Above the Harvest Moon (14 page)
‘Thank you.’
His mother had gone to the range and was fiddling about with the kettle behind Hannah. She now inclined her head meaningfully. He knew what she meant. Clearing his throat, Jake said quietly, ‘My mother was thinking you might like to get away for a bit until you’ve had time to decide what you want to do. Unless you feel you could go back home.’
Hannah shuddered, shaking her head.
‘It’s entirely up to you of course, but if you would like to get out of the town for a bit there’s an old couple who live and work on the farm where I’m employed who would be glad to offer you board and lodging.’
She stared at him, her eyes wide. Rubbing her nose in a childish gesture, she said, ‘But what would I do? How could I pay them? I don’t have a job.’
‘There’s plenty of work to be found on a farm so don’t worry your head about that. Since Farmer Shawe’s wife died, one of the women has been helping out at the farmhouse, cooking meals and cleaning a bit, things like that, but she would be better employed in the dairy where she used to work. You could take over in the farmhouse until you decide otherwise.’
‘But what if Farmer Shawe doesn’t agree? He doesn’t know me.’
‘I know you.’
‘And . . . and it wouldn’t get you into trouble?’
Jake smiled. ‘No, it wouldn’t get me into trouble.’
Hannah bowed her head for a moment, then she rose from the chair and stood taking in a deep breath. He saw her eyes were glittering with unshed tears and realised she wasn’t nearly as composed as she was trying to make them believe. But then who would be after something like that?
‘This is very kind of you, Mr Fletcher,’ she said in a low voice. ‘And if you’re sure it’ll be all right with Farmer Shawe, I’d like to accept your offer. But . . . but if he doesn’t like it or something goes wrong, please don’t think you can’t tell me. Just . . . just to get away for a little while will be . . .’
Her lips were trembling as her voice trailed away, and it was Rose who spoke into the embarrassed silence, saying briskly, ‘Well, that’s settled then and there’s no time like the present. You and Jake go now before it’s as black as pitch out there. You’ve a way to walk, lass.’
‘I’ll get a cab,’ Jake said immediately.
‘No, no.’ Hannah brought out a protesting hand to Jake and then dropped it by her side as sharply as if she had actually touched him. Her head again bent, she said, ‘I’d rather walk if that’s all right with you.’
Rose and Jake exchanged a glance over Hannah’s head but Naomi stepped into the breach, hugging her friend and saying chokingly, ‘Oh, Hannah, I’ll miss you not being close.You’ll still come and see us, won’t you?’
‘There’s nowt to stop you coming to the farm,’ Jake interposed quickly before Hannah could reply. ‘Perhaps that’d be better for the time being.’
‘Aye, all right.’ Realising she’d been less than tactful, Naomi nodded. ‘I will. I’ll come next Sunday, shall I?’
‘You do that.’ Only Rose understood what a concession Jake was making when he added, ‘And bring whoever you like with you. All are welcome.’
He meant Adam.
Hannah bit down hard on her lower lip to prevent the tears Jake’s kindness was causing from falling.Would he come? To her knowledge, none of Jake’s family had ever visited the farm.
The goodbyes were awkward but eventually they left the house, Jake carrying the cloth bag and Hannah wearing her bonnet and coat, the latter covering her torn blouse. Hannah walked quietly alongside him with her head down but her eyes dry. She felt very small and lost, but this was less to do with the bulk and height of the man beside her than her mother’s betrayal.When Naomi’s mam had told her what her mother had said, she had been stunned, even though her mother was like she was. Her mam had chosen to take her uncle’s word against hers. She was not only surprised and hurt to the core but also furiously angry. Her body ached in various places and as she walked, the tops of her legs stung where her uncle’s fingernails had torn her flesh. She wanted nothing more than to stand in a bath of hot water and scrub and scrub at her skin to take the sick feeling of being dirty away.
The cloying, tainted air in the terraced streets began to smell fresher once they were nearing the outskirts, and although the night was dark, the moon was high and the sky starlit. They hadn’t spoken for some time, and they were in sight of the North Hylton Road when Jake said, ‘You should have let me find a cab.’
He didn’t add, ‘After what you’ve been through,’ but she knew what he meant, and it was in answer to this that she said quietly, ‘I needed to walk.’ It was also less embarrassing, less intimate than riding in a cab with him somehow. Now the shock of her uncle’s attack was beginning to abate a little, she felt mortified she had collapsed in Jake Fletcher’s arms like that. She hadn’t been thinking straight at the time but she remembered now the effortlessness with which he had picked her up and carried her, and the muscled strength in the big male body. If it had been anyone but him, anyone, she wouldn’t feel so strange about it. Or perhaps she would. She didn’t know. She felt so muddled, so all at sea, but surmounting everything was a feeling of humiliation and degradation.
‘Do you like the country?’
He was trying to make conversation but she wished he wouldn’t. Rousing herself, Hannah said,‘I don’t know. I’ve only ever gone for walks on a Sunday afternoon as far as the edge of Southwick and I’ve never stepped foot on a farm.’
‘Then perhaps my question should have been do you like the town?’
She hesitated for a moment, glancing at him and looking away again.The good side of his face was towards her and as she had done on other occasions, she thought, it must be worse for him, looking in the mirror and knowing he could have been so handsome but for the accident. There were fields stretching either side of the road now and the warm night air carried the scent of sun-drenched meadows and corn. Hannah breathed in the fragrance before she said, ‘I’ve never really thought about it but now you ask I don’t think I do. Monkwearmouth is so dirty and smelly.’
‘A farm can be pretty dirty and smelly too.’
‘But not in the same way.’
She didn’t raise her eyes but his voice told her he was smiling when he said, ‘I couldn’t agree more. Nevertheless, when you’re up to your eyes in mud and the wind’s enough to cut you in two, you might find yourself longing for solid pavements under your feet and the shelter of the streets.’
‘Do you?’
This time he laughed out loud. It was a husky sound as though he didn’t do it very often. ‘Never,’ he said softly. ‘Coal is the lifeblood of the north, I know that, and it provides the basis of other industry, even the railways, but I hate the sight of the colliery chimneys sending their black columns of smoke into the sky. That’s not to say I don’t respect the men who risk their lives every day working under tons of rock, whatever Adam might have told you to the contrary.’ He glanced at her but she didn’t look at him. After a moment, he said, ‘Anyway, I’m the wrong shape for a miner. Ideally you need to be small and wiry to work those tunnels.’
‘Was your father small and wiry?’ She didn’t know why she had asked that because she knew no one talked about Mrs Wood’s first husband. It was common knowledge he’d disappeared on the night of Jake’s accident, only to be found a week later wedged under the landing at the docks. A double tragedy, everyone had said, the father getting murdered like that on the very night his bairn pulls an oil lamp on himself. But that was the way of things sometimes - it never rains but it pours. And at least the doctors managed to save the bairn.
He didn’t seem bothered by the question. ‘Aye. I understand he was. I’m obviously a throwback to someone in the past.’
‘My da died when I was a baby.’
‘Oh aye? Then we’ve something in common.’
They walked in silence after this until they came to the lane which led to the farm. Hannah’s heart was thumping so hard she was surprised he couldn’t hear it. Had she done the right thing in coming here? She didn’t know anything about how things were done on a farm after all, and what if the farmer decided she couldn’t stay? What if this old couple didn’t want her in their cottage?
‘Don’t worry.’
Startled, she glanced at Jake and saw his eyes were on her. ‘I’m not,’ she lied.
‘You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to but it’ll give you a breathing space, I think that’s what my mother thought. And there is no need to be frightened of me.’
‘I’m not,’ she said again. Another lie.
They were in sight of the labourers’ cottages now and she thought she heard him sigh before he said quietly, ‘You’ll be staying with a couple called Frank and Clara Lyndon. The last of their four sons married a short while ago and moved in with the in-laws, so Frank and Clara have a spare room. They’re a nice couple, you’ll like them, and Clara is the sort to put you right about anything you don’t understand. I’ll tell them I’ve decided to get a housekeeper in and you’re a friend of the family, that’s all, OK? It’s up to you if you want to say more. Get a good night’s sleep and I’ll come down to the cottage some time tomorrow and take you up to the farmhouse to see Farmer Shawe.’
She nodded. She felt petrified but was determined not to show it.
When they reached the small row of cottages she could see they weren’t the kind of thatched affair you might see on a picture postcard or chocolate box lid. They were built of brick with three steep steps directly from the lane to the front door. She couldn’t see much else by the meagre light of the moon. Jake rapped smartly on the front door. The cottage, like the ones either side of it, was in darkness, its occupants obviously in bed. It was a minute or two before a flickering light showed and then a second later the door opened.
‘It’s me, Frank.’
‘Jake?’ The large burly man holding the oil lamp peered at them. ‘What’s wrong, man?’
‘Nothing’s wrong, not really. Look, this is Hannah Casey. She’s going to do for us in the farmhouse for a while and I thought she could stay with you and Clara now you’ve got a room free. I’m sorry about the hour but she couldn’t come any earlier.’
Hannah stared at Jake’s dark profile. He had made it sound as if it had all been arranged for days.
‘Ee, don’t stand there on the doorstep. Come in, the pair of you, come in.’ A woman had come up behind the man, her grey hair in two long plaits and her plump little body wrapped in a faded brown dressing gown.
Jake stood aside for Hannah to precede him and when she climbed the three steps and entered the cottage she found herself in a small but comfortable sitting room. She watched as the man pulled down an oil lamp that hung on a chain from the ceiling and lit it before pushing it back up out of the way of their heads. His wife had taken the lamp he had been holding and placed it on a small round table covered with a fancy lace tablecloth.
‘That’s better.’The woman beamed at them, her rosy-cheeked face shining. ‘Now you say you want the lass to stay with us? That’s grand. Our Herbert’s room has been going begging for months, as you know. All I’ll have to do is make the bed up. I keep everything aired and shipshape.’
Hannah didn’t doubt it. In the golden light from the lamps she could see that the cottage was as clean and bright as a new pin.
‘Thanks, Clara.’ Jake placed Hannah’s bag on the floor, which was covered from wall to wall with coconut matting, and then straightened. ‘I’ll come and see you in the morning and sort out about her board and all.’
‘Don’t worry your head about that, there’s no rush.’ Smiling at Hannah, she said,‘You’re more than welcome to stay as long as you like, lass, and I mean that. It’ll be nice to have another woman to talk to sometimes.’
‘Thank you.’ Hannah told herself she couldn’t cry now, not in front of them all. She hadn’t expected such a warm reception and it was weakening, undermining her resolve to put a brave face on things.Whether Clara sensed something was amiss Hannah didn’t know, but suddenly the little woman was all bustle, instructing her husband to get Jake a drink while she and Hannah sorted out the room upstairs.
It wasn’t a small room but it wasn’t large either and, like the sitting room, it was immaculately clean. The old floorboards had been scrubbed to a bleached anaemic colour and the curtains at the sash window were blanched, a faded pattern just visible. A thick clippy mat at the foot of the double bed provided a splash of bright colour in the neutral surroundings, and the bed itself consisted of a thin flock mattress on an iron frame. Besides the bed, the room held a small chest of drawers and a studded trunk in one corner, and two rows of pegs on the far wall took the place of a wardrobe.
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