Luckpenny Land

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘You haven’t told us your name.’

  Never taking her eyes from the dog’s face the child answered. ‘Euphemia.’

  Meg and Sally Ann exchanged rapid, amused glances. It seemed a very grand sort of name for such a small, scrawny child. ‘How lovely.’

  Mam says it’s Greek, an’ it was all Greek to her how she come to have me.’

  Sally Ann spluttered and choked and had to give her attention to the pan of stew bubbling on the range to bring herself back under control.

  ‘We won’t wait for the menfolk today, since this is your first meal with us,’ said Meg, and saw a pair of troubled eyes turn up to hers. ‘Oo do yer mean? What menfolk?’

  ‘Well,’ said Meg, trying to sound encouraging as she set a chair at the table for Euphemia which the child ignored, ‘there’s my father, Joe, but you must call him Mr Turner. Then my brother Dan, who is married to Sal here. I have another brother, Charlie.’ Meg swallowed. ‘But he has gone to join the RAF.’

  ‘Do they live here an’ all?’

  ‘Yes. But they’re out in the fields most of the time,’ Meg felt it necessary to add. ‘You won’t see much of them.’

  Sally Ann placed a dish of succulent stew upon the table before Euphemia’s empty chair. The steam from it rose enticingly and the girl’s nostrils twitched.

  She glanced at the stew, then quickly up at the two women before snatching the plate and running to a far corner of the room where she started to push fistfuls of the food into her mouth.

  Meg was horrified. ‘Be careful, you’ll burn yourself.’

  Sally Ann put a hand on Meg’s shoulder, staying her as she would have gone to protest. ‘Let her be. She’s probably had to fight for every scrap, poor lamb, to survive.’

  ‘Everyone calls me Effie,’ the child mumbled at last through a mouthful of food, and held out the licked plate. ‘Is there any more?’

  Chapter Ten

  Kath regarded her aunt with some trepidation. She sat like a matriarch in a wing-backed chair in her private sitting room, certain of her authority in the insular world she had created. Shrewd eyes lurked beneath a straight black fringe while fat ringed fingers were folded upon some knitting in her lap.

  ‘You’ll be looking for work, I take it?’ The voice was well modulated, in a tone used to being obeyed.

  Kath looked slightly startled, not having considered doing any such thing. A few restful weeks was more what she’d had in mind, while she sorted matters out.

  ‘My stay would only be temporary. I intend going to London in due course. But until I’ve made my plans I’d like to stay here.’

  ‘At my expense?’

  ‘Indeed, no. I am perfectly able to pay my way.’ Kath had rather assumed there would be no charge of any kind, since she was family.

  ‘How old are you now?’

  ‘Twenty, nearly twenty-one.’

  ‘Hm. And Rosemary has kept you idle all your life, I shouldn’t wonder. Always was an expert in idleness. Landed herself a rich husband and retired to cosseted domesticity. No doubt that is what you have in mind.’

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  Ruby Nelson sniffed. ‘It wasn’t the way my sister was brought up, I’ll have you know, nor is it the way I have lived my life. You might as well understand that if you choose to stay here, you’ll either pay your way or work. That’s my creed in life, as you might say.’

  ‘I understand perfectly.’

  ‘I hope you do. There’ll be plenty of war work about, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Heart sinking, Kath readjusted her plans yet again. Perhaps she could find quiet employment somewhere, driving the wounded to hospital, for instance. That sounded useful and not particularly onerous. On a sunny September day in Southport with only the sound of gulls in the air, it was difficult to imagine where the wounded would come from.

  ‘Breakfast at eight precisely, luncheon at one and dinner at seven. Latecomers do not get fed. I prefer all rooms to be vacated each morning by ten. It only makes for more work if people stay in them. And the front door is locked at nine-thirty. My rules are strict but fair.’ Ruby lifted the steel knitting needles and began to click away at some navy blue wool. The sound was almost as loud as the grandfather clock that stood in the corner and whose hands evidently governed the household routine to the second.

  Kath said that she would make note of the times.

  ‘No gentlemen callers, of course. I take only honourable single women or widows, and gentlemen with impeccable credentials. My charges are reasonable. You will find the tariff on your dressing table. Less, of course, if you intend to cook your own meals.’

  ‘I would prefer full service, if you please.’

  ‘I am correct in assuming you are unattached?’

  A slight pause then Kath risked a smile. ‘Yes, quite unattached.’

  A nod of approval. ‘Then I am sure we will get along splendidly.’

  This was not quite the warm welcome Kath had hoped for. But what choice did she have? She couldn’t go home and tell her parents the truth. If she had the courage, she’d go to some back street establishment and get the matter dealt with. But the idea of abortion revolted her. It wasn’t the poor little mite’s fault after all. She hadn’t worked out all the details yet. How she would keep her pregnancy hidden for a start. But she hoped that here, in Southport, there would be good adoption agencies, or else in Liverpool not far away. Then she’d head south.

  Her aunt’s reaction to the news was another thing, best not thought about at this stage. Time enough to face that later.

  The washing of Effie proved to be the greatest test of Meg’s patience to date. The girl refused absolutely to remove a single garment. But she’d reckoned without Meg’s own stubbornness.

  ‘You are not sleeping in one of my beds dressed in those rags. Like it or not, you are taking a bath. Hold her down, Sal, while I unfasten her boots.’

  ‘They ain’t rags. Mam put me in me best to come ’ere.’

  ‘Then God knows what your worst is like.’

  ‘You can have hot cocoa if you take a bath like a good girl,’ Sally Ann promised, using bribery in her desperation, but the offer resulted in only a momentary pause in the struggle.

  It took the strength of both women to peel the coat and dress, both stiff with dirt, from the child’s emaciated body. When they had her naked on the rag hearthrug they both stared in awed horror. Great purple bruises covered her body.

  ‘I fell down,’ said Effie.

  ‘Several times it would seem.’

  The lower lip was starting to tremble but the brown eyes blazed with hatred and fear. No wonder the child had clung so tenaciously to her rags. ‘Come on,’ Meg gently urged. ‘The water will warm you and we’ll be very careful, I promise.’

  Effie had never taken a bath in her life, but testing the water with a tentative finger decided it might be worth the risk. She was curious to know what it might feel like to be clean. Mebbe the warm water would stop the continual itching that she suffered from. Very carefully, she lowered herself into the water and her small pixie face lit up at once with the pleasure of it.

  Very gently Meg soaped the tender body while Sally Ann poured water from a large jug over the tangled hair. It took the best part of an hour and a half to bathe her and to clean and comb the walking masses from the hair, using copious amounts of lye soap and paraffin.

  It was a shining little stranger who emerged. As the child sat wrapped in a towel by the fire, sipping the promised cocoa, Sally Ann and Meg smiled at each other.

  ‘She’s pretty,’ Meg said.

  ‘And smaller than ever. Have you realised, she’s not got a stitch to wear?’

  ‘I’ve still got me own bloody clothes!’

  ‘I’ve put those in the outhouse to be burnt,’ Sally Ann told her, so firmly that even Effie knew when she was beaten.

  ‘You can have something of mine,’ Meg offered. ‘I’m sure there must be some of Charlie’s old shoes in the atti
c. Though if you are to stay, you’d do best to curb that sort of language here.’

  ‘Joe would have a fit,’ Sally Ann agreed, stifling a giggle.

  ‘He will anyway when he sees her.’

  ‘I don’t care what any old man thinks.’

  ‘You will if he throws you out the door.’

  ‘I’ll go ’ome then.’ But it was a chastened Effie who spoke, her voice already blurring with sleep from the depths of the warm towels. She took no persuading at all to go to bed. Eyelids drooping as Meg led her upstairs, Effie opened them in wonder at sight of the small attic room.

  ‘Is this where I’ave to sleep?’

  ‘You’re to share it with me. Do you mind? I’ve made a bed up on cushions in the corner.’

  Since Effie had never shared a room with anything less than her entire family before, and sometimes with perfect strangers, she merely shook her head.

  ‘We can buy you a proper bed when you’ve decided if you’re staying.’

  ‘You mean of me own?’

  Meg laughed. ‘Of course. Come on, little Effie, you look all in.’

  Now that the face was clean, purple bruises could be seen quite clearly beneath each dark eye. The child didn’t look as if she’d slept for weeks, nor eaten. Meg felt a warm, protective glow inside that here, at least, she could do something to help another human being in this terrible time of war. Effie would eat well from now on, if Meg had to starve herself.

  ‘You’re not going?’ Meg, halfway to the door, stopped at the sound of fear in the high-pitched child’s voice.

  ‘I could sit with you for a while, if you like?’

  ‘Don’t matter.’ The thin shoulders shrugged. But of course it mattered a great deal. Quite clearly the child had never been alone in her life before, Meg realised. In the tangle of bodies and human misery of the slums, privacy didn’t exist. She tucked the covers up to the child’s chin and sat with her until the sound of even breathing heralded a deep sleep. Only then did she go back downstairs. And found herself thrust into the fury of a typical Turner row.

  ‘Who said this young thug could come here?’

  ‘She’s a child, not a thug,’ Sally Ann was saying, patient resignation on her flushed face while her father-in-law stood before the fire, blocking all heat from the room, waving a fist in the air.

  ‘I’ll not have strangers in my house without my permission.’

  ‘The government doesn’t need anyone’s permission,’ Meg quietly told him. ‘Evacuees are being billeted on everyone.’

  ‘If we have to have one, then it should be a lad. At least he’d be some use.’

  ‘Effie is here for protection, not to work.’

  ‘This is my house. I’ll be the one to decide such things. If she’s not going to work, she can leave first thing in t’morning.’

  ‘There’s a war on, if you haven’t noticed.’ Meg reached for her coat.

  ‘And where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘To see Lanky. I meant to go this afternoon but couldn’t because we had Effie to see to.’

  ‘It’s too late.’

  ‘It’s no more than half-past seven. I won’t be long.’

  ‘I’ve not done talking to you yet.’

  ‘Well I’ve done talking to you.’ Meg closed the door on his fury. Halfway across the yard she thought she heard a scream and stopped. She decided it must have been a fox or some other wild creature and, pulling her bicycle from the shed, rode off up the lane.

  Over the following week Meg did her best to keep Effie out of Joe’s way. It wasn’t easy. Sally Ann was nursing a black eye as a warning to them all of the risks they ran if they failed.

  ‘Why didn’t that lump of a brother of mine protect you?’

  ‘You know Dan can’t bring himself to contradict his father. They have a mutual adoration society going for them. Anyroad, nothing can stop Joe’s temper.’

  Naturally inquisitive, the child poked and pried in every corner, often wandering off and reacting strongly if Meg tried to curb her freedom.

  ‘I goes where I wants to go. I’ll happen go ‘ome tomorrer.’

  ‘I hope you won’t. Don’t you like it here?’

  ‘Not much. It stinks.’

  Meg had trouble hiding her smile since this was an odd sort of accusation coming from a child who herself had been unapproachable until a few days ago. She meant the animals, naturally, and nothing would induce her to go anywhere near them, coming almost to the point of hysterics at one point when Meg offered to introduce her to Daisy at close quarters.

  ‘Not bloody likely,’ she said, and set off down the hill at such a pace that Meg had to run to catch her, and it took some persuading to bring her back.

  ‘You mustn’t run off on your own like that,’ she warned. ‘You might fall and hurt yourself, and how would we know where to look for you?’

  It was only when Effie was fast asleep in her makeshift bed that Meg felt it was safe to leave her. She’d been so busy settling Effie in to life at Ashlea this last week that she’d quite neglected Lanky and decided one evening that it was time to put that right. Sally Ann agreed to look after the child when Meg said she would walk up to Broombank for a change, since it was such a pleasant evening.

  She was glad she had made the effort but regretted not bringing her bike when she found Lanky in bed, coughing blood and in obvious pain. There was no fire or heat of any kind in the cold house and no sign of his having eaten. The air was acrid with the tang of the old ash that lay untended in the grate, and a thin layer of yellow dust powdered everything.

  ‘I’m fetching a doctor. Just as soon as I’ve got some hot soup down you.’

  ‘No you’re not. There’s nowt he can do.’

  ‘We’ll see about that. And I shall light a fire in your bedroom, so don’t argue.’ With no telephone at Broombank and it being black dark outside by the time these essential tasks were done, Meg decided the doctor would have to wait until morning. There was no question of leaving Lanky alone, so she made up a bed for herself by the fire downstairs, and could only hope that little Effie would not wake and be frightened, all alone in a strange bedroom.

  At first light Lanky seemed no better, though he took a little scrambled egg and a sip of tea. Meg quickly dealt with the milking, surprised and saddened to find Lanky had only four cows left out of what had once been a sizeable herd, then ran as fast as her legs would go to the doctor’s house, more than two miles away. Her sides were near splitting when she got there but she leaned on the bell while she gasped for breath.

  A large, well-set man, still with a marked north-east accent to his quiet voice even after more than thirty years in Westmorland, came in answer to the desperate ringing. But Dr MacClaren only gave a sad shake of his head when she told him the facts.

  ‘I’ll call in later this morning. Lanky has never been properly right since he got gassed in the First World War.’

  ‘I didn’t know. Why didn’t he say?’

  The doctor gave a wry smile.’ He’s got his pride. Doesn’t like to be a burden to anyone.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘That’s the way he is, Meg. Your ma used to call on him quite a bit. It’s good to see you taking over. He needs a bit of care.’

  ‘I do what I can, I’m very fond of him.’ She might have said he was the nearest thing to a real father she had known, her own being very far from ideal, but it wouldn’t have been proper, not to the doctor who’d delivered her.

  ‘Keep him warm, well fed, and above all quiet. Rest is essential. The farm is too much for him but he’ll never sell it. You look more and more like your mother, you know.’ The doctor grinned. ‘No wonder he thinks you’re special.’

  Meg flushed with embarrassment, wanting to ask what he meant by that remark, but the doctor was on his way back indoors, anxious for his breakfast before starting on the day’s calls and surgeries.

  She was back at Broombank before eight but Meg knew she had a problem. How c
ould she return home to look after Effie when she didn’t dare leave Lanky? He needed care too. Fortunately this was a quiet time in the farming year but there were the hens to be fed and a hundred and one other jobs at both houses.

  ‘You get off home,’ he said, reading her thoughts. ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Like heck you will.’ Sal would have to look after Effie for once. She’d stop on, for a little while, and see to the old man.

  It was early afternoon by the time Meg felt she could safely leave him. Loyalties to her old friend and to Effie still warred within. First there had been the doctor to wait for and then she’d had to see that Lanky got a bit of dinner inside him. She’d spent a couple of hours hosing down the cow byre which really did stink, and had made some effort to clean up the house.

  Then she’d written a short letter to Jack, explaining that his father was ill. Would the Navy give him leave to come home and sort it all out? she wondered. Somehow she doubted it, but oh, what she wouldn’t give for Jack to walk in the door this minute, smile that wonderful smile of his and place a sweet kiss on her lips.

  Perhaps she could bring Effie back with her, then she could look after both at once. Meg brewed a pot of tea and took the tray upstairs to discuss the matter with Lanky.

  ‘Aye, bring the lass here by all means. I’ll be up and about in an hour.’

  ‘Indeed you won’t. I shan’t move an inch from this chair unless you promise me you’ll stay right where you are.’

  Lanky’s old eyes twinkled with pleasure. ‘Just as stubborn as your mother.’

  Meg kissed the wrinkled cheek. ‘And as determined to get my own way.’

  ‘Eeh, your mam rarely got that.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose she did, not with my father about.’ Meg sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Tell me about her. You loved her, didn’t you?’

  His eyebrows lifted in astonishment. ‘How did you guess?’

  Meg gave a soft chuckle. ‘I should have guessed long since if I’d had any sense, but it was something the doctor said. Go on, tell me.’

  For the first time Meg could remember, Lanky flushed like a boy. ‘It’ll have to be our secret. It’s not something to broadcast.’