Christmas at Emmerdale

by Pamela Bell

  ‘Mebbe I should stay,’ Dot said, looking around the kitchen. She had been ironing that morning and the kitchen smelt wonderfully of freshly pressed linen. A beef pie was browning in the oven, potatoes bubbling in a saucepan. ‘There’s no way you can do all that you’ve been doing and feed Frank. I don’t want him to starve!’

  A faint smile lit Maggie’s tired eyes. ‘I’ll make sure he has something to eat, I promise. ‘I’m not saying it won’t be hard, but our troops are dealing with a lot worse. If they can keep going, so can I. What you’re going to do is more important, Dot,’ she told her. ‘Our boys need munitions if they’re going to win the war. Go and make shells to beat the Germans, and put Bert Clark’s name on them. Don’t worry about Frank and me. We’ll manage.’

  But how? Maggie dropped her head into her hands that night. There was so much to be done. Winter was coming, that was something. Once she got the sheep down from the hill, it should just be a case of feeding and checking the animals during the cold, and Frank could help with that, but when spring came, there would be lambing and dipping and clipping and crops to be harvested. Feeling her breath coming in short puffs, Maggie made herself slow down. One thing at a time.

  Ralph would be home soon. Not by Christmas – she wasn’t foolish enough to think that any more – but sometime soon. He had promised. She just had to keep going until she could be with him again. Maggie imagined his arms closing around her, imagined resting her head on his shoulder. Nothing would seem so difficult then. They would work it out together.

  In meantime, she would do what she had told Dot she would do. She would manage.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Look, Papa!’ Rose tapped the newspaper as she pushed it under her father’s nose. ‘The government are calling on women to take up vital war work. That means women like me.’

  He passed the newspaper back to her. ‘It does not mean women like you, Rose. You are barely eighteen.’

  ‘Dot Colton is only eighteen. She’s left Emmerdale farm and is going to work in a munitions factory.’

  ‘Dot Colton is not a young lady,’ he pointed out. ‘Her case is quite different. She will do very well in a factory, but it wouldn’t be at all suitable for you. Indeed, Dot’s parents are also concerned. The “munitionettes”, as I believe they call them, are already getting a bad reputation.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For lax morals and indecency,’ her father pronounced. ‘Earning generous wages and living away from home is encouraging all sorts of bad behaviour. It’s out of the question for you to join them.’

  What would that be like? Rose wondered. To live away from home, to earn her own money and do what she liked with it? The idea fizzed along her veins. Imagine sitting down to lunch when she wanted to eat, not when her father wanted to dine! Imagine eating whatever she wanted, when she wanted! Imagine choosing to do what she wanted to do, instead of what she was allowed to do!

  Recently, her rebellious thoughts had almost scared Rose. She had always adored her father – she still did – but since the war her life had felt so constricted. It had never occurred to her before that she might not move seamlessly from a pampered existence in the vicarage to a pampered existence in her husband’s house. Naturally, she had imagined herself at Miffield Hall with Ralph, but might she then have been doing what Ralph wanted to do? Eating what he wanted to eat, when he wanted to eat it?

  Rose glanced at Edith, who was sitting at the end of the table, pushing the remnants of a lemon pudding around her plate. She noticed the tightness of her mother’s jaw sometimes, and her expression when she was watching her husband and thought no one was looking. She never disagreed openly with Charles but Rose found herself wondering more and more often what her mother really thought.

  ‘Papa, I must be able to do something,’ she tried again. ‘What if I trained as a nurse?’

  Her father sighed. ‘Emptying bedpans and doing who knows what filthy jobs? My darling, I hardly think so.’

  ‘But Papa—’

  He held up a hand. ‘I don’t wish to hear any more about it, Rose. You are a very lucky young lady, in the fortunate position of being able to stay safely at home with your parents. Your desire to help the war effort is admirable but it will be quite enough to help your mother. You are already rolling bandages and putting together comfort parcels for the troops.’

  ‘And knitting socks. Don’t forget knitting.’

  ‘And knitting,’ he agreed, rolling smoothly over her bitter comment. ‘The most important thing you can do is to write cheerful letters to John and to Ralph, of course. What do you think Ralph would think about the future Lady Miffield working in a munitions factory?’

  ‘Papa!’ Rose’s cheeks burned. ‘I keep telling you, Ralph and I just friends.’

  ‘I can assure you he would not want to think of you doing any such thing,’ her father said as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘The war is an upsetting time, Rose. For all of us. John and Ralph and all the others we love are showing great bravery at the front. We must be equally courageous in making sure that their world is here for them to come back to when the war is over.

  ‘That’s why I am anxious about the training camp,’ he went on. ‘I confess, I hadn’t realised what problems it would cause. Which reminds me, Rose my dear, I don’t want you wandering around on your own. There are some very unsavoury types at the camp. I even came across one loitering around the church.’

  ‘Perhaps he wanted to see the church,’ Edith suggested. ‘Would you like some more pudding, dear?’

  ‘Not he!’ Charles gave his bowl to Rose to pass on. ‘Thank you,’ he said as an afterthought. ‘He was an Irishman, and if he’d ever seen inside anything other than a Catholic church, I’d eat my hat. I sent him off with a flea in his ear.’

  Rose thought about Corporal Dingle, stealing apples from the orchard. She remembered his merry eyes and cocky grin. He had been Irish, although she couldn’t see him at church.

  ‘Papa, I will be perfectly safe,’ she said, passing his bowl down to her mother who served him with a couple of spoonfuls from the dish in front of her. ‘I have been walking around Beckindale on my own all my life!’

  ‘Things are different now.’

  ‘Didn’t you just say that we mustn’t let the war change everything? You know how much I like to walk. I can’t wait for you or Mother to want to go with me. It’s absurd! I might as well be a prisoner!’

  ‘Now, Rose, don’t exaggerate.’

  Her lips tightened. She passed the bowl of lemon pudding back to her father. ‘I am not exaggerating! Mother, tell Papa,’ she pleaded.

  ‘Rose will be perfectly safe on her own,’ Edith said in her quiet way. ‘I agree with you about the unsuitability of her working in a factory, Charles, but we must allow her some freedom. She is sensible enough not to come to any harm in Beckindale.’

  Her father subsided, grumbling, as he picked up his spoon and dug into his second helpings. ‘Oh, very well, you may go out on your own, but you are to be careful, Rose,’ he warned. ‘Don’t talk to any soldiers or encourage them.’

  Encourage them to what? Rose jerked on her gloves as she set off for a walk – on her own! The cold brought colour to her cheeks and her eyes sparkled with resentment as she replayed the conversation over lunch in her head. Oh, she knew that her papa loved her but he was smothering her! She was eighteen now, but he treated her as a child still and she was tired of it. Her privileged existence had never bothered Rose before but now … surely, surely, there was more to life than this?

  She walked all the way round the grounds of Miffield Hall and back along the lane to the bridge where she stopped, suddenly irresolute. She wasn’t ready to go home but where else could she go?

  Feeling stifled, Rose leant morosely on the parapet and looked down at the beck. It was a still, cold day and the surface of the water was glassy, but as she watched a stone skimmed across the river, bouncing once, twice, three times before plopped into the depths. Peering over, s
he was able to see the soldier on the little beach below bridge. He had a pebble in his hand and as she watched he bent, and with a clever flick of the wrist sent it bouncing five times across the water, before he looked up and grinned.

  It was Corporal Dingle.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said.

  ‘And good afternoon to you too, Rose.’

  ‘Miss Haywood,’ she snapped.

  ‘You look very cross a chara. Come down and throw stones in the water. It always works for me when I’m in a temper.’

  ‘I am not in a temper!’

  ‘It’s very easy, you know. I could teach you.’

  ‘I know perfectly well how to skim stones,’ said Rose.

  ‘Now that I don’t believe,’ said Mick. ‘Skimming stones is not the kind of thing that young ladies know how to do.’

  Exasperated, Rose marched to the end of the bridge and jumped down onto the beach without giving him a chance to help her. She took the pebble he offered her, inspected it to see that it was suitably smooth, and without a word sent it bouncing over the water the way Ralph had taught her to do one summer.

  ‘Three bounces. Not bad,’ Mick acknowledged. ‘You’d do even better if you weren’t in a mood.’

  Rose scowled at him. ‘What are you doing here?

  ‘Just passing the time. I came in with my brother, Levi, but I had the distinct feeling that he didn’t want me around,’ Mick smiled. ‘I suspect he may have found a girl, and good luck to him if so. He’s being very secretive, though.’

  ‘I’m surprised you’re not filling the time with a little stealing,’ said Rose crossly and he grinned and showed her his empty hands.

  ‘I wouldn’t dare after you tore such a strip off me in the orchard.’

  ‘Hah.’ She held out her hand. ‘Give me another pebble.’

  Obediently, Mick bent and found her a smooth, flat stone. ‘Try that one.’

  This time, Rose made herself relax. She remembered what Ralph had told her about bending low and flicking her wrist. The pebble skipped beautifully over the water.

  ‘Six!’ Rose jumped and clapped her hands in triumph when it disappeared at last. ‘Six bounces!’

  ‘I withdraw any suggestion that ladies don’t know how to skim stones,’ he conceded. ‘Who taught you to do that?’

  A shadow crossed her face as she remembered Ralph. ‘Just someone I used to know.’

  ‘A sweetheart?’

  Rose sighed without meaning to. ‘No, just a friend.’

  His eyes were a warm blue and full of understanding, and she was glad when he didn’t pursue it. He tossed a stone in his hand. ‘So I was right about stone skimming being good for your temper, wasn’t I?’

  She gave in with a laugh. ‘I suppose you were.’

  ‘Sit down, a chara, and tell me what put you in such a tearing rage,’ Mick invited her and somehow Rose found herself perching on old boulder.

  ‘I wasn’t in a rage exactly,’ she said, smoothing down her skirt.

  ‘Were you not?’ Mick leant back against the edge of bridge and regarded her with amusement. ‘Those brown eyes of yours were fairly snapping when you leant over and saw me!’

  ‘I was just feeling … frustrated.’

  ‘Oh, I know that feeling,’ he said, one corner of his mouth twitching.

  Rose hesitated. Here she was doing what her beloved papa had expressly forbidden her to do. She was talking to a soldier from the camp, and an Irish soldier at that. She had no doubt that her father would call Mick Dingle unsavoury. He was lean and dark with dancing blue eyes and a reckless air to him that tugged at her. She was sick of doing what she was told!

  ‘There’s a war on!’ she burst out. ‘I should be allowed to do something to help, but no! All I’m allowed to do is knit!’

  Mick laughed. ‘That sounds terrible!’

  ‘It is!’

  ‘You roll bandages, too,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Oh, yes … but other girls are going to work in factories or be postmen or drive trains. I’m not allowed to do anything like that.’

  ‘There’s not much call for train drivers around here,’ said Mick. ‘Not many factories either.’

  ‘I know of girls from Beckindale who are going to work in munitions factories in Bradford, but I’m not allowed to go. It’s not suitable for me, apparently. Nothing is suitable for me because I am useless!’

  ‘I daresay your papa is afraid of what might happen to you in the city. You are not very old, or very experienced yet, are you?’

  ‘How am I to become experienced if I am never allowed to leave Beckindale?’ Rose demanded. She tugged off her gloves and held her hands out in front of her, turning them palm up. ‘Papa thinks I wouldn’t cope with any dirty work but I could try.’

  ‘It would be a shame to spoil those pretty hands, though.’

  ‘And now Papa says that I mustn’t walk out on my own in case I come across soldiers from the training camp.’

  ‘Which you have done,’ Mick pointed out.

  ‘Yes.’ Rose sighed. ‘He would be horrified if he knew that I was here with you.’

  ‘Because I’m a soldier? Or because I’m Irish?’

  ‘And a thief,’ she reminded him with a pert look. ‘Although Papa doesn’t know about the apples.’

  ‘I can see why he would disapprove,’ said Mick, amused. ‘And yet here you are.’

  Rose’s eyes flashed to his face and then slid away. ‘Yes, here I am.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’m tired of doing what I’m told,’ she confessed. ‘I want to be … free.’

  ‘Good for you.’ Mick applauded. ‘So, if I happened to be skimming stones here next Tuesday, do you think you might defy your papa and walk this way again?’

  Rose looked at him. ‘I don’t want a sweetheart,’ she said abruptly, but Mick was unfazed.

  ‘Why not? Everybody wants a sweetheart, Rose – sorry, Miss Haywood,’ he corrected himself at her glare.

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Are you in love with another man?’

  ‘I thought I was,’ she said honestly. ‘Now … now, I don’t know. But I know he doesn’t love me, and I know I don’t want to feel like that again.’

  Mick clicked his tongue. ‘Sure, you don’t want to fall in love, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun, a chara.’

  ‘You said that before,’ said Rose. ‘Akara … what does it mean?’

  ‘Friend,’ said Mick. ‘It means friend.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Maggie pulled off her trousers and dropped them into the dirty linen basket. She really had to find time to do some laundry soon.

  She missed Dot. Not just because Dot had kept the house clean, the clothes washed and ironed, and food on the table, but as someone to talk to, a presence in the kitchen when she came in from the farmyard. Dot might have been prickly, but at least she had been there. Frank came in for meals, of course, but no matter how fond of him she had grown, he was never going to be a great conversationalist.

  Quickly Maggie pulled on a high-necked blouse and fastened her best Sunday skirt at the waist before pulling on some wool stockings. It had been bitterly cold out when she had been feeding the sheep earlier and she would be glad of the extra warmth under her boots as she walked down to church.

  Grabbing her hat and her warmest coat, Maggie ran downstairs. There was just time to shove a joint of beef into the range before she had to go.

  A letter for Ralph waited on the table. She had written to him the night before in the unsteady light of a candle. She hadn’t had any time to go and get more paraffin for the lamp; that was another job on her list of chores that never got done.

  Not long until Christmas, she had written. Remember how we thought the war would be over by then? There is no sign of it ending yet, I know, so I won’t hold you to your promise to be back this Christmas, Ralph my darling, as long as you keep your promise to come home as soon as you can. I hope and pray that by next Christmas we will be together and all this anxious
waiting will be over. I wonder where we will be? New Zealand? America? I won’t mind as long as we’re together.

  Where were her hat pins? Maggie scrabbled for them on the dresser. Ah, there! She pounced on them and stood in front of the mirror to pin her hat to her hastily put-up hair.

  Writing to Ralph eased her loneliness on the long winter evenings. It was almost like talking to him. Maggie imagined him sitting across from her, how he would laugh when she told him of being knocked over by a cantankerous ram or her disastrous attempt to make a cake. She had always loved watching Ralph laugh and she could picture him so clearly, his cheeks creasing as he threw back his head to reveal the long, strong column of his neck. She could still hear his laughter, still feel the warmth of it as it blew through her like a breeze rippling sunlight over a field of wheat.

  She would do anything to hear Ralph laugh now, for real. To be able to reach across the table and touch him, to feel his fingers close around hers. Missing him had been an ache for so long, Maggie was almost used to it, but sometimes it would sharpen into a pain and twist so savagely inside her that she had to suck in a breath to stop herself from crying out.

  She longed to see him again, but until then she just had to imagine him frowning at her news of Joe’s brusque messages from his training camp near Hull, and the ominous mentions of embarkation leave. I do not think that can be before May, Maggie had written. It is my dearest hope that you will be able to come before then. Even if the war is not over, surely you will get some leave? I do not want to be here when Joe comes back, Ralph. I cannot bear him to touch me again.

  But she tried not to think about Joe too much. Instead she imagined sitting at the table with Ralph after supper and telling him about her days, about the weight of the hay on her back as she struggled out to the sheep through the wind and the rain, about the warm fug in the cow byre and Fly’s expression as her legs went in four different directions on an icy patch of the farmyard.

  She told him how Edith Haywood had remarked on how tired she was looking and had suggested that Maggie employ a conscientious objector to help on the farm. I said I wouldn’t think of it, of course, Maggie wrote to Ralph. How could I take on a coward who refuses to fight while you are out there defending us all?