The Fleethaven Trilogy

by Margaret Dickinson

  He had been pulling away from the pavement but happened to look back to see her running towards him. His toes touching the road, he balanced the bike as she climbed on to the back. Then he revved the engine and they roared away into the night.

  It was a clear, starlit night as they drove along the coast road. The sound of his motorbike could, no doubt, be heard for miles across the flat fields, echoing through the darkness, louder at night in the stillness.

  As he pulled into the yard at Brumbys’ Farm, he cut the engine and in the silence he said softly, ‘I’m glad you decided to come home.’

  Morosely, she muttered, ‘I didn’t have a lot of choice. I suppose you think you’ve won, don’t you?’

  ‘Won? Oh, Ella, it isn’t a game, a competition. Ya gran’s only trying to take care of you. She cares about you.’

  ‘Huh! Pull the other one. She only took me in out of duty and she never lets me forget it.’

  The back door opened and, in the light streaming from the back scullery, the subject of their conversation stood in silhouette.

  ‘Ya late,’ was her only greeting. ‘It’s nearly half past ten.’

  The two young people moved forward into the shaft of light.

  ‘It was my fault, Missus,’ Rob was going ahead, smiling and apologetic, yet never fawning. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s all right then, Boy. I know you wouldn’t do it on purpose.’ There was a pause, then suddenly, with one of her swift and unexpected changes of mood, Esther smiled and opened the door wider. ‘Come in and have a bite, why don’t you, Boy? We haven’t seen much of you lately. How’s ya mam and dad and – er – all?’ Even in her most expansive mood, it seemed Esther could still not bring herself to enquire after his grandmother, Beth Eland.

  But Rob merely grinned and stepped into the kitchen. ‘They’re all fine.’ He slightly accented the ‘all’ but not enough to make it pointed. ‘Evening, Mester.’ He nodded to Jonathan who was sitting in the wooden Windsor chair beside the range, his feet just in their socks resting on the brass fender, wriggling his toes towards the warmth of the fire.

  Summer and winter there was always a fire burning in the range grate and most nights would find Jonathan soothing his aches and pains in front of it.

  Her fingers cupped round the mug of cocoa, Ella listened to the other three talking, but took no part herself. She was still smarting at having been coerced, tricked almost, into coming home at the time her grandmother stipulated.

  ‘Well, I’d best be off mesen,’ Rob said at last. ‘I’ve to be up early in the morning to help me dad cut North Marsh Field and I’ll come over in the afternoon and give you a hand here. ’Night.’

  ‘Good night, lad,’ Jonathan said, and Esther went with Rob to the back door.

  Ella stood up and put her mug on the table and, giving her grandfather a swift peck on his forehead, went towards the door through the living room and to the stairs. As she moved through the adjacent room, she heard Esther come back into the kitchen and say to Jonathan, ‘Eh, that lad’s so like his grandad, I could almost think it was him standing there. Gives me quite a turn sometimes. Mind you, he ain’t got Matthew’s dark side . . .’

  Ella, livid at Rob for being forced to come home so early and with Janice’s teasing still rankling, heard the words but was not really listening. She was still smarting with resentment at what she considered unfair treatment.

  If they treat me like a child, then I’ll act like one, she thought, the streak of childish rebellion that had always been part of her nature coming to the fore once more. She slammed the door from the living room into the hall, making the china in Esther’s cabinet rattle, and then she stamped up the stairs, thumping her feet on every step. She half expected Esther to arrive at the bottom of the stairs, shouting up to her and wagging her finger. But her grandmother did not appear and for once Ella felt cheated of a battle.

  Haymaking was well under way and Ella was expected to help as soon as she arrived home from school. Throwing off her dark green school uniform, she was soon dressed in check shirt, trousers and rubber boots and running out to the meadows, waving to her grandpa as she ran towards him.

  The tractor was stationary and he was not sitting on the seat but standing on the ground, leaning against the huge wheel, bending over slightly as if he had a pain somewhere.

  ‘Grandpa? Grandpa, what is it?’

  As he heard her voice, he straightened up and she saw the sweat glistening on his forehead.

  ‘Nothing, lass. Just a bit of indigestion. I must have eaten my sandwiches your grannie packed up for me a bit too quick.’

  Ella glanced to her left. Only a square of uncut grass in the very centre of the field remained. ‘You go on back to the house, Grandpa. I can finish this field on my own.’

  ‘Oh no, lass . . .’

  ‘Go on, Grandpa.’ She gave him a gentle little push. ‘Do as I say.’

  He straightened up and stretched and the smile crinkled his eyes, the lines deeply etched into his brown face. ‘You sound just like your grannie.’

  ‘Thank you very much!’ Ella said in mock dismay, but she was laughing as she said it.

  As she reached for the starting handle and inserted it into the front of the tractor, she glanced up to watch her grandfather crossing the field towards the gate. Her hand rested on the cool metal of the handle as she noticed with a shock how he seemed to be hobbling, his tall frame stooping. She sighed heavily. It was only the beginning of the harvesting season; hay was the first crop to be brought in, with the corn in a month or two’s time.

  Watching him, Ella felt her summer holidays slipping away from her. There would be no point in asking to be allowed to go to Aunty Peggy’s in Lincoln; that she was needed to help this year was only too obvious even without her grandmother saying so.

  Late into the summer evening as the sun slipped down in the western sky casting long shadows across the field, Ella drove the tractor up and down the field, the square of whispering grass diminishing with each swath cut.

  Above the noise of the tractor, she didn’t hear Rob until she glanced back at the reaper and saw him following it. He waved his arms and she pressed down the clutch and slipped the engine out of gear. She jumped down and went towards him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Come to see if you need a hand. Only I daren’t get in front to catch ya eye. Ya might have run me down.’ His white teeth shone through the gathering dusk as he grinned. ‘I dun’t trust women drivers, not even in a field.’

  She slapped his arm and he reached out with his long arms and tickled her just under her ribs. She laughed and squirmed away, then her expression sobered. ‘Have you been to the house? Did you see Grandpa?’

  ‘Yeah. Why?’ His tone was puzzled.

  ‘I sent him in to rest. He looked harrowed out.’

  ‘’Arrered out! My word, Townie, you’re even starting to sound like a country girl now,’ he teased, then, more seriously, he added, ‘He seemed all right. He was seeing to the milking.’

  Ella made a noise just like her grandmother’s click of exasperation. ‘I might have known. Where’s Gran? Isn’t she making him rest?’

  ‘Didn’t see her.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ella said, then shrugged and turned away to climb back on to the tractor. ‘Well, I’d better get on. If she catches me standing talking to you with the engine still running, I’ll be in for it,’ and added to herself as she increased the revs on the engine, ‘yet again.’

  Esther was waiting for her in the yard when Ella drove the tractor through the gate, with Rob perched to one side of her on the mudguard over the huge back wheel. She had unhooked the reaper and left it in the field ready for the following day when the adjacent field would be cut, but Jonathan liked the tractor to be brought back to the yard each night and put under cover in the open-sided barn.

  As she walked towards her grandmother, with Rob following, she was struck suddenly by the older woman’s stillness. Though
she could not see Esther’s face in the gathering dusk, Ella was filled with a sudden fear.

  ‘What is it, Gran?’ Something was wrong, she could sense it. Her heart began to thump painfully. ‘Grandpa? Oh, it’s not Grandpa?’

  ‘No – no,’ Esther said swiftly, and reached out her hand towards Ella. ‘Lass – I’m sorry. It’s ya cat, Tibby. Ya grandpa found him when he was takin’ the cows back to the field. In the road. He – he’d been knocked down.’

  Ella drew in a swift breath. ‘Oh no!’ Her lovely cat; the tiny kitten that Rob had given her to comfort her in the loss of her mother over six years ago now; the young cat who’d crept under the covers on her bed and nestled against her cold feet, who jumped into her lap, purring and kneading his paws against her legs, and then the grown cat, round and contented, purring a greeting every time he saw her. ‘Is he . . . ?’

  ‘No, he’s not dead, but he’s got a nasty bump on his head and he’s hurt here.’ She touched her own stomach. ‘Ya grandpa thinks mebbe . . .’

  First hope, and then dreadful fear, shot through Ella. ‘What?’

  Her grandmother sighed. ‘Perhaps it would be kindest if—’

  ‘No! You’re not drowning him in the water butt. Not Tibby. I won’t let you.’ Ella stared at her grandmother, but in the moment of sudden terror for her pet, she failed to hear the concern in her grandmother’s voice, the tenderness. ‘Lass, the cat’s unconscious. He’s badly injured, maybe bleeding inside. We must do what is best.’

  I mustn’t cry, Ella told herself, at least not in front of her. Esther would despise sentiment over a cat. If she didn’t cry at her own daughter’s funeral then . . .

  Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, Ella clenched her jaw, and, her voice unnaturally high-pitched, saying, ‘Oh well, Gran, it’s only an animal, isn’t it? And a useless, lazy one at that.’

  Then the girl turned and ran round the corner of the house, through the orchard towards the hole in the hedge. Squeezing through, she ran pell-mell into the field, tears blinding her now, oblivious to the fact that she was trampling down the ripening wheat. She stumbled, tripped and fell. She gave a groan of anguish, screwed up her face, closed her eyes and gave way to a paroxysm of weeping that had as much to do with six long years of loss as with the anguish over her pet, beloved though the cat was.

  She must have lain there for a long time, for when at last she rolled over and sat up, the dusk had deepened into darkness and she saw the beam from a torch wavering a few yards from her.

  ‘Ella? Ella, where are you?’

  She sniffled and tried to rub away the tears with the back of her hand. ‘Here – over here.’

  The corn whispered as he pushed his way through. Flashing the beam over her just once, he tactfully turned it away and sat down beside her, the night enveloping them in its soft blackness. Without any trace of embarrassment the young man put his arm about her shoulders and hugged her to him.

  ‘Ya shouldn’t have said that to ya gran,’ Rob said gently. ‘She was upset at having to tell ya.’

  ‘She’s going to – to kill him.’

  ‘No, she’s not.’

  She sniffed. ‘What? But she said . . .’

  ‘After you rushed off, we went and looked at Tibby again and I said I’d take him to me dad. You know how good he is with animals?’

  ‘And she – she agreed?’

  ‘Course she did.’

  ‘Well, she would, wouldn’t she, if it was you doing the asking?’

  ‘Now don’t be like that, Ella.’

  ‘What did your dad say?’

  ‘He reckons Tibby’s stomach is very badly bruised, but there doesn’t seem to be anything broken.’

  ‘Really? Then Tibby’s going to be all right?’

  ‘Well,’ he said slowly, not wanting to promise something that might not, in the end, happen, ‘he got a bump on the head too, but me dad bathed it and its only a small cut. He’s started to come round, but he’s a bit dopey. You’d better come and have a look at him.’

  She was scrambling to her feet. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘At our place. Me mam’s found an old dog basket you can have. Come on, we’ll go and fetch him home.’

  ‘I’ll stay up all night with him in the barn,’ she said deter minedly, ‘whatever Gran says.’

  As they went back to the edge of the field and walked around it towards Rookery Farm, through the stillness of the night, when sounds seemed to echo so plainly for some distance, they heard the sound of shouting and high-pitched laughter coming from the direction of the Point. Then the noise of several motorbike engines being started rent the air.

  ‘Just listen to them fools revving their engines,’ Rob muttered in disgust. ‘They’ll be using the Hump as a ramp and flying over it. Daft beggars!’

  ‘Maybe they’re the ones that – that knocked Tibby over.’

  ‘Probably,’ Rob said, resentfully, then he sighed and added, ‘Though, to be fair, it could have been anyone coming down the lane. He’s always hunting on the sandhills, isn’t he? It could even have been me.’

  ‘You don’t go as fast as that mad lot.’

  They listened to the noise of the bikes roaring up the lane towards the town, growing fainter and fainter.

  ‘Well, I’ve got to admit it, we go at a fair old lick when we get on the straight, don’t we?’

  He walked all the way back with her to Brumbys’ Farm and watched as she settled the basket into the mound of straw in the barn and sat down beside it, gently stroking Tibby’s back. The cat opened one eye in a tiny slit and, very softly, there came a few purrs.

  Bending over the basket, Ella felt her nose tickle and she sneezed.

  Rob laughed. ‘That’ll be the dog hairs. It’s an odd allergy you’ve got, ain’t it?’

  ‘Well, for once, I don’t mind putting up with it, as long as Tibby gets better.’

  The barn door squeaked open and Esther was standing there holding a lantern high. ‘There you are. How is he?’

  Rob straightened up and moved towards her. ‘Dad reckons he’ll be okay.’

  Esther nodded and moved closer, holding the light so she could look at the injured animal.

  Ella opened her mouth to tell her grandmother she would be staying with Tibby all night, but before she could do so, Esther said quietly, ‘Ya can tek the basket up to ya bedroom, just till he’s on the mend.’ She turned away towards the door, saying over her shoulder, ‘But only till then, mind.’

  Ella stared after her, watching the swaying light move across the yard. She shook her head and murmured, ‘If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never understand that woman.’

  Rob squeezed her shoulder and said, ‘I keep telling you, she’s all right, is your gran.’ As he went towards the door, he added, ‘I’ll come over tomorrow and give you a hand to cut yon field.’

  She had not expected him to appear the following morning, but when she went out into the yard he was already there with her grandfather, their heads bent together over the engine of the tractor. At the sound of her feet on the cinders in the yard, he glanced up and grinned at her, but as she drew closer she could see his concern for her in his brown eyes.

  ‘Now, then? How is he?’

  Her smile was broad. ‘A bit better. He’s had a tiny drop of milk and he seems content to lie quietly, as if he knows he ought to.’

  ‘Sensible cat.’

  ‘So? Who’s driving?’

  Rob pulled a face. ‘I dun’t reckon anyone is yet. We can’t get her started.’

  ‘I reckon it’s the fuel pump.’ Jonathan raised his head. ‘I’ll have to go into town and see if any of the local garages have a spare.’

  ‘I’ll go on me bike, Mester, if ya like.’

  ‘Are you sure, lad? I mean, doesn’t your father need your help today? You usually help him on a Saturday, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes, but I asked him last night if I could give Ella a hand today, so . . .’ he grinned cheekily, stood back from the tractor and
made an exaggerated, courtly bow towards her, ‘I’m at your service, m’lady.’

  Jonathan gave a deep chuckle. ‘Go on with you, then. And take Ella with you, now you’re legally permitted to carry a passenger,’ he added pointedly.

  The two youngsters glanced at each other and smiled, knowing Jonathan had guessed just how often they had broken the law on the quiet back lanes before Rob had passed his test.

  ‘What about Gran?’ Ella asked.

  He waved his hand at them both, urging them to go. ‘I’ll see to your gran. Off you go.’

  Sitting on the pillion of Rob’s bike, her arms tightly around his waist, Ella pressed her body close to the arch of his back. Through the thin summer shirt he wore, she could feel every rippling movement of his muscles, feel the warmth of him.

  If only, she thought suddenly, involuntarily tightening her arms about him, he would love me as I love him. Had she always loved him, she wondered. Ever since she had first met him? Even as a child? Or was it only now that she had realized, with a jolt, how she felt about Rob Eland?

  For the rest of the day, when they returned from the town and the new part had been fitted to the Ferguson and Rob worked with her in the meadow cutting the grass, Ella couldn’t help looking at him differently. She was quiet and guessed Rob would think she was thinking about her pet, and whilst this was, in part, the truth, it was not the sole reason for her reflective mood.

  She wasn’t sure whether the realization of her feelings for him brought her happiness or sadness. The knowledge that she loved him seemed always to have been there and yet only now did she formulate it into words in her own mind. It was a good feeling, to love someone like Rob, yet there was a tinge of sadness in facing the realization that it was unlikely he would ever love her in the same way. To him, she was the little orphan girl he had protected and taught the ways of the countryside; the ‘Townie’ he teased, yet never cruelly. She was his friend; that much she knew.

  But for Ella, now, it was no longer enough.

  Twenty