Family Drama 4 E-Book Bundle (161 page)

There was silence and then the clanking of iron
wheels on rails in the distance. The world was going on just the same. No matter what tragedy she’d suffered it would go on turning.

She stood up, sobered, her head rinsed clear by tears, and began to walk slowly back towards Scarperton. Everywhere was shuttered and silent. Turning away from the station a name, a place came into her head and it was not far from here. It was worth a try. This time she hoped the gates of the asylum would open and shut her in.

The telegram from Mirren was brief.

‘DO NOT SEND SEARCH PARTY. I WILL CONTACT SOON. GOOD LUCK BEN. MIRREN.’

‘Now what are we to make of this? Another of her little tricks?’ sniffed Florrie.

‘She’s a funny one but at least we know she’s safe and in one piece. You hear such tales these days. I never slept a wink last night, wondering where she was, but she’s let us know even if it’s not good news.’

Ben was packing his things up, relieved that Mirren was safe. She’d gone on the razzle and sobered up enough to keep them in touch. She was too ashamed to come home until she had got her act together so she could fool them all again. This would be the pattern for years to come and he’d never be able to trust her not to have slipups.
It was all hopeless and beyond him. Better to get out now.

He couldn’t go on mollycoddling her. It was time to let go of his dream of ever having her to himself. Florrie was right: she was a hopeless cause. Time for a change of sky.

There was an agricultural college near York that was advertising courses for practical supporters and an emergency teaching diploma. It would do him good to have a look at other aspects of farming–arable and animal husbandry. Teaching was in his blood, after all. He might try another farm or go abroad.

He would like to learn more about proper crop growing after all the blunders they had made trying to grow oats in this high altitude. Perhaps he could take in some estate management. The possibilities were legion, but his heart would always be in limestone scree and pastures, here in the Dales.

There was no point hanging about. Tom gave him a bonus and some extra. He was letting them down but there would be men demobbed soon and back in the fields. He said his farewells and made for the station. No use hankering over what would never be. Time to move on. He was not wanted here.

17

They were sitting on the grass in the shade of one of the big ash trees. The asylum garden was well tended and it was a beautiful June afternoon so the group were meeting outside.

‘My name is Mirren, Miriam Sowerby, and I am an alcoholic.’ There, it was said, and it was as hard as giving birth to admit those words to herself and to a circle of patients in the very place she’d visited Jack not that long ago.

Dr Kaplinsky was sitting at the back, silent, watching her first confession.

‘I was teetotal until my daughter, Sylvia, died in an accident. My husband was a drinker, as was my father, but I thought I would never take to strong drink, especially whisky. But I did and it became my only source of comfort. I know now I can’t take anything with alcohol in it. One drink leads to another. I’ve not had a drink since May the eighth, the first anniversary of Sylvia’s death.
With God’s help I will try to go through this day without a drink.

‘To feed my habit, I stole things that weren’t mine, I betrayed a loving friendship. I let my family down but most of all I let myself believe it was everyone’s fault but mine for letting my child die in such a way. I blamed my husband and my cousin. There is no justice in life’s events and life’s not always fair or in my control. I see that now. Others have suffered like me one way or another but I must only talk about what I know.

‘I thought I was alone and abandoned, and I lay down on the railway track, wanting to die like Anna Karenina in the book, but I couldn’t do it. Don’t ask me why. I heard my dad’s voice calling me to get up and telling me off, and a man came out of nowhere and shooed me away so perhaps I was not meant to go in that fashion…I don’t know. Perhaps I didn’t end my life because I was too scared. I heard a train and I wanted to live. That’s all I know. Then I decided to come here and ask for help. Sounds simple but it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I hated this place when I visited Jack here but I know I can’t stay sober on my own.’

Everyone clapped.

‘You chose life, Mirren,’ said the man sitting next to her. ‘You chose life over death. Every day you say no to a drink, you choose life.’

‘Do you think so? How can I ever stay sober?’ she asked.

‘By doing what you’ve just done: acknowledging your weakness and asking for help from others, from a higher power than just your willpower. That way you’re never alone, never abandoned, and if it gets too much try to keep busy with other things. You can do it but it won’t be easy. One day at a time is all we can ask of ourselves,’ he said, and the others nodded.

A woman smiled and added, ‘There’ll always be temptation but put it in the corner of the room, not centre stage. Keep busy and you’ll find ways to be the master, not its slave. You can do it!’

Dr Kaplinsky edged forward. ‘Have you thought that May the eighth is a good date to remember? It will always be Victory in Europe and, of course, a sad day of loss for ever. But it is also for you, Miriam. Victory over alcohol, the day when you discovered your true self and began the battle you’ll have to fight for the rest of your life. Every time you choose to be sober, you win another victory. Sylvia and Jack will be proud.’

Mirren stayed in the hospital for six weeks, using her savings to pay for her stay. They had given her the latest electric pad treatment, shocked her brain, giving her such a headache and fuzzy feeling. Her mouth tasted of rubber but it was the talking with
other patients that helped her most, knowing they were all fighting the same battle to stay sober that she was.

There was nobody to rely on now but herself and the support of her new friends. Dr Kaplinsky and the nurse slowly taught her to respect her own strengths, to grieve over what had gone and to let it go, to plan ways to feel good again.

Somewhere in all their discussions she had discovered some way to forgive herself for being weak, to forgive Jack and Paddy too for being human like herself–no better, no worse. It would take a lifetime to fathom it all out.

How she longed for World’s End, for the peace and solitude it would give her.

In the high summer of 1946 when she returned to Cragside and got stuck into haymaking she was sad to see Ben had taken her advice and left. There was so much she wanted to tell him and share.

Tom was struggling and she stayed on at Cragside and tried to make her peace with Florrie, but it was not easy. Too much had happened. It was better just to help with the influx of summer visitors to the farm, cooking, cleaning, showing she meant business this time.

The visitors spilled out to World’s End Cottage, for the income was needed now.

In September she wrote to Dr Kaplinsky, thanking him for his help and offering World’s End as
a respite stop for any people he felt needed fresh air and quiet to get their broken lives back together again. All they needed to bring were their ration books.

She welcomed strangers, refugees, all sorts of humanity for a few weeks to walk the hills and draw breath. The path to World’s End was well trod.

She often thought of Ben, working across the county now, getting on with his life without her to worry about. She’d sent him away in a fit of pique and bitterly regretted his absence. Cragside was not the same without his cheery banter. They had said stuff she wished could be unsaid. She almost wrote to him but then thought better of it. Best to leave well alone. It was enough to get through each week sober.

Her greatest thrill was a trip to Scarperton long overdue, stepping down the cobbled street to see Sam Layberg’s shop to redeem Gran’s brooch. As luck would have it, the brooch was still in its box after all those months.

He stared up at her over his glasses and smiled as he handed it back.

‘I said I’d come for it. Took longer than I thought,’ she said.

He grinned. ‘You’ve kept your promise to yourself, young lady, and restored my faith in humanity. Wear it with pride. It’s too beautiful a jewel to be in a pawnshop, just like yourself.’

There was a spring in her step after that little remark. She crossed the road to avoid reminders of the Golden Lion, making for the Copper Kettle tearoom instead. In half an hour it would be time to catch a bus to the hospital for her monthly meeting with Dr Kaplinsky. This rendezvous was her lifeline, her hope for the future, her own World’s End.

Part Three
The Snow House

18

1947 She can just see the dark head among the buttercups, ribbons and ringlets bobbing in the wind, chasing across Stubbins pasture but the child is out of sight and suddenly there are nettles and tall burned grasses hiding her from view. She calls and calls but there is no answer.

Mirren was woken by the chill, dragged from her dreaming, dragged from the solace of chasing Sylvia. Why did she have to wake up?

Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;

She heard herself calling out the lines from her favourite Rossetti poem. Asleep, fully clothed on top of her bed again, woken only by the chill of the icy bedroom stabbing her back into consciousness, this was getting to be a habit, a lazy habit.

It was Sunday, with twenty cows to be milked, but no breakfasts to make for the men and time to please herself, she hoped, while cracking the ice in the water bowl. Had she remembered to bank up the Rayburn to keep the back boiler going?

This falling asleep fully clothed, piled high with musty blankets, had to stop. She opened the shutters to look out on the February morning.

If only the sky was not so pigeon grey, darkening from the north. She needed no weatherglass to know there was snow on the wind. The old fears were creeping into the corners of her mind, closer, closer, making her uneasy. She hated snow.

She would have to crack the ice on the water tank again with the axe. The chores were all hers for the day: buckets of water to the indoor beasts, mucking out, chickens to feed, fields to scan for sheep. Thank God most were gathered down from the fellside closer into the farm, but there were stragglers out on the tops that would need rounding up.

The lorry would not be dropping off Kurt and Dieter from the German POW camp to help with evening milking. It was church in Scarperton for them and a long trek back for Sunday dinner.

Florrie might call in for tea as usual, walking up from Windebank after taking her Sunday school class, if it faired up. They had made a truce of sorts since Mirren’s return. She liked to keep
an eye on her daughter-in-law, just in case. Even after all these sober months no one could quite believe she meant it.

Sunday or not, it was all the same here; udders must be emptied and milk collected up. The new live-in girl, Doreen, was visiting her parents, the cow man was courting down at Rigg village but if the weather closed in again she was in for a packet of trouble to deal with all by herself.

The snow fences needed repairing from the last downfall before Christmas, and they were getting low on fodder.

If it was bad Florrie would make straight for home back at Scar Head and she would be spared her incessant chatter about Ben’s new job on a farm near York. He wrote to Florrie but not to her. There was nothing to say. She’d shoved him away from the nest and he’d made another life. Good luck to him.

Florrie found comfort in her chapel work and seemed to think it was just what Mirren needed to come out of herself and be more sociable. Once she sat down to wolf down a plate of ham and eggs, there was no stopping her. It made Mirren’s ears ache, all that wittering on about having no new clothes to wear. Who had, after six years of war and nearly two more years of make do and mend?

Clothing coupons were the least of her worries.
How was she going to manage when Kurt and Dieter were repatriated? She’d fallen lucky with them. They were almost family now. They were farmers’ sons and needed no training up on chores. She saw to it that they were well fed and muscled up for the job. The rhythm of a farming life knew no war zones or language barriers. It was a good arrangement.

Then Sam Lund, the shepherd, put her in a mood by going on about the ring round the moon the other week and it being Candlemas. He didn’t like the signs if the sun was breaking through the clouds as it was now.

‘Aye, Missus Sowerby, three circles is a bad sign. A pale moon is growing snow, I reckon,’ he sighed, scratching his cap, searching the sky. ‘I’d rather see a wolf running with me flock than the sun out on Candlemas morn.’

She ignored his warning. Everyone knew February could go either way: snow or rain, black or white. Only a fool thought winter was over. It mostly never started until the back end of January but they’d had such a poor summer and rough December, a mild New Year ought to even things out, but when was life ever fair?

She was glad that Christmas was behind them. Florrie wanted to do it the traditional way: visiting other farms, cards round the table and chapel singalongs. Mirren tried to make a bit of an effort, inviting their Germans for a meal now that the
rules against fraternisation were lifted, killing a cockerel and boiling an apology for a Christmas pud just to show willing, but her heart wasn’t in it. Going through the motions sapped every ounce of her energy.

Christmas was for kiddies and families, and a dangerous time for drinkers. The big old Yewell celebrations before the war was what Florrie yearned for, before…No use going over all that.

There were just the three of them now, Mirren, Tom and Florrie, with lodgers in Cragside when they could get them. World’s End was deserted. Her supply of refugees had dried up for the winter. It was too grim in a cold farmhouse at the mercy of every whim of the weather.