only sixteen. He’s got ideas of his own,’ Jan said.
‘I knew by his age that you were the one for me,’ Edward told her, and Jan groaned inwardly as Edward played his familiar riff. ‘As soon as I saw you, twelve and lookin’ like an angel, I said to my mate, “There’s the girl I’m gonna marry”.’
‘Yeah and, more fool me, I did marry you.’
Edward caught Jan’s hand as she walked from the Aga to the sink. ‘No regrets though, maid? No regrets?’
Jan felt the warmth of her husband’s rough and calloused hand on hers and wondered. She’d had plans to travel to the Greek Islands and sleep on the beach under the stars, like the character she’d read about in a book once. The last book she’d read. Must be more than twenty years ago. But Edward had wooed her into submission and she never did send off the passport application form that had sat on her mother’s dresser for two years after she’d married. For their honeymoon, Edward had taken her to Exeter and they’d seen a rep production of The Mousetrap. Edward had promised her that the next show they’d see would be in Paris. Almost twenty years on and they still hadn’t made that trip.
She stooped and dropped a kiss on her husband’s weatherbeaten forehead, feeling the spikes of his overgrown eyebrows tickling her chin. Edward Behenna would now be more likely to see the surface of the moon than the insides of the Folies Bergère. She smiled. ‘No regrets my ’andsome.’ She straightened up. ‘But that don’t mean to say you can dictate what Jesse’s future is going to be.’
Edward let go of her hand and turned his attention back to Jesse. ‘Greer is a lovely girl. Clever, beautiful, and comes from a good family.’
Jesse gave his father a glare. ‘I’m not marrying someone so that you can do a business deal.’
‘What are you talking about? Business deal? Who said anything about business? I’m just saying she’s a lovely girl.’ Edward looked at his son with a patient, innocent smile. Bryn Clovelly was a sharp operator. For all of his talk about a merger, Edward knew that selling a share of the business to him was a risk. However, Bryn had no boys of his own. Like Edward himself, and most vain men, Bryn was desperate for his business not to die with him. If Jesse and Greer were married, it would ensure that Behenna’s Boats was safe and Bryn would have himself a son-in-law from one of Trevay’s oldest fishing families. They were building a dynasty. But Jesse seemed to have other ideas. Edward got a hot itch on the back of his thinning scalp when he thought about selling his son’s future off to the highest bidder.
‘She may be, but I’m not marrying her. If you want to do business with old man Clovelly, do it yourself, but leave me out of it.’
‘An’ what’s the matter with lookin’ to the future?’ Edward spread his hands, fingers splayed, on the old table, his extraordinary eyebrows raised in innocence.
‘Plenty.’ Jesse dropped his head and stared at his lap.
‘Oh, now,’ cajoled his father. ‘You’re not bleating about that other girl, whatshername …’
Jesse’s mother took her hands out of the sink and wiped the suds on her apron.
‘Edward, leave him alone. Loveday Carter is a really nice girl. Jesse would be happy with her. Let the boy fall in love with whoever he wants.’
‘Her mother hasn’t got a pot to piss in, and anyway, what’s love got to do with it? He doesn’t know what love is.’ Edward was exasperated.
‘But you did, or so you say,’ Jan threw back. ‘And stopped me from having a bit of life in the bargain.’
‘Oh, you and your life.’ Jesse recognised the brewing of a row and his father didn’t disappoint him. ‘You didn’t have a life till I took you on. You’ve wanted for nothing since we married. I’m a good man. I’m not a drinker or a womaniser.’
‘And I’m supposed to be grateful for the fact that life now starts and ends at Trevay harbour sheds, am I?’
Edward stood up. ‘There’s no talking to you when you get in one of your moods like this. You sound like your mother, and she was a miserable old cow. I’m going back to work.’
‘But the pasties’ll be ready in a minute.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
In the simmering silence that remained after Edward had stomped out of the door and into the spring sunshine of Fish Lane, Jan stood for a moment in powerless frustration. Edward had set his mind on securing the future of the fishing fleet, and if that meant arranging a marriage between Jesse and Greer Clovelly, heiress to the Clovelly Fisheries Company, then that would be it, no matter what Jesse wanted.
She ran her thin hands through her short hair and bent to get the pasties out of the oven.
‘They’re hot,’ she said needlessly, serving one to Jesse.
‘Thanks, Mum.’
She put one onto a plate for herself and, wiping her hands on the tea towel that was perpetually tucked into her apron, sat opposite her son.
‘Eat,’ she told him. Jesse did so. After a couple of mouthfuls, she asked. ‘So … is it Loveday?’
Jesse shuffled a bit in his seat. With a full mouth he said, ‘I dunno.’
‘But it’s not Greer?’
‘How do I know? I’m sixteen. I want to see the world before I decide on anything. I’ve got my own mind and my own life.’
Jan nodded in understanding. It was one thing encouraging Jesse in a particular direction, but quite another thing to put all this pressure on the poor lad.
‘I’ll ask your dad to back off.’
*
‘Bloody ungrateful kids.’ Edward was on his boat, The Lobster Pot, checking the trawl nets with his old friend and ship’s mechanic, Spencer. ‘He doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. Does he think I wanted to take on the fleet from my dad? No I bloody didn’t. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me.’ He looked up from his work and surveyed the harbour around him. ‘Look at this place.’ He swept an arm dramatically across the view. ‘Trevay is the most beautiful place on earth. What’s he think he’s going to find anywhere else? Answer me that.’
Spencer moved his stained and smouldering hand-rolled cigarette from one corner of his gnarled mouth to another and made a noise that sounded as if he was in agreement. Edward continued: ‘Fifteen boats we’ve got in the fleet now. Fifteen! If my dad hadn’t been so canny after the war and bought them first few cheap from those poor fishing widows whose husbands had never come home from the Navy, we’d still have the arses hanging out of our trousers.’
Spencer gave another grunt.
‘You and me, Spencer, you and me, we know how the world works. Hard work brings good things. Not nancying around doing yer O levels and packing yer spotted handkerchief to go travelling. What’s that about?’
As inscrutable as ever, Spencer peeled the damp cigarette from his lips and revealed a handful of tobacco-stained teeth. ‘Want a brew, Skip?’
Edward
