The Harbour Girl by Val Wood Read Free Book Online Page A

Scarborough for the silver herring.
    Jeannie joined her mother and Nola when she was fourteen and made up the third in the crew, for Nell was pregnant with her second child. She was now quite swift with the knife and also adept as a packer, and out of the herring season she sat with her mother by the harbour and mended nets. When she was fifteen she began to walk out with Ethan.
    It happened quite naturally. He never asked her especially to meet him, but whenever all the girls and boys congregated around the harbour or the sands the two of them paired off instinctively. He never held her hand as they walked, as she had seen other boys do with their girls, and she was too shy to take the initiative herself. He had never kissed her either, and she wanted him to do that too.
    At nineteen he was tall and blond, with blue-green eyes and dark lashes. She knew that she loved him, but deduced that he had no feelings for her except for friendship. And I suppose, she thought hopelessly, I’ll have to be content with that. But it was not enough; that much she knew.
    ‘Is Ethan your beau?’ her mother asked her one day as they sat together mending nets.
    Jeannie gave a little shrug but didn’t meet her mother’s eyes. ‘He’s a friend,’ she murmured. ‘Always has been.’
    ‘He’s a good lad,’ Mary responded. ‘Very steady. Very reliable. His da says he’ll soon have his own smack.’
    ‘I know.’ Jeannie looked up this time. The sun was warm on her head and she gazed at the tossing white crests as they washed up on the sandy beach. ‘But …’ She didn’t want to put her feelings into words, not to her mother, that Ethan, although she cared for him, didn’t respond to her in the way that she wanted him to. He didn’t show any emotion. ‘I don’t know how he feels about me,’ she added lamely. ‘He never says.’
    ‘He’s probably shy,’ her mother said. ‘Some lads are, even with girls they’ve known a long time. You’ve to beware of men who are all promises and kisses and other things to sweet-talk a lassie.’
    Jeannie shook her head. ‘Well, that doesn’t happen with Ethan, Ma, so you don’t need to worry about it.’
    Mary hid a wry smile. She hadn’t really been worrying about Ethan Wharton, just thinking that the calm and constant lad was an ideal prospect for her daughter. He was reliable and bound for a worthwhile life, according to his father, and she really hoped that Jeannie was prepared to wait for him to declare himself. And that really was the worry; for Jeannie, despite appearing to be placid and self-possessed, had, she felt, inherited her own youthful waywardness as well as the headstrong determination of her father.

CHAPTER SIX
    THE BRACING AIR at Scarborough was considered to be beneficial to health, and as well as the gentry who came to take the medicinal waters, listen to the music in the Spa Hall or walk by the mere and flower gardens, the employees of manufacturing companies in the West Riding towns enjoyed a day at the seaside for their works outings. Men polished their boots and looked out their straw hats or bowlers; women and girls dressed up in their best hand-me-down gowns and decorated their hats with ribbons and flowers. They paddled in the sea, the men rolling up their trousers to their knees but never removing their hats, and the women drifting down to the edge in groups, egging each other on to lift up their skirts as far as their knees to splash in the ice-cold water. Often they strolled towards the Spa, where there might be a travelling show on the sands, or else visited the harbour to see the ships and watch the women mending nets, and stopped to buy a dish of cockles, or a crab or a lobster or a smoked herring to take home.
    Mid-afternoon one day in the summer of 1887, Mary broke off her work to take a stroll along the quay. Jeannie stayed where she was; sometimes visitors stopped to talk and she enjoyed listening to the different forms of speech: the friendly