Durham Trilogy 02. The Darkening Skies

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Sara marvelled that her sister-in-law noticed such details and, stifling a yawn, her mind wandered as the congregation sat and steamed quietly, their clothes drying out in the warmth of the hall. In her mind she was up on the fell in warm spring sunshine, walking hand in hand with a young lover. She tried to picture him as Sid in his Sunday best with his thatch of fair hair ruffled in the breeze, but it was Clark Gable who smiled at her, just like he did in the magazine picture her friend Beth had given her.

  At one stage in the service the wind must have picked up outside, because smoke began to blow back down the flue of the old stove and Tom stood up on the bench to open the vent. Sara saw him nod and grin at one of the Metcalfe sisters from Thimble Hill Farm while he was turned around. She was proud that her brother was the most Hashing young man in the chapel, dressed in his uniform.

  After the service, Sara detached herself from her mother who was chatting to Mrs Gibson and slipped through the crowd outside the chapel to see her friend Beth.

  ‘I need to talk to you about som’at,’ she whispered with a grin.

  Beth’s squint eyes widened with interest.’ ‘Bout what?’

  ‘Can’t speak now.’ Sara walked her to the gate. ‘Can I call after dinner?’

  ‘Aye,’ Beth nodded, ‘we can tak’ the bairn for a walk if the rain eases off. He might gan to sleep if he’s pushed in the pram.’

  ‘Where is Daniel?’

  ‘Mam’s got him, but he’ll be bubblin’ for his feed.’ She put a hand to her swollen breasts and winced. ‘Greedy little babby.’

  Sara looked with concern at her friend’s tired face. A year ago, she and Beth had run around together without a care in the world, until John Lawson had gone courting the giggling Beth and tempted her up on to the fell during the long summer evenings. Now the spark was gone from Beth’s funny brown eyes and her talk was all of babies. If this was what marriage and motherhood did to a lass, Sara thought with panic, she wanted none of it.

  So when Sid Gibson sidled up to her as she said goodbye to Beth, she gave him a cool look.

  ‘Mornin’, Sara.’ He touched his cap with an anxious smile.

  ‘Sid…’ Sara gave a brief nod and turned back to Beth. Her friend’s. look was enquiring, but Sara’s face was impassive.

  Sid cleared his throat. ‘Thought I’d go up the beck later -see if there’s any more lambs come in top field.’ Sara felt a flush of embarrassment at such an obvious invitation in front of her friend. She glanced around to see if any of her family were watching. Her father sat alone on the trap, fretting to be off. Mary sheltered under a nearby tree talking to Jane Metcalfe but managing to keep one eye on her and Sid.

  ‘I’m going visitin’ this afternoon,’ Sara murmured back.

  ‘Oh.’ Sid sounded disappointed. ‘Well, likely I’ll see you at the lecture here Wednesday evening.’

  ‘Aye,’ Sara nodded and Sid moved off to collect his bicycle.

  ‘You courtin’?’ Beth whispered. Sara flushed pink. ‘Then why don’t you speak to the lad?’ her friend chided.

  ‘I’m that mixed up about him,’ Sara hissed back. ‘I’ll see you later.’ She turned quickly and ran to the waiting trap, while Beth waddled over to her father’s joinery van, looking as if she were still pregnant with her newborn baby. There was no sign of her husband John. Probably sleeping off his hangover after market day in Lilychapel, Sara thought with disapproval.

  As the Pallisters set off up the valley to return to Stout House, they passed Sid Gibson wobbling in the wind on his ancient machine and Sara felt a stab of remorse that she had made no arrangement to see Him later that day. She wanted his company when he was not there and yet was somehow irritated by it when he was.

  Bill and Mary came in to Stout House for a Sunday lunch of mutton and potatoes and spring cabbage and carrots, followed by Lily Pallister’s homemade rhubarb and meringue pie. But there was no leisurely nap beside the large kitchen fire for Sara’s father that afternoon, as he and Bill ventured out into the wind and rain to count the lambs in the high fields. They went off, grim faced, with Cath yapping excitedly at her father’s heels, obeying his whistle.

  After washing up, Sara announced she was going out to see Beth.

  ‘You’ll catch your death in this weather,’ her mother fussed, glancing out of the small windows at the billowing black rain clouds whipping across the hills. ‘And you’ve been sneezing these past two days. Best stay indoors and keep warm, pet.’

  ‘I’ll not be long,’ Sara answered, pulling on her gabardine mackintosh and pushing her hair inside her beret. Her mother sighed with resignation, aware that if Sara was determined to go out, she could not be stopped.

  ‘Going up the beck are you?’ Mary paused over her knitting to enquire.

  ‘No,’ Sara muttered. ‘I’m going down to Beth’s, not that it’s any of your business.’

  ‘I’ll walk you down.’ Tom jumped up from his seat, eager to escape the tedium of a Sunday afternoon at home.

  ‘Be back in time for tea the pair of you,’ their mother said, ‘else your father’ll have something to say.’

  They hurried out of the back door into the buffeting gale that had increased all day.

  ‘Mary’s knittin’ those yellow bed socks for you,’ Sara told Tom as they rushed down the track and her brother laughed.

  ‘She means well most of the time. You shouldn’t let her bother you. You’re like a fish to the bait every time.’

  ‘It’s all right for you to say,’ Sara grimaced, ‘you’re leaving the morra. I’ve got her every day making me life a misery. Mary hates the sight of me - always has done.’

  ‘She’s just jealous, that’s all,’ Tom tried to explain.

  ‘Jealous?’ Sara answered in surprise. ‘What for?’

  ‘ ‘Cos you’ve always had a happy family and plenty to eat, even when money’s a bit tight,’ Tom answered. ‘She’s come from a slum house in Stanhope and knows what it’s like to have the means-test man go through all her possessions.’

  ‘Aye, I know.’ Sara felt humbled. ‘But why does she pick on me?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s because you’re the bonny one.’ Tom grinned and gave her a playful push, ‘Or perhaps because you’re the laziest lass this side of Lily chapel.’

  Sara pushed him back and Tom set off down the hill with his sister in pursuit, shouting and laughing in the wind. As they arrived, breathless, by the Rillhope cottages, Tom stopped and fished out a battered packet of the cigarettes he was forbidden to smoke at home. He turned his back into the wind and attempted to light one.

  ‘There’s one way you can get away from Mary,’ he suggested, his match going out. ‘Give a bit encouragement to Sid Gibson. It’s plain he fancies you.’

  ‘He’s asked me to marry him,’ Sara blurted out.

  Tom gawped at her as another match fizzled and then laughed. ‘Well, there you are then. You can be Mrs Gibson of Highbeck soon enough - Dad’s bound to agree.’

  ‘Aye,’ Sara answered without enthusiasm and turned to knock on Beth’s door. Tom’s cigarette caught alight and he dragged on it hard. Turning up the collar of his army coat he said, ‘I’ll see you in a bit.’

  ‘Where are you off to?’ Sara asked suspiciously.

  ‘Thought I’d get myself a cuppa at Thimble Hill,’ he winked. ‘Jane Metcalfe asked me after chapel.’

  ‘Soldiers!’ Sara gave a wry smile. ‘Ta-ra, then.’ The door opened and John Lawson’s bleary red eyes bunked at her in the rain. Beyond him Sara could hear the shrill wail of his baby son.

  She spent an hour in Beth’s kitchen, helping change Daniel’s nappy and making tea while her friend fed her baby and John went back upstairs to sleep. To Sara, Daniel was ugly; a sallow, crinkled creature who fretted and cried or dribbled sick down his discoloured dress. She did not understand why people made such a fuss over babies and she was impatient to gain her friend’s advice. Eventually they got round to the subject of Sid Gibson.

  ‘Well, should I a
ccept him?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s a canny lad,’ Beth considered, ‘and he doesn’t drink.’ She looked up to the ceiling and pulled a face at her absent husband. ‘And he’ll get Highbeck Farm one day - you’ll have a decent house to call your own.’

  ‘So you think I should say yes?’ Sara looked troubled.

  ‘Aye,’ Beth nodded, patting the wind out of Daniel. ‘You’d be daft not to.’

  Sara dropped her gaze. ‘But I don’t think I’m in love with him.’

  Beth snorted. ‘Love! Look where it got me.’ There was an edge of bitterness in her voice. ‘You’ve the chance of a good lad - tak’ it, I say. There’s no one else round here half as decent as Sid Gibson.’

  ‘Aye,’ Sara sighed, her green eyes sad. ‘I know he’s a good’un, but…’

  ‘The trouble with you, Sara, is you’re too romantic by half. Looks in a lad aren’t everything, believe me.’ Beth’s tone became sharp. ‘It’s no good sittin’ around waiting for Clark Gable, ‘cos he doesn’t live around these parts and he’s never likely to.’

  Sara burst out laughing at the idea. ‘If only!’ she giggled. Then looking at the clock on the mantelpiece, she leapt up. ‘Eeh, I’ll have to be off. Come up to the house during the week, won’t you? Mam’s longing to see Daniel.’

  ‘Aye, if the weather improves.’ Beth stood up with Daniel cradled in her arms. Sara thought, for the first time, they looked contented and right for each other. ‘So, what will you say?’ Beth was curious.

  ‘What I’m expected to say, I suppose,’ Sara said resignedly. She slipped into her wet mack and shivered in its dampness. ‘I’ll see mesel’ out, don’t come to the door, it’s blowing a gale. Ta-ra then, Beth.’

  ‘Ta-ra,’ the young mother replied, smiling at her contrary friend and doubting that she would ever do what was expected of her.

  The large kitchen table was covered in a starched white linen tablecloth and spread with cold meat and pickles, drop scones, gingerbread, fruit cake and bread, butter and jam. Lily Pallister dispensed an endless supply of hot tea from the large china teapot, an heirloom from the Victorian Pallisters. But Sara, preoccupied, picked at her food without enthusiasm. The chill of the walk back still made her shiver in spite of the cosy warmth of the large kitchen, its windows now shuttered against the battering wind.

  Afterwards, Bill and Mary went to their cottage next door and Richard Pallister went out in his oilskins to have a last check on his labouring ewes.

  ‘Stay and rest by the fire,’ Sara’s mother coaxed. ‘They’ll manage without you for one night, Dick.’

  He shot her a strange look, almost guilty, Sara thought. But her restless father would not be detained. ‘Stop fussing, woman,’ he snapped and went out.

  When they had all gone, Tom went over to the old gramophone and lifted the lid.

  ‘You know you shouldn’t, Tom,’ his mother protested half-heartedly. ‘Not on a Sunday.’

  ‘Who’s going to hear us?’ Tom laughed without concern and chose a record from its battered dust cover. He cranked up the machine.

  ‘What if the minister was to call?’ Lily Pallister laughed nervously.

  ‘Oh, let us listen, Mam,’ Sara urged, pausing over her diary writing. ‘It’s Tom’s last night.’

  Her mother acquiesced and began to hum tunefully to the strains of Jack Buchanan.

  ‘Haway and dance, Sara.’ Tom pulled his sister up from her prone position in front of the roaring fire. Together they waltzed to the crooner and, when he finished, Tom played the popular songs he had brought home the previous Christmas.

  Their mother, unable to resist the music, abandoned her mending and joined them, dragging her youngest daughter around the room. Chrissie giggled, glancing nervously at the scullery door, lest her stern father should suddenly reappear to admonish them all for their ungodliness. They shuffled around the large table to the strains of’ These Foolish Things and Sara’s favourite hit from two years ago, I’ve Got You Under My Skin.

  ‘It’s so romantic,’ Sara sighed as they danced to a halt.

  ‘Aye, Mrs Gibson,’ Tom whispered cheekily.

  ‘Shut your gob!’ Sara pushed him away with an embarrassed snort. But the thought had occurred to her as she glided around the fire-lit kitchen, mellowed by the music. She imagined herself being escorted up the chapel aisle in a white satin dress such as Princess Marina had worn for her marriage to the Duke of Kent. Waiting for her would be her gentle Sid, his soft hazel eyes full of admiration at the sight of her. He would whisk her away in a covered carriage pulled by elegant horses and she would smile charmingly and throw coins to the children and Mary Emerson. She would say goodbye to her childish pinafores and take up the role of married woman. Her heart beat a little quicker at the thought of being intimate with Sid Gibson and the memory of his tender kiss the previous day. As the voice of Jack Buchanan had rolled sensuously into the room, Sara had determined that on Wednesday evening, after the lecture on the Romans in Britain by the schoolmaster, Mr Banks, she would say ‘yes’ to Sid Gibson.

  Her musings were interrupted by a heavy banging on the front door. Somebody was already inside the porch, his bulk silhouetted against the frosted glass of the inner door. Her mother rushed guiltily to shut the gramophone, while Tom went to answer the knocking.

  ‘Minister must have heard us after all, Mam,’ he joked.

  A squall rushed in to the room, preceding their visitor. In the half-dark of the dreary day, it was difficult to make out the stout figure in the doorway enveloped in black oilskins and cumbersome boots. Sara was the first to identify him.

  ‘Sid!’ she gasped, blushing at his sudden appearance as if her daydreams had conjured him to her side. He had come for her answer now, unable to wait until midweek. But the look of alarm on his face dispelled her smile of pleasure.

  ‘Sorry t’ inter’up, Mrs Pallister,’ he gabbled out of breath, hardly acknowledging Sara. ‘Can you come quick, Tom?’

  ‘Aye.’ Tom did not stop to ask why, but unhooked his father’s old greatcoat hanging on the back of the wide farm door.

  ‘What is it, Sid?’ Lily Pallister asked anxiously, her amiable face creasing in concern.

  Sid hesitated a moment, then plunged on quickly. ‘I saw a man go int’ beck, up by Rillhope mine. I can’t get to him on me own.’

  ‘Richard!’ Lily’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘He went up that way.’

  ‘Aye,’ Sid nodded grimly. ‘I saw him gan.’

  ‘Quickly, Tom!’ his mother begged.

  ‘I’ll call for Bill,’ Tom said already halfway out of the door. ‘Haway, Sid, show the way.’

  For the first time Sid looked at Sara and she thought his eyes reproachful.

  ‘Go fetch Dr Hall, Sara,’ her mother ordered.

  ‘I’ll go on the bike,’ she offered at once.

  ‘Best get him to ring for the ambulance at Lilychapel,’ Sid said ominously and left.

  Sara rushed into the scullery, seized her damp coat and raced out into the gloom. To her surprise she found Cath leaping with concern in the yard, barking frantically.

  ‘Poor Cath.’ Sara calmed the dog a moment. ‘Did you come back to warn us?’ Then it struck her; the sheepdog was chained up and straining to be free of its shackles. Her father had not taken her with him when he’d left to do his rounds.

  With no time to puzzle over why Cath had been left behind, Sara took Tom’s old bicycle from the byre, mounted it unsteadily and wobbled off into the icy wind. Twice, freewheeling down the hill, she was blown off and badly scraped her knees and elbows. But the thought of her father, trapped on the rocks at the foot of the tumbling beck in the drenching rain, spurred her on to Lowbeck.

  It was dark and she was soaked through by the time she reached Dr Hall’s stone house, sheltered by a wall of beech trees in the middle of the village. She hammered frantically on the front door for what seemed like an age, but there was no reply. Rushing round the side of the house, Sara saw a chink of light spilling th
rough the curtains of a downstairs room. She battered on the window, trying to stem the panic rising in her throat.

  ‘Please let him be in! Please!’ she cried to the wind. The back door opened.

  ‘Who’s there?’ a woman’s voice called nervously.

  ‘Mrs Hall,’ Sara sobbed with relief, ‘we need the doctor. It’s me dad.’

  ‘Sara Pallister, isn’t it?’ The young woman regarded the agitated girl, her long hair plastered to her face and rain dripping off her nose and cheeks. ‘Come in, you look exhausted.’

  ‘Please, Mrs Hall, I just want the doctor,’ she persisted, her mud-spattered legs rooted to the spot. ‘Me dad’s gone in the beck. They think he’s badly hurt.’

  ‘I’m afraid Dr Hall isn’t here,’ the young doctor’s wife answered in concern. ‘He’s away to assist at a birth in Lilychapel.’

  Sara’s head Sopped forward and she let out an agonised wail of desperation. Her knees felt as weak as a newborn lamb’s after her cycle ride and it had all been to no avail. Her father was lying unconscious on the desolate fell and she could do nothing to help him.

  ‘You can come in and wait for my husband,’ Mrs Hall suggested, quite at a loss. Sara’s head went up at the sound of the woman’s helplessness. She must control herself and not give way to the waves of hysteria that threatened to engulf her. She swallowed hard.

  ‘Please ring for the ambulance in Lilychapel,’ she ordered. Tell them to come up to Stout House - that there’s a man badly injured. I must get back and help me mam when they bring him in.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’ll ring at once,’ the young woman agreed with relief, thankful that this bedraggled girl was not going to have hysterics in front of her. ‘But you’ll come in and have a hot drink before you go?’

  ‘No ta, Mrs Hall.’ Sara resisted the warmth beckoning from the open door and tinned on her heels and ran back into the night, clambering once more on to Tom’s bicycle.

  By the time she got to the steep climb up the hillside to Highbeck and Stout House, it was quite dark. Sara, abandoning the heavy framed bicycle in the ditch, trudged the final mile. Cold and soaked and utterly exhausted, she fell in at the back door. She could hear voices in the kitchen and as she entered she saw the room was full of people.