Meg giggled, knowing Jack was not the only one to be wary of Dan. ‘He tries to be tough, like Father, but it’s all show,’ she said. ‘If he bothers you, you’d best stay away.’ And see if I care, her tone said.
The music finished and she walked away from him, burningly aware he was watching the sway of her hips in the new blue chenille dress.
He danced with Kath again and Meg wondered if perhaps she’d been a touch too casual. She should have given him more encouragement, tried to get him to make a proper date. She’d die if he didn’t, she was sure of it.
Later, he took her outside. For a breath of fresh air, he said. Meg went willingly, heart thumping, aware that this was the usual mode of behaviour when a boy wanted to get to know you better.
The small schoolroom, a low, stone building that might have grown out of the rocky soil it stood on, was home to a few dozen children during the day and often commissioned into action as a social meeting point during the evening for the scattered farming community. Standing as it did in the middle of nowhere it was black dark all around, proving a great attraction for those wishing to try out a few undisturbed kisses. She’d noticed Kath make two or three well-timed exits, one of them, to Meg’s great astonishment, with her own brother, Dan.
Now that it was her turn she felt quite sick with anticipation and excitement. What if she did something wrong, said something stupid? Jack was so sophisticated, with vast amounts of experience, while Meg felt simply gauche and juvenile.
He leaned placidly against the wall and lit up a cigarette. He offered her one but she refused. Somewhere an owl hooted. ‘Your father wouldn’t approve, I suppose?’
Meg managed a smile. ‘I don’t suppose he would.’ She was tempted to take one, to prove she was her own person, but decided it would be childish.
His eyes were moving over her face and she put up a defensive hand to her hair. ‘I could always grow it again,’ she said, and his eyebrows lifted.
‘For me?’
She wanted to fall into his arms and tell him she would do anything if he would only ask, but she smiled instead. Was he never going to kiss her?
‘My father can be a pain too,’ he said, sounding vaguely sympathetic. ‘Always comparing me with my well-organised sister or pestering me to "put down roots", whatever they are. And me with my whole life before me. What’s the hurry? There’s always tomorrow, I say.’ Jack laughed then tossed the half-smoked cigarette away with a careless flick of his hand. Almost in the same movement he pulled her into his arms.
His lips were cold against hers. She could taste the cigarette ash, smell it on his breath along with the pint or two of beer he’d had earlier. But his skin was soft and warm and, oh, it was wonderful to feel herself pressed so close in his arms. She wanted to stay there for ever. His teeth grazed her lips and she felt a bolt of excitement so intense it shot right through her stomach.
‘Hallo, everyone, having fun?’
Kath came bouncing alongside, one of the Jepson boys in tow, and Jack broke away with a laugh to light another cigarette. A cold wind from the fells brushed over her lips and with sinking heart Meg realised that the romantic interlude, if that was what you could call it, was over. And he still hadn’t made a date to see her again.
The rest of her evening passed, as usual, with perfect decorum and at ten o’clock precisely her father took her home. Everyone else stayed on for the Conga and the Hokey-Cokey.
Meg flung open the back door and called for her young brother. ‘Charlie, how many times do I have to call you?’
There he was, as she’d expected, expertly flicking cigarette cards against a row of them propped against the yard wall. With a sound of exasperation she marched over and gathered up the cards, tossing them angrily into the dustbin. He let out a howl of protest.
‘What did you do that for, Meg?’ He stood frozen, the next card poised between finger and thumb, bright blue eyes so affronted it was almost comical, had she been in the mood for laughing.
‘You’re too old for boys’ games.’
‘One minute I’m too young, now I’m too old. Make your mind up.’ Too young for anything serious like marriage or war, and too old for games, she thought, feeling ancient as she remembered the awkwardness of being sixteen.
‘Haven’t I been calling you this last ten minutes?’ She turned from him and started to snatch pegs off the washing line, the raw April wind whipping colour into her cheeks like a lash, turning her hands, still wet from a morning’s scrubbing, all red and chapped. Washing always made Meg irritable and she’d not felt quite herself since the dance two weeks ago.
She’d got so touchy about not hearing a word from Jack Lawson that she’d even stopped taking her usual walk each afternoon, just in case she saw him and he thought she was chasing him. It was the silliest attitude to take, Meg well knew, but somehow she couldn’t help herself. Unrealistically, she wanted Jack to seek her out, to court her. Though how he would dare venture on to Turner property without an invitation from the men of the household was a puzzle she hadn’t yet solved.
Now, as if to chastise herself again for wanting something she couldn’t have, she poured all her energy into work, unfairly taking her ill temper out on her young brother.
‘Didn’t you hear me shout that it’d started to rain and to bring in the washing before it got soaked? I think sometimes you’ve only sawdust between your ears. Just look at these sheets, all splattered with mud. You and your games.’ Meg flung the spotted shirts and sheets back into the basket, hard put to keep the tears out of her eyes. It had taken hours to soak, scrub and starch them all. Now she’d have to start all over again.
‘I didn’t hear you.’
‘You didn’t listen. You only hear what you want to hear, you great lump.’ She thrust the basket into his arms and pushed him towards the kitchen door. ‘Did you fill the log basket like I asked?’ She knew, of course, that he hadn’t. It still stood in the middle of the slate floor where she had set it hours ago, waiting to trip up any unwary passer-by.
She spent the next two hours scrubbing the mud spots off the washing and setting it to dry on the wooden rack that hung suspended from the ceiling in front of the fire. Steam filled the small kitchen in no time, making her short curls cling damply to her rosy cheeks.
Then Dan came in, reminding her to take his boots to the menders and presenting her with a whole wad of socks to darn that had somehow got collected up in the bottom of his drawer. Meg bundled them in to her sewing basket, telling him tartly to take his own boots to the menders.
‘You go to town more often than I do.’
‘Well, it’s not my job to darn socks.’
Meg bit back the desire to tell him just what he could do with his tatty socks.
She brought the logs in herself, Charlie having disappeared off the face of the earth, and by the time she had finished all the usual chores, and prepared liver and onions for the dinner, she was almost too exhausted to think straight. But she’d go out this afternoon, come what may. A breath of fresh air would do her good.
The wind had chased the rain away and a fickle sun had come out when Katherine Ellis saddled her pony to ride over to Broombank early that afternoon. There was an ethereal radiance to the light that turned droplets of water into sparkling diamonds on the newly sprouting fern heads, their tightly furled croziers like miniature shepherd’s crooks. The air was rich with the resonance of damp earth and new grass, and that feeling of hope that is peculiarly discernible when spring comes to Lakeland, as if to celebrate having survived a hard winter.
‘Come on, Bonnie,’ she urged, ‘stop blowing, then I can pull this damn girth strap tight.’ Bonnie, being a slightly overweight fell pony of mature years, was not really Katherine’s idea of a good mount. She would have preferred an Arab stallion or a fine roan. One who pranced and whinnied with excitement when she took her out, not stand on three legs with eyes closed, or drop her head to the grass verge at every opportunity, resisting any threat of exercis
e.
But Bonnie was an old friend and thus not easily discarded. Kath revelled in the freedom the pony gave her, even managing to stir Bonnie to a gentle trot if she squeezed her thighs against the pony’s plump sides hard enough, though it might make her back and leg muscles ache.
She leaned forward and let the wind skim through her hair, knowing she should have worn a hat. Mummy was for ever telling her so. Just as she told her to wear a coat on a damp evening, or to take a torch and a whistle if she went over Kentmere. But Kath rarely listened to these words of wisdom. Where was the fun in life if you always did what was safe and proper?
Her mother was holding open the gate for her now, quite unnecessarily, at the end of the long drive that wound between jutting rocks to Larkrigg Hall where Kath had been born and in which she had been cosseted ever since as the unexpectedly late child of elderly parents.
The fine old house had once belonged to her mother’s quarry owning forebears. Larkrigg Fell was pitted with the remains of a dozen old quarries, once worked for the blue-grey slate of the Silurian beds formed many thousands of years ago when Lakeland was young. The entire landmass had been pushed upwards by volcanic disturbance, fold upon fold of rock and earth with the most ancient rocks to the north. From these natural resources men had made fortunes, Rosemary Ellis’s grandfather among them.
And she had largely spent it.
‘You’ll be back by tea time, won’t you, darling? You know that Richard is coming over and particularly wishes to see you, not us old fogies.’
Kath flicked her crop against Bonnie’s flanks, wishing the pony would speedily gallop away so that she could pretend that she hadn’t heard the question. But Bonnie slowed down to nuzzle Mrs Ellis’s hand, just in case she had a treat secreted in the pocket of her soft tweed skirt. Kath restrained a sigh and smiled sunnily.
‘I’ll do my best. But don’t wait tea for me. You know how unpunctual I am.’
Rosemary Ellis watched her daughter until she was quite out of sight, a frown of concern upon her face. How difficult girls could be, particularly Katherine who had always shown a ruthless determination to have her own way. Perhaps it was because she was an only child and, as Rosemary was well aware, thoroughly spoiled by Jeffrey, that she seemed so wild and out of control. But she was young still, at eighteen, and there was plenty of time for her to mature. It was only that with Jeffrey being unwell and the future so uncertain, it would be lovely if she would settle down with some suitable young man. Richard Harper was ideal and from a good local family, his father likely to be Mayor of Kendal next year.
‘We’ll wait till five,’ she called out in desperation, just as the pony’s grey tail swished out of sight.
The whitewashed stone longhouse that was Broombank Farm came into sight as Kath rounded the last hill and Bonnie came to a halt without any prompting.
‘Even the horse can read my mind,’ Katherine said crossly, forgetting the countless occasions she’d ridden this way.
It was early yet for the blaze of gold which would soon surround the farm with an almost magical light, but the first spears of broom were already attempting to thrust through the thick green leaves.
Built as an Elizabethan manor farm, Broombank occupied three sides of a quadrangle though many of its buildings were now little more than ruins. Only its tall cylindrical chimneys stood proud, the narrow curtainless windows looking blankly out from thick stone walls that seemed to have shrunk in upon themselves with the passing of the years as if ashamed of the air of neglect. Kath knew that the inside was in an even worse state. It was hard to imagine the fine ladies and gentlemen who had installed the oak panelling and doors and whose initials were carved over the stone lintel taking too kindly to its present state. It was certainly not a house she would care to own. But it wasn’t the building she had come to see.
‘Let’s see if he’s in, shall we? Walk on, Bonnie.’ The mare ambled forward readily enough knowing there might well be a mint humbug at the farm, if the old man was in. There was little Bonnie would not do for a mint humbug.
Jack came to meet them himself, just as Kath had hoped, as soon as they entered the farmyard. She stayed on the pony’s back, sitting very straight to display her breasts to full advantage, and slanted a smile down at him.
‘You’re looking as devilishly handsome as ever on this glorious afternoon,’ she said.
Jack Lawson rested one hand on the bridle and smiled back at her. ‘And yourself.’
Four years older than Meg and she, Jack Lawson, with his black curly hair and sleepy violet-blue eyes, was the nearest thing to a rake that Katherine knew. A bit brash perhaps, just a little too full of himself, but one twist of that sensual lower lip and she could forgive him anything. Well aware that he belonged to Meg, or would if her friend had any say in the matter, still Kath could not resist testing her own standing with him. ‘Show me a man and I’ll wind him in,’ was her favourite catch phrase. And, generally speaking, a true one. Jack Lawson was certainly a man who interested her but he was not proving an easy fish to hook.
‘I was just giving Bonnie some much needed exercise and realised I hadn’t seen you since the lambing supper.’
For all there was a coolness to the April breeze, Jack stood with his shirt sleeves rolled above the elbow, hands thrust in his trouser pockets, allowing Katherine ample opportunity to admire his muscles. He worked hard, so they were worth seeing. ‘I’ve been busy. Why, have you missed me?’
Now she was thrown into a quandary. If she said that she had, it might make her look cheap. But if she said no, he’d wonder why she’d bothered to mention it in the first place. She decided to play it cool. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Jack Lawson. It was nothing more than idle curiosity. Who else is there around here that isn’t already half dead?’
They both laughed at that, aware of Kath’s frustration with rural life and oft-pronounced intention of leaving the quiet fells to head for the bright lights.
‘What about Meg? I thought you and she were inseparable.’
‘So we are. When I can get her away from that sanctimonious old father of hers,’ Kath agreed, sobering instantly. ‘They do worry me, the Turner family. How on earth they managed to produce such a sweetie as Meg is quite beyond me. They are really quite dreadful with her.’
‘You seem to find her brother amenable enough.’
She glanced down at Jack, startled for a moment as she remembered allowing Dan to take her outside at the supper. Something she had almost instantly regretted. He had smelled of beer and cow dung. She shrugged slender shoulders, a gesture that managed to look elegant even in the old green sweater she wore. ‘He has a fancy for me, that’s all. Not to be taken seriously. I can handle him.’
‘As you can most men,’ came the soft reply, and Kath glanced swiftly at him again, to see if he was just the teeniest bit jealous, but his head was down, concentrating on the horse. She looked at his hand instead, large and tanned, the skin rough and calloused from hard work on the farm, held flat now under Bonnie’s soft muzzle. ‘Not too many sugar lumps, they’ll make her fat,’ and they both laughed.
‘Where are you off to?’ he asked, as she gathered the reins ready to move on.
She walked the pony round in a circle, aware of his eyes upon her. ‘Over Coppergill Pass. I often go there on a fine afternoon.’ Hazel eyes regarded blue for a moment in silence.
‘So long then,’ he said, sounding very like a gangster in one of those new American movies she and Meg occasionally went to see in Kendal.
Kath urged Bonnie into action and with an airy wave of a hand trotted out through the gate Jack obediently held open for her. He stood watching her go, eyes on the delightful up and down motion of her rear as rider and pony headed off up the lane. It was the neatest little bottom he’d seen in a long time and he almost regretted not offering to go with her.
It was late afternoon before Meg set out, striding away up the fields towards Brockbarrow Wood. More a copse than a wood, the stand of tre
es stood high on the fellside, flanking the sides of a small mountain tarn, dark and skeletal against the glistening water. It was her favourite place even when the wind cut through like a knife. But today spring was in the air and her heart felt uplifted by the freedom of an hour out alone where she could sit and think without fear of being disturbed.
No one saw her go, not that she’d have cared if they had. She was entitled to a break she told herself. Meg loved walking and was never afraid to be alone. She had often thought it would be good to have a dog at her heels, but the only dogs the farm owned were working animals that belonged to her father and her brother Dan. They were treated well as there was nothing more important to a good shepherd than his dog, but they were never allowed into the house and spent their time in the yard or barn when not working. Meg felt she would like to have a dog beside her at all times.
‘One day I shall,’ she announced to the empty landscape, mentally adding it to her list of requirements for a happy life. As soon as I have a job, whatever that might be, and a place of my own. And Jack, she added silently. How any of these dreams would be achieved she had not the faintest idea but the determination was strong in her.
Meg continued upwards, her rubber boots slipping sometimes on the sharp stones. Above her the track narrowed and split into a dozen such sheep-trails, named ‘trods’ years ago by the Vikings who first populated these fells. The Herdwicks would later lead their lambs up them to the summer grazing, allowing the youngsters not a moment’s rest in their eagerness to reach the heights. Today the fells were bare and quiet and she loved the silence, feeling it heave into her heart and push away all the unpleasant thoughts and niggling worries. A skylark soared, tearing up into a blue-grey sky in a frenzy of song, a winter migrant from a colder land. Meg called up to the small brown bird, assuring it that she would watch where she put her feet and not disturb its eggs.
Luckpenny Land Page 3
