Lakeland Lily

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘I’m glad we’re still friends, Lily,’ Bertie told her one Sunday afternoon as they walked over to Carreck Woods, Thomas bounding ahead, all long legs and big feet like an overgrown puppy. ‘A real family again, eh? Isn’t he making a fine young chap?’

  ‘He is,’ Lily proudly agreed, watching her young son shin up the trunk of a tree then drop into a pile of soft leaves.

  There was a small silence. ‘We should have more babies, don’t you think? A house needs a full nursery.’

  She thought of her exhausted mother and her own private vow not to end up the same way. Nor had she any wish to share her husband’s bed again. Lily wondered, from time to time, whether the lack of intimacy in their marriage troubled Bertie. If so, he’d showed no sign. Please don’t let him ask me, she silently prayed.

  ‘Babies aren’t so easily produced, and they grow bigger, remember.’

  Bertie snapped off a twig and began to swish at the long grass. ‘The more Thomas grows, the more interesting he becomes. He’s learning to sail and I mean to build him a small boat of his own. I should like four children, two boys and two girls. Wouldn’t that be perfect, now that we are happy together, Lily? Don’t you think it’s time.’

  Lily looked into his radiant face and fleetingly wondered if it would be worth having a nurseryful, as he put it, in order to sustain this precarious happiness.

  Then she thought of Nathan and the sacrifice she had already made, and her stomach churned at the thought.

  She swung away from him, walked over to a large beech and leaned against its gnarled trunk while gazing upon the green and blue landscape framed by the overhanging branches. Fingers of sun poked between like shards of golden glass viewed through a mist of tears.

  ‘Isn’t it a glorious day?’ she said over-brightly into the silence. ‘Look, there’s a half-sunken boat. Could we rescue it, do you think?’

  ‘I was talking about babies, Lily, not boats.’ There was irritation in his voice now. ‘You’re obsessed with the bally things.’

  One of the Public Steamers glided slowly by, leaving a herringbone pattern in its wash and a plume of white smoke from its funnel. What she wouldn’t give to own such a vessel! One that would carry hundreds, not dozens, of people. They’d make real money then.

  ‘Perhaps I am,’ she murmured, then laughed self-consciously. ‘When would I have time for babies? The business must come first, Bertie. We have to earn our living now, remember.’ She’d given up asking for his assistance. Accepted, as Edward had done before her, that Bertie was not meant for a working life. Sad but true. ‘I’ve taken on Rose to help with the paperwork. Did I tell you?’

  ‘Rose?’ He sounded surprised, almost shocked.

  ‘She’s doing wonders on the pier, and it leaves me more time to order supplies and do the bills. I was getting horribly behind, and if we aren’t efficient, we’ll fail.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  She stared at him for a moment, nonplussed. ‘Of course it matters. Heavens, Bertie, are you mad?’ She could have bitten off her tongue. She really shouldn’t let his silliness trouble her. Bertie knew nothing about business. She closed her eyes, tired after the week’s work, dreaming of smooth waters and soft breezes in her hair, but his next words left her reeling though they did not at first quite make sense. ‘I never meant it to happen, you know. It was an accident.’

  Only one accident came to Lily’s mind, so she sighed, murmuring something about it all having happened years ago. ‘You weren’t even there that day.’

  ‘No, I mean the Lakeland Lily. I only went to see what it was that kept you so fearfully busy and away from me all of the time. I was so dashed jealous. You’d no time for me any more.’

  Lily’s eyes flew open and she looked into his boyish face, soulful and guilty, as if he’d been found digging into his tuck box after lights out.

  ‘Tell me what you did, Bertie?’

  ‘Only struck a match to light the lamp, don’t you know, to take a proper look. Though it was still pretty dark and I blundered about quite a bit. The dratted thing must’ve fallen over. Everything seemed all right when I left, Lily. Not that I actually remember too well.’

  ‘You were drunk.’

  It was not a question but a statement of fact and Bertie did not attempt to deny it. He pressed his lips together in a resigned sort of way and nodded. ‘I dare say I must’ve been. Sorry, old thing.’

  All that agonising over who might have had it in mind to destroy her, trying to decide if Selene was right in her accusation, imagining some dire plot against her. She’d accused Nathan of arson, and all the time it had been Bertie behaving like a drunken idiot! Jealous and sorry for himself at her supposed neglect of him. Lily could almost see him stumbling about the boat, cursing as he fell over, then forgetting what he was about and skulking off to bed, leaving an overturned lamp to smoulder and destroy.

  She could hardly believe such wanton carelessness. True, he had not been himself ever since the war, but then few people had. If his problem had been something recognisable, like shell-shock, or neurasthenia as they were now calling it, she might have coped better with him. But a sense of failure seemed to have soured his character utterly. She’d thought since last winter that he was getting better, little by little. It seemed not.

  The flare of anger quickly died and Lily’s heart went out to him, and she sighed with sad resignation. Perhaps another baby would help to bring back the fun they’d enjoyed in the early days of their marriage - if she could only carry out such an act of generosity. Then again, since he was no longer the same man, what sort of a father would he make?

  Whatever her motives for marrying Bertie in the first place, perhaps because of them, he deserved her care and consideration. He must be given a purpose, one that restored his faith in life, and in himself. Who better to do this for him but Lily, his wife?

  She felt relieved that Nathan’s innocence had been proved, but that didn’t alter the fact that he was gone from her life, not for a few months or a year but for ever. Any attempt to see him again, as she so longed to do, could tip Bertie over the edge. And God knew what he would set his hand to then.

  Each day at dawn, before she started work on Lakeland Lily, she loved to walk along the twisting lane that wound up the hill past a cluster of white-walled cottages, wisps of smoke coming from the circular stone chimneys. She liked to trail her fingers along the harsh lines of dry-stone walls softened by pads of velvet lichen, clumps of green fern and winter-flowering jasmine. Once in Carreck Woods, the silence enveloped her, making her feel whole and strong. Lily loved to breathe in the scent of damp earth, lay her cheek against the shiny bark of a silver birch, or sit quietly on one of the thick roots which erupted from a craggy knoll.

  She loved this place, needed its peace and the sanctuary it offered from the turmoil which was her life.

  This morning she smiled as a family of roe deer quietly surveyed her before continuing with their feeding. She made no move, afraid to startle them. Treading softly was becoming second nature to her these days.

  She was alone in the woods as always. These were her private moments at the start of each day, when she could think and dream and recall happy times. Once down in her office or on the boats, there wasn’t a moment to herself.

  Lily hadn’t seen Nathan in months, though there were times when she felt his presence beside her like a living ghost. Even when she caught a glimpse of him going about his work, he didn’t stop to speak to her, nor she to him. But the pain of living without him burst upon her fresh and raw each and every day. That last afternoon months ago, following Bertie’s revelation, she’d gone to offer him an apology,

  ‘I was wrong to accuse you of firing the Lakeland Lily. I know now who it was.’ She’d looked into his face and wondered how she’d managed to keep away from him so long. The sun lit his dark hair to gleaming black silk and she could scarcely stop herself from smoothing back a stray curl. If only, she’d thought, I could see the expression in
his eyes. They were narrowed to mere slits beneath his dark winged brows.

  ‘Come with me.’ He’d grasped her arm and, ignoring her half-hearted protests, marched her along the pavement almost at a run, forcing her into the front seat of his motor. It was a new Morris and very smart.

  ‘I - I can’t come with you. I’ve an appointment with the Lake Commissioners in half an hour.’

  ‘You can spare me ten minutes.’

  Lily had made no further protest. Wasn’t she almost glad to be compelled to remain with him?

  Once outside the village Nathan stopped the car and turned to her. His voice seemed to come from a long way off. ‘You look well, Lily, if a little tired.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She remembered to this day the sick feeling in her stomach, how she’d kept her eyes on the distant mountains, veined with snow like threads of silver.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.’

  Knowing he was there beside her, so close she could smell the clean soapy tang of him, feel the warmth emanating from his body, touch him if she liked, caused Lily to waver in her resolution. How could she possibly contemplate a life which did not hold Nathan in it? ‘We agreed that it was over,’ she reminded him.

  ‘You decided.’

  ‘It’s for the best.’

  ‘Best for whom?’

  ‘Oh, Nathan, don’t! Best for Bertie. For me. For all of us.’ She risked a glance into his piercing blue eyes so he could see the truth of her words, and the effort they cost her.

  There was a breathless, heart stopping silence, then Nathan leaned closer to press his lips to hers, softly brushing her mouth so that it opened beneath his like a flower to the sun. ‘Not best for me,’ he whispered.

  Her heart thudded inside her chest, robbing her of breath and leaving the bittersweet ache of desire in its place. Perversely the fact that he was barely touching her made her want him all the more. Her skin felt as if it were on fire, scalding with need. Never in all her life had she felt such pain. Lily could hear her own voice begging him to let her go, to leave her alone, though he had withdrawn and she was perfectly free to let herself out of the car and walk away. Had she wanted to.

  ‘We belong together, you and I. Don’t deny it.’ His fingers lightly caressed her throat, stroking its sensitive hollows, while his mouth remained tantalisingly out of reach.

  ‘Bertie needs me.’

  ‘I need you.’

  Lily wanted to explain about Bertie’s sense of inadequacy, his jealousy and feelings of neglect, and his heavy drinking. She wanted to defend him. ‘It was the war that did it to him, and it’s been worse since his father died. The manner and timing of Edward’s death seemed to compound his sense of failure.’ She gabbled on, needing to fill the silence with words. ‘I’ve got him working on his power-boat plans again. He’s actually started building one at last. Perhaps that will help. How could I leave him now, when he is so troubled? You were in the war, you must see that’s impossible?’

  If she’d hoped for understanding or sympathy, she was disappointed. Nathan was not in the mood to consider another man’s problems, particularly when that man possessed the woman he wanted for himself. ‘The war hasn’t turned me into an arsonist. I’m the one you need in your life. Admit it.’

  Lily beseeched him with her eyes not to press for any such admission while Nathan let his gaze trace every beloved feature of her face, as if memorising it for all time. The stubborn purity of her blunt chin, the soft flushed cheeks, a cluster of curls on her brow that never quite stayed in place. And those bewitching hazel eyes, so wide open and honest, utterly frank and appealing. They could make an angel of most men, except perhaps the devil that lived within himself.

  ‘You are mine, Lily. Always have been. Always will be. Deny it as you will.’ Then he’d pulled her into his arms and in the gloriously crazy moments that followed, Lily proved him right in everything he’d said. Loving him as she did, how could she deny it?

  Later, when he’d returned her to the pier, she caught a glimpse of Selene, and guilt came, acid sour in her throat. Hastily she tucked escaping curls beneath her hat, smoothed rumpled skirts and attempted to cool her cheeks with the back of one leather-gloved hand before sneaking from his motor and appearing before her sister-in-law, as if from quite the opposite direction.

  It was only Lily’s newly discovered passion for her steamboat business which had kept her sane since that day. She’d found an ambition inside herself that she hadn’t known existed. If it was by way of compensation for her lost love, so be it. Thinking, planning, working with the boats kept her from dwelling on how badly she’d messed up her life.

  Only last week they’d uncovered two more scuttled craft and she was busily negotiating for their lifting and restoration. In September she’d bought the remains of a sad neglected vessel for under fifty pounds.

  So many people now worshipped speed that enthusiasm for power boating had quite taken over. The leisurely days of steaming were considered far too old hat and Edwardian. Yet the visitors didn’t seem to think this way, or they wouldn’t queue in their dozens to sail on one of Lily’s boats. Any number of steam launches had been dismantled, sold for scrap, or simply left to rot. Her fleet was small as yet, but if she continued to buy them up at this rate, as she intended to do, then in two or three years she would own half a dozen or more.

  She dreamed of how one day she might build a much larger ship. A Public Steamer to rival The Golden Lady. Then what would Nathan say? She almost smiled at the prospect. If she couldn’t have him as a husband and lover, why not as a business rival? It was better than nothing. And what would she name such a ship? Lakeland Lily II? Of course.

  She laughed at the thought, the lilting sound carrying over the distant valley. Now where would she get the money to build herself such a vessel? She who’d been born and brought up in the mucky Cobbles. Lily Thorpe who couldn’t at one time afford an apprenticeship to a humble dressmaker.

  ‘Getting above yourself again, lass?’ she scolded as she gazed about her at the dome of a midnight blue sky, shading through paler blues to a pink horizon where it lit up the dark mountain peaks as if with a rose-tinted lantern. Pockets of wispy mist stubbornly clung to the hollows and beneath these lay the lake, a shimmer of silver in the ghost light of early morning.

  But the sky was brightening and soon a clamour filled the air: the merry call of the peewit, the soaring song of the lark. The dawn chorus had begun. Smiling, Lily got to her feet and went to work.

  It was a week or two later and Lily sat in Hannah’s front parlour. Their fragile reconciliation proceeded with painful slowness and, as always on these visits, the silences between them were long. They sat, a picture of unacknowledged guilt and disappointment, only the boy playing at their feet oblivious to the suppressed emotion in the small shabby room.

  Lily tried, as so many times before, to say that things were better, that Bertie was slowly coming out of his depression. Even if this was an optimistic view of his state of health, she felt it necessary to keep up a front. She wanted them to see her as a respectable married woman with a flourishing business. Longed for them to be proud of her, to say they understood. And to forgive the grievous sin of adultery, though Lily knew that to a non-conformist Puritan like Hannah it would have been better had she died. Her fall from grace still lay between them like an unbridgeable gulf.

  Arnie sat slumped in the corner, saying nothing, sunk in problems of his own.

  Hannah said, ‘Not thinking of adding to your family yet then?’ her eyes on the boy.

  Lily fidgeted in her seat, smoothing her barathea wool skirt. ‘Not just yet. There’s plenty of time.’

  ‘It goes quick enough.’

  ‘Too quick,’ Arnie said. ‘You’re near thirty.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Are you happy, love?’ The softening in her mother’s tone brought a rush of tears to Lily’s eyes. She dipped her hea
d, tucking her son’s shirt more firmly into his shorts, so Hannah couldn’t see her face. ‘Why shouldn’t I be happy? I’ve got what I wanted, haven’t I? I’ve escaped from The Cobbles. Have a fine house, good husband, healthy son, and a growing business. I should think anyone would be pleased with all of that. What else could I want?’

  A coal shifted in the grate. Nobody spoke or moved.

  Then Arnie stirred himself from his corner seat, and tapped Thomas’s head. ‘How about you, young man? I dare say you’d think a twist of liquorice more interesting than talk, eh?’

  ‘Ooh, yes, please, Grandpa.’

  ‘We’ll walk down to Mrs Robbins’s shop and see if she’s got any, shall we? Our Kitty used to love bull’s eyes, but she’s a fancy young woman now. Seventeen and courting. Too big for toffee. You’re not, though, eh?’

  The two went off happily together, Lily smiling as Thomas asked, goggle-eyed, ‘Was it a real bull’s eye, Grandpa?’

  Hannah folded her hands and remarked in her stiff, best-behaviour voice, ‘Well, it’s good to see you again, Lily. We’re allus pleased to have you call. And the little lad’ll cheer Dad up. He’s been a bit down in the dumps lately.’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong?’

  Hannah told her how the fishing was down to almost nothing, how boat building work remained unreliable and Arnie was growing ever more worried and depressed.

  ‘I wish he’d come and work for me,’ Lily said. ‘I’m rescuing more and more scuttled boats. I could give him enough work to keep him going for years.’

  Hannah shook her head. ‘Thee knows your father’s pride as well as I do. He’ll not take work from his own daughter.’

  ‘He would if you asked him.’

  But no amount of argument would change Hannah’s mind. In the end Lily was forced to admit that her mother was probably right. Arnie would take help from no one, least of all his own daughter.