Tidelands

“I can’t afford to offend anyone,” Alinor said quietly, the words forced from her. “If I want to earn enough to put food on the table for the two of you, I can’t afford pride.”

“I know,” Alys said.

“And Rob is not more precious than you.” She choked on her words. “Nothing in my world is more precious than you.”

“I know,” Alys repeated. She put her arm round her mother’s shoulder and held her closely. “I know what you’ve done for us. I don’t know half of what you’ve suffered—for us. You’ve been mother and father to us, I know. And it was too much for any woman to do on her own. I’m grateful, I am—really. But I’m only saying that I can’t be like you. I can’t do what you do. I can’t bend under the wheel. I can’t stand it. I’d rather risk everything than settle for a poor life, like you have.”

“You think I’ve settled for poverty?”

“Yes,” said Alys with the blunt cruelty of the young.

“I understand,” her mother said quietly. “I do understand wanting to be proud, being in love, being reckless.”

“Do you?”

She nodded, pressing her lips closed on her secret. Only last night she had been proud of her desire, entranced by lovemaking, and reckless. “I do know,” she repeated.

They stood for a moment, holding each other close, then they turned and walked side by side up the road to Chichester.

“I’m sorry,” Alys said quietly. “You know I love you. I didn’t mean to say all that.”

“I know.”

They walked a few minutes in silence then Alinor spoke: “This life isn’t what I intended for myself. It isn’t what my mother wanted for me. She thought Zachary was a man with his own boat, who’d do well. She thought we’d be neighbors, and she and I would work together, and he’d make a better life for me. She thought Ned would inherit the ferry, and have a good wife and a child of his own, and I’d have money coming in from Zachary and we’d live next door to my brother in our home. She couldn’t foresee that Mary would die, and that your father’d turn out bad.”

They walked in silence for a while until they heard a shout from behind and turned to see a farmer with a wagon piled high with fleeces, his wife sitting up beside him with baskets of cheeses.

“Going to market?” he asked as they paused on the side of the road and turned to him. “Ah, Mrs. Reekie, I didn’t recognize you, out of your way, on the Birdham road. Are you going to Chichester market?”

“Yes,” Alinor said, smiling brightly. “And this is my girl, Alys.”

“Grown like a weed,” he said. “I remember you when you were a little tot. Would you like a lift?”

“Come up and sit on the bench beside me,” his wife said to Alinor. “Alys can go in the back on the fleeces if she doesn’t object.”

“Thank you,” Alinor said gratefully, as the goodwife leaned down and offered a hand to help Alinor up to the driver’s bench and Alys put one foot on the hub band, the other on the spokes, and clambered up.

“Are you selling some of your oils?” the woman asked, looking at Alinor’s basket.

“Yes,” Alinor said. “And buying some lace for Mrs. Miller, if there’s anything good to be had.”

“Terrible dear,” the farmer’s wife said. “I wonder she doesn’t make her own.”

Alinor, knowing that anything she said would be repeated, smiled and made no comment.

“But I suppose they’re doing so well, she can afford to buy,” the woman said.

“I don’t know,” Alinor said levelly.

“Oh, weren’t you there at harvest home? Didn’t we all see the best wheat harvest they’ve ever had? And don’t they sell half of it for profit and send it out of the county? And her yaddering away all dinnertime with Master Walter’s tutor from Cambridge, as if she were as good as him? As if she would have anything to say to him that he would want to hear!”

Alinor blandly smiled again.

“Still, she’ll make no ground there. I hear he’s going back to Cambridge when Master Walter goes. Taking the young lord back there, to teach him all about law or whatever it is that they do.”

“I don’t know,” Alinor repeated.

“Such a handsome man!”

“I didn’t really see,” Alinor said, thinking that the thudding of her heart was so loud in her own ears that it must be audible to the woman sitting beside her.

“You must have done! He went right up to you after dinner. We were all wondering what he had to say to you.”

“He was telling me about Rob. My boy is taking lessons with Master Walter. He is his server.”

“Did you hope that they would send Rob as a companion to Cambridge?” the woman speculated. “Was that why you walked away from him at the dinner without a curtsey? Did you ask for Rob to go, and did the tutor refuse you?”

“No, no,” Alinor said. “Nothing like that! I was unwell. I was so afraid of being sick before the company. I had to get myself home. I begged his pardon and dashed for home.”

“She doesn’t cure her hams properly, for all she’s so proud of them,” the goodwife said. “I felt queasy myself.”

“What brings you on this road, Mrs. Reekie?” the farmer interrupted his wife. “Will you be wanting a lift back this way after the market?”