Chapter Twenty Six

The Forest, 1907

T he postman arrives when Hester is snipping rosemary sprigs in her narrow front garden. The flowers have faded, the bees have had their fill, and she will dry the sprigs on the deep stone kitchen window sill before storing them in jars. Some she will pound into a poultice with ginger to reduce swelling, a common enough need among her more elderly patients with their arthritic fingers.

The letter is addressed in an unfamiliar hand. Hester tucks it into her apron pocket while she finishes her task. Ellen’s laugh and a squeal from Rose drift on the warm air from behind the cottage. Likely the kitten is entertaining her daughters. The creature is a plump thistledown of marmalade stripes and white chest, playful when not curled on a cushion in exhausted sleep.

Hester mourns the loss of the tabby, misses her dry wisdom, their shared lives. She passed in the winter, six months ago. Hester found her in her basket one frost-rimed morning, curled and still warm, her old heart having surrendered at last. She and the girls buried her by the stream, and in the spring Ellen planted catnip over the small grave.

‘Can you hear what the kitten says?’ Rose had asked of Hester and Ellen the day Hester brought the mewling bundle home.

The tiny wide-eyed creature nestled in Hester’s basket against a brown paper bag of flour. Both kitten and flour had been purchased at the mill along the lane, the miller assuring Hester the cat would excel at keeping her kitchen and larder mice-free, coming as it did from a long line of mouse hunters.

‘No,’ Hester said. Probably because the kitten – which Rose has named Pumpkin – is too young. Hester, unwilling to invoke old grudges, forbore to mention this.

Ellen had stroked the silky head with a forefinger while, with a proprietorial air, Rose lifted Pumpkin from the basket and bore him into the kitchen in search of milk.

Laying the last of the rosemary stems in her basket, Hester smiles at Rose’s childlike squeal. The girl has forgotten herself for a moment, for at sixteen, Rose has adopted airs which she believes appropriate to her advanced years. She will visit Catherine in Shiphaven and come home with kid gloves, or a straw boater with blue ribbon to match her startling eyes, and show these off to her mother and sister with the condescending grace of a duchess.

Hester has protested to Catherine, who gleefully pretends to be sorry and brings out her old excuse that, in a houseful of boys rapidly growing into men, Rose must be the daughter she will never have, and what harm is there in gloves and hats? Ellen could have them too, if she wished, says Catherine with generous eagerness – she would love to spoil the older girl in the same way. Ellen thanks her and says kid gloves would be ruined by weeding, and Catherine gifts her lacy undergarments, embroidered nightgowns and creams for her hands which are more heavily scented, although no more efficacious, than the salves Hester makes.

In the kitchen, Hester lays the rosemary on the sunny sill, searching through the open window for her daughters. They are sitting on the grass in the shade of the oak, teasing Pumpkin with a trailing pink ribbon. The kitten bats at the light material, chasing after it when Rose flicks it away. A mental count assures Hester both girls’ duties are done for the time being, so she allows them their play.

The sun and her rumbling stomach say noon has arrived. She takes the kettle from the range and walks outside to the pump. Hens gather at the edges of her skirt, clucking in hope of either a caress or corn, or both.

‘Shoo, you silly birds.’ Hester pulls her skirt close with her free hand. ‘You’ll have me head over heels, and then where would we be?’

‘Mama,’ Ellen calls. ‘Come and see what Pumpkin is doing.’

‘I can see from here.’ Hester bends to the pump, lifts the handle, lowers it. Water gurgles before erupting with a spurt. While she knows this trick and has stood well away, her hand is splashed with ice cold drops.

When the kettle is filled, she says to her daughters, ‘This afternoon we’ll go to the meadow. There’s much we need to prepare for winter.’

‘I’ll stay here.’ Rose scrambles up from the grass, brushes her cotton skirt and picks up Pumpkin. ‘I want to practise the receipt Mrs Bryce gave me for her meringues. I’ve promised to take some to Catherine.’ She rolls her eyes, another childlike gesture. ‘We have enough eggs.’

Yes, they have eggs. Eggs which they sell to the shop in the village to help their meagre income. Hester doesn’t want eggs wasted on meringues and thinks of forbidding the receipt testing before she decides she can use the yolks to make an omelette for their supper. Who knows when the ability to make meringues will be useful? Or is the girl thinking of becoming a cook?

When they sit to their dinner of bread and cheese, and Hester removes her apron, she remembers the letter in her pocket. She pulls it out, puzzling over the handwriting as she takes her knife and slits the seal. She scans the first few lines, and her hand goes to her mouth.

Mrs Cooper, the widowed Mrs Appleby’s long-serving housekeeper, writes to make Hester aware her employer is gravely ill. Will Hester bring Ellen to see her, as Mrs Appleby fears this may be the last opportunity to speak with her granddaughter?

Rose is not mentioned. The girl visited once, two years after Hester and Ellen’s initial introductions, and neither Rose nor the Applebys had shown interest since.

‘They’re your grandparents, Ellie,’ Rose had said on the train home. She shrugged. ‘They don’t care for me, they’re merely polite. I would much prefer to stay with Aunt Catherine.’

For the rest of the journey, Rose gazed at the landscape, hands clasped in her lap, letting the greening spring fields pass by without comment.

Hester had not insisted. Although painful reminders of Aaron’s absence, she and Ellen dutifully visit the house near Shrewsbury each summer, and Hester travelled alone there on the occasion of Mr Appleby’s death and funeral. A heart attack, found dead in the tomato bushes by the gardener early one morning three years ago.

‘Ellen.’ Hester hands her daughter the letter. ‘Sad news about your grandmother. Will you come with me, give her the comfort of seeing you for what may be the last time?’

‘Of course, Mama.’ Ellen shifts her gaze to Rose. ‘And Rose too?’

‘I’m not invited.’

Although Rose says it lightly, there’s a taint of bitterness.

‘You would be welcome, I’m sure,’ Hester says, and Rose tosses her a glare which brings her silence.

‘Given Papa is not here’ – Rose’s lightness of tone is countered by the glitter in her eyes – ‘I don’t see why we, you, keep up this pretence in any case.’

The statement lies on the table next to the loaf of bread.

‘It seems we won’t be required to keep up this pretence much longer,’ Hester says. ‘I, for one, don’t regard it as such.’

‘You’re too polite, Mama.’ Rose takes the bread knife and slices the solid crust. ‘I’m sorry the old lady is dying, and I should be nicer myself.’ She passes Hester a thick slice along with a beseeching flick of her eyes. ‘I’m right, however. She has no wish to see me, the foundling, when she has a real granddaughter to fuss over.’

‘Rose, no.’ Ellen’s protest comes quickly. ‘I’m sure Grandmother doesn’t think of you as the foundling. No more than Mama and I do, or Catherine and Cornelius.’ She lays a hand on her sister’s bare arm, her lips quivering. ‘You’re my sister in every way which counts, and you absolutely mustn’t believe such things.’

‘What about our other grandmother? The one here in Shiphaven?’ Rose’s challenge takes up residence beside the statement about their missing Papa.

Hester sighs. ‘My mother has never treated you and Ellen with any difference.’ This is true, as Lydia has never been overtly affectionate towards either girl, and more recently what affection she did show has been dampened by illness.

In the early days of her marriage to Joseph Michaels, Catherine’s father, happiness bolstered by wealth and social status nurtured Lydia’s generosity like spring showers after winter’s frosts. Hester’s daughters had opened themselves to their grandmother’s beneficence with the eagerness of sunflowers at noon. Time spent shopping, Sundays and holidays promenading with the rest of the Forest at the Harbour, arm-in-arm, strolling beside the coal barges and sailing ships, showing off new hats and dresses, trips into Gloucester for tea and cake, the theatre. Lydia enjoyed the role of Lady Bountiful and who more appreciative than two wide-eyed little girls?

These days, an illness which the combined skill of Hester and various doctors cannot cure has curdled Lydia’s temper. Joseph is patient as ever, unstinting in affection and all the care money can buy. Hester’s gratitude to this good-hearted man, which began when he rescued her from poverty and humiliation when Ellen was born, will never end.

Ellen dips her knife in the pot of yellow butter, smears the result on her bread. ‘Poor Grandmama is ill, in pain, and finds it hard to be cheerful with anyone or anything.’ She gives Rose what, for Ellen, passes as a glare. ‘Be kind, sister.’

‘Very well.’ Rose wrinkles her nose, a sign of discomfort, and draws the butter pot towards her. ‘It doesn’t change the fact I won’t visit our other dying grandmother. Not being invited is a good enough reason, don’t you agree, Mama?’

Ellen, the peacemaker, seeks to smooth the troubled waters. ‘Catherine will be thrilled to have you.’ She taps her chin. ‘It must be a whole month since you stayed with her.’

She grins and Rose laughs.

***

The afternoon sun pummels Hester’s wide-brimmed straw hat, and her hair is damp beneath the hot shade. The hessian sack she has carried to the meadow is filled with red-tinged yellow trefoil, creamy meadowsweet, the dense, purple spikes of self-heal, and white clusters of yarrow.

At the far edge of the field, Ellen fills her basket with the searing blue of cornflowers. The hot summer has brought many complaints of red, itching eyes, and Ellen’s soothing infusion is highly regarded.

Hester watches her daughter, searching the haze of butterflies, bees and insects for a glimpse of the shadow she has often seen of late. The bent crone, her own basket slung on her arm, will inspect the contents of Ellen’s, poking with fingers twisted as blackthorn. Today is too hot for ghosts, for Ellen does not proffer her gatherings for inspection, or smile, or frown. Hester suspects this is the shade of Aaron’s Mother Lovell, come to check the progress of his daughter. She hopes the old witch approves.

Oftentimes Hester expects to see a second shadow beside her daughter. So far, she has not caught Aaron’s tall figure crouched amid the blooms or squatting by a hedgerow, Ellen and Rose alongside, all attention as their father explains the healing properties of hawthorn or elder. She is glad. His shade’s absence declares her husband lives. Somewhere.

Ten years has dulled the ache in her chest and worn the sharpness from the edges of her bitter sorrow. Aaron was hers and the girls for six years, and Hester is grateful. The time was always borrowed.

She blames herself for being blind to the deeper need in him, his desperate search for redemption, as he more than once told her. No amount of assurance that Marianne was the mistress of her own fate appeased him. More fool Hester for taking silence as resolution, for assuming his contentment with their lives beside the river matched hers. If the goddess had tried to warn her, Hester’s ears were closed.

After his first abandonment, Aaron had found her when her need for him was at its most urgent. Her own fault, driven by a selfish love, to have taken the return as permanent.

Still. Ten years is a long time with no contact. The doubts nag at her, wake her in the grey seconds before dawn. Does he think of her? Does he miss them? Why has there been no letter, no homecoming, however brief? No explanation, apology … blank nothing. Aaron is alive. But in what condition does he live? Or – Hester lifts her hot face to the sun – does her same selfish love refuse to accept her husband has cut her, and his daughters, from his life?

Hester blinks in the glare. These are well worn questions which remain without answers. One day, if she is lucky, she might learn the truth.

She peers inside the sack, decides she has sufficient for today and waves to Ellen, calling across the shifting cloud of insects.

‘Time to leave.’

They meet at the stone stile, the one where Aaron refused to teach the young Hester what he knew, had cast her off with a rough voice to send her fleeing across the field with burning cheeks.

Her pulse thrums. Of the places where Aaron’s ghost might be found, the stone stile should be among them. All that is here, however, is the memory of her own humiliation haunting her until courage – or desperation – overcame sense and she sought him out one midsummer eve.

Did the seeds of his abandonment lie here in this colourful field? Hester is a responsibility Aaron never sought, in fact, resisted. She forced herself into his life. Yes, her own selfishness is to blame.

Ellen has climbed the stile, and Hester hands her the sack and prepares to follow. She smiles her thanks at her daughter, gathers to herself the warm glint in Ellen’s tawny-flecked eyes.

The girl vindicates every action, every decision. Hester would be selfish all over again, endure the hardships, the ostracism from family and society which she suffered alone, and very young, to ensure the gift of Ellen.

Hester takes the sack and leaves memory on the other side of the stile.

‘We can sort these after our visit to Mrs Appleby,’ she says. ‘Rose can help. It’s hard to imagine in this heat, but winter will soon be here with the villagers’ coughs and gripes.’

Ellen gently swings her basket. ‘We should take willow bark, Mama, to ease her.’

‘We will, daughter, we will.’