The Fisher Lass

by Margaret Dickinson

  ‘Ha!’ Francis threw back his head and laughed aloud, but the sound had no humour. It was cruel, mirthless laughter. ‘Then you are right about one thing, Mrs Lawrence. She is stupid and deserves all she has brought upon herself.’ He leant closer again. ‘And whilst I make no secret of the fact that I visit Aggie and her – er – friends, I most certainly make no admission as to fathering the girl’s bastard. It could,’ he said with slow deliberate malice, ‘be any one of a number of men.’

  Jeannie’s lips parted in a gasp and slowly she straightened up. ‘I see. So that’s how it is, is it?’

  Francis rose to his feet and leant on his knuckles across the desk. ‘That is exactly how it is. I’ll bid you “Good day”, Mrs Lawrence.’

  Jeannie wagged her forefinger in his face. ‘You,’ she said slowly and with emphasis on every word, ‘have no’ heard the last of this, Mr High n’ Mighty Hayes-Gorton.’

  Smiling sarcastically, he said smoothly, ‘Oh, I think I have. I think you will find, dear lady, that your husband will not approve of today’s little visit, never mind any further trouble-making on your part.’

  ‘Are you threatening me? Threatening that Tom will lose his job if I—’

  ‘That’s enough.’ For the first time, Robert spoke, his deep voice breaking into the quarrel.

  Jeannie tore her gaze away from the man before her, gave one swift, furious glance at Robert then turned and in one quick movement dragged open the door and marched from the room.

  ‘Jeannie – Jeannie, wait . . .’

  She heard him clattering down the steps behind her, but he did not catch up with her until they stood side by side on the steps outside the building.

  She stood a moment, gulping fresh air into her lungs, almost as if to clear herself of the putrid air of Francis’s presence.

  Giving full vent to her anger, she turned on Robert, spewing out her wrath, yet even as she did so, she knew she was being unfair. He was not to blame and yet she could not stop herself. ‘Leave me be. You and your family have caused us enough grief. She’s no’ what he says. There’ve been no other men. I’d stake my life on it. It’s him. Just him.’

  ‘I believe you.’ Touching her arm briefly, Robert spoke with a quietness that was such a direct contrast to her angry words, that she immediately felt ashamed. Then the anger that had carried her here, buoyed her up to confront one of their ‘masters’, died and she felt suddenly exhausted.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at once. ‘It’s no’ your fault.’ She could not resist a fleeting, wry smile as she added, ‘At least, no’ this time.’

  Robert too gave a slight smile of regret. ‘I’ve wanted to tell you so often, Jeannie, to explain about that night.’

  She gave a gesture of dismissal with her hand but he went on, haltingly at first and then with greater assurance as he realized that for the first time she was ready to listen to his side of the story. ‘I remember very little of what happened. Please believe me. I’d been drinking, and yes, I admit it a little too much. But not that much. Not enough to make me so paralytic that I didn’t know what I was doing. I found out later,’ he added grimly, ‘that my dear, caring . . .’ here the word was heavy with sarcasm, ‘brother Francis had mixed my drinks with rum. It always makes me ill and he knows that. And it was certainly he who led our party to Aggie’s house. What I don’t understand . . .’ his brown gaze was now searching Jeannie’s face for her side of the story, ‘is what a nice girl like Grace Lawrence was even doing at Aggie’s.’

  Jeannie sighed, seeing for the first time how the events of that night had really been. Young men out on a stag night, intent on causing the greatest embarrassment to the young bridegroom that they could. And the ringleader had been his own brother.

  Jeannie sighed. ‘She shouldna have been there. I know that now. But still, she’s not what your brother calls her. She’s just young and silly and gullible, bowled over by fancy clothes and parties.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I suppose, in a way, you can’t blame her either. She just wanted a bit of fun and didn’t realize what it would lead to.’ Now she looked at him full in the face. ‘She does love him, you know.’

  ‘Oh Jeannie.’ Her name was a whisper on his lips as they stood on the steps together just looking at each other.

  Then becoming aware that they were standing in full view of passers-by, of the whole dockside area if it came to that, Jeannie said, ‘I must go.’

  ‘Just one more thing . . .’ he said softly. ‘Would you please not – this time – take it as an insult if I say that I will try to see what I can do for Grace? In – in the way of money, I mean.’

  Jeannie stared at him for a moment, reading so many emotions deep in his eyes. Shame, regret, concern, even . . . She turned away, shutting out the one feeling she could see there that threatened to overwhelm them both.

  Nodding, she said heavily, ‘Aye, I’ll no’ refuse you this time, Mr Robert. For she’ll be needin’ all the help she can get.’

  She walked down the steps and, though she was aware of him standing watching her, she did not look back.

  Twenty-One

  Jeannie sailed through her pregnancy hardly noticing her condition. She was lucky that she had good health, but wryly she admitted to herself that there was precious little time for her to indulge herself.

  In contrast, Grace was ill throughout the following months. Whilst her stomach swelled, the rest of the girl’s body grew thinner, until her face was pinched and her skin, devoid of colour, was stretched tightly over the bone structure of her features. Unable to face the gossip, she gave in her notice at work and sat all day hunched in the chair at the side of the fire. Whilst Nell continued to work at her net on the wall, not a word, as far as Jeannie could hear, passed between mother and daughter. Shattered by the loss of her husband, her daughter’s downfall seemed to have robbed Nell of her last ounce of strength. She turned to the only comfort she knew: work. As the weather improved, Nell took her net into the back-yard and hung it from the rail fastened across the kitchen window. During the summer days the back-yards were filled with the sound of laughter and chatter as neighbours, their hands busy with the braiding, called to each other. Only this year, Nell worked in silence whilst Grace stayed indoors, even on the warmest days.

  ‘You must eat, Grace, for the sake of the baby. You’re no’ eating enough to keep a bird alive.’ Jeannie tried to coax her gently.

  But Grace would not answer.

  ‘Will you talk to her?’ Jeannie asked Nell.

  Tight-lipped, Nell said, ‘There’s nothing I can say to her, Jeannie. I never thought my Grace would shame us in this way.’

  Jeannie pleaded the girl’s cause. ‘She’s no’ the first and she willna be the last. She loved the man, worthless though he is.’

  Nell glared at Jeannie, stung to anger. ‘You might be married into this family now, Jeannie, but you dinna ken everything about us. Grace knew that she shouldna go to Aggie’s and not only for the obvious reason. There are other reasons too.’

  ‘What?’ Jeannie demanded, but Nell turned away and though she said no more, her action spoke loud and clear: ‘Mind your own business’.

  Annoyed, Jeannie turned and marched along the alleyway running between the back-yards of the houses. Tom’s ship was due in on the next tide.

  He would help her, she told herself, he would talk to Grace.

  ‘She’s a little whore and a bloody liar and if you so much as breathe a word of this to Father, I’ll kill you.’

  Robert watched the face of his elder brother contorted with rage, his blue eyes bulging, his face white.

  Calmly, Robert murmured, ‘“The lady doth protest too much, methinks”.’

  ‘What? What are you burbling on about?’

  ‘I should have thought you, of all people, would have known your Shakespeare. You, with your public school education. Edwin and I were not so – er – fortunate.’ The sarcasm was evident in Robert’s tone. ‘But perhaps the local Grammar School was not so b
ad after all.’

  ‘Huh, you think a good education is being able to spout the Bard?’

  ‘Oh no.’ Robert shook his head. ‘I think a good education is learning how to lead a good, honest, decent life. And that . . .’ he paused for emphasis, ‘includes standing by your mistakes.’

  Francis’s eyes glittered and his lips curled. ‘Just like the Honourable Robert in his farce of a marriage.’

  Robert felt the colour begin to creep up his neck, but he kept his tone level. ‘My marriage is nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Ah,’ Francis said slowly. ‘You think not, eh?’

  The brothers stared at each other for a long moment before Robert said once more, ‘What are you going to do about Grace Lawrence?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I shall deny everything. I might even, if you don’t stop meddling in my affairs, start a few rumours that the child is yours. So I should be very careful what you do, dear brother.’

  ‘Your threats don’t bother me,’ Robert snapped.

  ‘Really? Well, I don’t think Father or your father-in-law would be too pleased to hear that you have a bastard child by a little whore when you can’t even provide the company with a legitimate son and heir.’

  Robert opened his mouth to retaliate, but anything he said would be disloyal to Louise. And despite everything, he could not descend to that.

  ‘Oh go to hell, Francis,’ he muttered, but his brother only laughed. ‘Since you’re so fond of quotations and sayings, dear boy, how about this one: “The Devil takes care of his own”.’

  Jeannie stood on the jetty, pulling her coat around her. The buttons would scarcely meet now over the bulge of her stomach and the wind, whipping along the quay, found its way inside her coat and made her shiver. It was a blustery day and cold for July.

  ‘Come on, Tom, for goodness sake!’ she muttered, her gaze on the distant gates for sight of his ship nosing its way into the dock. She walked up and down, more to keep herself warm than searching for sight of his ship, but when she came near to the end of the jetty, she saw the Gorton North Star, its nose tight against the wall and the lumpers already unloading the kits of fish. She went nearer. ‘How long has she been in?’ she asked one of the workers.

  ‘Two hours, missis. One of the first in when they opened the gates.’

  ‘Do you know Tom Lawrence? Did you see him come ashore?’

  The man shook his head and, as a yell from the boat caught his attention, he turned back to continue his work.

  Jeannie hurried away down the length of the quay, annoyed with herself. Here she was standing in the cold and all the time Tom was already ashore at home or in the Fisherman’s.

  She went home first but he was not there.

  ‘No,’ Nell said. ‘He’s no’ been home.’

  ‘But his ship came in two hours ago.’

  The two women stared at each other, fear for a moment in their eyes.

  ‘Oh no.’ Jeannie shook her head. ‘We’d have heard by now if . . .’ She left the sentence unfinished and Nell turned away, back to her braiding.

  ‘I’ll go to the Fisherman’s,’ Jeannie said, ‘but he’d best not be in there, else I’ll skite his lugs for him.’

  Tom was not in the pub on the corner nor had he been to the pay office to collect his money. She was turning away from the narrow window when she heard someone call her name. Looking round, she saw Robert striding towards her.

  ‘How are you?’ he said and she could see at once that he was trying hard not to glance down at her stomach.

  ‘I’m well, but at this moment, rather angry.’

  ‘Oh? Can I help?’

  ‘Only if you can tell me where my husband is. His ship’s docked, but I can’t find him anywhere.’

  For a moment, Robert looked uncomfortable.

  ‘You know where he is, don’t you?’ Then as a thought struck her, she shook her head. ‘Och no, he wouldna . . .’

  Misunderstanding her, Robert said swiftly, ‘He’s all right. Nothing’s happened to him, I promise you.’

  ‘I wasna thinking it had,’ she said wryly. ‘I was thinking he might have gone to Aggie’s.’

  ‘Tom?’ The surprise on Robert’s face was genuine. ‘Go there?’ He could not believe that the man lucky enough to be married to Jeannie could even look at another woman, let alone frequent the house of Aggie Turnbull.

  Jeannie sniffed and before she had stopped to think, she said, ‘Well, it was no’ the first time for him on our wedding night . . .’ Then she clapped her hand over her mouth in horror. ‘Och, what am I saying.’ She could not believe that she had confided such a thing to anyone, especially to a man and, more especially, to Robert. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at once. ‘I shouldna have said that.’

  She had seen the spark of anger in his eyes and had misinterpreted its meaning for Robert was by no means offended by her confidence, but he was angry on her behalf. ‘No, I’m sorry, Jeannie. The man’s a fool if . . .’

  In her confusion, Jeannie reached out and touched his arm. ‘Please, don’t say any more. Just – just tell me if you know where he is.’

  Robert sighed. ‘Jackson said he came off the North Star and went straight out again on the Arctic Queen. She was just waiting to sail and they were a deck-hand short. Jackson said that Tom jumped at the chance.’

  Jeannie stared at him. ‘Tom? Tom went straight out again on another boat?’ She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  Robert nodded. ‘Yes, I have to admit, it surprised me a little. He’s not exactly got the name for being a “born fisherman”. Not like his father.’ He paused and then added, ‘You’ll be all right, won’t you? I mean, the office will let you have his money.’

  Jeannie nodded. ‘Och aye. I suppose,’ she added with wry amusement, ‘there’s one good thing about it. Half his pay won’t disappear across the bar at the Fisherman’s.’

  As Jeannie walked home she realized that far from being the courageous act it appeared on the surface, Tom would rather brave the perils of the ocean than face the problems at home.

  Robert called at the Lawrences’ house in Baldock Street the following day and thereafter, regularly every week, running the gauntlet of the gossips in the street and the tales that would be told.

  ‘It must be him, that’s the father of Grace’s bairn.’

  ‘No, no. It’s the other one. Mr Francis. One of the girls from Aggie’s told me. She used to meet him there. Daft over him, she was. But, of course, he denies it.’

  ‘Mebbe she ain’t sure which of ’em it is.’ And the raucous laughter would echo around the fishdocks, tearing Grace’s reputation into shreds.

  Now, Jeannie did not refuse Robert’s help and, whilst it went against her proud nature to accept money from him, this time she took it and spent it on titbits to tempt Grace’s appetite or things for the coming baby.

  When he stepped into the tiny, stuffy kitchen on his first visit and sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace to Grace, Robert was appalled by the change in the girl.

  Later, outside, he said, ‘Oh Jeannie, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this.’

  She looked at him keenly and could read the haunted look in his eyes. There was more there, she thought shrewdly, in those brown depths than just sorrow at the downfall of a fisherman’s daughter. In that moment she was sure, now, that there was some truth in the servants’ gossip that his marriage was not all that it might, or should, be. And he had told her as much himself.

  Overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of pity for him, she reached out towards him and touched his arm. ‘We appreciate your kindness, Mr Robert, all of us. But even I, this time, have to say that the fault is as much Grace’s as – as the man concerned.’

  He gazed long into her eyes and murmured, simply, ‘She loves him, Jeannie.’ His voice dropped to a whisper as he added, ‘You – you should know how that feels.’

  It was as if a gigantic wave had hit her, carrying her on its crest in a floo
d of emotion. The blood was pounding in her ears and she felt suddenly giddy. She felt an overwhelming desire to reach up, to cup his face between her hands and to kiss his mouth.

  ‘What is it?’ she heard his concerned voice say as if from a great distance.

  Swiftly, her voice hoarse, she managed to say, ‘Nothing – nothing. I . . .’ But she could say no more, for there was such a tumult of emotions going on inside her that she was robbed of her power of speech.

  ‘Jeannie, what is it? Are you unwell? Here, let me take you back into the house.’

  Solicitously, he took hold of her arm and made as if to lead her back indoors, but she resisted. ‘No, no. I’m fine. I’m better out here. In the fresh air.’

  ‘Let me fetch you a chair, then?’

  ‘No, no, really. Thank you. You go. Dinna let me keep you. I’ll be all right.’

  She didn’t want him to go and yet she couldn’t bear him to stay. She needed to be alone. To control her riotous emotions and castigate herself sternly for them.

  ‘I don’t like to leave you like this.’

  ‘Please, I’ll be fine. It’s just the heat, I expect.’ The July weather was capricious and today was hot and oppressive.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure?’ She nodded and he stepped back from her but he did not turn away and leave her immediately. He saw her glance about her as if looking to see who of their neighbours in the street might be watching. He followed her glance and saw that there were two or three women further down the road who had found it imperative that their front steps needed scrubbing at this very moment.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, giving her a quick, understanding smile. ‘I’d better be going.’ Then glancing down briefly towards the now-obvious mound of her stomach, he said huskily, ‘Take care of yourself, Jeannie, won’t you?’

  She watched him go, walking up the street away from her towards his motor car.

  I love him, she thought and the knowledge made her ridiculously happy. I’ve fallen in love with him. But then as realization of her true situation crept into her mind, she felt plunged into the depths of despair.