‘Where’s Kate?’ Will asked suddenly.
‘At school, of course.’
‘Oh – oh, yes. I forgot.’
There was silence, then Will whispered, ‘Is she – I mean – how has she . . . ?’ His glance flickered towards Matthew.
‘All right.’
When Will’s expression showed scepticism, Esther added, ‘No, really. She’s very good. Fetches and carries for him. Almost mothers him.’
‘She’s – she’s not afraid, then?’
‘Not a bit. First time she saw him, she just stared at him for a while and then went and fetched a picture she’d drawn at school to show him. Not that he takes a lot of notice, but she chatters away to him. Sometimes he seems to listen – sometimes not.’
Will was silent again.
At last, almost with a sense of relief, he stood up and pushed back his chair. ‘I – er – I must be going, Esther lass. Me wife – she’s – not well. I dun’t want to be late home.’
Esther, a spoonful half-way to Matthew’s mouth, said, ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Will. Nothing serious, I hope.’
He shuffled his feet. ‘’Tis this influenza that started last year, Esther. It’s the very devil. Two in our village have died of it already.’
‘Really. I hadn’t heard of it. It dun’t seem to have come round here.’
‘Well, you’m lucky then.’
‘I hope she’ll soon be well again, Will.’
‘Aye – well – yes, thanks, Esther.’
He still seemed ill-at-ease, more so than could be explained by his awkwardness with Matthew. She glanced up at him, an unspoken question in her eyes. Again Will avoided meeting her gaze.
‘Your – your Aunt Hannah’s been very good. Came and nursed the wife.’
Esther smiled. ‘Then I’m sure she’ll soon be well. The ’flu wouldn’t dare defy Aunt Hannah!’
Will laughed but shook his head. ‘She’s been good. Very good. I’ve not had much time for her in the past, but she’s been a godsend to us these last few weeks.’
Esther nodded. ‘I know, Will, I know. She’s a good woman, I’ll not deny that.’
Satisfied with her acknowledgement of her aunt’s virtues, Will backed away from the table, taking a last, almost despairing look at Matthew.
‘I’ll see you next week, lass. ’Bye, Matthew.’
Matthew did not respond.
Esther laid down the spoon she had been using to feed Matthew and stood up. ‘I’ll come out and see you off.’
‘No, lass,’ Will said quickly. ‘I mean – you stay with Matthew.’
‘He’ll be fine for a moment or two,’ Esther said firmly and followed Will out into the yard.
Standing by the cart as he climbed up on to his seat she said quietly, ‘Will – what was your news?’
He sat down on his seat high at the front of his cart and took up the reins. ‘I’ve telled you, lass. I got another tuppence on yar eggs.’
‘Will – that wouldn’t warrant three blasts on yar whistle coming down the lane.’
‘I’d ’ave thought you’d ’ave been pleased of a bit extra in these hard times,’ he snapped and clamped his jaw shut.
‘Will, please – tell me . . . ?’
‘Esther lass – there’s nothing more I can tell you. Now, will ya let me get on me way to the Point or I shan’t be home to the wife before dark.’
Reluctantly, she stood back whilst he turned the cart round and left her farmyard. She followed him as far as the gate, leaning on it to watch him go towards the Point.
Will neither looked back nor waved.
There was something – she knew – that he wasn’t telling her. And by the stubborn look on his face, he wasn’t ever going to tell her either.
Will did not come the next week, or the week after. In all the time she had lived at Fleethaven Point, Esther had not known Will Benson to miss his regular visits, except during the snowy weather. Now he had missed two weeks running. Esther felt concerned for him. Perhaps he had caught this dreadful ’flu from his wife and was too ill to work. Another week went past but no one at the Point knew anything about Will. She was also distressed by his absence because they had parted on heated words. Surely he wouldn’t stay away deliberately just because of that? Or was it because he didn’t want to face her further questions?
Then Tom Willoughby came home from market with the news.
‘His wife’s died, Esther. Never recovered from the ’flu, so they say. And Will, he was took bad, though I hear as how he’s better now. But with the funeral an’ all, he just ain’t got back on his rounds yet.’
‘Oh, poor Will.’ Esther bit her lip, holding back further comment. Her feelings for Will Benson were her own secret. Gently, Esther told Kate the reason for Will’s prolonged absence and the child listened solemnly to the news. With equal gentleness Esther tried to get the news across to Matthew though she wasn’t too sure whether he understood. She was unsure too whether word of another death, when he had lived for so long with so much killing and death around him, would make him even worse. There was no outward sign, however, that Matthew even understood. He sat in his chair by the fire, his eyes staring, unseeingly she thought, into the glowing coals. His mind, if it functioned at all, seemed miles away from Fleethaven Point.
Another week had passed when at last she heard the trundling of cart wheels coming down the lane and the carrier’s whistle as he rounded the last bend. Esther ran to the gate to meet him. Slowly Will climbed down and she held out her hands to him. ‘Oh, Will, I’m so sorry.’
He seemed to have aged several years in the few weeks since she had seen him. He stooped a little more and his hair showed fewer red glints amongst the white.
‘Aye, lass, thank’ee. But – but it’s not all that’s happened.’
‘I know you’ve been ill, too, Will. Are you feeling better now?’
He shrugged and sighed heavily. ‘I’m better, aye, but I get tired, very tired.’ His eyes met hers. ‘It’s yar aunt, Esther. She caught the ’flu nursing the wife and me.’
‘Aunt Hannah?’ Esther’s voice was incredulous. She had never known her aunt to have a day’s illness. Even giving birth to each one of her large brood had been over and done with in a matter of days.
‘It’s a natural thing, childbirth, not an illness.’ Esther could almost hear her aunt’s clipped tones.
‘Aye, she’s bad – real bad,’ Will was saying now.
‘And – Uncle George?’
‘He had the ’flu a while back. He’s fine again and looking after yar aunt. The girls help, of course. The eldest two are away in service now, but Rachael’s taken charge.’
‘Rachael! But she’s only a child, she . . .’
Will was shaking his head. ‘She’s seventeen, lass. You forget,’ he added as Esther gasped in surprise, ‘you’ve been gone nearly nine years.’
Esther nodded slowly. ‘So I have, Will, so I have, you’re right, I had forgotten just how long it’s been. I’ve been picturing them to be just the same as when I left.
‘Well, you’ve changed, so – why shouldn’t they?’
‘Yes – of course.’
It was difficult for Esther to imagine how things must be now. How the children she had known were grown up and working and – most difficult of all – that her aunt was now laid low by illness.
‘But,’ she asked at last, ‘they’re – managing all right?’
‘Aye.’ Will was silent for a moment. Then he put his head on one side and said quietly, ‘But if you were thinking of paying them a visit, I reckon they’d be pleased.’
Esther shook her head vehemently. ‘No, no, Will, I can’t. I can’t ever go back.’
‘Surely you don’t still bear a grudge against Hannah?’
Esther turned away and did not answer him.
The following week the news Will brought was even worse. ‘She’s over the ’flu itself, Esther, but it’s brought on some sort of seizure. She just sits in a chair now
, lolling to one side. She dun’t speak or do anything now.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘She’s a pitiful sight . . .’
He glanced towards Matthew sitting by the range, his hands shaking, his head nodding continuously. Will looked away, but Esther could read his thoughts. The condition of her aunt was much the same as Matthew’s, though brought about by a different cause.
‘I feel very guilty, Esther,’ Will was saying. ‘She caught that ’flu coming to help me and the missus. If she hadn’t . . .’
‘Now, Will, don’t be foolish,’ Esther told him briskly. ‘She’d have caught it some time if not from you.’
‘But she nursed George through it and a couple of her own young ’uns. I don’t understand it.’
‘There’s no telling with illness, you know that.’
Will’s face was still distressed. ‘I’ve brought trouble on them two sisters an’ no mistake,’ he murmured.
‘What did you say, Will?’ Esther prompted, but Will shook himself and said, ‘Nothing, lass, nothing at all.’
She took his arm. ‘Sit down and ’ave yar dinner, Will.’
He lowered himself into the chair and looked down at the piled plate she put in front of him. ‘I dun’t know if I can manage all that, lass. I ain’t quite mesen for eating yet.’
‘Dun’t worry,’ Esther assured him cheerily. ‘What you leave, the pigs won’t!’
Over the following weeks Will brought news of her aunt. ‘She’s better from the ’flu, but she ain’t making any more progress. She just sits all day long and George has to dress and undress her. I dun’t reckon she’ll ever be right again.’
If the news of her aunt was hopeless, at least day by day there were tentative signs that Matthew was improving. Esther’s tender and devoted care seemed to be soothing away his shakes. He made no husbandly demands upon her and she was grateful for that, for her thoughts were still with Jonathan. At night when they lay together in bed, she would put her arms around Matthew and pillow his head against her breast, stroking his hair until the shaking stilled and he fell asleep. She would be left staring into the blackness dreaming of bright, sunlit days in a sandy hollow on the beach.
The breakthrough that seemed to set Matthew on the way to recovery came from a most unexpected quarter, and one about which Esther was not altogether happy.
For one day in the early spring, Kate brought Danny Eland home to see her father.
Thirty-six
THE two children stood in front of Matthew sitting on the garden seat against the barn wall and regarded him solemnly.
Esther, coming out of the back door, stopped in surprise and caught her breath as she saw them. Quietly she moved forward to stand a little way to one side of them so that she could observe them, but, unless they turned, they would not see her. She could see all their faces in profile and she saw Matthew staring up at Danny. His head nodded and his hands fluttered helplessly. Slowly a smile spread across the young boy’s face, though there was no answering smile on Matthew’s.
Esther saw Kate give Danny a sharp nudge in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Don’t you laugh at him, Danny Eland. Just don’t you dare . . .’
The boy turned to look at Kate, their eyes on a level, staring into each other’s.
‘I weren’t. I wouldn’t do that, Katie. I was only being friendly-like.’ He turned his gaze back towards the pathetic man sitting before them. ‘I wouldn’t hurt him for the world. He’s been hurt enough. He went to war an’ I reckon he ought to have a row of medals. You ought to be proud of him, Kate. I’d be proud of him if he were my father!’
Esther drew in a sharp breath through her teeth and held it. Then slowly, as she continued to watch, she released her breath. It had been a statement made in childish innocence, but for a moment it had startled her. What was it Ma Harris was always saying? ‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!’
At that instant, Kate turned and saw her mother watching them. Esther saw a look of fear flit across her daughter’s face, as if she expected to be in trouble for having brought Danny to see her father in this pitiable state.
Esther smiled quickly to show that she was not angry. ‘Hello, Danny. You’re just the chap I need to give me a hand.’
Kate was not to know of the connection between Danny and Matthew. If Esther had her way, Kate would never know.
The young boy turned to grin up at Esther, puffing out his thin chest importantly.
‘I need to carry this garden seat around and put it near the pond,’ she explained. ‘Now the weather’s better, it’s a nicer place for Mr Hilton to sit.’
‘I’ll ’elp you carry it, missus,’ Danny said, taking charge. Turning back he leant towards Matthew with a gesture of solicitude that was strangely touching in one so young. Watching, Esther marvelled that the boy, instead of ignoring the sick man and directing his questions to Esther to answer for her husband as so many of the adults had done, actually addressed Matthew.
‘Can you stand up, mester? Lean on my shoulder . . .’ and as Matthew struggled to his feet, ‘that’s it, lean on me. Kate, fetch us a chair out of the house for yar dad to sit on whilst we move the bench.’
Kate, ever Danny’s willing slave, scuttled off to do his bidding.
Esther stood by as Matthew shuffled across the yard, his hand on the boy’s shoulder. She wondered if Matthew had realized who Danny was. It was difficult to guess just how aware he was, for although he made sounds sometimes, since those first words of greeting in the hospital when he had imagined her to be Beth he had not uttered a word. She had no idea if he understood what was being said to him or if he recognized the people around him, even those he had known all his life.
Danny settled Matthew into the chair which Kate had brought out and then, with Esther lifting one end and Danny the other, they carried the bench seat to a place beside the pond.
‘There, that’s better. Now there’s something for you to look at, Matthew. The willow tree and look, there’s still a few snowdrops round the pond and soon there’ll be the crocuses and daffs.’
‘And the ducks,’ Danny added, grinning as two ducks waddled towards the pond and splashed into the water. Now the two children stood back looking at Matthew. Slowly, Matthew turned his head and looked directly at them. His gaze, now obviously intent upon them as if he were really seeing them, went from one to the other. His head still moved in that awful nodding tic, yet at the moment it didn’t seem quite so bad. A tentative smile flickered on his mouth and his fluttering hands reached towards them.
‘I think he wants you to go and sit beside him,’ Esther said quietly. The two children glanced up at her, as if for permission, and when she nodded, they went and sat on the bench, one either side of him.
Esther watched as Matthew looked down at them, first to one side and then the other. Then she heard a deep sigh escape his lips, as he leant back against the seat. She could almost see his tortured limbs relax and the shaking lessened visibly. Before her eyes she was witnessing the beginning of Matthew’s recovery.
She was truthful enough to admit that it was down to Danny Eland.
Once the healing had begun, each day saw an improvement, so much so that on Will’s very next visit, he remarked upon the change. ‘He looks better, lass. That awful nodding’s not so bad and I reckon his hands aren’t shaking so much.’
Esther told him what had happened the day Danny had come. ‘The lad’s come every day since, Will.’
Will eyed her sharply. ‘Dun’t you mind, Esther?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘How can I if it’s helping Matthew to get better? I’m not that spiteful or petty-minded!’
‘Does Matthew – er – ever see . . . ?’ Will made a gesture with his head towards the Point, towards the Elands’ boat home.
‘Beth, you mean?’ Esther said quietly.
‘Aye.’
‘To be honest – I don’t know. Danny and Kate have started taking him for little walks now. You know, a little further each day. They’ve got him as f
ar as the pub . . .’ she paused and gave a grimace, ‘though I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,’ she added with a tartness in her tone. Then she shrugged, smiled and said, ‘Ah well, if it helps, why not?’
‘I dun’t expect landlord’ll let harm come to him – y’know, let him tek too much.’
‘No, you’re right, of course. Matthew sits outside when it’s warm enough and watches the children play on the grassland near the pub and the cottages . . .’ She stopped and did not add ‘and the Elands’ boat’.
There was a triangular piece of grassland which lay between the Seagull and the cottages and on the third side ran the river bank where the boat was moored. From the deck of their boat home the Elands had a clear view of the cottages and the pub and beyond them across the marshes towards the sea.
‘Of course, all the fellers come and talk to him,’ Esther made herself chatter on. ‘They’re getting a little less embarrassed now.’ She smiled musingly, ‘Funny, isn’t it, Will, how those two bairns weren’t afraid or awkward around him, and yet some of the grown-ups – they couldn’t get away fast enough when they first saw him.’
‘It was a shock for us to see him in such a state, Esther, remembering how he used to be afore he went to war. A fine strapping lad, brought down like that.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘It’s wicked, that’s what it is. I must admit,’ he added, a little shamefacedly, ‘I didn’t quite know what to do or say that first time.’
There was silence between them and then Esther, struggling with an inner conflict that she could still not quell, said haltingly, ‘How’s – how’s me aunt, then?’
‘No change, lass, no change. George – poor chap – he’s wearing himself out.’
Again there was a long pause, then Will said softly, ‘Won’t you go and see them, lass? Even if only for George’s sake. He’s always asking after you – has done ever since you left. Won’t you go?’
The Fleethaven Trilogy Page 33