Luckpenny Land

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘All right. I won’t tell.’

  ‘Aye, I did love her. I’d always loved her if you want to know, even when she was young Annie Follett. I rather thought that she had a fancy for me. We’d certainly talked about getting wed one day. Nothing definite, you understand. Just youngsters we were, dreaming.’ Silence fell and Meg thought the old man had fallen asleep but then he suddenly opened his eyes and continued. ‘Then the war came and I went away. Joe didn’t go. Flat feet or summat, I don’t remember. Mebbe he just had to stay and look after the farm. When the war was over and I came back, she’d already wed him.’

  ‘Why?’ Meg was shocked by this apparent disloyalty on the part of her lovely mam.

  ‘By rights you should ask her that, only she isn’t here any more so I don’t suppose it’ll matter. The truth is she thought I were a goner. It shook her when I come back. Not quite the man I was, admittedly, but with all me limbs in place which was more than some had. Anyway I met my Mary and wed her. We were right happy, but I never forgot sweet Annie.’ He started to cough again and Meg was all concern.

  ‘I’ve made you talk too much. Rest for a while. Don’t say any more. I’ve seen to the animals. Now I must pop home, check on Effie and fetch you some food.’ She leaned close and laid her soft, warm cheek against the old man’s rough one. ‘I’m glad you loved Mam. It makes us seem more like family.’

  Lanky gave a quiet chuckle and, lifting a shaky hand, stroked Meg’s hair.

  ‘You’re a grand lass. You remind me of her in a lot of ways. I shall always be grateful for the joy you’ve brought to a foolish old man in his last years.’

  ‘Oh, don’t talk so soft.’ She kissed him, trying not to let her tears fall upon his cheek as his horny hand held hers, still with its startlingly strong grip.

  ‘Don’t hurry back. Do what you have to do. I’ll be all right now.’ Unable to find her voice through the choking tears, Meg could only nod and stumble to the door. How different her life would have been if only her mother had waited and married Lanky.

  Ten minutes later Joe walked into Broombank yard with a determined stride. He would have driven up in the old van but petrol was getting expensive and he didn’t like to waste money. He’d taken a short cut across the fields, so didn’t see Meg running down the lane. And told no one where he was going.

  It was more than twelve months since he’d last asked for his loan to be settled, the interest had accrued very nicely since then and he wasn’t prepared to wait any longer. Now that war was a reality a man needed all his assets to hand. Particularly with a married son to keep.

  He found Lanky by his fireside looking as if he’d just got up. No wonder the place was going to rack and ruin. ‘Never would have thought to find you indoors at this time of day.’

  Lanky, having politely offered Joe refreshment and been refused, took a quick sip of his honey and lemon mixture, hoping to quieten the cough that he felt stirring. He wanted none of Joe Turner’s pity. ‘I suppose a chap can stop for a bite if he wants to.’

  Joe sniffed his disbelief, as well he might for it was a time Lanky would normally have been out on the fells, working. But that had been in the days when he’d been fit. It was plain he was far from that now. ‘Getting a bit slack, eh? You’ll be missing your Jack.’ Joe, as always, had the knack of pouring salt on a wound.

  ‘He has to do his bit for King and Country.’

  ‘I don’t hold with wars.’

  Lanky was feeling too ill for the roundabout question and answer game he and Joe usually indulged in. ‘I’ve only stopped for a minute,’ he lied. ‘So if you’ve owt to say I’d be glad if you got on with it.’

  Nothing could have suited Joe more. ‘Aye, you can be blunt with me, lad. We’ve known each other long enough.’

  ‘Then you understand that I’m a patient man but even I have me limits.’ The cough almost choked him as it burst forth and he quickly sipped the warmed honey mixture again. He preferred his own tinctures to the doctor’s newfangled stuff.

  ‘Thee wants to get that cough seen to.’

  When the spasm had passed, Lanky faced his rival with as placid an expression as he could muster. He felt so ill he wondered how he was managing to keep upright. ‘I suppose you’ve come for your money?’

  ‘Well, I’m not made of brass, tha knows.’

  ‘I haven’t got it.’ There it was. The truth. Out in the open at last. Plain and simple. ‘I can’t pay you. Not now, nor in the foreseeable future. I don’t know if I ever can.’

  Joe clicked his false teeth for a bit, deep in thought. ‘Well now, that’s a shame. I was hoping we could have this matter settled today. Have you made up your mind what thee is going to do about it?’

  ‘No.’

  The silence that now fell between the two men was filled with unspoken vengeance. A lifetime of resentments, one against the other. It was as if the veneer of friendship had finally been stripped away and the relationship shown for what it truly was: a jealous, bitter rivalry with its seeds sown long ago in the distant past.

  ‘I’ll have to take summat else then, in lieu.’

  ‘You’re not having my land, not now, not ever. Annie was right about you, Joe Turner. You’re a cold hearted son of the devil and no mistake.’

  ‘And you’re a stubborn old fool, that’s what you are. And Annie a greater. one for wasting so much time on you.’

  The last vestige of colour drained from the parchment cheeks. ‘Don’t you besmirch Annie’s name! There were nowt between her and me after you and she wed and you know it.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘You could have had her, and gladly, in return for a hundred acres or so.’

  Lanky half rose in his chair. Incensed by Joe’s taunting he had a longing to smash the self-satisfied face to pulp but the exertion even of moving was too much and he fell back, the burning rasping cough starting up again, the phlegm in his throat near choking him. He knew he shouldn’t let Joe’s taunts provoke him. Joe was not a man to let his women wander. He always liked to be in control, bragging that Annie belonged to him and would do only as he directed.

  When the honey and lemon had soothed the cough sufficiently for Lanky to speak again, his voice was low and resolute in its calm. ‘So you’d take away a sick man’s animals? You’re a hard man, Joe Turner. With few morals.’

  ‘Morals have nowt to do with business.’

  ‘Do your worst then and see if I care. Only leave my land alone.’

  The cough threatened again and Lanky calmed himself before continuing. ‘You didn’t deserve Annie. I can’t think why she chose you. She should have known I would come back. I told her I would, even if I was a poor study with writing.’

  A heat was closing over his head. It was like a fire that blotted everything out but the sight of Annie’s pretty face. A face that had kept him sane when he was in the army hospital. So lovely she had been with her cloud of shining hair, just like Meg’s. He could scarce think straight now but he was almost sure that she’d stood here, less than six months before she died, and told him that she had never stopped loving him through all those long years. Words he’d stored in his heart with joy. So nothing Joe Turner could say would spoil that truth.

  Joe, however, was determined to try. ‘You should have written to her more, told her where you were. She got fed up of worrying.’

  Lanky, an intensely private man, best with his own company, and, like Joe himself unable to read or write, still cringed at the embarrassment of having someone else write his feelings on paper. At first it hadn’t mattered because he’d been given regular leave and their time together had been sweet. But then, without warning, he’d been sent to France and that was it. There’d been a third letter but that had never been posted as he’d been struck down by the gas and spent the rest of the war being moved from hospital to hospital.

  He was glad she never saw him like that, so sick, spewing up blood and bile, half a man. He’d wanted to be wel
l before he contacted her again.

  But by then it had been too late. She’d married Joe and his dreams had crumbled to dust. That was the one time in his life when he, a grown man, had cried.

  ‘You’re right though,’ Joe said. ‘She might have waited. Only when I told her you were probably dead, she agreed to marry me.’

  ‘You told her what?’ The faded eyes went blank with disbelief. ‘You hadn’t heard that I was dead, had you?’

  ‘No, I hadn’t.’

  ‘You told Annie a deliberate lie?’

  ‘She had to see sense.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wanted her. Annie was a good woman, hard-working, salt of the earth as you might say. Same as our Meg is, only Annie weren’t nearly so rebellious.’

  Lanky saw it all now. He saw that Joe had been prepared to lie to get his way, fooling himself that it might be the truth. He’d ruined Lanky’s entire life, stolen the girl he had loved.

  Oh, he’d come to love his own dear wife, Mary, and they’d been happy together. But it was true that Annie had remained special. Mary had understood and seen no threat in the sweet memory, for that’s all it was in the end.

  Whereas Joe had let the hatred and jealousy grow inside him like a canker. He had never forgiven Lanky for the fact that Annie still loved him, even to her dying day. He had won her in body, but never captured her heart. Getting Broombank land would have been revenge, as well as economically useful.

  Lanky pulled himself upright in the chair and faced his old adversary with pride. ‘Meg may be Annie’s daughter, but she’s also yours so not so easily squashed. She has a strength and a spirit that even you can’t break, Joe Turner, try as you might. She’ll follow her own plan in life, will Meg, not yours. Mark my words, she’s a match for you any day.’

  Chapter Eleven

  The moment Meg walked in her own front door she knew she’d delayed too long.

  Sally Ann met her in the kitchen with the news that Effie had run off again. ‘You’d best start looking for her. I’ve searched every corner of the house and barns and can find no sign. I tried to keep an eye on her but she’s as smart as a ferret.’

  ‘It’s my fault, Sal. Don’t blame yourself.’

  Meg called for Rust and with dog at heel set off down the cart track, calling Effie’s name. Oh, why hadn’t she come back for her sooner, taken her to Broombank last night? Yet she’d had no reason to know then that Lanky would be ill and need her to stay.

  Effie should have waited. Why hadn’t she?

  Because Meg had promised not to leave her and she had broken that promise. Probably no one had ever kept a promise to her in the past so why should she be surprised if a perfect stranger let her down?

  Meg trekked on, longing to find some sign of the once noisome Effie. Used to solitary walking, she never felt lonely as a rule. Now, for the first time, she did. The fells and dales, so named by the early Norse settlers, looked more empty and bleak than they ever had before. The cracks and fissures forming steps in the rocks, punctuated periodically with patches of green, offered a deceptively easy climb to the top. Try it and your shaking legs would be the first to spot the mistake. But Effie was ignorant of which parts of this remote landscape could be traversed and which should be left well alone.

  Responsibility for these two people, one an old friend, the other a new, weighed heavily upon her. Why couldn’t she be more like Kath? Kath did not approve of responsibility. She said everyone thought only of themselves and that Meg should learn to do the same. It was not a belief Meg could ever subscribe to.

  But supposing Effie were in trouble? One slip on those heights and you were done for. In her mind’s eye, Meg saw the small child lying at the bottom of a crag like a broken doll.

  ‘Effie!’ she called out, her voice snatched and lost by the wind. Oh, Jack. If only you were here, you could help me look. A lump came into her throat. Where was he? Was he in danger? Would they send him to France? Perhaps she shouldn’t even be thinking of taking on an evacuee when all she wanted to do was pack her bags and go to him, wherever he was, so they could be married.

  If only that were possible.

  The old oaks and yews, their trunks twisted into grotesque shapes by the wind, whined and creaked, making her shiver. Meg searched till the October light was fading from the sky but could find no sign of the tiny figure. Her foot skidded on a stone and she pitched forward on to her knees. Tears stung her eyes as she picked the shale from her bloodied flesh. She was tired. Time to call it a day and go home. She’d go and see Mr Lipstock in the morning. ‘Come on, Rust. Supper time.’

  Sally Ann met her at the door. ‘She’s back.’

  Pleasure and relief flooded through Meg and she grasped Sally Ann’s hands with delight. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful. Then she trusts us after all.’

  Her sister-in-law looked doubtful. ‘Joe found her. I think she was lost, and very frightened. It’s a big world out there.’ Sal nodded in the direction of the stairs. ‘He’s with her now. Says we are not to disturb him while he teaches her the meaning of gratitude.’

  Meg needed no further warning. Very swiftly and quietly she flew up the stairs. Her hand was trembling as she lifted the sneck. of the bedroom door. She had no wish to stir Joe’s temper further but nor had he any right to chastise the little evacuee, if that was what he was about.

  When she pushed open the door Meg did not immediately take in the scene before her. It fell upon her eyes bit by bit like a disjointed jig-saw puzzle.

  Joe’s arm raised. The silhouette of his lean body against the blue of the night sky framed in the window beyond. The flash of something long and leathery. The night light by the bed shining upon a shivering white body and over it all a terrible silence broken only by a rhythmic, repetitive thwack.

  ‘No!’ Meg flew across the tiny bedroom, reaching for the belt that Joe held high above his head, ready to stroke its telling cruelty upon the torn flesh below. ‘No!’

  She was thrust fiercely aside so that she fell, knocking her head against the window frame. But she was up again as the belt met its target a second time. Not a sound came from Effie, lying curled up in her clean vest and knickers on the makeshift bed, arms about her head. Had she mercifully lost her senses? Meg grabbed for the raised arm and this time grasped the belt firmly enough to twist it hard and wrench it from her father’s grasp.

  Joe Turner swung round upon his daughter and knocked her flying with the flat of one hand. It sent her into a crumpled heap in the corner of the small room, bringing the sharp sting of tears to her eyes as her head banged on the floor. Pain shot through her and the world tilted and turned black, fired by a kaleidoscope of colour in her head. But Meg did not care. She held tenaciously to the lethal belt beneath her.

  ‘Stop that.’ The force of the quiet voice from the door was electrifying. Joe, one hand on Meg’s hair ready to drag her to her feet, stilled and half turned to face his daughter-in-law.

  Sally Ann was standing in the doorway with a rifle in her hand. It was no more than an air gun used to pop rabbits but it could do considerable damage at this distance. Joe, one eye on the gun, attempted to brazen it out.

  ‘There’s no ammunition in that thing.’

  ‘Try it and see.’

  For a long moment everyone remained frozen. Joe felt a touch of admiration for Sally Ann. She was a fine figure of a woman standing there like some warrior queen with her red hair all about her head. It took guts to take up a gun against him. He gave no such consideration to his daughter whom he dismissed as a trouble-maker, beyond his control, but he released Meg’s hair and she fell back upon the floorboards with a quiet sob. Before anyone could move, Joe had picked up Effie from the bed and shaken her like a limp white rabbit before tossing her back upon the thin mattress. ‘Learn to do as you’re told, brat. If I say you do summat, you jump to and do it. Have you got that?’ He did not wait for any answer, which was just as well since the child could not have given one.

  When he had go
ne Meg struggled to her feet and hurried to Effie’s side. She found the child curled into a ball tighter than ever, eyes wide open, unblinking. Beads of blood showed on the white underclothing but she made no sound. No tears fell and not a muscle twitched. It was as if she did not feel any pain.

  ‘Dear God, he’s killed her!’ Meg cried.

  ‘No,’ Sally Ann said. ‘She’s in deep shock. I’ll fetch some salt water to clean her up. You stay with her. When she comes out of it she’ll need a friend.’

  It was perhaps to the child’s advantage that she did not come out of it until the next morning. Even then she did not cry and Meg found her acceptance of the chastisement almost more terrible to bear than the act itself.

  Effie was sitting up in bed when Meg woke. Gently, she held a cup of water to the child’s parched lips. ‘Are you all right? Did he hurt you?’ Inane remarks, but what else was there to say?

  Effie gave a little shake of her head, denying the obvious truth. ‘But I still won’t milk his soddin’ cows.’

  Meg gasped, then reluctantly laughed. ‘Are you saying you took a beating rather than milk cows?’

  She would have to speak to Effie again about her language. It wasn’t proper for so young a child to have so filthy a mouth. Oh, but it was wonderful to see that even in these terrible circumstances the girl’s spirit was not broken. She was glad about that.

  ‘I’ve had a beating afore, and I don’t like them monsters.’

  Something hardened deep inside Meg and a resolution was born. ‘Well, you’ll not be beaten again. You and I, Effie, are moving out of here.’ Eager to put thought into action, she reached for her brown suitcase in the closet.

  ‘Where we going?’

  ‘You’ll see. A place where there is only kindness and love, not anger and beatings.’

  ‘Are there any cows?’

  Meg looked at the resolute, pointed face and started to laugh. ‘You might find, in time, that cows can be more appealing than your fellow men. Come on, can you get up, do you think? I’d like to be out of here before it gets light if possible. Can you walk?’