On Monday morning bright and
early Conrad Watts steered the “Maid of the Bay” out of the harbour entrance
and out to the open sea, but he spent the whole of the trip in the
wheelhouse.
Later that day Steve Sharp
was on the first ferry of the day from Pipershaven.
He was not an islander but
had gone to university with Lee Barnaby and they were still very close friends,
and he was the only person other than Lee himself who knew about Lee’s feelings
for Cheryl.
The Beaumont family had once
owned the whole island but after three successive heirs were killed in action
during the Great War the accumulated death duties forced the only surviving
Beamont, George, to sell off the estate in 1920, auctioning off the buildings,
the port, and parcels of land.
Fortunately, the sale managed
to raise enough to pay off the taxman, while being able to keep Woodside Farm
and retain a Beaumont family presence on the island.
Woodside Farm was the largest
of the five farms on the island covering the whole of the southeast corner, a
large wedge-shaped parcel of land bordered by Halfway Lane to the north,
Spanish River and the Eagles Crag in the west and the rugged coastline from
Manor Cliff Beach to Armada Head to the east.
It was primarily an arable
farm, potatoes mainly but also other root vegetables, but half the business was
breeding horses and ponies, rare breeds in particular, heavy horse’s,
Cumberland fell ponies and other breeds in danger of extinction.
They also had a Clydesdale,
Suffolk Punch and a Cleveland Stallion for stud but the heavy horses also
worked in harness, and pulled the dray on special occasions, fete’s and such
and the Christmas parades.
The equine side of the farm
employed an all-female team of stable staff, led by Natasha Baker, who were all
hard-working girls and didn’t care what work they did.
After about two weeks into
December, it was time to get the heavy horses reshod before their Christmas
duties and the Power brothers were visiting the farm to do the job and they
asked Natasha if they could have the assistance of two of the girls.
Obviously as Mark Power and
Michelle Kendall were seeing each other she had put herself forward, but she
needed one more girl and was about to assign someone when much to hers, and
everyone else’s surprise, Eden Hills volunteered.
“Ok then off you go” Natasha
said with a smile.
Eden was a relatively new
arrival on the farm, and was quite shy, she was a slender girl of five feet
eight and was completely bald, but she strode very confidently that day to meet
the blacksmith.
“Hi, I’m Dale” he said as she
walked in, and was rather pleased that his helper was the bald girl he had met
briefly at a party at the Beaumont Hotel.
“Eden” she said in response
“That’s a lovely name” he
said, “Doesn’t it mean Happy?”
“Delight or bliss” she
replied proudly
“Much more interesting than
mine” he said “I’ve always thought Dale was rather a dull name”
“Nonsense it’s a great name,
it means “small valley” she explained
“Really? I didn’t know that”
he responded
“You were at the party last
month” she said
“That’s right” he replied “I
remember seeing you there”
“I do rather stand out” she
said
“Yes, but in a good way” Dale
said, and Eden blushed
Eden worked with him on and
off over that week and in the week that followed, he asked for her, and it was
clear to everyone that there was more to their relationship than Blacksmith and stable girl.
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