A Nurse's Duty (44 page)

Eventually as the moors were once more clothed in their cloak of purple heather the burden of farmwork eased. The children were fit and brown and even Meg’s little legs seemed straighter since she had been having a regular supply of good, fresh milk.

The miners had to capitulate in July and go back to work for less money. Eventually a letter arrived from Kezia asking for Luke to return home. Tommy and Meg were to stay until the end of August: ‘Just until we get back on our feet’.

Luke hated going back, notwithstanding his reluctance to come to the farm in the first place, for he had grown to love the dale.

Karen watched him sympathetically as she took him down to the station at Stanhope. He sat quietly in the trap, face averted, while the other children, who were only there for the ride, laughed and chatted, happy to be having the outing.

‘Be careful with the eggs, Luke,’ Karen said gently to him as she handed over a covered basket containing butter as well. Luke took it wordlessly, unable to speak in case he broke down and spoilt his manly facade.

When he climbed on the train Meg realized he was actually going without her and set up a loud wailing so that Karen had to catch her up and hold her.

‘Hush love, there’s a pet,’ Karen rocked the little girl to her, whereupon Jennie lifted her arms and joined in the crying, jealous of Meg. It was in this pandemonium that the train pulled out of the station, Luke’s set face retreating from the little group.

Karen couldn’t stop herself from thinking about him. He was destined for the pit, just as most of the men in her family had been, generation following generation. But Luke had loved the outdoor life, just as his great-grandmother had done. He’d loved the high moor. But it was no good thinking about that.

Driving back to the farm in the brilliant morning sunshine,
Karen
felt her spirits lift in tune with the buzz of the bees busy in the heather and the butterflies fluttering above it. High overhead a curlew called and the children called back. They had recovered their high spirits and even Meg began to smile as Low Rigg Farm came into view in the fold in the track, the rowan tree in all its summer glory standing sentinel at the gate.

‘Home again,’ said Karen, and lifted Jennie and Meg down from the trap. But Tommy jumped and Brian followed suit, not to be beaten. Meg grinned proudly at him as he kept his balance on the cobbles. Nick poked his head round the barn door, wiping his hand on his sacking apron.

‘Nick! Nick!’ Jennie was as delighted to see him as usual. She still loved him with an uncritical devotion. There was no Patrick though, he was working on the roads. Sighing, Karen turned into the scullery and lit the fire under the copper. She had filled it before she went out for the washing was to start. There was plenty of work to occupy her mind.

At the end of August Karen decided she would take Tommy and Meg back to Morton Main herself so that she could see Da and Kezia and assure herself that they were all right. There had been no further letter from Kezia since the brief note saying Luke had arrived home safely and Karen found her thoughts returning to them all the time.

Accordingly she baked pies the day before and left them for Patrick and Nick to eat cold. The four children went with her, happy and excited and quite unnaturally clean. Patrick drove them to the station.

‘We’ll be back by nine.’ She smiled up into his eyes but knew better than to expect a kiss such as he gave the children. She would have liked some sign of affection but knew him well enough now to understand that outward displays embarrassed him, the more so as they grew older. So, contenting herself with the smile, she
took
the basket of farm eggs and butter in one hand and lifted Jennie with the other.

Was it her imagination, she wondered wistfully, or was Patrick growing away from her? But that was a thought she couldn’t bear so she turned to the children. They were clambering eagerly on to the seats in the carriage and waving to Patrick in great excitement while Karen settled down in a corner with Jennie on her knee. There was quite a difficult time ahead with a change of train at Bishop Auckland but there was a bus nowadays which ran from Morton village to Morton Main, making the last part of the journey easier, for which she was thankful.

The day was very warm and the children were hot and tired by the time they got to the village. The heat shimmered by the roadside where tar had run, sticky and black. Karen got down from the bus at the Chapel stop and stood Jennie on her feet while she helped Meg and Brian. And then Kezia was there, laughing and crying and hugging her children to her. Karen stood back and watched the happy reunion.

‘Thank you, Karen,’ Kezia said simply, looking at her sister. It was all she said but it was enough. Karen knew all rifts were healed. They walked together down the row with the children all talking at once, interrupting each other as they told of the wonders of life on the farm.

‘Da’s finished at the pit,’ Kezia said quietly, bitterly. ‘They reckoned he was one of the ring leaders, a trouble maker.’

Karen stopped walking for a moment in shock at this description of Da, that stern law-abiding man. How humiliated he must be.

‘He’ll have to get out of the house, of course. He can come in with us for now, then maybe he will be able to rent a cottage over at Morton.’

Of course, Karen thought, the house belonged to the colliery.

‘Can you manage?’ She gazed at Kezia anxiously. She could
have
Da at Low Rigg Farm but at sixty-three years old he wouldn’t want to move far from his beloved Chapel.

‘He’ll be all right.’

Kezia saw the uncertainty on Karen’s face and understood.

‘He’s better here. Da was never one for the dale, that was Mam. Anyway, he’ll get his pension in a few years.’

‘Not till he’s seventy,’ Karen reminded her. A few years can be a long time, she thought as they all went into Kezia’s kitchen. Da was sitting by the range, quietly staring at the fire. He seemed shrunken somehow, not himself at all, and Karen felt her heart drop at the sight of him. But his smile was warm enough, especially when he saw little Meg and Tommy. Brian hung back. He hardly knew his grandfather, Karen realized guiltily.

‘How are you, lass? And that man of yours?’ Da kissed her gravely on the cheek and surveyed her closely.

‘We’re fine, Da. Patrick an’ all.’

He seemed satisfied with what he saw for he turned his attention to her children.

‘By, she’s a bonny lass you’ve got there, mind. And the lad’s growing fast, isn’t he? Howay then, Brian, let’s have a look at you.’ Da became hearty when he spoke to the children. He’d changed a lot, thought Karen, losing his job had diminished him. And of course he would still be feeling Mam’s death … A lump grew in Karen’s throat and threatened to choke her. To cover up she talked to him in a straightforward manner, helping him in his pretence that there was nothing wrong, and after a while the urge to cry receded and the emotional moment passed. The lunch was of salad culled from the allotment accompanied by Kezia’s new bread and some of the farm butter. The children ate heartily, made hungry by their early start.

‘Howay then, troops. We’ll away and see what’s on offer at the shop,’ said Da when the meal was finished, and to whoops of joy he took the children up the street to Lizzie’s, the corner shop, and
spent
some of his precious pennies on sherbet dabs and black bullets. Soon even Brian and Jennie were competing for his attention, completely won over.

‘Granda, Granda, look at me, me!’

‘No, me!’

Their loud cries rang down the row intermingled with the gruff tones of Da. Karen marvelled at the difference between the relaxed, smiling man he was with her children and the stern father she had known as a child. The children were working their magic and taking his mind off his troubles, at least that was something.

The afternoon flew by with ‘Do you remembers’ and up to date news of the village, and soon it was time to wash hands and faces for the return home. Jennie and Brian protested loudly but to no avail. The train back to Stanhope had to be caught at Bishop Auckland so they must adhere to a time-table.

Karen’s heart was lighter. Despite the poverty of the community the people were cheerfully indomitable and she felt as one with them. Kezia and Father, Tommy and Meg, came to the bus stop with them to set them off on the early-evening bus.

In the little town, Karen carried the sound asleep Jennie to the station with Brian hanging on to her skirts with one hand while he sucked the thumb of the other. She was tired and her arms ached as she joined the straggle of people climbing the hill leading to the station, thinking only of collapsing into a seat on the train to take the weight off her legs.

It was then that she saw a familiar form in the crowd in front of her and her head jerked back in shock. Her stomach plummeted and turned into a hard, aching knot and her mouth went dry and sour-tasting. She closed her eyes tightly and stood still.

‘Mam? Mammy?’

Brian was tugging at her skirt with his face upturned in anxious enquiry. She opened her eyes. There was no sign of him now, the man who was so like …

Imagination, that’s what it had been. Why should it suddenly play such a trick on her? She hadn’t seen him for years. It must have been something to do with being so tired.

The whistle of the train set her off walking rapidly uphill again, with Brian having to trot to keep up with her.

‘Mammy!’ His protest penetrated at last and she slowed her pace.

‘Come on, pet, we’ll have to hurry, the train’s coming,’ she said. Quickly she handed over her ticket and headed for the platform. The train was standing still, with little puffs of steam coming from the engine. Half afraid of what she might see, she gave only a short glance up the platform. Was that him getting in at the other end of the train? No!

Karen bundled Brian into a compartment and followed with Jennie. Looking neither to left nor right she went straight to the first vacant seats. She sat there, not lifting her head until the train arrived at Stanhope. Jennie slept on and Brian leaned against her, tired and quiet and as ever receptive to her moods. Her lovely day had darkened and her mind was filled with formless fears she shrank from naming.

Yet in the end those fears seemed groundless for they had reached Stanhope without seeing anyone she knew. The evening sun brightened and love threatened to spill over as she saw Patrick outside the station, wafting patiently beside Polly. He smiled in mild embarrassment when she kissed him exuberantly, unable to hide her feelings, then he turned to the children to hide that embarrassment.

They drove home past the avenue of limes which cast long shadows as the sun was going down, they passed the old church and went on into open country. As they climbed the fell the heather was deeply purple and splendid, fading into a blue haze on the top of the moor.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

THE WINTER CLOSED
in once more. The moor became wild and white, cutting people off from one another, obliterating roads and tracks so only the snow poles standing on the roadside denoted its outline. And yet, even though winter meant the living was hard and every morning there was ice to break on the bucket of water which Nick had brought in the night before, it was still Karen’s favourite season, the time when she felt safest. No one from the outside world could get at them.

Work on the roads came to a halt so there was no money coming in and Patrick and Nick spent long hours tramping the low fell, bringing in sheep nearer to home, digging sheep out of drifts, carrying hay to sheep, lifting sheep back on to their feet when they fell over and were unable to regain their footing. Patrick even dreamed about sheep: sheep with foot rot, sheep falling down crags or trapped between outcrops of limestone. The world revolved around sheep. So he was glad of the change when the weather at last allowed some respite and they could spread manure and lime the moorland around the pasture in an attempt to wrest it from the heather.

The short days were hard for Karen too; she had to see to the farmyard stock and the children. But the children were growing up strong and healthy and she was happy.

One Sunday she decided to take them to Sunday School. They hadn’t been there for a few weeks because of the snow and both Brian and Jennie liked Sunday School. She sat in the caretaker’s tiny kitchen and drank tea while she waited for them, chatting idly with the caretaker’s wife who was busy preparing the dinner. It
was
a pleasant little interlude in the week. The caretaker’s cottage adjoined the schoolroom and she could hear the children reciting prayers in unison. Listening hard, she picked out Jennie’s piping voice among them.

The children began to sing an old song, ‘Jesus Bids Us Shine’, and she sang along with them under her breath while the caretaker’s wife was busy in the pantry: ‘You in your small corner, and I in mine.’ She liked that; it expressed just how she felt.

Afterwards they walked home through the slush and snow, and by the time they got back their feet were damp and frozen and their noses and chins were red and stinging in the wind.

‘Patrick!’

Karen hurried into the kitchen calling for him as she went to the fire with Jennie who by this time was fractious and crying, for the fire had burned low and needed mending and Patrick usually had a good fire going for them when they got back. But there was no sign of him now and she was puzzled.

She blazed up the fire and warmed milk in a saucepan and still Patrick didn’t come in. Leaving Brian and Jennie sipping their milk, she went out into the yard where Nick was just coming out of the stable.

‘Have you seen Patrick?’ she asked him anxiously.

Nick sniffed and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.

‘He went out just after you did, missus. Said he was going to the village,’ he answered. Lately he had taken to being more formal with Karen, calling her ‘missus’ again, and she wondered if Patrick had been getting on at him as he had when Nick first appeared.

At Karen’s frown, he hastened to add, ‘Well, there was nothing for him to do, was there, missus?’