Chapters (53)
- Cover
- Title page
- Dedication page
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Sow the Seed
- Reap the Harvest
- About the Author
- ALSO BY MARGARET DICKINSON
- Acknowledgements
- Copyright page
She sighed heavily. What’s the use, she thought. He’s in no fit state to understand anything I say. Aloud she said, unable to keep the sharpness from her tone, ‘Come on with you. Let’s get you to bed.’
In his drunken state, the nodding and the shaking had returned. The squire might be trying to help, Esther thought grimly, but he was doing Matthew no favours at all by getting him like this. No favours at all.
Nor her either.
Thirty-seven
THE Friday jaunts into town with the squire continued and there was nothing Esther could do to prevent them – though she tried.
‘You’re doing yourself no good, Matthew,’ she railed at him. ‘The drink makes you bad again.’
‘Shut up,’ Matthew growled, struggling to fasten his collar, too angry and proud to ask for her assistance. ‘Ain’t I – a right – after what I’ve been through?’
‘You’re getting so much better – when you don’t drink.’
He raised his hand and swung round as if to strike her. It was a long time since anyone had hit her, yet Esther stood her ground. Quietly, she said, ‘Aye, go on then. Hit me if it makes you feel better. If it makes ya feel a man again.’
She knew the words were cruel, after all he had been through, yet she had to try to make him see sense.
Before her, Matthew swayed, his arm dropping uselessly to his side. There was no strength in him now to deal her any kind of a blow.
The gesture had been a futile one and they both knew it.
A bright spring turned into a warm summer and with each day Matthew improved – at least in some ways. He still refused to do anything remotely connected with work and spent his days between the two children, the Seagull and the squire and his contraption, as Esther called it.
He would sit outside the pub in the early evening and watch the children playing on the stretch of grass. Esther found this out because almost every evening she was obliged to go and stand on the Hump and shout her daughter home for bed.
‘Why dun’t you come when you know it’s your bedtime? I won’t let you go playing up at the Point again if you’re not going to come home on time,’ Esther said, almost dragging the reluctant child home.
‘Aw, Mam, but I’m looking after me dad.’
‘Danny Eland, more like,’ Esther muttered to herself. Her daughter’s sharp hearing had caught the name.
‘Yes, he looks after me dad an’ all. He likes me dad, does Danny.’
Esther’s mouth became a thin line as she compressed her lips together to prevent the words tumbling from them. Of course he likes your dad, she wanted to shout. He’s his dad an’ all!