The Fleethaven Trilogy

by Margaret Dickinson

  Now, at last, she might find out . . . But under the heading ‘Name and Surname of Father’ there was nothing written, only two lines drawn across it. Ella groaned aloud and then clapped her hand over her mouth. For a few moments she stared wide-eyed at her bedroom door and held her breath. But there was no sound of the other door opening and her grandmother’s voice demanding, ‘Now what are you up to, Missy?’

  She looked down again at the long paper in her hands. It gave details of her birth. She hadn’t realized before that she’d actually been born in the terraced house in Lincoln, she mused. Then her mother’s name, Katharine Hilton. Here was the stark proof that her mother had never married, even though Ella remembered people in Lincoln calling her ‘Mrs’ Hilton. Somehow until she saw it written plainly before her eyes, there had always been a last vestige of hope that maybe her mother had been secretly married and he’d been killed in the war. Maybe . . .

  But no, she thought, she really was what her grandmother called her.

  She folded the certificate and laid that to one side too.

  Next she lifted out a packet of letters. On the first envelope the address was written in bold, yet neat, handwriting. Ella bit her lip, hesitating a moment, feeling suddenly guilty at prying into all her mother’s secrets. Yet she had to know, she had to find out about her father. Surely, her mother wouldn’t have minded? Surely by now, as Uncle Danny had suggested, Kate would have told her everything, if only she had still been here to do the telling?

  Sighing softly, Ella untied the ribbon holding the letters together and opened the first one.

  My Dear Kate

  I have settled in well here, but it is not a patch on my previous posting. I hope you are well – I do miss our little chats.

  I expect Lincolnshire is looking a little wintry at the moment – no fields of rippling ripe corn. My current driver is not nearly so efficient at changing a wheel in the dark.

  I have written twice before, but have not had a reply from you. Perhaps you did not get the letters.

  Kate, we must meet. I shall be attending a big meeting in Grantham the week after next. If you’re still the new CO’s driver, you should be bringing him . . . We could meet on the Wednesday about four, at the station, if you could manage it.

  There was nothing in the letter to give any real clues and to Ella’s acute disappointment there was not even a name at the end. She knew there had been a lot of difficulty in writing letters in wartime, particularly perhaps for servicemen, but he might have put his name, she thought crossly.

  It was the only one from the mystery man; the others were from people she knew. One was from Grandpa to Kate, written to her at the Suddaby station and enclosing another from Aunty Peggy and both letters were dated a few months before Ella’s birth.

  Her grandfather’s letter was short, a mere two lines.

  I think, my dear, that the enclosed letter will be the answer for you, at least for the time being . . .

  The answer to what?

  Ella began to read Peggy’s letter,

  My dear Jonathan,

  Of course Kate can come back to us. We should love to have her – it will be like old times – and she would be company for Mother, who, although still lively in her mind, is increasingly confined to the house and, indeed, to her sofa. As you know, since Father died, Mother has slept downstairs in the living room and so Kate, and her little one when it arrives, could have Mother’s bedroom upstairs. I’m still in my own room anyway, so it won’t be putting us about at all! And there’s still the tiny bedroom Kate had before, when the little one gets older . . .

  Ella laid down the letter. So, that was how she had come to be born in Lincoln and why they had continued to live with Aunty Peggy, Jonathan’s sister. She read a paragraph again. What did it mean ‘Kate can come back to us’? She didn’t understand that bit at all. She would have to ask . . . Oh no, she told herself firmly, you can’t ask Gran. Now she knew the whole story, or at least most of it, she could sense even from these sparse letters that Kate had gone to live with Peggy because her own mother, Esther, would not have Kate, pregnant and unmarried, at home. Esther Godfrey had turned out her own daughter. That must have been ‘the answer’ Jonathan referred to; the answer to a problem and a problem caused by her grandmother. That much, at least, Ella could deduce.

  In the flickering light from the candles, Ella’s mind drifted back to the very first moment she had met her grandmother. What was it she had said? Oh, yes, she remembered now the harsh words between her mother and grandmother.

  ‘I told you ten years ago I didn’t want you here, or ya bastard, and I still don’t. Nothing’s changed.’

  And then Kate’s forlorn words, ‘Can’t you ever forget anything or forgive anyone, Mam?’

  Remembering the moment vividly now, Ella could hear their voices in her mind. At last she understood all the resentment and bitterness that lay behind the words. Her mother had not only been referring to the continuing feud between Esther and Beth Eland, but to the unforgiving treatment she herself had received from Esther.

  Beneath the letters there were two or three photographs of her mother in uniform. One intrigued Ella; it was of her mother standing beside a huge car with bulbous headlamps covered over and leaving only a slit for the light to shine through. She was holding open the back door of the car and beside her stood a tall man in an officer’s uniform. Holding it close to the uncertain light from the candle, Ella strained to see the man in the picture. Her heart began to beat rapidly as she realized that this just might be the first time she had ever seen her father.

  Twenty-Five

  There was, of course, only one person she could talk to about the things she had found.

  All through the following day as she went about the jobs her grandmother had set her, Ella turned over in her mind everything she wanted to ask Uncle Danny and how she should put it to be tactful. But by the time she was free to squeeze through the hole in the hedge and run across the newly cut fields, the sharp stubble crunching under her feet, towards Rookery Farm, all her carefully formed plans were blown away in her eagerness.

  Clasped in her hand was something she wanted to show him. As she climbed over the stile and jumped down into the lane near the farm, she heard the familiar roar of the engine of Rob’s motorbike revving up in the yard. Her heart gave a leap in her chest and she began to run. The bike came sweeping out of the yard, banking over to the left and as it gathered speed past Ella, he raised his hand in greeting but made no attempt to slow down. Ella stared after him as the bike reached the end of the lane.

  Off to see the summer girls, she thought bitterly. Now he won’t even stop to speak to me.

  But at the junction, Rob turned his motorcycle full circle and came back towards her, pulling up beside her and, cutting the engine, he balanced the machine with his toes touching the ground on either side.

  ‘You all right, El?’

  She returned his steady gaze. Today there was no merry grin stretched across his mouth, no teasing laughter, but she could see the concern in his deep brown eyes.

  ‘Why’ve you been ignoring me?’

  He wriggled his shoulders in embarrassment. ‘I thought it best. I didn’t want to mek ya grannie any madder.’

  A spark of resentment flared. ‘I see. More bothered about what Gran will say than about me.’

  ‘No – yes – I mean . . .’ He was floundering but Ella was in no mood to help him. ‘I thought it’d only make things worse for you. I hoped if I stayed away a bit it might all blow over.’

  ‘Blow over?’ She snorted. ‘No chance!’

  ‘Well, I don’t think you an’ me dad have helped by going off on your little trip, digging up the past. You’re only hurting her more.’

  So, she thought, she wasn’t the only one who now knew all the secrets. Danny must have told Rob everything too.

  ‘It was their lives, El. It’s all so long ago. It doesn’t make any difference to us, now does it? Ya gran would have come
round if you’d given her time.’

  Suddenly she felt more sad than angry. He didn’t understand how she felt, how everything that had happened in her grandmother’s life, in her mother’s life, did indeed still overshadow Ella’s own.

  ‘Perhaps it doesn’t really affect you, Rob,’ she told him quietly, ‘but there’s still things I have to know.’

  She thought she saw the hurt in his eyes, but it was so fleeting that afterwards she wondered if she had imagined it. He stared at her for a moment, a slight frown creasing his forehead. Then looking away, he shrugged. ‘Well, it’s up to you . . .’ He bent forward, twisted a lever and then stamped on the kickstart. The engine noise filled the air, making any more conversation impossible. He wheeled the bike round and, mouthing, ‘See ya . . .’ at her, he set off down the lane once more, this time turning left at the end, and roared along the coast road towards the town.

  Her gaze followed his speeding shape as far as she could see and even when he had disappeared from her view, she could still hear the sound of him.

  Her eyes filled with tears but she brushed them aside angrily with the back of her hand and marched with fresh determination towards the gate of Rookery Farm. As she went into the yard, Danny came out of the milking shed. ‘Hello, young Ella. You’ve just missed him. Gone to the pictures, I think. Do you want to go with him? I could run you into town if you like.’

  ‘No!’ Her tone was sharper than she had intended. Then she added swiftly as an excuse, ‘No thanks, Uncle Danny. I’m not allowed out.’

  He sighed. ‘I thought ya gran might have calmed down a bit.’

  The girl shrugged her shoulders. ‘She’s still mad about our trip out yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make matters worse.’

  ‘I don’t think you could,’ she said wryly. ‘Anyway, can you spare a minute?’

  ‘Of course.’ He paused and then added softly, ‘More questions is it, lass?’

  She held out her hand. ‘Uncle Danny, do you know why Mum would keep this?’

  On her open palm lay the large whelk shell; a simple seashore shell, unusual, perhaps, in its size but an ordinary shell none the less, and Ella was totally unprepared for the extraordinary response it evoked in the man who stood looking down at it, mesmerized.

  ‘Where . . .?’ he began, his voice hoarse, and she was shocked to see sudden tears in his eyes. ‘Now would you believe that?’ he murmured, more to himself than to Ella. ‘Fancy her keeping that all these years.’

  He picked up the shell and held it tenderly, looking back down the years, remembering. ‘We were only a couple o’ kids when I gave her this. I’d just left school and she was being sent away to boarding school.’ He looked up at Ella. ‘Ya gran was trying to keep us apart even then, but we didn’t know why.’

  ‘Was that when she went to Aunty Peggy’s in Lincoln?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, she met them about that time but she didn’t go to live with them until later, after we found out that we were brother and sister.’

  ‘Then she went back again to live there when she had me, didn’t she?’

  He nodded. ‘Ya gran tell you that?’

  Ella shook her head. ‘No, I found some letters and photographs. Uncle Danny, I think one of the men in uniform might – just might – be my father.’

  Danny was staring at her, then he nodded slowly. ‘It’s possible. Probable, I suppose, when you think about it.’

  ‘Uncle Danny, I want to go to Lincoln to see Aunty Peg and, if I can, Mavis. I want to try to find my father.’

  ‘Now, hold on a minute, love. You’ll only upset your gran even more.’

  Ella’s chin was determined. ‘Surely she can’t object to me wanting to find my father?’

  He sighed and fingered the whelk shell, his thoughts still half-way in the past. ‘You might be stirring up more trouble and disappointment for yourself. What will happen if your father has a family – children?’

  ‘I’m his child, too.’

  ‘How are you going to prove it, though? Have you got your birth certificate?’

  ‘I – I found it last night amongst Mum’s papers.’

  ‘Does it give your father’s name?’

  She shook her head, unable to speak. She didn’t want his reasoning to be right, but she knew it was.

  ‘And don’t forget,’ Danny said gently, not wanting to say the words but knowing he must, ‘I don’t think he knows anything about you.’

  Her mouth was now set in a decisive line. ‘Then it’s high time he did know. It seems as if my poor mum took all the shame and he got off scot free.’

  Danny smiled pensively. ‘Eh, you do sound like ya gran when ya gets a bee in ya bonnet about summat.’

  ‘Well?’ Ella said defensively. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’

  He sighed and nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose it is. But just remember one thing, Ella. Ya mam must have had her reasons. She loved him very much. That she did tell me. Maybe she loved him so much that she wanted to, well, protect him or not cause him pain. I don’t know. As I say, she didn’t tell me much. But just – well – tread carefully. Don’t do anything hasty that might be totally against what ya mam would have wanted.’

  She stared at him for a moment, taking in what he had said, considering it. Slowly, she nodded. ‘I promise I’ll go carefully, Uncle Danny, but I have to find out who he is at least. I have to.’

  ‘I can understand that. But supposing he’s still alive? Supposing you do find him, what then? What if he doesn’t want to see you, to have anything to do with you? It could be you getting hurt then. Ya mam wouldn’t have wanted that to happen either.’

  ‘I won’t get hurt,’ Ella said, and as the picture that still haunted her dreams, of Rob chasing the summer girls along the beach, came into her mind, she added, resolutely, ‘Not any more, I won’t.’

  Now plans were beginning to formulate in her mind, but she clamped her jaw tightly shut against the temptation to share them with Uncle Danny.

  This was something she had to do on her own.

  When the O level results came out, Rob had just scraped the grades he needed to go to the farm institute near Lincoln. And Ella’s results were good enough for her to be able to choose just whatever she wanted to do: stay on at school to take A levels and try for university or leave now and go to college. The other alternative was to get a job in Lynthorpe, but if she were to suggest that, then she knew what her grandmother would say at once: ‘Ya needed here, on the farm.’

  Rob came to say goodbye at the end of August. From her bedroom window, Ella saw him climb the stile and walk across the stubble towards Brumbys’ Farm; this year the fields between the farms had grown wheat. At the hole in the hedge, he paused, hands shoved deep into his pockets, and glanced up at the house. She stood back from the window, not wanting him to see her watching him.

  Her heart turned over. How handsome he looked, the open-necked white shirt dazzling against his tanned skin, his long, lithe body. He seemed to have grown, even, during this last year and now stood a head taller than his own father. He seemed to be standing there trying to decide whether to come through the hedge or not. Black curly hair ruffled by the wind and with a strange, nervous look on his face as he had hovered uncertainly near the hedge, he reminded her so much of the young soldier in the photograph in her grandmother’s bedroom, about to go into battle. Then she saw her grandmother come round into the front garden and walk towards him through the few trees left in the orchard. Ella watched as Esther adopted her usual formidable pose: feet planted firmly apart, hands on hips. Through the open window, her voice drifted clearly to the watching girl. ‘Well, a’ ya coming through or aren’t ya?’

  She saw Rob grin, push his way through the hedge and walk towards the waiting woman. Closer to each other, their voices not so audible, Ella could not hear the interchange of conversation. They talked for a few moments and then slowly he turned and walked back towards the hedge. He was going and without even coming to fi
nd her to say goodbye. He had come to make his peace with her grandmother, but still, he was avoiding Ella. Disappointment, hurt and anger flooded through her. She felt herself clenching her jaw. All right, if that was the way he wanted it, that was the way he could have it! But the lump in her throat threatened to choke her.

  The last thing she saw before she turned abruptly away from the window was her grandmother putting her arms around Rob and giving him a swift, affectionate hug; something she had never done to Ella.

  An early-morning September mist, with the hint of autumnal sharpness in it, shrouded the farm as Ella let herself quietly out of the back door and tiptoed across the yard. From the direction of the barn, Tibby came towards her, his tail straight up and crooked in a question. She bent and stroked his head. ‘Bye, Tibby, old darling,’ she whispered. ‘I wish I could take you with me, but you wouldn’t like it in the city.’

  She stood up again and he rubbed himself against her legs, purring loudly. She hitched the bundle to a more comfortable position on her shoulder and continued her way across the yard, the cat following. At the gate, she paused and looked back once at the house, still and silent, awaiting the start of a new day. As dawn crept over the sand-dunes, suddenly, from the chicken house, the cock crowed, a startling shriek in the quiet. ‘Stupid bird!’ she muttered, and began to hurry along the lane before her grandmother should rise and find her gone.

  At the fork in the road, Ella hesitated again, looking towards the white walls of Rookery Farm just glimmering with the first rays of light. She sighed and made a silent apology to those who lived there for going without even saying goodbye. Rob . . . Her mind shied away; she couldn’t let herself even think about him.

  Tibby gave a miaow and jumped up on to a broad-topped gatepost where he balanced himself and then sat down facing the direction in which she was heading; the only one to watch her leave.