A Nurse's Duty

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Well, I’ll do it tomorrow.’

  ‘Good,’ she said and took the dirty dishes into the scullery. She hummed happily to herself as she worked. Patrick had volunteered no information as to where he had been all day and she didn’t ask him. It was enough for her that he was back.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘ANOTHER GRAND DAY,’ said Karen as she laid the table for breakfast. ‘If we don’t get some rain soon the hay crop will be short.’ She looked out of the window at a cloudless sky. The sun shone warmly and only a slight breeze was blowing down the valley.

  ‘No point in worrying about that, is there?’ Patrick answered. ‘I think I’ll go up to the moss, cut some peat today. I’m not needed at the kilns.’

  ‘A good idea. It’s good, hot fuel for the baking, and less coal to haul from the depot at Stanhope.’

  Patrick was soon striding over the fell, his peat cutter over his shoulder and his long legs eating up the distance. Once there, he cut peat steadily and put it to dry out in the summer sun. The job reminded him of his home in County Clare, though here on the high moor the peat layer was somewhat thicker than he had known in Ireland. Still, the work was familiar, pleasantly so. He remembered going out with his father and doing just this same work. Every half hour or so he would pause and wipe his brow and lean on his cutter, gazing round at the heather-covered moor with the tiny patches of green around the small-holdings. Even the limestone was similar to the rock he remembered in Clare, he mused.

  As the sun climbed to its highest point in the sky he dropped his peat cutter and went over to a limestone outcrop where he had left his jacket and ‘bait’, as Karen called it. He smiled softly as he thought of it, how he had teased her about it.

  ‘I’m not a fish,’ he had laughed. ‘Bait is for fish, isn’t it?’

  Karen had bridled. ‘In Durham, it’s sandwiches for your dinner.’

  Opening the battered tin box, Patrick sat down on a flat piece of stone and started to eat the cheese and home-made pickle sandwiches she had made for him, relishing the food after the hard work and the feeling of ease in his legs as he stretched them out before him. His thoughts wandered back to his childhood at home as had happened so often since his parents’ visit.

  ‘Cill Inine Baoith.’ He said the old Irish name for his birthplace aloud, and sighed as he felt a sudden longing to see the old place again. To walk up the narrow track away from the village to his father’s tiny farm, to step through the door and be met by the smell of new soda bread baking on the griddle, or even the all-pervasive smell of paraffin oil from the lamp hanging down from the rafters. And to see his father sitting by the side of the fire with his pipe smoke drifting up the chimney, and Daniel, his brother, and the friends from his younger days …

  Patrick rose to his feet abruptly and went back to the laborious cutting and stacking of the peat. He couldn’t go back, how could he? He must be the scandal of the place. They wouldn’t have stopped talking about his defection even now. That was if his mother hadn’t managed to keep it a dark, shameful secret. He worked on until a crick in his back made it imperative that he straighten and lean backwards to ease it. He looked out over the high moor, as Karen called it, but somehow the day seemed not so bright as it had done earlier. It was overshadowed even though there was not a cloud in the sky.

  Patrick was still up on the moor when a letter arrived from Morton Main. From Kezia, Karen saw by the handwriting, and was pleased. There had been no letter for a month and she’d been beginning to be concerned about it. Nick was having his midmorning break and the children were with him so she took the letter out into the sunshine and sat down under the rowan tree, her back supported by the trunk.

  The miners were locked out, Kezia said. Well, of course, Karen knew that. They had been locked out since May when they’d refused to agree to new terms in an attempt to protect the wages and conditions which had been hard won in the war. And which the mine owners were now determined to change back to what they were in pre-war days. Kezia and her family were in dire straits, as were the rest of the mining community.

  You know I wouldn’t ask, but if you could take the children, Karen, just until things get better? Little Meg isn’t very strong and then there’s Tommy. He was on the slag heap with Young Luke and a few of their friends. They were gleaning bits of coal for the fire – the coal house is bare by now. An official saw the bairns and chased them off. God knows why, it’s only waste, rubbishy stuff on the tip anyroad. Well, the bairns scattered, and Luke and Tommy ran back over the old tip. You know they’ve been told not to go near it, there’s been a fire smouldering away under the surface for years …

  ‘Dear God,’ breathed Karen, almost fearing to read on. In her imagination she could see the old tip with some of the stones burnt red and sometimes tiny puffs of smoke coming from holes in the ground. Shaking her head to rid herself of the image of a little boy falling through to what would seem like the flames of Hell, she forced herself to continue.

  Anyroad, Tommy went through the crust with one leg. He was lucky Luke was nearby to pull him out, but as it is he’s got some nasty burns. Doctor Richardson treated his leg. I’m telling you, that man’s an angel, Karen, he was so good with the bairn. But Tommy does need building up and I thought of you and the farm. At least he’d get a fresh egg there sometimes.

  Of course Kezia knew she could rely on Karen, there was hardly any need to ask. In times like these any relations who were in a position to help were expected to do so to the limits of their ability. It had been so for generations. Karen didn’t even consider waiting to ask Patrick but immediately sent a letter back to Kezia, walking up to the box on the main road to post it.

  When Patrick came in that evening, she showed him Kezia’s letter.

  ‘I sent a reply off this morning, telling her to send the bairns.’

  ‘But Karen –’ Patrick started to protest, to say that they were having enough trouble seeing to their own while trying to save a bit for the bad times. But he stopped as Karen lifted a determined face to him. For the first time, she looked hard at him, as though he were a stranger.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, we’ll manage,’ he answered, backing down as he so often did nowadays. Perhaps he could get some extra work, helping on one of the larger farms nearer to Stanhope?

  ‘If we’re hard up, maybe I could get part-time nursing,’ she said.

  ‘No!’ said Patrick. ‘You have the children to see to, that’s your work. And if there are Kezia’s little ones –’

  ‘Nick will be glad to help with the bairns.’

  Patrick strode over to where she was standing and grabbed her by the upper arms. ‘I said no,’ he said quietly. ‘And, by God, I meant it.’

  Karen looked up at him and opened her mouth to protest but something in his gaze stopped her. They looked at one another for a few minutes then Patrick dropped his hands and she turned away to see to the stew cooking on the fire.

  Karen’s heart ached when she saw Kezia’s children descend from the train at Stanhope. Patrick and she had driven down with the trap to meet them.

  Luke got down first then helped the youngest, Meg, on to the platform. She was a little stick of a girl with bent legs denoting rickets. Tommy at ten was more sturdy. The vital years of his growth had been during the war when the miners were in work, but he climbed down painfully and Karen’s heart felt full when she saw his bandaged leg. Tommy had the soft intelligent eyes of his grandmother and aunt and smiled excitedly at Karen despite his injury, for he thought it a great adventure to be going to live on a farm. Young Luke took hold of Meg’s hand and with Tommy limping beside them they came to meet Karen.

  ‘Hallo, there,’ cried Patrick, for he could see how overcome Karen was and jumped in to cover up. ‘Now won’t you all be having a fine time taking a holiday on the farm with your Uncle Patrick and Auntie Karen and your cousins?’

  He lifted them up to the bench seat on the trap without waiting for an answer, th
en swung their box up between their feet. Even Luke’s tired eyes glowed with excitement, though only for a minute. Patrick walked the pony up the hill from the station. Tommy was looking round, interested in everything he saw, but Luke had a closed expression on his face. He sat holding on to Meg and staring straight ahead.

  He had not wanted to come. He felt himself almost a working man and big enough to show solidarity with his father and grandfather in their struggle with the mine owners.

  ‘You must go. You can help on the farm and maybe even get some outside work,’ his mother had exhorted him as she packed the box. ‘And you can see to Tommy and Meg, make sure they are not a nuisance to your Auntie Karen and Uncle Patrick.’

  So now they were in Weardale, going up the fell with Patrick driving the trap and Brian sitting beside them, tongue-tied in the presence of these older cousins. The ride itself was a novelty for them. Karen watched them eyeing Polly. The only ponies they saw nowadays were the old ones from the pit when they were brought to bank, too old to work, she thought, remembering how she had loved to see them when she was small and had saved a crust from her tea to hold out with trembling fingers, just in case the large teeth nipped. But they were always gentle, stretching their necks forward to take the bread delicately in soft, slobbery lips. They were blind at first in the sunlight, then drunk with the freedom of galloping around the field behind the slag heap. How she had loved to see the sturdy little pit ponies enjoying the light and air and fresh grass.

  That was how the children were at first, quiet except for Meg weeping for home and her mother. She clung to Luke who tried roughly to comfort her. In the beginning she would not take any comfort from Karen at all, resenting her for not being her mother, but gradually her hostility lessened. After a few days they roamed about the moor, free and wild and delighting in the space and pure air, even Tommy, whose leg was healing fast now.

  ‘Do you want to see the fairy caves?’ asked Brian one day. He had already shown them the hidden ghyllie with its myriad delights and desperately wanted to impress them further.

  ‘Fairy caves?’ Luke scoffed at the very idea, but he was grinning indulgently. ‘Oh, go on then.’

  So Brian took them to the caves under a limestone outcrop and showed them where the little people feasted and danced as they had done ever since humankind came to these hills.

  ‘Where are they then, the little people?’ asked Tommy, looking round. ‘I don’t see any fairies.’

  ‘We’re not supposed to see them,’ Brian hastened to inform him. ‘If they think we’ve seen them they’ll take us away to live with them and we won’t see Mammy again. That’s why we can’t go inside.’

  Luke laughed, bringing sudden doubt about the tale to Brian.

  ‘It’s true, it’s true,’ he insisted stubbornly, despite his doubts. He had never doubted the story before, had learned it from the children in Sunday School and they told it as fact not fiction.

  ‘You’ll find out when you go to Sunday School,’ he said to Luke. ‘Then you’ll know.’

  But Luke only laughed again and turned away.

  However, Meg and Tommy were thrilled by the story though it was scary. Meg kept her eyes shut firmly when they were near the caves and clung to Luke’s hand. Even Tommy kept his eyes averted, just in case, though he professed not to believe it when he saw that his brother did not.

  Luke helped with the hay-making, showing himself to be a willing and adaptable worker even at his age for he was quick to learn and steady. The hay crop was ready by the middle of July which was something of a record for the dale, but because of the drought it was scanty. It was lovely green hay which went further than usual, however, so they were satisfied.

  So the long days were occupied from dawn to dusk with Patrick rising at three o’clock to cut hay or dry peat or do the hundred and one jobs which needed the strength of a man and one with two hands. He had got a job as well and had to go off every weekday with Polly and the cart, transporting stones for the council and working on the roads which criss-crossed the fells.

  This work was available now as the council improved communications in the dales by having the roads made up. Patrick took advantage of the presence of Luke to earn outside cash but the hard work and long hours took their toll. He began to look fine drawn and pale under his tan, coming in exhausted in the evenings to fall asleep over supper.

  Karen worried about him incessantly, he was so quiet. His hands bore new callouses from working with the stone and he was developing a slight stoop as though he had trouble with his back. But when she asked about it he denied it. When she went to the Co-operative Store in Stanhope for the groceries, she drew twelve and sixpence from her dividend book and bought him a good, wide leather belt. She offered it to him the next morning, and he put it on without comment.

  Eventually as the moors were once more clothed in their cloak of purple heather the burden of farmwork eased. The children were fit and brown and even Meg’s little legs seemed straighter since she had been having a regular supply of good, fresh milk.

  The miners had to capitulate in July and go back to work for less money. Eventually a letter arrived from Kezia asking for Luke to return home. Tommy and Meg were to stay until the end of August: ‘Just until we get back on our feet’.

  Luke hated going back, notwithstanding his reluctance to come to the farm in the first place, for he had grown to love the dale.

  Karen watched him sympathetically as she took him down to the station at Stanhope. He sat quietly in the trap, face averted, while the other children, who were only there for the ride, laughed and chatted, happy to be having the outing.

  ‘Be careful with the eggs, Luke,’ Karen said gently to him as she handed over a covered basket containing butter as well. Luke took it wordlessly, unable to speak in case he broke down and spoilt his manly facade.

  When he climbed on the train Meg realized he was actually going without her and set up a loud wailing so that Karen had to catch her up and hold her.

  ‘Hush love, there’s a pet,’ Karen rocked the little girl to her, whereupon Jennie lifted her arms and joined in the crying, jealous of Meg. It was in this pandemonium that the train pulled out of the station, Luke’s set face retreating from the little group.

  Karen couldn’t stop herself from thinking about him. He was destined for the pit, just as most of the men in her family had been, generation following generation. But Luke had loved the outdoor life, just as his great-grandmother had done. He’d loved the high moor. But it was no good thinking about that.

  Driving back to the farm in the brilliant morning sunshine, Karen felt her spirits lift in tune with the buzz of the bees busy in the heather and the butterflies fluttering above it. High overhead a curlew called and the children called back. They had recovered their high spirits and even Meg began to smile as Low Rigg Farm came into view in the fold in the track, the rowan tree in all its summer glory standing sentinel at the gate.

  ‘Home again,’ said Karen, and lifted Jennie and Meg down from the trap. But Tommy jumped and Brian followed suit, not to be beaten. Meg grinned proudly at him as he kept his balance on the cobbles. Nick poked his head round the barn door, wiping his hand on his sacking apron.

  ‘Nick! Nick!’ Jennie was as delighted to see him as usual. She still loved him with an uncritical devotion. There was no Patrick though, he was working on the roads. Sighing, Karen turned into the scullery and lit the fire under the copper. She had filled it before she went out for the washing was to start. There was plenty of work to occupy her mind.

  At the end of August Karen decided she would take Tommy and Meg back to Morton Main herself so that she could see Da and Kezia and assure herself that they were all right. There had been no further letter from Kezia since the brief note saying Luke had arrived home safely and Karen found her thoughts returning to them all the time.

  Accordingly she baked pies the day before and left them for Patrick and Nick to eat cold. The four children went with her, happy and
excited and quite unnaturally clean. Patrick drove them to the station.

  ‘We’ll be back by nine.’ She smiled up into his eyes but knew better than to expect a kiss such as he gave the children. She would have liked some sign of affection but knew him well enough now to understand that outward displays embarrassed him, the more so as they grew older. So, contenting herself with the smile, she took the basket of farm eggs and butter in one hand and lifted Jennie with the other.

  Was it her imagination, she wondered wistfully, or was Patrick growing away from her? But that was a thought she couldn’t bear so she turned to the children. They were clambering eagerly on to the seats in the carriage and waving to Patrick in great excitement while Karen settled down in a corner with Jennie on her knee. There was quite a difficult time ahead with a change of train at Bishop Auckland but there was a bus nowadays which ran from Morton village to Morton Main, making the last part of the journey easier, for which she was thankful.

  The day was very warm and the children were hot and tired by the time they got to the village. The heat shimmered by the roadside where tar had run, sticky and black. Karen got down from the bus at the Chapel stop and stood Jennie on her feet while she helped Meg and Brian. And then Kezia was there, laughing and crying and hugging her children to her. Karen stood back and watched the happy reunion.

  ‘Thank you, Karen,’ Kezia said simply, looking at her sister. It was all she said but it was enough. Karen knew all rifts were healed. They walked together down the row with the children all talking at once, interrupting each other as they told of the wonders of life on the farm.

  ‘Da’s finished at the pit,’ Kezia said quietly, bitterly. ‘They reckoned he was one of the ring leaders, a trouble maker.’

  Karen stopped walking for a moment in shock at this description of Da, that stern law-abiding man. How humiliated he must be.

  ‘He’ll have to get out of the house, of course. He can come in with us for now, then maybe he will be able to rent a cottage over at Morton.’