Emily (2 page)

When she awoke the sun was setting behind
them, suffusing the sky and land with a scarlet glow; the garnered fields were lit as if by a thousand lamps and sheep grazed amongst the stubble. She gave a small gasp at the immenseness of the wide landscape. Her own hamlet of cottages and barns and farmhouses was surrounded by woods and small copses, and she had never ventured beyond its limits. Here, the only signs of habitation were the occasional farmstead in the far distance. She lifted her head and sniffed. The air smelt different. Fresher, sharper, with a hint of saltiness. ‘Sam,’ she whispered, ‘have we come to ’end of ’world?’

‘Tha great daft lump!’ The old woman lifted her scrawny arm and aimed a blow at Sam’s head. He ducked with a dexterity which suggested that it wasn’t the first time such a blow had been directed towards him. ‘I telled thee to fetch ’lad. What’s tha brought ’little lass for? She’ll be of no use nor ornament!’

‘Missus wouldn’t let me bring him,’ Sam blustered. ‘She said she needed him. She said little lass’d be a good worker when she’s growed,’ he offered in mitigation.

‘And who pays to keep her while she’s growing?’ the woman shouted at him. ‘Didn’t tha think o’ that, tha daft beggar?’

Sam shuffled his feet and lowered his head. ‘Sorry, Gran,’ he muttered.

The woman turned her attention to Emily. ‘Does tha know who I am? Did tha ma tell thee?’

Emily shook her head, not daring to speak in case she should evoke a torrent of abuse like Sam
had just received. Perhaps, as it was obvious the old woman didn’t want her, she would be sent home again, though she doubted if she could walk back so far again tonight. The darkness was closing in and for the last few miles when they had turned off the road to take small rough tracks before reaching their destination, she had clung to Sam’s hand in case he should lose her in this vast empty landscape, which was punctuated only by isolated farms and cottages and the soaring spire of a church in the distance.

‘Hannah Edwards, thy fayther’s auntie.’ The old woman’s eyes pierced her face. ‘’Onny relative he’s got left. That’s why he’s sent thee here. Is tha a good lass?’

Emily nodded. Da always said that she was, though she was often in trouble from her mother. ‘What do I call thee?’ she dared to ask.

‘I’m glad to see tha’s got a tongue in thy head.’ Hannah Edwards pursed her mouth and considered. ‘Tha can call me Granny, same as our Sam.’ She turned towards the door. ‘Better come in then, seeing as tha’s here.’

The one-roomed cottage, like her parents’ home, was built of mud and straw and rounded cobblestones of varying sizes, but with a roof, not of tiles but of barley thatch. It felt warm and welcoming to Emily, with a bright fire burning and the brass knobs on the door and cupboards gleaming. In a corner of the room was a curtained alcove, where she could see the legs of a bed, and on the fire a kettle was steaming and in the coals beneath potatoes were cooking in their skins.

‘Sit down at ’table but don’t start until we’ve said prayers.’ Granny Edwards sat at one end of the scrubbed wooden table, Sam at the other and Emily sat in the middle, where a place was already laid. In the centre of the table was a large pot of soup and a loaf of bread. She bent her head as she saw Sam and his granny did and peeped from one eye to watch the old woman muttering softly.

‘Amen,’ Granny Edwards said in a loud voice. ‘Amen,’ repeated Sam. They both looked at her and waited.

She glanced from one to another, then tightly closing her eyes and clasping her hands together, repeated fervently, ‘Amen!’

Granny Edwards nodded, apparently satisfied with her show of faith, and proceeded to ladle the soup into large brown bowls. Emily took a sip, it was hot and salty and unlike anything she had tasted before. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast and following Sam’s example she dipped in a slice of bread and finished off the bowlful.

‘Tha’s got a good appetite,’ Granny Edwards muttered. ‘Tha’s going to tek some feeding.’ She pointed a spoon at Sam. ‘Tha’ll have to tek on some extra work. If tha’d brought ’lad he could’ve found work on ’farms. This bairn can do nowt.’

‘Our Joe’s just lost his job,’ Emily pronounced. ‘Mayster said he was too little to work. I’m nearly as big as him,’ she verified, ‘and I’m good wi’ hens and cleaning cupboards.’

There was silence as this pronouncement was digested, then the old woman’s face softened. ‘Lost his job, has he? So there’s no money coming in!’
She shook her head in commiseration. ‘That’s hard on thy ma, very hard.’

‘And on my da,’ said Emily. ‘He can’t work ’til he’s better.’

Granny Edwards rose from the table to fetch the potatoes and patted Emily’s arm. ‘God will look after thy fayther, never fear,’ she said softly. ‘It’s thy ma and brother who need our prayers now.’

Emily kept a discreet distance until she came to the conclusion that Granny Edwards’s irascible nature hid a lion heart. It was to the widow Hannah Edwards that neighbours trudged down rutted muddy lanes and marshy tracks for advice, whether on why the jam wouldn’t set or what to do with a wayward son or daughter, and the same son or daughter would come to her door to complain of overbearing parents. These last were given short, sharp shrift and sent home with the proclamation to thank God they had parents at all and were not homeless orphans as some poor bairns were.

Emily, listening from a chair in the corner often wondered if this last statement applied to her, for she often caught sympathetic glances coming her way as this pronouncement was made. The days slipped into weeks and she adapted to the routine of the household, and, having stated that she was good with hens and cupboards, was given the task of feeding the hens every morning and gathering the new-laid eggs, and keeping the food and pan cupboard tidy, at least as far as she could reach.

Sam worked every day, either in his garden, where he grew potatoes and other vegetables and tended the fruit bushes, or as a casual labourer on the local farms, where by his strength and willingness, he was assured of work.

‘He’s an ’andsome lad, our Sam, but not right sharp,’ Granny Edwards announced to Emily one day, ‘but he’s a good lad and a hard worker.’

‘Where’s his ma and da?’ Emily asked, having spent several nights beneath her sheets laboriously trying to work out Sam’s relationship to his granny and therefore to her. ‘Are they dead?’

‘Might just as well be,’ Granny Edwards muttered, more to herself than Emily, ‘for all we ever see of her. No,’ she confirmed, her fingers industriously clicking at her knitting, ‘his ma’s not dead, but she went off when Sam was twelve months old and I’ve ne’er seen her since. As for his da, well God knows where he is, or who he is, for I’m sure I don’t.’

Emily gazed at her; so Sam was one of the poor orphans that Granny talked about and not her after all, she decided, for she had both ma and da and she resolved to be kinder to Sam than she had been.

The cottage sat barely a mile from the banks of the Humber. From there they could smell the salt of the sea, feel the sharp wind on their faces or be shrouded in a sea of fog, which drifted in from the estuary and chilled them to the bone and made them hurry to pile up the fire with driftwood which Sam collected from the river banks and dried ready for use.

Sam walked across the marshy land every day to Cherry Cob sands, returning always with some treasure. He brought home eel, shrimps or mussels, sometimes a bunch of samphire which grew on the marsh, or a rabbit caught by a ferret which he kept in his pocket. His mind was a little slow, but his ability to catch, fish, net or snare was sure, and he always brought something home for the pot, which his granny had ready and waiting.

Emily begged time and again to go with him. ‘I won’t be a bother,’ she pleaded, ‘and I’ll keep ever so quiet while tha’s fishing. Please, Sam, let me come.’

He’d glanced at Granny Edwards, who shook her head. ‘Not yet. ’Tide’s fast and watter’s deep. Too deep for a bairn like thee.’

‘But ’other bairns go, I’ve seen them.’ She had watched the snake of youngsters wending their way across the marshland towards the mudflats. ‘And they go on their own.’

Granny weakened slightly. ‘They’re older than thee and know where to go and where not. Maybe when tha’s growed a bit.’

So she left it at that until a month had passed, but now winter was coming, a thin film of frost began covering the marshy land and the wind blowing in from the estuary was sharper and keener. They filled a sack with straw and pushed it into the window aperture so that no draught could penetrate and brought out a heavy blanket to cover the door. Driftwood was carried inside and Emily tied bundles of dry kindling with straw and stacked them in a corner of the room. Martinmas had
passed, when the farm workers, ploughmen, dairymaids and labourers stood by the market cross in local towns and bid for the next twelvemonth’s work. Sam went to the town of Patrington and came home with a huge beam on his round face to say that he had been taken on as a regular labourer at one of the neighbouring farms. ‘I’m not sleeping in, Gran. I’ll come home every night.’

His granny gave a satisfied nod, pleased with him even though it meant her getting up at four-thirty each morning to make sure he had a breakfast of gruel or oat dumplings before he set out on his several miles’ walk. His midday meal he would eat at the farm and on his return a dish of rabbit stew or mutton broth and barley bread would be waiting for him before he finally tumbled wearily into bed.

Time hung heavily for Emily now that Sam had gone to regular work. She fed the chickens and swept the yard and did a few jobs of work, but when those were done and the old woman sat dozing over her knitting by the fire, Emily would stand outside and wonder what to do next. There were no children in the immediate vicinity and the ones she had previously watched going to the river bank no longer came through the day. By teatime dusk was closing in and there was not a soul to be seen in that vast, awesome landscape. She missed her brother, Joe, for they had always played together, and she wondered if he had managed to get another job of work.

So she stood one midday, after eating her dinner of bread and cold bacon, and looked across to the far reaches of the skyline. The winter sun was
bright, glistening on the patches of frost which hadn’t cleared and outlining the stark bare branches of elm and ash in the distance. Granny Edwards had fallen asleep by the fire and the afternoon loomed long before her. Then Emily made a decision. She would go to the river. She could walk and just take a look, no more than that, and then come straight back home. Nobody will know, she pondered, and when I get back I can tell them that I was big enough to go by myself.

She slipped back inside for her shawl and to check that Granny was still sleeping, which she was, her mouth slack in a gentle snore and her knitting idle in her lap. Emily gave a little satisfied shrug and crept out again. The hens scuttled out of her way and she skipped along towards the track at the top of the dyke which she knew Sam always took to go to the river.

Though it was but a mile, it seemed much longer, for the track was muddy and stuck to her boots and slowed her down. Sometimes the path disappeared into a morass of mud and taking care not to slip down into the deep, water-filled ditch, she jumped down into the soggy grass. She kept on walking and thought she could hear the murmur of the tidal waters beyond the distant, low, green bank.

On she tramped, lifting her mudborn boots from the sucking ooze until she finally reached the bank. She scrambled up, crushing nettle and dead heads of sea aster beneath her feet and pushing her way through prickly, red-berried thorn and bramble; and there before her triumphant gaze lay the shining mudflats, which shimmered in the winter
sun and harboured hundreds of curlew and redshanks which searched and fed on the crustaceans beneath the mud. Beyond the mudflats lay the broad waters of the Humber and the banks of Lincolnshire on the other side.

She heaved a sigh of satisfaction. She had got here by herself, without assistance from Sam or anyone else. ‘I am big enough,’ she declared aloud and jumped down on to the grassy shore and found herself almost knee-deep in water. The grass which looked so firm from the bank was marshland with hidden pools and rivulets. The mud beneath the water sucked and oozed around her legs and with difficulty she splashed and pulled and made her way back to the bank, where she found a dry patch and sat down to take off her boots. She tied them together with her laces and hung them around her neck, wrung out the hem of her dress, then, cautiously and gingerly watching where she put her feet, she walked towards the river.

The tide was out and the quaggy mud sucked between her toes, but she ventured further until she reached shallow water and stepped into it. It was icy cold around her ankles and she quickly came out again, though she lingered on the edge and searched for pebbles to throw into the water, but found only a few shells and some chunks of driftwood, which she threw into the waves, disturbing the bobbing gulls and shelducks which were resting between the crests. A fleet of ships, with their canvas sails filling in the sharp breeze, was sailing downriver towards the mouth of the Humber on their way to the sea, and she waved her
hands to them, wondering where their journey was taking them.

‘I’d like to go on a ship,’ she murmured and she bent to peer downriver towards the spit of Spurn peninsula, trying to see as far into the distance as she could. There seems to be no beginning or end to it, she thought, where does it go to or come from?

The curlews called their flute-like cry and above her redshanks flew, whilst behind her on the banks, woodpigeons rustled and foraged amongst the berries and haws. She played for a while, splashing in the pools and collecting small pieces of driftwood to take home for the fire, until she began to feel a chill. The sun had gone, disappearing behind a thick bank of cloud and a mist began to drift in from the river; it settled on her hair like raindrops and her shawl felt damp. The tide too was rushing towards the shore. It gushed and babbled, trickled and frothed and percolated into all the muddy pools and gullies, absorbing them into one.