The Last Pearl Read online

  Leah Fleming was born in Lancashire and is married with three sons and a daughter. She writes from an old farmhouse in the Yorkshire Dales and an olive grove in Crete.

  Also by Leah Fleming

  The Girl from World’s End

  The War Widows

  Orphans of War

  Mothers and Daughters

  Remembrance Day

  Winter’s Children

  The Captain’s Daughter

  The Girl Under the Olive Tree

  The Postcard

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2016

  A CBS company

  Copyright © Leah Fleming, 2016

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Leah Fleming to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Hardback ISBN: 978-1-47114-096-9

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-47114-135-5

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-47114-098-3

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset in the UK by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd are committed to sourcing paper that is made from wood grown in sustainable forests and supports the Forest Stewardship Council, the leading international forest certification organisation. Our books displaying the FSC logo are printed on FSC certified paper.

  There is just one piece of jewellery that is equally becoming to everybody . . .

  Long live the pearl necklace, true or false from first date to our last breath.

  Genevieve Antoine Dariaux, A Guide to Elegance

  Contents

  Part 1: THE PEARL

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Part 2: THE SHINY SHOP

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  Part 3: THE LAST PEARL

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  Part 4: A LITTLE SHOP OF PEARLS

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  Part1

  THE PEARL

  The pearl mussel of the British Isles (unio margaritifera) has a thick coarse and unsightly shell . . . it is sometimes twisted, distorted and barnacled.

  Kunz and Stevenson, The Book of the Pearl,1908

  Prologue

  Perthshire, July 1879

  The boys on Glencorrin green were hard at their evening football kick around, stripped to the waist with backs tanned like leather, their dusty shirts used for goalposts. The tallest of them by a head was standing poised in goal, his curly black hair damp with the heat of the day, when a voice called from the cottage gate down the lane summoning his attention.

  ‘Jemmy, away and fetch yer pa in from the river,’ shouted Jean Baillie, his mother. ‘Supper’s in the pot and it’ll no keep till he graces us wi’ his presence.’

  Many folks in the village of Glencorrin wondered why Jean Guthrie had taken such a man as Sam Baillie to her bed. Sure enough, he was a fine-looking man with a head of wild jet curls and a dark winsome eye. His son took after him. He wasn’t afraid of hard graft in the forests, but in village eyes Sam was one of the tinker kind, and folks knew there was no holding them when the spirit put wanderlust in their feet.

  ‘I’m away this minute,’ Jem shouted, turning to answer her just as the ball flew past him and the opposition roared in victory. He grabbed his shirt with a shrug. ‘Sorry, see yous all tomorrow.’ His mother’s word was law.

  It was high summer in the forests around Perth and almost the shooting season, but there was a brief gap for haymaking and river fishing on the estate where the Baillies were employed. It was the nearest the villagers got to a holiday season. The banks of the river were full of campers and locals scouring the water for those special pearl mussels that might make them a fortune.

  Running down to the water’s edge through a secret path hidden by the tall Scots pines with their scented needles and cones, Jem Baillie knew just the spot where his father had fished for pearls every summer, hidden from the travelling folk in their bendy tents and vardos. It was the dry season, when the river ran deep and calm in the centre and the camps used by the log floaters in the winter were now filled with pearl hunters paddling in the shallows in search of treasure.

  Jem loved the silence of the dark forests. His grandfather had worked those hidden places, hewing down the great pines while supervising the other river rats jumping the floating logs that were carried by the water in full spate to the lumber mills. That was autumn work when the season picked up, but until the beaters went out on the Glorious Twelfth, there was nothing to do but join his father in searching the riverbed for the secret hoard that would bring honey for their coarse oaten bread and provide them with strong boots for the snows to come.

  Jem was an only child. When Sam Baillie, an itinerant traveller stopped for the season on the laird’s estate to be a hired hand, little did he know his wanderings would soon be over. When his tribe moved on he had already fallen for the quiet charm of Jean Guthrie who cleaned and served food in the shooting lodges. She’d borne him a fine son in her forties, a son they were trying to keep from the forest and the laird’s employ by enrolling him in school as a pupil helper. Once school was out, Jem was away with his father fishing until it was dark. Sam Baillie was the undisputed king of the pearl fishers and Jem loved to watch him at work. He had the old way of doing things, the gypsy way. ‘The right way,’ he was told.

  ‘Never forget, son, yon pearl is a gift of nature, it’s God’s bounty and not to be squandered. You have to tease the shell open a wee bitty, not crush it, killing the creature inside like the farm boys do. Some of my own are no better. All those piles of rotting shells on the shoreline, kicking up a stink. Why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?’

  Jem caught sight of his father bent over, peering into the water using the wooden bucket with a gl
ass bottom, searching down into the clear water. He was chest high in cold water.

  ‘Any luck, the day?’ Jem yelled but his father was too busy to answer at first. He looked up and smiled.

  ‘Give us a hand, laddie.’

  ‘Ma says its time you were out or you’ll catch yer death.’

  ‘Ach away . . . she’s in here, I know it in ma bones. I had a dream last night. She’s waiting down there. Come in and see. Your young eyes are sharper than mine and my back is awful weary.’

  Jem rolled up his britches, barefoot he waded in, taking hold of the shaft of the scraper with its hooks bent backwards to dislodge the mussel from its berth. He fished around with his feet through the stones and mud and sand, scraping up mussels to the surface, giving them to Sam to shove into the bag slung round his body, already weighed down with shells to be opened.

  ‘Come on home, the stew’s in the pot.’ Jem was hungry.

  ‘Howd yer whisht,’ Sam replied, coughing with a rasp that Jem hated to hear. ‘What’s that down there, can you see, to the left of yon stone?’

  ‘Just an old twisty thing.’ Jem was feeling with his toes.

  ‘Bring it up then.’

  ‘But it’s an old battered shell.’

  ‘Twisters are the best. Have I taught you nothing, son? They misshapes is there for a reason. Bring it up.’

  The boy and the old man sat on the tussocky riverbank as Sam carefully opened up each mussel in turn, one by one, but there was nothing of note, just glistening molluscs. Some were useless and not worth opening so Jem threw them back. Two had small seed pearls, like tiny shot pellets. There was one shaped like a minute acorn, a type they called a barrel pearl. They would all go in Sam’s baccy tin to be sold in a job lot.

  ‘I’m starving, Pa. Let’s away home or I’ll get a row.’

  ‘Wait, it’s here, I know it is. I dreamt it.’ Sam forced open yet another misshapen shell with a hump on its back, fingering inside to see if there was anything hiding in the folds of flesh.

  ‘There’s nothing.’ Jem was bored and his stomach was rumbling as he ferreted into the old shell he had brought out last, but then feeling something he pulled out what looked like a large white marble. His father took one look, crossing himself with a whistle. ‘Praise be. Have you ever seen anything like that in all yer born days?’

  Jem held the pearl in his palm. His heart was racing. Even he knew this was special, bigger than anything they’d ever found before. It was a perfect sphere and in the sunlight all the colours of the rainbow glinted from its smooth surface. ‘Wait till Ma sees this.’

  ‘No, you tell no one. This is our secret. You know she can blether with the other wifies and then they’ll all be wanting to know where we found this gem of gems. You can fish all your life and never find such a beauty. It’s worth a king’s ransom, laddie. I know it in ma bones and where there’s one there’ll be others. The Lord be praised for he told it to me in a dream. This wee darling will change our lives, sure she will.’ Sam kissed the pearl.

  Jem could see the excitement on his father’s leathery face but he could also hear his breathlessness and the rattling cough in his chest. Pa was getting too old for standing in rivers and lugging logs. If this pearl would buy them warm winter clothes, a horse and cart then it would be worthwhile.

  Yet as they trudged back through the path and the needles scrunched under his bare feet, Jem sensed the thrill of the search. All the disappointment of finding empty shells was forgotten when you had such a miracle in your pouch. Did this mean their fortunes had changed for the better?

  1

  York, 1879

  The dawn light peeped through the hole in the curtain. It was Saturday again, the best day of the week for Greta Costello as she rolled off the bed board, trying not to wake her sister Kitty. She’d slept in again, leaving no time for a lick and a promise in the wash bowl as she threw on her thin striped shirt and cotton skirt, wrapping her crocheted shawl across her chest and pinning her thick black plaits over her head. She crept down the steep wooden stairs in her stockinged feet. The boots would be waiting, polished, or her brother Tom wouldn’t be getting any spice.

  The tea was stewing on the embers of the banked-up fire but there was no time to linger. Mother was sleeping on the camp bed, she stirred as Greta lifted the latch of the door that opened straight out onto the darkened street. She hoped that Mr Abrahams had remembered to unlock his door.

  Greta scurried up Walmgate to the house of the old watchmaker, who lived across the River Foss in Aldwark, trying not to shiver in the dawn air. It was creepy in the first light; prostrate figures lay snoring in the doorways, mangy dogs scavenged for scraps. At least the laundry had been delivered before his Sabbath; a clean shirt, underclothes neatly pressed and mended. Mother always took care with his washing, keeping it separate, thankful for work at the end of the week rather than Monday. Living alone now, he always received them as if they were the Crown jewels, nodding his head in gratitude.

  Sometimes when she delivered them he was busy at his bench, curled over a watch repair with a candle lighting a globe of water acting as his magnifying mirror, looking up with tired lashless eyes and heavy lids. ‘Ah, Margareta, is it that time already?’

  She loved the special way he called her Margareta.

  ‘Do you know it is the Greek word for a pearl,’ he told her umpteen times.

  Here she was thinking she’d been named after the Blessed Margaret Clitherow of York, pressed to death between doors for sheltering a Jesuit priest in the bad old days, or so her father had once told her. Margaret was her Sunday saint’s name but Dad always called her little Greta and that’s what she liked best. Today she was the Saturday girl who could escape the poor Irish quarter of the old city. Later she would make her way to Parliament Street, to the bustle of the market stalls where helping behind the scenes brought welcome treats for the family.

  But first she must attend to Mr Abrahams as his gentile Sabbath girl who lit his lamps before sundown on Friday night, made up his fire and lit it again on Saturday morning, made sure all his ‘Sunday best’ was laid out while he slept and then topped up his special soup on the range to warm through. Mother had been happy to do this for a while but had been even happier to pass the task onto her eldest daughter when Greta turned fourteen.

  Saul Abrahams belonged to another world, a world of book learning and foreign languages. He was of the Jewish race and spoke Yiddish with his friends. He was a widower, frail and tired, who worked all day in his workshop room full of ticking clocks, some chiming at different times, others sitting silent and dusty, waiting for his magic touch.

  Greta lifted the latch and opened the door to Mr Abrahams’s house. She revived his fire, making sure it was well stoked, and tidied round a little of the clutter. The house smelled of chalk, spirit, oil and polish. His bench was cluttered with eyeglasses, brushes and tools of all sizes. She liked to linger over his repairs, fingering the delicate files and instruments he used, examining a box of broken jewellery, bracelets and chains labelled for repair beside soldering irons and burner which she mustn’t touch. She knew he would be doing no work today or any cooking until after sunset.

  Satisfied that the first task of the day was finished she left the house.

  It was time to rush to where the market stretched down the whole length of Parliament Street to help with the setting up of stalls. There was a blind basket maker who always needed a hand and some country butter makers who asked her to mind their babies while they set out their cheeses and butter pats. They knew she could be trusted behind the stalls. The vegetable growers also found her jobs: pulling off rotten cabbage leaves, unpacking boxes of fruit and putting the best specimens to the front of the stall.

  If she was lucky there were mugs of tea and buns, or perhaps a hunk of Wensleydale cheese which she slipped into her apron pocket along with the few pennies she gleaned for helping out.

  She avoided the drunks who thought any lass fair game. Costellos might
be dirt poor but Mother warned her not to give any men the eye or they might think they could take her down the back alley and mess with her private parts. Some of her school friends had already gone down that slippery slope so on Friday nights, when the men had their pay packets, they were out on the town with painted faces.

  Greta knew she looked older than her years with her hair tied up. Her Irish colleen looks, with her tumble of black curls fizzing in the damp air and her bluebell-coloured eyes, often brought unwelcome attention. Nothing would make her go down such a seedy path. She had a nose for danger.

  As she watched the young shoppers with their mamas, wearing their fine gowns, and sporting perky hats from the smart millinery shops, it was hard not be envious. They didn’t have to rise at the crack of dawn or spend the week with hands doused in scrubbing soap.

  The preacher at the Mission Hall told them that everyone was equal in the sight of the Lord, but not in York, they weren’t. You knew your place just by your address. Living off Navigation Road, Walmgate, might be within the city walls but it was a rat-infested, warren of back courts and dilapidated houses, full of Irish immigrants who came after the terrible potato famine years ago. Brendan Costello had worked as a navvy, building railways in Yorkshire. He’d earned a decent wage and found an English wife. They’d been respectable, well shod and fed, living in clean rooms but his dying of the cholera fever changed everything. Now Greta’s mother rented two flea-bitten rooms close to the wash house and the stand pipe so Mother could boil water in the copper and take in washing.

  Two of Greta’s brothers died as babies and now there was just Tom and Kitty to feed and keep clean. It was hard in those damp rooms but let no one say Mother didn’t try her best to keep them as they once were. There had been no chance of Greta staying on at St Margaret’s School when she was needed at home. Tom went out with the street boys collecting dog muck in pails to sell to the tanneries and he stunk to high heaven if they got in a silly fight. Even Kitty had to mind babies for a few pennies. That’s how they survived to the weekend.

  There were skivers like Nora Walsh who made her living reading palms and tea leaves, telling stuff and nonsense to wide-eyed biddies. Only the other day she’d plonked herself down at their table to cadge a mug of tea and a bit of a craic while Mother was trying to press shirts.