Luckpenny Land (25 page)

‘Your debt will be settled, naturally, when the farm is sold, Mr Turner.’

Joe returned her smile, the words music to his ears. ‘Then I hope, if it is a sale you are considering, Mrs Bradshaw, you will give me first refusal on the land. It has little value to anyone, excepting meself, being in close proximity to the high fell where I graze my sheep. Much of it is thin and don’t grow grass well, and down in the dale, well...’Joe pulled a doleful face. ‘Too damp, d’you see, for sheep.’

Connie Bradshaw’s sparse powers of concentration were already wandering. She was anxious to see the back of these people and hear how much money her father had tucked away. Debt or no debt, he had always been thrifty so there must be something. She dismissed Joe Turner with a vague promise to talk again and moved across to Mr Capstick to instruct him to get a move on.

Jack arrived just as the family was sitting down with the solicitor around the kitchen table. Meg ran to him at once and hugged him. He looked so tanned and handsome in his sailor’s uniform he quite took her breath away. She wanted to lean on him and drink in his warmth but he only kissed her briefly, his eyes going at once to Connie’s disapproving glare.

‘Sorry I’m late. The trains were all held up. Have I missed much?’

‘Only your own father’s funeral,’ his sister said in frosty tones.

Mr Capstick cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps we might get down to business.’

Meg sidled to the kitchen door, pushing Effie through it before her. ‘We’ll leave you to it then.’

‘You’d better stay, Miss Turner,’ said the solicitor. ‘This concerns you too.’

If Connie’s eyebrows had climbed any higher they would have taken off, thought Meg. Hiding her surprise, she instructed Effie to start clearing the cup and plates and not to make any noise about it. Then she closed the door and sat at one of the kitchen chairs, opposite Jack. He smiled reassuringly at her and she took a deep breath. He still loved her, she could tell. The only worry was how long they would now have to wait before it was fitting for them to marry and she could become a real part of his life.

The solicitor was reading a lot of legal jargon about appointed trustees and executors from a piece of paper he held in his hand. Meg could see Connie frowning and fidgeting with her gloves.

‘Can we cut all these unnecessary preliminaries, Mr Capstick, and get to the point. We are well aware my father has left the farm in a dreadful state. What we want to know is its value and how quickly we can sell it.’

Sell? Meg looked across at Connie Bradshaw with shock in her eyes. How could such a thing even be considered? Broombank Farm had been in the Lawson family since the seventeenth century. To sell it was unthinkable. Lanky had loved this farm. It was his whole life. She wanted to shout against the sin of such an action, point out it’s great potential, the large amount of good intake land it owned, the tract of fell it owned outright, in addition to accessible free grazing on the higher fells not easily available to all farms. The woodlands and water. Then there was the house itself, a house Meg already loved, neglected as it might be. She wanted to live here with Jack, and make it into a home. She wanted to farm Broombank land and make it good. How dare Connie Bradshaw come along to Lanky’s funeral after years of never bothering to call on him, and declare it must be sold?

Meg had been so busy with her rebellious thoughts that she had missed much of what was going on about her. But a loud squeak of anguished disbelief from Mrs Bradshaw brought her back to reality.

‘Option to purchase?
You cannot be serious. He must have gone mad. My father was senile, demented, that is quite clear. Or
she
has twisted him round her calculating little finger.’

Meg realised that everyone, including Jack, was glaring accusingly at her.

‘It is true that Mr Lawson left no money to settle his debts but neither did he wish the farm to be sold.’ Mr Capstick tapped the parchment in his hand. ‘The will states quite clearly that he directs his trustees, that is, myself and my partner, to...’

‘I’m well aware who you are, and a right pickle you’ve made of it an’ all,’ protested Connie forgetting her usual resolution to speak ‘proper’.

‘If you will permit me to continue?’ Mr Capstick, unflustered by the pent-up emotion that vibrated about the table, attempted to explain more fully.

‘The will states that the farm business, including all the stock, farm implements and machinery, harvested and growing crops, be left to Meg Turner. Mr Lawson seemed to think that his son was not particularly interested in the farm.’

All eyes turned to Jack, who flushed with embarrassment but said nothing.

‘He goes on to say, "I direct that my trustees shall not exercise their power of sale until they have offered to the said Meg Turner an option to purchase the said Farm and Land within five years of my death at the price of one thousand five hundred pounds..."‘

‘One thousand five hundred?’ Connie’s voice was little more than a squeak. ‘You cannot be serious. It’s worth two at least.’

Mr Capstick looked over his spectacles at her and understood perfectly, perhaps for the first time, why his client had arranged his affairs in just this way. ‘The market is depressed at the present time, made worse by the war. Mr Lawson was most anxious that Miss Turner have a chance, as he put it, to try her hand at farming. He seemed to think it was what she wanted.’

‘I’m sure it is.’

‘Is it, Meg?’ This from Jack, his voice full of hurt pride, curt and strangely bitter. ‘Is this what you wanted all along? Broombank?’

Meg, who had sat in a daze through all of this, tried to focus her gaze upon him. She tried to see him as he had looked when he had first smiled at her and kissed her outside the village hall, when he had made love to her in the barn. But that all seemed so far away now that she could scarcely reconcile it with the deep, hardening planes of his beloved face. ‘I - no, of course it wasn’t. That is, I mean... I do want to farm but...’

‘There, you see!’ Connie stood up and slapped her hands down upon the table. The sound was so loud that Meg actually jumped. ‘She has planned this from the start. Who knows what she persuaded my father to do, wheedling her way into his good graces, moving in to make herself at home by his fireside.’

Hot-cheeked, Meg faced her adversary with some spirit. ‘He was ill. He needed looking after. Who else was there?’

The implication that Connie had neglected her duties to her own father stung, and she reacted badly. ‘We’re living in the twentieth century. You could have picked up a telephone, I suppose, and let me know how my father was.’

Subdued by this justifiable criticism, though it would have necessitated a walk of several miles to the Co-op where a phone was located, and knowing she’d been too busy looking for the lost Effie at the time to think of it, Meg mumbled an apology. ‘It all happened so quickly. I ran to fetch the doctor to him, then thought he was on the mend. How was I to know that he ... that he...’

Mr Capstick cut in quickly, seeing the welling of tears in her grey eyes, and anxious to keep trouble to a minimum. He attempted to dampen the heat of the atmosphere with a smile.

‘Ladies, ladies, there is little point in going over old ground. I am sure Miss Turner did as she thought best in what must have been very difficult circumstances. For whatever reason, Mr Lawson felt he could not go on. Painful as it is, we must accept that fact and as his trustee it is my duty to see that his wishes are carried out to the letter.’

Silence fell, embarrassed and strained. Connie resumed her seat on persuasion, but with reluctance.
 

Meg, trying to come to grips with all the implications, was the first to break the silence. ‘May I please ask a question?’

‘Of course.’

‘This option to purchase within five years. Does that mean that I can stay here in the meantime?’

‘But of course.’ Mr Capstick picked up the document again. ‘I’m sorry, perhaps I haven’t made it properly clear. Until the five years expire, or until you find the purchase price earlier than that date, you are permitted to lease the farm from the trustees. Mr Lawson has stated in his will that the rent must be two hundred pounds a year, payable on the usual quarter days. Your first payment, since this is October, will be on Christmas Day, which is the first quarter day following the date of his death.’ He smiled at Meg. ‘Do you think you can manage that?’

The rent was reasonable, no one could deny it, less than the going rate. But a quarter of two hundred - fifty pounds - in how long? Less than three months. Not a chance. ‘Yes,’ she said, nodding briskly. ‘I can manage that.’

‘He asked me to give you this.’

‘What is it?’

The solicitor held out a coin. ‘He said that you would understand.’

Meg took the coin and cradled it in her palm. ‘It’s a Luckpenny.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘He told me about the old Norse custom many times. It’s to transfer one person’s good will to another, and with it friendship. Always give something back, Lanky said.’ She felt her heart swell with love and pride that he should have so much faith in her that he would leave her his beloved farm.

‘Oh, I’ll take good care of it, I will, I will,’ she said.

‘Good. Then everything is quite clear? You do understand the full responsibility facing you?’

Oh, yes, she understood perfectly. Taking in Jack’s stunned expression and Connie’s furious gaze, Meg understood that she had gained her longheld desire for a farm of her own, but very likely at the cost of something far more precious: Jack’s trust.

‘You shouldn’t have done it. You didn’t ought to have laid a finger on her.’

Sally Ann spoke the words quietly as she walked with Joe and Dan back down the lane towards Ashlea.

‘The little brat is bone idle. And wick with fleas.’

‘No, she wasn’t. We cleaned her up. Anyway, that was hardly her fault, was it?’

‘Then I don’t know whose fault it was.’

‘Joe.’ Sally Ann laid a hand upon his arm. ‘You do realise that Meg will never forgive you for hurting Effie in that way? You’ll be lucky if your daughter ever speaks to you again.’

‘She just has. I told her she could come home but all she cares about is Lanky’s Shorthorns.’

‘And all you seem to care about is getting your hands on Broombank land. Why? What does it matter?’

‘Happen I think there should be only one head to a family, and that’s me. Besides which, our Dan reckons he’s underpaid.’

Dan took interest at this point. ‘Does that mean I’m to get a rise?’

‘Oh, shut your face, you daft ha’porth.’

Sally Ann hooked a hand into Joe’s arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. ‘All you have to do is say you got a bit carried away and you’re sorry for hurting the child.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Yes. Sorry.’

‘You want me to apologise?’

Sally Ann turned to her husband who was doing his best not to become involved. ‘Tell him, Dan. He only has you and me now, with Charlie gone off to war. He shouldn’t alienate his only daughter.’

‘Charlie shouldn’t have gone. He knows Dad didn’t want him to.’

‘Aye, that’s right. What good did fighting a war ever do, that’s what I say.’

Sally Ann swallowed her vexation. ‘I despair of you both, I do really. I know you care about Meg really, deep down. Why in heaven’s name won’t you ever show it?’ And because Joe had not shrugged off the closeness of her arm and she sensed an uncertainty in him, well disguised by bravado, she dared to voice her concern a touch more precisely. ‘Well, I’ll tell you this, Joe Turner. You’ll not touch a child of mine in that manner, when it comes. Not while there’s breath in my body.’

Keen dark eyes turned upon her. ‘Are you saying it’s likely there’ll be a child?’

‘I might be.’

A moment’s considering pause. ‘Aye, well, thee will have a son. That’s different.’

Meg could not deny that the news excited her. She nurtured the thrill of this news in her heart and couldn’t wait for the time when Connie and her long-faced husband had departed and she could plead her case with Jack, persuade him to start planning properly.

But Mr and Mrs Bradshaw were relishing their little holiday, at someone else’s expense, and in no hurry to depart. The family passed a difficult weekend together, Connie taking every opportunity to make snide remarks, openly scathing that Meg could ever hope to find fifty pounds for the first payment at Christmas.

‘So that will put paid to your fanciful notions.’ There was grim satisfaction in the tone and Peter nodded in agreement, as he usually did.

Meg was hard pressed at times to bite her tongue but compelled herself to manage it, for Jack’s sake. She was too busy in any case for argument, since the days were filled with putting on kettles for the endless washing up following the gargantuan meals she was expected to produce.

‘My father always kept a good table,’ Connie had a fondness for remarking, though where she imagined the food was coming from she never seemed to wonder and certainly never enquired. Nor did Meg enlighten her. If it ever got back to Joe that he was temporarily supporting two households, Judgement Day would surely dawn early for them all.