A Nurse's Duty (41 page)

Nevertheless, Karen was happy and content with her life. Sometimes love for Patrick and their baby would bubble up in her and she would think, it can’t last, with a little pang of foreboding. But she pushed it away, the thought. Of course it would last, why shouldn’t it? The feel of Patrick’s hand on her breast was still enough to make her pulse leap in ecstasy, just as it had in the beginning, and she felt his need for her was still as intense as it had ever been.

She rushed to the door and picked up Brian who was climbing over the step in search of his beloved Nick.

‘Howay, my lad, you stay here and eat your breakfast,’ she said as she put him in his high chair. Brian’s mouth turned down and he prepared to wail for Nick.

‘Nick’s coming, he’s coming now,’ Patrick put in swiftly. Karen looked at him, wondering if he was jealous of Brian’s affection for Nick, but he was smiling indulgently at the boy.

‘Aren’t you a big strong lad, then?’ he said, picking Brian up and swinging him in the air, and Brian’s pout turned to a delighted grin.

He was growing strong and healthy, Karen thought happily. Now he could walk, he would toddle after Nick on his sturdy little legs whenever he got the chance. He was devoted to Nick and Nick was devoted to him. Brian showed no fear of the animals in the yard, waving his arms imperiously at them if they were in his way or chattering to them unintelligibly. Consequently they were friendly towards him, even the gander and his harem, now grown to six.

Karen went out to the gate to call Nick in from the pasture. It was one of those days when she could see clearly over to the far horizon, the sweep of the fells around her filled with the bleating
of
sheep. A blossom from the rowan tree above her drifted down and landed on her shoe. She looked idly at it. The tree had been covered with blossom this year, there would be a good crop of rowan berries.

‘Rowan tree and red thread, Put the witches to their speed.’ Idly she quoted the old Weardale saying. Leaning against the trunk, she called to Nick who was busy at the other end of the pasture, checking Polly’s hooves. He lifted his head and called back, and she waved and straightened up and walked slowly back to the kitchen. For the first time since the deaths of her mother and grandmother, Karen felt a lightening of the sadness within her.

‘Mammy, Mammy,’ cried Brian from his high chair by the table, his chubby face smeared with honey. Patrick looked up from his breakfast and smiled and somehow he didn’t look so tired and strained, just happy. And Karen felt her own love for them welling up in her and filling her world.

Chapter Twenty-Six

KAREN WALKED ALONG
the lane to meet Patrick, Brian trotting solemnly by her side. At two and three-quarters he was the quiet one of her two children. Eighteen-month-old Jennie clung to her skirts, stumbling a little but independent, insisting on walking herself.

Patrick was bring home the two little pigs which would be fattened throughout the year. It was the spring of 1921, fine and dry, the birds were singing, fresh grass pushing strongly through the ground. Karen was completely absorbed in her family, exulting in the warmth of the day and the sun on her back. She even gave a little skip as she walked along.

‘Clap your hands for Daddy coming down the waggon way, a pocket full of money and a cartload of hay,’ she sang to Jennie, and caught her up in her arms and swung her over her head. The little girl crowed with delight. She sang along merrily, completely out of tune and making up the words as she went along.

‘But he’s bringing piggies, not hay, Mammy.’ Brian had stopped to face her. ‘And this is the lane, not the waggon way.’ He had a literal frame of mind, and knew the waggon way was up by the kiln.

‘Oh, Brian, it’s a nursery rhyme,’ Karen laughed helplessly as she stooped and gathered him into her arms with Jennie, hugging them both. He wriggled to be free.

‘Don’t, Mammy, don’t! Let me down. I’m a big boy now,’ he cried.

‘Oh, yes, I forgot,’ she answered, and put him back on to his feet.

‘Daddy! Daddy!’ Jennie had caught sight of Patrick as he came out of the dip in the lane. Amid great excitement and exclamations over the piglets, even Brian broke into little hops and skips while grinning from ear to ear.

‘Let me hold one,’ he begged. ‘I can hold one.’

‘Me, me!’ cried Jennie.

‘Not now,’ decreed their father. ‘Later, when they’ve settle down.

‘Please, Daddy?’ pleaded Brian, but Patrick shook his head and reluctantly they made their way back to the farm.

‘Nick, Nick.’

The little girl struggled from Karen’s arms and ran to him, her excitement bubbling as she stumbled to him on fat little legs. Nick caught her up with his good arm, pleasure shining from him.

‘What is it, flower?’ he laughed at her. ‘Piggies, is it?’

‘Piglets. It’s piglets.’ This was Brian who had given up baby talk.

‘Let’s see then.’ Nick turned to Patrick, becoming businesslike, holding the child easily on one hip. He cast a critical look over the squealing animals as they were turned into the pen. He still did not trust Patrick’s judgement entirely, not in farming matters, though Patrick protested he had been born and raised on a farm.

‘It was not a dales farm, though, not like these round here, was it?’ Nick had pointed out.

‘Not much different,’ Patrick had argued, but Nick had been disbelieving about that. After all, the farm where Patrick had been born was in a different country altogether, wasn’t it?

In this case, however, he could find no fault with the piglets.

‘Not bad little ’uns,’ he pronounced, and Patrick grinned at Karen. She smiled back at him, remembering the little outbursts of jealousy he had once shown towards Nick. Now at least the two men seemed friendly enough.

‘Tea then, eh?’

Karen’s smile embraced them all as she went into the kitchen and put on the kettle. It was baking day and the loaves were spread on the steel fender to rise. The room was warm from the fire needed to heat the warm air oven, and the stotty cake, a flat bread cake baked on the bottom shelf of the oven, was now ready to come out to eat with the tea. It smelt heavenly. Taking the oven cloth from the brass line, Karen deftly slid the cake out on to the table to cool while she waited for the kettle to boil. Testing the oven with her hand, she filled it with the waiting loaves.

‘Don’t touch,’ she said as she looked round and saw Brian reaching for the cake. ‘It’s hot. I’ll give you some in a minute.’ She smiled fondly at his blush. Brian hated to be scolded. Patrick and Nick came in with Jennie and they sat around the table eating great chunks of the hot bread smothered in butter and treacle.

‘We might do well with them,’ observed Nick, meaning the piglets.

‘Aye, we might,’ drawled Patrick, imitating Nick’s accent and winking at Karen.

These had been good years for them since the war, she reflected. They were making a modest living and the children were growing up strong and healthy. Nick still helped out on the farm, rarely leaving it. She glanced at him, wondering whether to broach the subject of wages with him once again. She no longer took board money from him but he refused any payment for his work, saying his small pension was enough for him. After a moment’s thought, she decided to wait. She would ask Patrick to try.

All in all things were working out well, thought Karen as she looked round the table. Patrick, though brought up in the country, was not what anyone would call a handyman. His mind was often on other things, he didn’t seem to notice when small repairs needed doing around the place. Nick, despite his handicap, was more practical; he would suggest repairs and improvements when he saw the need for them.

Karen counted her blessings, thinking of the news from Morton Main, contained in her last letter from Kezia a few weeks before. That had been a very different story. The post-war boom in coal production was waning, the outlook was unsure. Young Luke would soon reach his thirteenth birthday and would leave school to join his father at the pit.

Kezia’s tone had been defensive as she wrote this last. The extra money was needed at home and Luke would reach the standard and pass the examination so he could leave school, Karen thought about it with sadness. Luke was a bright boy. In another world he would have gone to university perhaps but here he would sit the exam which would allow him to leave school, the one which showed he could read and write and do arithmetic and didn’t need any more schooling.

‘Something wrong?’ Patrick said softly as he noticed the faraway expression on her face.

‘No, no.’ Karen smiled intimately at him, her brown eyes tender. ‘I was just thinking how lucky we are.’

For a moment they shared the precious communion of minds while the children laughed and talked to Nick in the background. They were brought rudely back to the present by a loud knocking on the door. They hadn’t heard a cart or trap coming into the yard. Who could it be?

‘I’ll go.’ Brian jumped up, excitement lighting his eyes. He loved visitors, they were usually people of the dale and he knew them all.

Karen rose too, pleasantly anticipating a chat with a neighbour and laughing at the boy as he rushed through to the scullery. She followed him leisurely, glad that there was new baking to offer whoever it was. Brian stood on tiptoe to reach the latch and she let him stretch to do it himself. But when the door swung open at last his excited words of greeting were cut short. These visitors were strangers. Brian backed away shyly to his mother’s skirts and stood
there
, peeping round her. Karen stared in sudden shock. Unable to speak for a moment, she held on to the door with one hand while with the other she pulled Brian close in to her protectively.

‘Is Patrick Murphy at home?’

The question was bald, unaccompanied by a greeting. The speaker was the priest who had come to the farm a couple of years earlier, the friend of Robert Richardson’s. Sean, that was his name. He was with another priest, a stranger to Karen, but she had not forgotten Sean. She gazed past him at a man and woman in their early sixties, an ordinary enough looking couple but it was the man’s face which filled Karen with foreboding. She knew this was Patrick’s father. It could be no one else, the likeness was so striking. Though shorter than Patrick and careworn, he had the same black-fringed grey eyes, the same build and bone structure.

Mother and child stared at the visitors, unmoving. Brian, ever sensitive to his mother’s feelings, stood up as straight as he could and reached for her hand to comfort her. He looked up at her for guidance on what to do.

The woman looked hard at the boy out of blue eyes which registered no sort of greeting.

‘Mother.’

Patrick loomed in the doorway behind Karen, his eyes on the woman. He came past his wife and embraced the plump little woman who promptly burst into tears and threw her arms around him. And Karen started forward as though to hold him and then stopped herself.

‘Patrick. Oh, Patrick,’ said the woman, her voice fraught with emotion.

‘Come away in now, Mother,’ he said gently. His arm was still around her but his eyes were on his father. He led the way into the kitchen and Sean and the other priest followed without a glance at Karen or the boy. She wanted to shout at them to stop. No, they couldn’t come into her house, her life …

Jennie was sitting on Nick’s knee, giggling as she tried to stuff bread and treacle into his mouth. Treacle was smeared over her face and hands and all down her pinafore and Nick’s chin. He glanced up, laughing, but one look at the visitors made him hurriedly stand up.

‘Here’s the bairn, Karen,’ he muttered, and handed the child to her mother, backing away out of the door, murmuring something about getting back to work.

‘Karen, these are my parents. And Father Donelly you know of course,’ Patrick said stiffly while Jennie set up a screaming protest at the departure of her beloved Nick.

‘Mother, Father, my wife, Karen.’

She acknowledged the introduction with a nod of the head and a ‘How do you do?’ The priest and Mr Murphy glanced at her and away again, their reply inaudible. Mrs Murphy looked straight through her.

‘Take the children into the front room, Karen.’

Patrick saw her stricken face and attempted protest but he ignored it. She wanted to hear everything, felt her life depended on it. How could he dismiss her like this? Her face burned.

‘It’s all right now, don’t take on so.’

His tone was reassuring. ‘We can’t hear ourselves speak now, can we? Not with Jennie’s carrying on so.’ Comforted only a little, she held the crying Jennie against one hip and took hold of Brian’s hand. Silently she left the room. Jennie protested loudly and struggled to get down from her mother’s restricting arms, succeeding eventually as Karen closed the door of the front room after them.

She stared out of the window at the rolling moor, beautiful in the sunlight. The children stood solemnly beside her, Jennie quiet now as though sensing her deep foreboding and disturbed by it. They clung to her skirts with only an occasional sniff from Jennie. Those people in the kitchen were the children’s grandparents, she
thought
dully. She ought to be offering them hospitality, showing off the children to them. They should be proud of such fine, healthy bairns. But they had hardly glanced at Brian or Jennie, had ignored them. And the woman had looked at Karen as though she was the Whore of Babylon. She smarted under the implied insult, felt sullied and dirty.

Voices came from the kitchen. She could hear them but not what they were saying. Suddenly she could stand it no more. She wasn’t going to wait here like some servant waiting to be called into the presence of the mistress. She snatched up Jennie and turned to the front door.

‘Come on, Brian, we’ll go for a walk. Let’s go down to the ghyllie and see if we can find some wild flowers. We’ll pick a big bunch, shall we? Then we can put them in a vase on the table.’

Wrenching open the rarely used front door, she strode off down the garden path and out on to the lonnen which led to the fold in the fell which hid the little wooded ghyll and its sparkling burn. Brian’s face cleared as he trotted after her. A cool breeze had sprung up, buffeting them as they walked along and bringing roses to their cheeks, but as they came to the shelter of the little valley the sun was warm on their heads once again.