Beneath a Frosty Moon

by Rita Bradshaw

  Mrs Burns was full of bright ideas for saving a penny or two, Cora thought grimly, shaking her head warningly at Maria as her sister raised her eyebrows as she joined them. She would show Maria the letter as soon as they had a minute together without the others around. Oh, yes, the farmer’s wife had them reducing the amount of furniture and floor polish needed by sprinkling the cleaning cloths they used with paraffin so the polish didn’t soak into the material. They had to stick a knife into warm candle-ends that Mrs Burns saved, rubbing it over the soles of their shoes to make the leather waterproof. Coal dust mixed with damp tea-leaves kept the range going at night. There were a hundred and one other little cost-saving devices Mrs Burns insisted on, most of them being smelly or dirty or both. Not that the farmer’s wife cared.

  Mrs Burns’s motto of ‘save and mend’ was a constant refrain and one Cora was heartily sick of, and yet she noticed that the farmer’s wife had bought herself a brand new hat and coat on the shopping trip without batting an eyelid. By the same principle, Mrs Burns insisted they save all spent matches and put them into old matchboxes for lighting candles or the fire in the main house, whereas she always availed herself of unused ones. And at the beginning of the winter when the farmer’s wife had had to fork out for replacement gum boots for her because she had outgrown her old ones, you’d have thought she was paying for the crown jewels. Maria would use them next winter when her feet had grown anyway, so it wasn’t as if they were being discarded. Mean as muck, that’s what Mrs Burns was.

  Cora sighed heavily. What was she doing, wittering on to herself about Mrs Burns when her mam had run off with someone and left her da all alone? She bit hard on her bottom lip. She’d put up with Mrs Burns for ever if only her mam and da were still together.

  It wasn’t until much later when they were in bed and the others were asleep that she was able to show Maria the letter. Maria read it by the dim light of the flickering candle, crying silent tears by the time she came to the end. ‘Cora, you don’t think she’ll change her mind?’

  Maria stared at her, and Cora found it impossible to endure the look in her eyes. Taking the letter from her sister she pretended to read it again as she said, ‘No, I don’t. Anyway, Da wouldn’t want her back after this. Everyone – everyone will know.’

  ‘Are you going to write back to the address on the letter?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ It was a harsh whisper. ‘I’ll write to Da but not her. I never want to see her again, not ever.’

  ‘Oh, Cora.’

  ‘Well, do you? After what she’s done?’ Maria’s silence was her answer, and after a moment Cora said, ‘Well, I don’t. I hate her. She’s ruined everything. The war is bad enough but this . . . It’s Da that matters now. You can write to her if you want but I’m not.’

  ‘Are you going to tell Mrs Burns?’

  ‘It’s none of her business. She doesn’t care about us, you know that.’

  ‘She feeds us well.’

  That was Maria all over, seeing the good in someone even if she had to search for it, Cora thought irritably, and then she softened. Maria was nice. It was her who wasn’t. Gently, she said, ‘Yes, I know she does, but that’s partly because she wants us to be strong and well to work for her. Anyway, if we tell her she’ll tell him –’ they both knew she was talking about Farmer Burns – ‘and he’ll think with mam gone it makes us more helpless. And we won’t tell Susan and Anna either – there’s no need. Horace is different, and Wilfred needs to know, but I shall tell them not to say a word to anyone.’

  In a small voice, Maria said, ‘And Jed?’

  ‘Of course I shall tell Jed.’

  Maria nodded. Beginning to cry again, she whispered, ‘I hate this war.’

  ‘It’s not the war that’s made Mam do this. Nothing made her and no one. She made the decision, Maria.’

  ‘Well, I hate the war anyway.’

  They talked for an hour or more, and long after Maria had fallen asleep, Cora lay wide awake in the darkness. The little room was freezing, there had been ice on the inside of the window for weeks, but snuggled next to Maria she wasn’t cold. It was her thoughts that kept her from sleeping. She didn’t want to cry any more when she thought of her mother; her hate had burned that weakness away, and she hugged it to her. It was strengthening, sustaining. Her da was the one she felt bereft for. She lay quietly, formulating the letter she would write to him in her mind, and eventually drifted off into a troubled, restless sleep full of disturbing dreams she couldn’t remember in the morning.

  Wilfred stared at Cora, his thin face reflecting his shock. If she had told him her mam had walked through the town naked he would have believed it more easily than that Mrs Stubbs had played Cora’s da for a sucker. It just showed you never really knew anyone else. He would have bet his life on Mrs Stubbs being a good’un.

  Horace, standing at the side of him, looked bewildered and then angry. ‘I don’t believe you, our Cora. You’ve got it wrong. You and Mam were always at odds with each other.’

  Cora’s response to this was to thrust her mother’s letter into his hand. He read it in silence, the angry red draining from his face and his mouth tightening. Wilfred put his arm round Horace’s shoulders but he shook it off, throwing the letter on the ground and running off to join a group of his pals who were playing football with a rusty tin can.

  ‘He’s upset,’ said Wilfred quietly. ‘He didn’t mean that about you and your mam.’

  ‘It’s true and he meant it.’ Cora looked at Wilfred. ‘I know you’ve always thought a lot of my mam but there’s another side to her as this shows all too clearly. No one could have been a better husband than my da, Wilfred. You know that.’

  He nodded. Cora’s da had loved her mam like . . . well, like he himself loved Cora.

  ‘I’m not going to tell Susan and Anna yet. Time enough when they’re a bit older. Nor Mrs Burns or him.’ Like Maria, Wilfred knew who Cora was talking about. ‘He’d just love that, to think our mam’s run off with a fancy man.’

  ‘Oh, Cora.’ Her bitterness was tangible and pity welled up in him.

  ‘It’ll be just us four and Jed who know. All right?’

  ‘Have you told Jed yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  Wilfred felt a surge of pleasure that she had told him first, which evaporated when she continued, ‘Can you tell him I want to see him tonight when you get home? I’ll meet him near the old barn when everyone’s gone to bed. Say eleven o’clock?’

  ‘You shouldn’t be out late at night.’ Apart from his jealousy he was worried about the farmer waylaying her. It was a constant gnawing anxiety after she had confided in him about Enid and the way Farmer Burns was, regularly causing him sleepless nights and when he did fall asleep, nightmares in which terrible things happened and he was left writhing and in agony because he was unable to protect her.

  Cora waved his objections away with an irritable gesture. ‘Will you tell him?’

  ‘Of course, if that’s what you want, although I don’t see why you can’t wait till Sunday. Nothing’s going to change.’

  Today was Thursday and the thought of waiting till Sunday afternoon to see Jed was unbearable. Since the summer when they had declared their feelings for each other the time between Sundays seemed like mini eternities as it was, but the work the girls were expected to do once they were back from school in the evenings meant it was virtually impossible to meet in the week. They rarely fell into bed before ten o’clock as it was. Besides which, Cora was terrified Farmer Burns might find out about Jed. The girls always went for their Sunday-afternoon walk in a group from the farm, Cora breaking away from the others to meet Jed once they were sure they were alone and Farmer Burns wasn’t around. They would then meet later and arrive home together.

  Cora’s fingers went involuntarily to the dainty silver locket hidden under her dress. Jed had given it to her for Christmas and she had been thrilled. ‘Just tell him, Wilfred.’

  Wilfred knew about the locket and he h
ad to call on all the self-control he had learned to exercise in the last months not to betray himself as he said, ‘I’ll tell him. Don’t fret.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The bell to call them in after lunch sounded in the next moment. They had been talking over the fence that separated the boys from the girls in the small yard, and as they walked into the building through separate doors and then joined up again to enter the seniors’ classroom, Cora gave Wilfred a small smile and he smiled back. ‘Don’t worry, lass,’ he said softly. ‘It’ll be all right.’

  The words were meaningless in the circumstances but his concern and comfort were balm to her sore heart, and as she had done many times in the past, she thought, What would I do without Wilfred? She knew he cared about her and her sisters and Horace as though they were his own family, more so because he had told her he had never been close to his own siblings. And for her part she loved him every bit as much as Horace, more, she thought ruefully, as her brother gave her a filthy look when he passed her as though the situation at home was her fault.

  ‘Her mam’s run off with another bloke?’ Jed’s face was a study in surprise. ‘How does she know? Who told her?’

  ‘Her mam wrote to her,’ said Wilfred flatly. He had just told Jed that Cora wanted to see him and why, and now he added, ‘And she wants it kept quiet. She hasn’t even told the two youngest, just Maria and Horace and me and you.’

  Jed, shaking his head as though coming out of a trance, rubbed his hands that were blue with cold up and down the rough material of his work trousers. He had been breaking the thick ice on the water troughs in the yard when Wilfred and Horace had come back from school, and although Horace had gone straight into the farmhouse, Wilfred had come across to Jed to impart the news. ‘How’s she taken it?’

  Jed was showing no annoyance that Cora had told him first, Wilfred noted, feeling peeved. He had felt it was a small triumph over his enemy but Jed’s reaction was dispelling his satisfaction. ‘As you’d expect. Her mam told her that her da’s home from the war an’ all so she’s imagining all sorts about him.’

  ‘Poor blighter, coming back to that.’

  ‘Aye.’

  Jed straightened, throwing back his shoulders as he stretched his spine. He had grown a good five or six inches the year before and now at six foot four towered over Wilfred, which was another nail in his coffin as far as Wilfred was concerned. He had thought it impossible for his hate of Jed to find a deeper level, but when he spied on them on a Sunday afternoon the height and breadth of his rival against the slim perfection of Cora forced him to admit they made a breathtaking couple and he loathed Jed still more because of it. He himself hadn’t grown an inch in the last couple of years and Cora was now taller than him, and in spite of the good food that he stuffed himself with at the farm he was as thin as a rake.

  ‘I’m glad she had you to talk to at school earlier, she must have been in a state.’

  Again Wilfred said, ‘Aye,’ whilst thinking derisively how easy Jed was to fool. He had no idea how much he hated him and wished him dead, or of his real feelings for Cora. Mind, he’d worked hard to make sure of this, constantly curbing his natural responses around the older boy and acting the part of a pal. He’d gone about it bit by bit after that day in the summer, knowing a sudden change in his manner might make Jed suspicious, and Jed had been only too eager to let bygones be bygones, the idiot. ‘She said to meet her by the old barn at eleven o’clock,’ Wilfred said quietly, his love for Cora which was a thing apart from his jealousy making him add, ‘But I’d get there early and make sure Farmer Burns isn’t around.’

  ‘Aye, I’ll do that, lad.’ Jed clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Go and get a hot drink – you look frozen.’ The thick snow of November and December had melted the week after Christmas when a thaw had set in, but a severe drop of temperature at the beginning of the New Year had brought heavy frosts, and the sub-zero conditions showed no signs of abating. For the last three weeks any winter sun had been so weak and fleeting as to make no inroads on the barren sparkling ground, the only colour in the white sky a few fleeting wisps of silver and feeble glimmers of yellow which stained the expanse as the shadows of twilight approached. It made life even harder at the farm, but at least the thick glutinous mud that had been inches thick at the end of December had become rock-hard ridges that made walking slightly easier as long as you took care not to turn your ankle.

  As Wilfred walked off towards the farmhouse, Jed stood looking after him for a few moments. He was a funny one, was Wilfred, but he was glad he seemed to have come to terms with him and Cora walking out. And he was friendly enough now – they were more or less back to the way they’d been when Wilfred and Horace had first arrived at the farm before his friendship with Cora had upset Wilfred. And yet . . . Jed narrowed his eyes as Wilfred disappeared from view. He didn’t know if he altogether trusted him. There were times, just now and again, when he sensed something else was going on behind the pally front Wilfred adopted.

  He shrugged the thought away, his mind fully concentrating on Cora and what she must be feeling like as he continued with his work. His poor lass, his poor, poor lass.

  At half-past ten Jed was already standing in deep shadows with his eyes on the kitchen door from which Cora would exit. The night was frozen and still and the moon was high, casting its light over the frosty ground that, along with rooftops and trees and fields, glittered and sparkled as though strewn with diamond dust. An owl’s muffled hoot sounded in the far distance a few times and the occasional lowing of the cattle in the cowshed, but otherwise the night was silent.

  At five to eleven the kitchen door opened and Cora came out, walking quickly across the white glinting yard towards the old barn in the distance that was used for storing feed for the animals along with the fodder barrows and other equipment. He moved out of the shadows when she would have walked right past him, causing her to squeak in alarm before she realized it was him.

  ‘Sorry, lass.’ He took her hand and together they hurried away from the farmhouse, continuing past the barns and outbuildings until they reached the small beech wood some five hundred yards from any buildings. The interior of the wood was a dark and silent place for much of the year, cowled in shadows and screened from sunlight by dense columns of foliage. In winter, however, the trees were laid bare, allowing the bitter north-easterly winds to drive snow into the very heart of the wood, and tonight the trees stood clothed in their thick mantle of frost, the ground beneath their feet crisp and white and the moon casting eerie silhouettes and outlines here and there.

  Once they were in the heart of the wood he took her into his arms, kissing her long and hard beneath the frozen branches overhead. Cora hung on to him, kissing him back. She had been so worried something would prevent him from coming or that she would be discovered trying to leave the house. It was Jed who drew away, moving her to look down into her face as he murmured, ‘I’m so sorry, lass. I’m so, so sorry.’

  She hadn’t wanted to cry since she had read her mother’s letter but now the tears were overwhelming. He held her for long minutes, not saying anything beyond soft comforting sounds and muttered endearments, and when she finally composed herself he handed her his handkerchief to wipe her eyes.

  ‘I – I didn’t mean to cry all over you.’ She gave a little hiccup as she spoke.

  ‘Don’t be daft, that’s what I’m here for.’ He smoothed a tendril of flaming red hair from her damp cheek as he said again, ‘I’m so sorry.’

  She sniffed, giving a shaky smile. ‘I know it could have waited till Sunday but I just wanted to see you.’

  ‘I should hope so.’

  ‘I just can’t believe she’s done such a thing, Jed. Not my mam. It’ll kill my da, I know it will.’ She shook her head despairingly. ‘Just to leave him, to leave us all as though we don’t count for anything.’

  ‘No, don’t think like that.’

  ‘I can’t help it. The war’s turned everything upside down and now th
is. She couldn’t have loved us like I thought she did. It’s all been a lie, everything I thought was real.’

  ‘Look, lass, you’re in shock, all right? And I know it’s hard but if there hadn’t been a war we would never have met and that’s got to count for something, hasn’t it? And I tell you something else, Cora. I will never leave you, you can count on that. If we live to be a hundred I’ll be at your side. I might be toothless and bald by then, but I’ll be there.’

  She gave another shaky smile as he’d hoped she would.

  ‘I mean it, lass. I love you beyond words and if I could change what your mam’s done I would. But I can and do promise you that we’re different to your mam and da. What we’ve got happens once in a lifetime – you know that, don’t you? I’d die before I left you and I know you feel the same.’

  They kissed again, their white breath mingling, and as they did so she felt her world – which had been rocked to its foundations – beginning to stabilize again.

  In spite of the bitter cold they spent another hour talking and kissing and cuddling beneath the white skeletons of the trees, feeling as though they were the only two people alive in an enchanted landscape where the normal laws of nature were suspended. And it helped. She’d needed this time with Jed, Cora told herself, as they walked back towards the farmhouse hand in hand. She didn’t fool herself that it had solved anything but it had somehow set her back on course; that was the only way she could describe it to herself.

  As they reached the spot where Jed had been waiting for her earlier, Cora lifted her eyes to the black sky and frosty moon. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered softly. ‘The sky, the moon, the trees and fields, it’s all beautiful. It’s only men and women who spoil the world and make it ugly.’

  ‘But our world will be beautiful, lass, and filled with love, you’ll see.’ He kissed the tip of her nose. ‘I promise.’