Sons and Daughters Read online

  Sons and Daughters

  Margaret Dickinson

  Pan Macmillan (2010)

  Tags: Family Life, Fiction

  * * *

  SYNOPSIS

  Charlotte is an only child, reared by a brutal father who cannot forgive her for not being the son he desires. Loved by most that she meets, Charlotte has a gift for friendship, and it is her work as a Sunday School teacher that gives her hope ' and an escape from home. When Charlotte meets Miles Thornton, she is instantly drawn to him. He is new to the area and a widower, with three lovely young sons to look after but the one thing he has longed for is a daughter. As they grow to understand one another, it seems that Miles and Charlotte have more in common than meets the eye

  Sweeping from the early 1920s through to the end of World War II, SONS AND DAUGHTERS is a compelling, traditional saga set against the Lincolnshire landscape that Margaret Dickinson portrays so well.

  Sons and Daughters

  Born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, Margaret Dickinson moved to the coast at the age of seven and so began her love for the sea and the Lincolnshire landscape.

  Her ambition to be a writer began early and she had her first novel published at the age of twenty-five. This was followed by twenty-three further titles including Plough the Furrow, Sow the Seed and Reap the Harvest, which make up her Lincolnshire Fleethaven trilogy. Many of her novels are set in the heart of her home county, but in Tangled Threads and Twisted Strands the stories included not only Lincolnshire but also the framework knitting and lace industries of Nottingham. The Workhouse Museum at Southwell in Nottinghamshire inspired Without Sin, and the beautiful countryside of Derbyshire and the fascinating town of Macclesfield in Cheshire formed the backdrop for the story of Pauper’s Gold. In Suffragette Girl, the story took the central character to London and even to France and Belgium in the First World War, but Sons and Daughters is, once again, firmly based in Lincolnshire on the fertile marshland near the east coast.

  www.margaret-dickinson.co.uk

  ALSO BY MARGARET DICKINSON

  Plough the Furrow

  Sow the Seed

  Reap the Harvest

  The Miller’s Daughter

  Chaff upon the Wind

  The Fisher Lass

  The Tulip Girl

  The River Folk

  Tangled Threads

  Twisted Strands

  Red Sky in the Morning

  Without Sin

  Pauper’s Gold

  Wish Me Luck

  Sing as We Go

  Suffragette Girl

  Margaret Dickinson

  Sons and Daughters

  PAN BOOKS

  First published 2010 by Pan Books

  This electronic edition published 2010 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-330-52150-5 PDF

  ISBN 978-0-330-52149-9 EPUB

  Copyright © Margaret Dickinson, 2010

  The right of Margaret Dickinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  For Mandi

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My grateful thanks to Eric and Mervyn Griggs for a lovely day out around Wainfleet All Saints and district. Thank you for sharing all your memories with me.

  Many thanks to David Henson, Chairman at the Magdalen College Museum, Wainfleet All Saints, for a warm welcome at the museum and to David Turner for his kind interest and knowledge of the area in times past.

  And as always my love and thanks to my family and friends for their continuing support and encouragement, especially to those who read the typescript: Fred Hill, David Dickinson and Pauline Griggs.

  One

  LINCOLNSHIRE, 1905

  ‘Is that the – the coffin?’

  ‘Yes, Charlotte dear.’

  ‘And is – is Mama lying inside it?’

  Mary, standing beside the child and holding her hand tightly, gasped and covered her mouth with her handkerchief, her eyes brimming with tears. She could not answer.

  From an upstairs window of the farmhouse, Charlotte watched the cortège move away from the front door with sadness in her dark, violet eyes. But she did not weep. The coffin, smothered with wreaths of white lilies, lay in a glass hearse drawn by four black horses. Behind it walked her father, Osbert Crawford, and behind him were the men who worked for him. Charlotte – even at five – knew them all. First there was Edward Morgan. He was their household manservant. His wife, Mary, was their housekeeper and cook with only a young girl, Sarah, who came in daily to help her. Between the three of them they took care of everything and everyone in the household. Papa, Mama and Charlotte.

  Only now there would just be Charlotte and her father.

  Harry Warren, Osbert Crawford’s farm foreman, walked beside Edward. Though still only in his mid-fifties, he suffered from arthritis and needed a stick. Usually he rode his chestnut horse around the fields and lanes overseeing the farm workers. But today
he was obliged to walk with the rest of the mourners and every step looked painful. Just behind him and ready to help if he was needed was Harry’s son, Joe. He’d worked on the land since leaving school and even before that he’d worked during the holidays, at weekends and most evenings, always ready to do his father’s bidding, always eager to learn the ways of Buckthorn Farm and to please its master, Osbert Crawford. No doubt, Joe would take over his father’s job when the older man retired. The Warren family lived in one of the two semi-detached cottages two hundred yards down the lane from the farm. Charlotte wondered where they all slept, for now there were not only Mr and Mrs Warren and their son Joe, but also Joe’s wife, Peggy, their two sons and a little baby girl, Lily, who’d been born two weeks ago.

  Charlotte bit her lip. Was it really only such a short time ago that she’d walked down the lane to the cottage holding her mama’s hand and taking a large basket of food for the family and gifts for the new baby?

  So how, the child puzzled, could her mama have got so poorly so quickly that she’d died?

  Mary had tried to explain it gently. ‘Your mama’s gone away, sweetheart.’

  Mama never went away. Charlotte had never known a night when her mother had not been there to tuck her into bed. She’d been there a few days before, had bent to kiss Charlotte gently and whisper ‘My darling daughter’ before tiptoeing from the bedroom. The last sound Charlotte remembered had been the rustle of her mama’s silk gown and the soft closing of the door. Even after she’d gone, Alice’s perfume still lingered, enveloping the child in her mama’s reassuring presence. But in the cold light of morning, Charlotte’s world had fallen apart

  ‘When is she coming back?’ Charlotte had asked.

  Mary had dabbed her eyes with the corner of her apron. ‘She won’t be coming back, lovey.’

  ‘Not – ever?’

  The woman had shaken her head and glanced up at her husband, Edward, standing solemnly beside her. ‘No,’ she’d whispered. ‘Not ever.’

  The child had asked no more. Despite Mary trying to break the news gently, Charlotte knew her mother was dead. Living on a farm, she’d seen dead animals. She’d sat on a stool at Mary’s kitchen table often enough, watching the cook pluck a chicken, skin a rabbit or a hare. She’d seen the pheasants hanging in the barn – row upon row of them – after one of her father’s shooting parties. She knew full well what ‘dead’ meant. And now – though she couldn’t see her – she knew her mother was lying silent and still in that coffin disappearing down the lane on its way to the churchyard.

  ‘No women,’ Osbert Crawford had instructed harshly. ‘I don’t want unseemly weeping and wailing. My wife’s funeral will be conducted with dignity.’

  So even the faithful Mary, who’d come to Buckthorn Farm ten years earlier when Osbert had brought his bride home, was not allowed to attend her mistress’s funeral.

  Two years after Mary’s arrival, Edward Morgan, already employed at the farm, had asked her to marry him. At first, Osbert had forbidden the match, but when both had threatened to leave, he’d been forced to capitulate, aware that good and loyal servants were hard to find for the lonely farm set amidst the flat Lincolnshire marshland near the Wash.

  So, Edward and Mary had married and continued to live at Buckthorn Farm, serving their strict master and caring for his lovely, dutiful bride. And so it was Mary Morgan’s hand that Charlotte now grasped as she watched her mother leaving home for the last time.

  All the other men and boys who worked on the farm lined up behind Harry and Joe Warren. Charlotte knew them all and they all knew her. They always smiled and waved and raised their caps to her when they saw her. But today, they were not smiling or waving. They were walking with their caps in their hands and their heads bowed. Today, they didn’t even look up at the window.

  ‘Come, child,’ Mary said, trying to pull her away from the scene below, but Charlotte stayed, obstinately watching until she could no longer see the procession. Only then did she allow the woman to lead her downstairs to the comforting warmth of the huge kitchen.

  And through all her growing years it was the only place she was ever to find warmth and comfort and affection.

  Two

  LADY DAY, 1926

  ‘I hear the kitchen maid’s gone from the farmhouse, then?’

  Peggy Warren straightened up from bending over the range and turned towards her husband as he sat down heavily at the table. As she placed his dinner in front of him she sighed. ‘Not another one!’

  ‘Aye.’ Joe picked up his knife and fork. ‘But who can blame ’em, eh?’

  Peggy sat down before her own meal. ‘Not me, for one.’

  Joe chuckled. ‘Don’t fancy havin’ a go yarsen, then? Earn yarsen a bit o’ pin money?’

  Peggy stared at him. ‘Joe Warren, have you taken leave of your senses? Haven’t I enough to do looking after you and your two strapping sons who refuse to find themselves wives and leave home? To say nothing of your poor old dad, who can hardly get out of his bed these days. And then there’s Lily, who still comes home now and again from her job at the manor, and as for our Tommy – ’ Peggy cast a despairing glance to the whitewashed ceiling. ‘Always in some scrape or other.’

  At seven, Tommy was the youngest of the Warren family. His arrival had been a ‘surprise’ to the 44-year-old Peggy, who’d thought her childbearing days were over. Indulged by his parents and three older siblings, the boy ran wild.

  Joe’s smile widened. ‘I was only teasing, lass. I wouldn’t want you working in that miserable place.’

  Peggy was thoughtful. ‘If things were different, I wouldn’t mind. Me an’ Mary Morgan have been friends ever since she came here. We’d work well together, I know. And Edward’s a lovely feller. Still,’ she sighed, ‘I can’t and that’s that. Has his lordship – ’ this was Peggy’s scathing nickname for Osbert Crawford – ‘gone into town today to hire someone else?’

  Joe glanced at her briefly. When he’d swallowed a mouthful, he said shortly, ‘No. Rumour has it, he’s expecting Miss Charlotte to do the work.’

  Peggy’s fork clattered on to her plate as she gaped at him. ‘Miss Charlotte? You’re joking.’

  ‘I only wish I was.’

  ‘His own daughter? Working as a kitchen maid as well as all the work she does on the farm?’

  ‘Daughter, you say? Huh! Now tell me, Peg – ’ he waved his fork at her – ‘has that man ever – ever – treated that lass of his as a daughter? A proper daughter?’

  Peggy sighed. ‘No, he hasn’t. But that’s just it, isn’t it, Joe? It’s because she is a daughter . . .’ She paused and, as she met his gaze, whispered, ‘And not a son.’

  Joe placed his knife and fork neatly together on the empty plate and leaned back in his chair. ‘Aye,’ he said softly. ‘That’s the tragedy of it. Poor Mrs Crawford miscarrying three bairns, all boys, and the first two in the same years as our lads were born.’ He shook his head. ‘That must have hurt. Seein’ his farm worker the proud father of two healthy lads and him havin’ to bury his sons in the churchyard. You’ve got to feel sorry for the feller, Peg.’

  ‘I suppose so. The last one – two years after Charlotte was born – went full term, but he was stillborn. Poor little mite. Mary told me once, he was a bonny baby – just perfect. But he never even drew breath.’

  ‘Aye, the master was distraught, they said. Locked himself in his room for days and wouldn’t come out.’

  Peggy rose and gathered the plates, clattering them together with swift, angry movements. ‘But he’s got a daughter. A lovely girl, if only he’d see it. But d’you know summat, Joe.’ She stood very still for a moment as she added quietly, ‘I reckon he’d willingly sacrifice her if it’d give him just one of his sons back.’

  ‘Poor lass,’ Joe sighed. ‘She hasn’t got a lot going for her. Plain little thing, isn’t she?’

  ‘Not so little now, Joe. She’s twenty-six next month. But she doesn’t make the best of herself, I’ll grant you. Sha
peless, drab clothes; round, steel-rimmed spectacles; and her shining black hair always scraped back into a plait and covered with an old-fashioned bonnet. And have you seen the shoes she wears? They’re like a man’s.’

  Joe grinned. ‘Well, not all lasses can be as pretty as you, my love.’ His tender glance roamed over Peggy’s face, as lovely to him as the day he’d married her despite the fact that she had borne him four children and led such a busy life. There were only a few strands of grey in the curly brown hair and her figure was as slim and lithe as a young girl’s.

  ‘But he treats her like a boy,’ Peggy was still preoccupied with thoughts of Charlotte. ‘Worse than a lad, if you think about it. He never lets her out to enjoy herself. She’s never even been to the annual Harvest Supper at the manor, now has she?’

  After her mother’s death, Mary and Edward had cared for Charlotte. She’d been kept firmly within the confines of Buckthorn Farm, not even allowed to attend the local village school. A governess, Miss Helen Proudley, had taken care of her education. Living in, even sleeping in the same large bedroom, she’d become a companion to the girl too, but it’d always been Mary who’d mothered Charlotte and she who was the constant in the girl’s life. At fifteen, Charlotte’s formal education had ended.

  ‘You’re old enough to work now,’ her father had said, dismissing the governess at the end of July 1915. ‘With all the young men off to war, you’d better help about the farm.’

  From that day forward, Charlotte had spent most of her waking hours out of doors working alongside Joe and his two sons. Now her education was the farming way of life. In her bedroom at night, she would write in a journal all that she had learned that day from old Harry. Though retired through ill health by that time, Harry still lived with his family in the cottage at the end of the track where it joined the long lane running from the sea to the small town of Ravensfleet. Before long, Joe, who as expected had taken his father’s position as foreman, could be heard telling anyone who’d listen that Miss Charlotte knew as much as he did about the workings of the farm. ‘Though mebbe not quite as much as me dad,’ he would add in deference to the man who’d taught him, ‘but, you mark my words, she’ll be as good as any lad when her turn comes to tek over the farm.’