Born of Woman
Page 68
His screams quietened, and suddenly there were loud crunching footsteps up the path, the shadow of a man darkening the glass panel in the door. She flung it open before he had time to ring, scooped up the cot in one hand, the bags in another. The driver had already grabbed the suitcase.
‘Emergency, they told me. Is everything all right, Miss?’
‘It may be,’ she panted. ‘If you can do Pancras Road in thirty-seven minutes, with one brief stop on the way.’
The baby whimpered as the first blast of freezing air shocked against his face.
‘Courage,’ she whispered, as the driver helped her in and slammed the doors. ‘We’re going back where we belong, so you’ll have to get used to the cold.’
Chapter Thirty
Hernhope shivered in the cold, the embers of a small wood fire the only dying point of light inside its blinded windows. Slowly thawing snow fell with a ghostly thud from roof and sill. Inside, a man slept fitfully, alone. Old Year’s Night was over now, midnight fraying into slumped and grey-eyed morning, but no one had crossed the threshold yet.
The house waited, listened. Far away on the road from Newcastle, it could hear the muffled wheels of a taxi labouring in the clogged and treacherous slush. In the back was a new-born baby—a dark-haired boy-child, stranger to these parts—who neither slept nor cried. He was cold, frightened, bumped and winded, his nappy soiled, his stomach queasy, but he simply stared into the darkness, waiting for his time. The woman with him, tired and pale, rocked and soothed and sung him lullabies. She was hungry and nibbled at a slice of bread, sprinkled with salt from a crumpled paper bag. She had a branch of yew beside her, roughly broken off, a lump of coal wrapped in a nappy liner. A sprig of mistletoe drooped above the cot, wilting but still green.
The house waited. It would be an hour or more before the car arrived, the darkness lifted, but at least the snow was melting, the wind veering to the kinder, calmer south. The house was cold itself, and old—roof leaking, walls crumbling, damp seeping through its flagstones, its agues and ills too long neglected. It needed youth, new blood. Hester had found them, sent them here, would still watch over them. With any luck, things would be mended now, amended.
In the New Year.
Copyright
First published in 1983 by Michael Joseph
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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ISBN 978-1-4472-2265-1 EPUB
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Copyright © Wendy Perriam, 1983
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