The Turn of the Page Chapter 6

Chapter 6 Another Christmas. Their last one before going up to “Big School”.
“You’ve finished already?” Fern couldn’t quite believe it.
“Yes. I was hungry. Can I have some more please, Madda?”
“Of course.” We had plenty for today, and for tomorrow as well.
The cake stall had done well since they started it off – breaking even to begin with and then turning a tiny profit so that they could pay me back, and now any profits were theirs. They’d used some of them to each buy me a tiny Christmas gift – a rosemary plant, a candle and a little house plant in a pot. They’d had a stocking each, filled with tiny gifts that I’d bought over the year, and a book each. Plus – a major treat – a tin of chocolates for us to share. “Anyone want a chocolate before you start reading?”
“Oooh, well, maybe,” Daisy said, torn between the joys of a new book and chocolate.
Fern was already reaching for her book. “No, I don’t want to get chocolate fingerprints on my new book.”
“I think I’ll have my chocolate later. I do feel a bit full.” That was Hazel, and I wasn’t surprised! “That’s a pretty dress,” the girls had said, when we came across it during a tidy-up session. “Why don’t you wear it?”
“It’s not very good for gardening. Or very warm.”
“Well, sometimes. If you’re – oh, going for a walk in the summer, say.” Well, it was summer, and I was going for a walk. So I put it on.
It was a poignant reminder of the past, though. “Bring a couple of pretty dresses with you,” Jill had said. “And we’ll go out…”
The sea was calm and summer-blue today. The girls were down at the market, making the most of their baking stall. “Before we’re too old for it, and we lose the cuteness factor,” Fern pointed out. The girls were happy, healthy and safe. But I was so tired. Had I done the right thing by them, bringing them up here, like this? But then I remembered what had happened to Mark and Jill, the attacks on Mr Mellish. I didn’t think I was being paranoid, but I did feel scared sometimes. And very lonely.
Mr Mellish had agreed with me staying undercover though, seen my point. It had taken a bit of effort to convince Mr Garratt-Oldsby, Mark and Jill’s other solicitor, that I was genuine – and he’d been alarmingly keen to meet me, until Mr Mellish had started asking him why. Rather pointedly. And in an article, too. Then Garratt-Oldsby had shut up again. I went and stood at the edge – not too close! – and looked out to sea. Over to the little island that the girls said they’d love to have a house on, if they were rich enough to do that. This bigger island though – it had been a good place to come to. We could have been hiding out in some grubby city somewhere. They girls knew now that their parents were dead, that I wasn’t their mother.
“They drowned,” I’d told them when they asked. “So I brought you up instead.”
And that wasn’t an uncommon story, not here on an island that still had fisherfolk on it. People accepted it, understood it and didn’t ask awkward questions. I had a feeling that the girls would have more questions as they got older, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
I didn’t often think about Jill and Mark – I didn’t often have much thinking time! – but here, today, on my own and wearing that pretty dress, they came back to my mind strongly.
“I wish I knew what you’d want,” I said aloud to the breeze. “For the girls and for the business. What were your plans, your hopes and dreams?” Mr Mellish had been saying if we had some clear proof of what Mark and Jill had wanted, it would strengthen his hand greatly. We talked, occasionally and carefully. But wait a minute! We did have some clues, some proof! That documentary they’d been making! I ran to the phone box. I could leave Mr Mellish a message saying I wanted to speak, even if I couldn’t get through to him now. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about it.
Actually, on second thoughts, I could believe that I’d forgotten. I’d been so exhausted with looking after the children. And I’d pushed so much out of my mind as well. I was so in luck. Mr Mellish was in his (rebuilt) office and also picked up the call himself.
“Alright,” he said, at the end of our conversation. “Leave this with me. I’ll investigate. I don’t suppose you know who was making it?”
“No. Only that it was an indie company, no-one established. I never really paid much attention…”
“Pity. Give me time. Don’t want to ask around too obviously. This might be a real help though.” This is the only other house on our road now. As you can see, it’s not exactly lived in. Although this is the lee side of the island there’s no decent harbour area. But as I passed it, I had a bright idea. There had been a garden here once. And a few hardy flowers still survived. I had plans to improve our garden area a lot – mostly with a view to growing more fruit and vegetables to sell, with the help of the girls. They were so keen to get jobs as soon as they started at Big School, but I knew no-one would employ them yet. However, we could run the garden as a more professional business for the next two or three years, until they were old enough for “Proper Jobs.” But I was going to swipe some of these flowers and make the garden pretty as well as functional. They’d want to have friends home from school, and I wanted the place to look okay. I'd see what there was... “We did a good job on this,” Fern said. We had! We’d dug over a huge amount of ground!
The girls were all at Big School now. They had so wanted to get jobs straight away, but had also listened to why I was vetoing that.
“One, no-one will employ you yet. Two, I think you’re going to need the whole of this first term to settle in, to adjust, to get used to the homework and so on.”
Their faces had fallen.
“But in the spring, with the three of you to help, we’ll start growing a lot more fruit and vegetables. And that will make a real difference to our income – you’ll see.” And now it was spring, and we were making a determined start on the Great Gardening Project.
“What do you think we should do next?” I asked them. “How should we lay this out?”
“We could have one bed each,” Daisy suggested. “Then we’d know exactly what we needed to do or hadn’t done. And we could see if one of us was struggling and help.”
“Or what about different beds for different types of plants?” Fern said. “I think quality is what matters,” Hazel said after a bit of thought. “We ought to lay the beds out in terms of plant quality. And if we grow a mix in each bed, then we lower the risk of disease. Monocultures aren’t healthy. I was asking Mr Miller about that.” “I’ll pick these flowers,” Fern said. "I know they’re pretty, but they’re only going to get dug up. Shall I put them in our bedroom?”
“That’d be nice,” Daisy agreed. We’d extended the house again. I wanted the girls to have a proper bedroom of their own.
“I’m sorry you can’t have one each…”
“But we like sharing.”
Again, it was part of my plan for them to be able to invite friends over after school without it looking like we were all living in one room. Which we had been! I had a (tiny) bedroom too, and our next goal was to update the bathroom. “We should get some stones from the shore and make a path between the fences,” Daisy said, looking at her newly-planted seeds. “We’d track less mud into the house that way.”
“It’ll take a few trips!” Hazel said, but she was agreeing with her sister.
“Bit by bit – we’ll get there.” “I burnt them,” Hazel said sadly, about her pancakes.
“Never mind,” Daisy said. “You’ll get better.”
“That’s what you used to say to me when I was learning to bake,” Fern added. “And you were right. Madda, you need a new dressing gown. That one’s threadbare.”
It was. It was the one I’d brought to the island with me. “Well, it is about ten years old,” I said. “I think that should go on the clothes priority list,” Daisy said. “Maybe at the bottom. But not on the we’ll-get-round-to-it-someday list.” Fern nodded and Hazel made agreeing noises round her mouthful of burnt pancake. With four of us working on the garden we were going to be able to grow so much more.
“We’ll get some more stones today and lay a bit more path.”
“Anyone want to come with me to the house by the phone booth? I’m planning to split and lift some plants from that abandoned garden. Let’s make this one look a bit nicer yet.”
“Oooh yes. That’s a great idea. I’ll come.” It was tipping it down with rain and all our weekend plans had been cancelled for that day.
“What a good job we went to the library yesterday,” Fern said. “At least we’ve got something to read.”
“Let’s do the end of month accounts as well,” Daisy had suggested. “It doesn’t matter if we’re a few days early, and then it means they’re dealt with.”
And we’d done that and found them healthy enough.
“We still need another bike,” I said as we talked about what to save up for next. Selling their old ones that they’d now outgrown had funded two new (second-hand) ones but not the third, so Fern currently used mine a lot.
“And on the building front, I want to replace some more windows. And improve these walls as well. Our bedrooms are definitely warmer for being double-walled and well-insulated!” “Are we earning enough for us to take a salary yet?” Fern asked. Daisy looked mildly disapproving. “I’d like to buy some cookery books, and even second-hand they do cost money, you know.” Daisy’s frown eased off a bit. “That’s totally reasonable, Fern. What I’m proposing with the gardening is a profit-sharing system, payable quarterly. Our expenses are more stable now that you’ve all finished growing – I don’t have to budget for you all needing new shoes at once! – and how you manage your money, whether you save it or spend it, is up to you. You haven’t had that chance or experience yet, so it will do you good.” The other two went off to their bedroom to read, but Daisy stayed put. She pulled the accounts folder towards herself and closed it gently.
“I read through the whole of this yesterday,” she said softly.
What, right from the beginning? I thought, mildly alarmed.
“Those early figures are scary. I don’t know how you did it, how you kept us clothed and warm and fed.” A long pause. “You were so brave. Thank you.” And then Daisy picked everything up off the table and went into their bedroom to join her sisters in some reading before it was time for one of them to cook tea. I picked up a book off the shelves too and put it on the table in front of me – though I’d read Pride and Prejudice several times before, it never failed to amuse me. But there was a different story playing itself out before my unseeing eyes. Another rainy day, and I was with Daisy, but a much younger Daisy, looking at a filthy house and wondering how I was ever going to find the time to get it clean. Never being able to get enough sleep, but only being able to nap with one ear open for trouble all the time. That cold first winter that we’d only got through because of the kindness of our neighbours. Actually, what I was remembering was the fear, the not knowing how we were going to survive. Once the gifts came in, the fear lessened somewhat. And, oddly, how sad it had made me to cut up my other pretty dress to make clothes for the three of them. It had felt like cutting up a part of my heart. But I didn’t know why.
And now Daisy had read the accounts and also read the story of those years, hidden in the numbers.
And she had thanked me.