‘You nearly popped one on me,’ Nathan laughed, and his descriptions became so wildly extravagant and yet so sharply funny that even Lily found herself smiling, eyes dancing, momentarily catching Nathan’s laughing glance and moving as quickly away again.
‘Have you had enough?’ she asked at last, taking away his plate.
‘The soup was tasty. Thanks.’ She could tell by the doubt in his voice that the food fell short of what he was used to. He was no doubt still hungry.
‘D’you have much trouble getting meat?’ he casually enquired, and while Lily bridled with indignation at the implied criticism, Bertie sighed and happily closed his eyes, content before the warm fire.
‘We get by,’ was all she was prepared to admit. Not that she could remember the last time she’d tasted a bit of pork, or even liver. ‘Bertie shot us a rabbit the other week, didn’t you?’ She forbore to mention that there’d been little meat left on it, since he’d blasted most of it away.
‘I could get you a pig’s head. Make lovely brawn with that.’
Lily stiffened, even as her mouth watered. ‘We need no charity, thanks very much. We can manage well enough on us own.’
‘Sometimes a bit of venison comes my way.’
‘I’m sure it does,’ she responded, a dryness to her tone which left them all in no doubt how she believed he came by it.
A short silence fell and every part of Lily seemed to prickle with a new awareness. Why did he watch her so closely? Why did Nathan Monroe go to so much trouble to help Bertie? They weren’t in the least bit alike. They came from quite opposite backgrounds, a world apart in fact. Yet they chattered away like old friends.
Silence fell, disturbed only by the shifting of hot ashes in the grate and Bertie’s gentle snores. Why did Nathan linger? Why didn’t he have the grace to offer his thanks and go?
Attempting to ignore him, Lily turned her attention to sewing buttons on one of Bertie’s shirts, but couldn’t resist surreptitiously studying Nathan from beneath her lashes. He’d bought a new coat by the look of it. Navy blue, in a fine cloth. And he’d shaved. Looked almost respectable for once, despite his hair being as wild as ever and far too long. Lily recalled Rose’s words and almost smiled, forced to concede that no one could deny his good looks. To her horror she found his blue eyes resting upon her, studying her with amused interest. She drove her needle into a finger and, giving a little yelp, jumped to her feet, blood spurting on to the clean shirt.
‘You’ve hurt yourself.’ He leaned towards her and Lily flinched quickly away, wrapping the finger in her pinny.
‘It’s nothing. I’m tired, that’s all. I’m off to bed now, Bertie. It’s been a day and a half.’ She made no mention of her visit to Hannah, not feeling able to cope with his sympathy. Yet now she glared at her husband, wanting him to ask, needing his interest and willing him to look up and say he’d come to bed too. Then this odious man would be forced to leave. But Bertie slept blissfully on, tired as a result of all the unusual excitement. As Lily went to the door at the foot of the stairs, Nathan followed her.
‘I’ve no wish to offend, Lily. I thought you’d mebbe like a bit of something tasty for your mam. I know she’s ill.’
He seemed even bigger close to, his head almost touching the low ceiling. Tight-faced, Lily took a step back, unwilling to meet his gaze again, and found herself up against the door post. She couldn’t quite co-ordinate her hands to do her bidding and open the door. Hadn’t it always been so when he was around? Hadn’t he always taken pleasure in making her tremble with nerves? Hovering so close to her she could smell the musky maleness of him, see every hair on the back of the hand which rested on the door jamb beside her. Why did he put on this show of understanding? Why did he pretend to care, when quite clearly he wanted only to frighten and humiliate her?
‘Bertie can provide whatever we need,’ she sharply informed her. It was a bare-faced lie and they both knew it.
‘The offer stands if you change your mind.’ Then he lifted his hand and let the back of his fingers drift lightly over her cheek. Lily recoiled as if he’d scalded her.
‘I’ve told you, we can manage. Thanks all the same.’ She felt pride in the firmness of her voice and, stiff-backed, pulled open the door and went upstairs to bed. But unfortunately not to sleep. From below drifted the low hum of voices, interspersed with soft laughter.
Long after Bertie had slipped into bed, quietly, so as not to disturb her, Lily still gazed wide-eyed into the darkness, sleep held at bay by the memory of a smile, by a touch as smooth as silk and the fact that her body seemed to hum with newly awakened desire for a man who was not her husband. A man whom she claimed to despise.
Bertie did not agree with Lily’s poor opinion of Nathan Monroe. The two became such fast friends they were rarely seen apart. It riled her to watch the friendship develop yet know herself powerless to prevent it. Too often when she came home from work she would find them both sitting at the table, playing dominoes or cards, or simply chatting and laughing. Or the pair of them would go off some place, not telling her where. What they were up to half the time Lily did not care to consider. Was Nathan teaching Bertie his wicked ways? she worried, alarmed and frustrated.
And if a part of her felt jealous of the new friendship, or trembled a little when Nathan brushed by or even glanced in her direction, not for a moment would she acknowledge it. She had her family, and her lovely Amy. Nathan Monroe was trouble. The last thing she needed was to become involved with such a man.
Yet despite her best efforts he occupied Lily’s thoughts waking and sleeping. Her skin yearned to feel again the promise of his caress, her eyes followed his every move. She knew he was aware of her interest, yet was quite unable to prevent herself. Knowledge of his power over her was clear in the amused light in his eyes, the twist of his mouth. He held her spellbound, like a mouse facing a snake. Yet much as Lily longed to force Bertie to banish him from their home, she didn’t have the energy to protest.
Her only salvation was to fill her days with work. To become so tired she did not have the energy to think. With so many people to care for, so many people depending on her, money became a constant worry.
Lily was determined Amy shouldn’t suffer or be deprived of anything she needed. The child would soon be needing shoes. Her baby toes were kept warm in knitted bootees, but in a few months Lily knew she would be walking, and by next winter would need something far more substantial. She was growing at a rapid rate.
‘She’s a credit to you,’ Rose would say as she jiggled the infant on her lap. ‘So she should be, the way you coddle the little blighter.’
Lily half starved herself in order to buy fresh vegetables for the child. Hannah had passed on many of Kitty’s old clothes, but Lily longed to make Amy something new, something of her own, that no other child had worn.
Each week she’d put aside what she could to that end. A farthing here, a halfpenny there. Little enough, but over the months she had meant it to accumulate enough to enable her to buy proper shoes, and material which she could sew into a new frock and coat and bonnet. Hand-me-down rags weren’t good enough for her child. Not for Bertie’s lovely daughter.
The money was there in the tea caddy, safe, untouched even by Bertie’s extravagance. Now she weighed these plans against the reality of her mother’s illness. What price a child’s pair of shoes against a woman’s life, a family’s needs?
Facing up to reality, Lily took the few coppers she’d managed to save thus far and bought more eggs and milk for her mother. She’d make Amy a little custard of her own, as a treat. There were months yet before the shoes would be needed.
She also bought liver and bacon and made both families a delicious and tasty meal for once. With the last penny she bought a fresh bottle of medicine from the herbalist. It contained tincture of opium which he assured her would ease the spasms. The sacrifice was worth it for it did indeed make Hannah better. The coughing eased and her mother got some rest at last.
And Kitty got her bull’s eye.
But it wasn’t enough. Days later the bleeding grew frighteningly worse. Arnie pawned the kitchen table, two of their three chairs which he’d carved himself, and the clock he’d bought Hannah on their wedding day. Then he brought the doctor. Thus Hannah was taken at last to the sanatorium.
Purple dusk was darkening to blue-grey as Nathan and Bertie pushed off from the small jetty. Sharp spires of spruce and larch stood sentinel against the fading light, and beyond lay the backdrop of bronzed hills that circled the lake, which all too soon would melt into a forbidding black. There was no sound but the crunch of shingle as the boat slipped into the water, the oars shifting in the rowlocks, and a faint swish as they dipped deep.
Midnight was the best time for trout, Nathan explained, and just before dawn, when the fish come up to feed. ‘I know of holes and haunts where the trout lie between the islands, good for night-trolling.’ He hoped Bertie would keep quiet. He couldn’t do with a fisherman who prattled. ‘It’s important we don’t frighten away all the fish,’ he warned.
‘Absolutely.’
Bertie was keen to prove his worth. Lily’s scathing tones when he’d told her his plan still rankled. She’d looked at him as if he were a complete idiot.
‘Fishing? Why fishing, for heaven’s sake? It’s a dying trade on this lake. You won’t make any money out of it. Dad makes little enough.’
‘Nathan says he knows a good place. You could sell them on the stall.’ He was beaming at her like a small boy, eager to please.
Lily had lifted her eyes to the ceiling and sighed. She very nearly asked him why he didn’t go out with her father, if he was so keen. But Arnie was working all hours on odd jobs, struggling to recoup his possessions - in between visiting Hannah at the sanatorium, so had no time for the idle fancies of his daft son-in-law.
‘I want to prove that I’m not the toffee-nosed idiot he thinks me, Lily. At least fishing is something I’ve tried before, as a boy.’
‘Hardly the same.’
‘Nathan says it’s a start.’
She’d lost her temper then, shouting at him that all she ever heard these days was Nathan this, Nathan that. Couldn’t he find other friends besides Nathan? Bertie couldn’t understand why she hated the man so much.
‘I’ll make my own sandwiches, clean my own boots. I just want you to be proud of me, Lily. I have the right clothes already.’
‘Oh, well then, if you have the right clothes.’ And she’d started to laugh, the fierceness in her hazel eyes melting to honey as she told him she was proud of him already.
He smiled now, remembering Lily’s laughter, as Nathan handed him the fourteen-foot trolling rods from which the baits would be trailed astern, and instructed him how to splay out the thirty-five yards of line. Bertie struggled to take it all in.
‘The trace has three swivels and is made up of stout round gut. The seven-hook pattern flight serves the purpose and all the parts should be of the best material. We’ll use minnows as bait, since they’re plentiful at the moment.’
‘Haven’t the first idea what you’re talking about, old boy, but tell me what to do, and I’ll do it,’ said Bertie, equably enough.
Nathan rowed the boat slowly, picking out landmarks with ease as his eyes adjusted to the gathering gloom. They tried first the shallow grounds by the beck mouths where the trout were often found, then they moved across the lake to the opposite shore, drifting the boat at just the right speed for trolling. They came beneath a group of overhanging trees where the fall of insects and caterpillars might tempt the fish to rise.
‘We have to catch ‘em while they’re actually feeding,’ Nathan whispered. ‘Sometimes the waters go crazy when they all come up at once. Once they’ve finished, they’ll go down to the depths to digest the food, and we’ve had it.’
Nathan always enjoyed the silence of the night, the long shadows, the way the light never quite went on a cloudless night like this. The very loneliness of the sport excited him. It gave him time to think. About his past troubles, those that lingered, and the loneliness that still filled his life.
All those years dreaming of this return. Amazing really that here, in his boat, was the man who’d robbed him of what he most wanted: Lily.
Why had he imagined he could come back out of nowhere, and have her?
Why should she fall into his arms after the tricks he used to play on her? He’d done it simply to gain her attention, of course, and out of anger at the state his life had been in at that time. A stepfather knocking him and his mam about. Too afraid to leave the brute, or displease him in any way. His mother had faded into a poor frightened shadow and though she’d done her best to protect her son, the effort had cost her her life in the end and left him with nothing but bitterness.
It was then that he’d run away to sea. The old escape. If such an action had solved any of his problems, Nathan was not aware of it. Added to them more like. Oh, he’d seen the world right enough, and more misery and inhumanity than he cared to recall. He’d saved every penny he earned, gambled recklessly to double it, taken crazy risks with only one object in mind: to get back to the Lake Country where he belonged. And to Lily.
He’d meant to explain all of this to her. How he’d always loved her as a child, and always would love her now as the beautiful woman she had become. Somehow there had been neither the time nor the opportunity. Lily’s animosity towards him had made that abundantly clear from the start.