Free The Harbour Girl by Val Wood Page B

younger children for a few hours so that his daughter could have some time to herself or with friends. Susan was eighteen and her hopes, if she had ever had any, of having a husband of her own must be rapidly fading with so little opportunity to meet people. Her younger sister Ida was courting a fisherman. The youngest girl, and Stephen, who was now eight, no longer needed constant attention, but Susan’s role of housekeeper to her father and surrogate mother to her siblings was a duty it would be difficult for her to abandon.
    ‘You should have married again, Josh,’ she murmured. ‘It would have been best for you all.’
    Josh nodded. Like Ethan he was not communicative; he kept his worries close to his chest. ‘Mebbe I should. But what woman would’ve taken on a man with a house full of children?’
    She smiled. He was a handsome amiable man. ‘A few, I should think, but your bairns are almost all full grown now, and maybe Susan won’t want to relinquish her position.’
    ‘But Ethan,’ he said. ‘What to do about him?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Mary replied. ‘There’s nothing to be done. Jeannie has set her sights and her heart on this fellow Harry. I only hope she’s not making a big mistake.’
    Josh heaved a sigh. ‘I hope not too, but Ethan’s heart will be broken, I know that. I know my lad.’
    March turned to April and the days were getting longer, the evenings cool but pleasant. Jeannie took to taking rambling walks after work, to parts of Scarborough which she normally wouldn’t visit. She walked beyond and above the Spa, admiring the rose gardens and the tree planting that was taking place for the benefit of visitors coming to the resort. Sometimes she walked in the parks, or gazed through the railings at the locked square gardens to which only the private householders had a key.
    Sometimes she climbed the hill overlooking the North Bay and stood gazing at the power of the sea as it hit the rocks, or watched the ships dipping between the watery ridges of the choppy ocean. This eastern coastline was notorious for its shifting currents and the vagaries of its weather, which could change instantly from bright sunshine to enveloping sea mist, from gentle breeze to gale-force wind.
    She made her way down the cliff and walked along the sands almost to the boundary of Scalby before turning about and returning home. There were times when she wished she could take out a boat and row or sail in the bay and round the headland towards the harbour. There was talk of a road or promenade being built to join the north and south bays, but it had come to nothing, though plans were being drawn up for pleasure gardens and landscaping and work had already begun to clear a woodland ravine.
    Jeannie needed these walks alone as she slowly began to realize that there was a possibility that Harry might not come back; that what he had told her, of his love and of their marriage, might not be true. She had given him her address so he could no longer claim not to know where she lived, as he had said last time.
    By the end of May she was becoming anxious and towards the middle of June she was decidedly so.
    On the longest day of the year Mary rose and with a shawl over her nightgown began the breakfast; she took the pan of porridge from the fire where it had been simmering all night, stirred it, salted it and poured it into three bowls on the table, then riddled the coals and placed the kettle over the heat.
    ‘Come on, Jeannie,’ she called. ‘Six o’clock. Time you were up.’
    Jeannie rolled out of bed and within a minute was heading for the outside privy. Mary heard the retching and placed a hand over her mouth.
    ‘Dear God,’ she muttered, ‘please. No. Not that!’
    ‘I knew that crab was off,’ Jeannie gasped as with watery eyes she stumbled back through the door. ‘Tom! Was that one of yours?’
    Tom had purchased crab and lobster baskets which he took out at weekends. He was doing well with the boat-building