The strange, soft green eyes which reminded her so much of Kath, opened wide in false innocence. ‘So what would you be meaning by that remark?’
Meg got up and removed the empty dishes to the sink. ‘You can sleep here, on cushions by the fire.’ Then more sternly, ‘Any prowling about in my house and you’ll find I have other, more fierce dogs to protect me.’ The thought of young Ben and quiet Tess setting upon this man almost made her laugh but she managed to keep her face perfectly serious. He didn’t know how soft they were.
‘I’ll bear it in mind, to be sure.’ His gaze held hers for a moment, boldly challenging, as if saying it might be worth trying anyway.
Meg brought him a pillow and a blanket and placed them on the chair by the fire, hoping that she’d made her point. As she started up the stairs he spoke in his quiet, lilting voice.
‘I’m glad to have made your acquaintance, Meg Turner. I hope as how we are going to be friends and you’ll call me Tam.’
For some foolish reason, Meg’s heartbeat quickened as she looked down upon him. ‘I think it’s time you closed those Irish eyes of yours and got some sleep.’
Meg called at the surgery first thing the next morning. Rust had spent a comfortable night but was still drowsy from a minor operation he’d had to set his shoulder.
‘He’ll live. You can take him home later,’ the vet said. ‘When he wakes.’
‘He will be all right?’-
‘He’ll never work again, I’m afraid. A quiet life in future for this young man. If you decide to keep him, that is.’
‘I’m not having him put down.’
The vet smiled. ‘I didn’t think for a minute you would, Meg. Nasty accident though. How did it happen?’
Meg hesitated. ‘Just one of those things.’
She went straight from the surgery back on her bike up to Ashlea. She had it in mind to give a piece of her mind to Dan but found herself being interrogated by Sally Ann instead. Her sister-in-law was busy knitting khaki socks for her soldier brothers but was willing enough to put down her knitting for a minute and hear about the stranger who had helped to rescue Rust.
‘You let a man sleep all night in your house?’ Sally Ann gazed at her in astonishment. ‘I wonder what Jack would make of that?’
‘Oh, don’t. I daren’t even think. He’s Irish and behaved most properly.’
‘He’s good looking then?’
Meg dropped the ball of wool she was winding for Sally Ann, so surprised was she by this question, and had to chase it under the table. ‘Why do you think so?’
‘I can see it in the flush on your pretty cheeks,’ Sally Ann said, making the rosy hue deepen as a result.
‘What else could I do but offer him a night’s accommodation? Him having helped with the rescue.’
Sally Ann’s grin faded. ‘How is the dog?’
‘He’ll live, the vet says.’
‘That’s grand news. He’ll be out on the fells again before you know it.’
Meg swallowed. She wouldn’t cry at the damage done to her good friend, she wouldn’t. ‘He’ll never be up to working again, but maybe he won’t mind so much. He always has had a fancy for the easy life.’
‘Dan is real sorry about the accident. Could hardly sleep last night. He likes dogs.’
Meg was aware of her sister-in-law glancing anxiously at her and tried to smile but her skin felt all tight and stiff. ‘I’m sure he is,’ was all she managed.
‘He didn’t think. Oh, I know, that’s Dan all over, you’ve said so a dozen times. But he is doing his best to change. He does try, if not often enough mind, to be his own man. But Joe goes on at him so much it’s as if Dan has to prove how tough he is, even when he doesn’t feel it.’
Meg reached out and squeezed Sal’s hand. ‘My father has a way of getting under anyone’s skin and turning them into monsters. The dog will be fine. And it’s true he did behave a bit daft. Rust has a nervous streak in him, as collies often have. Remember how he ran away that time? I don’t think he likes Dan’s booming voice.’
‘I can sympathise with that,’ chuckled Sal. ‘Here, have a piece of curd tart while I put on a brew of tea. It’s freshly made.’
They sat companionably for some moments before Meg spoke again.
‘I hope you don’t mind my calling here so often. But I always enjoy our little chats, as well as your delicious cooking.’ Meg grinned and took a bite out of the wedge of tart.
Shrewd eyes regarded her in silence for a moment. ‘You miss someone to talk to up there, don’t you?’
A flash of guilt crossed Meg’s face before she could stop it. ‘I do, yes. Effie’s lovely but she’s still a child. I forget that sometimes. I miss Kath, and oh, Jack of course, so very much. But that isn’t the only reason I come here. I hope you and I can be friends.’
‘Course we can. I know Kath is special to you. Sometimes, I used to think, a bit too special.’
Meg looked at her sister-in-law in surprise. ‘What do you mean by that?’
Now it was Sally Ann’s turn to flush beetroot red. It clashed alarmingly with her hair. ‘Trust me to put my big foot in it. I didn’t mean anything, except, well, she did push in between you and Jack, didn’t she?’
‘Push in?’
‘Yes. Going out with you on picnics and swims and such like. Wasn’t natural, I thought, for a beautiful girl like her to want to be with you two all the time, just as if you were sisters and always had to be together.’
‘I suppose we felt like sisters sometimes.’
‘Why didn’t she find a fella of her own?’
Meg sat and listened to the clock ticking out in the hall while she considered this. ‘She was a friend. Still is. Therefore always welcome with Jack and me. We didn’t mind.’
The sharpness in Meg’s voice caused an awkwardness to fall between them, one that might have continued indefinitely had it not been broken by the arrival of Joe.
‘Is that cur of yours still going strong then?’
‘Yes, no thanks to your son.’
‘Don’t look at me so fierce. I didn’t kick him down the scree.’
‘No. But you put it into Dan’s head to try and make it as difficult as possible for me to run Broombank.’ Meg spoke quietly but her tone said she wasn’t to be made a fool of. ‘You’ve taken my hay, my tups, my cows, and now damaged my dog, but you’ll not make me give up. I’ll tell you that for nothing.’
Joe sat down in his chair, took off his cap and rubbed one hand over his thinning hair. He was quite calm, infuriatingly so in Meg’s opinion. ‘I’ve allus had a fancy for Broombank.’
‘You can buy land as good anywhere.’
‘Aye, but not cheek by jowl with me own place. Anyhow, it has more usable acres than I have as well as good access to the heaf.’
Meg steadied her breathing and sat down opposite her father. Sally Ann excused herself swiftly, and went off to find something that didn’t need doing.
‘This is about Mum and Lanky, isn’t it?
The question was quietly asked but it was as if she had lit a match to touch paper. She watched his face turn red, then white as it drained of all colour, his mouth screwing into a tight knot of rage.
‘Oo told you?’
‘Does it matter? Isn’t it all very old hat now? Does it really matter if Mum once loved Lanky? Who knows if anything would have come of it? It mightn’t have lasted, they were only young.’ Like me and Jack, came the unbidden thought, but Meg quickly squashed it. Her love for Jack was absolute, not here today and gone tomorrow.
‘Aye, she used to say that.’ Joe reached for his pipe as he always did in times of stress and emotion. ‘She spent half her life up there at Broombank, even when Mary was alive. After Mary was gone Annie still kept going. She was never away. How do I know what was going on?’
It hurt Meg more than she could bear to hear her mother’s memory so defiled. ‘You nasty old man! Mum, Mary and Lanky were good friends. That’s all. They’re all dead now, l
et them rest in peace. Why you always have to see the worst in people, I don’t know.’
‘Because it’s generally the way things are. I don’t trust women. Never have, never will.’
For the first time she began to feel truly sorry for her father. He lied and cheated to get Annie to marry him but had never felt secure with her. Because of that he’d kept her close to the house, and her daughter too in the fullness of time. He’d bullied his two sons, each for different reasons, but he hadn’t managed to make any of them love him. It was really very sad.
Meg went to kneel by his chair and Joe looked directly into her eyes, surprise in his own at seeing her beside him thus.
‘Why do you have to be pushing and shoving all the time, ordering people about? Why can’t you just let things be? Maybe, if you gave me the chance, you might find something in me that you like. Would that be so terrible? Would it really damage you, or Ashlea, if I managed to be as good a farmer as you?’ She didn’t say better, that wouldn’t have done at all.
Joe made no reply.
When he made no move towards her, Meg got wearily to her feet and stood before him. ‘I don’t want to fight you, but I will if I have to. Every time you knock me back it makes me a little bit stronger, gives me a little more confidence to cope. If Mum hadn’t the courage to stand up to you, and escaped at every opportunity to a place where there was friendship and love, you’ve only yourself to blame. As I have escaped. And Charlie. If you don’t watch out, Dan will do the same.
‘But I’m still your daughter, Joe Turner, and I’m certainly not going to deny that fact, nor give in to your bullying. Nor will I fail in this enterprise. In fact, I intend to be a success. Have you ever considered that I might want to be like you, and not my mother?’ Then, bidden by some instinct she could not at that moment define, Meg leaned over and kissed her father on the cheek. She left the kitchen quickly before he had time to reply.
‘Walk with me up the lane for a bit,’ she said to Sally Ann.
‘You haven’t had another falling out?’
Meg shook her head, tears welling in the grey eyes. `’I don’t want to talk about it, all right?’
Sally Ann nodded in silent misery and Meg could see her sister-in-law wishing life with the Turner family could be a lot less complicated. So did she.
‘You’ve not taken the hump, have you? About what I said earlier, about Kath?’
Meg shook her head. ‘Course not. It’s always hard to understand other people’s friendships. Forget it, I have.’ Meg was trying not to think too much about what Sally Ann had said about Kath pushing in. Weren’t they a trio, like the three musketeers? But the silence from her best friend was deeply worrying. Jack’s letters too were few and far between, and not exactly romantic. It hurt to remember their vow that snowy Christmas night. Had they forgotten it so quickly?
The two girls paused to smile at the hectic toing and froing of a pair of hedge sparrows, busily preparing their nests. ‘I feel like that sometimes,’ Sally Ann said. ‘Allus rushing back and forth. It’s good to escape the chores for a minute and catch a breath of fresh air after all this rain and mist.’
Meg glanced at her sister-in-law anxiously. ‘You are all right? The baby and everything?’
Sally Ann smiled a contented smile. ‘Oh, yes, never better.’
Meg relaxed. ‘I’ll be getting more than enough fresh air now with the sheep to sort and the lambing about to start.’
‘You enjoy it though.’
‘I love it.’
‘Will you keep him on?’
‘Who?’
‘The Irishman. Whatever he’s called.’
Meg jerked up her head and looked at Sal, the idea new to her. ‘I hadn’t thought.’
‘Well, I would if I were you. Things aren’t always going to be this quiet, are they? I keep expecting the skies to be filled with aeroplanes and parachutes, but nothing’s happening. Except that everyone you see has faces as long as a wet fortnight, thinking of their loved ones going overseas.’
Meg too looked suddenly glum. ‘Jack will be going soon. I can’t bear to think of it. I don’t see much of him but at least I know he’s safe.’
‘Do you think we’ll be safe, up here?’
Meg tucked her arm into Sally Ann’s. ‘Of course. It’s a bit shaming really, to be so far away from the action. I intend to work extra hard on the farm. People are going to need food, it’s an important job too.’ She laughed, rather self-consciously. ‘That’s what I tell myself, anyway.’
‘You’re right. All I seem to do is start babies.’
‘Well, you’re going to finish this one. A real beauty it will be, with a cheerful smile just like its mother. Take care now.’
As Meg strolled away, Sal called after her, ‘What was it he wanted, this Irishman?’
Meg stopped in her tracks. ‘O’Cleary. His name is Thomas O’Cleary. Known as Tam.’
‘Tam, is it?’ Sally Ann’s lips twitched with teasing good humour. ‘Maybe you won’t miss your Jack as much as you might think.’
‘Sal!’
‘You said he was waiting in your kitchen. What was he doing there?’
Meg blinked. ‘Do you know, I haven’t the first idea.’
Tam O’Cleary declared himself in no hurry to depart and seemed willing enough to help with the sorting. Meg picked out the ewes that appeared weakened by the hard winter and put them closest to the farm where she could keep a better eye on them. The rest were divided up into their likely lambing weeks and enclosed in-by accordingly.
‘Have you worked with sheep before?’
Tam shook his head. ‘Horses. Cows.’
‘I need a sheep man.’ She wasn’t sure she wanted Tam O’Cleary about the place, though Meg couldn’t rightly say why. ‘I’ve too much to learn myself to try to teach you. Green as they come, that’s me.’
‘Not quite,’ said Tam softly. ‘You were born and raised on a farm.’
‘Yes, but not allowed to work with the sheep.’ She lifted her chin a notch. ‘But it’s what I want to do, so don’t you start telling me how hard it is and not women’s work.’
He checked the mark on a ewe, shifted a hurdle and let it scamper through, then closed it again. ‘But you need help, that much is certain. Where else would ye find a fine strong man like meself with a war on?’
Meg couldn’t help but smile at the deliberate use of the Irish accent, finding herself warming to this man though really she shouldn’t. ‘How you can turn on the charm, Tam O’Cleary.’ And they both laughed, eyes meeting, shifting, dancing away. She decided to be entirely businesslike.
‘We don’t dip the ewes in the spring. But the hoggs, they’re the first year lambs that have spent the winter at farms on lower ground to give them a good start, will be returning on the fifth of April. That’s Hogg Day, and they will require dipping and marking up before we let them back on to the fell.’
‘You’d want that done before the lambing starts?’
Meg agreed that would be for the best. ‘Though it doesn’t always work out that way, or so I’m told.’ She screwed up her eyes as she gazed over her stock, wishing Lanky was here to pass judgement on them, and help with the weeks of lambing she now faced. ‘When the hoggs have been dipped,’ she continued, aware that Tam was watching her, ‘they always go back to the part of the fell where they spent the first summer with their mothers. It’s a wonderful homing instinct that keeps them safe on their own ground, which is vitally important on these vast areas of high fell.’
‘You’re the same. Safe on your own ground.’
Meg smiled, unaware how it lit up her face, golden curls streaming in the wind. ‘Something of the sort.’ She saw the pensive expression in Tam O’Cleary’s face and it confused her. He was a man, after all, and had a way of reminding her that she was a woman just by the look in his eye.
‘No more talk. There’s work to be done,’ she said crisply, and tried not to watch his smile.
Later, when the work wa
s over for the day and they’d all enjoyed one of Effie’s cheese bake suppers, the question that had been teasing her for so long finally came out.
‘Why did you come?’
Meg had meant to ease into the question politely, in a roundabout way, a method in which her father was an expert. But as ever she was too frank and straight, and the question came out boldly, tactlessly even, making her blush. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so blunt. Only you never said what you were doing in my kitchen that day?’
‘I came because of Katherine.’
‘What?’ It was the last thing she’d expected to hear. ‘How do you know Kath?’
Tam told the tale of how he first met Kath and her subsequent disappearance. He showed not a trace of his usual teasing humour, nor made any mention of the pregnancy. He wanted to tread warily, for no reason beyond instinct.
‘Are you saying the old girl has done her in?’ asked Effie, eyes like saucers.
Meg’s glance quelled her into silence. ‘Don’t be silly. All this reading is doing your imagination no good at all, Effie Putnam.’ Turning back to Tam, she said, ‘Where could she be? Why do you think there’s anything wrong at all? She might just have taken it into her head to leave. Kath has always maintained that she wanted to go to London. I can’t think why she didn’t go there in the first place.’
So here it was. ‘She was short of money, her family not understanding her problem. Perhaps she was nervous there might be bombing, with the war about to start.’
Meg pooh-poohed this idea at once. ‘Kath isn’t a weak weed. She isn’t afraid of anything, and certainly wouldn’t let the rumour of bombing, which might or might not happen, stop her doing what she wanted.’
‘Maybe not, in the normal course of events. But then there was the child to consider.’
‘Child?’ Meg frowned. ‘What child? I don’t understand.’
Tam glanced sideways at Effie’s face, avid with interest. Meg took the message.
‘Good heavens, it’s past six. Effie, be a dear and feed the hens, will you? I forgot at lunchtime with being so busy.’
Luckpenny Land Page 27
