‘Tell me?’
‘Not now. We’re getting near Rookery Farm.’
To their right, Ella saw a long, low farmhouse with
white-washed walls surrounded by buildings, sheds and
barns. Her mother was bending towards her. ‘You’re not
to ask awkward questions when we get there, Ella. D’you
hear?’
‘Why?’ The girl’s candid blue eyes demanded an
explanation.
‘Because . . . Oh I can’t explain it all now.’
‘Tell me!’
‘No, not now.’ Her mother was firm as she said again,
‘When you’re older, I’ll explain everything.’
‘Promise?’
‘I promise.’
Ella Hilton was an intelligent child with an understanding
and perception which sometimes exceeded her years.
But at this moment she was beginning to feel, disturbingly,
that there was a great deal she did not know or understand
about her own family. As soon as another thought came
into her head, it came out of her mouth. ‘That old man in
the coffin? Your grandfather . . .’
‘He was always so good to me,’ Kate murmured, tears in her voice. She seemed to be thinking aloud, not really
talking to Ella so much as reminiscing to herself.
Ella tugged at her mother’s sleeve. ‘He’s not – he can’t
be – that old woman’s father.’
Kate stopped and stared at her daughter. ‘Old
woman . . .?’ Laughter bubbled up inside Kate, banishing
for a moment her melancholy memories. Child-like, she
clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh Ella, she’d box your
ears if she heard you call her that. My mother, Esther
Godfrey, an old woman!’
Ella was laughing too, dancing around her mother in
the lane. She watched Kate take a deep breath, revelling in
the breeze ruffling her long, shoulder-length auburn hair;
saw her close her eyes and lift her face to the sky, a small
smile curving her mouth.
‘Oh, it’s so good to be back,’ Kate murmured. ‘I hadn’t
realised just how much I missed this place.’
Ella’s laughter died. She was suddenly, uncomfortably,
aware that back here in the place she still called ‘home’,
her mother did not share her feeling of belonging in the
city. To Ella, these wide open spaces and glowering grey
skies were awesome and lonely.
‘I don’t like it here,’ she muttered as Kate pushed open
the farmyard gate and two sheepdogs near the back door
of the house began barking. ‘I don’t like that tiny bedroom
I had to sleep in last night. I bumped my head on that
sloping ceiling and it was all – all creaky in the night.’
Kate laughed. ‘It’s only the wind. There’s nothing to
hurt you.’
‘There was a funny rustling in the roof,’ Ella insisted.
‘Only birds, I expect,’ her mother murmured.
‘Well, I want to go home.’
‘Don’t you want to see Uncle Danny and Aunty Rose
again?’ Kate paused, her hand resting on the gate. Even though Ella had never visited Fleethaven Point before, she
knew Danny and Rosie Eland. Like Grandpa Godfrey,
they visited Kate and her daughter in Lincoln, usually at
the beginning of December when they came to the city to
do their Christmas shopping. It was a time she looked
forward to, when the tiny terraced house was filled with
laughter and presents.
Ella was quiet for a moment, torn between wanting to
see them again and her desire to leave this place. ‘Well,
yes . . .’ she began, trying to weigh her dislike of these
windswept fields against the pleasure of seeing the Elands.
Then her expression brightened. ‘Will Rob be here?’
‘Rob? Why, yes, I expect so.’
The smile on the girl’s face was impish now. ‘Good.
He’s about my age, isn’t he? But I’ve never met him.’
‘No, you haven’t. I was forgetting that,’ Kate said,
smiling as she added, ‘They’ve always left him at home
with his grandma so they could do their shopping in
peace.’
Ella was marching eagerly through the farmyard gate
now but as the dogs came loping towards them, she
hesitated once more. The two animals bounded around
them, wagging their tails in welcome and shaking their
long black and white coats. Ella began to sneeze. ‘Do
something, Mum. You know I – atishoo – don’t like
dogs.’
The back door of the farmhouse opened and as Ella
heard a squeal of delight, she looked up to see Rosie
running towards them, her arms stretched wide in welcome.
‘Kate, oh, Katie, and little Ella, too.’
Ella frowned momentarily at hearing herself described
as ‘little’ when already she came up to her mother’s
shoulder. But then finding herself clasped against the
woman’s soft bosom and her face showered with kisses, she couldn’t help smiling. At least Aunty Rosie’s welcome
was better than her grandmother’s.
‘Hello, Rosie,’ her mother was saying and submitted to
being clasped in a bear-hug too.
Rosie Eland was plump, but not fat. Her hair was a
fluffy cloud of shoulder-length blonde curls, swept back
from her face by two combs on either side of her head,
with a huge roll curl on the top. She wore a paisley
patterned wrap-over apron and the sleeves of her blouse
were rolled up above her elbows. Her blue eyes sparkled
with her obvious delight at seeing them and her smooth
skin shone with sweat. ‘I was up to me elbows in soap suds
in the wash-house, when I heard the dogs barking and
came to see what all the racket was about. Oh, it’s so
lovely to see you and Ella. Come on in. I knew you’d come.
I told Danny so . . .’ Rosie chattered on. ‘“Kate will come
for her grandad’s funeral”, I told him, “whatever her mam
ses, she’ll come”. I was right, wasn’t I, Katie? I knew you
wouldn’t stay away from poor old Will Benson’s funeral.
Eh, but it’s good to have you back home after all these
years, even if the reason for you coming is a sad one.’
Rosie Eland linked her arm through Kate’s and, putting
her other arm about Ella’s shoulders, she urged again,
‘Come along in. I’ve got the kettle on and we’ll mek a pot
of tea and have a good old gossip before the boys come
home.’
Ella hung back a little and, feeling her reluctance, Rosie
said, ‘What is it, love? Don’t you want to come in?’
‘It’s the dogs, Rosie . . .’ Kate began.
‘Oh don’t be afraid of Bunty and Bess. They mek a lot
of noise, but they won’t hurt you . . .’
‘I’m not afraid,’ the young girl said stoutly, ‘but they
make me sneeze.’
Rosie looked puzzled until Kate explained. ‘She has some sort of allergy to dogs and horses.’ Her voice dropped
so that Ella scarcely heard. ‘I think it’s hereditary.’
Rosie stared at Kate and then blinked. ‘Oh. Oh, I see.’
But even to the ten-year-old girl, it was obvious that Rosie
did not quite see. Then she said, ‘Wait a minute, I’ll tie
them up near the barn. They’ll be well out of your way
then.’
The two dogs followed her reluctantly, their tails drooping,
and submitted to being tied to a ring in the wall of the
barn. Soulfully they eyed the visitors until Ella said, ‘Oh,
I’m sorry. Poor things. Let them go, Aunty Rosie . . .’
Rosie put her arm about the girl’s shoulders once more
and hugged her. ‘Don’t worry, love. They’ll be all right just
while you’re here. Fancy you sneezing your head off every
time you come near animals. And there I was just going to
show you some pretty little kittens our cat’s just had.’
‘Oh, cats don’t bother me, just dogs and horses.’
‘Really? Oh, well then, come and look at them while
me and yar mam have a good old chin-wag.’
Near the back door of the farmhouse, set to one side,
was a long triangular-shaped chicken coop. Rosie lifted
one of the lids and there, nestling in a bed of straw, was a
tabby cat with four kittens, who were crawling around the
straw, mewling blindly.
‘They’re not ever so pretty yet,’ Rosie said. ‘Not until
they gets their eyes open.’
The mother cat was licking one of her offspring so
furiously that she rolled it over on the straw. Ella knelt in
front of the coop, so fascinated by the little family that she
hardly noticed Rosie and her mother move away and go
into the house.
Ella lost track of how long she stayed there, stroking
the mother cat’s head and watching her suckle her four
kittens, purring loudly. She heard the click of the farm gate and looked up to see her uncle Danny limping across the
yard. His left leg was held stiffly, as if he could not bend it,
and he swung it outwards as he walked. Ella knew he had
been injured during the war when the bomber in which he
had been a rear gunner had crashed.
‘It’s a miracle he wasn’t killed,’ her mother had
explained when Ella had once asked about Uncle Danny’s
‘poorly leg’. ‘The whole rear turret of the plane fell off and
landed in a tree. That tree saved his life.’
As he crossed the yard towards her, Ella scrambled up,
but at that moment her mother appeared in the doorway.
Ella hesitated, seeing the look that passed between the two
adults, a slow smile curving both their mouths. They
moved towards each other, into each other’s arms. Whenever
they met, Ella thought, it was always the same; the
look, the smile, and then the embrace that seemed to last
for a long time, her mother resting her head on Danny’s
shoulder, and he, his hand stroking her hair, murmuring
softly, ‘Katie,’ before they pulled back and looked into
each other’s eyes. And it never seemed to matter who was
there at the time, they made no attempt to hide their
obvious affection for each other.
Then, as always, Danny turned to Ella and held out his
arms. Now she ran to him to be swung up into the air and
round and round until she laughed and squealed that she
was dizzy.
Pretending breathlessness, Danny panted as he set her
on the ground once more. ‘My, you’re getting heavy and
so tall too. She’s nearly as tall as our Rob, and he’s like a
streak of pump water.’
Kate smiled. ‘Where is he, anyway?’
‘On the marsh or in the dunes, just like we used to be,
Katie,’ he said softly. ‘He nearly lives out there when he
can get out of doing his fair share of the work.’
Kate laughed, her head thrown back, her hair ruffled.
‘We used to do our share of disappearing at milking
time . . .’
Ella looked up at them, her glance going from one to
the other. ‘Were you friends then? When you were my
age?’
They looked down at her, startled by her question,
almost as if, for a moment, they had forgotten she was
there.
‘Oh yes, Ella love,’ Danny began, ‘we were friends all
right . . .’ Suddenly, there was the noise of rubber tyres
skidding on the loose gravel at the edge of the lane and
they all turned to see a boy, a few months older than Ella,
riding his bicycle at breakneck speed into the farmyard,
narrowly missing the gatepost. The brakes squealed as the
bike slithered to a halt a few feet from them.
‘Talk of the Devil,’ Danny murmured. ‘Here he is.’
It was like looking at a much younger version of her
Uncle Danny; the same black curly hair, the same wide
grin and laughing, cheeky, brown eyes.
At her side, Ella heard her mother gasp. Kate was
gaping at the boy and her face was suddenly, strangely,
pale. ‘Heavens! He’s the spitting image of you and –
and . . .’ Her voice faded away and Ella saw the glance
that passed between her mother and Danny.
Slowly the man nodded. ‘I know. I’m not going to be
allowed to forget who my father was, am I, Katie? Not
while young Rob’s around?’
Kate shook her head, her gaze coming back to rest on
the boy.
Curious, Ella stared at him too. So this, she thought,
was Rob Eland. Ella watched as the boy propped his
bicycle against the barn wall and walked towards them, a
swagger in every step.
‘One of these days,’ Danny was saying to his son, ‘you’ll
come such a cropper off that bike.’
But the boy’s grin only widened, the brown eyes full of
mischievous daring.
Danny put his arm about Ella’s thin shoulders, drawing
her forward. ‘This is Ella, Rob, and her mam . . .’ Again
the swift glance flew between the two adults, before he
added, ‘yar aunty Kate.’
Ella was still staring at Rob. He was slightly taller than
she was and just as thin, but, she guessed, wiry and strong.
His short, coal black curly hair glistened wetly and even
though it was a wintry January day, he wore only a
sleeveless pullover over his shirt, short trousers and knee-length
grey socks that were apparently permanently wrinkled
around his ankles.
‘Hello,’ he nodded towards Kate and then his gaze met
Ella’s fixed stare.
‘Rob, show Ella around the farm while I have a talk
with her mam,’ Danny said.
There was a fleeting expression of irritation on the boy’s
face, but Ella noticed that he hid it valiantly from his
father. As Danny turned away, he put his arm around
Kate’s waist and led her into the house. Ella watched Rob’s
brown eyes darken as he stared after them. Then his gaze
flickered briefly towards Ella, an unspoken question in
their depths, then back again to the doorway through
which the adults had disappeared. She saw him lift his
shoulders fractionally, shrugging off something he could
not understand.
‘Come on, then,’ he muttered, and marched ahead of
her towards a line of brick buildings, kicking a stone as he
went, sending it rattling across the cobbles of the yard.
‘We’ve got a calf in here. Like to see it?’
Ella nodded.
He showed her all round the farm; the huge sow with
her litter of seven piglets. ‘One died,’ he told Ella, ‘but
she’s rearing the rest.’
Then he took her to a low wall at the bottom of the
yard overlooking the vast expanse of flat fields, the newly
ploughed brown furrows stretching straight true to the
horizon. ‘We farm all this.’ He waved his hand seeming to
encompass all the land as far as they could see. Showing
off, Ella thought, just like a boy.
‘As far as that line of trees. See? Then it’s your grandmother’s
farm.’ He turned round to look at her and there
was a definite note of admiration in his voice as he added,
‘She
owns
all her farm.’