by Pam Weaver
As she sat in the pew waiting for the choirmaster to gather up his baton, the soloists to limber up, she felt the wooden seat digging into her back. She had brought a cushion but that didn’t seem to be doing the trick. They stood to sing, and what a blessed relief. It had been a jostling ride down into Windebank that night and now she was paying for it.
It was one of those stop-start rehearsals that never seem to get going. Everything was wrong: the basses were late with their entry, the sopranos were out of tune, but looking at the ages of some of them it was not surprising. They kept parting company spectacularly with the male parts.
‘Talk about “All we like sheep have gone astray”. Ladies, please, watch my beat,’ shouted the choirmaster, the veins of his temples bursting with exertion. It was not going well but they weren’t the Huddersfield Choral Society, just a bunch of mill workers, farmers’ wives and teachers, quarry-men and a few Land Girls and soldiers padding them out. All were wrapped up against the draughts, and ancient village worthies, willing to have a go, had brought hot-water bottles for their feet.
Somehow they struggled together, sang themselves hoarse, letting the power of the music raise their meagre voices to dizzy heights. The B flats were cracking and there was the odd screech in the wrong place, but Mirren was putting her heart into the rehearsal with gusto.
In that moment, in that music, she could forget all her worries and let rip, but the ache in her back got no better. She was feeling so uncomfortable by half-time that she went for a stroll across the green just to straighten up. Perhaps she should have stayed at home after all and put her feet up as Ben suggested but she was desperate to get away for a few hours’ change of scene.
Sitting in the chapel only reminded her of that Sunday a year ago and the dancing goose, the Christmas dinner and the look of bemusement on Grandpa Joe’s face. She felt like bursting into tears at the sweet memories of Jack’s kisses but swallowed her nostalgia and made for her pew, trying not to grimace during the great rumbling ‘Amen’ chorus, but a huge contraction gripped her by the belly and made her sit down.
Now that wasn’t wind or the fish pie, that was for real, so she took some deep breaths and thought about the latest craze for mind over matter. I’m going to sing ‘Worthy is the Lamb’ if it kills me, she decided, standing to give the chorus some passion.
By the end of the chorus, she was limp with emotion and sweat, and the sickening realisation that this bairn was not going to wait for the end of the rehearsal to make its appearance. Birth was supposed to take hours. Was this one just protesting wildly at her singing efforts, preferring to shove its way out rather than hear her screeching?
She whispered to Hilda and they shuffled out, collapsing through the chairs and into the vestry followed by half the married females as rumours spread of something interesting going on, all wanting to give advice and not a midwife among them.
Someone went to the kiosk to phone the doctor while someone else ran for Nelly Fothergill, who had had thirteen children and lived by the green.
‘I don’t think Mr Handel quite expected such spectacular effects from his “Hallelujah”,’ she gasped between contractions, knowing any second something bloody and messy was going to shoot out onto the polished vestry floor.
There was a plaque on the wall to focus on until she saw old Josiah Yewell’s name, one of the trustees, one of the founders of the chapel. Can’t get away from flaming Yewells, she cursed at him. Men, what do they know?
Was he the rascal who had two wives but became so religious in his old age that one of his missus had thrown a pillow down the farm stairs one night, telling him to go and sleep in the blessed chapel if it was more important than her, or was it someone else? She was too tired now to think, getting fuzzy with pain.
She was taken over by strange grunts and primitive noises, not in the least musical, groanings rendered on the floor among the cushions and army blankets and newspapers scattered as the impatient baby shoved its greasy head into the world for its first breath. It was a girl, a dark-haired little beauty.
Nelly made sure that the baby was breathing, and from the stunned choir in the chapel came cheers and clapping, and a stirring rendition of ‘For unto us a child is born’.
Never had Windebank chapel seen such drama since the vicar of St Peter’s had thrown a piss pot out of his window over the chapel band processions on Christmas morning for disturbing his slumbers, singing carols right under his window, annoying his lady wife.
The Irish midwife arrived after it was almost over, tidied the baby up and shoved her in Mirren’s arms. Mirren looked down at the screwed-up purple face. She thought she could see Jack in her daughter but this child looked like all new-born babes, wrinkled and swollen, and she felt numb and exhausted.
‘And what will you be calling this little princess?’ the midwife asked. ‘Handel?’
‘Georgina Fredericka?’ laughed Lorna, who was musical.
Mirren was so exhausted and shocked that she could hardly think.
‘Now as I recall, December the sixth is the feast of Saint Nicholas, so it is. Nicola or Carol?’ said the midwife, determined to have a name at hand.
‘It’ll be another Miriam, won’t it, your ancestor who saved the children of the dale?’ suggested Lizzy Potts, the minister’s wife.
Mirren looked down on the little face, recalling Jack’s wish for something fresh. The name was already decided for a girl. ‘She’s called Sylvia…Sylvia Adeline.’ She was determined to give the child at least one family name too.
What a shock but what joy in this urgent delivery. Their own Christmas baby was born, a sign of hope in a dark world. Mirren would never be alone again with this little companion at her breast to love.
Love flooded over her for this tiny mite born in a rush. It all felt as if she was in a dream as she waited for the ambulance to carry them across the village to stay the night under the midwife’s roof. They mustn’t take any chances with this precious cargo. Cragside could wait. She thought of the messenger waiting in its cage.
Poor Ben and Uncle Tom, she sighed. They were going to get one hell of a surprise when the pigeon landed on their roof tomorrow morning.
Cragside went into raptures at the new arrival and Ben couldn’t take his eyes off the tiny thing in her bassinet cot, draped in net. Her flannel nightdress and knitted jackets smelled of talc and lavender water. He thought Sylvia was the most perfect thing he’d ever seen. She was a potted version of Mirren except for her dark hair and olive skin, and when her eyes stared up at him they were like jet buttons.
Auntie Florrie couldn’t keep away and decided to decamp down to Cragside for the duration to give the new mother a hand. The arrangement suited them all fine. They took on a young Italian POW called Umberto at Scar Head, who worshipped the baby and sang tenor arias to ‘Bambina Sylvia’ in a loud voice.
New birth was giving hope for the future–new lambs and calves and stock–but Sylvia was different. Ben’d never been close to a baby before and he cradled her nervously at first until he got used to the size of her. Her hands curled like fronds, her lashes grew and when she gave him her first smile, he was her slave.
He was glad to be out of the way at Scar Head when she squealed all night with colic and it was the women who did the floor pacing, but he stood proud as one of her godparents when she was baptised in the chapel, draped in the ancient lace robe that had served the Yewells for over a hundred years.
Sylvia Sowerby tripped off the tongue but how he wished she had a proper Yewell name. He tried not to watch Mirren nursing the baby in a corner out of sight, her breast full of milk, the baby nuzzling with contentment, and he was envious of Jack all over again.
How mean it was to be relieved that Sylvia’s father was far away and it was him who got the hugs and kisses of the little infant when he carried her around the fields at lambing, who picnicked with her at hay timing and pushed her pram proudly to show her progress. No one called him a girl’s blouse to his face and
he knew he was being unusual in making such a fuss of a girl, but he wanted her to love the farm as much as he did, to pick flowers and know their names, to treat stock with respect, to have an eye for good form and line in a beast but all in good time, he mused; Sylvia was only a baby.
He talked to her sometimes as if she was grown up, and when she could crawl on all fours she followed him around like a faithful puppy in trousers cut from Grandpa’s old fustians with patches at the knees.
The activities of the secret Auxiliary Unit began to scale down and there was hope that the invasion was no longer a priority. He could begin to think there would be a future for him, but his rucksack was never far away and they still did exercises in the woods and kept the operational bunker well stocked.
News from the real front was slow but getting better, and they all plotted Jack’s progress in the newspaper from victory at El Alamein in November ’42.
On Sylvia’s first birthday, she stood up and staggered across the hall. ‘Ben…Ben…’ were her first words, her mouth covered in precious cocoa icing from her little cake. Everyone roared with laughter and he blushed.
At Christmas he played Santa and filled her stocking with knitted toys and a wooden horse on a trolley. He had to watch where she was after that, for she followed him around at his chores and he made her a little brush to help.
Mirren seemed happy to let him take Jack’s place. Sometimes he felt guilty that he was getting the pleasure of the baby but at the back of his mind he knew a time of reckoning would come and he’d have to take a back seat once more.
Jack’s unit was bogged down through the fall of Tunisia to the invasion of Italy in the summer of ’43. Still, the news was good and the best of all news was their entry into the South of France. Jack sent postcards from France to Sylvia. Surely the end was near.
Mirren kept pointing to his picture but the little girl had no idea who the strange man in uniform was. ‘Daddy,’ Mirren kept saying, pointing but Sylvia turned one morning and pointed, ‘Daddy Ben!’
He blushed both at the compliment and with embarrassment. There was nothing he’d have liked more but it was never to be. Four years is a long time in the life of a child. The months and seasons had rushed by so quickly. Then the letters stopped after the agony of Arnhem in September ’44 and everyone but Mirren feared the worst.
She stuck out her chin like a warrior and carried on gathering the sheep across the fells, lost in her thoughts. Ben knew better than to challenge her when she was in such a mood.
When the war news was at its grimmest and there was no word from Jack, Mirren took Sylvia up the well-trodden path to World’s End, first in her arms, then on her back in a sling when she grew heavy. Now she could walk unaided, with sturdy little legs in wooden clogs, her body wrapped up in scarves and her head in a woolly hat. Florrie was her devoted slave and kept her supplied with knitted outfits. Her dark hair had grown into natural ringlets, her face round as a ball, with a beaming smile that allowed her to wind Daisy, Ben and the farm hands around her finger.
They would stand on the crest of the ridge and shout into the wind, telling Jack all their news and calling him home.
‘Daddy, home!’ Sylvia mimicked, not understanding as they wandered round the ruins, playing houses. No one knew of their secret visits and if they did they said nothing. It was none of their business. Mirren had to be strong for all her family now, and she drew that strength from the wind in her face and the rocks beneath her feet. There was comfort in this refuge and she wanted Sylvia to share in the joy of the place. One day she would make a home for them up here, safe from all the troubles of the world. When the war was over this would be their hidy-hole.
11
October 1944
It was the morning of the Harvest Supper and the village was trying to raise a thousand pounds to add to their big War Savings campaign so the hall was being decorated ready for the evening’s concert and everyone was baking treats from their hoarded rations of eggs, butter and treacle, to be auctioned off.
Up at Cragside, Florrie, Daisy and Mirren were peeling apples from the orchard and Sylvia was getting under everyone’s feet as usual. They had ten pies to bake and two sponge cakes to raffle. Sylvia needed a fancy-dress costume for the children’s competition but Mirren couldn’t settle until the postman had been.
Every day she looked out for letters, and just when they’d given up hope a whole pile of them came together from somewhere in Belgium. Then nothing, and the news about the parachute campaign wasn’t good.
Jack had transferred into some airborne division ages ago but his letters were vague and censored. They knew so little about his activities, only that they were hush-hush. He’d been away for almost four years now; four whole haytimes, harvests and lambings.
He’d missed Sylvia’s birthdays, and although she kissed his picture every night and said, ‘Good night, Daddy,’ his daughter had no idea who he was. He’d missed all her important milestones: the first tooth, that first step, her first words, her potty training, blowing out the candles on her little birthday cake. How would they catch up when he came home?
He was beginning to feel a stranger even to Mirren. Letters were no substitutes for kisses and cuddles, for chats over tea. They had had only three nights alone together in three and a half years and it all seemed a lifetime ago.
Everyone was drabber, wearier and fed up with war. The travel restrictions were beginning to bite, petrol was short, rationing was stricter. There were more inspections and checks. Labour was harder to get as most of the young farm lads were called up. The whole agricultural effort was a disaster in the dale as the crops didn’t ripen off and the ground lost quality.
Mirren was sick of war and the newsreels and the slow Allied progress into Germany. They’d hoped for a quick end after D-day and peace before Christmas but still it was all dragging on and Jack’s silence was terrifying. To have gone through all he had and be lost now was unthinkable. She felt so out of touch with him. There was so much to share with him.
By the afternoon, Sylvia was overtired and crotchety, and none of them was in a mood for yet another fund-raising effort. The house was a refuge for evacuees again, these latest fleeing from the doodlebugs in London; a private arrangement with a family who were cousins of Auntie Pam in Leeds was made, bringing Margery, her mother and Dennis and Derek, two little boys who were full of mischief.
It was good to have children for Sylvia to play with but she was clingy and shy with them at first. Daisy still lived in, and Uncle Tom and Auntie Florrie too since Mirren’s grandparents died. Large as the house was, it was noisy, untidy and getting shabby.
Nothing had been replaced: neither furnishings, bed linen, crockery nor pots. There were scuff marks on the oak table and up the hall stairs, a line on the walls that got higher as Sylvia grew, but there was no paint to cover up sticky finger-marks.
Sometimes Mirren wished everyone would go away and leave her in peace with her little girl but she was always glad of help and couldn’t manage the farm on her own. Walking round the fields and walling were two ways to get away from folk.
Ben had taught her how to do it properly. Mirren would never have managed without his help and encouragement. More and more she relied on him as her big brother. He was patient when Sylvia clambered all over him, feeling in his trouser pocket for the sweets he saved for her from his ration.
He kept an eye on Mirren at the socials when some of new RAF boys got frisky and suggestive. She’d seen too many local girls go off the rails while their husbands were away. To her it was the worst betrayal of all; flirting and dancing was all that was needed to cheer the lads up at the hops but anything else was unthinkable.
Now it was an effort to get dressed up and she was going to give the Harvest Supper a miss if she could. The wind had got up and she shoved an old coat over her shoulders and a scarf round her head to see to the chickens. It was growing damp, another grey mizzling day half over and still no news.
She d
idn’t know what made her look down towards the farm track, but a speck on the horizon caught her eye. Was it a horse strayed out of the field? No, it was too small. It was someone trundling up the track. There was just something in the mist that made her stop and stare and wonder. Her feet just edged forward for a better view.
There was a jaunty stride and the swing of a greatcoat and Mirren knew, she just knew, and her legs started to run and her heart was pounding.
‘Jack!’ she screamed. ‘Oh, Jack!’ hair flying, her arms outstretched in welcome. She ran towards him and then tripped and fell flat on her face, in a crumpled heap, and the soldier came running.
‘Drunk as usual,’ laughed an oh so familiar voice. For a moment time went away and they hugged and kissed and cried with joy to be together again.
‘Jack! I’ve been so worried. Why didn’t you send a telegram?’
‘And have you think the worst? You know me, I like to give a surprise. How’s my best girl?’ he bent down to pick her up and his breath smelled of ale and cigarettes. ‘Well, I have to say you look a bit of a sight in your old clobber. I thought it was a tramp running to steal my whisky. Where’s the little ’un? Tucked up in bed? I’m dying to see her…’
They marched up the track arm in arm and Mirren’s face was aching for she had a grin from ear to ear. ‘Florrie! Come and see who the cat’s dragged in!’ she yelled.
A face appeared at the window and then there was a scream and suddenly his mother leaped on him and burst into tears. ‘If I’d known you were coming, we’d have set out a spread…Let’s be looking at you…You’ve lost a bit of weight.’ There was a deep stitched scar across his cheek.
‘What’s that?’ Mirren pointed.
‘I had an argument with a dispatch bike, another bump on the head. It must be made of concrete, but this one knocked me out.’ Jack laughed searching the room. ‘Where’s my nipper then?’
‘Just out with her Uncle Ben as usual,’ said Florrie, and Mirren saw a flash of annoyance cross her husband’s face for a second, then it was gone.
