Every Mother's Son (39 page)

They walked together for a short distance, then coming to the parting of the ways they stopped to gaze over the Humber, gleaming with a dark intensity as the sun sank lower. Beatrice and Charles were to take the lower Broomfleet road to the manor whilst Daniel headed up to the top of the dale. They were all unsettled and tense, unable to say goodbye.

Finally, Daniel put out his hand to shake Charles’s. ‘See you again soon, eh,
old chap
?’ he said.

‘I hope so,’ Charles answered quietly. ‘It will seem strange not seeing you every day.’

Beatrice stood on tiptoe to kiss Daniel on his cheek. ‘We shall meet again before long,’ she murmured. ‘Sooner than we think.’

He gazed at her and saw that her eyes were moist. He put his hand to his bristly cheek and joked, ‘I won’t ever shave again.’

He raised his hand as he set off up the footpath that took him through a meadow and towards the top road; he paused to turn round and watch them and saw Beatrice turn too and wave. None of them had said goodbye.

On the top road he looked down and they were lost to view; the Humber was still visible, a dark ribbon dividing east Yorkshire from Lincolnshire, with the last ferry steaming towards Brough from New Holland and other ships and barges like smudges on the water. He cut through Elloughton village but didn’t stop to call on Granny Rosie as her house was dark and the curtains drawn and he didn’t want to disturb her. Besides, he wanted to get home and give all his news there first.

As he strode on upwards he could see the rooftop of the farmhouse partly hidden beneath trees, and smoke issuing from the chimneys. He sniffed and could smell apple-wood and felt a heart-warming sense of coming home. Sheep were grazing in the harvested fields, and in one of the meadows where the piggeries were kept someone was closing them up for the night. Lenny! Daniel gave a piercing whistle and Lenny looked up, putting his hand to his forehead the better to see. Then he gave a sudden wave as he recognized him and set off at great speed towards the farmstead to announce that Daniel was home.

Lenny, Fletcher, Maria, Joseph and Elizabeth were in the yard to greet him, while his mother was at the open door, waiting to welcome him home. Smiling, he put down his pack and opened his arms wide to embrace them all. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s so good to be home.’

Granny Rosie was there too, busily making tea and bringing out cake; she had been staying at the farm to help Harriet during the harvesting.

Daniel looked round the kitchen. Nothing had changed. The big table in the centre of the room, the lamp in the middle of it casting a cosy glow, enough chairs to accommodate them all at one sitting, easy chairs by the fire for those who had five minutes to spare to sit in them.

‘Have you missed me, then?’ he asked.

‘No, not a bit,’ Fletcher, Lenny and Joseph said in unison. ‘But your ma has,’ Fletcher grinned. ‘Cried every night.’ He patted Harriet on the shoulder as she wiped her eyes. ‘She thought you were never coming home.’

‘Not true,’ Harriet objected. ‘Once I got that first postcard from France, I was much easier in my mind. I knew you’d come back when you were ready.’

‘We’ve been a long way, Ma,’ Daniel said softly, and sipped his tea. ‘And it took us a long time to get home from Italy.’

‘You hired horses?’ Fletcher said. ‘How come? Did you have enough money to do that?

Daniel shook his head. ‘Bought them,’ he said, helping himself to a slice of cake. ‘I didn’t know when we left that Charles’s father was worried that we might get stranded and had insisted on giving Charles a banker’s draft as well as making some sort of arrangement with his Swiss bank, so Charles came up with ’idea …’ he paused, ‘or come to think of it, it might have been Beatrice’s idea – she’s full of ideas, is Beatrice – that we buy the ponies rather than hire them and then sell them on before we came home and put ’money back.’

‘And did you?’ his mother asked worriedly. ‘You don’t owe anybody?’

‘I don’t owe anybody, Ma, I’ve even brought a copper or two home wi’ me.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But don’t you want to know about Leo or Marco?’ He glanced at Rosie, who was perched on the edge of her chair as if ready to take flight, and then at his mother who was screwing up her handkerchief into a tiny ball. ‘Where would you like me to start? With finding, without intending to, an uncle and a cousin, or meeting my grandfather who is from one of ’oldest and most noble families in Italy?’

He grinned at the expressions on their faces. ‘Questions, please, and then I want to know what you’ve all been up to while I’ve been away.’

They all listened without interruption as he told them of travelling across France and Switzerland, of meeting Beatrice and her decision to come with them. ‘We couldn’t have stopped her,’ he explained. ‘She was set on it, and as it turned out it was ’best thing ever; cos of her being able to speak other languages, you see,’ he finished lamely. Then he told them about travelling over the Alps on horseback and down into Italy, and there meeting his mother’s brother. ‘Without Leo we’d never have met Marco. We’d never have thought of going to Vernazza and might never have gone to Rome either.’

They were all getting tired and Harriet insisted that Elizabeth and Joseph should go to bed, and that there was plenty of time to hear more the following day. At some time during the evening Harriet and Fletcher had tactically agreed that although they would tell Daniel about Granny Tuke, they wouldn’t discuss the relationship between Christopher Hart and Fletcher in front of Joseph and Elizabeth, as they hadn’t yet been told. However, as Elizabeth was saying goodnight, she blurted out that Granny Tuke had died and they had all been to her funeral. ‘She fell into ’water,’ the little girl said, her bottom lip trembling.

‘How did that happen?’ Daniel was aghast. ‘I’m so sorry, Da.’

‘We don’t know,’ Fletcher said. ‘She must have slipped. Off to bed now, Lizzie.’

‘I’ll go up and read her a story.’ Maria stood up. ‘She’ll have bad dreams otherwise.’

Lenny also decided to go to bed as he had to be up early. ‘I’ve a couple of sows about to farrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll catch up wi’ ’news about Uncle Leonard in ’morning.’ He grinned. ‘I wouldn’t mind being called Leo.’

‘We’ll talk more tomorrow, Daniel,’ Fletcher said. ‘I’m tired too. We’ve had a busy time recently, what with ’harvest and ’funeral and other things too. I’m going up to Hart Holme some time tomorrow. If you want to come wi’ me, I’ll tell you then what’s been going on.’

Daniel turned a questioning glance on his mother after Fletcher and then Rosie went off to bed. ‘There’s too much to tell tonight, Daniel,’ Harriet said. ‘Tomorrow is soon enough.’ She put both hands to his face and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Your bed’s made up as usual. Get a good night’s sleep. I’m so pleased that you’re home.’

‘I hope you’re not too cross with me, Mama,’ Beatrice said anxiously. ‘I thought that … well, I thought that if I asked you if I could travel with Charles and Daniel you might say no, or at least Papa would say no; he would have been anxious, I know.’

‘And did you think that he would be less anxious once we heard from the academy that you had gone without leaving a forwarding address?’ Melissa was determined that her wayward daughter would not get away scot free even though she wasn’t angry with her and wished that she had had some of her adventurous spirit when she was young.

Beatrice was penitent, or at least partly so. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘And it wasn’t Charles’s fault either. I’d planned it in advance, ever since he and Daniel discussed travelling abroad. I didn’t want to be left out.’

‘But you are a female,’ her mother said patiently. ‘Your father would have thought that you were destroying your reputation by travelling abroad without a female companion.’

‘I did think of that, as a matter of fact, but for one thing I didn’t know of anyone who would have come, and for another it would have been embarrassing for Charles and Daniel. After all, the three of us have known each other for ever, and I knew they would look after me. Not that I needed looking after,’ she said in a sudden surge of pique. ‘I was actually very useful to them.’

‘I’m sure that you were,’ her mother agreed, ‘but they could hardly refuse you, could they? However, what’s done is done.’ She smiled. ‘I’m quite sure that you all had a wonderful time and I’m looking forward to hearing about everything you did. When Charles comes down we’ll talk.’

Charles had gone up to speak to his father, who had gone early to bed.

‘Is Papa ill, Mama?’ Beatrice asked anxiously. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Not ill,’ Melissa said, ‘but he’s a little frail at the moment. I’m sure he’ll recover quite rapidly now that you and Charles are home again. He’s had a worrying and anxious time,’ she added as she saw another question hovering on her daughter’s lips. ‘It’s something that needs to be discussed, but perhaps we’ll wait until the morning. Stephen and George are eager to see you. Stephen has something special to tell you and George particularly wants to hear about Rome. He seems to think that you followed his advice!’

The following day Fletcher and Daniel set off together for Hart Holme Manor, Fletcher saying that there were things they needed to discuss and Daniel hoping that he’d also see Beatrice and Charles.

‘Get on with them all right, did you?’ Fletcher asked as they jogged along in the trap.

‘Yeh, of course,’ Daniel laughed. ‘I allus have done.’

‘I suppose you were all on an equal footing, travelling as you did. But how did Miss Beatrice cope? Was that difficult?’

‘Not for Beatrice it wasn’t. To begin with, she introduced me as their cousin, but after a while there didn’t seem to be any need, and in any case once we were travelling across ’Alps we didn’t see many folk and those we did, hikers and travellers like us, didn’t seem to think it strange that we should have a woman with us. There are more women travellers nowadays, Da, they’re becoming very independent.’

Fletcher nodded. ‘And rightly so,’ he said. ‘I found when I was in America that there was a certain kind of freedom for women, but there were some who stuck strictly to the rules of what women could or couldn’t do.’

Daniel smiled. ‘They obviously hadn’t met Beatrice, had they?’ He hesitated, then added, ‘I think she’s a bit nervous about what her father will say about travelling with us without his permission.’

Fletcher cleared his throat. ‘I think she’ll find that he won’t have much to say about it, not in view of recent happenings.’

Daniel turned to him. ‘Why? What’s been going on?’

Fletcher didn’t meet his gaze. ‘Several things,’ he said. ‘Beginning with Granny Tuke. Although I’ve known ’full story for years, as have your ma and seemingly many other folk, Christopher Hart didn’t, even though it concerns him more than anybody, and that’s why I wanted to talk to you, to have it out in ’open. Maria and Dolly know and so does Lenny. Now it’s your turn.’

Melissa had suggested to Christopher when she went to his room to say goodnight that they discuss the issue of Ellen Tuke with Charles and Beatrice the following morning. Christopher demurred slightly, but when Melissa pointed out that they didn’t want it hanging over them whilst the twins were telling them about their journey, he agreed. ‘It’s just that I’m so embarrassed about it,’ he explained.

‘I don’t think that they will be,’ she said. ‘They’ll think of you differently, perhaps.’ She gave a little smile. ‘More human.’

‘Are you suggesting that I’m not?’ he harrumphed.

She kissed his cheek. ‘I know you are,’ she said. ‘But they’ll know that you haven’t always been as proper as you appear to be now.’ Her cheeks dimpled. ‘They’ll love you for your weakness, especially when I tell them that you were seduced.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ he said, with some of his old spark. ‘I’ll tell them myself, or at least I’ll tell Charles that I was drunk and that will keep
him
out of mischief.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Unless he’s already been into mischief, although I rather think that Beatrice and Daniel would have seen to it that he hasn’t.’

When the maid knocked on the sitting room door to announce Fletcher and Daniel, Christopher was leaning with one arm on the mantelpiece, Melissa was standing by the window where she had seen them arrive and Charles and Beatrice rose from where they had been sitting to greet them.

There were a few hesitant strands of strained conversation and then Charles went across to Fletcher and put out his hand. ‘I thought there was a likeness,’ he said. ‘I first saw it that time I came to your harvest.’

Fletcher shook his hand. ‘Yes, Tom told me that you seemed to have noticed a similarity that day.’

‘So he knew, did he, or had you told him?’ Christopher asked.

‘No, sir, I hadn’t, but apparently he’s known ’connection ever since he was a young lad.’ What Fletcher didn’t say was that Tom’s Aunt Mary, the Harts’ nanny, had also known.

Christopher sighed and shook his head as if he didn’t know what to say.

Beatrice came across to Fletcher and gave him her hand, and then impulsively kissed his cheek. ‘I hope you won’t tease me in the way my other brothers do,’ she said quietly, and glancing at Daniel she gave a small huff of breath. Thank goodness Fletcher wasn’t Daniel’s natural father, or all of her plans would come to nought.

‘Will you have coffee?’ Melissa reached for the bell.

‘No thank you, ma’am – Melissa,’ Fletcher said. ‘I’ve come to collect Stephen. We’re meeting some of ’tenant farmers this morning so we’d better get off, if he’s about?’

Charles looked questioningly from Fletcher to his father.

‘We’ve lost our bailiff,’ his father told him. ‘Fletcher has kindly agreed to help out temporarily whilst I’ve been out of commission, but,’ Christopher smiled and it seemed as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, ‘I’m feeling much better now, and Stephen has taken to farming like a duck to water. When he comes in later we’ve several things to discuss, so Charles, if you are still keen to do something other than manage the estate, then we’ll talk about that too.’

The twins glanced at each other and then at Daniel. They all smiled. So that, Beatrice thought, is one hurdle over.