by Jenny Holmes
Les shook his head. ‘We’re due to sail up to the west coast of Scotland on Monday. That’s as much as I can tell you.’
The snippet reassured her a little. ‘That has to be better than the Med?’
He was tight-lipped as he stood up and walked to the French windows. ‘I’ll write,’ he promised. ‘But there’s no guarantee that my letters will get through.’
‘No. We’ll have to take each day as it comes.’
They talked quietly in the presence of death, careful not to open a Pandora’s box of ragged emotions: their endless, unfulfilled longings to hold each other through day and night; her fears for his safety in the face of stealthy torpedoes and whining, roaring Messerschmitts; his image of her as a wild spirit who could at any moment escape from the cage of their engagement and fly free.
‘I love you,’ they whispered to each other before Donald opened the door and entered the room, his cheeks wet with tears. He came to stand between them and stare out of the window at the bare, frozen earth.
At church next morning, Brenda stood next to Joyce with her hymn book open, unable to sing the words. Events of the day before and a sleepless night had left her feeling that she existed inside a strange bubble, unable to experience what was going on around her.
‘Hello there, Brenda, you look shocking!’ Dorothy had exclaimed in the church porch as they’d filed in behind the Hubys and in front of Geoff, who stayed at the back of the church to discuss a course of treatment for mastitis with one of his dairy farmer friends.
‘Ta for that,’ Brenda had replied with none of her usual verve.
Joyce had frowned at Dorothy who had taken the hint then immediately caught up with Evelyn and ostentatiously linked arms with her and made sure that they sat together in a pew wedged between Bernard and Cliff.
The vicar had glided out of the vestry in his white sail of a surplice and led his flock in prayer, filling the church with loud, unctuous certainty while his unhappy evacuee sat cowed and alone in the front pew. Joyce had occasionally caught sight of the boy’s back view between taller members of the congregation: the bristles of his closely cropped hair, the red ears that stuck out, the scrawny neck. She’d remembered Alan’s dread of the cane and tried not to imagine what had gone on the day before, once the vicar had closed his front door on the world.
At the close of the hymns, prayers and seemingly endless sermon, Joyce leaned in towards Brenda. ‘Dorothy was right: you do look as if you’ve been through the mill.’
A heavy sigh showed that Brenda was too tired to deny it.
‘Don’t you think it would be best to put off decorating the hall until later this week?’
Brenda nodded weakly.
‘Good, that’s settled. Leave it to me; I’ll fix a new time with Evelyn and Dorothy while you take yourself off home.’
At the church gate they went their separate ways: Brenda back to bed in her goods wagon, Joyce to Black Crag Farm on her bike. The air was bitterly cold and she was glad of the thick woollen scarf pulled over the lower part of her face and of her Land Girl hat pulled well down over her forehead. Still, she arrived at the farm with pinched cheeks and frozen fingertips and was stamping her feet on the flagstones to restore circulation when a smart Ford car followed her into the yard with a woman she had never seen before sitting at the wheel. By the time Joyce had taken her bike into the shed, the slim, well-dressed woman had stepped out of the car and was knocking impatiently on the farmhouse door.
Laurence opened it and waited for the visitor to speak first.
‘Well?’ Her voice was low and matter-of-fact, as if continuing a conversation rather than greeting someone afresh. She wore a camel-hair coat with a lustrous fur collar and a matching hat with a fashionable, narrow brim. Her heeled shoes were unsuitable for the countryside: thin-soled with a pointed toe and a slender T-strap.
Laurence didn’t stand aside to let her in. Instead, he beckoned for Joyce to join them. ‘A ewe’s got out of low field,’ he told her. ‘We’ll need to fetch her back.’
‘Right you are.’ Joyce was willing to set off immediately.
‘Not now. Later will do.’
The visitor studied Joyce with undisguised curiosity. ‘Who is this, pray?’ she said as she pushed past Laurence and entered the kitchen.
‘None of your business.’ With another quick nod of the head, Laurence gestured for Joyce to follow them in. ‘Now then, Muriel, to what do we owe the honour?’
‘I’ve come to see Alma; what else?’ The visitor scanned the tidy room as she set her crocodile-skin handbag down on the table then gave a small, satisfied grunt. ‘At least her housekeeping’s still up to scratch.’
Laurence glared at her then turned to Joyce. ‘This is Alma’s aunt, Muriel Woodthorpe.’
‘And you are?’ Muriel ignored Joyce’s tentative offer to shake hands.
‘Joyce Cutler. I help Mr Bradley with the sheep.’
‘I see.’ She scrutinized Joyce through narrowed eyes, taking in her best woollen dress and trim figure as she hung up her coat and hat. ‘Is this what a Land Girl looks like? I’d expected corduroy breeches and gaiters.’
‘Most people do.’ Joyce returned the stare. ‘But Sunday is my day off.’ Despite Muriel’s careful attention to her appearance and a small, even-featured face, Joyce thought she’d rarely come across anyone as immediately off-putting as Alma’s aunt.
There was an awkward silence as Muriel took off her own coat and gloves. She left her hat on, patting the sides of her grey, permed hair into place as she sat down at the table. ‘I presume Alma would have heard my car arrive?’
‘She did.’ Laurence didn’t budge from his position by the door.
‘So where is she?’
‘Upstairs.’
Muriel tapped her forefinger on the table. ‘Do I have to go up and fetch her or will you bring her down?’
He tilted his head to one side. ‘What if she doesn’t want to see you? Has that crossed your mind?’
‘Tell her I’ve got all day if necessary.’ Equally immovable, Muriel went on tapping, only stopping when they heard slow footsteps descend the stairs.
Alma came into the room, head down and hands clasped in front of her. Her hair was loose, held clear of her face by a pale blue Alice band that matched her blouse. She wore the same long pleated skirt as usual.
‘Hello, stranger.’ Muriel’s disdainful voice cut through the silence and she patted the seat of a chair next to her. ‘Come and sit down. I’m eager to hear how married life suits you.’
‘Hello, Aunty Muriel.’ Alma sat reluctantly, every nerve straining to stay as far away from her aunt as possible.
Muriel turned to Joyce. ‘Since you’re here, why not make yourself useful?’ she suggested with a glance in the direction of the kettle on the hob.
Joyce busied herself at the tap, suspecting that at this rate the atmosphere in the room was set to reach boiling point long before the water in the kettle did.
‘Well?’ Muriel said in the same way as before.
‘It suits me perfectly, thank you.’
‘That’s just as well, since there’s no going back once the vows are exchanged, eh, Laurence?’
With a face like thunder he joined Alma and Muriel at the table. ‘Why are you bothering us?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve left Alma alone all these months, so why turn up now?’
‘Because!’ Muriel’s airy reply was accompanied by a waft of the hand. ‘Why not? It’s coming up to Christmas, the season of good will. Besides, Alma is my niece, my dead sister’s girl. I brought her up as if she was my own.’
‘It’s all right, Laurence.’ Alma spoke with quiet resignation. ‘You and Joyce should go after that ewe while Aunty Muriel and I have a chat.’
Ready to take her advice, Joyce produced cups, saucers and a milk jug from the cupboard. ‘There are two scoops of tea leaves in the pot,’ she told Alma. ‘All you have to do is pour in the hot water.’
But Laurence stayed where he was.
‘Whatever you have to say to Alma, say it in front of me. Go on, Muriel, ask her how I’ve been treating her. Ask her if I’m as bad as they say. Am I driving Alma to drink the way I did Lily?’
Joyce took a sharp breath and shot a look of alarm at Alma, whose right hand flew automatically to her face.
Muriel’s lip curled. ‘Ever the gentleman, eh, Laurence?’
His fist thumped the table and he knocked his chair over as he stood up. He stooped to set it right, looking for a moment as if he might use it as a weapon against the visitor.
Alma reached across the table to put a restraining hand on his arm while looking directly at her aunt. ‘It’s no good, Aunty Muriel; if you can’t be civil, I’ll have to ask you to leave.’
The older woman’s tongue tutted rapidly against her teeth. ‘Did you hear that?’ she appealed to Joyce. ‘My own niece is turning me away!’
‘You can stay so long as you behave yourself.’ Alma’s voice grew clearer and her chin was up. ‘It’s not on, Aunty Muriel.’
Surprise flickered across the older woman’s features: a blink, a twitch of the mouth. ‘What’s got into you?’ she muttered, once she’d recovered her composure. ‘Back in the old days, you knew not to give me any cheek.’
‘If she stays, I’m off.’ Laurence didn’t wait to hear more. Instead, he jammed his chair back under the table. ‘Hurry up and get changed, Joyce. I’ll wait for you outside.’
He slammed the door behind him and Muriel tutted again. Tap-tap-tap went the manicured finger. ‘Honestly, Alma, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.’
Joyce flicked her hair back as if swatting a fly. The woman was a nightmare and she wondered how her niece had managed to survive under her roof for so long. Instead of changing her dress, she grabbed her Land Girl overcoat and jammed her feet into her wellington boots. In less than a minute she’d joined Laurence in the yard.
He ordered her to follow him. ‘The ewe that got out has a bad case of sheep scab. We have to find her and treat it before it spreads to the rest of the flock.’
‘I know the one you mean,’ Joyce said, running to keep up.
‘Bloody woman,’ was all he said about Muriel Woodthorpe as a blast of icy wind buffeted them sideways. ‘I could wring her sodding neck.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Joyce imagined that this would be Laurence’s last word on the subject of Alma’s aunt. She expected them to work together in silence, rounding up the escaped ewe and bringing her back to the yard where they would break the ice in the sheep dip, add a fungicide powder to the water then fully submerge the animal. This would deal with the mites that had caused the scabs on her back and shoulders.
They achieved the first part of the job without difficulty; the pregnant ewe hadn’t strayed far and offered little resistance to being rounded up by Patch. She was in a sorry state, with strips of matted fleece hanging from bare, scabbed flesh that had become red and infected from her rubbing against stone walls and rough tree bark.
Laurence looked concerned. ‘Let’s hope we can cure this before she drops her lamb.’
Joyce watched the dog drive the sheep along the lane then ran ahead to open the gate into the farmyard. ‘What fungicide do you use?’
‘Cooper’s Dip; old fashioned but it does the trick. You’ll find it on a high shelf in the feed shed.’
Skirting wide of Muriel’s parked car, Joyce hurried to fetch the powder, keeping her fingers crossed that they could finish the job and be out of the way before the visitor emerged from the house. She rejoined Laurence in a corner of the yard, beside a concrete tank that had been sunk into the ground. He stood astride the sick ewe while Patch lay obediently to heel.
‘Use that mattock to break the ice.’ He pointed to some heavy tools resting against a nearby wall.
Joyce picked one up, lifted it over her head and brought it down hard. The thick ice shattered under the first blow. Now the shards had to be lifted out and the powder poured into the tank.
‘Be careful,’ Laurence warned. ‘It’s got a fair bit of arsenic in it.’
Their backs were turned to the house and they were too busy to notice when Muriel stepped out into the yard. Alma looked on uncertainly from the doorway.
Joyce used a spade to mix the contents of the tank, making the murky water swirl and the powder dissolve. ‘You won’t like this,’ she warned the sheep, whose ears had gone back and whose eyes had started to roll. ‘But it’s for your own good.’ Her sheep-rearing background told her that the ewe must stay underwater, head included, for at least sixty seconds. ‘Ready?’ she asked Laurence.
‘Yes. I’ll deal with the back end. You take her by the horns. One, two, three … lift!’
Together they raised the pregnant sheep and swung her over the dip. Then they plunged her in and knelt to hold her firmly under the water. They felt her squirm and kick then go limp. At the end of one minute they heaved her out and set her back on her feet.
She gave a long, pathetic bleat then put her head down and charged blindly across the yard, straight towards the parked car. Spying the danger to her vehicle, Muriel raised her fist and yelled. Joyce heard Laurence give a loud guffaw; it was the first genuine laugh she’d heard from him in all her time at the farm.
‘Shoo! Get away!’ The irate town dweller used the only weapon she had. She ran forward and swung her handbag at the drenched ewe, which skittered sideways at the last second, causing Muriel to overbalance, totter forwards then go crashing down on to her knees.
Alma ventured slowly out of the porch to offer a hand. ‘Here, Aunty Muriel; let me take a look.’
‘My knees!’ Allowing herself to be helped on to her feet, she looked down in dismay at her ruined nylon stockings and grazed legs. Blood had already begun to trickle from the wounds.
Alma quickly decided she couldn’t allow her aunt to drive away in this state. ‘Come back inside. Let me clean you up,’ she offered.
Meanwhile, Laurence and Joyce set about the task of recapturing the ewe. Together with Patch, they drove the panicky, dripping creature out of the yard and along the lane, back towards the lambing field.
‘I wouldn’t have helped her,’ Laurence growled as they went. ‘I’d have left her to pick herself up off the ground after all she’s done.’
‘To Alma?’
‘Yes. My wife doesn’t owe that woman any favours. Muriel reckoned to look after her when she was growing up but what she did was turn her into an unpaid skivvy – never bought her any nice clothes or said anything kind, never let her go out by herself.’
The outburst took Joyce aback. She’d always imagined that it was Laurence himself who had set up the strict regime for Alma once she’d arrived at Black Crag Farm. Now it seemed it had been established a long time before their marriage.
‘Worse than that,’ he went on as Joyce opened the field gate and he and Patch drove the ewe in, ‘she wouldn’t ever let Alma forget about the scars on her face, kept on telling her not to think about having what she called “a normal life”.’
‘That’s shocking,’ Joyce said firmly. It fitted in with what Alma had told her and did nothing to improve her opinion of the visitor.
‘But nothing compared with what she said after Alma and I started courting.’ He watched the ewe join the others bunched together under a stand of hawthorn trees.
‘I can imagine.’
Laurence closed the gate with a firm click and turned up the lane. ‘No, you can’t,’ he contradicted without looking back. ‘You’re a good-hearted lass, Joyce. Muriel Woodthorpe is a nasty piece of work. Never in a month of Sundays could you understand what goes on in the mind of a woman like that.’
‘At this rate I’ll be seeing paper chains in my sleep!’ Evelyn stood on a stepladder in the church hall, holding the coloured decorations that she and Dorothy had been making over the previous few days. Some were already hung between the beams but as yet there was no sign of a Christmas tree, holly or mistletoe to complete the decorative effect. ‘How m
any days have we got before the dance?’
Dorothy counted them off on her fingers. ‘Today’s Monday. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday – that’s five days for us to get everything ready.’
Evelyn separated one of the chains from the bundle and handed an end to Joyce. ‘Hold on to that while I sort myself out.’ She came down the ladder then stretched the chain towards a corner of the hall. ‘By the way, where’s Brenda when we need her?’
It was Dorothy who leaped in with the answer. ‘Her fiancé’s sister has passed away. Brenda’s lying low in her room for a bit.’
‘I see.’ Evelyn climbed the ladder again. ‘That’s poor timing, just coming up to Christmas. How old was the sister?’
‘In her early thirties.’ Joyce stood patiently holding her end of the chain while Evelyn secured the other with a drawing pin. She’d hardly finished her sentence when Cliff breezed in.
‘Look what the cat dragged in,’ Dorothy remarked. She and her brother were still at loggerheads over her letting slip the news about his and Evelyn’s engagement. That was the thing about Cliff; he always knew when Dorothy had done something wrong, just by the look on her face. So he’d wormed a confession out of her then lost his temper and demanded to know exactly who she’d told. She’d retorted that it wasn’t her fault if he and Evelyn chose to keep the whole thing a secret. It was bound to come out sooner or later.
‘Where’s Geoff?’ Cliff ignored both his sister and Evelyn and instead made a beeline towards Joyce. ‘He was meant to bring his gramophone.’
‘That was yesterday, silly,’ Dorothy interrupted. She pointed to a smart walnut cabinet set in a corner of the hall. ‘What do you think that is?’
‘Geoff says the plug’s faulty. I promised to take a look at it.’ Pulling a screwdriver out of his jacket pocket, Cliff got to work.
Up her ladder, Evelyn’s movements grew stiff and awkward and she fumbled with her box of drawing pins.
The chilly atmosphere was only broken when Walter Rigg appeared unexpectedly with Alan at his side. ‘Good evening, all.’ His sonorous voice carried around the high-ceilinged room. ‘Look who I’ve brought to lend a helping hand.’