Family Drama 4 E-Book Bundle (139 page)

‘What do you do to help him?’ Jack stared her back, his dark eyes piercing into hers. She looked away into the distance, not sure where all this was leading. Teachers were there to drum stuff in. Mirren
had never thought of them as having headaches and homes and pain, just like everyone else. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Come on, you know how to be helpful, fetch and carry, look interested when he’s talking. You could be quite pretty if you smiled more.’

‘Thanks for nothing,’ she quipped, but was interested just the same.

‘There you go, thinking of yourself. You’ve got the brains, so use them. Work it out like arithmetic. Don’t sit there feeling sorry for yourself. Give him some hope by passing the blessed qualifying exams. Show him you’re a winner. If you get stuck I’ll always help if I can.’

Why was Jack being so kind? Was it something to do with the fact that Uncle Tom was visiting his mam a lot?

‘Is World’s End haunted?’ she asked, changing the subject.

‘What do you think? You’re the one that slept there.’

‘I wish I could go and live up there like a shepherd, and go for walks and keep hens and not have to go to school,’ she sighed.

‘By the time you’re ready to leave, it’ll have fallen down. It’s like an eagle’s eyrie up there, but very lonely,’ Jack smiled, showing a line of white teeth.

‘We mustn’t let it fall down. It’s my friend and I want to live up there one day,’ Mirren replied.

‘Don’t be daft. Whatever could you do up there? It’s a poor living off thin topsoil. Even I know that.’

‘I don’t care. They mustn’t pull it down. Uncle Tom could mend it.’ Then she remembered that she was in the doghouse and Uncle Tom wouldn’t do anything if she didn’t go back to school.

‘Why should he help you when you won’t go back to school?’ Jack had read her thoughts.

‘If I go back and behave, will he mend the roof for me?’ she smiled.

‘Well, that’s a start, but you’ll have to ask him yourself and he’s got other ideas in his head at the moment. He’s courting my mam, by the looks of things.’

‘Do you mind?’ she asked, not sure what courting meant.

‘Nothing to do with me…Mam’s a widow. As long as he doesn’t want me to be a farmer. You’ve got a few bridges to mend before you ask any favours off anyone.’

She looked at Jack, her hero, with growing admiration. He was already at the boys’ grammar school, and if he was on her side the battle was as good as won.

Her battle was yet to come in going down to Windebank with her tail between her legs but if it meant a new roof on World’s End, then it was worth it.

That night on the moor had changed everything. She knew now she was part of these hills like her ancestors before her: Miriam and Sukie and Adey and Mother.

Sitting in the twilight of that icy December afternoon, Mirren knew that one day she would make this farming way of life her own, but how she wasn’t sure. Tomorrow she must make her peace with Mr Burrows. That was enough to be going on with…

In the days that followed the snow fell hard and there was no school, no chance to find a path to World’s End. By the time New Year came and went, she was much too busy with lessons to think much about it again.

5

29 June 1927

The total eclipse of the sun was going to be the most exciting event in Mirren Gilchrist’s life since that snowstormy night at World’s End.

Granny Yewell was throwing a leaflet from the council on the table, telling them the hours when they must dowse their fires, so as not to spoil sightings of the sun with smoke. ‘If I hear one more word about this blessed eclipse…’ she called out to Grandpa Joe, who was kicking off his boots in the back porch and then knocking over his mug of tea on the clean tablecloth.

‘There, look what you’ve done,’ she snapped. ‘What a fuss about nothing. You’d think it were the end of the world!’

Poor Gran got so flustered and crabby when the farm workers invaded her kitchen, but there was always something warm waiting for Mirren on the table after school: a pot of broth or warm
oven-bottom teacakes dripping with rhubarb jam. Adey Yewell had taken a great interest in her schooling ever since she’d marched down to Windebank with her hackles raised on her granddaughter’s behalf and tore a strip off Mr Burrows.

‘We can’t have our lass wasting that brain of hers trying to knock some learning into lumps o’ lard like Billy Marsden. You should be grateful to have such talent. I want no more nonsense. She’s taken her punishment from us so just you treat her right or you’ll have me to deal with!’ Of course, news quickly spread and the whole village was agog at Adey’s stand. Mirren felt so proud of her.

Now that Mirren and Mr Burrows had come to an understanding after she wrote her own letter of apology, and the vicar had stepped in as referee with the family over the runaway episode, school was not so boring. She was going to be put in for a prize scholarship. The Head was giving her extra coaching and he didn’t have whisky breath any more. A new girl called Lorna Dinsdale arrived in Mirren’s class. They became best friends and they were both trying for the scholarship together: no skiving off for Mirren with Lorna chasing her heels in class for top marks.

One of their projects was to study the total eclipse of the sun, due that summer, and the vicar brought in lantern slides to explain the ‘fenominer’ and how their dale was to be honoured with the
best view in the whole of England. It was the centre of Totality. The sun was going to be eclipsed completely right above Mirren’s head.

No one in the village could talk of anything else because every farmhouse, cottage and hotel was going to be booked up with visitors. There was brass to be made.

‘Aye,’ Joe replied to Adey, mopping up the spilled tea, giving his wife and granddaughter one of his twinkling looks. ‘Who knows what the Good Lord in His mercy, who sets His firmament in the sky and causes the sun to go down at noon, has in store for us? It’s all there in the Good Book. I shall be taking mesen off to the highest spot to stand before my Maker. I’ll be nearer heaven should I be taken up to glory and you should all be doing the same.’

Grandpa Joe was of the old school of local preachers; just like the preachers in the Band of Hope at Scarperton, well drenched in the Holy Bible, never considering he had done service to his Lord unless he had his congregation whipped up into a frenzy of enthusiasm, making their Sunday roast dinners dry out in weariness by the length of his preaching, but she loved him dearly. There was always a sweetie in his pocket for her and a twinkle in his eye.

‘Now then, none of that talk afore the lass,’ Gran said, seeing Mirren’s wide eyes on stalks. ‘I’ll have
enough to do making breakfasts for all them folk thronging the hillsides for a good view. It’ll be all hands to the pump, Joe. I want that yard spotless.’

Mirren knew they’d put their names down on the Eclipse Committee to provide field parking, hot breakfasts and some overnight accommodation when the world came to Windebank. All this work for a little extra brass in the kitty would be useful come the autumn when she must be kitted out far winter: clogs, shoes, uniform. Her legs just kept growing out of things. There was a limit to how far the egg money would stretch, but she would do the work and collect the takings. That was what this coming eclipse was all about.

They had seven bedrooms and she must go in the attic while Grandpa Joe could kip in the stable loft for one night and the family visitors would sleep in the upper parlour on a camp bed. Gran would charge ten shillings a night for the privilege of sleeping in her best rooms and full breakfast.

Organising parking in the fields would be Uncle Tom’s job with Uncle Wesley’s boy, Ben, from Leeds, but they were all moaning about the wetness of the spring and the awful summer so far, and Tom didn’t want his fields poached or the lambs disturbed by vehicles.

Gran suggested they open the fields for campers, tents and cyclists, and charge at least a shilling per person. It was only for one night.

‘You’re a hard woman,’ Joe smiled, sipping from his refilled mug of tea with relish.

‘Someone has to be in this house,’ she argued. ‘You’re as soft as butter with yer head either stuck in a milk pail or in another world, on yer knees night and day waiting for the call to glory. If thousands of mugginses want to traipse up here for a clear view, then let them pay for it, I say.’

‘That’s hardly the spirit, Mother, of a good Christian woman,’ he tried to tease her, twinkling those blue eyes, but she was not for soft-soaping.

‘Life’s shown me that you don’t get owt for nowt in this world. We’ve a bairn now to feed and clothe. You have to take yer chances, as well you know, and this event won’t happen again in our lifetime right slap-bang in this dale. The minute the shadows are over, I’ll stoke up my fire and make a hundred breakfasts if I have to. Think of the brass.’

‘There’s more to life than brass, Adey,’ said Grandpa Joe.

‘My name’s Adeline, as well you know, but it’s brass as polishes the silver, keeps us all fed and clothed. We live off our wits and off our land. The land can give us a bonus this year, that’s all,’ she answered. ‘The girl’ll have to do her stuff too and earn her keep.’

Mirren sensed that her gran got tired of having a boisterous child around when the rest of her
family was grown up. She tried not to show it but it sort of leaked out at the corners. The coming of the city hordes was a worry to her, not being used to throngs of people.

‘I don’t like offcumdens wandering where they will, knocking down walls and leaving litter, frightening and stealing. I shall keep out of their way,’ Adey added.

‘They’d not want to meet you on a dark night with yer dander up. No need to put up any sign “BEWARE OF BULL” but “BEWARE OF FARMER’S WIFE’”, Grandpa laughed, but Gran was not amused.

They were always arguing and bickering, and sometimes forgot she was there, but they were kindly and welcoming so that the sad life in the Rabbit Hutches seemed a long time ago. She wished she could remember her own mam. All she had of her was the photographs in her father’s tin box, but being here she could imagine her as a little girl on the farm and wonder how she could ever have left such a beautiful place.

Sometimes they sat her by the fire and quizzed her about life in the Hutches but Mirren only told them the good bits. The bad times were hidden at the back of her head and not for sharing.

Cragside was a house full of men with Grandpa Joe, Uncle Tom, the yard boys and shirts to iron. Mirren helped Carrie where she could but Uncle
Tom, up at Scar Head, was in want of a wife to do all his laundry, and needed regular pies and bread to keep him stocked up. The news that he was courting was a great relief, but Florrie Sowerby worked in The Fleece, which didn’t go down so well.

Grandpa teased Mirren that she was growing into the bonny bairn of the dale, the bobby-dazzler with golden curls and bluebell eyes, fringed with long lashes. She’d rather be a boy and race around the school playground with a football, never sitting still, scourge of the Sunday school trying to catch up with Jack Sowerby, who ignored her when he was with his friends. She palled up in mischief with anyone who’d let her join their gang. The village girls gave her a wide berth but Lorna stuck to her side.

No one seemed to fuss much over appearance but Uncle Tom knew the way to her heart and sometimes brought her ribbons and crayoning books from the market. Sometimes he brought Florrie’s son Jack to help out on the farm. They would all be coming to help out with the parking and cooking.

Mirren’s hair was bobbed short now. It was easier to manage than plaits. Grandpa Joe complained she looked like a lad, which pleased her no end.

Gran was not one for titivating her appearance to please her man. She preferred sludge colours,
plain shirts and pinafores with her greying hair scraped back.

Farm cooking was plain and simple with ‘no frills and fancies’. They baked rabbit pies and rib-sticking milk puddings, food to fill bellies and stave off hunger until the next feed. There was no time on a busy farm for fancy baking and showing off, Gran declared, so each week’s menu followed a regimental order: roast, cold, mince, pie, hash, stew. Who needs a calendar when you can tell the day of the week by the dish of the day? Mirren thought. The days of bread and dripping and what her dad called ‘push pasts’ with Granny Simms were long gone.

As they went about morning chores, Gran was barking out lists and orders for the coming invasion. This kitchen was her world and she ruled it like a sergeant major. Sometimes Mirren caught the sharp end of her tongue and wondered why Gran was being so hard.

It was Uncle Tom who told her the tale of Adey’s parents, who were farmers up the dale, who’d killed a cow for their own use and then when others fell dead and anthrax was discovered, it was too late for them to survive. Gran was boarding with an aunt near Settle and banished from any contact. She never saw her parents again or got to say farewell, and never went back to visit the spot. The farm was boarded up and the land useless. It
would never be farmed again in her lifetime. She was the object of curiosity and pity for a while. Who wanted a child of anthrax victims on their land?

This made Mirren sad too, for she knew how it felt to be left alone in the world at the mercy of strangers. She was glad that Grandpa Joe had made Gran happy and she, in turn, ploughed all her love into running her side of the dairy, butter and cheese making and housekeeping as efficiently as she could. No one could ever say Adeline Yewell was a shirker of duty who let dust settle, or a lazy mother whose lads wore grey shirts not white, or one who kept a poor table and empty cake tins. Just when she was due a rest, along came Mirren to spoil the show.

Now Gran was going to make sure that the money pot on the mantelpiece would be stuffed full of brass by the end of this eclipse but she’d not be giving this sun dance a second glance herself.

Mirren loved Cragside. No one had a house as big or grand as this one. Only Benton Hall was bigger and it had been a hospital for the soldiers in the war who couldn’t walk or talk. In her eyes Cragside was a fairy castle high on the hill. She was the princess in the turret, huddled under the goosedown quilt as the wind whistled around, the candle flickering in the draught, while Jack Frost
painted ice pictures on her window. She felt safe here, the house wrapped its arms around her, shielding her from ghosts and ghoulies of the night.