.
‘Mam! Mam, my swab was clear!’ Penny called, and in her excitement she sat up in bed. ‘Sister says that if the next one is clear too I can come home. Oh, Mam, isn’t it great? Can I go to Morton and see the puppies? Can I have a puppy, Mam, can I?’
The way Hetty was feeling, if Penny had asked for the moon she would have moved heaven and earth to get it for her. ‘We’ll see,’ she said, more out of habit more than anything else. She took out her hankie and dabbed at her eye. ‘I think I must have got something in my eye,’ she said for Da and Frank looked away, embarrassed at this display of emotion.
‘I’ll pop round and see Charlie while you’re all here,’ she said, and walked rapidly away. Richard made to follow her but changed his mind. A last glimpse of his face showed her that he understood she needed to be on her own for a moment or two to compose herself. That was the thing about Richard, she thought, he was sensitive to her feelings.
Charlie was sitting up in bed, reading. He greeted her gravely.
‘I didn’t expect anyone, Dad said he wouldn’t be able to come.’ He didn’t mention Audrey’s funeral and neither did Hetty. And, she recalled, piling misery on misery, he had missed the scholarship exams. But she was going to do something about that. She was already in touch with the Friends’ School at Great Ayton and had secured him a provisional place, subject to his passing the entrance exam and his father’s signature being on the entrance forms – something she was determined to get. But she wouldn’t tell the boy until she w
as sure.
‘I’m allowed home tomorrow,’ Charlie volunteered. ‘I could have gone today but for …’ His voice tailed off.
‘Oh, Charlie, that’s grand! You can come to Saltburn for a while. You and Penny can keep each other company while you get well.’
His face brightened and then he actually smiled. He was looking past her and she turned to see what it was he was looking at.
‘Now then, shrimp! What are you doing lying in bed on a day like this?’ It was Peter, and right behind him Mr Hutchins. Peter’s mood had lightened, his sorrow at his sister’s death pushed aside as he talked to his brother.
‘Eeh, Peter, I didn’t think you’d come,’ breathed Charlie. Hetty stepped back from the window, a surge of pleasure running through her, she was so pleased to see them.
‘O’ course I came, you’re me kid brother, aren’t you?’ Peter demanded. ‘Now hurry up and get ready, Matron says we can take you back with us now. Look, there’s the nurse come for you.’ And there was Nurse Rose to take him to the bathroom where he would have a final bath to make sure he wasn’t taking out any germs, and then dress in his own clothes.
‘We’ll be waiting, Charlie,’ Peter called after him.
Hetty walked down the path to the end of the block with Mr Hutchins. ‘What changed your mind?’ she couldn’t help asking.
‘I thought the lad deserved to get out first chance he had,’ the man replied. ‘I told Anne I’d come.’
Hetty looked at him. He was not going to criticise his wife to her, of course not, but they both knew how he must have stood up to her. Perhaps now was a good time to tell him of her ideas for Charlie’s education. They spent the time waiting for his official discharge discussing future plans for the boy.
Hetty travelled back to Saltburn with Mam and Da and Frank.
‘I can make two journeys with the car,’ Richard had offered. ‘Or we can get a taxi. What do you think?’
‘Nowt o’ t’sort,’ declared Thomas. ‘A waste of money a taxi is when there’s a perfectly good bus.’
‘You go home now,’ said Hetty to Richard. ‘I’ll enjoy travelling on the bus with them, really I will.’ So he had gone and it was five o’clock when they all trooped through the front door of Pearson’s Ruby.
‘By, I’d kill for a cup of tea,’ said Maggie as she sank into a comfortable armchair. ‘Can I take me shoes off, Hetty, or are you too posh now?’ She took them off anyway, without waiting for a reply.
‘What about a meal? Did you have anything? I can easily order something from the restaurant,’ said Hetty after she had brought her mother a pair of slippers.
‘We had fish and chips at Alice’s place before we went to the hospital. You can’t come to the seaside without having cod and chips, can you, our Hetty?’
She agreed that fish and chips were what made such outings.
‘Aye, Hetty, an’ you should have told us,’ said Frank. ‘We shouldn’t have had to find out from Alice. If you’d told us years ago it would have saved a heap of bad feeling.’
Thomas nodded his head in agreement.
‘Told you what?’ asked Hetty.
‘About the smugglers and the bag of coins.’ Mam gazed at her remorsefully. ‘I’m sorry, love. Me mam said I shouldn’t be in such a hurry to believe that blooming man. She was right an’ all. Condemning me own flesh and blood, I was. But a gentleman he was supposed to be, may he rot—’
‘Maggie! Don’t speak ill of the dead, now.’
She closed her mouth tightly but her expression spoke volumes.
‘We all should have had more faith in you,’ said Frank. ‘I’m sorry, our Hetty.’
She smiled round at them. ‘Well, never mind now,’ she said. ‘I can’t be mad at anyone today anyroad, not when Penny’s coming out tomorrow. Now, how about a nice cup of tea?’ Dear old Gran, she thought as she went to the door; she had believed in Hetty all the time. On impulse, she slipped into her bedroom and took a box out of the top drawer of her dressing table. She hadn’t opened it in years. It was only an old shoe box with something wrapped in tissue paper in it. She took it back into the sitting room.
‘I don’t know why I didn’t show you this before,’ she said, carefully unfolding the tissue to reveal what looked like a raggy old piece of washleather. With it was one old coin, a fourpenny piece with what she now knew to be the head of George III on it.
‘Why, will you look at that!’ commented Thomas. ‘You were right, our Hetty, I never would have believed it.’
‘Me neither,’ Maggie agreed. She gazed at the coin for a minute or two and then looked up at her daughter. ‘Well, the fellow that lost that purse has no use for the money now, has he? Strange things happen, eh? And that reminds me, Hetty. That fellow who was with you today … Richard Fortune, wasn’t he? I mind when he came to tell us about Penny being badly. He came before an’ all. He was looking for you then, years ago it was. Well, by the looks of you two together, I’d say he’d found you.’
‘Mam!’
‘Aye, well, I speak only as I find. And I’m sure it’s a different kettle of fish altogether from when that brother of his was after—’
‘Maggie, watch your mouth,’ warned Thomas.
‘It’s all right, Da,’ said Hetty. ‘I know Richard is different from Matthew, he’s a good man. I would marry him tomorrow if he asked me.’
‘He’ll ask you,’ her mother asserted, nodding her head confidently. But as Hetty made the tea she wasn’t so sure. Perhaps he was just being kind? Mebbe just because he was Penny’s uncle … mebbe he hadn’t called her ‘my love’ that morning. Mebbe she was fooling herself. Hetty rinsed the teapot out with hot water and mashed the tea and poured it out again into the sink and rinsed the teapot, all the while staring dreamily out of the window as darkness came down over the sea and only pinpoints of light could be seen from the ships lining up to go into Tees Port.
‘Hetty? Where’s that tea, then? By, I’m fair clemming for a cup.’ Maggie had come in search of her. She clicked her teeth when she saw what Hetty was doing. ‘By, our Hetty, you’re a proper dreamer, you are. Give that teapot here, I’ll make the tea or we’ll be lucky to get it before breakfast time.’
Chapter 38
It was a bright Saturday morning when Hetty and Frank went to bring Penny home from the fever hospital. Frank sat beside her as she drove, watching every movement.
‘You’re not a bad hand at that, our Hetty,’ he commented as she pulled to a halt in the hospital grounds. ‘I’m thinking of getting a car meself, you know. I’m learning how to drive.’
‘Are you, Frank? That’s great.’ Hetty did not ask if he was sure he could afford it. The pits were working full-time again, she knew that though she refused to think about the reason: the imminence of war.
‘Aye, well, I’ve got me overman’s ticket,’ he said, almost as though she had asked the question. But this particular conversation came to an end in the excitement of having Penny back, being able to touch her at last, feel the child’s arms round her neck. By, thought Hetty, this is what I’ve been missing so much.
‘Where’s Uncle Richard?’ asked Penny as they drove out of the hospital gates and took the road to Saltburn.
Where indeed? Hetty questioned too, though silently. She caught Frank watching her face, looking for her reaction, and carefully kept her eyes on the road. She hadn’t seen Richard since the day before and didn’t know why. He had been there for her all the time Penny was in hospital. There could be many a reason, she told herself. His mother, his father’s business affairs; now he knew she had her family with her perhaps he thought there was no need for him to be there all the time. Perhaps seeing her family had reminded him of her origins, a dark thought indeed. But no, of course not, Richard wasn’t like that, he was no snob. Determinedly, Hetty put it out of her mind. Richard would come, of course he would.
The staff of Pearson’s Ruby were all at the front door to welcome home Penny. Steve and Mr Jordan and Sylvia and Alice too –
she must have shut up the cafe to be there. And more exuberantly, out in the street watching for the car, were Thomas and Maggie and, a surprise for Hetty, Gran too. A frail, more stooped Gran than Hetty remembered but still the same Gran, the smile on her face a ray of sunshine. Penny was carried up to the flat in triumph and laid carefully amidst the cushions on the sofa.
‘Now stay there, no getting down without permission,’ Hetty admonished, and though Penny protested, she did as she was told. For even though the diphtheria had left her, she was still pale and weak and her dark eyes were shadowed.
‘Proper peaky,’ was Gran’s verdict. ‘But never mind, we’ll soon build the bairn up. Parrish’s Food is the thing, our Hetty.’
They had a bit of a party, with Mr Jordan bringing up tempting morsels from the restaurant for Penny, and Mam muttering, ‘Good wholesome food is what the lass wants.’ Afterwards, when Penny was carried off to bed for the rest of the day, too tired even to protest, Hetty slipped out and walked along the front on her own. On impulse she followed the cliff path down to the lower esplanade and then on to the sands. There were families on the beach, children digging in the sand and paddling in the water. The sun was warm and for once there was no breeze from the sea. She turned towards Marske. The crowds thinned out as she went until she was on her own on the broad golden sands, with only the sound of the waves on her right and the seagulls swooping and crying in the shallows.
Coming to a cleft in the cliff, with a rock large enough to perch on, she sat down. Just for a few minutes, she told herself. She needed the time to herself to collect her thoughts. She felt restless, slightly out of sorts, and told herself she had no reason to feel like that, not now she had Penny home with her again. She tried to make plans for how she would convince Mr Hutchins that Charlie ought to go to the Friends’ School, perhaps could even get a scholarship. He could maybe be a boarder there … It was no good, she couldn’t think anything through, not today.
Hetty slipped off her shoes and dug her bare toes into the sand, so soft and warm it was, here in this sheltered place. Dreamily she slid down, folding her legs under her, leaning against the rock. She ran her fingers through the sand, back and forth, seeing the light glint on tiny particles as the sun hit them. Suddenly there was a shadow blocking out the sun and there was Richard, standing only a few feet away, saying nothing, just watching her.