Chapter Twenty Nine

M ara steps from the cottage, her walking boots laced, and a raincoat, bottle of water, an apple and her notepad and pen stuffed into her hiking backpack.

The weather has cooled, ideal for walking. Mara unfolds her Ordnance Survey map, refolds the unwieldy paper to show her route and walks up the lane to a ridge. From here she has a view across fields to the Severn – brown today – to the power station on the far bank and beyond to the Cotswolds. The thatched cottages of the Cotswolds are on her visiting list, and she adds them to things to do with Josie when she gets here.

Meanwhile, this morning’s walk has a more immediate purpose, triggered by Dorrie saying Hester’s family came from Shiphaven. Williams.

In the liminal time between darkness and the first stirrings of dawn, Mara had dreamed of strolling in a churchyard at dusk and of a soft-edged figure lingering by the church wall. She had woken with a start, pulling herself upright, staring into the dim light, remembering …

… the day she arrived in the Forest, her need for air and exercise after two days of travelling, and her desultory exploration of the churchyard opposite the Victoria Hotel. The ghostly shape of the man turning her veins to ice. The name on the gravestone: Williams.

Coincidence, ghosts, or the intervention of the goddess, Dorrie has set Mara a new direction to follow. She tried calling the church this morning to ask if the parish register was available. When there was no answer, Mara decided to hike there. If nothing else, she would enjoy a long walk and become better acquainted with Sabrina.

The river path takes her above low cliffs, winding between birch and oak, blackberry brambles snatching at her jacket, nettles growing in patches between clumps of ferns; and beside the water where the path tops earthen flood banks protecting fields from the daily tides. Defined by debris and puddles, the height of those tides amazes Mara. Rare outbursts of sun warm her head and shoulders, the walking is easy, and she lets her thoughts swirl like the incoming waters in the cleft in the bank.

Uppermost is her last call with Peter while Mara paced the library car park, the wooden tone of his demands about her returning to Australia, the woman calling his name, and the lie about the restaurant.

Examining this evidence of likely betrayal, Mara tests its ability to cause her further grief. There is pain, of course. She finds, however, she can add this latest piece of the puzzle to the accumulation of months of such hints with less heartache than she might have thought. The frequent trips, weekend absences, late nights and inattentive calls have transformed into solid objects thrown on top of the other, like overturned wagons, chairs and tables, to form a barricade against hurt with herself hunkering behind them.

Once, in Adelaide, this was all she had bar the routines of daily life. Here, in the Forest, she has fallen into a new life. Her immersion in her search for Aaron, her discovery – real or imagined – of river nymphs, Sabrina, the spirits of St Ceyna, have given her a life which is not dependent on Peter, on the demands of a betrayed marriage.

With a jolt of guilt, Mara adds Jack Hewson to her list. Whatever feelings she holds for her blue-eyed landlord, the bottom line is she is content, comfortable in his company.

Mara likes these changes. She is energised. Alive.

She halts at a fallen tree to take a drink from her water bottle, holds the bottle loosely in her hands.

Energised and alive or not, she’s sadly deluding herself. Come late September, Mara will have to set aside these elements of her new independence. The inevitable confrontation with Peter and the grief likely to heap upon her will need to be confronted. No more procrastinating. Not yet, Mara whispers. Not yet.

As Mara bends to put the bottle in her backpack, a darkness on the stony cliff face a short way upriver, where the cliff folds in on itself, catches her attention. Curious, she steps closer to the edge, peers at the dark stain. The grey stone is blackened, scorched in a way which suggests a fierce fire burned here. The marks stretch to the bend in the cliff, about two thirds of the way up from the level of the river.

A fire on a boat? Mara recalls the reports in the articles Miss Griffiths found, written in the 1950s, of strange happenings on the Severn. Flames, fire, ghoulish shrieking. Despite her exercise-gained warmth, Mara shivers, tiny shards of ice pricking her skin. Another of Sabrina’s tricks?

There’s the tale, too, of the fisherman who drowned, dragged into the depths near Barnley by a many-armed creature, with Hester and Aaron said to play a part in the tragedy.

The fisherman came from Shiphaven. What was the date? Mara perches on her felled tree and scrabbles in her backpack for her notepad. She flicks through, searching. 1891, summer. And the name, Jem Stokes. While the body was never found, it’s another reason to explore the parish register, see if his death is recorded. Out of interest rather than relevance.

An hour later, Mara reaches St Stephens in Shiphaven. On the way, she passed the path to the King’s Shilling and thought she might call in there on her way home to Lavender Cottage if she has anything of interest to tell Jack. An inner voice teases her, any excuse to be with Jack, and Mara tosses her head and pushes back with the ‘we’re just good friends’ line. She tries hard to believe it.

Entering the churchyard via a gate at the bottom of a short hill, Mara threads her way past gravestones. The grave with the Williams name was near the church corner as viewed from the lych gate. She walks past the front of the church to the corner, moves among the headstones. There he is.

Stanley Williams. Called to God, 12 Oct 1888 aged 53 yrs. Loving husband and father. Safe in the arms of Jesus.

Mara crosses her arms and berates herself for not remembering earlier, and immediately makes the excuse she hadn’t been aware of the Shiphaven connection. Mr Williams’ strong hint had come too early and at a time when Mara’s head wasn’t in the proper place for receiving messages from the dead. Goosebumps play hot and cold on her arms despite the sun’s best efforts to burn off the cloud.

The closed great wooden front doors of the church give way to Mara’s twist of the cast iron handle and a shove. She prays the vicar is here, and the parish register available.

Thirty minutes later, Mara pulls the door from the inside and steps into the afternoon. The patchy sunshine has spread, more sun than cloud, and the warmth is soft on her face after the chill of the church vestry. She makes her way to the lower gate, hitches her pack to sit more firmly and sets off with unhurried strides. What she discovered in the church jumps around in Mara’s mind with the clatter, clatter of a steam train. She needs to think about how to deliver her extraordinary news.

***

All lunch time, Jack has pulled beers and ciders which Emmy lifted onto trays and carried into the beer garden. The earlier cool cloudiness gave way to blue sky and warmth, and the patrons ate outside, basking like lizards on stone. They’ve left, and he, Emmy and Tom are deep into cleaning up.

Freed from customer demands, Jack diligently scrubs the bar and grudgingly lets his mind play on Dorrie’s arch comments about how neither he nor his dad took after Grandfather Billy, and also Rose’s strong reaction to Edward being teased as a foundling.

What was the old girl getting at? He polishes the bar taps to a mirror shine and decides she was getting at nothing, merely remembering an old (and discouraged) joke. If there was any more to it, any scandal in the family, it could lie buried as far as Jack’s concerned. Unlike Mara, he’s not keen on digging up old history. God knows what skeletons could fall out of what closet.

‘Is it too late for a girl to get a drink around here? Non-alcoholic of course.’

He spins about. Mara’s here, a backpack slung over one shoulder, hair mussed as if she’s been running her hands through it. Her eyes are serious, and Jack turns his irritation about delving into the past to silently castigating the bastard husband if it turns out the man’s been hassling Mara again.

‘Welcome.’ He puts aside his cloth. ‘Been hiking? What would you like to drink?’

‘Yes, hiking.’ She leans on the bar, says she’ll have water because the pub is closed and she doesn’t want him to lose his licence. She tries a half-smile. ‘Do you have a minute? I’ve just come from St Stephens, looking at the register.’

She holds his eyes with her dark ones and Jack thinks he might fall into those pools …

‘Exciting news?’ Jack pours the water while his pulse skips with unwarranted nerves. Whatever Mara has found, it’s not all good. Otherwise, she’d be bubbling with the thrill of discovery.

‘Exciting, yes.’ She takes the water. ‘Come and join me outside, with a drink.’ She scrunches her face. ‘You might need it.’

Jack pours a beer, follows Mara into the garden. Here he was, just thinking of skeletons in closets. Has Mara opened a door and some horror has fallen out?

Emmy calls out that she’s finished and is off, and Jack waves his thanks. He sits opposite Mara, takes a swig of the cool drink.

‘Right, Sherlock, what’s up?’

Mara does the half-smile thing and launches straight in. ‘Dorrie’s comment about the Williams coming from Shiphaven sent me there,’ she says, and he murmurs his understanding. She eyes him with careful scrutiny. ‘Ellen’s baptism is there, with Hester as the mother and no father, which tells us what we already knew, that Ellen was illegitimate, without saying who the father was.’

‘At least we know when she was born, right?’ For some reason, Jack wants to keep the conversation on the Williams.

‘We do, although the Census told us pretty much the same.’ Mara leans towards him. ‘What proved interesting, however, wasn’t about the Williams.’ She takes another gulp of water, eyeing Jack over the rim. ‘Rose is there,’ she says. ‘Not as Rose Williams, nor as Rose Appleby.’

Her hesitation forces Jack into speech. ‘As what?’ he demands. A warning roils in his gut. ‘Spit it out.’

Mara’s gaze is steady on Jack’s face. ‘She’s there as Rose Stokes, born May 1891, daughter of Jem Stokes and his wife Jane, both of whose deaths are recorded a few weeks later, with a sad note that neither body was ever found.’

Jack’s mind slows to a limping spiral. He tries to pick this news apart, its implications. ‘Jem Stokes?’ Why does the name ring bells?

‘The fisherman.’ Mara’s voice is as steady as her eyes. ‘The man Hester jilted, who led a lynch mob up the river at midsummer 1891, claiming she’d stolen his baby. His baby, it turns out, who was named Rose.’

A confusion of implications tumble in Jack’s head. He swallows a large gulp of his beer, stares at Mara and says the first thought which emerges from the mist. ‘You think this is our Rose, my grandmother? I mean,’ he blusters because there’s a piece of this tale he senses he doesn’t want to comprehend, ‘Rose was a common name in those days.’

‘Yes.’ Mara concedes the point, adding, ‘Except the coincidence of the dates, and you remember Dorrie saying Hester used to call Rose her gift from the goddess, and how Rose blew up when your dad was called a foundling by the other boys?’

‘Hester pulled the baby from the river?’

Mara pulls in her lips. ‘What else? She could have been washed ashore and Hester found her, saved her, and for whatever reason didn’t give her back.’ She hmms. ‘Gave her the same surname as herself and Ellen, Williams. And didn’t change it after she married Aaron.’

‘A foundling,’ Jack murmurs. Which leads to another, happier thought. He cheers immediately. ‘You mean, Ellen and Rose weren’t sisters?’

‘Exactly. They grew up as sisters of course, which counts for a lot.’

A strange light gleams in Mara’s eyes. Jack’s missing something and he’s content about that. He carries on with the Ellen and Rose line.

‘Are you saying we’re not second cousins, blood relations?’

‘Yes.’

Jack’s heart does another skip. ‘My real great granddad isn’t your Aaron Appleby,’ he says. The horrifying realisation insists on dawning. ‘It’s the fisherman?’ Jack might be sick on the grass of the beer garden. ‘That brutish man Hester jilted and whose poor wife …’ He blinks. The poor wife who was Jack’s great grandmother … ‘You mean the bastard who drove his wife to suicide, with her baby, is my great grandfather?’ His head hurts.

‘Looks like it.’

Mara covers Jack’s hand with her own. He’s grateful.

The cheer of discovering he and Mara aren’t related is punched into a whimpering mass of hurt by the discovery he’s the descendant of the monstrous fisherman.

‘This,’ Jack tells Mara bitterly, ‘is living proof that my reluctance to learn about family is totally justified.’ He gulps more beer. ‘What a blot to discover on the family tree. Horrible to think his blood flows in my veins. I mean ...’ Jack has a nightmarish vision of himself driving a woman to her death.

‘Hmm.’

‘What?’ Jack demands of Mara’s non-committal murmur.

‘Everyone has scoundrels in their family.’ She shrugs. ‘And while we haven’t known each other for long, I’d bet my last dollar you have none of the fisherman’s nastiness in you.’

She lifts her hand from his and Jack misses the touch.

‘Besides –’ the amber shards in Mara’s eyes glint ‘– I kind of adore the idea you and I are friends. It gives closure after a hundred years to what must have been bitter enmity between the Stokes and the Williams, even if no one alive remembers.’

‘Friends,’ Jack says. He stares into her eyes, willing more than friendship to shine from them, and husband be damned. She returns his steady gaze for an instant and glances away. Her cheeks flush, and Jack is both delighted and sad.

‘Not cousins,’ he murmurs.

It’s not perfect, doesn’t let him bring the emotions he feels for this beautiful dark-haired woman out from the deep place he’s stowed them. She’s still married.

He concedes not being cousins is an improvement, despite the high price he’s paid learning the manic fisherman is his grancher.