Luckpenny Land (37 page)

‘You’ve not taken the hump, have you? About what I said earlier, about Kath?’

Meg shook her head. ‘Course not. It’s always hard to understand other people’s friendships. Forget it, I have.’ Meg was trying not to think too much about what Sally Ann had said about Kath pushing in. Weren’t they a trio, like the three musketeers? But the silence from her best friend was deeply worrying. Jack’s letters too were few and far between, and not exactly romantic. It hurt to remember their vow that snowy Christmas night. Had they forgotten it so quickly?

The two girls paused to smile at the hectic toing and froing of a pair of hedge sparrows, busily preparing their nests. ‘I feel like that sometimes,’ Sally Ann said. ‘Allus rushing back and forth. It’s good to escape the chores for a minute and catch a breath of fresh air after all this rain and mist.’

Meg glanced at her sister-in-law anxiously. ‘You are all right? The baby and everything?’

Sally Ann smiled a contented smile. ‘Oh, yes, never better.’

Meg relaxed. ‘I’ll be getting more than enough fresh air now with the sheep to sort and the lambing about to start.’

‘You enjoy it though.’

‘I love it.’

‘Will you keep him on?’

‘Who?’

‘The Irishman. Whatever he’s called.’

Meg jerked up her head and looked at Sal, the idea new to her. ‘I hadn’t thought.’

‘Well, I would if I were you. Things aren’t always going to be this quiet, are they? I keep expecting the skies to be filled with aeroplanes and parachutes, but nothing’s happening. Except that everyone you see has faces as long as a wet fortnight, thinking of their loved ones going overseas.’

Meg too looked suddenly glum. ‘Jack will be going soon. I can’t bear to think of it. I don’t see much of him but at least I know he’s safe.’

‘Do you think we’ll be safe, up here?’

Meg tucked her arm into Sally Ann’s. ‘Of course. It’s a bit shaming really, to be so far away from the action. I intend to work extra hard on the farm. People are going to need food, it’s an important job too.’ She laughed, rather self-consciously. ‘That’s what I tell myself, anyway.’

‘You’re right. All I seem to do is start babies.’

‘Well, you’re going to finish this one. A real beauty it will be, with a cheerful smile just like its mother. Take care now.’

As Meg strolled away, Sal called after her, ‘What was it he wanted, this Irishman?’

Meg stopped in her tracks. ‘O’Cleary. His name is Thomas O’Cleary. Known as Tam.’

‘Tam, is it?’ Sally Ann’s lips twitched with teasing good humour. ‘Maybe you won’t miss your Jack as much as you might think.’

‘Sal!’

‘You said he was waiting in your kitchen. What was he doing there?’

Meg blinked. ‘Do you know, I haven’t the first idea.’

Tam O’Cleary declared himself in no hurry to depart and seemed willing enough to help with the sorting. Meg picked out the ewes that appeared weakened by the hard winter and put them closest to the farm where she could keep a better eye on them. The rest were divided up into their likely lambing weeks and enclosed in-by accordingly.

‘Have you worked with sheep before?’

Tam shook his head. ‘Horses. Cows.’

‘I need a sheep man.’ She wasn’t sure she wanted Tam O’Cleary about the place, though Meg couldn’t rightly say why. ‘I’ve too much to learn myself to try to teach you. Green as they come, that’s me.’

‘Not quite,’ said Tam softly. ‘You were born and raised on a farm.’

‘Yes, but not allowed to work with the sheep.’ She lifted her chin a notch. ‘But it’s what I want to do, so don’t you start telling me how hard it is and not women’s work.’

He checked the mark on a ewe, shifted a hurdle and let it scamper through, then closed it again. ‘But you need help, that much is certain. Where else would ye find a fine strong man like meself with a war on?’
 

Meg couldn’t help but smile at the deliberate use of the Irish accent, finding herself warming to this man though really she shouldn’t. ‘How you can turn on the charm, Tam O’Cleary.’ And they both laughed, eyes meeting, shifting, dancing away. She decided to be entirely businesslike.

‘We don’t dip the ewes in the spring. But the hoggs, they’re the first year lambs that have spent the winter at farms on lower ground to give them a good start, will be returning on the fifth of April. That’s Hogg Day, and they will require dipping and marking up before we let them back on to the fell.’

‘You’d want that done before the lambing starts?’

Meg agreed that would be for the best. ‘Though it doesn’t always work out that way, or so I’m told.’ She screwed up her eyes as she gazed over her stock, wishing Lanky was here to pass judgement on them, and help with the weeks of lambing she now faced. ‘When the hoggs have been dipped,’ she continued, aware that Tam was watching her, ‘they always go back to the part of the fell where they spent the first summer with their mothers. It’s a wonderful homing instinct that keeps them safe on their own ground, which is vitally important on these vast areas of high fell.’

‘You’re the same. Safe on your own ground.’

Meg smiled, unaware how it lit up her face, golden curls streaming in the wind. ‘Something of the sort.’ She saw the pensive expression in Tam O’Cleary’s face and it confused her. He was a man, after all, and had a way of reminding her that she was a woman just by the look in his eye.

‘No more talk. There’s work to be done,’ she said crisply, and tried not to watch his smile.

Later, when the work was over for the day and they’d all enjoyed one of Effie’s cheese bake suppers, the question that had been teasing her for so long finally came out.

‘Why did you come?’

Meg had meant to ease into the question politely, in a roundabout way, a method in which her father was an expert. But as ever she was too frank and straight, and the question came out boldly, tactlessly even, making her blush. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so blunt. Only you never said what you were doing in my kitchen that day?’

‘I came because of Katherine.’

‘What?’ It was the last thing she’d expected to hear. ‘How do you know Kath?’

Tam told the tale of how he first met Kath and her subsequent disappearance. He showed not a trace of his usual teasing humour, nor made any mention of the pregnancy. He wanted to tread warily, for no reason beyond instinct.

‘Are you saying the old girl has done her in?’ asked Effie, eyes like saucers.

Meg’s glance quelled her into silence. ‘Don’t be silly. All this reading is doing your imagination no good at all, Effie Putnam.’ Turning back to Tam, she said, ‘Where could she be? Why do you think there’s anything wrong at all? She might just have taken it into her head to leave. Kath has always maintained that she wanted to go to London. I can’t think why she didn’t go there in the first place.’

So here it was. ‘She was short of money, her family not understanding her problem. Perhaps she was nervous there might be bombing, with the war about to start.’

Meg pooh-poohed this idea at once. ‘Kath isn’t a weak weed. She isn’t afraid of anything, and certainly wouldn’t let the rumour of bombing, which might or might not happen, stop her doing what she wanted.’

‘Maybe not, in the normal course of events. But then there was the child to consider.’

‘Child?’ Meg frowned. ‘What child? I don’t understand.’

Tam glanced sideways at Effie’s face, avid with interest. Meg took the message.

‘Good heavens, it’s past six. Effie, be a dear and feed the hens, will you? I forgot at lunchtime with being so busy.’

‘Aw,’ Effie groaned, realising she was about to miss some glorious tidbit. As if there was anything they could say that would shock her? Not that she dare admit as much.

‘Perhaps you’d rather do the milking? I have to do that too in a minute.’

Effie was convinced. When she had gone, on feet so rapid it was a wonder she didn’t fall over them, Meg turned back to Tam. ‘Best make it quick, whatever you have to say. She’ll be back before you can shake a lamb’s tail.’

‘Kath was pregnant when I last saw her. So far as I know she hadn’t told anyone else besides me. Probably only told me because I was a stranger. I wondered if mebbe her aunt discovered it.’

‘Kath? Pregnant? I don’t believe it.’

‘I’m afraid it’s true. And no, she isn’t married, if that’s what you were wondering.’

An odd little pang of disappointment pinched at Meg. Why should Kath tell this man, this stranger, about her problems and not herself, her one best friend? But she mustn’t show that it mattered. It would be foolish. Only Kath’s health and well being was important. ‘Poor Kath, suffering this terrible ordeal all on her own. So that’s why she went off abruptly to Southport, to hide from the disgrace. I wonder if she’s told her parents?’

‘She said not.’

Meg looked solemn. ‘No, I can understand that. Mr and Mrs Ellis are very proper. Doctor and magistrate Mr Ellis is, and Rosemary organises the flower rota at the church. Oh dear, how dreadful. Poor Kath. And you think that this Aunt Ruby threw her out?’

‘Or took her somewhere. The point is, where?’

Chapter Nineteen

‘I don’t believe a word of it.’ Twin spots of outraged colour burned high on Rosemary Ellis’s cheekbones but Meg was more interested in the fingers pleating and unpleating the linen skirt to take too much notice. It was the sign of a nervous woman, rather than an angry one.

They sat politely either side of the marble fireplace in the aquamarine and white drawing room and Meg had never felt more uncomfortable in all her life. Rosemary Ellis preferred not to associate herself with the common-or-garden dalesfolk, linking herself instead to the fringes of the upper echelons of Lakeland society. She used as her model such notables as the Bagots of Levens, the Hornyold-Stricklands of Sizergh, and the Lonsdales.

‘I’m sorry to have to be the one to break this news, Mrs Ellis, but there it is, these things happen in the best of families. Better you hear it from me than from a stranger.’ The effect of these simple words, meant in a kindly way, was electric. Rosemary Ellis was on her feet in a second, looking as if her knees might buckle under her at any moment.

‘A stranger? What do you mean? Who else could possibly know?’

Meg wondered whether she ought to involve Tam, but saw no help for it. She would have to offer some explanation for her learning the truth. Sighing softly, she told of Tam’s arrival at Broombank and how he had been concerned for Kath. She even told the story about Rust, and how well he was doing now, the leg mending nicely, just to give Rosemary time to collect herself.

‘He asked after me at the Co-op and they directed him up to Broombank.’

Rosemary was white to the lips. ‘Is he the father? Because if he is...

That idea had not, until this moment, occurred to Meg. Oddly enough, she felt a pang of anguish at the thought, then realised it was impossible. ‘No, no, he couldn’t be. They’ve only just met. They are just good friends, Tam says. Both lonely people, away from home, I suppose. Look, would you like me to make you a fresh pot of tea?’

Rosemary dropped back on to her sofa with the movements of a woman twice her age. ‘No, thank you, I’m perfectly all right.’ The fact that she didn’t at once offer to make a fresh pot for Meg proved the opposite to this brave declaration. Rosemary Ellis, the hostess
par
excellence,
would never have committed such a breach of good manners.

Meg cleared her throat. Sorry as she was for Mrs Ellis, she felt more compassion right now for Kath. ‘You wouldn’t have any idea where she might be?’

‘Me? How should I know?’

Meg might have reminded Rosemary that she was the girl’s mother but thought better of it. ‘I just thought that perhaps Kath might have written, told you where she was staying.’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea what my daughter has chosen to get up to.’ The sharp edge to her tone surprised Meg. Had she perhaps outstayed her welcome? She got up at once to go.

‘I’m sorry to have caused you any distress.’

Meg found herself being shown to the door with a speed quite unlike Rosemary’s usual politeness. She gave the older woman a reassuring pat on the hand. ‘I shouldn’t let it bother you too much. Kath isn’t the first, nor will she be the last, to find herself in this situation, particularly now, with a war on. She’ll cope.’

‘I’m sure she will,’ said the icy voice. ‘She always was wilful.’ The door was held open, Rosemary clearly anxious for her to depart, and Meg only too ready to obey, when stubbornness gripped her. ‘I’ve written to Southview Villas so many times and got no answer but I won’t give up. I want to see her, write to her at least. If you hear where she’s moved to, you’ll let me know? I worry she might be ill or something.’

‘Katherine is perfectly well, I tell you,’ snapped Rosemary, and Meg couldn’t stop her eyebrows rising in surprise. Very quietly, she pushed the door closed again and stood facing Mrs Ellis.

‘You do know where she is, don’t you? I wish you’d tell me.’

Rosemary Ellis’s eyes held sudden panic then a plea for understanding and all her confidence seemed to seep away. ‘I had to do it. Her father would have been devastated if he’d found out. Once the baby is born Katherine may live where she chooses but no one, most of all Jeffrey, must find out about her condition.’