Luckpenny Land

by Freda Lightfoot

  Luckpenny Land

  Freda Lightfoot

  Originally published 1994 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH

  Copyright © 1994 and 2010 by Freda Lightfoot.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. Nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0956607300

  Published by Freda Lightfoot 2010

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  Life is hard for Meg Turner. She lives on a lonely farm in the bleak but beautiful mountains of the English Lake District with a bully of a father and a brother who resents her. They want to keep her stuck at home, but Meg wants more than the kitchen sink. For love and comfort she turns to her best friend Kath, and to Lanky Lawson, who’s more of a father figure than her own father will ever be. But it’s Lanky’s son, Jack, with his dark good looks, she loves and hopes to marry one day. Loyalties are threatened as World War Two approaches and Meg gradually realises that the only thing she can really count on is her passion for the haunting land she loves. Until one day a stranger arrives in the dale and her world changes for ever.

  Chapter One

  1938

  ‘Anyone would think I was asking to go on the streets.’

  The stinging slap sent the honey gold hair swirling about her face, enveloping her burning cheeks in a wash of colour that for a brief moment lit up the shabby kitchen.

  Any ordinary face would have been hardened and cheapened by the cold light of the single Tilly lamp, but not this one. The girl’s face was arresting, alive with the urgency of her request. There was strength in the way she firmed the wide mouth, resolution in the sweeping arch of the brow, in the smoke grey of the eyes fringed by a crescent of dark lashes above cheek bones that would hold their beauty long after time had wrought its damage.

  But there was no one to be captivated by Meg Turner’s youthful beauty here, certainly not her uncompromising father. Even her two brothers had withdrawn from the scene to a safer distance the moment supper was over, Dan to check the flock for any new lambs, Charlie reluctantly to clean out the sheds.

  The remnants of the kitchen fire fell together with a small hushing noise. There was no other sound in the room, save for that of the rain that beat against the window. Outside, great waves of it washed down the hillsides from the high mountain tops, gushed into the overfilled beck and pelted onwards to the River Kent and the distant sea. They were used to rain in Lakeland and paid little heed to it, and the glowering skies seemed eminently suited to her mood. Meg wished she was out in it, letting it wash over her face and limbs, cleansing the pain and frustration from her as it so often did. The wind was rising, she could hear it whining in the great ash trees that lined the track to the farm and gave the name Ashlea to the place that had been her home for all of her nineteen years.

  Inconsequentially, she remembered leaving a blanket loose on the line. She’d have to search for it in the bottom field come morning. Nothing that wasn’t battened down would survive the helm wind that scoured these high fells. Though the wind could not penetrate the walls of the farmhouse which were four feet thick, solid enough to withstand the worst mountain weather, and keep her within, like a prisoner.

  Meg began to clear the table with jerky, angry movements, swallowing the bitter tears of disappointment that threatened to choke her. She supposed the slap was no more than she deserved. She shouldn’t have dared to repeat the rebellious statement she’d made to Dan earlier when he had caught her pulling pints at the Cock and Feathers.

  ‘Get your coat on,’ he’d bluntly told her. ‘You’re coming home with me.’

  She hadn’t been able to believe her bad luck, having deliberately chosen the inn because it was far from the market area of town where her father conducted his business. Not for one moment had she considered the possibility of her own brother choosing to drink there. But losing her temper would get her nowhere. Hadn’t she discovered so a dozen times?

  Nevertheless, since it had taken her weeks to find this job, she wasn’t for giving in easily. ‘I’ll not,’ she’d said, continuing to pull pints, feeling the excitement of defiance in the pit of her stomach.

  When she’d tossed back a ragged abundance of honeyed curls from slender shoulders, an unconsciously sensuous act, not a man in the room would not have willingly championed her.

  Only Dan Turner was not a man to take on lightly.

  The elder of the two Turner brothers, his short stature belied the beefy power of him. In his tweed jacket and waistcoat, flat cap jauntily tilted to one side of his large bullet head, he looked even more intimidating than in his more usual working overalls. He had the typically round, handsome Turner face, broad nose and very slightly projecting ears. But unlike young Charlie, this brother seemed to wear a perpetual sneer, which drew up one corner of his mouth and flared the nostrils in a way that gave off a strong warning to leave well alone.

  The farmers, recalling Dan Turner’s expertise on the wrestling field, fascinated though they were by this little drama, had drawn back slightly, shuffling uncomfortably.

  ‘You should be selling the eggs, not swanning around behind a bar.’

  ‘The eggs are all sold. What’s so terrible about a little job? You drink in enough of these places. Why shouldn’t I work in one?’

  ‘You know damn well why, because you’re a woman! God knows what Father will say.’

  ‘It’s only Saturday mornings, for pin money.’ She had spoken with calm assurance, desperately wanting to disguise the unease that filled her at mention of her father’s reaction. ‘You’re not going to tell on me, are you?’

  But he had.

  Now the man at the head of the table glared at her with a cold fury in his eyes that made Dan’s seem mild by comparison. ‘How dare you speak like a loose woman at a Christian table? I’ll wash thee mouth out with lye soap if I hear the like in my hous
e again.’

  Unrepentant, Meg returned her father’s accusing glare, a show of bravado she did not quite feel in her young, fiercely rebellious eyes. ‘I was only trying to make the point that it is a perfectly respectable public-house.’

  ‘Palace of sin, more like! You should be grateful for a good home and food on your plate, not always be prating on after summat different.’

  ‘It’s not that, you know it’s not,’ Meg cried.

  She longed to reach out, to touch the rigid figure, to seek some sign of affection, but knew such a gesture would be considered a show of weakness. They had never been a family to display emotion.

  Life was grinding hard on these Lakeland fells, governed by the changing seasons with little time for sentiment. The year began in October when the rams were put to the ewes. Through the harsh days and long nights of winter the hardy Herdwicks and Swaledales survived on scant grass where they could find it, eked out occasionally by croppings of ash and holly. In March and April the flock was brought down ready for lambing. Later there would be the sorting, marking, dosing, clipping and dipping that marked the farming year until the autumn sales came and it all started again.

  But Meg felt she had no part in this routine. Her life was spent almost entirely within doors, even more so since the death of her mother six months ago. Since then Joe Turner had fashioned an even tougher shell about himself. If Meg had never managed to penetrate that shell, even as a young child, how could she hope to do so now?

  Worse, she no longer had her mother’s protection. Without Annie’s steady hand to calm him, who knew what her father might do? Joe Turner didn’t approve of any show of independence from his women folk. He liked to know where they were at all times, and said as much, frequently.

  As he was saying now.

  ‘I’ll not have you wandering round as if you had no home to go to and no proper work to do. If you’re short of summat to do you can scrub the hen arks out.’

  ‘I’ve done them.’

  Meg felt the hot rebellion drain from her, and her shoulders slumped. What was the use? She could never win. She stared at her father and despite all her best efforts, she hated him. She hated his round, pugnacious face, the skin below the eyes loose and flabby, dragging the lids down at each corner. She despised the too large nose seeming to overpower the thin upper lip, drawn under slightly, to show a pair of expensive false teeth that grinned at him each night from his bedside table.

  Meg knew all about honouring one’s father and mother. It had been drummed into her at hundreds of unwilling visits to chapel over the years. But though she had willingly and lovingly done the latter there were shaming moments when she wished that it was her father lying in the cold earth and not her lovely mum. She longed for Annie now with a passion that brought a physical pain to her young heart.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what it was all in aid of?’

  Meg blinked the threat of tears away. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! I’m like stupid Cinderella in that daft fairy tale, and I won’t stand for it any more. I want to have a life of me own. An identity.’

  ‘Identity?’ Her father’s scathing tone made the word sound somehow not quite decent. ‘Thee’s my daughter, that’s who thee are. What’s wrong with that?’

  Meg sighed, knowing he would never understand but unable to prevent herself from trying. ‘I mean I’ve nothing that’s just mine. No time to call my own, not a penny to spend that hasn’t to be accounted for.’

  ‘What do you need money for? Fol de rols, I suppose. Useless flibbertigibbets.’

  Meg rubbed her forehead, which was starting to ache from the day’s endless arguments. ‘Don’t talk daft.’

  ‘Daft, am I? When have you ever gone short? Tell me that. You only have to ask.’

  ‘That’s just the point. Why should I have to ask? It’s undignified, having to ask every time I need something.’ Meg thought of her friend, Kath, who had a monthly allowance paid into her bank account, and knew a twinge of uncharacteristic envy.

  ‘I’m your father,’ Joe said stolidly, as if that explained everything. ‘I hope I can keep my family without help from a slip of a girl.’ Twin spots of colour lit the high cheek bones.

  ‘But I want to do it. Mrs Blamire gets run off her feet and says she can’t cope with all the cooking and serving on busy days, as she did when she was younger.’

  ‘Mrs Blamire may do as she thinks fit, but no daughter of mine will work in a taproom. If women’d stop at home where they belong we’d soon cure the unemployment problem, you mark my words. Wilful, that’s what you are, and it’s time you learnt your place.’ Dark brows met with the ferocity of his anger. ‘You have the hen money. It was allus good enough for thee mother.’

  But Meg wasn’t for letting go easily, not now she’d got this far. In truth she didn’t rightly know what she wanted but her confused mind desperately searched for something. She couldn’t even put a name to it. Freedom? A purpose to her mundane life? Something beyond bringing in the coal bucket. She didn’t particularly like the idea of working in a pub but it had been a job she could do, with money of her own at the end of it. The feeling had been a good one. And now it was gone and her father would never permit her to find another.

  But somewhere, somehow, there must be a place for her. A place beyond this kitchen.

  On her feet now, her small pert bosom rising and falling on shallow breaths of anxiety, she met Joe Turner’s gaze with commendable courage and battled on. ‘I’m not me mother. I can’t take her place for you. Things have changed since her day. Women should have the same right to work as men do.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’

  The cold anger on his face was such that Meg quailed slightly and decided her to take a different tack. Deliberately she softened her voice. ‘Cock and Feathers is a respectable house and I’d get up early and see to your breakfast before I went. I’ve plenty of time to sell the eggs and vegetables at the market before I start, and after I finish I’d see you all had a hot dinner to come home to. You’d never notice I was gone.’

  Not entirely unaware of his daughter’s burgeoning womanhood, for the most part Joe chose to ignore it. But he certainly knew how to protect it.

  ‘Thee would be open to all manner of lewd remarks from the scuff of the gutters that frequent such places. I hope I know my duty as a good Christian better than to let you. I’ll hear no more about it. I have my reputation to keep up at chapel. What would they think? That I couldn’t afford to keep me own daughter at home? It don’t bear thinking of. Working in a pub indeed, where folk spend money they can’t afford on demon drink. It didn’t take long for someone to see you and tell our Dan, now did it?’

  Meg opened her mouth to protest that Dan had gone in the Cock and Feathers himself for the purpose of drinking, but thought better of it. It would only make matters worse.

  ‘Finish the washing up and get to bed.’

  Joe’s tone was stark in its decisiveness and he turned away to pull on the old mackintosh that hung steaming before the fire. ‘And there’ll be no dancing for you tonight. You’d best stop in for a bit, see if that’ll get rid of your hysterics.’

  Meg’s heart plummeted and all her defiance fled. She could still recall the humiliation of being kept in for a whole month after she had once dared visit the Roxy Picture House in Kendal.

  It had been her sixteenth birthday and she and her best friend, Kath Ellis, had ridden in on their bikes to celebrate by drooling over Humphrey Bogart. They had dawdled on their way home, stopping for a hot meat pie at the corner shop and arriving home later than promised. Their giggling happiness had soon been squashed. Joe Turner had reached for his belt and only Annie’s pleading had saved Meg from a very sound beating. Even so, the punishment of being kept in for four long weeks had seemed severe and still rankled, nearly three years later.

  Now it was all happening again. Only worse. If she was kept in then she wouldn’t be able to go with Kath to the supper dance. More importa
nt, she would miss seeing Jack. The thought made her die a little inside. She had loved Jack Lawson for as long as she could remember and lived in hope that he would notice her one day. She’d made herself a new dress especially for tonight and now Jack would never see her in it. Hot tears stung the backs of her eyes as she fought for control.

  ‘I’m not a child to be sent to my room.’

  ‘You’re behaving like one.’

  ‘I’m trying to show you that I’m a grown woman who wants to start work instead of being skivvy to two idle numbskulls.’ She dismissed her brothers with a flap of her hand. ‘Why must everything be done for their convenience? Why have I no rights?’

  ‘Because the farm will be theirs one day, not yours. Because they do all the work on it, not thee.’

  Meg choked back the agony of unshed tears. ‘That’s not true. I work as hard as they do, harder. Our Dan only does what he has to and Charlie isn’t interested in the land, you know he isn’t.’

  ‘He’ll do what he’s told. You all will. Now have done. I’ve heard enough.’ Joe started to walk away but beside herself with the anguish of not seeing Jack, Meg snatched at his arm and pulled him round to face her.

  ‘I won’t stay in, I won’t! And I won’t skivvy for them two any more. They could do a bit more for themselves for a change. Fetch coal in for a start.’

  Joe Turner went white to the lips, the spurt of flame from the dying fire reflected in the charcoal of his eyes. ‘My sons have enough work of their own to do without taking on women’s duties. Trouble with thee, young lady, is you don’t know when you’re well off. You’ve good clothes on thee back, food in thee belly. What more do you want?’

  He set huge hands down upon the table top, hands that could bring a lamb from its mother as sweetly as butter, wring the life from a fat chicken or shoot a troublesome dog without flinching. He balled them now into threatening fists. A man who read his Bible nightly, he nevertheless considered it his duty to exercise discipline when it was needed. And this young madam was getting above herself.