Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess

by Amanda Owen

  He must have noted the look of disdain on my face.

  ‘Personally,’ I said, ‘I hate it, it’s horrible.’

  ‘It’ll grow on you,’ argued Clive.

  I left it at that, there was no way that I was going to expend any more energy on it that night. It could stay until I found something better to take its place.

  Annoyingly enough, from that moment onwards, everybody who visited The Firs would comment on that dresser and it irritated the hell out of me. ‘Come on,’ I’d say. ‘Follow me and see the wondrous and interesting things that I’m filling the house with.’ We would wander from room to room whilst I pointed out what I thought were objects of fascination and beauty and finally, when we’d taken in the panelled porch and chandelier, the half-testers and polished back range, they’d stand and gawp at the dresser and tell me what an outstanding piece it was.

  Reuben polished it and replaced a few of the cup hooks on the rack but it made no difference to its overall appearance, it just stood dominating the room with its angular, awkward presence. It only just fitted in the gap between the beams. Once upon a time a drop-down cupboard bed had sat in the very same place, a feature from times past when it made no sense to leave the warmth of the fire to go upstairs to bed. Unfortunately, this had been removed and now all that remained were the old nails in the beams and wooden pegs in the flags that had once underpinned it.

  I had just got to the stage of considering whether it would be acceptable to take the dresser to the saleroom, when I had a stroke of luck. Our friends Colin and Anne from Weardale had called on us and we had once again taken them down to The Firs to proudly show off our work in progress. They were interested in how we were getting on as they were about to embark on a similar project themselves, converting part of their farmhouse into a bed and breakfast and holiday let. I dutifully showed them around, all the nice places, rooms both finished and unfinished, and then ended the tour in the room with the French stove where the dresser stood. I opened the door and, from the doorway, just vaguely pointed out the colour schemes and explained how, one day, eventually it was to be filled with bookshelves, prints and maps but, in the meantime, it was just being used for storage and a workspace.

  ‘Nothing to see here,’ I said to them, not wishing to encourage them to venture in and undoubtedly express their admiration for the ugly dresser. Of course, Anne was having none of it and went in for a closer inspection.

  ‘Col, come an’ look at this,’ she piped.

  I sighed inwardly, but it was fortunate that I didn’t share my avid dislike for the dresser aloud because Colin turned out to be an aficionado of the cabinet maker who had made it some thirty years before.

  ‘Aye, it’s made by the same company that made our kitchen,’ he said. ‘Look, dovetail joints and the same lal’ carved acorns that were his signature mark.’

  ‘What a find,’ said Anne. ‘I’d love one just like it.’

  ‘Yer can ’ave this ’un,’ I said. ‘Believe me, you’d be doin’ me a favour.’

  ‘Now hold on, Anne,’ said Colin, getting flustered. ‘We haven’t got the room, there’d be nowhere to put it . . . unless we get rid of yer Mam’s pipe organ.’

  ‘I can’t get rid o’ that, it was Mam’s pride and joy,’ she replied indignantly.

  I smiled. A solution had just come to mind that would keep both parties happy.

  ‘A pipe organ. Yer know what, I would rather like to own a pipe organ.’

  ‘Yer would?’ said Colin.

  ‘Yer would?’ echoed Clive, who had now appeared on the scene.

  ‘It’s a big un,’ said Colin.

  ‘Mand’d accept nothing less than a big . . .’ Clive smirked, but I didn’t let him finish.

  Anne was very keen for this swap to happen and came up with a plan. Colin would take a picture of the organ on his phone and would show me when we were both at Muker Show the following week. Mobile phones with cameras have now gone mainstream to the point that even the most hardened of Dalesfolk will have one lurking in their pocket or in the glovebox of their Land Rover. It is irrelevant that, for the most part, there is no coverage so little chance of actually being contactable, but what they are useful for is the photographing of sheep. At the Muker Show they were perfect for taking pictures of the day’s show winners or, even better, the sheep that you had at home but that you didn’t bring to the show that day but would almost certainly have wiped the floor with the other competitors. To the untrained eye it all looked mighty suspicious to see small gatherings of archetypical Dales farmers huddled around a mobile phone. Whether it’s a relief when you discover that the screen they are studying does indeed show a lithe, long-legged female – but rather the perfect embodiment of a Swaledale sheep – remains doubtful.

  ‘Now what yer looking at?’ asked Stephen Calvert, the builder, as I squinted at the picture on Colin’s tiny phone.

  ‘A picture of his organ,’ I said, keeping my face perfectly straight.

  ‘It actually is an’ all,’ Clive, who was leaning against the Land Rover, chipped in.

  The conversation soon got turned around to quoits, Stephen’s hobby and lifelong passion. He had scaled the heights of stardom in the world of international quoit playing, playing all the big venues on the circuit: Arkengarthdale, Whitby and Goathland. Muker Show was one of the most prestigious locations to play hoopla – whoops, sorry, quoits – on the hallowed turf.

  ‘Why aren’t yer playing?’ enquired Clive, slapping Stephen on the back. It did seem unnervingly quiet without the familiar chink of the metal hoops hitting each other after being thrown towards the wooden peg in the clay pit.

  ‘Nah, no quoits competition this year,’ said Stephen, shaking his head sadly. ‘It just couldn’t go on any more.’

  ‘Why, what’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘It were just becomin’ too popular, folks from all ower turning up to play.’

  ‘Nay to hell, yer can’t be ’avin that,’ quipped Clive, ‘folks turning up at Muker Show and wanting to enjoy themselves and play quoits? No wonder yer put a stop to that.’

  The pump organ was beautiful and ugly in the same breath, made of mahogany, over-embellished with fretwork and an arrangement of large, painted, decorative pipes. Textured and weirdly tactile, they resembled giraffe skin, though the colour was not dissimilar to verdigris. Above the keys was a row of stops with glorious musical terms written upon them. A pair of velvet-clad pedals needed to be rhythmically pumped in order that the internal bellows filled with air and the resulting sound was as powerful and stirring as it was captivating.

  ‘No wonder yer mam loved playing this,’ I said to Anne after we finally had it in the place of the dresser, which was now loaded up and awaiting transportation to its new home. ‘Are you sure yer wanna part with it?’

  ‘This is the next chapter in its history,’ she said as she reminisced about her mother Gladys’s love of music. She had been an accomplished pianist and teacher, having trained at the London College of Music, and for many years had held organ recitals in her sitting room and organized singsongs at the local pub.

  My pathetic attempts at making sweet music were a miserable failure but, on the upside, the resistance I met with when pumping the foot pedals would at least give me toned thighs.

  ‘There’s many a good tune can be played on an old fiddle,’ commented Clive, ‘but that aint one of ’em.’ He winced at the disjointed few bars of ‘Beautiful Dale (Home of the Swale)’ I hammered out.

  ‘Mebbe I should be practising this, I might be needing to play it soon,’ I replied. I picked out the sombre tones of the funeral hymn ‘The Day Thou Gavest’. ‘How d’ya like this?’

  Clive shook his head. ‘If you don’t want me shuffling off this mortal coil just yet, mi dear, yer need to be keeping me in the manner to which I’m accustomed.’

  ‘You’ll live forever, thee,’ I said glibly. ‘Creaking gate an’ all that.’

  6

  Where’s Eartha?


  ‘BARN SALE’ the advertisement said, the rural equivalent of a garage sale. The listing in the local free advertiser read like a dream: cheese press, hay spades and other farming bygones, it said, then a telephone number. I rang straight away.

  ‘When’s the sale?’ I enquired. ‘It doesn’t say in t’paper.’

  ‘Why, what’s ta wantin’?’ came the curt reply.

  I explained that I didn’t know until I’d seen what was for sale.

  There was a long silence.

  ‘We’eell thoo’d better come now,’ came the reply, eventually.

  Swaledale has many little green lanes that veer off into the unknown, tracks hemmed in by drystone walls that inhibit the passage of anything wider than a four-wheel drive. These lanes tend to follow the contours of the land, winding their way to secluded farmsteads, and it was one of these lanes that I was now carefully negotiating in the Land Rover, cash in pocket and excited children in the back.

  We had already had a stroke of luck on the journey from Ravenseat, so spirits were high. The road down Swaledale was winding, with hairpin bends, humpback bridges and numerous undulations that could test the skills of any driver, particularly any that were loaded to the gunwales with merchandise. White van men, given an impossible timetable in which to deliver parcels to houses in the area, would undoubtedly test the protective packaging of those items marked as ‘fragile’ or ‘handle with care’. Only recently, I was sent a gift of a very pretty religious ornament of the Good Shepherd complete with a pensive look as he scanned the horizon, presumably looking for his missing lamb. Unfortunately, it wasn’t only a lamb he was missing when he arrived: a limb, too, had become detached, presumably lost in transit.

  Today, though, the bumpy road was to be a blessing, as it was our turn to be the finder of good things. Just as we rounded the corner out of Gunnerside, I spied something lying ahead of us in the middle of the road.

  ‘What’s that?’ shouted Sidney, who was travelling in the middle seat on the middle row, looking over my shoulder.

  ‘That, my little ginger freckled friend,’ I said, ‘is a loaf of bread.’

  I checked that there was nothing behind and then did an emergency stop. Reuben leapt out of the back door and scuttled off to retrieve it.

  ‘It’ll be all right for thi chickens, Miley,’ I said as Reuben got back into the Land Rover.

  Reuben reported that the bread, medium-sliced Warburtons, was in date and the packaging unscathed.

  ‘OK, it’s not for t’chickens, it’s for us,’ I informed Miles.

  ‘Do yer think we should hand it in?’ said Violet innocently. ‘To the police.’

  ‘Use yer loaf,’ I said. ‘Finders keepers, in this case.’

  It was like a modern-day version of Hansel and Gretel following the trail of breadcrumbs, only, in our case, it was Warburtons toastie, medium-sliced or – the absolute pinnacle – a seeded granary. Every few hundred yards, there’d be another loaf. This went on for a couple of miles until the trail petered out. Whether it was a bread van or just a supermarket delivery vehicle, I don’t know, but it kept us in sandwiches for a few days.

  And so, the children chattered away and played pass the parcel with the loaves of bread as we jolted and jarred our way along the narrow track.

  ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ piped up a little voice but, quite truthfully, I didn’t know, as I was in unfamiliar territory and following the vaguest of directions. Finally, we rounded a corner and the lane opened out into a farmyard. The weather was dry so, devoid of mud, the once-cobbled yard looked charmingly quaint and in no time at all the children had disembarked and gone. Only the little ones remained, baby Nancy now wide awake and squinting in the sunlight and Clemmie, who had a perplexed look on her face, was straining against her seatbelt in an attempt to free herself. The children had no qualms about setting forth to explore the gardens, fields and pastures; in their eyes nowhere was off limits. Being raised at Ravenseat, in open country where you can walk for hours without ever seeing another soul or passing habitation, the concept of not being allowed to roam wherever they liked never occurred to them. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell them that it didn’t always work like that.

  There was certainly plenty to see. Cats and chickens featured predominantly, as, too, did various tractors, vintage and otherwise but all in a serious state of disrepair. The overall picture was one of a place that had seen its heyday and was now in serious decline, but still it was a pleasant enough scene. The fact it was a fine sunny day is probably what made it seem homely and welcoming, for on closer inspection it appeared that no scrap man had set foot in the farmyard in at least the last fifty years.

  An elderly man emerged from a building and shuffled towards me, his head bent forward, a greasy cap upon his head. His heavy black wellies were folded down, so the frayed hem of his ill-fitting brown moleskin trousers was visible. Braces appeared to be holding everything up. His shirt was dirty, missing at least the top three buttons, and his sleeves were rolled back to the elbows, exposing crêpe-like weathered skin. Here and there, a purple bruise was visible. Old age and infirmity comes to us all and, knowing nothing of him or his circumstances, all I could perceive was that he seemed to belong to another era.

  ‘It’s a lang time sen bairns was laikin’ in t’yard,’ he said, when finally he reached out his hand to shake mine. ‘The name’s Ambler by the way.’

  The children were now back, squabbling and creating a ruckus. The cats that dozed here and there eyed them suspiciously with the withering look of disdain that only a feline is capable of. Chickens that were quietly scratching in the yard now sprinted away into the distance, their peace rudely interrupted.

  ‘This place is ace,’ shouted Reuben, who was in his element, poking about around the skeleton of what once was some kind of jeep. The chassis was exposed, and its body had rotted and rusted into oblivion. The remains of the rubber tyres had perished and it now sat forlornly, crumbling and exposed to the elements. Evidently no one had realized that it was on its final journey and the key had been left in situ, ready for the next outing that never came, until it had corroded and become one with the ignition.

  ‘Oh my gawd,’ shouted Edith. ‘There’s an ice-cream van too!’

  Cue a stampede as the children ran to a nettle bed where the abandoned van sat. I felt a bit embarrassed at the children’s enthusiasm for what was essentially a junk yard. Much of the stuff was way beyond repair, but I was still hopeful that somewhere, in an outbuilding perhaps, there’d be something of interest.

  ‘Nut everything’s fur sale,’ Ambler said. I was thankful for small mercies; Reuben would have happily taken everything he could lay his hands on.

  ‘Com wi’ me,’ he said, ushering me towards the farm buildings.

  Raven was sitting on an old stone mounting-block, tickling a tabby cat which had stretched itself out and appeared to be enjoying the attention.

  ‘Rav, watch lal’ uns will yer,’ I shouted as I followed Ambler.

  We stepped over pushbikes and chain harrows, skirted around milk churns and dodged a back actor (an excavator that is mounted on the back of a tractor) precariously balanced on blocks. He stopped at an ancient building with an arched entrance. Once upon a time, it had had doors, but not any more; hurdles had now been tied across the front to stop animals getting either in or out – which, I wasn’t quite sure.

  ‘There’s some stuff in t’granary,’ he said.

  There were some useful items laid about – muck forks, a spade and a shovel – all solid and well made, as things used to be. Anyway, I owed Stephen Calvert the builder a shovel, as I’d managed to run his over and break it when we were working down at The Firs.

  ‘What’s ’appened ’ere,’ he’d exclaimed, although the wheel marks and the close proximity of the Land Rover meant that it wasn’t really that much of a mystery.

  I apologized. ‘It wasn’t your favourite shovel, was it?’ I said.

  ‘Aye, it bloody well was,’ h
e replied forcefully.

  I grimaced, not entirely sure whether to believe him.

  ‘Forty years I’ve ’ad that shovel, man an’ boy,’ he said. ‘I’ve replaced t’shaft an’ even bought it a new end, but still.’ Then he laughed.

  Now, at the barn sale, I found a gavelock, a long iron bar for driving holes into solid ground and a tiny moudie spade perfect for breaking into the tunnels when putting down mole traps. I paid him, and he carefully counted out the notes, then folded them and put them in a dinted metal tin in his pocket.

  ‘I was really looking for some household stuff too,’ I said. I was itching to see what else he might have.

  ‘Aye, that’s what t’last fella was lookin’ for an’ all,’ he replied.

  Of course, I wasn’t the first person to go and have a look at what was on offer, news travels fast up the dale and I was still usually the last to know.

  ‘’E got t’cheese press.’

  I tried to hide my disappointment.

  ‘You had a cheese press?’ I said flatly, like it mattered now.

  ‘H’aye,’ he said, with a sharp intake of breath. His eyes took on a wistful look as he described how his mother had made the best cheese. How the cheeses were wrapped in muslin and stacked on traves – the wooden shelves in the dairy – and what flavour, like nothing nowadays. I smiled as he recalled milking a particularly quiet cow by hand in the field and carrying the fresh milk back to the farmstead in a backcan. Then he snapped out of his dream.

  ‘I knaw where t’backcan is,’ he said jubilantly. ‘I remembered where it were.’

  We set off yet again, round the back of the buildings, past a partially grassed-over midden, through a passageway with a tin roof, between two buildings and eventually reached the farmhouse.

  ‘Carful,’ muttered Ambler, ‘she’s sittin’.’

  ‘She’ was a goose, sitting nonchalantly on the doorstep just under the eaves of a tiny gabled porch. I wouldn’t say that I am fearful of geese, but I am well aware of their reputation for being fierce creatures and an excellent alternative to a guard dog. Ambler went inside, and I hovered outside, one eye on the goose and the other drawn by the very dingy and dark entrance hall just beyond. Then I followed him in, eyes focused straight ahead. I strode past the goose, willing there not to be flapping wings and a honk preceding a shower of pecks.