‘I didn’t see because I didn’t want to see. There are no shades over my eyes now. I hope I’m not quite so easy to take advantage of these days.’
‘And I hope that I am not so selfish. I’ve certainly been at the receiving end of some malice myself in recent years.’ Kath glanced at Meg’s face. ‘I hope you don’t bear me any. I would like us to remain friends.’
There was a small, strained silence before Meg spoke. ‘You betrayed me. Both of you. But I’ve put the pain behind me. All that matters to me now is Lissa. She is the one good thing that has come out of all this. Lissa comes first in everything.’
A figure loomed suddenly on the path, lurching around the comer towards them.
‘Well, if it isn’t Madam Ellis herself.’
‘Jack.’
‘Not in uniform? Pity. It suited you. Same old Katherine back again. Done up to the nines as usual.’
‘No.’ Kath shook her head. ‘Not quite the same old Katherine. The war has changed even me. I’ve learned to deal more considerately with other people’s feelings these days. How about you? It doesn’t seem to have done you much good.’
Meg stood silent for a moment, wondering how best to cope with this reunion for which she had waited for so long.
‘Shall we go back for tea?’ she suggested, kicking herself for sounding so mundane. ‘Or a glass of sherry perhaps?’
Both ignored her. Meg still hadn’t faced Jack with the truth about Lissa, or told him why Kath had come today. She worried over what would happen when he found out. Was it right to want so desperately to protect Lissa that she was prepared to do anything, even cheat Jack out of his rights? Or was it cowardice?
Kath was gazing at him with an expression close to contempt on her beautiful face. ‘I’m surprised you’ve let this idiot back into the house, Meg. Haven’t you learned your lesson yet?’
Startled by this unexpected attack, Meg opened her mouth to protest then closed it again. It was too uncomfortably close to the truth to deny.
‘Who are you calling an idiot?’
Kath’s eyes glazed with frost. ‘You like having women fawning over you, don’t you? You enjoyed having both of us on a string, the tantalising pleasure of having two women want you. For a time it was fun, I’ll admit that. I was young and selfish enough to go along with it. But let me bring you up to date, Jack Lawson, I’ve grown up since then. I’ve seen the raw side of life, and you know what? I’ve learned it hurts when someone rides rough shod over you. It’s not so much fate that affects our lives, but other people. I hope I’ve learned to be less selfish. I’ve certainly survived, without you, without my parents, without help from anyone. Very much, I suspect, as Meg too has learned to survive, working this farm through all weathers.
‘Times have changed. When I look at you now, I wonder what I ever saw in you. I feel mighty relieved that I escaped. Who knows what could have happened if I hadn’t been forced, by circumstance shall we say, to go away and make a new future for myself.’
She went to Meg and took her hands between her own. ‘We vowed to be friends, the three of us, for all time. I know how we both hurt you, and I’m sorry for it. If I could go back and change things, I would, Meg. I’ve wished that so many times over the years.’
‘It’s Meg’s fault all this happened,’ Jack burst in. ‘Panting for me she was. Desperate to be loved. But all she really cared about was that damned farm.’
Kath swung round upon him. ‘With a father like she had, she needed love, and what was so wrong with that? Did you have to take advantage of that fact so cruelly? You didn’t need to give her a ring and fool her into thinking it was going to be orange blossom and roses all the way. If you’d been fair and honest with her she could have made her own choice.’
‘Stop it.’ Meg’s voice was quiet, but very strong. ‘Stop it, the pair of you. I’ve had enough of your squabbling. Do you take me for a complete fool? If I made mistakes in the past I’ve had plenty of time to regret them, as we all have.
‘When your father left this land to me, Jack, he gave me a Luckpenny to go with it. Always give something back, he said, if you want to prosper. Well, I followed that advice and the Luckpenny did bring me success and good fortune, gained through care and hard work. It didn’t save Broombank from the bomb but I know that if I put effort into it, I can build again. You have to give to receive, to make your own luck. It’s true of land, of sheep, and most of all, of people.
‘Perhaps I did fail you, Jack, by too often putting my interest in the farm first. It was a mistake I’ve repeated since, before the learning of it sank in. One I don’t intend to make again. Ever. But this doesn’t simply concern we three any more. There is a fourth party involved. Whose feelings are far more important than mine.’
‘What fourth party?’ Jack asked, in scathing tones. ‘That bloody Irishman, I suppose.’
A long, telling silence in which both women looked into each other’s eyes and for a moment they were girls again, sharing secrets. Despite their differences a message passed between them, an understanding. Kath smiled. There was such serenity in that smile that Meg caught her breath. It was going to be all right. She knew it.
‘And if she does love the Irishman, what of it?’ Kath said. ‘I for one would applaud that. Tam is a fine man. Exactly what Meg needs and deserves. I hope you will both be very happy.’ She leaned forward and kissed Meg on the cheek. She smelled of some expensive French perfume and the thought flashed through Meg’s mind how typical it was of Kath to marry money.
Jack turned away. ‘Huh. I’m not staying here to listen to such soppy talk. It’s all right for some, those who’ve had an easy war. I don’t have to listen to you, you interfering bitch. I’m going for a walk.’
‘You mean a drink.’ Meg froze him with the unexpected harshness in her tone.
‘What if I do? A man can please himself what he does with his time, I suppose.’
‘Not in my house he can’t. But I can please myself what I do with my life, my home, and my child.’ Meg drew in a deep breath. ‘You can pack your bags, Jack Lawson. You’ve had ample time to sort yourself out. All you do is sit about and feel sorry for yourself. You won’t find work sulking at my fireside.’
‘What did you say?’
‘You heard. You might have had a tough war. So have many others. We’ve all suffered in our own way. Now it’s time to start again. This came for you this morning.’ She handed him a letter. ‘It’s from a Lina Ruggierri.’
‘Lina? My Lina?’ Meg was astonished, and moved despite herself, to see the drunkenness fall from him and how eagerly he ripped open the envelope.
‘It’s addressed to me because I wrote to her in Italy. She was taken prisoner, like you, but is home again now. And it seems she wants you. So you can go to her. You have the money to start again in a new country if you’ve a mind to. Rebuild your life, Jack, as my father has, as Rust here had to do once.’ The dog perked up its ears at the sound of its name but did not get up from where it lay, patiently waiting for her. ‘As we all have to do.’
‘I will,’ Jack said, looking somewhat shamefaced at last. ‘I’m grateful, Meg, for your finding her. I don’t really deserve this.’
She smiled at him then. ‘No, you don’t. Go on. What are you waiting for? Haven’t you some packing to do?’
‘I have that.’ And he turned on his heel and hurried away down the lane.
Kath shook her head in amazement. ‘Still the same generous Meg.’
‘I hope I’ll always be that. As for you, Katherine Ellis, just remember you’re not having Lissa. Not now, not ever. She is a part of me now, a part of this land, and will remain so. She has no wish to leave and I don’t intend to make her. Now all of that is quite settled, perhaps we could go and try a slice of Sally Ann’s cake. It has fruit in it today, I believe.’
Meg was struggling through thick snow up Dundale Knott. It would have taxed a man, let alone a woman. But there was no alternative.
The snow had bee
n piling up for weeks till it was level with the height of the wooden gate that led into what once had been a lane. They’d had to tunnel through it to get out of the house.
The arctic winter of 1947 was proving to be the worst in living memory, beating all previous records. Meg hadn’t seen a soul reach her farm in weeks. Britain had ground to a halt as snow piled in fourteen foot drifts across roads and rail tracks. Power stations and factories had closed down from lack of fuel.
If only Tam were here. The snow had started soon after Kath’s visit and she hadn’t seen him since. It was as if he had rid his life of her. But how could she rid hers of him when she loved him so? An impossible prospect that filled her with a gnawing misery far worse than the bitter cold.
The roof was back on Broombank, so the property was at last properly protected from the worst of the weather. Once spring came the builders would start work on the kitchen and the dairy. She had not yet moved back in, anxious though she was to be near her animals. Ashlea was marginally warmer and she preferred to stay with Sally Ann and the three children, living largely by candlelight, eating their way through a rapidly emptying larder. Seven long, cold weeks when the only way to keep warm much of the time was for them all to sleep together in one big bed.
Here on the fellside were her sheep, stuck fast in the drifts, and she must get to them. The most hated and difficult part of a shepherd’s life but it must be done. At her side, struggling with equal difficulty but steadfast loyalty, were Tess and Ben, and of course her lovely Rust.
He lolloped to a halt, wagged his tail furiously and started to bark. ‘What have you found, boy?’
A telling hump of snow. Meg stopped too, to gain her breath. She must be mad. No French perfume for her, she thought, wanting to laugh at the very idea, despite the cold.
Yet she would choose no other life. She’d wanted to prove something in that long ago April when she had been young, not simply to Joe but to herself too. And she had surely succeeded.
Despite all the difficulties, all the problems she’d faced, despite the knowledge that it would take some time to restore Broombank, and her flock of sheep to what they would have been if the bomb had not dropped, she would have it no other way. She could survive. Meg knew that now. But she’d paid a price. She had lost Tam through her stubbornness and misguided loyalty. One day Lissa might visit Canada to see her mother and the proposed horse ranch. She might like it and decide to stay. Nothing in life was certain.
For now Meg could only do her best, concentrate on the lambing which had started with a vengeance. There was no one but herself to care for them and many depending upon her now that Joe and Dan were gone. She’d lost too many lambs already so must give them her undivided attention as the nightmare of the snow continued relentlessly.
Sally Ann, and the children too, had been forced to work day after day, for as long as there was light, carrying hay and ash croppings up on sleds to those sheep who were barely coping, carrying down on the same sleds those that weren’t. They’d spent days bringing as many sheep as they could find into the intake fields but it was an impossible task. There were too many and their efforts seemed inadequate by comparison. Too easily one could disappear in moments beneath a drift of snow when the helm wind tore across the fells, or the blizzards raged in a storm the like of which no man had seen in a century or more.
‘Come on, dig. It’ll be dark soon,’ Meg told her dogs. ‘We must hurry.’ They understood her perfectly and dug with their front paws as furiously as she dug with her shovel. ‘Wait. I can feel her.’ Meg thrust her hands down in to the icy cold and caught hold of sodden wool. She started to pull. Nothing moved.
‘And what is it you think you are doing, woman? You’ll never do it that way. Is it mad you are?’
Meg fell forward into the snow, getting half buried in it herself, so shocked was she by the voice coming unexpectedly out of nowhere.
Tam’s face was grinning down at her. ‘What is it this time you’d be wanting me to rescue for you? If it’s not a dog, then it’s your whole flock of sheep. Is that the way of it?’
She sat up and started to dust the icy snow off herself, for he would make no move to help her, she knew that. She loved that in him, the way he never deprived her of her independence. But perhaps he was no more than a mirage, a snow sickness. She’d been on her own in this awful whiteness so long she could be hallucinating.
‘Well, are you going to sit there all day or must I do the work all by meself? Dear Lord, can you not be safe to leave for a moment?’
‘It was more than a moment,’ she said, finding her voice at last. ‘Where the hell were you when I needed you?’
Tam acknowledged the criticism with a wry smile. ‘In Ireland, buying horses. And if you don’t show a bit more gratitude, I’ll wish that I’d stayed.’
Meg grinned at him, feeling suddenly light headed.
‘Start digging here, below the sheep. Then we can pull her forward,’ Tam instructed.
It took nearly an hour to clear the drift from around the two animals, huddled together, frozen to the wall against which they had run to shelter.
‘Take care. Don’t alarm them, they’re in shock,’ Meg warned. ‘Come along, my beauties. Be brave, take a few steps.’
‘They can’t. They’re stuck fast.’ Tam glanced backwards down the slope. ‘Once they do move, they might panic, blinded by the snow. And if we lose them, they’ll go right down the scree and end up buried for ever at the bottom.’
‘I know it.’
‘Get your crook round that one’s neck.’
Meg struggled to do so. They were fine sheep, traumatised, as so many she had found, by the freezing cold.
‘Has he gone then?’
She didn’t ask who he meant. ‘Oh yes. Back to Italy. To Lina. I found her for him.’
‘Ah. That was clever of you.’
‘One has to take the initiative sometimes, I believe, to rid oneself of a problem.’
‘Indeed one does. Here she comes, catch her.’
One ewe had broken free and started to slide towards them. The wool tore from one side of her body, and remained stuck fast to the wall. But she was free and happily allowed them to pack her on to the sled. The second ewe had feet so raw, drops of blood scattered over the snow.
‘She’ll be all right,’ Meg said. ‘I’ll make her some boots till they heal.’
‘My God, Meg, stubborn and soft-hearted as you are, I do love you.’
‘I love you, Tam. Don’t leave me again, not ever. If you do, I’ll... Oh, I don’t know what I’d do.’
Tam grinned. ‘Then it’s a good job the question won’t ever arise. Because I hate to see you lost for words, Meg Turner. Or can I soon start calling you O’Cleary?’
‘Oh, yes please. Just as soon as you can get me on a sled and carry me into town.’ Then he kissed her, the freezing prickles of his stubble scraping her chin raw, and she loved that too.
‘What about Lissa?’
She’s staying here with us. Is that all right with you, Tam?’
‘My darling girl. Anything is all right by me, so long as I have you.’
Meg wriggled from his grasp, a smile so wide upon her face it made her look like a happy child.’ Me and my sheep, don’t forget.’
Tam reached for the rope to guide the sled. ‘As if I could.’
Read a Sneak Preview of Wishing Water
(third in the Luckpenny Series)
1951
Chapter One
Lissa Turner kilted her thin cotton skirts and slid from the sheep-cropped turf into the icy waters of Allenbeck, squealing with delight as it foamed against her bare legs. She swivelled her head round to look up at the boy, still standing on dry land, very nearly over-toppling herself in the process.
‘Come in, it’s wonderful.’
She wriggled her toes, the stones grinding and slipping beneath her feet, and tried another step. Above her head a lapwing climbed on lazily beating wings, finishing in a dizzying d
isplay of joy in the May sky. Not always so blue in these Lakeland hills, it came as no surprise to Lissa to find it sun-filled and blue. For today was a special day.
Today she was to see her mother.
All around them grew alder and silver birch, pale slender stems crowding the edge of the small gushing stream, eager perhaps to cool their own feet in the exhilarating flow from the rocky depths of the high mountains. Over the low hump of Gimmer bridge, built a century or more ago with painstaking care and not a scrap of mortar, as was the way in this part of Westmorland, she could see right along the rough track to the stile where the road divided. If she took one twisting path she would come to Broombank, her home, and where Meg and Tam lived. The other climbed up over Larkrigg Fell to the place she should live, Larkrigg Hall. The place where her mother would be preparing a special tea this very afternoon for their first meeting in years. Four years to be exact, not since just after the war when Lissa had been only seven and too young to understand anything.
But she understood now. In Lissa’s pansy eyes was more knowledge than she admitted to, certainly more than was considered good for her. Her stomach tightened into a knot of excitement. Lissa meant to enjoy this day, to wring from it every drop of pleasure she could.
‘What if you fall in?’ grumbled the boy, pausing in the act of unlacing one boot as he wondered if he would get the blame, if she did.
Lissa gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘Then I’d get wet.’ The idea at once took root and she wanted nothing more than to feel the icy water flowing and stinging over every part of her young flesh. Something tickled her toes and she wriggled them, seeing darting slivers of dark shadows race away.
‘Oh, look, there are millions of minnows here,’ she cried.
‘Don’t talk soft. Millions, my foot,’ he scoffed.
‘There are.’
Storm Clouds Over Broombank Page 25
