Family Drama 4 E-Book Bundle (160 page)

It was the longest speech he'd ever heard from her. She looked up at him, rising quickly. ‘The war has a lot to answer for but it's over now and you've a new life to lead. I wish you well, Ben,' she whispered, patting him on the shoulder as she darted towards the door. ‘I'll bid you good night. There's a hot brick in the oven. Wrap it in the towel. We
can't spare water now for bottles. If you need a shave…' She paused, seeing his stubble.

‘I think I'll grow a beard. It'll keep my face warm and the ice off my lips.'

‘Pity,' she quipped. ‘It'll grow red and won't match your hair. You'll look like a Viking on the pillage.'

‘Who cares in this weather?' he laughed. ‘You look like a walking eiderdown.'

‘Precisely; anything to keep warm,' she replied. For a second there was a flash of the old banter between them. He'd heard more about her history today than in the whole of the time they had worked together. Perhaps because he was leaving she felt she could share stuff with him, trusting he'd tell no one. Perhaps she was relieved that he was off to pastures new, perhaps not; it was hard to tell with Mirren.

Yet Sylvia's name had been spoken just the once and before he left he wanted to beg a snap of his godchild from her. Surely that was not too much to ask.

Mirren lay in the dark, too stirred up to sleep. Grief never ends, she sighed and just the mention of that precious name brought back every second of that terrible day, and just that sniff of whisky in the snow brought so much back into her mind again. How easy it would be to slip, but the need was more bearable now. There was a sadness to
the edge of it that softened each haunting memory.

Death is for ever, and for months she couldn't let go of the hope that it was all a nightmare and she would wake up to see her baby's dark head on her pillow. It was never there and she'd gone on living, but it was a different life, with the terrible knowledge that awful things could happen again. She needed someone to hold her together in case she fell apart again.

Jack had been too shattered to do that and she hadn't been able to let anyone else near enough. Ben was strong but she had pushed him away and now he was going to the far ends of the earth to get away from her. All that anger and blame and fear had driven away friends and family until she was set up alone with strangers, her heart iced over with hurt and fear. Ben would find love and comfort, but she couldn't risk ever letting anyone close. For the first time for months she wept quietly, sitting up in the chill, fiddling for the candle, and that was when she felt something strange again. She was not alone. The house creepers were back.

For a second she tensed but it wasn't a physical presence, more a comforting presence all around her of women: farmers' wives who had paced these floors, treading the same Gethsemane road, a company of weeping women, Rachels weeping for their own lost children in the wee small hours of the night, mothers who couldn't be comforted. It
was this sharing of loss that bound her to Cragside for ever. A bit of Sylvia was here within these walls. How could she leave? She buried her head in her pillow.

Grief has its own milestones, its own sad progress, perhaps: Sylvia's birthday, Christmas, the anniversary and the ones to come. Each of these needed marking, and she had hidden all her pain away in suitcases or it had been done for her, and she had never bothered to sort out her daughter's clothes or her toys. What the eye didn't see…Now there was time. They were confined indoors, fast in, and Ben was the one person in the world who might help her face her fear. It would be the one last task they would share before he left. It was up to her to open the door, to clear the air once and for all.

At first she was cross because his coming messed up her solitary routine. It was duty that had dragged her out in the snow and duty that revived him, and yet the thought of him going away for good…He looked different, older and more careworn. He had suffered too in his exile. Tonight his presence was companionable and welcome. He smelled of earth, woodsmoke; honest sweat glistened on his brow in the firelight.

She noticed his broad hands stretched out for warmth; farmer's hands, chapped, gnarled with wind and rain, rough and even bigger than her own
spades. His palms were callused, blistered from all their shovelling, and just for one second she wondered what those hands would feel like dusting over her skin.

A frisson of shock sparked through her body. She had undressed him and sponged him down like a brother
in extremis
, but now she was curious and not a little shocked by the realisation that Ben might be her cousin and a friend, but in the firelight he was first and foremost a man.

‘Remember how Grandpa Joe used to say that a good bit of wood gave two heats?' Ben shouted as he split the logs with an axe.

‘Could we ever forget? The first was in the chopping and the second when it was on the fire,' Mirren said as she was loading the logs onto the foddering sled, layered up in coat, scarf and sacking hood.

Splitting the wood, crashing blade onto bark, was strangely soothing, releasing all his tension and stiffness. The pile was drying off by the fire. The last of the fallen trees stored under tarpaulin was damp, but dry enough at the core to eke out the peat.

Day was following night, and still it snowed. Their daily routine was digging a tunnel out to the cattle in the byre, which bellowed in protest at having only half-portions. Ben looked out across
an arctic landscape, snow on ice whipped into monumental sculptures. He thought of their flock still not rescued, heavy with lambs. No amount of wool would save them from this devouring monster. He turned back to his chore with a heavy heart.

There was relief in Mirren's eyes when he tackled something extra, but he felt uneasy. Something was shifting between them as if being stuck together was forcing some change. There was a tension that he couldn't explain, a restless nervous energy that was making them both busy themselves, always on the go, jumping up to see to a chore or to the stove, the dogs. When Mirren did sit down her right leg was bobbing up and down like a piston and she only did that when she'd something on her mind. He knew her so well, or he thought he did, but she was softer round the edges, her voice quieter and there was a look in her eye he'd never seen before when they talked about the old days at Cragside.

‘This house's a bit too big for one to manage,' he said, and then wished he hadn't.

‘Tom and Florrie are talking of giving up Scar Head and moving back here, I think to keep an eye on me,' she smiled. ‘They say it could do with knocking back.'

‘You can't do that! It's Cragside, it wouldn't be the same.'

‘I suppose it makes sense but I don't know what
the old ghosts will think about it if we do. Josiah Yewell spent his life turning his sow's ear of a farm into a silk purse and nearly beggared himself to keep his wives in china and embroidery silk, so Granny Adey told me once, but I don't know if it's true.'

‘I heard he stole a picture and was so in fear of hell that he sent it back to the artist but Dad said Grandpa was always full of fanciful tales. I wonder what tales will be told about us?'

‘You'll find gold in the outback, raise ten kids and make a fortune,' she laughed.

‘And you? Why aren't you at World's End and what's all this about it being a refugee camp, a holiday house for down-and-outs, as Florrie says, a proper league of nations up there?'

‘Who knows? I had to make something out of it. It's a special place, thanks to you. Maybe one of these days I'll return there and turn into Miss Havisham and stop all the clocks. I can't live alone here for ever–it's not economic. If this blow-in doesn't stop soon, the weight of ice will crack the slates, the beams will rot, the roof will cave in and I'll end up like Miriam of the Dale, hiding under the chimney, frozen to my lamp. Last night for the first time in ages I felt…no, you'll laugh,' she stopped.

‘Go on.'

‘I felt the past round me. I couldn't see anything but there was a mist and I knew they were there,
watching and waiting, nice ghosts like the ones at World's End. Am I going off my rocker?'

‘An old house is steeped in people's stories and feelings. Was Sylvia there?'

She didn't reply, but bent her head. ‘Why do you ask that?'

‘Because when I go round the rooms I can't see a single photo of her and I want to take one with me when I leave. I've been plucking up courage to ask you and if I don't say it now I never will. If you like, tell me where I'll find one and I won't mention her again, but I loved her too.'

‘I know and I'm sorry, but Florrie took the stuff away and I never asked where, and she's never said, but there must be some somewhere. Perhaps it's time I went and looked while you're here…It's not something to do on my own.' She paused, gazing out of the window. ‘Oh my God, look at that! Hares are foraging for food in the open. Things must be bad, get the gun. Quick, there's supper out there if you're still a crack shot!'

Ben shot up at her command and made for the gun cupboard.

Later he flung the carcass across the table with satisfaction. ‘That'll make a change from salt bacon.'

The smell of the jugged hare boiling wafted through the kitchen, raising Mirren's spirit at the thought of a feast. She would make a batter pudding with
rhubarb jam and topped with cream. The wind was howling through the doors and a sad bunch of bedraggled sheep were bleating outside but they were on rations that were fast running out.

The two of them were cocooned inside now that it was dark, and might as well make the most of it. She saved some precious hot water for a strip wash. Tonight she would drop her breeches and put on a thick skirt, take off the old Land Army jumper and find something half decent to honour the poor beast that was cooking up a treat on the range.

It was agony stripping off in the icy blast, but she'd put a hot brick round her undies and Gran's old paisley shawl. For once she would attempt to look half human, but why the fashion parade now was hard to fathom. It was something about reminding her and, by default, Ben that she was still a woman, not a snowball. She wanted him to remember her as she once was, and not the fierce animal that had brayed at him before he left. She unrolled her hair and let it hang down to her shoulders for a change, looked in the mirror and decided to pin it back up again. No use frightening the man.

‘You'll do,' she pouted back at her reflection. How long was it since she had dressed up for anyone? Her legs had not seen daylight for months. Florrie would be impressed by this effort. She was
all dolled up like a dog's dinner, wondering if it was a bit much.

The tantalising smell was wafting upstairs, and Mirren knew that dratted Ben had left the blanket off the door and the door open. Every degree of heat must be saved. The draught was that keen in the hall it would cut them in two. Time to get down and brave the stairs, dart back into the kitchen and see to the dinner.

It was strange eating at night. But there was no time in the day to cook up much. Doreen was the one to see to the meals for everyone. Beasts came first and then, as there were only two of them, they must forage for themselves. Tonight they deserved a reward for all their hard work.

Tomorrow she must scrape out the last of the oats and make up some oatbreads to hang on the pulley to dry. With cheese from the dairy, they wouldn't starve, and there was always the sack of the National Flour that tasted of floor sweepings, but with some treacle cake mixed in it wasn't so bad.

Tonight they were eating civilised, like the toffs, in celebration of shooting the hare and for keeping the show on the road. There was nothing more they could do to save their flock. You had to admit when you were beaten, Mirren sighed, and Nature as always was having the last word.

*

They sat stoking up the fire, full to bursting after the dinner, warmed through with a hot toddy of spiced elderberry cordial.

‘Grandpa Joe was wrong about there being only two heats from wood. There's a third, don't you think, the one you get from just looking at the flames and the colours? It cheers your soul,' Ben said.

‘I never took you for a romancer,' Mirren laughed. ‘But happen you're right.'

He was touched she had made an effort to change for supper and he was glad he had put on a clean shirt and his dried-off tweeds.

There was another heat tonight that he didn't like to share: a spark of interest in her eyes when she looked at him and held his gaze just a little too long for comfort, making him want to look away. It didn't take much for a spark to ignite into a flame but he drew back at such a thought. What if he got it wrong?

From the first second he opened his eyes and saw Mirren's worried face, her hands rubbing life back into him, all the old feelings had come rushing back: admiration, concern, gladness that they were still friends, but most of all a stirring in his groin that would never go away when she was close.

They sat side by side, savouring the chickeny meat, the pot herbs and vegetables. He kept darting
glances at the flames shooting up into the grate, feeling content for the first time in months.

Is this what marriage was about, going about jobs side by side, sitting in companionship sharing the triumphs and disasters of the day? Only the silence between them wasn't so comfortable now. There were things to discuss, feelings to sort out and a photograph to find. He meant to keep her to her promise and now was as good a time as any, but she was quick to seize the moment.

‘Shall we play cards?' she said, jumping up to the sideboard. ‘It's too early for bed yet.'

‘We could listen to the wireless,' Ben countered.

‘There's only a little juice left in the battery and we need to listen out for news. If it gets worse they'll have to do a drop. They did it before.' Mirren was back to her usual practical self.