Christmas at Emmerdale

by Pamela Bell

  ‘We need to get you warm and dry, and then I’ll look at your ankle,’ he told her, his hands shaking as he lit one of the spills from the mantelpiece and held it to the fire.

  Flames were starting to lick at the wood as he clattered up the wooden stairs to find her some dry clothes. Maggie huddled into the chair, shivering uncontrollably, as much from fear for her baby as from the cold. She didn’t protest when Hugo took off her hat and gloves and chafed her icy hands to warm them.

  ‘The sheep?’ she asked through chattering teeth.

  ‘In the field. Don’t worry about them, they’re fine.’

  ‘And Fly?’

  ‘She’s here. Look.’ He nodded his head towards the kitchen door, where Fly lay, uneasy at being inside and completely alert, her bright eyes fixed on Maggie. ‘She won’t leave you until she’s sure you’re safe. I’ll give her a heroine’s meal and extra straw for her kennel later.’

  Maggie felt the tears rise up inside her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry, Hugo. I was stupid. I thought I could do it all by myself.’

  ‘Hush now,’ he said as he pulled off the shawl and began to unbutton her jacket. ‘No talking until you’ve warmed up. Let’s get these wet clothes off you.’

  Maggie was too numb to care about the decencies as he took off her jacket and the sodden blouse beneath and wrapped a blanket around her bare shoulders before turning his attention to her boots and socks.

  He pulled a face as he examined her bad leg. ‘It’s going to hurt when I take your boot off, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I know.’ Maggie managed a ghost of a smile.

  ‘You can scream if you want.’

  She did want to, but she wouldn’t let herself, clenching her teeth instead at the excruciating jab of pain.

  Hugo laid the boot aside with a smile. ‘You’re a tough woman, Maggie.’

  ‘I’m a Daleswoman,’ she said, and braced herself for the agony of removing the sock. ‘We don’t do screaming at a little bit of pain,’ she added breathlessly.

  His fingers were gentle as they probed her ankle. ‘I think it’s just a bad sprain. I’ll strap it up but first we need to get you out of these trousers. Can you lift yourself up so that I can pull them down?’

  In spite of her throbbing ankle and the cold that still had her in a rigid grip, Maggie was very aware of Hugo’s warm hands so close to her waist, brushing against her bare thighs as he eased the trousers down over her legs. He was careful to touch her no more than absolutely necessary and he wouldn’t look at her, but her heart had started a slow, painful thud against her ribs.

  Her eyes rested on his bent head. He still wore a cap thick with snow that was beginning to drip in the heat of the fire, and all she could see was the firm line of his nose as he manoeuvred the trousers over her ankle, tossed them aside and began to rub her feet gently between his palms.

  He glanced up at her, his grey-green eyes startlingly clear. ‘Are you beginning to feel anything yet?’

  Maggie thought of the warmth of his hands, the competence of those deft fingers. She thought about how he had carried her down off the hill. She noticed the line of his mouth, how the firelight threw the angles of his face into relief, and her own hands trembled. With cold, she told herself.

  ‘Yes,’ she said unevenly. ‘I think I am.’

  She drew the rough blanket around her, very aware that she was sitting in only her camisole and bloomers, while Hugo found a bandage and strapped up her ankle.

  ‘Better?’ he asked when he had finished.

  ‘Much. Thank you.’

  ‘And the baby?’

  She pressed her hands over her swollen stomach, glad to have been reminded of what really mattered. ‘I don’t know.’ She bit her lip. ‘It’s not kicking but then it doesn’t always …’

  ‘I’m sure it will be fine,’ said Hugo but she thought that his smile looked strained.

  He helped her up to bed, found an extra blanket to tuck around the eiderdown and left her with a stern order to sleep.

  Maggie was exhausted but she couldn’t sleep. She lay in bed, cradling her stomach, and willed the baby to move so that she knew it was alive. All those nights she had lain here wincing at the discomfort and wishing it would be still, and now she would do anything for one of those kicks!

  Please let my baby be all right, she prayed as she had never prayed before, not even for Ralph. Just one kick, a hiccup, anything to tell me I haven’t killed my child.

  This was all her fault for being stubborn, for thinking that she could do everything herself. Maggie lashed herself for taking such a risk with her child. She would do anything to undo that wretched walk up to the moor but the damage was done. She could only lie there under the blankets, thinking of the baby she might never see. Her skin was warm, but inside the cold creep of dread seeped deep into her bones.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Maggie woke sluggishly. There was a blankness to the light, a muffled quality to the silence, that added to a dull sense of foreboding. Disorientated, she struggled to pull herself up onto her pillows only to yelp at the bolt of pain that shot up from her ankle and brought back a jumble of memories from the day before: snow, falling, cold, fear.

  Fear for her baby. In a panic, Maggie felt her belly and was rewarded at last with a sharp kick that made her suck in her breath. Eyes stinging with relief, she collapsed back onto the pillows. It was only when she had thought she might lose it that she had realised just how much this baby meant to her. It might have been conceived in horror and disgust, but this child was part of her, and she would do anything to protect it.

  She would even be sensible, she told Hugo when he knocked on the bedroom door to see how she was.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said. ‘You can spend the day in bed in that case.’

  ‘The animals—’

  ‘Are all fine,’ he interrupted her. ‘The sheep are in field just behind the house. I’m going to check on them in a minute. The cows are safely in the byre and have been milked. Blossom has been fed, and Fly is tucked up in the barn with the hens. There must be nearly a foot of snow out there and it’s started to snow again. Nobody is going anywhere today,’ he said, ‘especially not you. You’re exhausted.’

  Maggie hadn’t been looked after since she was a child. It was strangely comforting to snuggle down under the blankets and watch the snow building up on the windowsill. The throb in her ankle was balanced by the pulse of relief about the baby and she drifted in and out of sleep all day.

  In the evening, Hugo brought her tea and some bread and cheese. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked as she hoisted herself up on the pillows so that he could put the tray on the eiderdown.

  ‘Much better, thank you.’

  ‘Can I sit down?’

  She looked at him curiously. ‘Yes, of course.’

  He perched on the edge of the bed. ‘We need to talk,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry about yesterday, Hugo, I know how stupid I was and that I owe you my life.’

  ‘It’s not about yesterday. Or it is, indirectly.’ Hugo hesitated, picking his words carefully. ‘When the snow has gone, I think I should go back to York.’

  ‘What?’ Maggie stared at him, aghast. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if yesterday proved anything, it proved that you can’t manage on your own.’

  ‘But I’m not on my own. You’re here.’

  ‘You need other people, Maggie,’ he said. ‘You’re too isolated here, and I’m part of the problem. There was no one I could go to for help yesterday. If I went, everyone in Beckindale would accept you.’

  ‘They wouldn’t,’ said Maggie with a trace of bitterness. ‘It’s not just you. I’ve never fitted in.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She plucked restlessly at the blanket. ‘I don’t know … I suppose my father encouraged Andrew and I to run wild at High Moor. Andrew went away to school, but I was never taught to play nicely with the other girls. I didn’t care. I was happy up
in the fells,’ she said, sighing a little. ‘The Oldroyds were always proud, too. We liked to keep ourselves to ourselves and made a point of not needing anyone else.

  ‘Then when Ralph and I fell in love, everyone thought I was somehow trying to better myself.’ Maggie lifted her shoulders at the absurdity of it. ‘I didn’t care about being Lady Miffield! I just wanted to be with Ralph.

  ‘Of course, no one would believe that. Ralph wanted us to go away but Andrew had died and my father was ill. I couldn’t leave him.’ She sighed. ‘And so I married Joe and came here, and that was still not the right thing to do. Joe is … a hard man, a violent man. He thinks that because he’s stronger than me, and can hurt me, he’s better than me. In Beckindale, they think that because I’ve got bruises on my face I should be ashamed, but why should I be ashamed? I don’t hit myself! But they don’t like that. They don’t like that I’ve managed to keep the farm running by myself. They don’t like that I wear trousers. They don’t like anything about me,’ she told Hugo. ‘Why should I pretend to be something I’m not just to make them like me?’

  ‘Because when this child is born, you’re going to need neighbours,’ he said. ‘You need to be part of the community, and I’m afraid my presence is making that more difficult for you. If I went back to York—’

  ‘No!’ Maggie recoiled instinctively from the idea. ‘I couldn’t manage without you now, Hugo,’ she said. ‘Promise me you won’t go!’

  He sighed. ‘All right, I’ll stay. But only if you’ll promise me that you’ll try to get on better with people.’

  Her mouth set in a mutinous line. ‘Ava Bainbridge will never accept me – and I’m not going to apologise to her about Frank.’

  ‘Ava is just one woman. I think you’d find that the others would be open to you if you made an effort to make friends.’

  ‘I have friends,’ she said sulkily. ‘The vicar’s wife, Mrs Haywood,’ she said when he raised an eyebrow. ‘And her daughter, Rose.’

  ‘They’re not enough,’ said Hugo. ‘This war will end one day, Maggie. Your husband will come back and I’ll have to go, but you’ll still be here. This is your place. Yours and your child’s. You need to find a way to belong.’

  It snowed all that day and the next. On the third day, the sun rose on a pristine world. The entire dale was coated in a soft white blanket that glittered in the weak winter sunlight and it was another two days before a thaw had set in enough to contemplate taking the trap into Beckindale.

  ‘We’re getting very low on stores,’ Maggie told Hugo that evening over a supper of bacon, bread and boiled milk. ‘I’ll go into the shop tomorrow and see if I can get hold of some sugar and tea. We could do with more candles too.’ She caught his eye. ‘And yes, I’ll be friendly,’ she sighed.

  ‘Good girl,’ Hugo said, exactly as he would to Fly. He grinned and got to his feet. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘All right then.’ Maggie accompanied him to the door. ‘Goodnight Hugo.’

  ‘Goodnight Maggie.’

  She smiled at him and without warning the air tightened and her mouth dried. This was ridiculous, Maggie thought as her pulse boomed and thudded in her ears. This was Hugo, conscientious objector, grieving widower, the last man she wanted to be attracted to. Look away, she ordered herself sternly, but her eyes were snared with his and as the silence lengthened, her breath shortened, she could feel herself leaning towards him as if drawn by an invisible force.

  It was Hugo who broke the tension. ‘Goodnight,’ he said again in a hoarse voice and jerked open the kitchen door to step outside into the farmyard where the snow lay packed down. Maggie closed the door after him and collapsed back against it. She felt very strange. Her blood was pumping and there was a tingling underneath her skin.

  ‘Maggie!’ Hugo’s shout made her heart leap. Was he coming back? Had he felt the same irresistible tug of attraction?

  But when he banged on the door and she opened it, it was clear that she was the last thing on his mind.

  ‘Fire!’ he gasped. ‘Come quickly, there’s a fire in the village!’

  Grabbing her shawl, Maggie limped after him to the gate. It was a still, silent night and in the starlight an eerie orange glow in one of the buildings could be clearly seen.

  ‘It’s the pub,’ she said. ‘The Woolpack is on fire!’

  Hugo opened the gate and started to run. ‘Where are you going?’ Maggie shouted after him.

  ‘They’ll need help.’ She heard the quick fear in his voice, knew that he was thinking of his wife and child. ‘Nobody will be able to get through from outside with all this snow, and there aren’t enough able-bodied men in the village now.’

  Maggie didn’t waste time arguing. She let him start jogging down the track through the snow while she ran to the stable and quickly harnessed sleepy Blossom to the trap. By the time she caught up with him, he was nearly at the lane end. He waited for the trap, panting, hands on his knees, and swung up onto the seat so quickly that she barely needed to slow Blossom at all.

  Clicking Blossom into a trot, they rattled over the packed snow into Beckindale, where a crowd had gathered outside the Woolpack. The fire had taken hold and there was screaming from somewhere and several women in the crowd were weeping. The noise was fearsome, of crackling flames and crashing beams and the shouts of men frantically passing buckets of water along a chain.

  ‘Is there anyone still inside?’ Maggie asked anxiously as she clambered down from the trap as quickly as she could and tugged the reins over Blossom’s head. Hugo was already on the ground.

  ‘Little Iris Bainbridge.’ Janet Airey twisted her handkerchief between her hands. ‘And Ava. Percy thought she’d got out, but nobody’s seen her.’

  ‘There’s a child in there?’ Hugo demanded, horrified.

  ‘Percy tried to go in again, but they held him back. They said it’s too dange—’ Janet broke off as he turned and ran towards the pub. ‘Where’s he going?’

  ‘Oh, dear God! Hugo!’ Pushing through the crowd that were watching in shock, Maggie was in time to see him plunge into the burning building. ‘Hugo!’ she cried and without thinking she ran in after him, evading the hands that reached out to grab her. ‘Hugo!’

  Inside, the smoke enveloped her, thick and black and foul. ‘Get back, Maggie,’ Hugo yelled, but as she coughed she saw him run up the stairs where a small bundle had collapsed at the top. The fire was a monster, roaring and belching and gobbling, sending sneaky flames leaping through the air. Hugo’s tweed jacket was alight, Maggie saw with horror. She whipped off her shawl and when he staggered back down towards her, holding little Iris Bainbridge in his arms, she used it to slap out the flames.

  ‘Take her out,’ Hugo said hoarsely, pushing Iris at her and grabbing the shawl which he wrapped around his nose and mouth. ‘I think I saw another body. I need to go back.’

  ‘Hugo, no!’ Maggie protested, but she was coughing too hard to make sense and she had to get Iris to safety. The little girl was limp in her arms as she stumbled through the smoke towards the door and out into the air, where she was greeted with a great shout.

  ‘Please, somebody help her,’ Maggie wheezed desperately. ‘I don’t think she’s breathing …’

  To her relief, hands caught her and took Iris from her, but when she tried to go back inside, a blanket was wrapped around her shoulders and she was held firmly back.

  ‘I need to help Hugo!’ Maggie strained to get free while the doctor bent over Iris. Hugo had come for her when she needed him and now it was her turn to save him, but the elderly men on either side holding her by her arms ignored her struggles.

  ‘There’s nowt you can do now, lass.’

  Rose saw Maggie struggling but a deafening crash inside the pub drowned out her words. The crowd murmured in distress and the human chain faltered as it became clear that the buckets of water were a futile effort against the flames.

  Rose and her parents had been playing cards by candlelight at the vicarage when t
hey had heard faint shouts and screams. Charles Haywood threw down his cards and strode outside to see what was going on, only to come back with the news that the Woolpack was on fire. ‘I must go and see what I can do,’ he said.

  Rose and her mother waited only to put on coats and hats before hurrying after him. All was confusion when they arrived. Nobody seemed to know what had happened, and rumours swirled through the crowd. According to Mary Ann Teale, the fire had been started by a candle, but her neighbour disagreed. ‘No, I heard it were a cigarette.’

  At first it was thought that everyone had got out safely, but then the word went round that Ava was missing, and little Iris Bainbridge who was only six. Rose’s hand crept to her mouth as she stared at the flames. They had taken a terrifying hold, in spite of her father’s efforts to organise a human chain with buckets of water from the village pump. It was impossible to believe that anyone could survive such a conflagration. Rose hadn’t liked Ava Bainbridge, but she couldn’t imagine the horror of being trapped in those flames.

  All the would-be rescuers had been beaten back by the heat of the fire until Maggie and the conscientious objector had arrived and run inside without hesitation. Like everyone else, Rose had gaped at their courage, and shared in the cheer that went up when Maggie appeared with Iris, but there had been no sign of Ava or Hugo, as her mother said he was called.

  ‘That brave man!’ Edith murmured beside her. ‘How can anyone call him a coward after this?’

  Percy Bainbridge sat on the ground, his face grey. He had his arms around his two older children while the doctor treated Iris who was coughing and choking but who seemed to be coming round.

  There was a terrible whoosh as part of the roof collapsed, drawing an involuntary groan from the people watching, but it was followed a moment later by a shout. ‘What’s happening?’ The question ran through the crowd. Craning her head, Rose could just see a figure staggering out of the Woolpack with a body in his arms.