Wishing Water
Freda Lightfoot
Originally published 1995 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH
Copyright © 1995 and 2010 by Freda Lightfoot.
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. Nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN 978-0956607324
Published by Freda Lightfoot 2010
‘paints a vivid picture of life on the fells during the war. Enhanced by fine historical detail and strong characterisation it is an endearing story...’ Westmorland Gazette on Luckpenny Land
‘The new series will be greeted with joy by the thousands of women who enjoy her books.’ Evening Mail, Barrow-in-Furness on Champion Street Market
‘Kitty Little is a charming novel encompassing the provincial theatre of the early 20th century, the horrors of warfare and timeless affairs of the heart.’
The West Briton
‘Another heartwarming tale from a master story-teller.’ Lancashire Evening Post on For All Our Tomorrows.
‘a compelling and fascinating tale’ Middlesborough Evening Gazette on The Favourite Child (In the top 20 of the Sunday Times hardback bestsellers)
‘She piles horror on horror - rape, torture, sexual humiliation, incest, suicide - but she keeps you reading!’ Jay Dixon on House of Angels.
‘This is a book I couldn’t put down . . . a great read!’
South Wales Evening Post on The Girl From Poorhouse Lane
‘a fascinating, richly detailed setting with a dramatic plot brimming with enough scandal, passion, and danger for a Jackie Collins’ novel.’
Booklist on Hostage Queen
‘An inspiring novel about accepting change and bravely facing the future.’
The Daily Telegraph on Ruby McBride
Wishing Water (Third in the Luckpenny Series)
Lissa Turner seems to have everything a girl could ever hope for: she’s pretty and intelligent, has warm and devoted parents and a beautiful home in the Lake District. But despite her good fortune, Lissa is not happy. For her real mother abandoned Lissa while she was still a baby, and her feelings of confusion and vulnerability have persisted. As soon as she is old enough she takes up a job in Carreckwater, a lively village in the heart of Lakeland. She makes many friends but is wary of close relationships. Secretly Lissa wants nothing more than to be loved and cherished, but her lack of faith in herself launches her into a disastrous marriage with sinister consequences...
Chapter One
1951
Lissa Turner kilted her thin cotton skirts and slid from the sheep-cropped turf into the icy waters of Allenbeck, squealing with delight as it foamed against her bare legs. She swivelled her head round to look up at the boy, still standing on dry land, very nearly over-toppling herself in the process.
‘Come in, it’s wonderful.’
She wriggled her toes, the stones grinding and slipping beneath her feet, and tried another step. Above her head a lapwing climbed on lazily beating wings, finishing in a dizzying display of joy in the May sky. Not always so blue in these Lakeland hills, it came as no surprise to Lissa to find it sun-filled and blue. For today was a special day.
Today she was to see her mother.
All around them grew alder and silver birch, pale slender stems crowding the edge of the small gushing stream, eager perhaps to cool their own feet in the exhilarating flow from the rocky depths of the high mountains. Over the low hump of Gimmer bridge, built a century or more ago with painstaking care and not a scrap of mortar, as was the way in this part of Westmorland, she could see right along the rough track to the stile where the road divided. If she took one twisting path she would come to Broombank, her home, and where Meg and Tam lived. The other climbed up over Larkrigg Fell to the place she should live, Larkrigg Hall. The place where her mother would be preparing a special tea this very afternoon for their first meeting in years. Four years to be exact, not since just after the war when Lissa had been only seven and too young to understand anything.
But she understood now. In Lissa’s pansy eyes was more knowledge than she admitted to, certainly more than was considered good for her. Her stomach tightened into a knot of excitement. Lissa meant to enjoy this day, to wring from it every drop of pleasure she could.
‘What if you fall in?’ grumbled the boy, pausing in the act of unlacing one boot as he wondered if he would get the blame, if she did.
Lissa gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘Then I’d get wet.’ The idea at once took root and she wanted nothing more than to feel the icy water flowing and stinging over every part of her young flesh. Something tickled her toes and she wriggled them, seeing darting slivers of dark shadows race away.
‘Oh, look, there are millions of minnows here,’ she cried.
‘Don’t talk soft. Millions, my foot,’ he scoffed.
‘There are.’
‘Catch some then, clever clogs. Bet you can’t’
‘I can.’ Lissa lifted the jam jar that had been hanging on a string about her neck and, still holding her dress with one hand, dipped it with the other into the gushing waters. The tiny fish fled. Not one was to be seen. The water that gushed into the jar was quite empty of life. ‘Oh.’ She sighed her disappointment.
‘You’re ignorant, Lissa Turner. All girls are ignorant. Can’t catch fish to save your life.’
She stopped caring about the sharp stones and swivelled about to splash him with a spray of the foaming water. ‘Yes I can!’
‘Here, give over,’ he protested and taking up a flat stone, tossed it carelessly into the beck, missing her bare feet by inches. The water splashed in great wet globs over her clean print frock and up into her face, making her gasp at its coldness.
‘Oh, you rat!’ But the imp of mischief in her could not resist retaliation, so she dipped her hands in the cold water and scooped up great washes of it. Though she aimed at the boy, laughing on the shore, she soaked herself more than him.
‘Nick, we could go for a swim. A real one. Why don’t we?’ She was breathless suddenly with the unexpectedness of her idea, eyes shining with excitement. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? The perfect way to celebrate a special day.
‘We can’t go for a swim.’ The boy sounded contemptuous, as if she was wrong in the head. ‘You know we’re not allowed to go alone up to the tarn.’
‘Oh, phooey.’
‘And our Daniel can’t swim yet.’
‘I can too,’ came a piping voice from some yards away but neither of them took any notice of the smaller boy, knee-deep in water and mud, engrossed in his hunt for wild creatures.
‘Anyroad, Miss Clever-Clogs is going out to tea.’ The older boy spoke with lilting mockery in his tone. ‘With the witch up at the big house.’
‘She’s not a witch,’ Lissa hotly protested, uncertainty in her voice.’ She’s my grandmother so how can she be a witch?’
Nick put on his superior expression.’ If she is, how come you’ve never been to see her before then?’
Lissa desperately searched her mind for a reason. Not for the world would she admit the truth, that her grandmother would have nothing to do with her. Any story was better than that. ‘She’s not been well.’
The boy grunted his
disbelief and Lissa wished she could stamp her foot at him but the water hampered her.
‘If you want to know, she’s been waiting for my mother to come home. She couldn’t get here for my birthday but she’ll be here today.’
‘Huh! Rather you than me. The old bat’s a witch I tell you,’ Nick insisted. ‘And you’d best come out of that beck, before our Meg catches you.’
Lissa had been thinking exactly the same thing but she hated to be told so. ‘I’ll please myself what I do, Nick Turner.’
‘You’re just a girl, and as a boy and your cousin I’m responsible for you, like I am for our Daniel here. Anyway, your hopeless at fishing.’
Lissa was incensed. Though she‘d gladly slipped down to the beck at Nick’s suggestion, bringing her jam jar to catch a few minnows, that was only because she hated to be confined, even for a minute, while the adults chattered on about the Festival of Britain Tea Party in the village hall, how good Betty Hutton had been in ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ at the pictures last week, and other matters which were of no importance at all.
‘I’m three months older than you so how can you be responsible for me? Nor are you really my cousin, so there.’
The boy’s lip curled with superior mockery. ‘Huh, no one believes that old tale Aunty Meg tells about her finding you in a Liverpool orphanage.’
‘Believe what you like, it’s true.’ Lissa slapped more water at him. ‘I do know who my mother is though, so there. She’s flying all the way from Canada to see me. Today!’ The joy of it sang in her heart.
‘Meet your mother? Looking like that? Oh, aye, you will be popular.’
Lissa’s heart gave a little jump of fear. Oh, no, she couldn’t meet her looking a sight. Katherine was beautiful, everyone said so. For weeks Lissa had watched as the dress had been painstakingly stitched, anxiously waiting for the day when she could wear it. But, unable to resist Nick’s challenge, she’d ruined everything.
‘It’s all your fault,’ she cried, tears pricking the back of her eyes. ‘I can catch fish just as well as any boy.’
But Nick only laughed, quite without sympathy for her plight. She turned, meaning to get out of the stream, her movements as liquid and graceful as the swirling waters that washed about her white slender limbs, hair ribbons slipping loose in the wild tumble of glossy black curls. For all she was still a child, it was abundantly clear to anyone that Lissa Turner would grow into a beauty, one very much with a mind of her own.
‘Drat you.’ Lissa slapped at him again with the flat of her hand, then laughed out loud as he lost his footing, arms flailing round and round like a windmill in the wind, and almost in slow motion fell backwards into the water. Fortunately it was more wide than deep at this point and he was as much winded as wet. But for Nick, surprisingly angry.
‘Now you’ve done it,’ he shouted.
He looked so funny sitting there on the pebbles with his bony knees poking up out of the frothing water that Lissa laughed till the tears rolled down her cheeks. Then Nick joined in too while Daniel rolled on the grass and waved his feet in the air with delight.
Too late now to argue. Too late to complain she was in her best dress and she really mustn’t risk spoiling it. And Lissa desperately wanted to prove she was as good as him.
‘Keep still,’ she ordered. ‘Don’t frighten the fish away with your cackling. I’ll show you.’
She carefully kilted her skirts between her legs, tucking the hem into her waist band at the front, stuffing the trailing bits up the lace-trimmed elastic of her best knickers.
Then she waded slowly out into the fast-flowing stream, close to the bridge where there were fewer stones and the water spread out wide and deep and dark beneath a tunnel of greenery. As it came above her knees she stopped. For what seemed an age Lissa waited until the tiny minnows had grown used to the pale trunks of her legs and brushed against them with casual ease. Very slowly she bent down, holding the jar in the flow of the river. At first there was nothing and her heart fluttered with despair.
Then she saw it, a great fat black cloud of darting fish. In seconds her jar was crowded and she swooped it out of the water with a cry of triumph.
‘I’ve done it. See.’
Her delight was short lived, for the swift movement rocked a stone beneath her foot and the heavy water took instant advantage, pushing resolutely against her. Even as she struggled to find her balance Lissa knew herself lost. Holding the jar high in her hand to save her precious fish, she sat with infuriated dignity, almost up to her chin in the deep water.
Meg stared at Lissa with horror in her grey eyes. ‘How could you?’ She widened her gaze to encompass the two muddy boys, unusually subdued. ‘How could any of you behave so badly, today of all days?’
They all stared miserably at the pools they were making on the slate floor, deeming it prudent not to reply.
‘Upstairs with you, madam.’ Meg ordered, then jerked a thumb at her two nephews. ‘You two had best go to the outhouse, clean that mud off and get out of those wet things. I’ll find you something dry to wear, though I can’t promise it’ll fit, nor save you from trouble when you get home.’
She felt a jolt of pity for their sad faces as they trailed off to do her bidding. At any other time Meg would have laughed at their predicament. It was no more than childish fun after all. She could remember she and her brother Charlie being in exactly the same predicament on any number of occasions. But she was short on humour today. Kath’s letters always seemed to put her in a temper, even now, after all these years. There was still the gnawing fear that she would come for Lissa and take her back with her, and Meg would never see her lovely girl again. Canada was the other side of the world, after all.
She could remember, as clearly as if it were yesterday, the time Kath had come for her daughter. Lissa had been seven years old by then. Seven years in Meg’s care, and Kath had imagined she could simply collect her, like a parcel, and ship her away. But Meg had refused to allow it.
‘Lissa stays here with me, at Broombank, where she belongs,’ she’d said, and that had been that.
Surprisingly Kath had made no protest. She had merely smiled her beautiful smile, shrugged slender shoulders and walked out of Meg’s life with that elegant swinging sway to her hips, to start life in Canada with her new husband.
She’d written once or twice a year since then, often claiming that she would visit soon, but nothing had ever come of these promises.
Until today.
A soft touch at her elbow brought her back to the present. ‘Here,’ said Tam, handing her a steaming bowl. ‘Sponge her down quickly with some warm water and she’ll be right enough. Did you never get mud in your own eye, Meg O’Cleary?’
Meg looked lovingly into her husband’s face and her lips lifted into a smile. How could she resist when she loved him so much? Tam leaned over the bowl and dropped a kiss upon her nose.
‘Tis a lovely woman you are, Meg, when you’re thinking with your heart. I’ll go and deal with them two tearaways and take them back meself. See if I can stop your father tanning their hides. He is staying at Ashlea again, is he not?’
‘Yes,’ Meg sighed. ‘Poor Sally Ann.’
‘She gets on with him better than you do. I’ll see these lads don’t suffer his wrath.’ Taciturn and dour to a fault, the boys’ grandfather Joe was supposed to be retired in Grange-Over-Sands but spent every moment he could at his old home, Ashlea, using the excuse that he was helping his daughter-in-law, Sally Ann, widowed by a stray bomb, and never remarried. Joe had remarried, at the end of the war, but the marriage hadn’t prospered.
‘Thanks.’ Meg gave Tam a warm smile of gratitude, drew in a deep breath and started up the stairs. Lissa could be as troublesome to deal with in her own way as Joe. There were no arguments from her now as Meg stripped off the sodden dress. No tantrums or tears as the dripping, best white underwear with the lace trim was replaced by everyday interlock vest and knickers.
‘You’ll have to wear your ye
llow cotton frock,’ Meg said, hiding a smile as she saw the pretty nose wrinkle in disgust. ‘Don’t like it.’
Meg sighed, biting back the retort that perhaps Lissa should have thought of that before she decided to go fishing for minnows, but managed, with difficulty, to hold her tongue. ‘Which then?’ thinking over Lissa’s wardrobe which shrank daily as the child grew. Soon, all too soon in Meg’s opinion, she would be a child no longer. Budding womanhood would take over. It was certainly long past time they had a talk about it.
‘I shall wear my jersey skirt and blue embroidered blouse,’ Lissa said, deciding on what she considered to be her most sophisticated items.
‘Isn’t it rather warm for jersey?’
‘You’re wearing a skirt and blouse.’
So the blue jersey it was. The tangled dark locks were brushed and fresh ribbons found to put them back into their tidy bunches, one at each side of the rosy, scrubbed cheeks. The sparkle was back in the arresting eyes, the tongue loosened once more into chatter. ‘Oh do let’s hurry, Meg. We mustn’t be late. What will she be like? I don’t remember her. Will she like me?’
The questions came thick and fast as they set off to walk the two miles up to Larkrigg Hall. Meg’s heart went out to the child, for didn’t her own anxiety match Lissa’s?
‘Of course you will recognise her, once you see her. She will be surprised how much you have grown.’ Meg didn’t like to talk about the love aspect. She couldn’t. She found it impossible to credit Kath with the ability to love a daughter she’d abandoned so soon after her birth. Not even a war would have persuaded Meg to do such a thing. But then there had been other, more pressing reasons, best not remembered.
The slopes of Larkrigg Fell rose gently ahead of them, with the steep crag of Dundale Knott at their backs, its comical lop-sided appearance belying the very real dangers to be found on the crags and crevices that scarred its surface. As her beloved dog, Rust, had once discovered to his cost. He was at her heels now, as always. Battle-scarred and not so spry as he’d once been, yet fit enough to walk the fells with her every day tending the sheep, despite his thirteen years.
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