Wish Me Luck (37 page)

‘Have you . . . have you seen his mother yet? Have you seen Meggie?’

Fleur shook her head. Even now, she noticed he used the pet name for Robbie’s mother that she’d never heard anyone else use apart from Pops. Meg’s father called her that too. Maybe that’s what she’d been called as a girl . . .

‘But you will?’ Jake was pulling her thoughts back to the present. ‘You . . . you’ll be going to see her?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then . . . then tell her I’m so sorry, won’t you?’

Fleur raised her head and stared into his face. For a moment a shudder ran through her. The haunted look was back in her father’s eyes and now it was ten-fold in its despair.

‘Of course I will, Dad,’ she said softly. There was a moment’s silence before she added, ‘Dad, will you please tell me what all the mystery is? Don’t you think I have a right to know?’

Jake closed his eyes, sighed and shook his head. ‘They’re not my secrets to tell, Fleur love. If they were, then of course I would tell you. But . . .’

‘But Robbie’s gone. It . . . it can’t hurt him now, can it?’

‘No,’ Jake said sadly. ‘It can’t and I can’t tell you how sorry I am that that’s the case. Poor Meggie. To lose her boy . . .’ He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and coughed to clear the emotion catching his throat. He sighed. ‘Well, if I do tell you, you must promise me one thing first, Fleur.’

‘Anything, Dad. I just want to know. I want to understand.’

He sighed heavily. ‘You might not understand even when I’ve told you it all.’

‘I’d like the chance to try. Mum and I have always clashed – you know that – but I don’t want us to carry on like this – like we are now. It . . . it’s tearing our family apart.’

Jake sighed. ‘To be perfectly honest, I don’t think your knowing about the past will help that. It’s more this business with Kenny that’s coming between you and your mum now.’

‘What about you, Dad? Do you blame me for Kenny joining up?’

His answer was swift and certain. ‘No, love, not for a minute. Like I’ve said before, I’m proud of him – and of you – even though I’m worried sick about you both. But your mother just wants to keep you safe. She doesn’t even want to see the wider picture.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘I think she’d even rather Hitler marched in unhindered than lose either of you.’

Fleur shuddered. ‘Well, I don’t think any of us would last long if he did, do you? Can you imagine his jackbooted cohorts tramping through Britain?’

Jake shook his head. ‘No, I can’t and I don’t even want to try. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’ He glanced at her, their faces almost on a level and so close. ‘We can’t let that happen, Fleur, and it’s up to you and Kenny and all those wonderful young people just like you to stop it. Whatever it costs.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Whatever it costs.’ Already it had cost her everything. It had taken away her future. There was no future for her now that Robbie was gone. Yet she had to summon up the courage to continue the fight Robbie had believed in so passionately. What would happen after the war was over, she dared not think. She couldn’t face the thought of the empty years stretching ahead without Robbie.

Jake was speaking again, pulling her thoughts back to the present. ‘I want your promise that even if you go on seeing his mother now and again – as I’m sure you will – you’ll never breathe a word to her about what I’m going to tell you. It’s not something she’ll want to talk about or even like to think you know about. I don’t want to hurt Meg any more than she’s going to be hurt now. This is going to devastate her, Fleur. Oh, love—’ He touched her arm. ‘I don’t mean to minimize your grief. But you’re young. You’ve a whole life ahead of you—’

Fleur closed her eyes and groaned. ‘But it means nothing without Robbie, Dad. Don’t you see?’

‘I know it feels like that now, but . . . but in time—’

‘No, Dad. You’re wrong. Eternity wouldn’t be long enough. I’ll never get over this. He was all I ever wanted. The only man I’ll ever love.’ She lifted her head and stared him straight in the eyes. ‘And now I want you to tell me about the past. I swear I won’t breathe a word to his mother. But I have to know. I have to try to understand what it is that makes Mum so bitter that she can hardly bring herself to say she’s sorry he’s dead.’

Jake blinked as if that shocked even him. Then he sighed again as he said heavily, ‘All right, then. I’ll tell you. But you must promise me not to say anything to Meggie. Not a word. Not ever.’

‘I promise, Dad,’ Fleur said solemnly.

‘I’m being dreadfully disloyal to her.’ His eyes were full of pain at the thought, though Fleur wasn’t sure if her father was referring to his wife or to Meg Rodwell.

There was a long silence before Jake, haltingly at first, began to speak.

‘I’ll go right back to the beginning. It’s time you knew a few other things besides matters that concern Robbie. It’s high time you knew about your mum and me too.’

He paused again and pulled in a deep breath as if he was about to launch himself over a precipice. Perhaps that’s how it did feel for Jake to talk about things that had not been spoken of for years.

They leant on the gate, watching the sheep, whilst Bess lay panting beside them, as Jake began to speak. ‘You know the big building on the outskirts of South Monkford?’

‘The one that used to be a workhouse? It’s some kind of convalescent place for the forces now, isn’t it?’

Jake nodded. ‘That’s where I was born. And your mum came into the workhouse as a young girl when her mother died.’

‘You were both in the workhouse?’ Fleur was shocked. She would never have imagined that the successful farmer owning Middleditch Farm and all its acres, the man who was well liked and respected in the neighbourhood, could have been born into such lowly circumstances. Then another thought struck her. ‘But . . . but you had a mother. Gran.’ She spoke of the woman who had lived with them for the last few years of her life.

‘Yes.’ Jake’s voice was husky. ‘But I didn’t know I had until . . . until – well, all the bother happened.’

‘All the bother?’

‘Mm.’ He was silent again.

Though she was impatient for him to continue, Fleur held her tongue. Quite literally, for she had to hold it between her teeth to stop all her questions tumbling out.

‘All I knew as a lad was that I’d been born in the workhouse,’ Jake went on as he gazed out across the rolling fields that were all his now. But he was seeing, Fleur knew, pictures and events from the past. ‘I thought I was an orphan. A feller called Isaac Pendleton ran the place. He was what they called the master of the workhouse and the matron was his sister, Letitia Pendleton.
Miss
Letitia Pendleton.’

‘But that was Gran’s name. Except – well – I always thought it was
Mrs
Pendleton. I never knew that she was a . . . a “Miss”. She was always just “Gran”. I’m sorry, Dad. Go on.’

‘As a young girl she’d fallen in love with Theobald Finch.’

Now Fleur gasped and before she could stop herself she interrupted his tale again. It was impossible not to show surprise or ask questions, so she gave up trying. ‘The Finch family who live at the Hall?’

‘Aye, but there’s only Miss Clara Finch left there now. Mr Theobald’ – he paused over the name, still unable to refer to the man in any way other than the name by which he’d always known him – ‘died a while ago.’

‘I do vaguely remember seeing him in the town. I think Mum pointed him out to me once.’ She glanced sideways at her father but his gaze was still far away.

‘Dad, was he – Mr Finch – your father?’

Slowly, he nodded. ‘My mother loved him,’ he said simply, ‘but his family didn’t think her good enough for him. At the time, Isaac – her brother – was running the workhouse with his wife. But she left him – so the rumour went. Isaac took me in as an orphan and Letitia became matron.’ He smiled wistfully. ‘She took the job so that she could be near me, yet she was not allowed to acknowledge me openly.’ Now his smile broadened. ‘As a lad I always wondered why she favoured me. She saved me many a beating from Isaac.’ Now he chuckled. ‘Though I still got plenty.’

‘Oh, Dad!’ Fleur rested her cheek against his shoulder, tears filling her eyes. Jake put his arm about her shoulders and held her close.

‘Don’t cry, love. It’s all a long time ago now.’

‘I know, but I can’t bear to think of you as a poor little boy, believing yourself an orphan and being beaten and growing up in a
workhouse.
I mean, I know it’s a magnificent building, but it was still a workhouse. Why, even now the old folk in the town fear it, don’t they?’

‘Oh yes. We all still live in the shadow of the workhouse. Those of us who grew up there.’ He smiled gently. ‘And even some of those who didn’t. It’s still a threat hanging over us all even if it isn’t a workhouse any more.’

Fleur wound her arms tightly around his waist and nestled her head against his shoulder. She said nothing. The lump in her throat wouldn’t let her, but her actions implied: you’ll never go back in the workhouse, Dad. Not while I’m around.

‘There, there,’ Jake murmured, feeling her compassion. ‘I was a tough little tyke. And then’ – he smiled fondly – ‘Meggie arrived at the workhouse. And she changed my life.’

He didn’t need to elaborate. By the tone of his voice, Fleur could tell he remembered that time as very special. That Meg was very special.

‘She was so – so
alive
,’ he went on. ‘So spirited and . . . and full of daring. D’you know, Fleur, I’d lived in that place all my life and I was— Let’s see, I’d be about fifteen by the time she came and in all that time I’d never ventured out. Never asked to go out to seek work, never really gone out of my own accord. Oh, I knew
how
to get out. Several of the others did. There was a hole in the wall. And once or twice I went through the gates, but I never went more than a few yards.’ He laughed aloud now. ‘Not until she came and took me out with her one day. She went looking for her dad.’

‘The old man? Pops?’

‘Well, he wasn’t old then, love. He was a young man and a bit of a rascal, by all accounts.’ He gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘We were all young once, lass. Even me and Meg.’

‘Oh, I think she still looks young, Dad. She looks years younger than Mum.’ The words were out before she could stop herself. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .’

‘’S all right, love. There’s only you an’ me here.’ He glanced down at the dog, dozing at their feet. ‘And Bess won’t say owt, now will she? But just think a minute. Your poor mam’s a busy farmer’s wife. She can’t dress like Meg and wear those flimsy shoes, now can she?’

‘No, of course not,’ Fleur said hurriedly. Privately, she was thinking that her mother could still make a little more effort even if it was only now and again. ‘But I don’t think Robbie’s mum’s had it that easy. The front room at their house is her sewing room. She’s worked to keep them all. Herself, Robbie and the old man.’

Again, Jake had a faraway look in his eyes as he continued with his tale. ‘Her father, Reuben Kirkland – the old man as you call him – worked for the Smallwoods and so did Meg. She worked in the dairy. And then, Meg’s father had an affair with the Smallwoods’ daughter, Alice.’

Fleur was shocked. ‘Pops did?’

‘Yes. Pops.’ Jake was adamant. ‘Of course, they dismissed him and his daughter, Meg, and then turned the whole family out of their tied cottage – the one old Ron lives in now. Reuben took his family – his pregnant wife Sarah, Meg and her little brother Bobbie – to the workhouse, promising to return to get them out when he’d found other work.’

Fleur was ahead of her father, guessing what had happened. ‘And he never came back for them? He ran away with Alice?’ She paused, taking in all the startling revelations. Then she asked, ‘Did Meg know?’

‘Not then. Not when she first came into the workhouse. She believed him, trusted him. She told everyone that they wouldn’t be there long. That he’d come back for them. She didn’t know why they’d been dismissed. For a while I think she blamed herself.’ He smiled fondly again. ‘She was a cheeky little tyke and she thought the missis – Mrs Smallwood – didn’t like her friendship with her daughter.’

‘Her
friendship? Meg was friendly with Alice too?’

‘Yes. Complicated, isn’t it? So, you see, when she did find out about their affair, she felt doubly betrayed. By her father
and
by her best friend.’

‘So how did Meg find out?’

‘Her mam gave birth to a stillborn child in the workhouse and Meg went in search of her father to tell him. Of course, she didn’t know about her dad and Alice then. She just went to try and find him to tell him about her mam. And she took me with her. We went to the racecourse. She thought her father might be trying to find work there. He was good with horses.’

Fleur nodded. South Monkford racecourse was famous, though sadly neglected since the war had begun.

‘Did you find him?’

‘Oh yes.’ Jake’s face was grim. ‘He was with her. With Alice. Bold as yer like, walking round the racecourse with his arm around her.’

Fleur gasped. ‘Oh, poor Meg!’

‘Yes,’ Jake said thoughtfully. ‘D’you know, as far as I can remember, it was the only time I ever saw Meggie cry.’ Again, he used the pet name as he spoke of her fondly. ‘She was heartbroken and vowed never to forgive her father. Said she’d cut him out of her life for ever.’