Luckpenny Land (24 page)

The cow byre was empty and only two cows were in the field. There were four yesterday. Had two wandered off and got lost? Surely not. Perhaps Lanky had taken it into his head to move them to another field. She couldn’t think where, or why, but she would see to the mystery first thing after breakfast.

Meg filled a jug with milk from the kit and cradled the heavy jug against her hip as she pushed open the barn door. If the dogs were gone then Lanky was already out on the fells.

They came to her at once, Tess and Ben, whimpering their pleasure at seeing her.

Lanky too was in the barn. He was hanging from a rope fastened very carefully to the rafters. His milking stool lay overturned on the ground beneath him.

The jug of milk slipped from Meg’s hand and flowed into a pool as white as Lanky’s face, all over the cold slate floor.

Chapter Twelve

It was a perfect, crisp autumn day for the funeral. Overhead a buzzard circled in the clear air and in the hedgerow a pair of stoats played. Lanky would have loved it. In her mind’s eye, Meg could see his slight figure striding out over the fells, his familiar rolling gait making short work of the steep gradients as he checked on his beloved sheep. But Lanky was gone and would never breathe the clear, autumn air ever again.

Why had he done it? Dr MacClaren said that the sickness would never have got better, only worse, and that it was getting the old man down. But Meg felt she had failed him in some way. Why hadn’t she been able to make him feel better, make him want to live?

‘He knew I was coming back to him. Why didn’t he wait?’

‘Folks make their own mind up when they’ve had enough,’ Effie said, with surprising wisdom.

Meg hated the air of awful sadness about the place. The work on the farm had ground to a halt and she supposed this was now the end for Broombank. Someone else would put the tups to the ewes and see to next year’s crop of lambs. She couldn’t bear to think it might be her own father.

A gate hung, creaking forlornly on a broken hinge. Stones from a wall that had tumbled down lay among long tufts of grass with no Lanky to put them back.

Meg got out her black hat and dusted it off. The last time she had worn it, for her mother’s funeral, she had hoped never to wear it again. Now she placed it correctly upon her head, tucking up the honey gold curls as if it would be too frivolous for them to fly free.

She buttoned up her coat. ‘There’ll be a chill wind out, Effie, put your scarf on, there’s a good girl.’

The child looked a sorry picture in a skirt that was too long, one of Meg’s jackets cut down for a coat and tied in the middle with an old belt. It still came nowhere near her fragile size.

At least she was clean and the wounds upon her back, though still tender, were starting to heal. The bruises on her pinched face were purpling now and the fair skin had lost its perpetual greyness. There was even a hint of colour upon the too-flat cheeks. The country food and air was doing her good already, Meg thought with pleasure. She was looking forward to the day when the cheeks and tiny pixie-like body rounded and filled out to the childlike chubbiness they ought to be.

Effie was gazing up at Meg out of adoring eyes. Beside her sat Rust, his small black and tan body leaning against the skinny legs, his chin resting on Effie’s knee.

How she would have managed without these two in the days since the discovery of Lanky’s body, she couldn’t imagine. They had all clung together for support and a bond had been forged between them.

It had been Effie who had made the watery porridge that dreadful morning and tried to force it between Meg’s chattering teeth. Effie who had washed her face and undressed her with tender care, making her lie down between cold sheets while the doctor and the police went about their gruesome business.

Meg hadn’t wanted to do anything, not even to think. Her limbs had felt like jelly. And though she had been vaguely aware that people came and went, to and from the house, that voices spoke to her, they seemed to reach her from a long way off, as if through cotton wool.

She could only concentrate on the pain that swelled about her heart, yet do nothing about its numbing effect. Great fat tears had rolled from the corners of her eyes, and her teeth kept chattering. She had lost Lanky - a funny little old man it was true, but she’d loved him. He was the only real father she had known, and the only friend in the world since Jack and Kath had left. How would she manage without him?

‘I suppose I’ll have to go now,’ Effie had said, jerking her back to reality.

‘What? No, of course you won’t. Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘Seems you’ve no home neither now.’

The child would be sent back to Manchester and very likely bombed. Meg knew that whatever happened, she mustn’t allow that.

But how were they going to manage? There was no food on the farm. She knew that for a fact. Except eggs, and they couldn’t live on those indefinitely.

Joe would never allow them back in Ashlea. He would take his revenge for this latest show of spirit. Meg had flouted his authority once too often and he would gladly abandon her to her fate. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’ How often she had heard that text. Had it not been for Annie’s frequent intervention she too might have felt the lick of that strap. But Annie was gone now, and with the passing of her gentle protection had gone the last crumb of decency from her hard-hearted husband. Even if Joe had permitted it, Meg had no wish to return to Ashlea while he lived. She could never forgive him for beating a defenceless child.

She’d pushed herself up into a sitting position and stared out through the window, a healing anger burning deep inside her. It wasn’t right that Lanky had gone in this way. Whatever had driven him over that final edge would never be known. But life went on and he would be the first to say so. She couldn’t neglect her responsibilities, to Effie and to Jack. Someone would have to take care of Broombank for him. Why not herself?

The thought had simply dropped into her head. Crazy, impossible, and wildly intoxicating.

She and Jack were to be married. She wore his ring, didn’t she? So why not? Jack wouldn’t turn her out. Meg’s heart swelled with love and thankfulness. She would be safe with Jack.

The rain started as the coffin was lowered into the dark ground, needles in the cold wind that made people hunch closer into their coat collars. They sang ‘Abide with Me’, accompanied by the wheezing tones of the harmonium in the small dale church and now stood, black-suited, feet shuffling around the yawning grave in the tiny churchyard.

Everyone was here, all the neighbouring farmers in the good suits they always kept for funerals and weddings alike, paying their last respects to an old colleague they had known all their lives.

Meg watched them in silence. Joe looked suitably sanctimonious, Dan and Sally Ann trying to curb the smiles on their faces - news of a coming baby had been whispered into Meg’s ear just as the service began. She had wanted to push her friend away, to shout, ‘No, I don’t want to hear about your happiness.’ Instead she had managed a smile and a squeeze of Sal’s hand.

There was Dr MacClaren, and Mr Capstick, the family solicitor. And a plump, matronly woman whom Meg assumed to be Connie Bradshaw, Lanky’s married daughter. She wondered, fleetingly, why Mrs Bradshaw had not called at the house before the service but mostly her mind kept returning to the fact that there was still no sign of Jack. He had promised faithfully that he would be here, she had the letter in her pocket to prove it. But though they had delayed the little ceremony as long as was seemly, he had not arrived.

The statutory ham had been served, washed down by jugs of hot tea. In Lakeland the worth of a man was often judged by the size of his wake and Meg and Effie had slaved for hours to make Lanky’s a proud one. Most of the ingredients had been supplied by Sally Ann from Ashlea’s pantries, unknown to Joe. But Hetty Davies had likewise contributed a meat pie or two.

‘Just to help out,’ she had said kindly, and Meg had offered heartfelt gratitude.

The dalesfolk, having done their duty, felt they could relax a little in the warmth of Lanky’s house. There was a log the size of a small tree sitting in the wide hearth, cut by Dan for this day, filling the room with an acrid scent of pine and spitting larch. Everyone was enjoying exchanging gossip and indulging in a little quiet bargaining while remembering to show respect.

Joe showed none of that. ‘He’s nowt much left to show for a life, has he?’

‘Two of his cows have gone since yesterday.’

‘Aye, lucky it weren’t all four.’

For a moment Meg stared at him, uncomprehending. ‘You took them?’ Her voice grated raw in her throat.

‘Aye, well, you should have telled your friend not to borrow money he couldn’t repay.’

Red hot fury exploded in her head. ‘You can’t do that!’

‘I’ve already done it. Too old to be of any real value but they rightly belong to me in lieu of debt.’

‘You took the others too, didn’t you? Lanky used to have eight or nine at least.’

Joe ignored her and turned to help himself to a second piece of pork pie.

‘Answer me. You took them all, didn’t you?’

‘Aye, I did. And he still owes me so I’ll happen take the rest. Blame theeself. You should have persuaded that lad of his to stay and do his duty by the farm and his father.’

‘There’s a war on,’ Meg said weakly, knowing it was no real excuse. Farming was a valid occupation during wartime and Lanky clearly couldn’t manage Broombank on his own. ‘He has more pressing duties to see to.’

‘Lanky should have sold to me when he had chance then. There’s still a sizeable lump outstanding and dead or not, somebody has to pay it.’ Joe started to walk away and then stopped and turned back to her as if on an afterthought. ‘You can pack your bags and come home any time. But don’t bring that brat with you. Send her back where she belongs.’

Meg could only stand speechless, impotent fury boiling inside her heart. How was it, she thought, that when good neighbours were treasured in this farming community, Lanky had to get saddled with Joe Turner?

Nothing would induce her to go back to live in her father’s household. With or without Effie.

Though how they were going to manage without milk or cheese if he took the last two cows, Meg dare not think. But manage they would, somehow. She straightened her back, unconsciously lifting her chin a fraction. If this was their own private war, her father was on the winning side. But only for now. Things could change quickly in a war.

Meg went to the window and looked down the lane. The rain had stopped, thank goodness, and a thin sun was trying to break through. Jack would arrive soon and sort it all out.

Then she saw her father walk over to Connie Bradshaw and Meg’s heart sank. What was he scheming now?

‘Thee’ll be wanting to clear the estate up quickly, I reckon,’ Joe pointedly remarked.

Connie Bradshaw was a woman who bore a grudge against life. Unmarried until the age of thirty-five, she still nurtured a feeling that life had passed her by. She had met her husband, a travelling salesman in farm machinery, when he had unsuccessfully tried to sell her father a tractor. Against all the odds, Peter Bradshaw had taken a fancy to Connie’s robust plainness and called at the farm again. Within a matter of weeks they were ‘walking out’ and in six months they had married. Connie had gladly moved to a smart house in Grange-Over-Sands with her new husband. She had never relished the state of chaos that had always clung to life at Broombank. She disliked dirty boots, feeding buckets in the kitchen and nights constantly disturbed by the inconvenience of tending messy animals. Her well-scrubbed semi-detached with its pretty garden was much more to her taste. Until she and Peter could change it for a new detached with a view of the estuary, that is.

While there would be no children from this late union, the two of them felt perfectly content, united by their ambition for a neat, ordered, comfortable life. The only problem lay in the paucity of Peter’s salary. Hard as he worked, the monthly sum fell far short of their desires, if not their needs. It was unthinkable, naturally, for Connie to take employment. Now, with the inconvenience of war to make matters worse, the death of her father had opened up to them the very real possibility of a useful windfall.

‘Mr Capstick, our family solicitor, will be attending to the will shortly.’

Joe touched his forelock respectfully. ‘I’ve no wish to intrude upon your grief, Mrs Bradshaw,’ he said, with suitable deference in his tone. ‘But I should point out that Lanky owed me a deal of money. A sizeable sum in point of fact.’ Joe handed her a sheet of paper which he had made Sally Ann write out for him the night before. It showed the sums Lanky had borrowed over the last several years during the slow decline of Broombank. The interest was also noted, and from the total he had deducted the value of eight cows, far below their true market value.

This was something of a shock to Connie and she stared at the paper, perplexed. ‘I had no idea, Mr Turner, that my father was in debt.’ The sum outstanding amounted to a few hundred pounds. Not a fortune, but even so, hard to find just now. She had no illusions about the poor value of much of her father’s land, and the business had as good as died with him. But she still hoped that the farm as a whole, with the house, buildings, implements and stock, would surely sell for a few thousand pounds. She smiled brightly at Joe.