Emerald Star (Hetty Feather) Read online

  I took to visiting her every day, after I’d spent hours gutting the wretched fish. Oh Lord, the very smell of them made me retch now, and the arch of their slimy bodies against my hands made me shudder. I dreamed of those popping eyes and gaping mouths night after night. When I was finished, I’d wash my hands for a full five minutes under the pump, using my own cake of soap – but I still fancied I smelled fish whenever I held them to my nose. My hands grew so red raw I could scarcely sew at nights, and it hurt when I clicked my new knitting needles.

  Lizzie was helping me make a shawl. I’d call at the inn mid afternoon, when all the fishermen were slumbering. Tobias himself often lumbered upstairs to take a nap after drinking several pints of his own ale at lunch time. Lizzie and I could hear him snoring above our heads as we sat together in the kitchen.

  ‘Men! It’s hard to distinguish them from pigs sometimes,’ said Lizzie, helping me unpick two rows because I’d dropped a stitch.

  I spluttered with laughter, but added loyally, ‘Except my father.’

  ‘Aye, Bobbie’s a fine man, I’ll grant you that. He used to be a wild one – but Katherine’s kept him on a very tight rein since they were wed.’

  ‘Was he really wild?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘I’ll say,’ said Lizzie. ‘He was always the boldest of lads, utterly fearless. He was the clear leader of all the boys – and as for the girls . . .’

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. ‘He didn’t go after girls like – like Matthew Stevens?’ I blurted out, tormented by the thought of Father winking and grinning and jumping on all the girls.

  ‘No, no! Not at all! That Stevens lad is a menace – steer clear of him.’

  ‘Mina says he’s her sweetheart.’

  ‘She’s still a silly little girl, for all she’s full grown. No, Bobbie wasn’t remotely like the Stevens lad, chasing all the girls. The girls chased him. My goodness, Hetty, he was several years younger than me, but even I’d have chased after him. He was slimmer then, a whip of a lad, but hard muscled with work. His hair was brighter too, and he wore it curling on his neck, and his eyes were the clearest blue. No wonder Evie fell for him.’

  ‘But he left her!’ I said. ‘He is my father and I think him very wonderful, but I cannot forgive him for leaving poor Mama.’

  ‘That’s men for you,’ said Lizzie.

  ‘If only he’d stayed. He should have married Mama. She’d have been a much better wife for him than Katherine!’ I said fervently.

  Lizzie laughed at me. ‘Maybe, though Bobbie seems happy enough with Katherine now,’ she said. ‘Well, he was, till you came along. You’ve not learned to get along with Katherine any better?’

  ‘She won’t try to get along with me! She hates me, Lizzie. And I hate her.’ I clashed my knitting needles together and promptly dropped another stitch. ‘Oh, look now! I cannot get the hang of this silly knitting.’

  I was proud of my nimble fingers when I sewed and knew I could do very fine work – but those same hands fumbled helplessly when I tried to rib and purl and plain. It did not help that every girl child in the village past the age of five could knit beautifully. They carried their wool and needles around with them and knitted casually as they lolled on the rocks or sat on the harbour wall swinging their legs.

  ‘Patience, patience,’ said Lizzie, taking my knitting, deftly manipulating the needle and restoring the stitch to its rightful place.

  ‘Even Big May knits beautifully. She’s making a gansey for her pa and she carries the pattern in her head,’ I wailed.

  ‘She’s had years of practice, Hetty. You want everything to be immediate. You want to knit like a native, you want to be able to gut a fish in seconds—’

  ‘No I don’t! I wouldn’t care if I never saw a single fish again in all my life,’ I said, sniffing my fingers and wincing at the reek still there.

  ‘Well, we’d all starve if there were no fish, so that’s a silly way of talking,’ said Lizzie. ‘You’ll get used to it soon. I’ll lend you my special gutting knife. It’s got a fair old blade on it – you’ll get on well with that.’

  ‘Lizzie, you’re being so kind, but I don’t want to gut fish. Or sell them on the stall or salt them in barrels or fry them in the pan. I don’t want to pluck those flithers from the rocks or crack open mussels. I especially don’t want to bake a crab or boil a lobster. Can’t I – can’t I work in the inn with you?’

  ‘You can’t have a slip of a girl working in an inn. It wouldn’t be decent. And when those old men have sunk a pint or three you’d prefer talking to a shoal of fish, I’m telling you straight. Now stop your silly blathering. We’ll have a cup of tea.’

  ‘I suppose Mama could knit . . . I never saw her knit when we were at the hospital together.’

  ‘I doubt there was any need for fisher-lassies’ shawls and fishermen’s ganseys in the heart of London,’ said Lizzie.

  ‘And we never ate fish at the hospital, so she didn’t have to gut them,’ I said. ‘I’m sure she was right glad of it too.’

  ‘She didn’t work with fish when she lived in these parts,’ said Lizzie. ‘Her folk lived on farmland, three or four miles away. Evie was a milkmaid.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said. ‘So Mama was a country girl!’

  I could have thrown my wretched knitting in the air, rejoicing. I’d been a city girl at the hospital, but I’d had five fine years with my foster family being a country girl myself.

  ‘Tell me more about Mama, Lizzie,’ I said, nestling up to her.

  Lizzie took my knitting from me and started on a few rows herself, to help me out.

  ‘Her folk were farm hands. Evie worked on the farm too as soon as she was in her teens. They have a fine herd of shorthorn cows on Benfleet Farm – they give very creamy milk.’ Lizzie pinched my cheeks. ‘You should drink more milk, Hetty, and make those cheeks rosy and plump.’

  ‘Mama was always slender, yet I’m sure she drank milk every day,’ I said.

  ‘She was like a little elf girl beside us big lassies,’ said Lizzie. ‘But she was strong, mind. She’d haul great churns of milk about when she came to the village on market day in her little donkey cart.’

  ‘She had a donkey!’ I said. ‘Oh, what did she call it?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ said Lizzie, laughing at me. ‘I don’t think it was a pet. She just used it for work.’ She put her head on one side. ‘But of course she gave it the day off on Sundays and dressed it in a bonnet and took it to church with her.’

  ‘Oh, Lizzie! Don’t tease. Tell me more about Mama. What else did she do on the farm? Did she plough the fields?’ I remembered my foster father ploughing with the great shire horses. Jem probably ploughed those same fields now.

  ‘I don’t think lassies plough the fields – leastways, not round here,’ said Lizzie. ‘I expect she fed the chickens.’

  ‘Oh, chickens!’

  ‘And helped with the harvest and went tattie-howking – there’s always work to do on a farm.’

  ‘I know, I know. I lived on farmland when I was little.’ I was so excited I jumped up and whirled around the room. Mama had never been one of these dour women up to their elbows in fish. She was a farm girl and I had been a farm girl too. Oh, we were so alike!

  I was filled with an intense desire to see this farm, to stand in the cow meadows and imagine Mama there.

  ‘Will you take me to see the farm, Lizzie?’ I asked eagerly.

  ‘It’s a little far for me now, Hetty. I have rheumatics in my knees. I doubt I could trek all the way there and back – and it’s not really my place anyway. You had better ask your father, see if he’ll take you.’

  ‘Then I will,’ I said.

  I skipped nearly all the way back to Father’s house, and when I was inside I busied myself darning his socks and a hole in his gansey.

  ‘What are you fussing with his things for?’ said Katherine, frowning. ‘Give them here!’

  ‘I’m mending them. Father said I could,’ I insisted.

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