Free The Fisher Lass by Margaret Dickinson

including the
police, could have done about it.’
    Jeannie, still unforgiving, her mouth a straight hard line, leant a little closer to Nell and said, with quiet deliberation, ‘Aye, an’ if I’d known that this afternoon, Mrs
Lawrence, I’d have led them on mysel’.’
    Nell gazed at her for a long moment and then nodded slowly. Her eyes softened as she smiled. ‘Aye, I do believe you would have done, hen. For you’re a brave, feisty girl, and
I’ll thank God every day of my life that you came along at that moment. But you know something, Jeannie lass . . .?’ The older woman patted the hand she still held. ‘You’re
always going to be the one that others lean on. Because you are so strong, you’re always going to be the one they all come to. All your life, lass, you’re going to have to carry the
burdens for those nearest to you.’ For another moment she held Jeannie’s gaze and then she turned away, bustling back to her work. ‘What am I doing standing here blethering on as
if next week’ll do. I’ve this net to finish by the morning and I’ll be up half the night as it is.’
    ‘I’ll help you, if you like,’ Jeannie volunteered and Nell glanced at her again, this time with surprise in her eyes.
    ‘You know how to braid?’
    Jeannie nodded and a lump came into her throat as she said hoarsely, ‘I had a very good teacher. The best. My father taught me.’
    Aware that the girl was perhaps reliving painful memories, deliberately Nell pulled a comical face. ‘Is there anything you
canna
do, lass?’
    Now Jeannie laughed as she moved towards the net to watch Nell’s quick fingers for a moment. ‘Plenty,’ she said and added wryly, ‘I’m no great shakes in the
kitchen. The man who takes me on’ll have to have a strong stomach.’
    The two women laughed together and behind them even Grace smiled as she turned away, the one, by the sound of it, to cook the meal again that evening.

Nine
    ‘Tell me about your home, hen,’ Nell said softly. ‘Your mother and father and where you come from.’
    They were sitting by the fire late one evening, just the two of them, waiting for Grace to come home.
    ‘We lived in a small fishing village on the Fife coast,’ Jeannie began and suddenly she could almost feel again the wind on her face as she had stood on the wall watching her
father’s boat becoming a mere speck on the horizon as he sailed away. A wave of homesickness for the whitewashed, gabled cottages that clustered around the harbour, the ever-open doors of
friendly neighbours in the tiny community where everybody knew everyone else, washed over her.
    Faltering a little at first, Jeannie went on to tell Nell’s sympathetic ear about her childhood, the loss of her mother, but when she spoke of her father there was a catch in her voice.
‘My father’s sister took care of me when he was at sea but I used to live for his time ashore. He’d take me into Kirkcaldy and buy me clothes and presents or even to Edinburgh.
Och, he used to spoil me rotten. Once he took me on a real holiday to the Trossachs. D’you know, if I close my eyes . . .’ she did so to demonstrate, ‘I can still see the wet
rocks and hear the rushing water of the Falls.’
    She sighed and opened her eyes bringing herself back to the tiny, cramped kitchen that was miles from her homeland. She forced a smile and said, ‘Mr Lawrence reminds me of him in so many
ways. He even looks a bit like him.’ She laughed. ‘He has a beard like him.’
    ‘Aye, he’s a good man is my George,’ Nell said dreamily as if she too were thinking back. ‘The first time I laid eyes on him, Jeannie, I knew he was the man for me. I
just never went home.’
    ‘Have you ever been back to Scotland? For a visit?’
    Nell pressed her lips together and shook her head. ‘We couldna afford it, specially when the bairns came along. And now all ma family in Scotland are gone. There’s no point in going
home. I’ve been homesick many a