All the dear faces (76 page)

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They were hand in hand, looking, Phoebe screeched at them, like two lovers wandering in the sunshine beside a summer lake. Had they no thought for anyone but themselves, for God's sake? Her voice became even more frenzied as she scrambled over tumbling rocks and great fallen trees, ready to knock their two silly heads together in her wild fear. She and Charlie had thought Annie had drowned and really, she might have come up and told them she was still alive. She had the baby under one arm, bouncing her about like a half-filled flour sack which Beth submitted to amiably enough, and behind her was Charlie, his strained face breaking out at the sight of them into that wide, endearing grin they knew so well. Neither seemed surprised to see Reed and why should they, for did not the most amazing things occur in Annie Abbott's turbulent life
?

Yes, yes, Upfell had been saved by some fluke which had sent the main torrent racing to Chapel Beck and not in the direction of their farm. Of course it was flooded and there was some damage . . . Long Beck? They didn't know but as it was higher up the valley perhaps, but for God's sake, did it matter? Jesus Christ, did it matter? They were alive. They were all alive and unhurt . . . when they had seen Browhead, not that there was much left of it. Dear God in Heaven, did Annie know? They had thought. . .
.

Here Phoebe began to cry inconsolably, a great precipitation as immense as the one they had just survived, burying her face in the soft neck of the startled baby.

“
Phoebe . . . Phoebe, darling. . . ."

“
Give over, Annie Abbott, don't tha' say 'owt or I'll land thi' one. I were right worried. . . ." she wailed, her normal guarded reserve breaking down in the face of her vast relief
.

Wordlessly Annie put her arms about her friend, the
only one she had had before Charlie came, and they stood clasped together, the baby between them, watched by Charlie and Reed, themselves inclined to blink rapidly and clear their throats a time or two
.

They wept in one another's arms, Phoebe and Annie, in sorrow for what had gone and would never be replaced, for Cat and Natty and perhaps Browhead; in thankfulness for what was left and in sudden joy when two bedraggled forms crept hesitantly over the gouged out enormity of what had once been an ancient oak tree. They hesitated for a moment,
Blackie
and Bonnie, then raced ecstatically across the sodden ground towards the two women.

“
Now then, don't tha' go puttin' tha' great muddy paws on my skirt," Phoebe remonstrated tartly to the two animals, "oh, an' that cat's sittin' skrikin' on top o't'wall back at Browhead. 'Appen tha'd best go an' see to it, Annie Abbott."

AUDREY HOWARD

ALL THE DEAR FACES

Edwardian Liverpool — the greatest port in the Empire, a sprawling, brawling city of poverty and wealth, slum tenements and civic pride, vice and hard-won respectability
.

Mara O'Shaughnessy, eighth of thirteen children, longs to escape from the crowded tumult of her family, while her sister Caitlin, quiet but determined, is already, to her mother's horror, involved with the Suffragettes
.

Woodall Park, 2,000 acre estate home of Elizabeth and her parents, Sir Charles and Lady Woodall, could have been a million miles away. With their neighbours, the Osbornes of Beechwood Hall, life is lived in servanted ease, country pursuits and suitable marriages
.

Yet in the golden years before World War I, Liverpool Irish and English gentry are to become fatefully, passionately entangled ..
.

HODDER AND STOUGHTON PAPERBACKS