Authors: Leah Fleming
Matt often wondered how he could ever have been deceived into thinking Mirabel disfigured and plain. Love had transformed her features, softened those marks to a point where they were invisible
to him. Their marriage was more than just gazing into each other’s eyes. It was, as a preacher once said, more a looking forward together in the same direction.
I woke from my strange reverie when Bill brought in a mug of coffee. ‘You’re not still looking at that thing, are you?’
‘I was just thinking how names run in families, and aren’t all the first-born Stockdale boys named William? And here’s William Albert Dacre. I wonder why? Was he the first?
This picture poses more questions than answers.’
‘Put that thing away, it gives me the creeps, those hands sticking out, the hidden face. You notice the hidden mother far more than you notice the baby,’ Bill replied. ‘But I
might just go and look in the attic to see if there are any more of his photographic plates.’
Trust a Dales farmer to be practical, thought his wife. ‘You do that but I’m going to find out more about this mystery woman. There’s bound to be something in the Parish
register of births and deaths about your family history. There’s something about all this that needs rooting out. You never know,’ I smiled placing the photo back into the recesses of
the album. ‘They say where the lanes be long and tracks climb high, people get away with a whole house full of secrets. Who knows, if I delve a bit more I might find a good story hidden
behind that veil.’
Read on for an exclusive extract from Leah Fleming’s upcoming novel
The Last Pearl
‘First show me your hands,’ Mr Abrahams, the old jeweller, ordered. ‘How rough they are from all that washing, but they’ll improve. Oily hands
won’t do for my repairs.’ He lifted a clutch of pearls out of a velvet cloth. ‘Each one of these is a gift of nature, the tears of the gods, some say. Good pearls are cold to the
touch, so hold and see for yourself.’
Greta felt their smooth round texture in her palm. ‘Where do they come from?’
‘From inside the shell of an oyster or mussel. When a bit of grit gets under its shell, the oyster coats it with mother of pearl, layer after layer of nacre. She grows the pearl like a
baby in the womb.’ He smiled. ‘You can open a thousand shells and never find anything better than these.’
‘But we sell oysters on the market to eat.’ Greta was puzzled.
‘Ah, my dear, these are from special shells,
unios
,
margarita margaritafera
, unique shells growing under the fast-flowing river beds and estuaries. All over the world
there are different shells and shapes producing pearls in all the colours of the rainbow. Most come out of the deep sea. Divers swim down to collect them, but we have them closer to home
too.’
He brought out a necklace for her to hold under the light. ‘This necklace is weak and needs to be restrung and the clasp needs tightening. You must watch and work with other beads
before I can let you loose on such a precious item, but perhaps one day . . . It’s delicate work for my tired eyes but it must be done.’
Greta watched how he shed the pearls onto a tray, one by one in order of size, with such a tenderness of touch. ‘We must not damage the pearl or bruise its surface.’ He took off
his glasses and sighed. ‘I always think we are like pearls. Without grit there would be no pearl. Sorrows have a way of strengthening the heart, never forget that, child.’
‘Away and fetch Pa in from the river,’ shouted Jeannie Baillie to her son, who was busy storing peats outside the door of their cottage. ‘He’s been out
there too long.’
It was high summer in the forests around Perth, and almost the shooting season – a brief summer gap for haymaking and river fishing on the estate where the Baillies were employed. The
banks of the river were full of campers scouring the water for those special mussels that might make them a fortune.
Running down to the water’s edge through a secret path hidden by the tall Scots pines, with their scented needles and cones, Jem Baillie knew just the spot where his father fished for
pearls every summer, hidden from the travelling folk in their bendy tents and vardos. It was the dry season, the shallow season when the river ran deep and calm and camps used by the log floaters
in the winter were now filled with pearl hunters.
Jem loved the silence of the dark forests. His grandfather Guthrie worked those hidden places, hewing down the great pines while supervising the other river rats, jumping the floating logs that
were carried by the water in full spate to the lumber mills. That was autumn work when the season picked up, but until the beaters went out on the glorious 12th of August, there was nothing to do
but join his father in searching the river bed for the secret hoard that would bring honey to their coarse oaten bread, and strong boots for the snows to come.
Jem was an only child. When Sam Baillie, an itinerant traveller, stopped for the season on the Laird’s estate to be a hired hand, little did he know his wanderings would soon be over. When
his tribe moved on he had already fallen for the quiet charm of the widow Guthrie, who cleaned and served food in the shooting lodges. She bore him a fine son in her forties, a son they were trying
to keep from the forest and the Laird’s employ by enrolling him in school as a pupil helper. Once school was out he was away with his father fishing until it was dark. Sam Baillie was the
undisputed king of the pearl fishers and Jem loved to watch him at work. He had the old way of doing things, the gypsy way. ‘The right way’ he was told.
‘Yon pearl is a gift of nature, son. God’s bounty and not be squandered. You have to tease the shell open a wee bitty; not crush it, killing the creature inside like the farm boys
do. Some of my own are no better. All those piles of rotting shells on the shoreline kicking up a stink: why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?’
Jem caught sight of his father bent, peering into the water with the wooden bucket with a glass bottom. He was chest high in cold water.
‘Any luck, today?’ Jem yelled, but his father was too busy to answer at first. He looked up and smiled.
‘Give us a hand, laddie.’
‘Mam says it’s time you were out or you’ll catch yer death.’
‘Ach away . . . she’s in here, I know it in ma bones. I had a dream last night. She’s waiting down there. Come in and see. Your young eyes are sharper than mine and my back is
awful weary.’
Jem rolled up his britches. Barefoot, he waded in, taking hold of the shaft of the scraper with its hooks bent backwards to dislodge the mussel from its berth. He fished around with his feet,
through the stones and mud and sand, scraping up mussels to the surface, giving them to Sam to shove into the bag slung round his body, already weighed down with shells to be opened.
‘Come on home, the stew’s in the pot.’ Jem was hungry.
‘How’d yer whish’t,’ Sam replied, coughing with a rasp that Jem hated to hear. ‘What’s that down there? Can you see, to the left of yon stone?’
‘Just an old twisty thing.’ Jem was feeling with his toes.
‘Bring it up then.’
‘But it’s an old battered shell.’
‘Twisters are the best. Have I taught you nothing, son? They misshapes is there for a reason. Bring it up.’
The boy and the old man sat on the tussocky river bank as Sam carefully opened up each mussel in turn, one by one. There was nothing of note, just glistening mollusks. Some were useless and not
worth opening, so he threw them back. Two had tiny seed pearls, like tiny shot pellets. There was one shaped like a minute acorn, the ones they called barrel pearls. They would go in his baccy tin
to be sold in a job lot.
‘I’m starving, Pa. Let’s away home or I’ll get a row.’
‘Wait, it’s here. I know it is. I dreamt it.’ Sam forced open yet another misshape with a hump on its back, fingering inside to see if there was anything hiding in the folds of
flesh.
‘There’s nothing.’ Jem was bored and his stomach was rumbling as he ferreted into the old shell he had brought out last. Feeling something, he pulled out what looked like a
white marble.
His father took one look and crossed himself with a whistle. ‘Praise be. Have you ever seen anything like that in all yer born days?’
Jem held the pearl in his palm. His heart was racing. He knew this was special, bigger than anything they’d ever found before. It was a perfect sphere and in the sunlight, all the colours
of the rainbow glinted from its smooth surface. ‘Wait till Ma sees this.’
‘No, you tell no one. This is our secret. You know she can blether with the other wifies and then they’ll all be wanting to know where we found this gem of gems. You can fish all
your life and never find such a beauty. It’s worth a king’s ransom, laddie. I know it in ma bones – and where there’s one there’ll be others. The Lord be praised, for
he told it to me in a dream. This wee darling will change our lives, sure she will.’ Sam kissed the pearl.
Jem could see the excitement on his father’s leathery face, but he could also hear his breathlessness and the rattling cough in his chest. Pa was getting too old for standing in rivers and
lugging logs. If this pearl would buy them warm winter clothes, a horse and cart then it would be worthwhile.
Yet as they trudged back through the path and the needles scrunched under his bare feet, Jem sensed the thrill of the search. All those disappointments of empty shells were forgotten when you
had such a miracle in your pouch. Did this mean their fortunes had changed for the better?
The early morning light peeped through the hole in the curtain. It was Saturday again, the best day of the week for Margaret Costello. She rolled off the bed board, trying not
to wake her sister, Kitty. She’d slept in again, and now had no time but to throw on her skirt, shirt and wrap the shawl across her chest, pin her plaits over her head and creep down the
wooden stairs in her stockinged feet. The boots would be waiting polished or her brother, Tom, wouldn’t be getting any ‘spice’.
The tea was stewing on the embers of the banked up fire. No time to linger judging by the rain on the window. Mother was sleeping on the camp bed, but stirred as she lifted the latch and went
straight out on the darkened street, hoping that Mr Abrahams had remembered to unlock his door.
She scurried up Walmergate to the house of the old watchmaker across the river Foss in Aldwark, trying not to shiver in the dawn air. At least his laundry had been delivered before his Sabbath:
a clean shirt, underclothes neatly pressed and mended. Mother always took care with his washing, keeping it separate, thankful for work at the end of the week rather than Monday. Living alone now,
he always received the clothes as if they were the crown jewels, nodding his head in gratitude.
Sometimes when she delivered them he was busy at his bench, curled over a watch repair with a candle and globe like a magnifying mirror, looking up with tired lashless eyes and heavy lids.
‘Ah Margarita, is it that time already?’
She loved the way he called her by her given name.
‘Do you know it is the Greek word for a pearl?’ he told her umpteen times.
Here she was thinking she was named after the blessed Margaret Clitherow of York, pressed to death between doors for sheltering a Jesuit priest in the bad old days: or so her father once told
her. Margaret was her Sunday name, but most of the time she answered to all the usual short cuts: ‘
Maggie Costello, come and mind my bairns
.’ ‘
Peggy me darling angel,
fetch me a packet of tea. Tell him to put it on the slate.
’
Dad always called her little Greta and that’s what she liked best. Today she was the Saturday girl, who could escape the Irish quarter of the old city and make her way later to Parliament
Street, to the bustle of the market stalls where helping behind the scenes brought welcome treats for the family.
But first she must attend to Mr Abrahams, as his gentile Sabbath girl who lit his lamps before sundown on Friday night, made up his fire and lit it again on Saturday morning, made sure all his
‘Sunday best’ was laid out while he slept and topped up his special soup on the range to warm through. Mother had been happy to do this for a while but was even happier to pass the task
onto her eldest daughter now she was fourteen.
Saul Abrahams belonged to another world, a world of book learning and foreign languages. He was of the Jewish race and spoke Yiddish with his friends. He was a widower, frail and tired, who
worked all day in his workshop room full of ticking clocks, some chiming at different times, others sitting silent and dusty waiting for his magic touch.
Greta opened the latch and revived his fire, making sure it was well stoked, and tidied round a little of the clutter. The house smelled of chalk, spirit, oil and polish. His bench was cluttered
with eyeglasses, brushes and tools of all sizes. She liked to linger over his repairs, admiring the delicate files and instruments he used, fingering a box of broken jewellery, bracelets and chains
labelled for repair beside soldering irons and a burner which she mustn’t touch. She knew he would be doing no work today or any cooking until after sunset.
Satisfied that the first task of the day was finished, she left the house without lingering. It was time to rush to where the market stretched down the whole length of Parliament Street to help
with the setting up of stalls. There was a blind basket-maker who always needed a hand, and some country butter-makers who asked her to mind their babies while they set out their cheeses and butter
pats. They knew she could be trusted behind the stalls. The vegetable-growers found her jobs pulling off rotten cabbage leaves, unpacking boxes of fruit and putting the best specimens to the front
of the stall.
If she was lucky there were mugs of tea and buns, and a hunk of Wensleydale cheese which she slipped into her apron pocket along with the few pennies she gleaned for helping out.