Luckpenny Land

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘Aw,’ Effie groaned, realising she was about to miss some glorious tidbit. As if there was anything they could say that would shock her? Not that she dare admit as much.

  ‘Perhaps you’d rather do the milking? I have to do that too in a minute.’

  Effie was convinced. When she had gone, on feet so rapid it was a wonder she didn’t fall over them, Meg turned back to Tam. ‘Best make it quick, whatever you have to say. She’ll be back before you can shake a lamb’s tail.’

  ‘Kath was pregnant when I last saw her. So far as I know she hadn’t told anyone else besides me. Probably only told me because I was a stranger. I wondered if mebbe her aunt discovered it.’

  ‘Kath? Pregnant? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s true. And no, she isn’t married, if that’s what you were wondering.’

  An odd little pang of disappointment pinched at Meg. Why should Kath tell this man, this stranger, about her problems and not herself, her one best friend? But she mustn’t show that it mattered. It would be foolish. Only Kath’s health and well being was important. ‘Poor Kath, suffering this terrible ordeal all on her own. So that’s why she went off abruptly to Southport, to hide from the disgrace. I wonder if she’s told her parents?’

  ‘She said not.’

  Meg looked solemn. ‘No, I can understand that. Mr and Mrs Ellis are very proper. Doctor and magistrate Mr Ellis is, and Rosemary organises the flower rota at the church. Oh dear, how dreadful. Poor Kath. And you think that this Aunt Ruby threw her out?’

  ‘Or took her somewhere. The point is, where?’

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’ Twin spots of outraged colour burned high on Rosemary Ellis’s cheekbones but Meg was more interested in the fingers pleating and unpleating the linen skirt to take too much notice. It was the sign of a nervous woman, rather than an angry one.

  They sat politely either side of the marble fireplace in the aquamarine and white drawing room and Meg had never felt more uncomfortable in all her life. Rosemary Ellis preferred not to associate herself with the common-or-garden dalesfolk, linking herself instead to the fringes of the upper echelons of Lakeland society. She used as her model such notables as the Bagots of Levens, the Hornyold-Stricklands of Sizergh, and the Lonsdales.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to be the one to break this news, Mrs Ellis, but there it is, these things happen in the best of families. Better you hear it from me than from a stranger.’ The effect of these simple words, meant in a kindly way, was electric. Rosemary Ellis was on her feet in a second, looking as if her knees might buckle under her at any moment.

  ‘A stranger? What do you mean? Who else could possibly know?’

  Meg wondered whether she ought to involve Tam, but saw no help for it. She would have to offer some explanation for her learning the truth. Sighing softly, she told of Tam’s arrival at Broombank and how he had been concerned for Kath. She even told the story about Rust, and how well he was doing now, the leg mending nicely, just to give Rosemary time to collect herself.

  ‘He asked after me at the Co-op and they directed him up to Broombank.’

  Rosemary was white to the lips. ‘Is he the father? Because if he is...

  That idea had not, until this moment, occurred to Meg. Oddly enough, she felt a pang of anguish at the thought, then realised it was impossible. ‘No, no, he couldn’t be. They’ve only just met. They are just good friends, Tam says. Both lonely people, away from home, I suppose. Look, would you like me to make you a fresh pot of tea?’

  Rosemary dropped back on to her sofa with the movements of a woman twice her age. ‘No, thank you, I’m perfectly all right.’ The fact that she didn’t at once offer to make a fresh pot for Meg proved the opposite to this brave declaration. Rosemary Ellis, the hostess par excellence, would never have committed such a breach of good manners.

  Meg cleared her throat. Sorry as she was for Mrs Ellis, she felt more compassion right now for Kath. ‘You wouldn’t have any idea where she might be?’

  ‘Me? How should I know?’

  Meg might have reminded Rosemary that she was the girl’s mother but thought better of it. ‘I just thought that perhaps Kath might have written, told you where she was staying.’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what my daughter has chosen to get up to.’ The sharp edge to her tone surprised Meg. Had she perhaps outstayed her welcome? She got up at once to go.

  ‘I’m sorry to have caused you any distress.’

  Meg found herself being shown to the door with a speed quite unlike Rosemary’s usual politeness. She gave the older woman a reassuring pat on the hand. ‘I shouldn’t let it bother you too much. Kath isn’t the first, nor will she be the last, to find herself in this situation, particularly now, with a war on. She’ll cope.’

  ‘I’m sure she will,’ said the icy voice. ‘She always was wilful.’ The door was held open, Rosemary clearly anxious for her to depart, and Meg only too ready to obey, when stubbornness gripped her. ‘I’ve written to Southview Villas so many times and got no answer but I won’t give up. I want to see her, write to her at least. If you hear where she’s moved to, you’ll let me know? I worry she might be ill or something.’

  ‘Katherine is perfectly well, I tell you,’ snapped Rosemary, and Meg couldn’t stop her eyebrows rising in surprise. Very quietly, she pushed the door closed again and stood facing Mrs Ellis.

  ‘You do know where she is, don’t you? I wish you’d tell me.’

  Rosemary Ellis’s eyes held sudden panic then a plea for understanding and all her confidence seemed to seep away. ‘I had to do it. Her father would have been devastated if he’d found out. Once the baby is born Katherine may live where she chooses but no one, most of all Jeffrey, must find out about her condition.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Meg quietly persisted.

  Rosemary ignored the question. ‘Jeffrey hasn’t been at all well. On top of everything he’s recovering from a severe bout of influenza. It would quite ruin his health if word were to get out about that Katherine... You must promise me that you will say nothing, not a word to a soul? Promise!’

  Meg grasped the hands that Rosemary was wringing with such anguish and squeezed them gently. ‘I will say nothing if that’s what you want, but you must tell me where she is. I am her best friend and surely have a right to know. I’m worried about her.’

  Jeffrey Ellis chose this moment to walk into the sitting room. He was wearing a blue checked dressing gown though it was past eleven o’clock in the morning. He seemed pleased to see Meg. ‘Hello. How is the farm doing?’

  ‘Very well, thank you.’

  Meg had always thought he was a man who carried a sort of quiet dignity about him, as all good medical men do. Now he seemed thinner, more tired, with an air of resignation or defeat about him. ‘Have you heard from Katherine?’ he asked, a pleading in his face, and Meg shook her head, unable to trust herself to speak as she watched the light of hope die in faded eyes so like Kath’s own. ‘I was hoping you might have. She’s adventuring somewhere. That’s my daughter, never still for a minute.’

  Meg caught the expression in Rosemary’s eyes, begging her to leave. ‘I must go. Work to do, I’m afraid.’

  Mr Ellis grasped her hand as she reached for the door handle. The grip was surprisingly firm. ‘You’d let me know if you did hear, wouldn’t you?’ It made her shiver to hear her own words of a moment ago echoed back to her. She smiled and nodded. Somehow she couldn’t see this gentle man as the censorious creature Rosemary made him out to be.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘If she writes to anyone it will be to you.’ Which gave Meg pause for Kath had done no such thing. Why was that? Shame perhaps? How very silly.

  At the front door she tried one last time. ‘I’ll write to her aunt once more then, just in case. Miss Ruby Nelson, isn’t it, Southview Villas? Perhaps she might have heard where Kath is by now.’

  But Rosemary was pushing something into her hand,
a scrap of paper, crisp and rustling, whispering feverishly as she glanced back over her shoulder, half an eye on her husband wandering like a lost soul into the drawing room. ‘You can check if she’s all right, if you like. Don’t come again. I don’t want her here. Not till she’s got rid of it. Then she can come home as if nothing had happened.’ The door closed firmly in Meg’s face.

  Standing on the empty driveway Meg read the address. Greenlawns Home for Wayward Girls.

  ‘I can’t go. Not yet, much as I’d like to. I’ll write and tell her that I’ll come as soon as the lambing is over.’

  ‘She’s your best friend,’ Effie pointed out.

  ‘The sheep are my livelihood, I can’t neglect them. It would take days to go to Liverpool, find this place and come home again. I’d have to stay overnight, maybe longer with the trains the way they are. She might refuse to see me.’ Meg wanted to drop everything that very minute and go and find Kath, but how could she? She simply daren’t risk leaving her flock at this important time.

  ‘What can I offer anyway? Her own mother won’t have her home.’

  ‘You could let her come here,’ Tam suggested.

  ‘I will. Oh, I will. There’s nothing I’d like better. I’ll bring her to Broombank where she can have all the love and care she needs. But I must be sensible.’ She looked from one to the other of them, begging them to understand. ‘The next weeks are the busiest in the farming calendar. I can’t leave now.’

  There was no one else to stand in for her. Effie certainly couldn’t deal with the lambing, nor could Tam manage on his own, since he said himself that he was more used to horses. ‘I’m sorry, but it has to be. Mrs Ellis says she is being taken care of. We’ll just have to believe that.’

  ‘She also said that she hadn’t the first idea where Kath was,’ Tam reminded her, in his quiet, lilting voice.

  Meg turned on him at once, upset by the implied criticism. ‘You go then. You find her if you think I’m so wrong.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were.’ He sighed. ‘This is your first lambing season. I don’t suppose another week or two will make much difference and I rather think you’re going to need all the help Effie and I can give.’

  Effie puffed out her flat chest, pleased at being included. ‘I’ll keep you all fed, anyroad,’ she volunteered, just to make sure they understood that she wasn’t having anything to do with the underparts of sheep.

  Tam grinned. ‘I’d like to see how it all pans out, so I’ll stay on if you don’t mind?’

  Meg was surprised, alarmed by the offer and strangely relieved all at the same time. ‘I can’t pay you. Not yet anyway. Not till I sell the lambs in the backend probably.’

  ‘Did I ask for payment?’

  ‘Nobody works for nothing these days.’

  ‘I like to be different.’

  ‘You know nothing about sheep. What use would you be?’

  ‘I don’t think you can afford to be choosy. I’ll work for my keep to begin with. Let’s at least make sure you have some lambs to sell.’

  He was far too sure of himself in Meg’s opinion. Whenever he stood about, watching her, she felt strangely inadequate and came over all ham-fisted and clumsy. And Thomas O’Cleary was too good-looking for his own good, certainly for hers. She daren’t think what Jack would have to say about this man staying here. Yet she needed help, very badly. Reluctantly, and with a strange excitement in her heart, she agreed.

  ‘All right. You can stay till the autumn sales. We’ll see how we get on.’

  Tam smiled, as if he had known all along that she would agree.

  Effie simply giggled.

  ‘Now that’s settled, perhaps we should work out a shift system. Them sheep will need watching round the clock, presumably,’ he said.

  And so will you, came the unbidden thought.

  The first lamb died. The failure was such a devastating blow that Meg redoubled her efforts to shepherd them more carefully. It was important that she had a good crop of lambs this year if she was to build up the flock. She set an alarm clock by her bed. Every two hours it woke her and she would pull on her boots and raincoat, usually with her eyes still half-closed, pick up her torch, and walk out into the bitter cold night to check her precious flock. Her successes were sweet but every time a lamb died she blamed herself, whether justifiably or not.

  The ewes were not in their best condition. They’d had a hard time of it through the frost and snow, so mortality was bound to be high. Broombank did better than some places lower in the dales and Meg knew she shouldn’t complain.

  Then came the day when she had to skin a dead one and pull its skin over a live orphaned lamb so that the bereaved mother would accept it as her own. Meg performed the task but then went and vomited her breakfast into the hedge.

  Could Joe have been right? Was farming too tough for a woman? Determined to prove herself, she refused help from anyone. Out every morning before dawn she spent all day amongst her flock, missing meals and far too much sleep.

  ‘I have me pride, for God’s sake,’ Tam said. ‘If I can birth a mare surely a ewe isn’t all that different? You can trust me to do a shift on me own, surely? You’ll be no good to anyone if you collapse.’

  Shame-faced, feeling oddly light-headed, Meg allowed Tam and Effie to chase her off to bed for a proper night’s sleep at last.

  It was Effie’s task to feed the orphan lambs that a ewe rejected or had insufficient milk for.

  Meg came down to the kitchen one morning to find them all gathered, bleating madly, about Effie’s legs.

  ‘They’re driving me crackers,’ Effie mourned. She was holding two bottles at once to a pair of fiercely sucking lambs while the others desperately nuzzled her hand wanting their own share. Meg watched as she got herself a mug of tea, a smile on her face.

  ‘How do you know which ones you’ve fed?

  Effie gave her an anguished look. ‘You might well ask.’ The two bottles were now empty and Effie dabbed a blob of milk on the top of each head to identify the two fed lambs then went to refill the bottles with fresh mixture. The moment her back was turned the other lambs leapt upon the first two and quickly licked off the delicious fluid. Meg burst into laughter.

  ‘I don’t think your system is working.’ She explained what she’d just seen.

  Effie stared at the milling lambs in despair. ‘Drat! No wonder some get fat while the others stay skinny.’

  Effie met Meg’s gaze, brimming with laughter, and burst into giggles. Then they were both laughing so much Meg was clutching her sides in agony. ‘Oh, the thought of them licking up the milk as fast as you mark them. ‘They were off again and it was some moments before the two of them could wipe away tears and bring themselves back under control.

  ‘Well, come on, what do you suggest?’ Effie asked.

  ‘How about some sort of label?’

  So luggage labels were found, one attached to each lamb and duly numbered.

  ‘Now you start at one, mark it, and keep going, in order, till they’re all fed. Easy.’

  ‘Let’s hope they don’t eat labels,’ chuckled Effie. But the system did seem to work and the lambs started to thrive better after that.

  It was the middle of May before Meg felt it safe to take time off from her duties. A familiar twittering warble told her that Broombank’s swallows had returned to take up summer residence and there were five blue eggs in the dunnock’s nest by the gate.

  The lambing season had been longer and harder than Meg could ever have imagined. But her first crop of lambs were safely delivered, smaller than she would have liked, but it was a start.

  Oh, and how she had loved watching them grow, seeing them play ‘I’m the King of the Castle’ each evening as they gambolled and frolicked on the knolls of grass about the farm, as lambs are supposed to do. It filled her with such pride to watch them that it took her twice as long to get her chores done. She had survived her first winter, and the knowledge seemed to give her fresh courage, ready to face an
ything, even this sour-faced woman who was taking an age to answer a simple question.

  She tried to imagine Kath sitting here in this green painted room in exactly the same way. Though not quite the same, for Kath’s mind would no doubt have been a turmoil of misery and confusion, worrying over her baby and her future. How long had she been in this place? Six, seven months? Maybe longer.

  Meg had disliked Miss Blake on sight. There was a smell about the place, rather like the paraffin and sand they used to spread over ‘accidents’ in infant school. It made her feel uneasy.

  ‘She probably came at the end of last year,’ Meg helpfully pointed out. ‘A pretty girl, with fair hair worn in a bob.’

  The woman sniffed. ‘They’re all pretty, or so they think.’

  Meg watched as she leafed painstakingly through a long slim book, wishing she would hurry up. Meg wanted to get this mission done with and be back on the train before nightfall. This was not a time to linger in Liverpool.

  The wisdom of her coming had been debated long and hard for some weeks. They’d listened to the news every night, horrified by what was happening. The phoney war was turning into a real one as Hitler occupied Denmark, Norway, Holland, and swept on through Belgium to France. Mr Chamberlain had gone and Winston Churchill was now Prime Minister, promising them nothing but ‘blood, sweat, toil and tears’.

  ‘What if you get bombed?’ Effie had asked, panic in her voice. Tam calmly told her that nothing of the sort had yet happened so why should they choose to drop one on Meg the moment she set foot in the city. Tam O’Cleary was good at easing tension, Meg had discovered. But then he was good at a lot of things.

  She’d taken the train to Southport and been forced practically to bully the directions to Greenlawns out of Ruby Nelson. It was as well she had since nobody in Liverpool seemed to have heard of the place.

  Miss Blake paused at a page in her large blue book, peering through narrow rimmed spectacles. ‘Ah, here we are. Yes, we did take in a girl by that name: Katherine Margaret Ellis, aged twenty. She came to us in November last. Yes, I remember her now.’