The Fleethaven Trilogy

by Margaret Dickinson

  ‘About fifteen miles inland. I’m going to tell you everything from the very beginning, at least the beginning as far as we’re all concerned. Then we’ll come back to Lynthorpe and, finally, back to Fleethaven . . .’ His voice dropped as he said, more to himself than to her, ‘Everything comes back to Fleethaven.’

  They drove in silence for a while until Danny said suddenly, ‘I hope today’s not going to upset you too much.’

  ‘Upset me? Why should it?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know if talking about ya mam upsets you.’

  She sighed. ‘I’d like to talk about her, to know more about her. But no one seems to want to mention her name. It’s as if she’s a taboo subject. Grandpa will sometimes speak about her, but not for long, and as for Gran, well, I don’t think anyone dare say Mum’s name in front of her.’

  ‘Mmm.’ He was silent for a moment, then he murmured, ‘Well, perhaps after today things might become a little clearer for you.’

  They were driving through the winding lanes of a village. ‘This is Suddaby. Do you remember the very first time you came to Fleethaven Point? To a funeral?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. I saw the old man in his coffin.’

  Danny glanced at her in surprise. ‘Did you? Did you really? Well, that was your great-grandfather, your gran’s dad, Will Benson. I think,’ he slowed the car down to a crawl past a line of cottages, ‘that he lived here somewhere, but I can’t be absolutely sure.’

  Ella looked at the line of cottages, whitewashed with pretty gardens, their polished windows twinkling in the sun.

  The car rounded a corner and they came to the church. Danny pulled on to the grass verge near the gate and they got out. Walking up the curving path, it was peaceful in the churchyard, only the birds fluttering in the tall trees, calling to each other.

  Ella suddenly pointed excitedly. ‘I do remember now. Rob threw sticks up into that tree. That was at the old man’s funeral, wasn’t it? I remember it ’cos Mum was walking with you and no one was taking any notice of me. I went galloping across all the graves to get to Rob . . .’ She gave a fleeting smile. ‘Gran was shouting at me even then.’

  Danny said nothing, just nodded. He led her round the corner of the church and amongst the graves until he stopped in front of a row of three identical headstones. Ella felt her pulse quicken. At last, she was going to hear the story from the very beginning, hear all the secrets that had so dogged her life, half whispered snippets that had made no sense to the young child and yet had seemed to affect her life so deeply.

  Danny pointed to the headstone in the centre. ‘That’s your great-grandfather’s grave.’

  Ella read the inscription. ‘In loving memory of William Benson born 20th June 1860 died 23rd January 1953.’

  ‘Goodness, he was ninety-two when he died.’

  Danny grinned. ‘Look well if your gran teks after him.’

  Ella laughed. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her.’ Her glance went to the headstones on either side of Will. One read ‘In loving memory of Rebecca Benson, beloved wife of William Benson, departed this life 30th March 1919, aged 62 years. Her reward is in Heaven.’

  ‘So this is Gran’s mother, is it?’ Ella murmured.

  ‘No,’ Danny said quietly at her side. ‘No, it isn’t. That’s the whole point, lass. This . . .’ he was pointing to the headstone on the other side of Will ‘. . . is your gran’s mother and your great-grandmother.’

  Ella gasped as she leant forward and read the inscription. ‘In loving memory of Constance Everatt who fell asleep 9th June 1893, aged nineteen years. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’

  ‘Everatt? That’s the name your mam called my gran when they were rowing that day. Esther Everatt, she called her.’ Ella was looking now from one headstone to the other, trying to work it all out.

  Danny’s voice came softly. ‘Will Benson was married to Rebecca. They never had any children and then he fell in love with Connie Everatt, a young lass in the village. She had a bairn, ya gran, but died three days after giving birth.’

  Ella gasped. Now the mists of a shameful secret were beginning to clear, floating away to reveal the truth.

  ‘Esther was brought up by her aunt Hannah, Connie’s sister. She was an old battle-axe, by all accounts. Never showed ya gran any love and just treated her as a skivvy for her own large family of kids.’

  ‘Did Gran know who her father was all the time?’

  Danny shook his head. ‘Old Will didn’t acknowledge her as his daughter for years, not until after his wife had died, but he always kept a watch over her. I expect everybody in Suddaby village knew, but nothing was said outright. Y’know how it is?’

  ‘So,’ Ella murmured, ‘her aunt was pretty hard on Gran, was she?’

  Danny snorted. ‘That’s an understatement, lass, from what I’ve heard. Reckon ya gran might have been happier in the workhouse, and that’s saying summat.’

  Ella stood for a few moments staring down at the grave of the young nineteen-year-old girl who had died so tragically young and whose early death had left her bastard child to the mercy of a cruel aunt. ‘I asked at that funeral who this girl was and it all went deathly silent. No wonder!’

  They turned and walked back through the churchyard.

  ‘At sixteen,’ Danny went on, ‘Esther left the cottage here in the village and walked through the night to Fleethaven Point. Will, on his rounds as a carrier, knew that old Sam Brumby was past managing his farm and needed help, even though the stubborn old goat wouldn’t admit it!’

  ‘Is that how Gran came to live there, then? Just like that. Came to work for Sam – and – and stayed?’

  Danny smiled, but there was a tinge of sadness in his smile. ‘Aye, put simply, that’s about it.’

  ‘But there’s more?’

  He sighed. ‘Oh, aye, lass, there’s more. A lot more.’

  Back at the car they both paused and looked about them. ‘I’m sorry I can’t tell you exactly where Will lived or where your gran lived as a child with her aunt.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ She looked up at him. ‘I’m surprised you know so much. How come?’

  He opened the car door, got in and slammed it shut before he said. ‘You’ll see.’

  They drove slowly out of the village and up a hill. Near the top, he pulled in on to the wide grass verge and switched off the engine. They sat for a few moments looking out over the rolling countryside before them. Below a tractor put-putted its way across the field, stopping every few yards for the stooks to be loaded on to the trailer.

  ‘There’s a basket in the back ya aunty Rosie’s packed up. Let’s have a bite, shall we?’

  Suddenly, Ella realized she was very thirsty – and hungry. In her excitement or apprehension that morning, she wasn’t sure which, she had eaten very little breakfast.

  She got out of the car and climbed into the back seat where she unpacked the basket and handed ham sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper to Danny.

  ‘I’ll take you to see the old airfield next.’

  ‘Why?’ Ella asked, and bit into her sandwich.

  ‘It was an operational bomber station during the war. Ya mam was a WAAF there. Now,’ he smiled, ‘I know I’m overrunning me tale a bit, but if I tried to tell you everything just in the order it happened, we’d be running round the countryside, backwards and for’ards all day.’

  Ella grinned at him. ‘It’s all right. I think I’ll fit all the pieces together when I know them. I always was good at jigsaws.’

  Danny guffawed. ‘Oh, this is a jigsaw, an’ no mistake.’

  ‘I knew Mum was in the WAAFs. Aunty Isobel and Aunty Mave – they’re my godmothers – she met them then.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Danny nodded.

  ‘I haven’t seen them in years. Not since Mum’s funeral.’ Ella sighed. ‘Gran would never let me go back to Lincoln to visit anybody, not even Aunty Peggy. It was always the same, “No, we need you here.” I knew it was only an excuse. This last Chri
stmas was the very first time I’d been back in six years.’

  ‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘she’s always been afraid you wouldn’t come back if you once got back to Lincoln.’

  Ella laughed wryly. ‘She was probably right, too,’ her tone sobered and there was a trace of bitterness as she added, ‘though I’d have thought she’d have been pleased to see the back of me.’

  ‘Now, now, don’t talk like that, young Ella,’ he admonished gently, but his understanding smile took away the sting. He, better than anyone perhaps, seemed to understand what her life was like at Brumbys’ Farm.

  They packed up the basket again and she slid back into the front seat. They drove down the hill and soon came to the derelict airfield, its concrete runways dotted with tufts of grass and broken pieces of rubble, its control tower echoing with ghostly memories, the door squeaking as it swung to and fro in the wind. Danny pulled the car to a halt and switched off the engine. For a few moments he did not seem to be here in the car with Ella, but looking back to the days of the war, hearing again the vibrant noise of the Lancaster bombers as they took off into the night.

  ‘My squadron was posted here, to Suddaby, where Kate was, but on the first mission out of here I was shot down and taken prisoner. I had a bad leg wound, hence the limp.’ He glanced at her and grinned swiftly. ‘I never got the chance to talk to her much then and I didn’t manage to get repatriated until, oh, mid-way through ’forty-three. She’d left the WAAF by then . . .’ He turned and looked straight at Ella. ‘She’d got you.’

  She returned his gaze and said quietly, ‘Uncle Danny, do you know who my dad was?’

  He did not answer her question immediately but got out of the car and stretched his limbs, his arms above his head. Ella got out too and together they walked on to the deserted airfield and towards the dilapidated control tower before he said, ‘No, not really.’

  She looked at him, her head slightly on one side. ‘Sounds as if you have your suspicions, though.’

  ‘As far as I know, Kate never told a living soul.’

  ‘Not even him?’

  Danny sighed and shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Her heart contracted. She swallowed. ‘Do you mean – he was killed – in the war – and she never got the chance?’

  ‘No, no,’ Danny said swiftly. ‘Not that.’ He stopped, but she knew there was more. She bit her lip to stop herself pressing him. He would tell her in his own time, but she knew this was a difficult day – for both of them. So many emotions, so many memories being dragged out and laid bare.

  ‘When Kate told me about you, she said she couldn’t marry the father – sorry, your father . . .’ his voice dropped to a whisper ‘. . . because he was already married.’

  Her heart felt like a lump of lead in her chest, heavy and cold. ‘So,’ she said and could hardly keep the tears from her voice, ‘he won’t want me either.’

  Danny put his arm about her. In the cool of the wind that whipped across the flat, desolate airfield, his touch was warm, comforting. ‘Don’t say that, love. I honestly don’t think he even knows of your existence. If he did . . .’

  He left the words lying unspoken between them, for in truth, neither knew the real answer.

  ‘Come on, let’s take a look around.’ He glanced down at her. ‘If you want to, that is.’

  Ella nodded and her voice was husky as she added, ‘Show me where Mum worked. Tell me what she did.’

  ‘She was in the MT Section, Motor Transport. I think,’ he steered her in the direction of a square of concrete with buildings around it, ‘this was the MT yard. I’m a bit hazy. I wasn’t here many minutes,’ and he added ruefully, ‘literally.’

  The buildings were empty and the yard clear except for a heap of rubbish in one corner, an old propeller sticking out the only reminder of the aircraft that had once filled the skies above the airfield. Ella gazed around trying to imagine it alive and humming with activity: huge lorries and jeeps, cars and motorcycles and, of course, the huge, lumbering, magnificent aircraft.

  ‘She drove the CO about, didn’t she?’

  ‘Most of the time, yes. But she’d be under the officer in charge of the MT Section. If the CO didn’t need her, she’d be detailed for other duties.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, let’s think. She used to drive the crew bus, taking the airmen out to the aircraft when they were going on an operation, maybe meet them when they came back – that sort of thing. But she’d never be far from the camp just in case the CO needed her.’

  ‘So . . .’ Ella said slowly, thoughtfully, ‘she spent most of her time with the CO, did she?’

  Danny looked down at her. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘She did.’

  They walked across to the control tower, its windows broken, only shards of glass remaining, the paint peeling; the glass lookout on the roof had crumbled and lay in a twisted heap of metal.

  ‘Can we go inside?’

  Danny glanced about him and shrugged. ‘Don’t see why not.’

  The door, as he pushed it open, scraped on the concrete floor and their footsteps echoed eerily as they went inside. It was gloomy, and a melancholy air hung over the whole place. Upstairs, Danny said, ‘This is the control room where Mavis and Isobel worked as R/T Operators. They talked to the aircraft.’

  The room was littered with old chairs, desks and wooden shapes that had once held radios now ripped out. On the wall was a huge blackboard with the name SUDDABY painted in white at the top. Underneath was the word RAID and blank spaces for details to be filled in. And the column that seemed, to the wide-eyed girl, the most poignant, RETURN.

  How many times had that last column remained heartrendingly incomplete?

  Had her mother sat here watching that board, Ella wondered, waiting through the long hours of darkness for the sound of returning aircraft, her gaze riveted on that last column, waiting for the return of the man she loved?

  He must have been on this station, she reasoned. But had he been a pilot, or a member of the ground crew, or maybe an officer? Maybe, just maybe, a very high-ranking officer. Perhaps she was standing in the very place where her father, too, had stood waiting for the sound of Lancaster engines in the night air. Perhaps they, her mother and father, had waited together . . .

  Ella felt a shudder run through her. ‘Let’s go, Uncle Danny.’

  They returned to the car and drove in silence for a while, then, her mind beginning to work again, Ella said, ‘You know the day Mum died, the day of the floods?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘She was all excited, I think she was going to meet someone. She’d had a letter. It was waiting for her at Brumbys’ Farm.’ For a moment hope sprang again, and she turned to look at him. ‘Do you think my father could have got in touch and she’d been going to meet him?’

  Danny lifted his shoulders. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘And you really don’t have any idea who he might be?’

  ‘The only people who might be able to make an educated guess are Mavis and Isobel. They were her friends at the time. They’re your best bet.’

  Ella was thoughtful for a while, then she asked, ‘Where are we going now?’

  ‘Back to Lynthorpe. We’re – we’re going to see ya mam’s grave. Now a’ ya sure?’

  Ella nodded firmly. ‘No. I’ll be fine. But maybe we could get some flowers on the way, could we?’

  He smiled and his voice was husky as he said, ‘That’s a nice idea, love.’

  Now it was Ella who led the way through the churchyard towards the corner where her mother was buried. There was a simple white headstone with the inscription, ‘In loving memory of Katharine Hilton, born 4th September 1912. Tragically drowned in the East Coast floods 31st January 1953.’

  Ella stood looking down at the grave and then gently laid the flowers on top.

  Danny, standing beside her, said softly, ‘We fell in love, ya know, ya mam and me.’

  Ella stared at him. Fleeting m
emories filled her mind: Kate and Danny greeting each other, their fond embrace, the look in their eyes when they looked at each other, their whispered conversations. Now, with his brief words, it was all explained. And she understood, too, why no one else, not even Aunty Rosie, had minded their obvious affection for each other. They had all understood.

  ‘We didn’t know then, you see, that we were related. We just thought that all the time your gran was trying to keep us apart, it was because of her feud with my mother. They were so busy trying to keep their own secrets, they never thought about what might happen to us.’

  Ella gasped. ‘How awful! When did this happen?’

  ‘We were eighteen. When we told both families we wanted to get married, all hell broke loose.’ He was silent for a moment, gazing down at the earth where his first love lay. He took a deep breath and pointed to the grave to one side. ‘There, see that one? Matthew Hilton?’

  Ella stepped to one side and bent forward to read for herself. ‘Matthew Hilton, husband of Esther Hilton and father of Katharine, born 20th August 1890, drowned January 1920.’

  ‘He was drowned too,’ Ella murmured. ‘Like Mum. Funny, I never noticed this grave on the day of her funeral.’

  ‘Hardly surprising,’ Danny commented and then went on with his story. ‘There was a dreadful storm at the Point. At that time we lived on an old boat on the river bank. It wasn’t safe and we came off and went to the Harrises’ cottage. But he,’ Danny’s eyes too were on the Matthews grave, ‘he thought we were still on the boat. He came to rescue us, me mam and me.’

  She stared at him as, at last, she began to understand. ‘He was Gran’s first husband, wasn’t he? And she’s bitter because he was drowned trying to save you and your mother?’ Ella felt a moment’s empathy for her grandmother. No wonder Esther had been so frantic when Grandpa Godfrey had gone to the Point to rescue Grandma Eland at the time of the floods; she must have been so afraid she might lose Jonathan in exactly the same way.

  He nodded and she went on, easing his telling of the story by saying the words for him. ‘And he was trying to save you and your mam because he was your father too.’