Delia shook her head. ‘I don’t understand why he would take anyone else’s boat. He was so very particular about his own.’
‘Could your mother sail?’ Peggy asked.
‘She did when she was a girl. Her father had been a fisherman and had taught her to sail when she was very young.’ Suddenly she recalled the day when she had caught her mother gazing out at the shrimpers’ sailboats on the estuary and in a moment of rare conversation had told her that she and Deakin had sailed there from the Devon coast. ‘She told me that she’d helped to sail the boat here from Brixham,’ she continued. ‘But never in my life did I hear her mention Paull creek or the boats and she never again talked of sailing.’
‘Mmm. I wonder why they left their own harbour?’ Peggy probed, but Delia didn’t know. She knew nothing of their past, and, she thought, she didn’t want to; they were strangers to her now as much as they had been when she was a child and a young woman.
‘It’s just,’ Peggy continued, ‘well, there’s the matter of ’cottage and ’smallholding. Who it belongs to.’
Delia looked at her. ‘I don’t know. It might be rented, though I never saw anyone call at the house.’ She shrugged. ‘Not that I care. I don’t want it.’
‘Mebbe you don’t,’ Peggy said persuasively, ‘but ’rumour is that Deakin bought it cheap for cash when they first came here.’
Delia frowned. ‘Rumour? What rumour?’
‘Aye.’ Peggy nodded. ‘It’s been talked about for years. Somebody spilt the beans, and buying a property for a wodge of cash isn’t something that folk would forget easily, even after nearly thirty years; not in a small village like this one.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And even if you don’t want it, mebbe it’d be a good nest egg for your son?’
Delia licked her lips. She didn’t want any part of it, but for Robin? If it had been her parents’ property it could be sold to ensure his future. ‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘I suppose so. What should I do, Peggy? The property would be in his name, I expect, and if he hasn’t been found …’
‘Mebbe have a look round ’cottage, if you can face it? See if there’s any place where deeds would be kept.’
Delia gave a dry and ironic scoff. ‘He kept money under the floorboards. Under a rug in the kitchen. I stole from it when I left. I would have been completely destitute if I hadn’t.’ She remained silent for a moment as she considered. ‘Will you come with me?’ she asked. ‘I daren’t go in alone; too many shadows from the past.’
Jenny and Arthur were waved off after a fish luncheon at midday on Good Friday. Peggy had baked a large cod and served it with a batch of shrimps and parsley sauce. Arthur and Giles agreed that they had never before eaten such tasty fish.
‘That’s because it was swimming in ’estuary only this morning and brought home by Aaron before you were out of bed,’ Peggy told them.
Aaron grinned and bashfully agreed that she was right. ‘Tide had been high,’ he said. ‘Though I sailed almost to ’mouth of ’Humber to catch it. Plenty o’ fish about. No need for anybody to be hungry.’
After Jenny and Arthur left, Giles agreed that he’d join the children at the kitchen table to paint eggs and to the children’s amusement wore one of Peggy’s aprons to cover him; Aaron went out into the fields to find Jack, and Delia had already whispered to Giles that she was going with Peggy to look at the burnt-out barn and didn’t want Robin there. He nodded in understanding and pressed her hand.
Delia shivered as they opened the gate into the Deakins’ yard; it felt to her that it was like a ghost farm, quite unreal and nothing to do with her. When she’d first come back with Robin that dark night in November, she hadn’t seen anything but a chink of lamplight at the window and a mere slit of light at the door when her mother had opened it.
Now she saw it as it was: the cottage looked derelict, with cracked window panes and unpainted window frames and door; the yard had weeds growing through the cracks of paving slabs and puddles of dirty water they had to step over. The grass in the paddock was uncut and two thin goats bleated at them. Was it always like this? she thought. Did I not see it before or did I simply accept it?
There was still a strong smell of burning wood and straw and an underlying aroma of something else, a pungent sweetness that Peggy said Aaron thought was tobacco. ‘But something else too,’ Delia said, sniffing the air.
They crossed to the barn and saw the damage. ‘It’ll have to come down,’ Delia remarked, ‘and I’ve been thinking that if the property didn’t belong to them, why hasn’t an agent or the owner come to look at the damage? Everyone must have heard about the fire.’
‘It was ’talk of ’village for a couple of days,’ Peggy told her, ‘and you’re quite right, I don’t recall anyone saying that it belonged to anybody else, and somebody would have known. If you can’t find any documents we’ll have to mek enquiries wi’ authorities.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘Have you seen enough here?’
‘No.’ Delia stepped into the barn. The floor was still wet from when the locals had doused the fire with river water. ‘That smell? It’s alcohol, isn’t it? Brandy! I remember now; sometimes he – Deakin – smelled of it. He’d go outside of an evening and when he came back in we could smell it on him.’ She turned to Peggy. ‘He was smuggling, wasn’t he? How else could he afford brandy? Not from shrimping.’
Peggy nodded. ‘Yes, that’s what we thought. Me and Aaron.
