MATTHEW WAS OUT in the fields when he saw the trap with Maggie and Fred approaching. The land was so flat and the roads so long that it wasn’t possible for anyone to arrive without them being seen from a great distance.
He waved and walked towards them. ‘No work to do, Fred?’ he joked. ‘Taking ’day off?’
‘Just that.’ Fred grinned. ‘What’s ’use of having a fine wife and not enjoying her company? Besides, she wanted to see her ma.’
‘How is she, Matthew?’ Maggie asked anxiously. ‘She’s been on my mind for a week or two.’
‘She’s all right,’ Matthew assured her. ‘She doesn’t complain anyway. Da’s gone into Hull,’ he added. ‘Says he wants a new grain merchant.’
‘Why? What’s wrong with ’one we’ve got?’
Matthew shrugged. ‘He’s just taken it into his head to go, that’s all. You know how he is. Can’t budge him once he’s made his mind up. He went off in a hurry anyway, first thing this morning.’ He moved off. ‘I’ll be up for my dinner afore long. Put ’kettle on when you get home,’ he called.
‘Is Rosa home?’ Maggie called back.
‘Aye, she is. She’s singing.’ He laughed. ‘And playing her squeeze box.’
Rosa had stoked up the fire, made porridge for Matthew’s breakfast and for Jim when he arrived, and taken Mrs Drew her breakfast in bed. Before she sat down for her own breakfast she ran upstairs again and brought down the old squeeze box. She put her thumbs through the leather loops at each side and squeezed it in and out. ‘I wish I knew how to play it,’ she’d murmured.
‘Well, just practise with it,’ Matthew had suggested. ‘Then maybe you’ll get ’hang of it. Onny do it after I’ve gone!’ he added jokingly.
He’d looked at her from across the table. We’re alone and she doesn’t think of me any differently from the way she does of Jim or did of Henry, he thought. Yet I never think of her as my sister, even though we have lived in the same house for over ten years. He watched the way her dark lashes touched her cheekbones as she looked down, the way her mouth softly smiled as she concentrated on finding a note on the instrument. It’s hopeless, he reflected dismally. She told Da that she couldn’t marry any one of us, as she thought of us as her brothers.
She’d looked up and given him a brilliant smile as she found a right note, then gave a small frown. ‘What is it? You look sad!’
‘It’s nowt,’ he sighed and got up from the table.
She touched his bare forearm and it was as if he had been given a powerful magnetic shock. For a moment neither of them spoke, then she said huskily, ‘It’s ’first time there’s been any kind of music since Maggie’s wedding. You’re thinking of Henry, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ he’d said quietly. ‘Henry wouldn’t want us to mope and he liked a bit of music anyway.’ As he went out of the door, he said, ‘I’ll see you at dinner time,’ and had reflected that Henry was the last person on his mind and the only one who filled his thoughts day after day, hour after hour, was Rosa herself.
‘I’ll show you how to play it.’ Fred took the squeeze box from the side table after they had had their midday meal. Mrs Drew had joined them and was very cheerful now that Maggie had come, and wanted to know all that was happening in the town of Hedon.
‘Don’t tell Da, will you, Ma? But Fred and me went to a dance.’ Maggie’s face lit up with delight. ‘Fred bought me a new dress, pale grey muslin with sprigs of flowers on it. Mrs Winter, who lives just a few houses down from us, made it up for me.’
Mrs Drew gave a deep sigh. ‘Oh how lovely, Maggie! And where did you buy ’material? Not in Hedon?’
Maggie leaned forward towards her mother. ‘No. In Hull! I went with Mrs Winter by carrier and we did some shopping, and she helped me choose ’fabric, and then we caught ’carrier back.’ Maggie’s face was bright as she described her shopping trip and her mother exclaimed on her exciting life since she had married Fred.
‘Maggie!’ Fred was bent over the instrument and showing Rosa how to finger it. ‘It don’t matter whether your fayther knows or not about us going to a dance. You’re my wife now and if we want to dance, or sing in ’market square we can do! We don’t have to ask anybody’s permission.’
He looked across at her and smiled, yet he was perfectly serious.
‘I know,’ she said fervently. ‘It’s just that—’
‘Old habits,’ Rosa murmured. ‘Maggie can’t help it, Fred. She’s always been an obedient daughter.’
Fred laughed aloud. ‘Not like you, eh, Rosa? You wouldn’t be playing this forbidden instrument if you were obedient, would you?’
‘It’s different for me,’ she objected. ‘I’m not Mr Drew’s daughter.’
‘Yet you wouldn’t disobey Ma, would you?’ Matthew interrupted.
Rosa shook her head and turned to smile at Mrs Drew, who was watching her with a calm expression on her face. ‘No, but then Aunt Ellen has been like a mother to me. She probably understands me better than my own mother did,’ she added. ‘And she doesn’t hold me back but gives me my freedom.’
Mrs Drew smiled gently. ‘You would have flown from us long ago, Rosa, if I hadn’t. You’re like a wild bird that flies in for shelter and food.’
Rosa came across the room and bent and kissed her cheek. ‘And love,’ she whispered, so that no-one else could hear. ‘I come for that too.’
Mrs Drew stroked Rosa’s face with her thin fingers. ‘I know,’ she said softly. ‘I know. That’s why I wanted you here.’
‘We’re going into Hull next week,’ Fred announced. ‘I’m going to see a lawyer. Now that I’m a married man,’ he winked at Maggie, ‘I’ve got to see my wife’s provided for if owt happens to me.’
‘There’s a lawyer in Hedon that Da uses,’ Matthew said. ‘You don’t need to go into Hull.’
‘Aye, but this one in Hull, Somerville, he looked after my affairs when I was working away, so I’ll use him again. So,’ he looked around him, ‘if there’s owt anybody wants while we’re there?’
Rosa put her fingers to her mouth and contemplated. ‘Is he a learned man, this Somerville? I mean – would he know languages, do you think?’
Fred considered. ‘Don’t know. Mebbe. Aye.’ He shook a finger. ‘He mebbe does when I think about it. He’s got a bit of Latin up on a wall in his room at any rate. I noticed it last time I was there. Why?’
Rosa looked enquiringly at Matthew and wondered if he remembered the foreign papers they had found in her box. He frowned for a moment as he caught her eye, then his face cleared and he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why not!’
‘I’ve got some foreign papers in my box up in the loft,’ she said, in answer to Fred. ‘I don’t know what they are.’ She looked towards the door as it opened and Jim came in. He was wet and muddy and late for his dinner. ‘Jim!’ she said. ‘We’d given you up. I’ve kept your dinner hot.’
‘No hurry.’ He leant against the back of a chair and nodded towards his sister and Fred. ‘I need to get this muck off me first.’
Rosa turned again to Fred. ‘I think they might have belonged to my father. His name was on them anyway.’
Jim straightened up. ‘Your da? His name on what?’ His eyes flashed piercingly between Rosa and Fred.
Rosa blinked and thought what an odd question when Jim had only caught the tail end of a conversation.
‘Some papers I found,’ she said briefly. ‘They had my father’s name on them.’
‘Oh!’ Jim ran his hand over his whiskery chin. ‘I see. I’ll just go and get cleaned up,’ he muttered, and went out of the room.
‘What’s ’matter with him?’ Maggie began. ‘He allus looks as if he’s just lost a shilling!’
‘Shall we bring the chest down from ’loft and put it in your room?’ Matthew interrupted to ask Rosa. ‘Seeing as Fred and Jim are both here.’
Rosa looked at him, remembering that they were going to ask Henry to help them bring it down, and merely nodded as she realized that Matthew’s thoughts were elsewhere and not on his dead brother.
‘By heck, but it’s heavy. What’s in it?’ Jim stood halfway up the ladder with his back to the trap door whilst Matthew eased it down from the loft space onto Jim’s back, with Fred waiting with arms at the ready to balance it and take some of the weight.
‘Only linen and china,’ Rosa said from the bottom of the ladder. ‘My gran packed it, she said she’d put in things I might need one day.’
Jim grunted. ‘She put in ’stone sink by ’weight of it, and her smoothing iron.’
‘We’ll shift it into your room, Rosa,’ Matthew said, once it was down, ‘then you can look for your papers again.’
She smiled her thanks. ‘I know where they are.’ She had been up into the loft several times on her own, when the men had been out on the farm and Mrs Drew asleep. She had fetched a ladder from outside and climbed up, pushing the heavy trap door open, and had sat by the side of the chest with a lighted candle in her hand, fingering the linen or holding the sheets of parchment with the foreign lettering up to the candle flame, trying to decipher what the words meant. Then when she had finished she had always carefully tucked them away again under the folds of linen, so that she would know where to find them the next time.
She thanked the men for their efforts and closed her bedroom door to take the papers from the chest in private, and wondered why Jim was shuffling his feet and hovering around when she’d said she would only be a minute.
‘I’ll take care of ’em,’ Fred said, when she gave them to him. ‘They look official.’ He glanced through them and Jim came to peer over his shoulder. ‘Might be a last Will and Testament like I’m going to do.’
‘That’s what we thought, didn’t we, Matthew?’ Rosa said vaguely, wondering if she was doing the right thing by letting them go.
‘Why, have you seen ’em afore, Matthew?’ Jim asked and when Matthew said that he had, commented, ‘You never said owt!’
‘Why should I?’ Matthew rebuked sharply. ‘They’re not mine to discuss. They belong to Rosa.’
Jim lowered his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean owt. I just wondered why they’d not been mentioned afore, that’s all. Squeeze box was brought down and talked about.’
‘I forgot about them, Jim.’ Rosa suddenly felt sorry for him. He seemed such an abject forlorn figure. ‘We were going to bring ’chest down and then, what with Maggie getting married and Henry—’ she faltered. ‘It didn’t seem so important.’
‘Ah!’ Jim turned away. ‘Da’s not seen ’em, I suppose?’
She stared at him in surprise. ‘Why no. Of course not! No-one has, not until today.’
‘Ah!’ he said again and stood pondering, one hand on the doorknob. ‘Not worth mentioning really,’ he mumbled. ‘He wouldn’t be interested. Not in some old papers.’
Rosa stared at him. What was he trying to say? She glanced enquiringly at Mrs Drew, who in turn was watching Jim with such a look of grief etched on her face that it was as if tears were not far away.
‘I hadn’t thought of mentioning them, Jim,’ Rosa said. ‘As you say, your da wouldn’t be interested.’
Jim went out of the room, muttering something about seeing to the horses, and there was a sudden potent silence.
‘He’s a funny fellow, that brother of mine,’ Maggie declared. ‘I never could make him out. Except when I was very young,’ she added. ‘When I was just a bairn. He used to look after me then, didn’t he, Ma? It was after he left school that he changed.’
Mrs Drew gave a deep deep sigh. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘When he started work with your father and when the Irish were here working on ’embankments and digging dykes and drains and laying sluices. It was a period of great change on Sunk Island.’ She looked at Rosa. ‘It was during ’time when your ma met your father and brought him here to meet Mr Drew.’
‘To meet Da?’ Maggie exclaimed. ‘Why ever would she want to do that? Da is hardly welcoming to strangers.’
Her mother suddenly became nervous and confused. ‘I have often wondered that myself,’ she said. ‘But she did. I remember distinctly, when I went to answer ’door as she knocked. ‘‘Mrs Drew,’’ she said. ‘‘This is Mr Carlos from Spain.’’ Her eyes were shining like stars and I could see that she was very taken with him by ’way she looked at him. ‘‘I’ve brought him to see Mr Drew.’’ That’s what she said.’
Mrs Drew looked around at them all. At Maggie sitting with Fred, at Rosa and Matthew. ‘It was later that Jim became moody.’ She sighed again and her fingers played distractedly around her mouth. ‘I think his father worked him too hard. He forgot that he was just a boy and he gave him a man’s responsibilities.’ Then she lowered her head as if in contrition that she had unwittingly criticized her husband.
Fred broke the tension. ‘Come on then, Rosa, I’ll play this old squeeze box and you can give us a dance before Maggie and me make tracks for home.’
She gave him a swift smile and asked him to wait a moment, and dashing out of the room returned a few moments later with her thick plait unbraided, and her mother’s silk shawl which she draped not around her shoulders but around her waist, so that as she swayed to the rhythm the fringes around the edge of the shawl rustled and whispered against her skirt.
‘Make her some castanets, Matthew,’ Fred laughed as he urged a tune out of the old music box. ‘She’ll look like a proper Spanish dancer then.’
Rosa closed her eyes and clicked her fingers high above her head and her black hair drifted around her shoulders, and Matthew, watching her, knew that he had lost her; that she was gone elsewhere, to her father’s mythical castle in Spain, to a dreamland that was warm and colourful, full of flowers and music and happy laughing people who sang and danced and kissed.