The Fleethaven Trilogy

by Margaret Dickinson

  ‘Oh, indubitably!’

  ‘By heck, Bumpkin,’ she mimicked his dialect, ‘that’s a big word for you. Getting into being a college boy already? It’ll cost us to speak to ya when ya come ho-ame.’

  ‘You!’ He set down the flagon and reached out towards her and began to tickle her ribs.

  She squealed and squirmed trying to get away from him, but he held her fast. ‘No, don’t do that. You know I’m ticklish. Don’t, Rob, stop it!’

  They were laughing and rolling over and over on the hay, legs and arms flailing, romping like two playful puppies.

  ‘What on earth is going on?’

  They froze, staring through the gloom at each other, their eyes wide.

  ‘Oh no!’ Ella breathed and as Rob rolled off the top of her, they both turned frightened eyes to the top of the ladder to see Esther’s head and shoulders.

  ‘Get down here this instant,’ she spat at them. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘Gran, we’re not doing anything . . .’

  But Esther had disappeared, climbing down to stand at the bottom, waiting for them.

  Rob climbed down first and, her heart thumping, Ella followed, but immediately her feet touched the ground she swung round to face her grandmother boldly. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but we were only – well – mucking about.’

  Before she knew what was happening, Esther had brought her right hand up smartly and dealt a stinging blow to the left side of Ella’s face, catching her on her left jawline and making the birthmark redden. ‘Hold ya tongue, ya little trollop!’ Esther snapped. ‘I might have known. It’s in the breed, ain’t it? Like ya mother – and mine for that matter. Eh, an’ I did me best to din it into ya mam, but no, it’s in the blood. And now you!’

  Then she turned her wrath on Rob. ‘And as for you, I expected better of you, Rob Eland.’

  Ella rubbed her sore cheek and glanced at Rob. She saw him flinch, his face pale. ‘Missus – listen – please. We weren’t doing nothing, honest. Just – just playing . . .’

  ‘Oh, aye. ’Spect me to believe that? Ya mun think I were born yesterday. But ya like ya grandad, too, ain’t you? A flirt, after anything in skirts!’ She leant closer towards him, thrusting her face close to his. ‘Get off my farm, Rob Eland, and dun’t you set foot on it again. Ya not welcome here and you keep away from her.’ She flung her arm out towards Ella. ‘Right away. You hear me?’

  All colour drained completely from his face.

  Ella gave a cry and clung to his arm. ‘No, Gran, no. Why won’t you believe us? We weren’t—’

  ‘I dun’t believe you.’

  For a brief instant, though his eyes were still staring straight into Esther’s, Rob touched Ella’s hand where she was gripping his arm. She heard him sigh. ‘It’s no use, Ella. I – I’d better go.’

  ‘Yes, you had,’ Esther said.

  ‘Gran, please . . .’

  As Rob turned away to leave, Esther grasped Ella by the arm and made to pull her out of the barn and towards the house. ‘As for you, Missy, up to ya room till I decide what I’m goin’ to do with you.’

  With a swift movement, Ella twisted herself from her grandmother’s hold. ‘No, I won’t.’

  With Rob gone, they faced each other. ‘Ya’ll do as ya told, else—’

  ‘Else what, Gran? Else you’ll hit me again?’ She touched her cheek, still smarting from Esther’s hand. ‘Else you’ll turn me out? Eh? What? What will you do?’

  ‘You little madam!’ Esther said through gritted teeth, her mouth set in a hard line. ‘Aye, an’ I’ve a good mind to turn you out at that. After all I’ve done for you, and you do this.’

  ‘Gran, I’ve done nothing. Rob doesn’t think of me like that anyway, though I wish he did. I wish we had done something.’

  Again Esther’s hand came up, but Ella, half expecting it now, put up her arm to fend her off and the older woman let her own fall. ‘Get into the house.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’ Ella whirled about, grasped the ladder and began to climb back up to the hayloft.

  She felt Esther grab her ankle and she kicked out to force her to release her hold. She heard Esther cry out. ‘Ouch! Why, you little devil. Kick me, would you?’ And she turned to see her grandmother, rubbing a point on her left jawline.

  ‘Well, we’re quits now, aren’t we, Gran?’ and she turned to show Esther where the skin around the birthmark on her own face was glowing bright red.

  Ignoring her grandmother’s gasp of shock, Ella climbed back up into the loft to collapse on to the hay and bury her face in it, trying to stifle her uncontrollable sobs.

  When at last she pulled herself up into a sitting position, sniffed and rubbed the tears away with the back of her hand, it had grown darker in the loft and, outside, dusk was creeping across the farmyard. She heard a rustle in the hay and saw Tibby picking his way towards her. He climbed on to her knee and rubbed his face against her cheek, purring as loudly as he knew how. She hugged him hard to her and buried her face in his soft fur.

  It was over, all over. Fresh tears trickled down her cheeks. All her hopes for making Rob love her had been smashed in an instant. And by her grandmother, too. How she hated that woman!

  Grandpa! I must find Grandpa and tell him my side. He’ll believe me . . .

  She had started to scramble up, tipping Tibby unceremoniously into the hay, when she heard shouting in the yard, shrill voices raised in anger. Women’s voices.

  She crept to the ladder and climbed down. Then she tiptoed to the door of the barn and, keeping hidden behind it, she peeped out.

  In the lengthening shadows two figures stood in the centre of the yard. As she might have expected, one was her grandmother, but when Ella recognized the other figure, she gasped with surprise.

  Beth Eland stood there, her round body shaking with indignation, her finger wagging only inches from Esther’s nose.

  ‘How dare you even think my grandson would be up to no good?’

  ‘Like his grandad, ain’t he, Beth? Allus after the women.’

  At that moment, Ella saw her grandfather appear out of the cowshed on the other side of the yard. He paused a moment, looking at the two women in surprise, his eyes going from one to the other and back again. Then Ella saw his glance go beyond them and towards the barn where she was standing. She ducked back, but too late; she knew he had seen her. Peeping out again, she saw him coming towards her, skirting the edge of the yard, unobserved by the two women so totally immersed in their quarrel. In a moment he stepped inside the barn and came to stand beside her, putting his arm casually around her shoulders but keeping partially hidden, looking out cautiously just like Ella, as if he, too, wanted to watch what was happening, but not get involved.

  ‘Grandpa?’

  ‘Mmm?’ His attention was still on the two women.

  ‘Grandpa – me and Rob – we weren’t doing anything, honest.’

  For a moment, through the gloom, his keen glance returned her steady gaze. ‘I believe you, love. But I’m afraid your grannie never will.’ He jerked his head towards the arguing women.

  ‘But why, Grandpa? Why won’t she? I’ve never lied to her in my life. Not even when I’ve been in trouble. I always owned up, you know I did. And Rob too. He thinks that much of her, he’d cut his right arm off before he’d upset her. She should know that.’

  Grimly Jonathan said, ‘I don’t even think such a drastic step as that would convince her. Not in her present mood.’

  They fell silent, their attention caught again by the raised voices.

  ‘Ya judge everyone by ya own standards, that’s the trouble with you, Esther.’ Beth Eland’s head nodded vigorously and her fat chins wobbled. ‘You think no one else but you can remember things, dun’t ya? That only others has done wrong. Well . . .’ She thrust her face closer to Esther. ‘What ’bout you in the war, eh? Carrying on when ya husband was away fighting?’

  Beside her, Ella was sure she felt Jonathan stiffen and she bit her lip. Was Grandma Ela
nd letting out secrets that even he didn’t know? Then she frowned. She didn’t think her grandpa had been in the last war; he’d been too old. Then what . . .?

  ‘Oh, aye, trust you to rake up all the past. Why, that’s years ago.’

  ‘It’s you can’t let go of the past, Esther Everatt.’

  Ella gasped. That name again. She’d heard Grandma Eland refer to her grandmother by that name before, when she’d tried to ask questions about Esther’s early life. Shrewdly, Ella guessed it was the name from their young days; the name by which Beth had first known Esther. In her anger, it was the name that came naturally to her lips.

  ‘Ya can’t forgive and ya can’t forget, can ya? Not ever.’

  A memory stirred in Ella’s mind; a fleeting picture of her mother and her grandmother . . . But then the argument going on now claimed her attention.

  ‘You’re a fine one to talk about not forgiving, Beth. Ya’ve harboured a grudge agin me all me life nearly, just ’cos you reckon I stole ya sweetheart.’

  This was something new. Ella stepped forward, eager to listen, forgetting for a moment just what the quarrel was about. Then she felt her grandfather’s warning hand on her shoulder and she glanced up at him.

  Did he understand all this? she wondered. Was he being hurt by the words they were flinging at each other? ‘Grandpa,’ she began, ‘didn’t you ought to stop them. Maybe . . .’

  He was shaking his head, and there was a small smile on his mouth, yet it was tinged with a sadness. ‘No, love, leave them be. They’ve been wanting to have a go at each other for a long time. Years and years this has been building up. We’d better let them get on with it.’

  And get on with it they certainly did, though much of what they said was a mystery to the listening girl.

  ‘Well, ya should ’ave kept ya legs crossed,’ Esther shouted and Ella gasped at her grandmother’s crude remark. If the scene being played out before her hadn’t been so awful, it would have been funny.

  ‘Grandpa, what are they on about?’

  But Jonathan pretended he had not heard her puzzled question. Round and round the quarrel raged in a maelstrom of emotion, the outpouring of years of bitterness.

  ‘Ya’re a mean old beezum, Esther Everatt. Work, work and more work – that’s all you’ve ever known. All ya can think about is ya precious farm. Ya put it before anybody, dun’t ya? ’Cept mebbe Jonathan. As for that poor bairn. Well, me heart fair bleeds for her it does, brought up by you. You’ve never shown her an ounce of love, ’ave ya? Just ’cos you was born a bastard . . .’

  Ella gasped.

  ‘. . . and so was she, ya tek it out on her. ’Tain’t ’er fault, poor scrap, yet ya blame her, dun’t ya?’

  ‘Of course I dun’t.’

  ‘You, of all people, should understand her better than anyone. You should know how it feels. And yet ya doing the same to her as was done to you. Ya never let her have any fun. Ya keep her here working like a skivvy—’

  ‘Aye, an’ what happens when I do give in and let her go out? With your grandson?’ Esther flung her arm out towards the barn. ‘A couple of weeks later, I find ’em rolling in the hayloft. God knows what would have happened if I hadn’t heard ’em laughing and squealing like a pair of – a pair of . . .’

  ‘Yeah, yeah go on, like a pair of what? They were hardly up to what you’re accusing ’em of if they were meking a racket. Or do you know summat I don’t, Esther? Mebbe in ya time, ya’ve learnt summat I ain’t.’ Beth dropped her voice a little, but Ella’s sharp ears still picked up her words. ‘After all, we’ve both ’ad two fellers, ain’t we, Esther Everatt? An’ we’ve shared one of ’em, ain’t we?’

  ‘Get off my farm, Beth Eland,’ Esther shrieked, ‘and dun’t ever come back!’

  Suddenly, Jonathan moved from Ella’s side, with a swift, decisive action. He raised his voice. ‘That’s enough now,’ he said firmly, and walked towards the two women.

  They turned startled eyes towards him and Beth’s hand fluttered to her mouth nervously as if she wished she could bite back her own words.

  But Esther only faced her husband squarely. ‘Listeners hear no good of themselves. Where is she? Still skulking in the loft?’

  He turned and beckoned to Ella and she moved out of the barn hesitantly and went to stand beside him. As if to demonstrate at once to his wife that he was not taking her part in this quarrel, he put his arm around Ella’s shoulders.

  Returning Esther’s stare steadily, he said quietly, ‘Have you ever known Ella, Rob or – since you seem so intent on bringing the past into everything – Kate to lie to you?’

  Ella heard her grandmother drag in a shocked breath and Beth, too, gasped.

  ‘That’s not fair—’ Esther began.

  ‘Oh no? What you two have been slinging at each other in the past few minutes is hardly fair. Raking up things that happened over forty years ago. You could have been friends, the pair of you; should have been friends, but no, you go on harbouring bitterness down the years and wrecking other folk’s lives too, because of it. What about Kate and Danny all those years ago? If only you’d behaved sensibly and told them the truth from the start then maybe, just maybe, Kate wouldn’t have gone off and, well . . .’ Ella felt his arm tighten around her ‘. . . done what she did.’

  She looked up at him. This was not the time to ask questions, but she had plenty of questions she wanted to ask now, after what she’d been hearing. And ‘by heck’, as Rob would say, she was going to ask them.

  Twenty-Two

  As she had feared, Ella did not see Rob again for days. She heard him, though. Night after night, she heard his motorbike roaring down the lane from Rookery Farm and turning towards the town, the noise echoing through the night air, growing fainter and fainter. Going away from her.

  Once, in the pale light of evening, she thought she saw, leaning out of her bedroom window, two figures on his bike, his passenger with long hair blowing out behind her.

  In stark contrast to all the heated words, her grandmother now barely spoke to her, only acknowledging her presence by snapping orders for the work she still expected Ella to do.

  ‘Go along with her for a while, Ella love,’ her gentle grandfather suggested. ‘Do your best to please her.’ He sighed. ‘You’ll have to prove yourself all over again.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve caused trouble between the two of you,’ Ella said in a small voice, genuinely contrite.

  Jonathan put his arm about her shoulders as they walked towards the big barn. ‘Don’t worry yourself about that. I’ll be in the dog-house for a few days.’ He gave a deep-throated chuckle as if Esther’s frostiness really didn’t perturb him very much. ‘It’s not the first time and I don’t expect it’ll be the last. She’ll come around.’

  ‘But what did it all mean, Grandpa? When Gran and Grandma Eland were quarrelling? They sounded as if they almost hated each other.’

  He sighed heavily and murmured, ‘It’s so long ago now, yet they still harbour bitterness, each about the other.’

  ‘Why? What was it that happened that was so awful?’

  He was silent a moment, seeming torn between the desire to answer her questions and yet something still held him back. At his next words she understood.

  ‘It’s not my place to tell you everything. Really, it should come from your grannie.’

  ‘She won’t tell me anything. You know she won’t. It’s always been “Don’t ask questions that don’t concern you, Missy”, now hasn’t it?’

  ‘I’ll tell you a little, if it’ll help,’ he shook his head slowly, ‘but I really don’t feel I can tell you it all.’ He sat down on a bale of straw and let out such a deep sigh it was almost a groan. ‘You do know, don’t you, that I’m not your real grandfather, that I was your mother’s stepfather?’

  Ella’s eyes widened in horror. ‘Not – my – real – grandfather? But you must be. You’ve got to be!’

  He smiled and ruffled her short curly hair as he always had done when she
was younger. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ he tried to joke, but Ella was not laughing.

  ‘Grandpa?’

  ‘Your gran was married to someone else before me. Matthew Hilton.’

  Ella drew in a breath. ‘But that’s my name.’

  ‘Of course. You – you know your mother was never married, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but – but I thought the name I’d got was, well, my own father’s surname. I never thought it was my mother’s maiden name.’ There was a pause whilst she continued to stare at him, her young sixteen-year-old mind trying to come to terms with the facts. Facts that everyone else had always known about her, but that she had not fully understood. ‘Grandpa, do you know who my father was?’

  Jonathan shook his head. ‘Your mother would never say. She never did tell us.’

  ‘And this Matthew Hilton?’ Now her agile mind was leaping ahead. ‘Was he Grandma Eland’s sweetheart, then?’

  Jonathan nodded and said hoarsely, ‘So I understand.’

  He got up and for a moment stood looking down at her, sympathy in his eyes. ‘I can understand how you feel, love. In your shoes, I’d feel very puzzled and mixed-up too. But it’s your grannie who should explain it all to you. I’ve been trying to persuade her for years to be more open about the past. Not to treat it all as if it’s some dark and dreadful secret.’

  ‘And is it?’

  He shrugged. ‘In her eyes, yes, but in mine, no. It’s just, well, life. These things happen, but you can’t live in shame for generation after generation.’

  ‘And that’s what she’s doing? Hiding the truth from me because she’s ashamed of what happened?’

  He nodded. ‘Something like that.’ As he moved away, Ella stared after him in disappointment.

  ‘Grandpa, just tell me one more thing – please?’ He paused and turned back, waiting for her question.

  ‘This – this secret, whatever it is, is that why Rob’s keeping away from me now? Does he know?’

  ‘I think, though I’m only guessing, that he’s staying away because he doesn’t want to make your grannie any madder with him than she already is.’