Larkrigg Fell (42 page)

‘I know, but it’s money in hand. We do have to eat and pay rent.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ and he stormed off, quite forgetting that he’d promised to take William. Their contentment, it seemed, was rapidly on the decline.

The day of the sale dawned bright and clear, a bonny day that would have warmed Seth’s old heart. The cars, pick-ups and vans started to arrive early, parking with difficulty on a damp field that would be churned to mud by nightfall.

All the family came, anxious not to miss a thing, followed by friends and neighbours ready to pay their respects to an old friend and view the end of several generations in farming, as well as keep an eye open for a bargain among the accumulated clutter. A clutch of second home owners arrived in their Rovers and BMWs, looking for bygones to adorn their rural retreats. The tourist and curious onlooker who would buy nothing, and the usual band of dealers seeking something cheap they could sell on at twice the price.

Billy was installed in a chair close by the auctioneer, to keep an eye on things and regale close friends with any homespun tales of the items as they came up.

Beth, assisted by Meg and Ellen, was inside setting out plates of pasties, scones, cakes and biscuits on trestle tables loaned by the auctioneer. Sally Ann had borrowed a tea urn from the church hall and they all set to, to dispense several dozen mugs of tea during the course of the day, and sufficient sustenance for everyone, as and when required.

Andrew stood at the back of the crowd, hands thrust deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched, acutely aware of the waves of sympathy and curiosity among those present and hating them for it.

Tom Briskett had offered him two days work with his sheep up on the high fells. He supposed he’d have to take it. There’d been nothing else. His own prize beef cattle had already gone to market and sold. On that day Andrew had thought his heart would break. The sheep would be next.

And when everything had gone, would it be then that Beth would finally leave him?

‘Now what do we have here?’ The auctioneer worked his way through a miscellany of items from cocoa tins of nuts and bolts, bent hay rakes, fencing posts, parts of long lost engines and forgotten tools, and reeking bottles of sheep salve that hadn’t been used since before the war. ‘The first war that is,’ he quipped, putting it in a box with cattle wormer and other half empty drenches and doses.

Gradually, lot by lot, everything went under the hammer. If no one bid for it, the rejected item was added to the next and the next, and so it would go on until everything was cleared and the farm and fields stood empty.

Andrew watched bleakly as Seth’s precious tools were sold, Billy’s voice often piping up to explain their purpose to the young, check-shirted farmers who gathered about with interest.

Should he have risked taking on a mortgage, for Beth’s sake? But there was little point in mourning over that now. It would have been huge, and how could he ever have made the payments?

A buyer had been found for the house before auction, offering a fair price but it meant the end of its farming days. The new people, high-flyers from Birmingham were seeking a quiet bolt-hole in the country, far away from the cut and thrust of their business lives. Well, he thought grimly, they’d find quietness here all right.

Children ran about squealing, plump wives picking through linen and pots and pans, enjoying the day out. Even from this distance he could see his mother’s best blue and white china glinting in the sun. It brought a sour taste to his mouth. He supposed he should be thankful that the family had allowed them first pick of a few essential bits and pieces without, as Cedric had pointed out, charging them for it. Andrew had carried them round to the rented cottage last night and his heart had clenched at the smallness of it. He’d go mad in there, he was certain of it. Beth deserved better. Why couldn’t he be man enough to provide it?

The crowd followed the auctioneer up and down the lines of equipment, set out in rows along the length of the big field. Old ploughs and seed-drills, sheets of corrugated iron, spades of every shape and size, hoes, rakes, a scythe sharpened away to a blade so fine it might snap in two and would probably end its day stuck to someone’s fireplace wall.

‘What on earth is that, Andrew lad?’ A cheerful voice at his elbow. He answered without thinking, his heart plummeting. ‘An iron clog - a patten Seth called it, that he buckled over his boot when he was using a spade for heavy digging. Said he’d worn it since he were a lad at the turn of the century.’

‘By heck, I haven’t seen one of them in years. I’ll bid for it.’

Andrew managed a bitter smile as the much loved patten went for a few pence to his farmer friend, together with a pair of hedging mitts. It seemed in a way to symbolise an age of slower pace, an age of stability and innocence. One which had changed only with the passing seasons and not at the dictate of politics, banks or selfish greed. His world was disappearing, piece by piece before his eyes and he could do nothing to stop it.

Andrew was ashamed to find a glimmer of tears in his eyes as he watched the tractor go, though he was glad to see it bought by an old friend from a neighbouring farm. That tractor had been his personal responsibility, and he couldn’t have nursed or cared for it better had it been able to live and breathe.

Needing escape from his emotions, he turned on his heel and strode from the field, going in search of Beth and a restorative mug of tea. He caught sight of her through the open door of the kitchen, looking harassed and ruffled, pressing a hand to the small of her back. He should take better care of her. She was carrying his bairn after all.

Then he saw her half turn and her pale face light up. His heart missed a beat and he wished he could see who it was who stood just behind his kitchen door and brought such a radiant smile to his wife’s face. Then the person stepped forward. A young woman. Tessa? The two of them were hugging and laughing and jumping about like excited young schoolgirls.

Thank God it wasn’t Pietro.

Andrew sounded almost jovial as he called out her name, and didn’t flicker an eyelid when he saw she had Jonty with her.

They’d recently moved back to the dale, it seemed, after living with Tessa’s mother these last years while Jonty had treatment and physiotherapy. Now he looked bright and healthy for all he was still confined to a wheelchair. And his arms and shoulders were even more powerful than before, as he spent so much time working-out each day, he told them, to keep strong and supple.

The two men eyed each other with suspicion and restrained courtesy.

‘We’ve bought one of those new bungalows at the end of Quarry Row, would you believe? It’ll be perfect for Jonty.’

‘Thanks to her mum,’ Jonty put in, without a trace of bitterness.

Beth was delighted. Even Andrew expressed his pleasure, glad that Beth would have a friend nearby, at least. Beth herself, who had been secretly dreading the move but had been too afraid of revealing her true feelings to Andrew, couldn’t believe her luck. Having Tessa close by would make it all bearable.

‘This means our two boys can be friends too. Oh, that’s brilliant. How is little James?’

Tessa gave a wry smile. ‘Not so little any more. They aren’t babies long. He runs rings round the pair of us, I can tell you. When do you move in?’

‘Soon,’ Beth told her. Then a farmer’s wife asked for two teas, scones and jam, and there was no more time for gossip.

‘We’ll have lots of time to talk later,’ Tessa promised. ‘I’ve so much to tell you.’

The small living room was stacked high with boxes, and tiredness overwhelmed her as Beth was faced with unpacking and tidying yet another new home. William was fractious, constantly wailing and perversely wanting to crawl everywhere he shouldn’t. He opened tins and boxes, tipping the contents out all over the floor with great gurgles of glee, and putting things in his mouth which Beth had to keep taking from him, to prevent him from hurting himself. She was bone weary. Every ounce of energy seemed to have drained from her body.

Billy had moved into a smart new flat in Kendal and the house which had served as farm and family home for two hundred years or more was theirs no longer. The last stick of furniture had been cleared from Cathra Crag, the rooms swept and mopped out, everything gone except for the big kitchen table which had been sold with the house.

Much of the land had been sold off to neighbouring farmers, save for an acre or two around the house, together with a goodly number of the heaf-going sheep which belonged to it.

Andrew and Beth had moved into Number Two, Quarry Row, with a few pots and pans and armfuls of bed linen. Try as she might, Beth found it hard not to let her mind wander back to those early days in Lakeland when she had been young and filled with dreams. She’d thought Larkrigg Hall was the answer to everything, and yet it had brought nothing but unhappiness and disaster. She had hoped to live there, with Pietro, for the rest of her life, but he’d chosen her sister instead, as all men did, and she had lost them both.

In the end, as expected, Sarah had tired of him. Only it had taken too long and was much too late for it to make any difference to Beth’s life. Sarah was still in Italy, still enjoying a carefree youth. And Beth was here in this rented cottage, feeling old and worn out, with nothing to call her own, and a husband who was unemployed, and she may not even love.

Guiltily she pushed these betraying thoughts aside and opened a box, rubbing the small of her back with a tired gesture. Why hadn’t she labelled them? Where on earth had she put the kettle?

‘No, William. Let mummy open the boxes. You play with your bricks.’ A wail of protest. ‘All right then, you can sit in the box, let me take out the flour and jams first.’

‘Tractor,’ he yelled, and she had to laugh as he climbed in among the kitchen groceries and started to drive the cardboard box with many vrum-vrum noises.

If this tiny living room couldn’t match the elegance of the drawing room at Larkrigg, at least there could be happiness here. And she wouldn’t ask herself what her feelings were for Andrew. Far too complicated. And looking back, nursing a nostalgic yearning for a certain artist’s smooth-skinned beauty, did no good at all.

Beth set about filling every jug with flowers to bring some brightness into the cottage and cheer her. ‘There, isn’t that pretty?’

William was too busy tipping soap flakes all over the floor to be interested in flowers.

‘Hello. Anyone home?’

‘Ellen.’ Beth took one look at her friend and promptly burst into tears.

‘Nay, I may not be beautiful but I don’t usually get such a reaction.’ Shocked and distressed, Ellen wasted no time in putting Beth straight to bed with a large mug of hot tea laced with sugar and stern instructions not to move a muscle.

Then she went through the little house as she said herself later, like a hot knife through butter. Every floor swept and scrubbed, every shelf polished, every cupboard and drawer lined with fresh paper, every item orderly and shipshape.

‘Amazing how I still remember what my mother taught me,’ she said, laughing as she pulled on her coat. ‘There’s a stew in the oven. Now I have to go and feed my zoo. I’ll call tomorrow to help you finish off.’

‘Oh, Ellen. I’m so very grateful.’

When Andrew came in he never even noticed the flowers, or the fact that the house was all unpacked and tidy. He ate the stew which Ellen had prepared, bubbling with renewed energy, talking all the time. ‘I’m going to see a chap over Sedbergh way tomorrow. I’ve heard on the grape-vine that he’s looking for a man.’

‘Sedbergh? But that’s miles away.’

‘It’s work, Beth. And its a big farm.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. It would be wonderful if you could find a really good job.’

‘I will, trust me.’
 

‘I do.’

He left at dawn, buoyed up with new hope and later that morning Tessa called and they sat sipping coffee and giggling like schoolgirls over silly jokes and memories of old times.

‘Do you remember that goat?’

‘Oh yes, milk squirting everywhere except in the bucket.’

‘Jonty chasing it half across the fell.’ They were off again, hooting with laughter.

‘We won’t wake William, will we?’ she asked, wiping the tears from her eyes and nodding in the direction of the toddler’s snuffling snores. Beth chuckled.

‘It’d take dynamite.’

‘And soon you’ll have another.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you pleased?’

‘Actually yes, I am. Two years between them seems about right.’ Her face momentarily clouded. ‘But life’s a bit tough for us right now. Andrew is finding it hard to settle without the farm, and getting a good job isn’t proving easy.’

‘Will you find one? After the baby’s born, I mean.’

Beth sipped at her tea and considered. ‘I’ve never had any urge to be a powerful businesswoman. Having said that, we could do with a bit more money.’

‘Let me show you what I’ve been up to since I last saw you.’ Tessa brought out a portfolio filled with paintings. They were mainly of birds, her favourite subject. Bold colours, strong lines, beautiful pictures. ‘Jonty helps me by preparing the canvases and framing the finished pictures. He’s very good at it. Do you like them?’