The Girl at the Farmhouse Gate
Page 24
He held the heavy coat as she thrust her arms into it and then turned her to face him, took her in his arms and kissed her.
They skirted the fallen tree. Christopher kick-started the motorbike and satisfied himself that it was in good order after its night in the rain. The track, although strewn with debris, was reasonably dry. He warned her to take extra care on the steep decent to the valley floor.
‘Is there petrol in your truck?’ Georgina asked him, astride the bike and shouting over the noise of its engine.
He nodded. ‘Pa insists that it’s kept topped up in case of emergencies. Why?’
‘I want to introduce you to my parents. Will you come for Christmas dinner? There’ll be a goose. Will you? Please? My father won’t set the dogs on you, I promise!’
‘In that case how can I refuse!’
He stood listening while the sound of the motorbike dwindled away down the hillside. Then he climbed onto a tree stump, filled his lungs and delivered to the forest in a robust baritone all six verses of ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’.
He made porridge, located saws and axes and by midday had cleared the branches of the fallen tree so that the track was passable and he would be able, the next day, to drive the truck to Georgina’s home.
‘Boss wants you two girls to take a load of straw up the lambing pens,’ Jack shouted to Mabel and Annie as they hosed down the last of the milking stalls. ‘Soon as you’m finished ’ere, he says. The cart be loaded ready, so look lively.’
‘But I’ll miss me train,’ Annie wailed.
‘Not if you gets your finger out, you won’t!’
Lion, the heavier of the two shire horses, leant his great shoulders into the incline and heaved the cart steadily uphill towards The Tops, where the byre used for lambing stood with its back to the north wind. Annie eased the cart in, as close as possible to the entrance. Anxious to get the job done in time to catch her train, she began heaving the straw off the cart and into the byre where they were to spread it across the dry, earth floor.
‘Come on!’ she urged Mabel, who seemed to be making very heavy weather of the work. ‘Put your back into it, Mabe, or I’ll never get to London!’
It was half an hour later, as they spread the last of the straw, that Mabel’s waters broke.
‘Whatever is the matter?’ Annie asked. ‘Are you poorly or what?’
Mabel stood, hunched forward, her palms on her knees, and groaned loudly, the amniotic fluid pooling between her feet. Annie watched, aghast.
‘Mabel! You’ve piddled yourself!’
‘It’s not piddle, Annie!’ Mabel gasped, recovering from the contraction. ‘It’s me waters ’as broke! It’s me baby coming!’
When Annie stood gaping, Mabel pulled open her bulky jacket and cupped her hands around the bulge that she had managed to conceal for so long. ‘What d’you think this is?’ she asked, gathering herself for the next contraction and then staggering under the impact of the pain. Annie, left with no time to react to the astonishment and shock she was feeling, grasped Mabel’s flailing hands in hers and supported her.
‘Quick,’ she said, as the contraction passed. ‘Get onto the cart! We gotta get you back to the farm!’ But Mabel was breathing hard and shaking her head.
‘No!’ she said. ‘No time, Annie! Arfur come quick! This one’s no different! Oh… Ow!’ She doubled up again and pushed Annie away from her as though her intrusion into the sequence of pain and then no pain was a hindrance to the arrival of the child.
When the third contraction had passed she waddled into the byre and, by the time the next one began, had lowered herself carefully onto the straw, set her back to the rough, stone wall, drawn up her knees and was preparing to push, her sweating face twisting and turning puce with pain and exertion.
Apart from watching a feral cat deliver a litter of kittens in one of the farm mangers, which, compared with what was happening to Mabel, had been a comparatively simple and almost charming occasion, Annie was unfamiliar with the process of childbirth. Mabel’s situation terrified her. She could not believe that a human being could survive such an appalling experience. Mabel was obviously about to die and Annie felt totally helpless, useless and scared. She knelt down in the straw beside the gasping, writhing creature that Mabel Hodges had become.
‘What do I do? Tell me what to do!’ Annie beseeched her.
‘Nothing!’ Mabel puffed, managing a faint, breathless smile. ‘Not yet! Wait! I’ll tell you when!’
It was a short labour and a violent and noisy delivery but suddenly there was a small, glistening thing squirming in the straw and Mabel was reaching forward and scooping it into her arms where it screwed up its angry crimson face and gave a great yowl of protest at this sudden exposure to an inhospitable and confusing world. Mabel quickly checked that the child had the right number of arms, legs, ears and eyes and then pointed to a pair of shears hanging from a nail on the drystone wall.
‘What d’you want them for?’ Annie asked, feeling suddenly faint.
‘To cut the cord,’ Mabel told her.
‘You can’t use them, Mabel! They’re for shearing sheep! They’re rusty!’
‘Just give ’em here, Annie! And a twist of that binding twine off of the straw bales. Ta.’
Annie flinched as Mabel snipped the hose-like connection between herself and her child, tied it off, wrapped the infant in her cardigan and cradled it against her huge breasts.
‘How-do, Scarlet O’Hara!’ she said sweetly, smiling into the hideous little face. ‘How-do, Scarlet O’Hara Vallance.’
Mabel had made an agreement with Ferdie. If their child was a girl, she could choose her name. If it was a boy, as Ferdie was certain it would be, he would be christened Winston Ferdinand Horace.
‘We best go back down to the farm now, Annie,’ Mabel said, hauling herself to her feet. ‘I’ll get in the cart and you drive Lion.’
Annie, her knees wobbling so strangely that she could barely stand, managed to do as she was told. Her respect for Mabel was enormous. She settled the mother and the child on what was left of the straw, flicked Lion’s reigns and began the steep, awkward descent to Higher Post Stone Farm, the cart pitching and rolling down the uneven track.
At first they travelled in silence. Then, from time to time, Annie heard Mabel give a deep groan. After a while and when the groans had become more frequent, she said, breathlessly, ‘You best stop, Annie, ’cos I reckon there’s another one comin’!’
The boy, a lusty twin for Scarlet O’Hara, came slithering onto the straw moments later. The shears were at the byre so they wasted no time in wrapping the little boy in Annie’s jacket and encouraging Lion into a dangerous trot.
An hour later Mabel was sitting up in the double bed in the Vallance cottage with a robust, pink baby in the crook of each of her plump arms while Ferdie stood, bursting with unrealistic pride, beside her.
‘She was just wonderful, our Mabel!’ Annie, her colour restored, told Alice when Fred collected her and drove at breakneck speed to the station. ‘She was so brave! And she knew exactly what to do! But it was awful, Mrs Todd, and I’m never, ever going to have a baby myself! Never, ever. That’s for sure!’ They got Annie to the station seconds before the London train pulled out.
Eileen located a cradle and a crib, together with a plethora of other useful nursery items dating from the days of Christopher’s infancy, from the attics of Higher Post Stone Farm, and between them, she, Mrs Fred and Mrs Jack contrived to produce, for the fortunate infants, nappies, nighties, bootees, shawls, blankets and even a couple of knitted matinee jackets, that were only very slightly moth-eaten.
Rose, who had trudged up from the lower farm, was sure she had, packed away somewhere, not one but two Christening robes. ‘The older one was Grandma Crocker’s!’ she announced. ‘’T will ’ave turned a bit yellowish after all this time, I daresay, but a soak in a drop of bleach’ll bring it up lovely, you’ll see!’
Two by two, before they left for Christmas
with their families, the land girls had climbed the steep stairs to Ferdie’s bedroom to pay their respects to the babies and their beaming parents. Alice, meanwhile, who had arrived at the higher farm just as the doctor was leaving, and having assured herself that all was well with both mother and children, allowed Roger to lead her into his sitting room, where Eileen brought them a tray of coffee and biscuits.
They sat discussing the future of the suddenly and significantly enlarged Vallance family.
‘It’s astonishing that no one knew!’ Alice exclaimed. In hindsight, Mabel’s increasing girth should have attracted more attention than it had and almost certainly would have done, had she not always been so rounded.
‘We’ll have to get them decently married if they’re to stay here,’ Roger said firmly. ‘Very quietly and as soon as possible. I’ll telephone the vicar.’
‘But what will they live on?’ Alice wanted to know, as much for her own peace of mind as anything. ‘The Ministry will have Mabel out of the Land Army in no time!’
‘The thing is…’ Roger began, thoughtfully stroking his chin. ‘My manpower situation is going to need rethinking when this caper is over. It seems likely to me that a lot of the lads who were farm labourers before they were called up won’t want to return to the land. Their experiences in the forces, not to mention the various skills they’ll have picked up, will have changed their outlook on life. Made them more ambitious. Whereas some of the girls – your Annie Sorokova, for an example – might well be inclined to take up careers in farming.’
‘Not Mabel, though,’ Alice smiled. ‘I haven’t noticed her studying for any Ministry of Agriculture exams!’
‘No. But she’s a useful and hard-working member of my workforce, Alice, and she’s already virtually running the dairy. I took her over to Tom Lucas’s place the other week. He’s recently installed a milking machine. He showed Mabel how it works and she grasped the mechanics of it in no time! She’s not stupid, that girl. Just uneducated. She took to operating that equipment like a duck to water!’
‘Did she? How splendid! So…are you going to offer her a job?’
‘I’m seriously considering it. With a bit more training I think she’s up to it. I’ve done the sums. With her wages, plus Ferdie’s, plus the cottage, they should manage well enough.’
‘But what about the babies? The twins won’t raise themselves, you know!’
‘Mabel can arrange her hours round the milking schedule, and there’s Eileen, Mrs Jack and Mrs Fred, don’t forget. All motherly souls. They’ll help out… What?’ he paused, catching Alice’s reaction to this. She was looking amused and mildly disapproving. ‘Farm labourers’ wives do this, Alice! Always have! They mind each other’s babies and take their toddlers with them into the harvest fields if necessary! Get the nippers working as soon as they can walk, bless them!’
‘How fortunate for you!’ she was laughing at him and he felt slightly and briefly embarrassed.
‘You know, Alice,’ he smiled, ‘you would have made a formidable suffragette!’
‘Wouldn’t I! Pity I got my timing wrong!’ But she leant towards him and squeezed his arm. ‘I think it’s a great plan, Roger!’ He put his own hand on top of hers and they sat that way for a moment.
He gathered himself together, preparing to enquire about her plans for a post-war career and to ask her whether she would consider marrying him. Since the consultancy work that clearly meant a lot to her might not be a full-time commitment, he hoped she would consider retaining a small flat in London for when she was required to be there, while spending the rest of her time with him at Higher Post Stone Farm. But just as he was about to speak, Eileen appeared in the doorway and asked if they’d finished with the coffee tray.
Alice got to her feet and Roger, deprived for a second time within twenty-four hours of the moment when he had been about to make his proposal, found himself offering to drive her down to the lower farm.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but first I must go and drool over these babies.’
Edward John, fresh from a performance as Melchior in his school’s nativity play, stood, astonished and smiling, at the foot of Ferdie’s bed.
Both babies were sleeping soundly, one in the crook of each of Mabel’s arms, which, clearly, had been designed for precisely that purpose, while Ferdie began telling Edward John how strongly young Winston resembled his own father.
‘Horace, my pa were called,’ he announced, not for the first time that morning, ‘and a more handsome fella you couldn’t wish to meet! So Horace is to be me son’s third name, Edward John. First Winston, after Mr Churchill, second Ferdinand, after me, and third Horace, after me pa, see!’
‘And what’s the little girl’s name?’ Edward John enquired.
‘Oh, just plain Scarlet O’Hara, she be,’ Ferdie said. ‘Should rightly of bin Ruby in remembrance of me ma but no, Scarlet O’Hara she is to be called, after the lady off of the pictures!’
Edward John stared at the baby girl’s jelly-bean cheeks, the fluffy halo of silky, gingerish hair, and failed to make a connection between this Scarlet O’Hara and the raven-haired, crimson-lipped beauty, dressed in a white crinoline and with a dark green velvet ribbon round her tiny waist, with whom he had recently fallen in love in the stuffy darkness of the one-and-ninepenny seats of the cinema in Exeter.
‘It’s just like “Away in a Manger”, isn’t it?’ he said, turning excitedly to his mother as she entered the bedroom and joined the group of admirers at the foot of the bed. ‘Except we’ve got a Mabel instead of a Mary and two baby Jesuses!’
About the Author
JULIA STONEHAM began her career as a stage designer before moving into writing. She was a regular writer on The House of Eliott and her radio series, The Cinderella Service, was nominated for a Sony Award and was commissioned by Granada TV.
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First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2010.
This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby in 2012.
Copyright © 2010 by JULIA STONEHAM
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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ISBN 978–0–7490–1288–5
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