‘Dear me, no. You still have the progeny from your Swaledales, and money for the ones that went back home.’
Meg was staring at him now with the first glimmer of hope in her eyes. It would be almost like starting again, but not quite. She still had a good young flock, Will said so. Then she turned to Sally Ann. ‘I owe my father money for the mortgage?’
Sally Ann nodded. ‘You can pay him back. When you get on your feet.’
The thought sickened her and yet increased the new determination that was starting to flow through her veins. To many these empty fells must seem hostile and inaccessible, yet if you studied them, lived on them, you learned there was order and sense to the rhythm of life in these remote parts. You learned where the old drover roads and tracks led to, the passes you could cross and those best left alone. You learned from nature. Her new Swaledale lambs had returned to her, as the unexplained instinct bred in them compelled them to do. She had been given something back.
‘Our Hetty says if you do decide to carry on like, she’ll be glad to help out, look after little Lissa any time. That’s if you want her to. Course, Tam said as how you might not want to.’
‘Tam?’ She was alert in an instant. ‘When did you see Tam?’
‘Oh, not since he was here on his last leave.’
She’d rather not be reminded. It had been too terrible for words. Joe being as difficult as he could be about Tam’s turning up here, as if he had no right. Taking his ill temper out on them all when Meg had quietly insisted that Tam did indeed have that right, as her friend.
Connie had arrived in the middle of it all, complaining nobody had told her about the accident and that she hadn’t heard a word from Jack in months. As if Meg had time to worry about him now.
Everyone’s patience had been stretched, tempers shortened, and she and Tam had had their worst row yet. He’d accused her of wallowing in self-pity, of not having the guts to carry on.
‘Can’t you see there’s no point in carrying on now?’ she’d screamed at him. ‘Broombank is gone. It cost Effie her life when she came here to be safe. Dan was killed too. It isn’t worth it. No land is worth such sacrifice. No house should matter more than people. You said that yourself. If Mr Ellis, thanks to fate or the hand of God or whatever you believe in, hadn’t taken it into his head to take Lissa for a walk that morning, and not let her help with the butter making, she might have been dead too. How could I have borne that?’
‘It’s not your fault that they’re dead,’ Tam had gently told her, and Sally Ann had said it too.
But Meg wouldn’t listen. She knew better. She’d been obsessed with owning Broombank for years. Because of her first lambing she’d failed to go to Kath when she needed her, had then neglected Lissa and robbed Effie of her childhood. As soon as she held her mortgage papers in her hands, the fates had taken it from her, together with the one person who had loved and trusted her most in all the world. What was that if not a punishment?
How could she live with such a terrible tragedy?
‘Father can have it,’ she’d said then. ‘And good riddance to it.’
Now that it was perhaps too late she was changing her mind. Lissa came to lean against her knee.
‘Are we going home, Meg?’ she asked, reacting with that uncanny instinct children have to the sensitivity in the atmosphere.
Meg swallowed, and slipping an arm about the child, pulled the sturdy little body close. Three years old and starting to ask questions. Life went on, whether you wanted it to or not. She had Lissa to think about, entirely dependent upon her now.
‘Broombank could be put right, given time,’ Will said, carefully watching the thought processes in her eyes.
Meg met his shrewd gaze. Then she looked at Sally Ann. Paler, thinner, a deep sadness about her, but still determined to keep going day after day, for the sake of her children.
She thought of her lovely Tam. How she missed him. He got home on leave when he could but it wasn’t enough. Meg needed his warmth, his strength with her always. Though they might do nothing but argue these days, she still needed him. When this war was over, what sort of woman did she want him to find? He always said he loved a woman with spirit.
Putting down a hand Meg stroked Rust’s floppy ear. He was lying against her foot as usual. She heard him breathe little gusts of pleasure.
‘The other two dogs, Tess and Ben, where are they?’
‘They’re with me,’ Will said. ‘We thought it best to sell Dan’s trail hounds, but knowing your land and sheep as they do, I kept yours. They’ve been working hard. Good dogs both of them. But with nowhere near enough work to keep them happy. Tess and Ben need you, Meg.’
Rust sat up at sound of these familiar names, one ear cocked so comically that Meg actually laughed out loud, for the first time in months, for all there were tears in her eyes. ‘Look at him. Never say die, lad, eh?’ The tongue lolled as he grinned at her, alert, expectant, reading her mind, knowing her decision almost before she knew it herself.
‘I reckon it’s time we all got back to work. First thing in the morning, eh, lad?’
Rust gave one joyful bark, understanding exactly and replying in the only way he knew.
When autumn comes to the high fells there often seems to be a final celebration of colour and long hours of sunshine, like a last waltz before the close of a glorious dance. The wetness of summer had dissolved into a rare brilliance but this year Meg took no heed of the beauty around her. Her mind was entirely on work.
Two POWs had been appointed to Ashlea after the accident, both quite amenable. Brought each day in a truck, they got on with what had to be done without bothering anyone. Karl had lived on a farm in Germany so the work progressed well, and Sally Ann had been glad to have someone else to think about and feed. The War Committee had done Meg’s ploughing and every neighbour in the dale had come in to help with the harvest. Now Meg felt as if she’d been away for too long and was glad to be home and working again.
The autumn dip took place and somehow the familiarity of the daily routine began to soothe and heal her wounds. Though there would be no forgetting, Meg was learning to live with the pain. Effie no longer haunted her days and at night she slept the healthy sleep of a tired body after a satisfyingly hard day’s work. The relief was profound.
It was a relief, too, to get out of the house, away from the sound of her father’s voice calling down the stairs, demanding something or other every five minutes of the day.
‘Tell him to wait,’ Meg warned Sally Ann as her sister-in-law sat a complaining Daniel in his chair and started up the stairs for the fourth time in as many minutes to do his bidding.
‘What else does he have, all on his own up there, not able to move properly? I can’t just ignore him.’
Meg watched this performance day after day until she came to a decision.
With the help of Will and Hetty Davies, they cleared space in her mother’s parlour and brought down Joe’s bed and personal belongings. Then the four of them carried the protesting, grumbling old man and placed him in it.
‘There you are,’ said Meg, pleased with the result. ‘Now Sally Ann won’t have to run up and down stairs all the time.’
‘It’s come to summat when you’re a bother to your own family,’ mourned Joe.
Meg lifted a warning finger to him. ‘Don’t try anything on with Sally Ann. She’ll up and leave you in two shakes of a lamb’s tail if you don’t treat her right. She has a family of her own, remember. She doesn’t have to stay here and take your bullying. So mind your manners for a change.’
‘And thee mind thine, young madam. I suppose you think you can take over the running of Ashlea now that Dan has gone?’ Strangely enough Meg had not got so far in her thinking. She was aware the work of Ashlea would be added to her own, but control of it had not crossed her mind.
‘Ashlea is yours, Father,’ she said quietly. ‘Always will be. And after you, Dan’s two boys, as he would have wanted. But if there’s somethi
ng particular you want doing, you only have to say.’
‘How will I know if thee’s done it?’
Meg laughed, though not unkindly. It lit up her face, reminding Joe of the old spunky Meg and for a moment he was glad they were into a battle of words again. He’d missed them. ‘You’ll just have to trust me, won’t you?’ she said.
‘Tch. I’ll be out of this bed in no time, just you see if I’m not.’ There was resolution in the faded eyes, and a new expression: fear. Meg saw it and felt her heart stir with pity. Though how could she feel pity for a man whom she did not love? Yet how could she hate him? He was her father and he had lost everything, just as she had.
‘Course you will,’ she said softly. ‘Sally Ann and I will help you do it. I’ll talk to the doctor, get some advice. In the meantime you’ve no need to worry about the farm.’
‘Humph, that’s all thee knows. I never thought the day would come when I depended upon a woman to run my farm for me.’
‘You never can tell what life will throw up next, do you, Father?’ she said, and went away smiling.
Meg had often walked on her beloved fells this last year, needing the peace to soothe her soul. She had watched the blaze of broom blossom and die away, followed by the bright patchwork of summer flowers. Now the white caps of mushrooms were sprouting all over the fields.
But she’d never come this close to Broombank before.
Its emptiness echoed in her heart, the solitude of the place more marked than ever before. The only sound was of a rustle of dry leaves where a quarrelling shrew warned insects in its high-pitched squeak that it was hunting and they’d best watch out.
But Will Davies was right. Broombank could be saved. The dairy and old scullery could be built up again and the roof restored. How much would it all cost? Did she have the heart to do it? Wouldn’t it always remind her of Effie?
The door was not locked and a rush of memories met her as she walked into the living room: of Effie making cabbage soup, drinking cocoa by the fire, soaking in all of Meg’s stories. Charlie pounding out tunes on the old piano in the parlour next door. She could hear it all as clearly as if it were happening now.
Anything worth saving had been removed. The lofts and spare rooms at Ashlea were full of boxes and pieces of furniture, stored for safe keeping. Broombank stood a shell, empty of the life and love it had known throughout its long existence. Meg’s dreams and plans for it too must surely be dead.
She went to the bedroom she and Tam had shared. All she could hope for now was to get through each day. Do what had to be done, for the sake of her sheep. She couldn’t look any further than that.
Unable to bear it she turned away, but something bright caught her eye and she looked down. At her feet, half buried in the dust, she saw it. The Luckpenny that Lanky had given her with the sale of his land. Bending down, she picked it up and held it in the palm of her hand. She could hardly see the coin for the tears swimming in her eyes.
‘You didn’t bring Effie much luck, did you?’ she said, but there was no bitterness in the words. Death was a part of war. It had to be accepted. Shed come to terms with that now. A part of her would always grieve for Effie, but she could go on now.
Her fingers tightened over the penny. It was meant to bring good fortune to the land, and the farm. They were both still there, weren’t they? The house was badly damaged but not as badly as she had feared. The young sheep had returned, and her friends and neighbours had stood by her, as they always did. She tucked the penny into her pocket. It would be needed if she really did start again.
Meg left the house, Rust at her heels without needing to be told, and climbed Dundale Knott.
Angry slashes of red cut through a grey, lowering sky as she gazed down upon her former home from high upon the fell. She had felt just that sort of red hot anger within herself this last year. The feeling that she wanted to slash at everything, strike out at the tranquil beauty of the place. Feeling so much pain, it had seemed impossible to go on living. But that was fading now.
‘Life is stirring in me again, Effie. I can feel it. Try to understand. I have to go on, for Lissa’s sake. For Tam. Are you pleased for me?’ Behind her came the sound of the quiet cropping of the grass by her sheep. Above her head, the lonely mew of a curlew, like a sad echo of happier times.
She remembered the day that Charlie’s plane had flown over and Effie and Sally Ann had been scared out of their wits. Then they’d celebrated Charlie’s engagement with some of Effie’s awful beetroot wine, joking and giggling, teasing Tam about going to the dance. The sting of tears came to her eyes at the memory.
Yet despite their fright, they had imagined themselves in no real danger of being bombed. Not here, amongst all this beauty and tranquillity.
Meg brushed the tears angrily from her eyes and got to her feet. The time for crying was done. Best not to dwell on things, that’s what Sally Ann said.
As Meg turned to climb higher up the fell, she saw a flicker of movement below. A dark figure broke through the hedge from the lane. Someone was crossing the field, walking towards Broombank. Curious, she stopped to watch. Not looters she hoped. Who dared trespass on her land? What should she do? Send the dogs down to chase whoever it was away, or... Meg stopped, and her eyes fastened disbelievingly on the figure. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. It was.
‘Tam!’
Then she was running, falling, slipping and tumbling down the fellside at such a rate it was a wonder she didn’t go head over heels right to the bottom, Rust bounding excitedly beside her. She was laughing and crying all at the same time and she could hear Tam laughing too. How she loved that sound.
Seconds later she was in his arms, smothering his face with kisses.
‘Oh, my darling, my darling.’ When she could draw breath she ran her hands over his beloved face, across his shoulders and down his strong arms and back to his face again. ‘Let me look at you. Oh, you look so good.’ He was a soldier in an American uniform. A stranger. But not a stranger. He was her love.
‘You look pretty good yourself,’ he said, moss green eyes devouring her as she had so loved them to do in the past. `I thought never to see you smile again.’ His lips were seeking hers, devouring her, needing her, and Meg felt the first shafts of desire like the stirring of new life within her.
‘How long have you got?’ She wished the words unsaid almost as soon as they were uttered for she didn’t want to hear the answer. ‘Long enough,’ he laughed, holding her from him so that he could study her.
‘It’s never long enough,’ she mourned. ‘Why don’t they give you a decent leave?’
‘I’m lucky to be here at all. Isn’t it nearly always cancelled? I’ve dreamt of nothing else but taking you to bed, Meg Turner, and I mean to do so. I mean to make love to you all night long, till you beg for mercy.’
‘Oh, I want you too. I’ve needed you so much, Tam, so very much. But not at Ashlea. I couldn’t bear it, not with Father listening and making acid comments. And Sally Ann all hollow-eyed, remembering.’
Tam smoothed a hand over her cheeks, her chin, down her throat, making her shiver with fresh longing. ‘You’re looking a bit hollow-eyed yourself, me darlin’. The beauty of the cheek bones was still there, for all the skin looked pale, but stretched tight with tension, the eyes like dark bruises.
‘I’m mending, slowly.’
He kissed her again, with poignant tenderness. ‘Then where?’ he whispered. ‘When? I must have you before I go mad.’ The touch of his lips on hers, the remembered maleness of him, set her senses whirling, her pulses quickening.
‘Is it too cold today?’ she asked, teasing him wantonly with her eyes, remembering past days of loving in the bracken.
‘For the fells? In October? Aren’t you as shameless as ever, Meg Turner?’
‘Oh, I am Tam O’Cleary. With you, I am indeed.’
As one they looked towards Broombank, and she shivered. ‘I wish I had a home to offer you,’ he said.
‘Yo
u have yourself, my love, and that is all that matters.’ She felt his sigh and clung to him, wanting so much to prove with every part of her being, how much she loved him. ‘There are always the barns.’
So the barn it was. Warm and dusty, fragrant with hay and old apples, and because of the perversity of fate, untouched by German bombs. As they loved and touched, kissed and became one again, many ghosts were laid. Meg gave no thought to another time, another loving in this very same barn, in another man’s arms. Tam was all that mattered now.
Connie came again that Christmas of 1943. There seemed something about the festive season that caused her to visit. Even last year, despite their being in mourning and not wanting to celebrate at all, she’d turned up, like a bad penny, Meg thought.
Now she was filled with guilt when Connie announced she’d had official word that Jack was missing.
‘Does that mean...?’
It was no good, Meg could not speak the words. She had lost too many people already. Surely not Jack as well.
‘No, it means nothing of the sort,’ said Connie stoutly, setting down her great tapestry bag and her hat box with a thankful sigh that sounded very much as if she meant to stay for the duration, as perhaps she did. ‘A cup of tea would go down a treat. And I’ll have a piece of carrot cake, Sally Ann, if there’s one going.’
Sally Ann went smilingly to put the kettle on.
‘It means, so say the powers-that-be, that he’s been taken prisoner. Went on some special boat operation and never returned. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Very special, my Jack. They must have appreciated his worth, mustn’t they?’
‘I suppose so,’ Meg said. Somehow she didn’t feel up to more bad news. She didn’t love Jack any more, but she would always think of him as a friend. And despite what he had done to her, he was still Lissa’s father.
Sally Ann put a comforting arm about the older woman’s shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s dreadful to lose someone you love.’
Storm Clouds Over Broombank Page 17
