‘Poor Elizabeth,’ she murmured. ‘She was never able to do that for her mother, not until you came along.’ Then she gave a sudden smile. Elizabeth had also said how proud and happy
she and Harriet were to have discovered such a brother as Ralph, who was so kind and understanding as well as bold and brave. I will not tell him that, she determined. That will keep for some other time.
‘Why are you smiling, Amelia? Did Elizabeth say something more?’ he queried.
‘No.’ She put the letter back in the envelope. ‘Nothing else.’
Since Jack and Phoebe, Mrs Boyle and Roger had departed for Australia, Amelia and Ralph had spent less time together and their courtship was deferred, as Ralph introduced himself to the local farmers and estate workers and asked their opinion of farming methods. They talked of ploughs and cultivators, grubbers and drills and of the exodus of farm workers into towns where they could earn more money in factories, if indeed they could find work. He was invited to attend agricultural clubs where he heard the grumbles of the labourers, and the insistence of the landowners that they must move with the times or they would be bankrupt.
He pored over agricultural-machinery catalogues, and Amelia and her mother, with the steward, went over the estate accounts and worked out whether or not what Ralph proposed was feasible.
Sam had finally agreed that buying the sail reaper had been a good investment; now he had to be persuaded that they should buy other machinery.
‘A horse mower, Sam,’ Ralph suggested enthusiastically. ‘It will mean that we can cut when the hay is lush and in full flower and the weather is right. And it also means that
you
can use it.’ Sam’s movements were restricted since his seizure, though he was now up and walking slowly.
‘Nay, I don’t know about that,’ he said ponderously. ‘I’m not used to mechanical things.’
‘A boy could use it,’ Ralph assured him. ‘Let alone an experienced farmer such as yourself.’
‘It’s all very well.’ Sam stared straight at him. ‘Spending money on newfangled ironwork. What’s going to happen if tha doesn’t stop here? What if tha goes back to Australia and teks our Amelia as well? What’ll we do then eh? Tell me that!’
Ralph was silenced. Amelia hadn’t said yes or no to his proposal. And if she said no, then he couldn’t stay, there would be no place here for him. Where would there be a place? Would I settle again in Australia working under Da? he pondered. Would Da give me more responsibility and would I want it if he did? He gave a little shake of his head. Wherever he went, without Amelia, he realized, it wouldn’t be home.
He gazed back at Sam. ‘It needs some thought, doesn’t it, Sam? We need to take our time.’
Sam, who had expected to be persuaded and cajoled, stared at him in surprise. ‘Well, not that long!’ he said. ‘I don’t know how long I’ve got,
do I? If we’re going to modernize, we’ve got to get started, so tha’d better let me tek a look at them catalogues.’
I’m afraid: that’s the trouble, Amelia finally admitted to herself. All my grand thoughts of travel abroad and when it comes down to it, I don’t know if I am brave enough. I enjoyed my time in Switzerland but I always knew I would come back, and when I was a child and always asking Papa to take me on his ships I knew that I would be safe with him. But Australia! It is so very far away.
‘Mama,’ she appealed to her mother. ‘When you were in Australia, did you ever think that you would like to stay?’
Her mother gazed into the faraway past, and shook her head. ‘I always wanted to come back,’ she said softly. ‘I belong here, my roots are well down. But’, she said, and looked at her daughter with affection and understanding, ‘if your father had wanted to stay, then I would have done so, just to be with him.’
She smiled and said, ‘But he knew me so well. He knew that I wanted to come home.’
The next morning, Amelia was about to start breakfast when her mother came in dressed in her green travelling outfit. On her head was a matching hat with a veil. As Amelia looked up to greet her, the trap driven by Ralph went past the window to the door. ‘Are you and Ralph going somewhere, Mama?’ she asked.
Her mother nodded. ‘Yes, and you too, Amelia. I thought the three of us would take a drive. It’s short notice, I know, but I had a sudden desire to go somewhere in particular, and I also wanted to show Ralph. That’s all right isn’t it, Ralph?’ she asked, as he came into the breakfast room. ‘You haven’t anything pressing that you must do today?’
‘No, I haven’t, Aunt Emily. There’s nothing that can’t wait a day.’
Hedges were being cut and relaid, the stubble being ploughed and fences repaired ready for winter, and Sam had his head down over the catalogues and could be heard every now and again exclaiming, ‘Well I never.’
Amelia hurried upstairs after finishing breakfast to put on a warm jacket over her wool dress. She took a hat from the shelf, a blue beribboned one with a jaunty feather in it, and placed it on her head. Then, looking at herself in the mirror, took it off and put on a plain grey one. ‘No.’ She looked this way and that at her reflection. ‘Today I will be frivolous,’ and she took it off and put back the first one, tipping it over her forehead, so that it gave her a rather saucy image.
‘I’ll drive, Ralph,’ Amelia’s mother said as they went out into the autumn sunshine. ‘You and Amelia can sit back and enjoy the ride!’
Amelia laughed. ‘This is very mysterious, Mama, where are we going?’
Her mother shook the reins and they moved
off, the trap jerking so that Ralph and Amelia were thrown against each other. ‘We are going’, said Emily, as she negotiated the gate at the end of the drive, ‘to a place I haven’t visited since I was five years old! Sit back,’ she repeated. ‘It will take us an hour. But,’ she added quietly, almost under her breath, ‘much longer if we were walking.’
They set off at a spanking pace, but presently the mare eased to a brisk trot and they bowled along the Holderness lanes, between hawthorn hedges glistening with early berries and horse chestnut trees with crisp golden leaves and the last of the nut-brown conkers dropping with a soft thud onto the road below. Rabbits and stoats ran in front of them and pheasants rattled and croaked in the woodland on either side of the meandering road.
They came to a rise and Ralph looked across the Holderness Plain. He could see for miles across acres of harvested stubble of gathered corn, which glowed warm in the morning light, except on those farms where it had been burnt black and gave off the smell of acrid smoke. Along a distant road a plank-sided wagon stacked high with winter wood was being drawn by a pair of draught horses, and on the horizon to the west he could see the shadowy outline of hills and dark copses.
‘Is that the Wolds?’ He nodded over to the far-off grey rise.
‘Yes,’ Amelia answered. ‘My father’s family are
from there. It’s lovely. Gentle rolling hills and pastureland, a different landscape entirely from Holderness.’
He took hold of her hand and stroked her fingers. ‘You’re happy here, are you not, Amelia?’ His voice was low.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I am. But that is not to say that I wouldn’t be happy elsewhere.’
He smiled then and squeezed her fingers gently, but made no answer.
They came presently to a narrow road which drew past a manor house and Mrs Linton slowed the horse to a walk. ‘I remember coming past here with Sam when I was a child,’ she said. ‘It was the biggest house I had ever seen and Sam touched his cap as we went by,’ she laughed. The road continued through a wood where she told Ralph that masses of bluebells and primroses grew in the spring.
‘Mama is reminiscing,’ Amelia whispered. ‘We have visited that house several times since then.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Her mother overheard her. ‘That is true, Amelia. We have visited the house as neighbours, but at the time I am remembering, I was a nobody. Just a poor child leaving home.’
They came eventually to a coach road which led between the town of Hull and the coast, and Mrs Linton drove up it for a little way until they came to a large red brick building. ‘The workhouse!’ she said softly. ‘Where your da grew up, Ralph.’
Ralph sat forward suddenly. ‘Da?’ His father’s
past suddenly confronted him and came alive. ‘He lived here?’
‘With our mother,’ Aunt Emily said quietly. ‘She died in poverty here and was buried in a pauper’s grave.’
She said no more, but turned the mare’s head and drove back the way they had come. Ralph twisted around in his seat and watched as the building disappeared as they dropped down the hill and then up another rise, before coming off that road to enter another set of narrow winding country lanes.
‘Mama?’ Amelia asked quietly, ‘did you and Sam walk all this way?’
‘We did. We had no trap, no horse or donkey. We walked from where I am going to take you, almost to the Humber bank, and the cottage which was to become my home for many years until I went into service.’
Ralph and Amelia looked at each other. It was a very long walk for a small child.
They passed a hamlet of half a dozen houses and then the road became just a track. ‘We will have to walk from here,’ Aunt Emily said and her voice shook. ‘It isn’t far.’
Ralph helped her down and then Amelia, and tied the mare’s reins to a tree. ‘Aunt Emily,’ he said. ‘I can’t help thinking that this is upsetting for you.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I should have done this long ago, but I know now why I have waited. The time wasn’t right. But now it is! Come with me.’
She led them down the track which although overgrown was still well used; then she stopped. Ahead of them was a small dwelling, a hovel almost, but someone was living in it for the door was open and the chimney had a curl of smoke coming from it.
‘The fire always smoked,’ she murmured. ‘We always had to open the door.’ A tear trickled down her cheek. ‘This is where Joe and I were born,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Your da, Ralph! This is where we lived with our mother and father.’
Ralph felt a sudden rush of emotion and he caught his breath as if in pain. I didn’t understand. Whenever Da spoke of his childhood, it was as if he was talking of another world. And now here it is in front of me.
His aunt was speaking. ‘And on this very path,’ she said, ‘as Sam came to collect me to take me away, I saw Joe. He was crying. He was eight years old, and had just been told by the estate foreman that he wasn’t wanted for work.’ She clutched her throat. ‘There was no work for him after the harvest, because he wasn’t big enough, and Joe knew, even then, how much he was depended upon, that there was no other money coming into our home. Eight years old!’ she repeated. ‘Just a child.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Ralph muttered, and felt Amelia’s hand steal into his.
‘Nor did I,’ she murmured. ‘And if we had known, would we have understood? We have not
known poverty or privation to have any understanding of it.’
Her mother turned to them. ‘I want to be alone for a little while and I would like to knock on the cottage door and see who is living there. I’ll see you back at the trap.’
She walked away from them down the path to the cottage and Ralph exhaled a deep breath. He felt very strange. It was as if he had been on a long journey and had finally arrived at his destination. He had set off from Australia in search of his family and discovered that they had been with him all his life. That although the blood of his ma and da didn’t run through his veins, he was shaped irrevocably by them, and not by the man who had given his seed, or the mother who had given birth to him.
‘Ralph!’ Amelia said softly, and the feather in her hat fluttered as she looked up at him. She felt her love for him enveloping her as she realized intuitively that his search was ended. ‘Ralph! I will marry you, and I will come with you back to your home in Australia.’
He put his hand on her face and gently stroked her cheek. He shook his head and she felt a fleeting pang of dismay. Had she taken too long? Did he no longer want her? But then she saw his eyes crinkle and he gave a pensive smile. ‘How could I take you away from here, Amelia? This is where you belong.’
‘But—’ she began, and he shook his head as he continued. ‘Sam showed me,’ he said, ‘only
the other day, how to graft a stem from one rose onto another, so that they shared the same rootstock.’
She wrinkled her brow. She knew that. What did he mean?
‘My da – Joe,’ he said, and he kissed her on the nose so that she smiled and knew that everything would be all right, after all. ‘He was that rootstock, and he and Ma grafted me to them so that I became theirs. Do you understand what I am saying?’
‘Yes,’ she murmured, not wanting to break the moment, for she could see that he was emotional. ‘I do understand.’
He blinked and gave a sudden grin. ‘I thought you would. You seem to know me so well!’
She lowered her eyes. She hadn’t always. She had been so wrong about him on several occasions. ‘So, you will return to Australia? Where you belong?’ So be it, she thought. I will go with him if that is what he wants.
‘Do you love me, Amelia?’ he asked softly.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I do,’ and she lifted her lips to his. ‘And I will go with you, wherever you choose to go.’
He heaved a sigh and put his arms around her and neither of them saw her mother standing in the cottage doorway watching them, with a shadow of someone behind her.
‘We will go back,’ he murmured, giving small kisses on her ear, ‘to see Ma and Da and Peggy. But not yet, and we will come back. I choose to
stay here with you, if you will have me. This is where my roots are and Da and Ma will be happy for me, to know that I have come home.’
He tucked her arm into his and turned her so that they were facing back up the track, away from the cottage. ‘Come, Miss Linton,’ he smiled. ‘Let us not delay. I have a courtship to continue.’
She gave a chuckle. Life would not be dull with such a husband. With her bare hand she pushed aside a bramble that was laid across their path; the berries on the bush were already turning a rich luscious black, and where its tip touched the earth it had rooted, sending down suckers and making a strong loop.
‘Look,’ he said, as they came out from the track, and pointed upwards into the sky. The very last late swallows of the summer were swooping overhead, wheeling and crying with their high-pitched note.