Luckpenny Land (40 page)

Meg would have written to Jack with joy if the baby had been hers, eager to tell him he was to become a father. They would quickly have married and everyone would have counted a little on their fingers and smiled and said, ‘Ah, yes, but they’re young and there is a war on.’ But that was not the way it had gone. Melissa was Kath’s baby. Kath’s and Jack’s. And it was all too terrible to think of.

She was spared from answering Joe’s direct accusation by the arrival of Tam. Joe took one look at the tall, well-set Irishman, got to his feet and stood glowering before him.

‘So this is how the land lies. Mebbe you’re the one who has caused this trouble.’

Tam’s brows lifted very slightly in surprise. At any other time Meg might have laughed at the comical sight of her father trying to outface a man a good six inches taller than himself. But this wasn’t the moment.

‘Dad, leave Tam alone. Don’t make a bigger fool of yourself than you already have.’

‘A fool am I? And there’s me thinking it’s my daughter who’s the laughing stock around here. I can see why. I think thee’d best leave, son.’

‘Leave?’ Tam smiled down at Joe. ‘Now why would I be doing that?’

‘Pack your bags, or whatever it is you roving Irish carry your chattels in, and go.’

Tam lifted his eyes slowly to Meg and held them for a long moment before returning them to Joe. There was some message in it, one she couldn’t quite read, or perhaps didn’t wish to. ‘I’ll go when I’m good and ready, or when Meg tells me to. I don’t think you have any say in the matter.’

‘Have I not? We’ll see about that.’ Joe was beside himself with fury, almost spitting with rage. ‘Nobody gainsays me without being sorry for it,’ he roared. ‘I’ll not have my daughter preyed upon by strangers. Foreigners at that.’

Meg took a quick step forward to lay a calming hand upon Joe’s shoulder. ‘Dad, stop it. Tam is right. This is
my
house,
my
farm, and you are the visitor here.’

‘What?’

‘I’d be obliged if you left without any bother. Tam has nothing to do with any of this. He is my employee and, I hope, my friend. I’ll not have him tainted by your nastiness.’

‘Thee has a funny way o’choosing thy friends.’

‘The choice is mine, not yours.’

Joe glared furiously at her. ‘Then don’t expect me to come and bail you out when nobody will lift a finger to help thee, because of him and what he’s done to you.’

Meg almost laughed. ‘When have you ever bailed me out of anything? Never. More likely the very opposite. Everything I have here has been achieved in spite of you, not because of your help which has been non-existent. Now get out, before I forget I’m still your daughter and thump you one.’

So startled was Joe by this spirited response that he glowered once more at each of them before storming out, slamming the door behind him just to show who was boss.

‘You stood up for me, against your own father. I’m flattered.’

‘Don’t be. I’ll not have Joe telling me what to do. Nor you neither.’ She turned from him and walked from the room, but his soft chuckle had a strange effect upon her all the same.

The small Austin car left the rough cart track and started along the lane. It drove past a cluster of whitewashed cottages around a former bobbin mill and on over a humped bridge. Ahead lay the wild grandeur of mountains and the rugged outline of Goat Scar and Raven Crag.

‘I hear you have a baby staying with you?’ Rosemary Ellis had stopped to offer Meg a lift into town and she put the question briskly, as if the answer were of no consequence. Meg felt her heart quicken.

‘I have.’

Mrs Ellis did not take her eyes from the road as she shifted the gear lever and eased the car forward. ‘Is it Kath’s?’

A slight pause while Meg thought through her line of approach. ‘Everyone thinks she’s mine.’

‘She?’

‘Melissa. Effie has started calling her Lissa and I’m afraid we’ve all picked it up. But it seems to suit her.’ Meg cast the older woman a sidelong glance, then stared out at the passing scenery, achingly beautiful on this September morning, the bracken aflame to a rich russet red. Here there was freedom and solitude. Space to breathe and feel. She could scarcely imagine Kath’s despair, living in that dreadful home. How thin and desperate she had looked. Yet Rosemary Ellis, her own mother, had known where she was. ‘Kath has gone. I don’t know where.’

‘I rather thought she might run.’

‘Isn’t that what you wanted? For her to disappear?’

The question was very nearly impertinent and Meg heard the sharp intake of breath.’ I don’t know what I wanted,’ Rosemary admitted. ‘For it not to have happened, I suppose. The scandal...’

Meg wanted to feel sorry for this woman who’d lost her daughter, but somehow couldn’t quite manage it. ‘Did you send her money when she was in that place, in Greenlawns?’

Mrs Ellis fell silent as they drove on beside the tumbling waters of the beck, a worked-out quarry and an old farmhouse with a medieval pele tower. She was quiet for so long Meg thought she’d decided not to answer the question, which had been cheeky anyway.

‘We were asked to provide what we could towards her keep though the girls were expected largely to work for it themselves. I considered myself fortunate that Ruby had found somewhere to take her, somewhere the baby could be born and cared for.’

‘What did Mr Ellis think?’

The car swerved slightly and Meg grabbed the door strap, heart in mouth. But the road was empty as usual, so no harm was done. They came out of the narrow lane on to the main road.

‘Jeffrey doesn’t know anything about it. He mustn’t. His heart, you know. He isn’t as strong as he likes to think.’

Meg had no trouble in feeling sorry for Mr Ellis.’ He misses her. Doesn’t he ever wonder why she doesn’t write?’

The silence lasted so long this time, they had almost reached the bridge that led into Kendal before Rosemary answered.’ I pretended once that she had. I read him a letter that was supposed to have come from her, saying she was going to be away for a long time, somewhere secret, and she couldn’t write again for ages. It seemed to satisfy him. He thinks she’s doing her bit for the war.’

Meg gasped. To shuffle off one’s pregnant daughter to avoid a scandal was bad enough; to lie to one’s husband about her welfare was altogether more terrible. The words burst out of her before she could prevent them. ‘How could you do such a thing? Kath loved you. She still loves you. Both of you. All right, so she made a mistake but she paid too high a price for it. It’s not a criminal offence for God’s sake. Lissa is just a baby and she’s beautiful. She’s very dark, and sitting up nice as ninepence. Kath’s child. Don’t you want to see her? Aren’t you even going to tell Mr Ellis that he has a grandaughter?’

‘No.’

‘Stop the car here, please.’ Meg had to get away before she said something truly unforgivable.

‘Just as well Lissa has me then,’ she announced to the retreating vehicle as it sped away, Rosemary Ellis sitting stiffly at the wheel.
 

Later, in Melissa’s bedroom, Meg gazed down upon the sleeping child. Effie had made a bed for her out of a large drawer and she knelt beside it. The sound of the baby’s breathing was oddly calming and Meg felt a fierce need to protect her from cruel gossip, from the war, from all the problems she might meet as she grew. Meg stroked the back of one finger over the soft down of the baby’s cheek. So tiny. Such a frail scrap of humanity. A bubble of milk dribbled out upon the rosily pouted lips and Meg smiled.

‘It’s not your fault, little one. You didn’t ask to be born, nor to be abandoned. Kath, your mum, didn’t mean to be heartless. It’s the way she is, a bit reckless and impulsive. Never gives a thought to anyone but herself, and look what a mess she’s got herself into. Things are difficult for her right now, what with being thrown out by her ma and pa, and not having any job. Things aren’t too good between her and me either. Not like they used to be, nor ever will be again, I don’t suppose.’ Meg smiled sadly down at the baby. ‘Still, given the chance, she might have loved you.’

She bent over, about to gather the sleeping baby in her arms, so deliciously sweet did she look, then stopped as a new thought entered her head. As I might come to love you
.

It jolted her and Meg became very still, aware, in that moment, of a new risk. The possibility of fresh pain in the future if she came to care too much for Kath’s child.

She took a step back, away from the sleeping baby. No, that wouldn’t do at all. She must think very carefully about this. What would happen when the war ended, and Kath and Jack returned?

In the meantime Melissa must be fed and given a home, as was only right and proper, until her mother came to claim her. But that was all she could give her. ‘You’re not mine, do you see, so I can’t love you as a real mother would. That wouldn’t be right. Or safe. For either of us.’

Being responsible for a baby on top of all her other chores would cause endless complications. Admittedly it was pleasant sometimes simply to sit and watch her gurgling happily, but Meg dare not allow herself too many such treats. Nor did she feel she could ask Sally Ann for any help since her sister-in-law gave birth to a baby herself in June. A boy, Nicholas David Turner, much to Joe’s delight. Both mother and child were doing well, Dan walking about as if he had performed the entire miracle singlehanded.

Meg was relieved when the school term ended and Effie took over, leaving her free to concentrate on the farm, and to avoid too much contact with the baby. Making a living for them all was all that mattered now.

In the days and weeks that followed, Meg buried her pain in work. She was glad of it, welcomed it. Up before dawn each day she laboured, blotting all thought from her mind. She concentrated entirely upon seeing to her flock, milking her two cows, seeking ways to make her farm pay. Her heart wasn’t in the task, the work feeling little more than drudgery but it got her through each day. Come the evening she would eat one of Effie’s suppers, though it might be sawdust for all she noticed half the time, and fall into bed praying for oblivion. Rarely did she find it. More often than not that was when the thoughts started, turning over and over, replaying the events that had led to this pain. Seeing Kath dancing in Jack’s arms, laughing up at him with her lovely hazel eyes.

Why hadn’t she realised what was going on? How blind and naïve she must have been. So much in love she hadn’t seen because she hadn’t wanted to see.

‘Will you take the bairn for a walk?’ Effie would ask her each day. ‘Will you give Lissa her bottle?’

Requests that became a constant thorn to stab into her heart.

‘I don’t think so. I have work to do.’ Meg would hurry from the kitchen back to the peace and sanctuary of the heaf and her sheep, aware of Effie’s troubled gaze upon her.

But the thorns kept on stabbing her.

What had she done to deserve such treatment?

Wasn’t Kath her best friend, and Jack much more? The thoughts whirled and burned, images to torment and torture.
Where
had he loved Kath? In the barn where he’d made love to her? How? Why? Till Meg felt insanity threaten and prayed for exhaustion to bring relief.

At first she expected a letter from Kath any day, an enquiry about Melissa at least, or word that she’d found a job. When summer followed spring and still Meg heard nothing she put the thought from her mind. In any case, she wasn’t ready to face Kath yet, wasn’t even able to think about the effect her betrayal would have upon their friendship. Betrayal was the only word for it.

Their threesome had become dangerous, she could see that now. A mistake had been made, boundaries had been crossed from which there was no retreat.

But she continued, despite Tam’s and Effie’s protests, to write to Jack as if nothing had happened.

‘He’s gone to fight for his country, perhaps even die for it. I can’t just abandon him.’

‘I would,’ declared the less complicated Effie, who had learned the whole sorry tale by this time.

Once, in the depth of her despair, Meg wrote to Jack, based now in Southampton, to say that perhaps it would be best if they called off their engagement, in view of the war, and go their own way. It was a coward’s way out but she felt short on strength.

He replied almost by return, saying he needed to be able to think of her waiting for him at home, and whatever was bothering her could surely wait until Christmas by which time the war would be over and they could sort it out. The rest of the letter was about how hard the training was and how he was expecting to be sailing any week now, so that might liven things up a bit.

‘Wish I could get up to see you before I go, but it’s so far I might not manage it. Thinking of you, Jack.’

Ashamed that she was fussing over a spoiled love affair when he might lose his life in this terrible war, Meg never again suggested they break their engagement. It seemed only fair to wait, as he suggested, for Christmas when the war would be over. That would be soon enough. As for telling him about Melissa, that was for Kath to do, when the time was right. Nothing to do with her.

‘You’re a fool,’ Tam told her. ‘Why concern yourself with Jack’s feelings, after what he’s done to you? Or Kath.’