Luckpenny Land (2 page)

‘Identity?’ Her father’s scathing tone made the word sound somehow not quite decent. ‘Thee’s my daughter, that’s who thee are. What’s wrong with that?’

Meg sighed, knowing he would never understand but unable to prevent herself from trying. ‘I mean I’ve nothing that’s just
mine
. No time to call my own, not a penny to spend that hasn’t to be accounted for.’

‘What do you need money for? Fol de rols, I suppose. Useless flibbertigibbets.’

Meg rubbed her forehead, which was starting to ache from the day’s endless arguments. ‘Don’t talk daft.’

‘Daft, am I? When have you ever gone short? Tell me that. You only have to ask.’

‘That’s just the point. Why should I have to ask? It’s undignified, having to ask every time I need something.’ Meg thought of her friend, Kath, who had a monthly allowance paid into her bank account, and knew a twinge of uncharacteristic envy.

‘I’m your father,’ Joe said stolidly, as if that explained everything. ‘I hope I can keep my family without help from a slip of a girl.’ Twin spots of colour lit the high cheek bones.

‘But I want to do it. Mrs Blamire gets run off her feet and says she can’t cope with all the cooking and serving on busy days, as she did when she was younger.’

‘Mrs Blamire may do as she thinks fit, but no daughter of mine will work in a taproom. If women’d stop at home where they belong we’d soon cure the unemployment problem, you mark my words. Wilful, that’s what you are, and it’s time you learnt your place.’ Dark brows met with the ferocity of his anger. ‘You have the hen money. It was allus good enough for thee mother.’

But Meg wasn’t for letting go easily, not now she’d got this far. In truth she didn’t rightly know what she wanted but her confused mind desperately searched for something. She couldn’t even put a name to it. Freedom? A purpose to her mundane life? Something beyond bringing in the coal bucket. She didn’t particularly like the idea of working in a pub but it had been a job she could do, with money of her own at the end of it. The feeling had been a good one. And now it was gone and her father would never permit her to find another.

But somewhere, somehow, there must be a place for her. A place beyond this kitchen.

On her feet now, her small pert bosom rising and falling on shallow breaths of anxiety, she met Joe Turner’s gaze with commendable courage and battled on. ‘I’m not me mother. I can’t take her place for you. Things have changed since her day. Women should have the same right to work as men do.’

‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’

The cold anger on his face was such that Meg quailed slightly and decided her to take a different tack. Deliberately she softened her voice. ‘Cock and Feathers is a respectable house and I’d get up early and see to your breakfast before I went. I’ve plenty of time to sell the eggs and vegetables at the market before I start, and after I finish I’d see you all had a hot dinner to come home to. You’d never notice I was gone.’
 

Not entirely unaware of his daughter’s burgeoning womanhood, for the most part Joe chose to ignore it. But he certainly knew how to protect it.

‘Thee would be open to all manner of lewd remarks from the scuff of the gutters that frequent such places. I hope I know my duty as a good Christian better than to let you. I’ll hear no more about it. I have my reputation to keep up at chapel. What would they think? That I couldn’t afford to keep me own daughter at home? It don’t bear thinking of. Working in a pub indeed, where folk spend money they can’t afford on demon drink. It didn’t take long for someone to see you and tell our Dan, now did it?’

Meg opened her mouth to protest that Dan had gone in the Cock and Feathers himself for the purpose of drinking, but thought better of it. It would only make matters worse.

‘Finish the washing up and get to bed.’

Joe’s tone was stark in its decisiveness and he turned away to pull on the old mackintosh that hung steaming before the fire. ‘And there’ll be no dancing for you tonight. You’d best stop in for a bit, see if that’ll get rid of your hysterics.’

Meg’s heart plummeted and all her defiance fled. She could still recall the humiliation of being kept in for a whole month after she had once dared visit the Roxy Picture House in Kendal.

It had been her sixteenth birthday and she and her best friend, Kath Ellis, had ridden in on their bikes to celebrate by drooling over Humphrey Bogart. They had dawdled on their way home, stopping for a hot meat pie at the corner shop and arriving home later than promised. Their giggling happiness had soon been squashed. Joe Turner had reached for his belt and only Annie’s pleading had saved Meg from a very sound beating. Even so, the punishment of being kept in for four long weeks had seemed severe and still rankled, nearly three years later.

Now it was all happening again. Only worse. If she was kept in then she wouldn’t be able to go with Kath to the supper dance. More important, she would miss seeing Jack. The thought made her die a little inside. She had loved Jack Lawson for as long as she could remember and lived in hope that he would notice her one day. She’d made herself a new dress especially for tonight and now Jack would never see her in it. Hot tears stung the backs of her eyes as she fought for control.

‘I’m not a child to be sent to my room.’

‘You’re behaving like one.’

‘I’m trying to show you that I’m a grown woman who wants to start work instead of being skivvy to two idle numbskulls.’ She dismissed her brothers with a flap of her hand. ‘Why must everything be done for their convenience? Why have I no rights?’

‘Because the farm will be theirs one day, not yours. Because they do all the work on it, not thee.’

Meg choked back the agony of unshed tears. ‘That’s not true. I work as hard as they do, harder. Our Dan only does what he has to and Charlie isn’t interested in the land, you know he isn’t.’

‘He’ll do what he’s told. You all will. Now have done. I’ve heard enough.’ Joe started to walk away but beside herself with the anguish of not seeing Jack, Meg snatched at his arm and pulled him round to face her.

‘I won’t stay in, I won’t! And I won’t skivvy for them two any more. They could do a bit more for themselves for a change. Fetch coal in for a start.’

Joe Turner went white to the lips, the spurt of flame from the dying fire reflected in the charcoal of his eyes. ‘My sons have enough work of their own to do without taking on women’s duties. Trouble with thee, young lady, is you don’t know when you’re well off. You’ve good clothes on thee back, food in thee belly. What more do you want?’

He set huge hands down upon the table top, hands that could bring a lamb from its mother as sweetly as butter, wring the life from a fat chicken or shoot a troublesome dog without flinching. He balled them now into threatening fists. A man who read his Bible nightly, he nevertheless considered it his duty to exercise discipline when it was needed. And this young madam was getting above herself.

‘You let the lads do whatever they like, why not me?’ She knew the answer so why did she torture herself by asking?

‘I thought I’d made that clear.’

‘It’s clear you’d have liked me a lot better if I’d been a lad too.’ Tears were standing proud in her eyes but she would not let them fall.

‘Happen you’d’ve been easier to manage if you were. Just take a good look at yourself, madam. Eyes mad as fury. Hair all round your neck like a wild woman.’

‘Would you prefer it if I had it all cut off? Then I’d look like a boy too.’ She tossed back the wayward locks with a defiant twist of her lovely head.

‘I’d prefer thee to act with proper decency.’

‘If that is the only way to make you see me as a real person, and not simply as your serving wench then so be it.’
 

Snatching up the shearing scissors from the dresser Meg pulled her tangled hair down over one shoulder and began to hack recklessly with the sharp blades. Glittering golden tresses rained upon the scrubbed table top, curling and bouncing about with a life of their own.

Joe Turner reached for the shears but she danced away, evading him, and continued with her relentless massacre, forcing him to remain a helpless onlooker.

She might have continued on this self-desecration had he not slammed those same fists down upon the table, seeming to make the whole room quake.

‘Enough! What would thy mother say if she saw thee acting so wantonly?’

Meg froze, tears brimming over at last from her clear grey eyes, making the room swim dizzily before her.
What had she done?
She stared at the bright curls falling away in her hand. He’d driven her to it. It was his fault. But she wouldn’t let him see her distress. Against the greater tragedy of a desolate life, ruined hair seemed of small importance.

Meg gathered up the cut tendrils into her palm, and tossed them into the fire where they crackled and fired up. A lump came into her throat. She couldn’t go to the supper looking like this, with half her hair cut off. What would Jack think of her now?

‘Now thee will have to stop in,’ Joe said with satisfaction, clearly reading her thoughts, and walked, spine rigid, from the room, his whole bearing making it clear that he’d had his say and won. As was only right and proper.

It took Meg the best part of an hour in her distress to finish the washing up, tidy the room and replenish the fire which had sulked itself black. When she had done, she refilled the big black kettle and set it back on the hob, so there’d be hot water for a mug of strong tea for her brothers when they got in. Then she took off her floral apron and hung it on the peg behind the pantry door before climbing dejectedly up the stairs to her room.

Hardly bigger than a cupboard tucked beneath the eaves right at the top of the house, it was at least her own. The only place where she could be sure of privacy.

Ashlea had been built some time during the early part of the eighteenth century. New by Lakeland standards, it was a typical, unprepossessing yeoman type building of grey stone with a slate roof and the traditional cylindrical chimneys. For all its plainness it had

seemed warm and alive when her mother had lived in it, its homely rooms muddled and untidy with Annie’s tapestry work, bottles for the lambs, and the usual boots and buckets of farming life.

Once the house had smelled of beeswax and lavender, overlaid by the strong tones of woodsmoke from the fire that burned constantly in the kitchen range. But Meg found she did not have the heart to reach these same standards. She could never rid her mouth of the taste of dust and unhappiness, as she coped with the cleaning of the five bedroom house all alone, and the endless washing, ironing and cooking for four people.

It wasn’t that she didn’t try. Meg longed to recapture the scents of those lovingly remembered days. Of home-baked bread, the sharpness of bilberry jam and the tangy aroma of her mother’s blackberry and apple pie. But her own efforts seemed poor by comparison.

So she loved her tiny hideway high in the attic, the only place where no demands were made and she could be herself. From the window cut in the farmhouse roof she could see right over the stand of ash and rowan behind the farm to the heather-carpeted turf of the high fell, clotted with broom and juniper and punctuated with the grey rocks that resolutely burst out of the thin soil at every opportunity.

Now the rain and wind robbed her of the solace of this much loved view and she fell upon the bed and lay on her back, determined not to cry. But despite her best intentions great fat tears rolled out of the corners of her eyes and ran down into her ears. She had chosen the wrong moment. Why had she risked spoiling the dance for an impossible concession? What had possessed her to be so reckless?

The thought of dancing with Jack Lawson made her stomach quiver with excitement. Now she wouldn’t see him at all and he’d chat up some other girl.

She got off the bed to stand in front of the speckled mirror and confront the horror of her hair. One side was long as ever, rippling in waves over her shoulder. The other side was short, sticking out in a madcap sort of way like a halo. The oddness of it suddenly appealed to her sense of humour and she felt a giggle start deep inside. What would everyone say if she left it like this? They’d think she’d gone mad. The shortness of it seemed to exaggerate the devilish gleam of hot rebellion that still burned in her grey eyes.

The laughter started then, bubbling up and spilling over in great spurts of glee. And suddenly it didn’t matter what her father did. She was young, wasn’t she? Soon the dull days of winter and a cold spring would lighten into summer. There was still time to find some other way of escape. And she would, too. However much she might feel that she belonged here, at Ashlea, she wouldn’t stay as anyone’s skivvy.

What’s more, if there was some way for her to go to the lambing supper, then she would find it. She must see Jack, she must. But first the hair. Meg opened a dressing table drawer and took out a pair of scissors. Short hair, Kath said, was all the rage.

It was Charlie who championed her, as always. He came in on a bluster of cold wind, banging all the doors.

Dan and her father were upstairs getting washed and changed ready to go out and Meg was drying her hair in front of the fire. She had cut and washed it and now it sprang in short bouncy curls, a wild mass of golden colour about her head. She rather thought it suited her but was still self-conscious about it. Charlie sank wearily into a chair, telling her about the latest lambs to be born and put with their ewes in the barn for the night. It was a moment before he noticed her hair. When at last he did, an explanation had to be given and his young face darkened.