A Nurse's Duty

by Maggie Hope

  Of course, Karen thought, the house belonged to the colliery.

  ‘Can you manage?’ She gazed at Kezia anxiously. She could have Da at Low Rigg Farm but at sixty-three years old he wouldn’t want to move far from his beloved Chapel.

  ‘He’ll be all right.’

  Kezia saw the uncertainty on Karen’s face and understood.

  ‘He’s better here. Da was never one for the dale, that was Mam. Anyway, he’ll get his pension in a few years.’

  ‘Not till he’s seventy,’ Karen reminded her. A few years can be a long time, she thought as they all went into Kezia’s kitchen. Da was sitting by the range, quietly staring at the fire. He seemed shrunken somehow, not himself at all, and Karen felt her heart drop at the sight of him. But his smile was warm enough, especially when he saw little Meg and Tommy. Brian hung back. He hardly knew his grandfather, Karen realized guiltily.

  ‘How are you, lass? And that man of yours?’ Da kissed her gravely on the cheek and surveyed her closely.

  ‘We’re fine, Da. Patrick an’ all.’

  He seemed satisfied with what he saw for he turned his attention to her children.

  ‘By, she’s a bonny lass you’ve got there, mind. And the lad’s growing fast, isn’t he? Howay then, Brian, let’s have a look at you.’ Da became hearty when he spoke to the children. He’d changed a lot, thought Karen, losing his job had diminished him. And of course he would still be feeling Mam’s death … A lump grew in Karen’s throat and threatened to choke her. To cover up she talked to him in a straightforward manner, helping him in his pretence that there was nothing wrong, and after a while the urge to cry receded and the emotional moment passed. The lunch was of salad culled from the allotment accompanied by Kezia’s new bread and some of the farm butter. The children ate heartily, made hungry by their early start.

  ‘Howay then, troops. We’ll away and see what’s on offer at the shop,’ said Da when the meal was finished, and to whoops of joy he took the children up the street to Lizzie’s, the corner shop, and spent some of his precious pennies on sherbet dabs and black bullets. Soon even Brian and Jennie were competing for his attention, completely won over.

  ‘Granda, Granda, look at me, me!’

  ‘No, me!’

  Their loud cries rang down the row intermingled with the gruff tones of Da. Karen marvelled at the difference between the relaxed, smiling man he was with her children and the stern father she had known as a child. The children were working their magic and taking his mind off his troubles, at least that was something.

  The afternoon flew by with ‘Do you remembers’ and up to date news of the village, and soon it was time to wash hands and faces for the return home. Jennie and Brian protested loudly but to no avail. The train back to Stanhope had to be caught at Bishop Auckland so they must adhere to a time-table.

  Karen’s heart was lighter. Despite the poverty of the community the people were cheerfully indomitable and she felt as one with them. Kezia and Father, Tommy and Meg, came to the bus stop with them to set them off on the early-evening bus.

  In the little town, Karen carried the sound asleep Jennie to the station with Brian hanging on to her skirts with one hand while he sucked the thumb of the other. She was tired and her arms ached as she joined the straggle of people climbing the hill leading to the station, thinking only of collapsing into a seat on the train to take the weight off her legs.

  It was then that she saw a familiar form in the crowd in front of her and her head jerked back in shock. Her stomach plummeted and turned into a hard, aching knot and her mouth went dry and sour-tasting. She closed her eyes tightly and stood still.

  ‘Mam? Mammy?’

  Brian was tugging at her skirt with his face upturned in anxious enquiry. She opened her eyes. There was no sign of him now, the man who was so like …

  Imagination, that’s what it had been. Why should it suddenly play such a trick on her? She hadn’t seen him for years. It must have been something to do with being so tired.

  The whistle of the train set her off walking rapidly uphill again, with Brian having to trot to keep up with her.

  ‘Mammy!’ His protest penetrated at last and she slowed her pace.

  ‘Come on, pet, we’ll have to hurry, the train’s coming,’ she said. Quickly she handed over her ticket and headed for the platform. The train was standing still, with little puffs of steam coming from the engine. Half afraid of what she might see, she gave only a short glance up the platform. Was that him getting in at the other end of the train? No!

  Karen bundled Brian into a compartment and followed with Jennie. Looking neither to left nor right she went straight to the first vacant seats. She sat there, not lifting her head until the train arrived at Stanhope. Jennie slept on and Brian leaned against her, tired and quiet and as ever receptive to her moods. Her lovely day had darkened and her mind was filled with formless fears she shrank from naming.

  Yet in the end those fears seemed groundless for they had reached Stanhope without seeing anyone she knew. The evening sun brightened and love threatened to spill over as she saw Patrick outside the station, wafting patiently beside Polly. He smiled in mild embarrassment when she kissed him exuberantly, unable to hide her feelings, then he turned to the children to hide that embarrassment.

  They drove home past the avenue of limes which cast long shadows as the sun was going down, they passed the old church and went on into open country. As they climbed the fell the heather was deeply purple and splendid, fading into a blue haze on the top of the moor.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THE WINTER CLOSED in once more. The moor became wild and white, cutting people off from one another, obliterating roads and tracks so only the snow poles standing on the roadside denoted its outline. And yet, even though winter meant the living was hard and every morning there was ice to break on the bucket of water which Nick had brought in the night before, it was still Karen’s favourite season, the time when she felt safest. No one from the outside world could get at them.

  Work on the roads came to a halt so there was no money coming in and Patrick and Nick spent long hours tramping the low fell, bringing in sheep nearer to home, digging sheep out of drifts, carrying hay to sheep, lifting sheep back on to their feet when they fell over and were unable to regain their footing. Patrick even dreamed about sheep: sheep with foot rot, sheep falling down crags or trapped between outcrops of limestone. The world revolved around sheep. So he was glad of the change when the weather at last allowed some respite and they could spread manure and lime the moorland around the pasture in an attempt to wrest it from the heather.

  The short days were hard for Karen too; she had to see to the farmyard stock and the children. But the children were growing up strong and healthy and she was happy.

  One Sunday she decided to take them to Sunday School. They hadn’t been there for a few weeks because of the snow and both Brian and Jennie liked Sunday School. She sat in the caretaker’s tiny kitchen and drank tea while she waited for them, chatting idly with the caretaker’s wife who was busy preparing the dinner. It was a pleasant little interlude in the week. The caretaker’s cottage adjoined the schoolroom and she could hear the children reciting prayers in unison. Listening hard, she picked out Jennie’s piping voice among them.

  The children began to sing an old song, ‘Jesus Bids Us Shine’, and she sang along with them under her breath while the caretaker’s wife was busy in the pantry: ‘You in your small corner, and I in mine.’ She liked that; it expressed just how she felt.

  Afterwards they walked home through the slush and snow, and by the time they got back their feet were damp and frozen and their noses and chins were red and stinging in the wind.

  ‘Patrick!’

  Karen hurried into the kitchen calling for him as she went to the fire with Jennie who by this time was fractious and crying, for the fire had burned low and needed mending and Patrick usually had a good fire going for them when they got back. But there was no sign of him n
ow and she was puzzled.

  She blazed up the fire and warmed milk in a saucepan and still Patrick didn’t come in. Leaving Brian and Jennie sipping their milk, she went out into the yard where Nick was just coming out of the stable.

  ‘Have you seen Patrick?’ she asked him anxiously.

  Nick sniffed and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.

  ‘He went out just after you did, missus. Said he was going to the village,’ he answered. Lately he had taken to being more formal with Karen, calling her ‘missus’ again, and she wondered if Patrick had been getting on at him as he had when Nick first appeared.

  At Karen’s frown, he hastened to add, ‘Well, there was nothing for him to do, was there, missus?’

  ‘No. I just wondered where he was, that’s all. Thank you, Nick.’ Karen went back to the children but a tiny nagging question was pushing into her thoughts. Patrick had been quieter than usual these past weeks, perhaps a little withdrawn. Was he unhappy?

  When he came home, around two o’clock, she questioned him with her eyes but he offered no explanation as to where he had been. He sat down at the table and she brought his meal from the oven where it had been keeping hot. His manner forebade enquiry and as she bent over the table she caught a strong smell of whisky.

  ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, visibly shaken.

  ‘What is it?’ Patrick said coldly. He looked up at her unsmilingly, challenging her to comment.

  ‘Nothing.’ Karen collected herself quickly and turned back to the fire. She put a hand up to the brass rail, leaning on it, and gazed into the glowing turves. Deliberately she closed her mind to her suspicions though she didn’t even know what it was she suspected, she told herself angrily.

  ‘Good God, woman, do I have to tell you everywhere I go?’ demanded Patrick, unappeased.

  ‘“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”,’ quoted Brian primly. He had been learning the Ten Commandments at school.

  Patrick exploded. ‘Get to bed!’ he shouted at the boy, and Brian fled, his lower lip trembling.

  ‘Don’t shout at him,’ said Karen, turning to face Patrick.

  ‘You’re turning him into a bloody little hypocrite,’ he snapped. ‘He has to learn not to speak to his father like that.’

  Jennie was staring at them, her eyes wide and troubled, so Karen bit her tongue and turned back to her contemplation of the fire. And after a while Patrick seemed to regret his outburst for he went upstairs to Brian and brought him down again. The boy’s face was tear-stained but he brightened when his father sat with the two children on the settee and told them stories of Ireland. He told them of the merrows, or morhuads, which were sometimes to be seen on the wild coast of Clare, and Karen listened too. He spoke so infrequently of the land of his birth.

  ‘The men have green teeth and green hair,’ he told them, ‘but the women are lovely except that they have the tails of fishes.’

  ‘Mermaids! You mean mermaids,’ interjected Brian.

  ‘No, that I don’t,’ said Patrick. ‘I mean merrows, though maybe the English would call them mermaids.’

  Karen smiled as she brought out the flour and yeast to make bread while she listened to the story of Jack Dogherty who looked for them and eventually saw one and followed him beneath the waves to the country of the merrows beneath the sea where he fell in love with a lady merrow.

  ‘What’s the sea like, Daddy?’ asked Brian plaintively. ‘I’ve never seen the sea.’

  ‘Oh, but you will, when you go on the Sunday School trip to Redcar,’ put in Karen. And somehow, the mention of Sunday School seemed to mar Patrick’s mood again and he stood up abruptly.

  ‘I have work to do,’ he said, and went out to the barn.

  Jennie started to cry fretfully. She wanted to hear more stories, so Karen told them how they would go to Redcar and see the sea for themselves. And maybe, if they were very lucky, they would see a mermaid.

  When the snow barricaded them in again Karen was happier. She felt safe, her fears silly to her now. And Patrick was snowbound too, he had to stay on the farm. After a while, she forgot about his little outings. She even forgot about the man she’d thought she had seen in Bishop Auckland.

  ‘There’s a man in the lane, Mam! He wants to see you, he gave me a penny to run and tell you!’

  Brian’s eyes were bright and sparkling, he was bursting with the importance of the message he had to give. He clutched his penny tightly in his fist then held it out for her to see.

  ‘A man? Why doesn’t he come here then?’ Karen’s surprised question turned into an admonishment. ‘You shouldn’t have taken his penny, Brian. I’ve told you that you must not take money from anyone.’

  He was crestfallen. He hadn’t thought of that. Not many pennies came his way and when they did he usually had to share them with Jennie.

  ‘But, Mam, he said I was doing him a favour.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he come up to the house?’ she repeated, mystified.

  ‘I don’t know. He said he wanted to see you in the lane. “Tell her it’s Dave, he said …”’ Brian stopped abruptly, startled by his mother’s exclamation.

  ‘Dave? You’re sure he said Dave?’ In her anxiety and shock she bent down on one knee and took hold of Brian by the arms, speaking harshly and urgently. He began to cry, sure now he had done something wrong. But what? Karen forced herself to moderate her voice, to keep it under control. She was being stupid, there were hundreds of Daves in the world. Loads and loads of Daves, and anyway, her Dave was dead. Someone was playing a game, on and on ran her chaotic thoughts.

  ‘All right, son, you can keep your penny to buy sweets when the travelling shop comes around. As long as you share them with Jennie, mind. Now go and have your tea. Nick’s in the kitchen and there’s some strawberry jam.’

  Brian’s face brightened as he saw things were not so bad after all. He skipped into the house to tell Nick and Jennie about the penny.

  Karen stood straight, squaring her shoulders and smoothing down her apron, forcing herself to be sensible. Dave was dead, she told herself, hadn’t Joe told her he was dead? And Joe wouldn’t have told her that if it wasn’t true. These last few years had been more settled for her and Patrick; his periods of withdrawal had lessened, he was as any other husband and father. Their coming together in bed had become more relaxed and natural and a source of quiet joy. A sense of fulfilment and security marked her life. She had begun to put on weight and was supremely happy. It was 1924 and they had been married for six years.

  Now she looked out through the gate at the lane. All she had to do was walk past the rowan tree and along the track to the bend and she would find all her silly fears were without foundation. She had had a letter from Joe only last month, and if Dave had been alive and there had been a mistake he would have known and warned her. It was someone else. It had to be someone else.

  Yet still she stood rooted with dread that somehow Dave was not dead but had come back. The memory of the man she had seen at Bishop Auckland station a couple of years ago came back to her and she shivered.

  ‘Will I go and see who it is, missus?’ Karen hadn’t heard Nick coming up behind her. He had got the tale from Brian and was gazing at her anxiously. When she was disturbed so was he, even after all these years.

  ‘No, you stay with Brian and Jennie,’ Karen decided as she looked back at him. ‘It’s all right, Nick. Really, I’ll be fine. I’ll just walk up to the bend.’ She put her hand on his arm in reassurance; it wasn’t right that he should be disturbed.

  ‘Just watch the bairns for me.’

  ‘Aye, I will. You know I will.’

  Karen nodded her thanks and resolutely stepped out of the gate, trying to convey confidence. Nick watched until her slight figure turned round the bend in the track then went in reluctantly to watch the children. At three and a half Jennie was full of mischief and not to be trusted for long on her own. But his instincts were to go with Karen. He was disturbed by some nebulous, unknown
threat.

  Karen approached the dip in the lane with a thumping heart even while she was telling herself that this must be some other man, for Dave was dead. Dead at Gallipoli as Joe had told her, so how could it be him in the lane? She walked on, her whole being focussed on seeing the man. At last she realized she was on the last stretch of the rutted track before the road and it was deserted. She stared down it, sure she must be wilfully not seeing anyone.

  Hardly daring to hope, she went to the end and looked up and down the winding moorland road. There was no one there, not a soul, only the faint sound of a motor bike further along. The relief was shattering. It had been her imagination, Brian had mixed up a message, that was all. She almost danced back to the yard, her spirits bubbling.

  Just before the gate she stopped abruptly. Someone had given Brian a penny. What was a strange man doing giving the boy a penny? Her forehead puckered as she leaned against the sturdy trunk of the rowan tree. She would make sure he was accompanied in his walks to and from the bus which now ran along the end of the lane. It could have been a neighbour, she thought, someone they knew, though she couldn’t bring to mind a Dave living nearby and she knew everyone in the dale. But that must be it, Dave was a common name, perhaps he was visiting someone.

  Her brow cleared and she went back into the kitchen smiling, deliberately putting the puzzling incident out of her mind. As she seemed to be doing so often these days. Nick’s face lightened when he saw her and he moved to the door to meet her.

  ‘I’ll just get on now then, missus,’ was all he said, but he stepped out jauntily into the yard.

  Karen soon became busy with the evening meal and seeing to the children and didn’t mention the episode to Brian who seemed to have forgotten about the man.

  Patrick came in and if she seemed unusually quiet he didn’t notice. He had been sledding firewood from the plantation of trees further along the fell and was tired for it was hard work hauling over the uneven ground. But it was necessary to prepare for the long winter ahead; they couldn’t afford to buy a great deal of coal and there was only so much peat he could cut and dry on the high moor.