The Sorrowing Wind (The Apple Tree Saga Book 3)

by Mary E. Pearce

  ‘Pick him up,’ Linn said. ‘He’s your own son.’

  ‘I’m afraid to,’ he said. ‘I might hurt him, being blind.’ The stairs creaked and Mrs Gibbs came into the room. She took the baby out of his cot and placed him, in his blankets, in Tom’s arms. And now, with the small warm face nuzzling with such surprising strength against his own, the small hands pushing against him, Tom stood for a while feeling that he and this baby son of his were alone together in the dark. Alone together as one flesh. But, right at the heart of this shared darkness, there was a sunny picture forming.

  ‘I can see you,’ he whispered. ‘I can see you, little boy, one summer’s day, after rain, reaching up with both hands to touch a wild pink rose in the hedgerow, and you’re laughing the way your mother laughs, ’cos one or two raindrops is splashing down into your face.’

  Mrs Gibbs took the baby and laid it back again in its cot. Tom returned to Linn’s bedside and sat with her hand between his own.

  ‘Your father was here. Did you hear him? He’s gone to fetch Dr Dundas.’

  ‘Yes, I heard him.’

  ‘You went against me, didn’t you? You left the house and went all them miles to Outlands Farm. That frightens me to think of, your going all that way.’

  ‘Did Father come and fetch you home?’

  ‘It was Betony that done that. She put off her wedding, would you believe it? I dunno what she said to the policeman, but they let me go, whatever it was. Then we picked up your father on the way home.’

  Tom felt Mrs Gibbs beside him. She was touching his shoulder.

  ‘We should ought to let her rest. The doctor’ll be here before long. You can come up again in an hour or two. I’ll sit up here while she has a sleep.’

  ‘I reckon that’s right,’ Tom said. ‘I’m gabbling on like an old goose.’

  He rose from the stool and leant over to kiss Linn’s forehead. He felt her fingers touching his face. He turned and went down into the kitchen.

  ‘How is she?’ Betony asked.

  ‘She says she’s all right. And Mrs Gibbs don’t seem too worried about her, does she? Anyway, Dr Dundas will be here directly.’

  ‘How’s the baby?’

  ‘Oh, he’s a masterpiece, he is! I daresay they’ll let you see him later.’

  ‘Sit down here,’ Betony said. ‘I’m going to clean that forehead properly.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, and sat on the edge of the rocking-chair, his back quite straight, his hands folded between his knees. He was thinking about his baby son. ‘Maybe he’ll be a carpenter, the same as me. Maybe they’ll take him on at Cobbs.’ And after a while he said, ‘D’you think he’ll mind overmuch, having a father that’s stone blind?’

  ‘No, he won’t mind, I’m sure of that.’

  Betony was swabbing the deep cut, wiping away the dried blood.

  ‘I don’t like the look of this at all. It’s very ugly.’

  ‘It’s a funny thing, but I can’t feel it. I felt it all right when the stone hit me. I thought I was going to fly to bits. But I don’t feel nothing any more.’ He put up a hand and touched the wound with the tips of his fingers. ‘No, not a thing,’ he said, pressing. ‘My head just feels numb, that’s all.’

  ‘Numb all over, do you mean?’

  ‘Pretty well all over. I ent sure. It’s like pins-and-needles inside my skull.’

  ‘I wish the doctor would come!’ she said. ‘Surely he ought to be here by now?’

  ‘Maybe he was out some place else. Maybe Jack has had to wait. Are you worried about Linn?’

  ‘I’m more worried about this cut.’

  ‘I told you, that’s nothing, I don’t hardly know it’s there at all. I’m a bit muzzy, but I’m used to that.’

  ‘I think you ought to try and rest.’

  ‘Can a man rest when he’s just this minute become a father?’

  ‘They haven’t all spent such hours as you have, under police questioning.’

  ‘No,’ he said, and, after a pause: ‘I never murdered Tilly, Bet, and that’s the truth as God’s my witness.’

  ‘I never thought you did for one moment.’

  ‘I wish she’d come forward and put an end to all this talk. I don’t want my son growing up in the world with people saying his dad’s a murderer.’

  ‘Lean back and rest,’ Betony said. She was worried and frightened by the colourless, leached-out look of his skin. ‘Lean back in the chair and take it easy.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, and leant his head against the flat cushion that hung on tapes from the back of the chair. ‘I am a bit tired, now that I think of it, I suppose.’

  Betony lifted his booted feet and put the stool underneath them. She fetched a blanket and spread it over him, up to the chin.

  ‘Sleep if you can. You’ll be better for it. Linn and your baby are in good hands.’

  ‘We’re going to call him Robert, you know, after Bob Newers, my mate in the Army. We was going to ask if you’d be his godmother.’

  ‘I’d be cross if you asked anyone else!’

  Betony went about the kitchen; turned the napkins airing on a string above the fire; eased the kettle out on its bracket; set the teapot on the hob to warm. The lamp on the table was burning crooked. She went and turned the wick down low. Then she took up scissors and an old newspaper and sat down with them in her lap. She began making spills, cutting and folding carefully, making hardly any noise.

  ‘I know what you’re doing,’ Tom said. ‘You’re making spills.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I noticed the jar was almost empty.’

  ‘That was always a favourite job of yours, even when you was a little girl. You wouldn’t let nobody else make them. Nobody else done a proper job.’

  He could picture her plainly at her childhood task and somehow the thought of it made him smile. Sitting back in his chair, wrapped in his blanket, he had the heat of the fire in his face, could hear the small sounds it made, and could smell the sweet smell of old mossy applewood burning on it. But slowly the world was slipping away. The picture inside his mind was fading. His blind eyes were closing of their own accord. And because he was really very tired, death came to him disguised as sleep, so that when he gave himself up to it he was still smiling.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Michael’s not here,’ Mrs Andrews said. ‘He motored up to London this morning and is staying the night with Major Thomas. Tomorrow he sails for South Africa.’

  ‘How long for?’ Betony asked.

  ‘He may decide to stay for good. If he does I shall probably go out and join him there. But should he decide to return to England he would prefer not to see you again. That was the message he asked me to give you.’

  ‘Yes. I see. In that case I think I’d better leave this with you.’ Betony took the ring from her finger and placed it on the hall table. ‘I came as soon as I could,’ she said, ‘but it seems I’m too late.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have made a scrap of difference however soon you had come. He wouldn’t have seen you.’

  ‘I’m sorry he feels so bitterly.’

  ‘Are you sorry? ‒ I very much doubt it, Betony. You never really loved Michael. I always thought that, from the very first.’ Mrs Andrews was unyielding. ‘You could never have done such a thing,’ she said, ‘if you’d really loved him.’

  Armistice Day was cold and sunless. A bitter wind blew in the churchyard yews and birches, and a few dry snowflakes fell on the people below. The war memorial, cut from a piece of Springs Hill granite, was a tall Celtic cross surmounting a rough-hewn pedestal, and stood inside the main gateway. Huntlip had given thirty-six lives. The names were cut on three sides of the stone. Some were repeated twice or three times. Hayward. Izzard. Mustoe. Wilkes.

  ‘Thirty-six young men,’ the vicar said, at the end of his address, ‘whose courage and sacrifice will live forever.’

  People stood very still, during the two minutes’ silence, and their heads were bowed. The silence would last in
many hearts. But heads were raised again during the singing of the hymn, and the frail human voices rose defiantly round the cross, strong because they sang together. The people, singing, all looked up, and the cold wind dried the tears on their faces.

  Afterwards, walking home through the village, Dicky said: ‘Tom’s name should be on that stone by rights, along with the others.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps so,’ Betony said.

  She and Dicky walked with their father. The rest of the family came behind. Jesse was staring straight ahead. He found it difficult to speak.

  ‘No “perhaps” about it. Dicky’s right. Tom gave his life for King and Country, just the same as William and Roger.’

  Betony took her father’s arm.

  The following day, she spent three hours at Chepsworth Park, where all the invalid veterans wore sprigs of greenery in their coats, remembering their dead comrades. There were many ‘helpers’ there that day: every wheelchair case had been taken for an outing through the park, all the bedridden men had someone to talk to, and several ladies had banded together to put on a concert in the evening.

  ‘Oh, we’ve got floods of helpers at the moment!’ the superintendent said dryly to Betony. ‘Armistice Day has made them remember, certainly. But it’ll fall off by the end of the week and then we’ll be left short-handed as always.’

  ‘Perhaps it would help,’ Betony said, ‘if I came more often.’

  Afterwards, on her way through Chepsworth, she stopped to look at the new memorial standing in the cathedral grounds. It was the figure of a private soldier, bareheaded save for a bandage, and he stood with his rifle in front of him, the butt on the ground, the barrel clasped between his hands, staring at the ground as though bowed down with weariness. All around the monument, the steps were strewn with laurel wreaths.

  As Betony left the cathedral precincts, a column of unemployed men passed by, each with a placard on his chest and back. ‘Hundreds more where we come from!’

  ‘We take charity but what we want is work.’

  ‘Old soldiers never die, they only fade away ‒ from starvation!’ And one man, seeing Betony coming away from the war memorial, called out to her: ‘The dead are remembered all right! It’s us live ones that get forgotten!’

  Sipping a glass of Madeira wine in the vicarage drawing-room, Betony could easily guess why the vicar, Mr Wisdom, had summoned her there. Miss Emily Likeness, headmistress of Huntlip school for forty-three and a half years, was retiring at Christmas, reluctantly, due to a general decline in health.

  ‘Am I correct,’ the vicar asked, ‘in thinking you will not be marrying Captain Andrews after all?’

  ‘Quite correct,’ Betony said.

  ‘I am very sorry, Betony, that it has worked out so sadly for you.’

  ‘Thank you, vicar. You’re very kind.’

  ‘I was wondering whether, in view of your changed circumstances, you’d consider taking over from Miss Likeness as headmistress of the village school. I can think of no one more suitable. Miss Likeness herself hopes you’ll agree. But, of course, you needn’t give your answer tonight. You will probably wish to think it over.’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ Betony said, ‘but I think the answer will probably be yes.’

  As she was leaving, the vicar said: ‘There’s a rumour in the village that Tilly Preston’s been seen in Warwick. Is it true, d’you suppose?’

  ‘Yes. It’s true. Jeremy Rye saw her there, serving in the bar of a public house. She’s been living there for some time as the wife of the landlord.’

  ‘Why did she never come forward, then? Surely she must have seen the posters?’

  ‘Jeremy Rye asked her that. She claimed she knew nothing at all about it.’

  ‘I never doubted that your foster-brother was innocent.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ Betony said.

  Her sister Janie had been ill with ’flu. She was now recovering, sitting up in bed, eating the grapes Betony had brought her.

  ‘Have you heard from Michael?’

  ‘No, not a word.’

  ‘Mother tells me there’ll be no wedding but surely ‒’

  ‘Yes. That’s right. Michael’s gone abroad. He doesn’t want to see me again.’

  ‘Oh, Betony! Are you sure?’

  ‘Don’t be upset. I’m not. I feel, somehow, that it wasn’t really meant to happen.’

  ‘But what will you do?’ Janie asked. She could not imagine her own life without her husband and her three children. She could not imagine such emptiness. ‘Whatever will you do?’

  Betony smiled. She thought of the school, where she would soon be mistress-in-charge, with over a hundred small children in her care. She thought of the invalid veteran soldiers needing help at Chepsworth Park, and she thought of the grey-faced men she had seen walking the streets because they had no work to go to. She thought, too, of Linn Mercybright and her fatherless baby.

  ‘There’s always plenty to do, Janie. It’s only a question of where to begin.’

  The Land Endures by Mary E. Pearce

  The Land Endures is the fourth book in the Apple Tree Saga. Keep reading for a preview of Chapter One and details of where to buy the book.

  The farmhouse welcomed them from the beginning. They felt they belonged there, all of them, as though the place cast a spell on them. Stephen had had his doubts, of course, and sometimes Gwen had shared in them, for the purchase had not been an easy one, and the outgoing farmer, Mr Gould, had driven a hard bargain over the valuation of the standing crops. But that was behind them; a thing of the past. Holland Farm was now theirs, even if it did have a mortgage on it, and when they clip-clopped into the yard and saw the old, quiet house waiting for them, they knew they had made the right decision.

  The house was not quiet for long. As Stephen and Gwen stood in the hall, waiting the arrival of the furniture van, the children ran from room to room, making their own discoveries. After the tiny house at Springs, the space of the farmhouse delighted them. Their voices rang out, echoing, and their feet pounded the bare boards.

  ‘Is it possible,’ Stephen said, ‘that four children can make so much noise?’

  ‘Does it distress you?’ Gwen asked. She followed him into the big kitchen. She still worried about him, ceaselessly, for the war had left its mark on him, and even now, more than a year after his discharge, his nerves were still badly frayed. ‘Shall I tell them to be quiet?’

  ‘God, no! Let them yell. They never had the chance in Prior’s Walk.’

  And yell the children certainly did. It seemed they meant to make up for the past.

  ‘Chris! Come and look! This bedroom is vast!’

  ‘Never mind the bedroom. You come up here. There’s a secret cupboard in this wall.’

  ‘I can see the cattle from up here. Our cattle. And some sheep. Yoo-hoo, Joanna, why don’t you come?’

  ‘Where’s Jamesy calling from?’

  ‘He’s up in the attic. So’s little Emma.’

  ‘The furniture’s coming!’ Jamesy shrieked. ‘I’ve seen the van coming up the track.’

  ‘It’s miles away yet,’ Joanna said, glancing out of the nearest window. ‘It’ll take all day, the rate it’s going.’

  But downstairs they ran, in search of their parents, and found them in the kitchen-cum-living room, where three casement windows looked out on the yard and where, in the big blackleaded iron range, the wood ashes were still warm, although the Goulds had been gone two days. There was a bundle of sticks in the hearth, together with a heap of logs: a gesture of Mr Gould’s goodwill. Stephen threw the sticks into the stove and blew on the ashes until they caught. Soon he had the split logs alight, and the children’s faces were lit by the flames.

  ‘The furniture’s coming,’ Chris said.

  ‘Is it?’ said Stephen. He looked at his watch. ‘Two o’clock. Bang on the nail.’

  ‘As soon as they’ve unpacked the kettle,’ said Gwen, ‘make sure they bring it to me.’

  It was cold for early Oct
ober. They would all be glad of a cup of tea.

  Gradually, as the carpets were laid and the furniture was carried in, the house became more and more their own, beginning with the kitchen-cum-living-room, the most important room in the house. Wing-chair; book case; old sagging couch; the Monet print and the oval mirror: all these soon had a place and looked as though they had been there for years; but some disagreement arose as to where the dining-table and chairs should stand, and the carved mahogany sideboard, and the desk that had come from Stephen’s office. The removal men had their own ideas and the foreman especially argued with passion.

  ‘Oh, well!’ Gwen said. ‘I can always alter things afterwards.’

  But when, on leaving, the men came into the kitchen again, to receive Stephen’s tip, the foreman looked round at their handiwork and touched Gwen’s arm.

  ‘You won’t better that!’ he said to her. ‘Not if you try for a hundred years!’

  And he was right, as Gwen afterwards had to admit, for even when spring-cleaning time came round and the furniture had to be shifted about, she found herself putting it back again, item by item, as before. Holland Farm was like that. It was not a place that invited change.

  The weather was wet the day they moved in and remained wet throughout the weekend, but the four children were perfectly happy, poking into cupboards, attics, cellars, till the house had yielded all its secrets. Under a floorboard in the attic they found a broken china mug, a spinning-top, and a small wooden doll.

  ‘The Goulds had no children,’ Stephen said, ‘and they lived in this house nearly fifty years.’

  ‘Visitors’ children, perhaps,’ said Gwen.

  But there were other discoveries: drawings of animals on the walls, revealed when the wallpaper was removed; a girl’s name, Rosina Lane, entwined in a pattern of vine-leaves; and, under another loose floorboard, a bunch of herbs in a sealed jar that bore a label and these faded words: ‘Gathered by me on Midsummer’s Eve: Cicely Lane, aged eleven; year of grace, 1860.’