By the time they’d finished the first glass of champagne, Thomas was back to talking about the trial.
‘What a nasty piece of work your mother-in-law was!’ he exclaimed. ‘No wonder you ran away. Any sane person would. But as a lawyer I loved the sheer drama of it when she admitted she’d done it! Oh my goodness, I was so excited at that moment, I wanted to cheer.’
Mabel got the giggles then. She wondered how she could have gone through so many different emotions in one day. From terror in the morning to anxiety while she waited for her turn in court, humiliation when the lawyer tried to belittle her, and anger when she finally said what needed to be said. There was shock when Agnes admitted what really happened and distress later when she went down to the cells, followed by resignation and a feeling of everything completed at the end. But then just when she thought it was all over, and she’d go back to the hotel and try to sleep, Thomas appeared.
Now it was joy unconfined. She could happily sit here forever, looking at his handsome, smiling face, wondering how soon she’d get to kiss him properly. She knew she ought to telephone Percy so he could tell Joan what had happened. But for now she couldn’t move.
23
Mabel felt quite tiddly by the time she and Thomas went into the restaurant for dinner.
She tried to tell him earlier that she needed to go back to her hotel to change her clothes, but he kept pouring the champagne, kissing the tips of her fingers and telling her how fetching she looked in her green outfit.
He had a room in The Royal, but as much as they would have liked to creep up the stairs to it, they knew the hotel staff would be disapproving, and it would make Mabel look like a scarlet woman.
‘We’ll just have to get married quickly,’ Thomas said. ‘I can’t think of anything better than holding you in my arms every night, forever.’
Mabel had told him everything that had happened since she left Dorchester, and how indebted she felt to Joan, Percy and John Baring. She would have liked them to meet Thomas, but he said it was better that she went straight back to Dorchester with him.
‘You can invite them to our wedding,’ he suggested.
‘You’ve got weddings on the brain,’ she laughed. But she loved the fact that he felt that way.
The dinner was delicious; rare roast beef so tender the knife went through it like butter, fluffy roast potatoes and several different vegetables.
‘I think that was the best meal I’ve ever eaten,’ Mabel said as she finished hers.
‘That might be the company, or just that you haven’t eaten properly for days,’ he said. ‘And I’m going to insist you have a pudding too.’
A little later she asked him what he had thought when he got to Willow Cottage and found she’d gone.
‘I believed your note – well, at least, until later that night when some doubts crept in. You see, Clara came out while I was at your little cottage, and I had a feeling she wasn’t telling me the whole story. I couldn’t understand why you hadn’t at least telephoned my office. Clara passed that off as you being worried about your friend, and having to leave in a hurry, but how long would it have taken?
‘Then I started to consider how little I knew about you, where you grew up, your family and the like. I wouldn’t say you’d been evasive, just not forthcoming.’
‘I know, and I felt bad about it. But if I told you part of it, that would lead to questions, and more lies. Besides, if I’d told you the whole story, what would you have done? Suggest we commit bigamy? In truth, if it hadn’t been for all this, I might have just run away again.’
‘I understand,’ he said, taking her hand and squeezing it. ‘At least, I did once I got your letter. I sat through that court case in a state of shock. Your life back then was so hard, so different to the pretty picture I’d had in my head before.’
‘Tell me what that was like.’
‘It was all rural bliss really, roses round a cottage door, you in a white apron and sun bonnet, shucking peas and feeding chickens. I certainly didn’t imagine you living on a fast-eroding cliff, gutting fish and having a witch like Agnes wiping her feet on you. But I liked what that first witness said about you.’
‘Jack? What did he say?’
‘That after your mother died you were the little housekeeper for your father, and how you used to come out fishing on the boat with them, and you were as good as an adult deck hand. He said you had the sunniest nature, and you were the fastest runner in the village. Though I’m not sure why he brought the running up.’
Mabel laughed. ‘We kids would keep lookout for the shoals of fish coming in. I was always the fastest at reaching the beach to tell the fishermen when we spotted them.’
‘That talent should come in handy in Dorchester,’ he teased her.
A little while later, Mabel whispered to him. ‘They want us to leave.’ She could see waiters hovering in the background, and all the other diners had left.
‘I know, but I don’t want to take you back to your hotel and leave you there. I want you in my bed.’
‘I’d like that too, but we must be sensible and show some respect to the poor staff who have jobs to do,’ she admonished him. ‘What time do we leave in the morning?’
‘Straight after breakfast, I’ll be at your hotel,’ he said. ‘I suppose we can always find some little backwater to do some canoodling on the way back?’
‘You, Thomas Kellaway, are incorrigible,’ she said. ‘Now we must go.’
Mabel couldn’t sleep that night for what seemed like hours. It had, after all, been an incredible day. She didn’t like to dwell on that picture of Martin and Agnes struggling on the cliff top, and then him going over the edge alone. Neither did she want to dwell on the hangman putting the noose around the poor woman’s neck. But perhaps it would be best to think, as Agnes did, that there was nothing left on earth for either of them.
But however distressing the court case had been, that was all blown away by Thomas turning up.
Now she was free to marry him. She could abandon the guilt, the mourning clothes and – at least in Dorchester – never again be afraid of the past catching up with her, and look ahead to a glorious future with Thomas.
What of the psychic powers, though? They worried her. Were they, as Beatrice suggested, something which could come after a trauma and disappear later? Or had they always been there, and she just hadn’t tapped into them before?
She certainly didn’t want such powers; they smacked of fairground booths, of seances and fortune-telling. The people who sought such messages appeared to have a rather unhealthy desperation about them too, and it wasn’t kind to encourage them. Yet how could she stop it happening? What if she just picked up some item one day and all at once she found herself falling into a trance? How on earth could she stop that happening?
Mabel woke to bright sunshine, and bounced out of bed in excitement. But seeing her home-made grey and white dress hanging on the wardrobe door, she instantly wished she had something prettier to wear. The green costume she’d worn for court was attractive, especially the cheeky hat, but it wouldn’t be comfortable on the long journey home, and she hadn’t anything else.
Scooping up her washbag and a towel, she flung a wrap over her nightdress and ran along to the bathroom before anyone else beat her to it.
Sitting in the bath, she thought how amazing it was that the previous morning she’d been so scared, she couldn’t stomach breakfast. But today she intended to eat everything the waitress offered her.
Thomas arrived right on the dot of nine, just as he’d said he would. Mabel was waiting, having paid her bill a few moments before. She had no doubt Thomas would offer to pay it for her, but she intended to keep her independence.
After he’d kissed her cheek and picked up her bag, it was the first thing he asked about.
Mabel smirked. ‘I’ve already seen to it.’
‘Before we hit the road for Dorchester, I’d like to take you on a little detour,’ Thomas said, once he’d
helped her into his shiny white Wolseley with red leather seats. Mabel knew that’s what the vehicle was, because he’d mentioned it with pride several times the previous evening. She was impressed too; it was beautiful, and it was exciting to have her first ride in an automobile. She remembered how people used to call them ‘horseless carriages’, but that expression seemed to have vanished now.
She clung on to the door as Thomas started her up and pulled away. But she soon realized there was more danger of someone running out in front of them than the vehicle tipping over.
‘So where is this detour taking us?’ she shouted above the noise of the engine.
‘Hallsands,’ he said. ‘I think you need to see it one last time.’
‘Must I?’ She was alarmed at the thought.
‘Yes, you must. If you don’t, you’ll always be wondering about it. I’d like to see where you grew up too. We don’t have to speak to anyone, just look around and leave.’
It was only when they had passed through Kingsbridge, emerging on to the narrow dirt lane she remembered so well, that images of childhood began to come back to her. Walking with her mother to visit an old lady who lived in a tiny, very isolated cottage. She didn’t think she was a real aunt, but they used to call her Auntie Winnie. She used to kiss Mabel, which she didn’t like, as the old lady had whiskers on her chin. They walked along part of this lane to get to Huckham school too; her teacher felt sorry that her pupils had to walk so far, so she made them cocoa on winter mornings.
Most of her memories, though, were from when she first started walking out with Martin; they often came this way on a fine summer’s evening, holding hands and kissing till they were flushed and dizzy. He had lifted her up and sat her on the milestone to Hallsands to ask her to marry him.
A not so nice memory was of walking along this road every day once she’d got her housekeeping job. It was horrible when wet, her feet slipping and sliding, and sometimes she found herself wading through puddles. It was eighteen miles, the round trip. Although she used to set off in the morning at a lively pace, on the way home she was often so tired she could’ve lain down in one of the fields and gone to sleep.
It was especially hard in the winter. She would take a lantern to light the way, and if she was lucky she’d get a lift on Mr Hubert’s cart. But she remembered the biting cold, and the wind nearly blowing her over on some days.
When they got close to Hallsands, Mabel’s heart began to beat faster; she didn’t want to confront any more memories, she just wanted to go back to Dorchester and put this place, and all that went with it, behind her.
The village looked far smaller than she remembered. A hamlet really, not a village. There was the mission hall, the chapel, the little shop and the coastguard station, and a few new cottages that must have been built after the disaster. But it didn’t seem to have a heart, not the way it had when she was growing up.
They left the car parked at the side of the road and walked for a bit. She showed Thomas the lane that used to lead down to the sea, past the cottages. There was a rudimentary bridge made of planks across the part of the lane that had been damaged, so at least the fishermen could get down to the shore. There were a few fishermen down on the beach making new lobster pots, but they weren’t looking her way.
All that was left of her old house was a bit of the end wall. Everything else was gone.
Warm sun on her face should have dispelled her memories of that last night, but it didn’t; she was right back there, scrabbling along over washed-up shingle in the dark, buffeted by the wind and icy rain like nails in her face and soaking through her cloak.
She could still see the way the front door was split by the force of the storm, as if it was wet cardboard, and she remembered stepping into a foot of water in the old kitchen. But the clearest memory was of coming back down the stairs and seeing a huge wave charge into the cottage and then withdraw, taking the last chair. She was lucky she managed to get out before the next wave. Even above the noise of the sea, wind and rain, she heard the creak of timbers, masonry falling, and saw the remains of the front door float off out to sea.
‘Ah you alright?’ Thomas’s concerned question brought her back to the present.
She shook herself to make the images go away. ‘You can’t imagine how dreadful that last trip to my house was,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t want to.’
Next, she showed him Tern Cottage where Agnes lived with Ted and, latterly, Martin. As a child Mabel had always thought the people who lived in this little terrace were rich, but she could see now that the cottages were every bit as shabby and poor as one she’d been born in. They peeped through the window of Tern Cottage. The wooden Windsor armchair that Martin used to sit on was still there, but little else. She wondered who had taken the table and the easy chairs, or the china cabinet Martin’s grandfather had been so proud of because it had been made by his son, Martin’s father.
‘Let’s go now, I’ve seen enough,’ Mabel said suddenly.
A woman was looking out of her front door at them. Although she knew the Talbots, who lived there, she had no wish to talk to them now.
‘Will that cottage come to you now?’ Thomas asked as they walked back to his Wolseley. ‘It ought to – unless old Mr Wellows had children other than Martin’s father?’
‘He didn’t,’ Mabel said. ‘He was very friendly with my father, and before Agnes and Martin came to the village, I remember him bemoaning the fact he had only the one son – no daughter to housekeep for him, as I did for my father.’
‘Then it should come to you. I can’t imagine it’s worth more than a couple of hundred, but it could be let out for holidays. Also, I should look into that compensation for your own house too. Agnes hadn’t received it, that was spoken about during the trial.’
‘I don’t like to think of getting any money from here,’ she said.
‘Now that is plain silly. Your father would be horrified if you didn’t value the house he worked so hard to maintain. As would old Mr Wellows. But I can sort all that out for you, it will be good for you to have a little nest egg of your own.
‘There’s just one more thing,’ he said as they got back to his automobile. He reached in the back and pulled out two bunches of roses. ‘I thought you might like to throw one of these in the sea for your father and Martin. Maybe put the other on your mother’s grave?’
Mabel really wanted to leave immediately, fearing she might break down and cry if she stayed any longer. But she was touched by Thomas’s sensitivity, and it was such a kind thought.
She assumed that Martin was buried in the churchyard in Stokenham – her mother and father were there too – yet Thomas understood that Martin’s heart, like her father’s, had always been in the sea.
He drove up to the cliff top near the Hallsands Hotel and the row of homes called Mildmay Cottages. They had been built to house some of the villagers who had lost their homes that tragic night. Mabel remembered when she was in Bristol reading in a newspaper how a councillor called Mildmay had helped to publicize what had happened. He took on the parties responsible for dredging up huge quantities of shingle for the construction of Devonport docks, ignoring warnings that they were putting the village at risk. Mabel was pleased that they’d named the cottages after him.
Walking to the cliff edge, Mabel tossed the roses in, one by one. She made herself remember their wedding day, how Martin had tears in his eyes as he put the ring on her finger. Then her mind slipped forward a few years and she remembered how smart and proud Martin had looked in his uniform when he went off to war. He needn’t have gone, fishing was a reserved occupation, but he felt it was his duty. He was never able to share with her the details of the hell he went through in France, but at least now he was no longer tortured by the memories.
As for her father, there were so many good memories of him, it was hard to choose her favourite. There was going out on the boat with him to pull up the lobster and crab pots. When he found he had a good haul, he would sing
on the way back, and some of the other fishermen would join in. Mabel could hear that joyous sound still. After her mother died, he would often take her on his lap in front of the fire in the evenings, brush her hair and tell her stories. Often, she fell asleep in his arms and he’d carry her up and put her to bed. He never made her feel she was a burden, he didn’t go to the pub and drink like his friends, but stayed in with her, and he always told her she was his darling.
At Stokenham church it took a little while to find where her parents were buried in the churchyard. Although most people went to the chapel in Hallsands on Sunday, they preferred the Church of England for weddings, christenings and funerals. Mabel and Martin were married here, as Mabel’s parents had been.
She remembered coming here with her father, picking wild flowers on the way, to put on her mother’s grave. As far as she recalled, there was only a small headstone and it was close to the wall. Her father had been laid to rest there too, once his body was washed up, but there had been no money to have another headstone made.
Thomas found it, scraping off weeds and moss on several old graves before he found the right one. The headstone read: ‘Patience Grainger, born 1877, died 1903. Beloved wife to Bertram and mother to Betty.’
‘Far too young to die,’ Thomas said sadly.
‘Maybe if the doctor had come sooner,’ Mabel said. ‘Dad had to go nearly into Kingsbridge to get him, he said he ran almost the whole way, but the doctor was out with another patient and he didn’t arrive on his horse till the next morning. Ma had already died.’
Thomas wandered off while Mabel put some of the flowers on her mother’s grave.
‘Over here,’ Thomas called a few minutes later. ‘I think Martin may have been buried with his grandfather.’
This headstone read simply: ‘Edward Wellows, 1844 to 1918.’ But there were signs that the grave had been opened fairly recently to make room for Martin’s body. There were flowers too, but they were all dead now. Mabel put the last few roses she had in a vase.
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