by Pamela Bell
There was a pause. ‘You’re in love with Ralph?’
Rose sighed. ‘I thought I was. I mean, how could I not love him? He’s so … so Ralph. You know.’
A slight smile softened Maggie’s face. ‘Yes, I know.’
‘But I saw him look at you at when he came to Emmerdale Farm after your father’s funeral and I realised that don’t really know what love is,’ Rose went on. ‘I love Ralph, I do, but I’m never going to have what you and he have. I know that.’
‘And I threw it away,’ said Maggie bitterly. ‘I thought that staying with my husband would be doing the right thing. I thought I should keep my wedding vows.’ Her face set. ‘Not any more. I’m not staying with Joe now, not after he killed Toby, but where else can I go? What else can I do? If I were a man, I could just leave. I could get a job. As it is, I’m trapped. I have no family, no money, no skills.’
What a pampered existence she herself had, Rose realised. The unfairness of a woman’s position had never ever struck her before. She had just taken it for granted that there would always be a man to look after her.
‘My brother says the war will be over by Christmas,’ she told Maggie. ‘Can you bear to stay at Emmerdale Farm until then? It’s less than four months.’
‘But how will Ralph know that I’ll be waiting for him?’
‘You can write to him, tell him to come back for you.’
Maggie shook her head. ‘I’ve already thought of that but how will I find out where to send a letter? And even if I write to him, Ralph can’t write back. If Joe finds out that I’ve had a letter from Ralph, he really would kill me.’
‘Give me your letters,’ Rose heard herself say. ‘I’ll send it to Ralph. He can write back as if to me and I’ll pass his letter on to you. No one else need know.’
Maggie stared at her. ‘You’d do that for me?’
‘And for Ralph. I want him to be happy.’ And it was true, Rose realised.
‘What about your parents? They wouldn’t approve of you encouraging adultery. That’s what it is,’ Maggie said when Rose shifted uncomfortably.
‘I’ll tell them that Ralph and I are writing to each other as friends, which will be true.’
‘Are you sure?’ Maggie asked after a moment and Rose nodded.
‘I’m sure. Think of it as my contribution to the war effort. Papa won’t let me do anything else,’ she added, resigned, and got to her feet, brushing off the back of her skirt. ‘Bring a letter to church on Sunday. I’ll make sure it gets to Ralph.’
Chapter Nine
Somewhere in France, 11 September 1914
My dearest and only love,
I am not allowed to tell you where we are, only that we are well back behind the firing lines and waiting for our turn for a scrap with the Germans. We can hear the big guns – that unmistakable crump, crump, crump – in the distance but are comfortable enough in our billet here. I expect we will be sent forward soon and the men are in fine spirits.
As for me, my spirits are as high as they have been for more than a year now. The last time we said goodbye, I was hopeless. What does it say that I am more joyful sitting here preparing to go into war than I was dancing and drinking champagne a year ago? This time my heart is full of hope. This time I know that you will be waiting for me when I come home.
I cannot tell you what it meant to me to see your smile as we marched out of Beckindale, although the bruises on your beautiful face filled me with horror. That brute Sugden! I knew he must be responsible. How dared he lift a hand to you? If I could have broken rank there and then to deal with him as he deserves, I would have done but for now the war makes us all prisoners to a higher cause, and I had to march on and leave you there.
My darling, when I had your letter, it left me wild with joy and yet raging at your unhappiness. I know how much you grieve for Toby, and that your disgust of Sugden must be greater even than mine. Please, please hold on just a few months more. I am confident this whole show will be over by Christmas and then I will come for you. I will take you away and devote the rest of my life to making you forget that you have ever been anything but the happiest woman alive.
There are precious few hills here. I miss the fells. I miss you. Sometimes when I can’t sleep I remember those days walking high on the moors with the wind blowing in our faces and the smell of the heather, lazy summer afternoons in the shade, dangling our feet in the beck, and always you, you with sunshine in your eyes, your hair falling around your face. I torture myself remembering the way you turn your head, the way you tilt your chin at me. I miss you, Maggie, I have been missing you for too long, but now I only have to miss you until Christmas.
Take care until then my dearest one. I love you always and forever. We were meant to be together, and we will be.
Your ever loving Ralph
Maggie straightened and pressed her hands to the small of her back. The previous day’s rain had left the earth clogged and heavy. Digging potatoes was hard work but at least it got her out of the house and away from Dot’s grumbling. She rested for a moment, enjoying the view as she leant on the fork. It was a mild autumn day, the air rinsed with a watery light, and so still that the smoke from the chimneys in Beckindale drifted straight upwards. Across the dale, the moors above High Moor were smudged with purple heather while the bracken-covered slopes below had turned a bright russet colour.
A red squirrel ran along the dry-stone wall and paused as if to study her, its head cocked and its eyes bead-bright as it clutched a nut between its paws. ‘And good morning to you, too,’ said Maggie. She missed having Toby to talk to, missed the comfort of his warm, sturdy body pressed against her leg, and the coldness of his nose nudging her for attention.
Every time Maggie thought of what Joe had done to her dog, hatred squeezed her heart.
The squirrel darted off with its prize. Sighing a little, Maggie put her foot on the fork and pushed it into the claggy ground. Perhaps she should be preparing for winter too. There were crab apples to be gathered and made into jelly, blackberries for jam. The blackthorns were heavy with sloes and she could coax Dot into showing her how to make the rosehip syrup that the cook at High Moor had claimed was a cure-all for every minor complaint.
But perhaps she wouldn’t be here. Maggie picked out a potato and shook the worst of the earth from it before dropping it into the trug. Perhaps she would be gone.
This whole show will be over by Christmas, Ralph had written in his first letter. I will come for you. The thought had kept her going for the past few weeks. It helped her sit opposite Joe at table, helped her bear his heavy tread on the stairs, the sound of his chewing. It helped her pretend that he had broken her.
She was quiet and submissive and careful not to provoke him, and when he heaved himself on top of her at night, she let him do what he wanted, which was not very much. He grunted and swore but more often than not would flop back onto his side with a curse, and Maggie would smile grimly into the dark. She could endure this now that she was leaving him. Joe would learn then that he had not broken her. He had made her stronger.
Ralph’s latest letter crackled in her pocket. Thanks to Rose Haywood, she heard from him often and she pored over his letters before hiding them in the dairy where Joe never went.
But the news was not good. Soon after that first letter, Ralph and his company had been moved up to the front. He wrote of howitzer shells exploding around him, of a sea of mud criss-crossed by planks and trenches full of water and entanglements of barbed wire, and crawling into dugouts only big enough to sit up in. Of the incessant rat-tat-tat of machine-guns and the dull crump of heavy shells burrowing into the earth and the rising, tearing, shattering burst of shells exploding overhead. He told her of his fellow officers, shot through the lung or carried from the field having lost a leg or an arm, and his men, his brave-hearted men, who scrambled over the top of the trench and ran into the German guns.
The newspapers reported that the troops were fighting splendidly, but even they
had to acknowledge in the end that the British Expeditionary Force was in retreat as the Germans swept into France. Ralph always ended his letters the same way. He was safe, he loved her always and forever, they would be together soon. Maggie was to wait for him and he would be home soon.
She was waiting, Maggie thought, but there was no sign that the war would be over by Christmas as so many people had claimed. Perhaps all the new recruits would make a difference. Maggie hoped so. The Army had leased two of Joe’s far fields to put up a training camp. The first batch of recruits from Bradford had just arrived and Maggie could hear shouted commands in the distance as they drilled. She wished they would hurry up and get to France to support Ralph.
Five more potatoes and Maggie reckoned she had enough for dinner and supper. She washed the worst of the earth off under the pump and took them into the kitchen where she warmed some water so that she could scrub away the earth packed under her fingernails. She had hoisted up her skirt as much as she could but the hem was still splattered with mud, and her boots were filthy too, in spite of having scraped off the worst of it at the door. If only she could wear trousers like Joe. They would be so much more practical.
She set the potatoes on to boil while Dot finished the ironing. Joe had gone to market to sell the few wether lambs they had, and Maggie hoped he wasn’t spending all the profit on beer. She didn’t expect him back until the evening, but when suppertime came there was no sign of him. Dot had gone home to Beckindale, so Maggie fed Frank and sent him back to his room above the stable while she put Joe’s supper of bacon cakes to keep warm between two plates.
It was nearly dark when Joe came back. Maggie had lit the fire against the damp evening chill and was knitting socks for the troops by the hissing light of a paraffin lamp.
Joe was swaying slightly. He had been drinking – the fool, Maggie thought contemptuously, but she said nothing. She just put aside her knitting to fetch his plate from the warming oven in the range.
‘There’s apple pie if you want it, too.’
Joe grunted as he sat down at the table. He ate fast, shovelling the food into his mouth, but he was watching her in a way that made her uneasy.
‘Did you get a good price for the lambs?’ she broke the silence at last.
‘Enough.’
‘You were gone a long time.’
‘Why don’t you come out with it and ask if I was in t’pub?’
‘Were you?’
‘Later,’ he acknowledged. ‘After I’d joined up.’
Maggie had picked up her knitting once more but at that she paused and stared at him. ‘After you did what?’
‘I joined up,’ said Joe with a touch of defiance.
‘But … you’re a farmer! Farmers aren’t expected to fight. It’s a reserved profession, surely?’
‘Maybe I want to fight,’ he said belligerently. ‘Maybe I’m sick of watching them volunteers training out there in t’fields and not being able to do my bit. Maybe I want to do my duty – or is it only your precious Ralph Verney who gets to fight for King and country? And maybe I’m sick of all this,’ he said, gesturing around the kitchen. ‘Maybe I’m sick of shovelling shit all day just to pay rent to those blasted Verneys. I never wanted this farm,’ he said. ‘I never had a chance to do owt else, but now I have, and I’m taking it.’
‘You can’t just walk away from a farm,’ said Maggie, shocked out of her pretence of being submissive. ‘What about the milking? What about the sheep? The crops?’
‘You’ll have to manage.’
‘How? George has already gone. Elijah’s too old. If you go too, there’ll just be Frank, and he’s only a boy.’
‘He’s strong enough,’ said Joe indifferently. ‘He can do t’milking and t’ploughing. Get some help in for rest of it if you must, or do it yourself.’ His lip curled. ‘Them suffragettes are allus on about you women being equal. Now’s your chance to prove it.’
We women will have to do the work instead. Hadn’t she said as much to Dot? But she had never imagined being left on her own to run a farm. There was more than milking and ploughing to think about, as Joe well knew. How could she possibly manage the sheep and the cattle on her own, quite apart from the crops and general maintenance? She had been busy enough with the dairy and the vegetables and the hens, with running the farmhouse, without having to think about the farm itself.
But Joe would be gone. The thought of it set a giddy relief uncoiling inside her. No Joe. How much more bearable would the next months be without him! A smile threatened to break out over her face and she bent her head quickly to school her expression to indifference. If Joe knew just how much she wanted him gone, he would stay just to spite her.
It would be worth the struggle with the farm.
The war would be over in a few months, Ralph still assured her. And when it was over, Joe would come back and she would be gone.
‘I daresay Tom Skilbeck up at Barter Farm will take t’stock off your hands.’ Joe interrupted her spinning thoughts. ‘He might even give you summat to use t’fields if you can’t manage.’
Maggie’s head came up at that. Tom Skilbeck was Ava Bainbridge’s father and as tight-fisted a farmer as you would find anywhere. ‘We’d never get the fields back,’ she pointed out.
‘He’d let you stay here,’ said Joe indifferently. ‘If you’ve got any sense, you’ll let him take over the whole farm. I might sell up anyway after t’war,’ he said.
It was on the tip of Maggie’s tongue to ask what he could possibly do instead, but then she reminded herself that it wouldn’t matter to her. She would be on her way to New Zealand with Ralph.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, mentally vowing not to let Tom Skilbeck anywhere near Emmerdale Farm. If she were to be left to manage on her own, manage she would. Somehow.
‘When are you leaving?’ she asked Joe.
‘Tomorrow morning. I’ve to report for training near Hull.’ Joe pushed his plate away.
‘Will you get a chance to come home before you go to France?’
‘Mebbe. We should get embarkation leave at least. I might come back then. I’ll see. Or mebbe I’ll get other leave and come back and surprise you.’ He made it sound like a threat, which Maggie supposed it was.
‘Don’t think you can do what you want while I’m gone,’ he warned, pointing a stubby finger at her. ‘I’ll be keeping tabs on you. There’s plenty of folk in Beckindale will know if you’re messing me around while I’m doing my patriotic duty, and they’ll let me know. You won’t be able to keep any secrets from me.’
A thick mist enveloped the farmhouse the next morning and Maggie had to grope her way through the fog to the privy. It seemed appropriate somehow that the farm she was now responsible for should seem muffled and unfamiliar. She could hear the cows shifting and lowing in the barn but the hens were silent, bamboozled by the eerie light.
Over breakfast, Joe told Frank that he was going to war. ‘You’ll have to help t’mistress,’ Joe said, jerking his head at Maggie.
‘Don’t worry, Frank,’ Maggie told him kindly, seeing Frank’s eyes grow round with alarm at what ‘helping’ might involve. ‘Finish your porridge and get on with the milking.’
The milking. Frank could understand that.
When he had gone, Joe drained his tea and pushed back his chair. ‘I’ll be off then.’
‘I’ve packed some bread and cheese for you to take with you,’ said Maggie stiffly and handed him the packet wrapped in waxed paper.
Joe grunted and shoved it into his pocket as he went to the door. His gaze swept around the kitchen and rested at last on Maggie, who stood by the range with her hands folded over her apron at her waist, her expression rigid. She hoped he wasn’t expecting any tender words before he went off to war. He had been rough with her the night before and only the thought that he was leaving had kept her from crying out.
But it seemed Joe wasn’t thinking of tenderness either. ‘I’ll know what you’re up to,’ he said. ‘Don�
��t think I won’t.’ And with that, he turned and walked out to be swallowed in the mist.
Chapter Ten
A fine drizzle seeped through the khaki of Levi Dingle’s uniform as he hung around outside his tent. He was waiting for his brothers. Nat was finishing a letter to his wife in Ireland and Mick was somewhere doing what Mick did best, working the system to their advantage. The other recruits that made up their company of the Bradford Pals were daunted by the army’s rigid rules and regulations, but not Mick. It had taken him no time at all to find out how to secure the best bed in the tent and an extra blanket, how to avoid the worst of the fatigues – no emptying of the urinal tubs or peeling hundreds of potatoes for the Dingles – or how to get his buttons polished to a shine that would satisfy the eagle eye of the sergeant-major.
‘He’s like a cat, that one,’ Mammy had used to say with a mixture of pride and disapproval. ‘Throw him as far as you like, and he’ll land on his feet.’
Nat was the eldest and steadiest of the family and Levi loved and admired him, but it was Mick he idolised. He longed to have Mick’s daredevil charm and confidence, and envied his carefree approach to life.
Especially, he envied Mick’s ability to talk to girls. Where Levi’s tongue would tie itself in knots, Mick didn’t need to try. A wink, a smile, and the girls would blush and giggle and let Mick tease and flatter them – and do a whole lot more, too. A whole lot of things that Levi could only fantasise about in the dark while his blood pumped with a hot mixture of confusion and longing.
He had never even had the courage to kiss a girl.
Mick was the reason Levi was standing here in this muddy field in the Yorkshire Dales. Behind him stood row upon row of tents that leaked like sieves in the incessant rain. ‘Mother of God,’ Mick exclaimed with a grin every night. ‘It’s like being back in Ballybeg. Tell me again why we left the bogs, Nat.’
In front of him was the parade ground, already reduced to a quagmire of sticky mud a foot deep in places, where they drilled incessantly. Every muscle in Levi’s body ached and his feet were permanently wet.
