Rachel was well aware of how Cora was feeling; her voice was gentle as they watched the horse and trap disappear. ‘You had no idea he was considering joining up?’
‘None.’ In the warm morning sunshine Cora shivered. It was a beautiful day for the end of April and that in itself seemed wrong. It should be dark and cloudy and raining and cold – Jed was gone and she might never see him again. It seemed incredible, impossible, like a living nightmare. ‘None at all.’
‘That seems odd to me.’ Rachel took her arm, leading Cora back into the farm kitchen where she sat her down at the table and made her a cup of strong, sweet tea. The girl was in shock, her face as white as lint and her eyes huge and strained. Only when Cora had finished every drop did Rachel say, ‘Cora, I know this might seem a platitude in the circumstances when you’re so upset but I have no doubt whatsoever that Jed loves you. I’ve never seen anyone look at someone the way he looks at you. I don’t understand why he’s done what he’s done but I do know it’s not because he’s feeling any different about you. You must believe that. It’s important.’
‘I want to.’ Cora’s voice was a croak.
‘I know, dear, I know.’ Rachel patted her hand. She had umpteen things to do, not least taking refreshments to the four Italian POWs who had been brought to the farm that morning by the soldier assigned to guard them. They had seemed a jovial bunch, their young keeper laughing and joking with the POWs and telling Rachel in an aside that this was a cushy job all told. The Italians had assured Rachel that they all had farming backgrounds and indeed had had no trouble in harnessing the two shire horses and getting them out to the fields that needed ploughing. She had stood and watched them for a while in spite of all the work she had to do, faintly anxious that they wouldn’t know what they were doing, but the beautifully straight furrows convinced her otherwise. She had walked back to the house smiling to herself, thinking how Bernard would have hated them handling his precious horses and even just setting foot on the farm. It had made their presence all the sweeter. It was Bernard’s funeral the following day, and the soldier had assured her that she and Cora could leave the farm for a few hours, safe in the knowledge that all would carry on as normal.
‘How could he just up and leave like this, Mrs Burns?’ Cora swallowed hard before she stood up, also aware of the workload they had to get through. They both knew it was a rhetorical question and Rachel made no attempt to answer as they walked along to the dairy. Today was butter-making day, always hard work, and she needed to get Cora churning the cream in the end-over-end churn before she saw to the POWs.
Once she was alone, Cora allowed the tears to come although she didn’t falter in churning the cream. It would be at least two hours before it was done and her arm always felt as though it was falling off long before she had finished, even though she and Mrs Burns took turns. But today she was hardly aware of what she was doing. Jed’s going must be because of Farmer Burns – that was the only thing she could think of. He had said he was glad the farmer was dead and that was probably true, but now he’d had time to think about what he had done was his guilty conscience too much to bear? Was that why he had gone off to war and put himself in the way of goodness knows what? And she was tied up in his guilt, the cause of it. Had that made him feel differently about her, about the prospect of a life with her? It must have done. There was no other reason for him to have chosen to leave her, because the excuse he had made to his parents was rubbish. He was sad about his brothers – who wouldn’t be – but he’d told her many times that he saw himself as his parents’ solace; that he would hate to go to war; that his place was working on the land and providing towards the war effort in that way. And now he had enlisted; he had gone away to fight and if he was killed it would be her fault. She couldn’t bear it, she couldn’t. She would go mad.
All day she worked like a Trojan, refusing to eat at lunchtime despite Rachel’s repeated requests and looking – as Rachel whispered to Maria when the other girls came home from school – like a walking corpse.
Maria found Cora cleaning out the fires in the bedrooms; a job, Rachel told Maria, she’d told Cora that Maud could do once she was back from school but which Cora had insisted needed to be done immediately so new fires could be lit and the rooms warming for bedtime. The April days were mild and sunny but the nights were still cold. The day after Farmer Burns had died, Rachel had told the five girls to collect their things from the attics because they would be moving into the main house with her. Between them they had cleaned the two bedrooms on the top floor and thoroughly aired them through, whereupon Maria and Cora had taken up residence in one, and Maud, Anna and Susan in the other. Both rooms were large, airy and comfortable and the height of luxury after the cramped attic, and each had held a double bed, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe and two easy chairs; they had taken the chairs out of Maud, Anna and Susan’s room and put a single bed in their place in which Maud slept.
When Maria walked into the room she shared with Cora, Cora sat back on her heels and looked up at her sister. ‘Mrs Burns has told you, hasn’t she? About Jed enlisting?’
Maria nodded.
‘It’s because of me.’
‘You?’
‘He’s gone to fight because of me.’
‘Of course he hasn’t.’ Maria knelt down at the side of her. ‘It’s because of his brothers, Cora. What the Germans did to them. Mrs Burns said there was a letter.’
‘It’s not because of his brothers, Maria. Something happened.’
Cora’s voice sounded tired and so unlike her that Maria’s heart jumped in her chest. Something was wrong, even more wrong than Jed going off to war without telling her sister. Her voice low, she whispered, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Shut the door. You mustn’t repeat to anyone what I tell you.’
Once she was back at Cora’s side she sat down beside her on the clippy rug in front of the small fireplace and put her hand on Cora’s. ‘What is it?’
‘Farmer Burns – he didn’t fall and bang his head on the trough. Jed – Jed hit him with a hoe because Farmer Burns was attacking me. He was going to force himself on me and then kill me. He told me so. Put me in the river.’
Maria stared at her, wide-eyed. ‘Oh, Cora.’
‘Jed didn’t mean to kill him, in fact we didn’t even know he was that badly injured at first. He was drunk you see, Farmer Burns I mean. We – we went off to tell Jed’s mam an’ da what had happened but because we’d left him bleeding we changed our minds and came back to make sure he was all right. That’s when – when we found him. And so we made it look like an accident. And it was, it was an accident really.’
‘Of course it was.’ Maria took both Cora’s hands, her own eyes swimming with tears although Cora’s now were dry. ‘And he was a horrible man, evil, wicked.’
‘But it’s because of that, what – what he did, that Jed’s gone. He said he was all right about it at first but he must have had second thoughts and started to feel bad, bad enough that he couldn’t stay or even tell me he was going himself. Everything was fine before that and he would never have enlisted, Maria. Never. And now he’s in the army and could be sent anywhere and if he dies—’
‘He won’t, he won’t die, Cora.’
‘He must hate me now. I’m the reason he’s had to leave the farm and everything he loves.’
‘Don’t be daft, lass. Jed loves you. He’ll always love you.’
‘Then why didn’t he at least come and say goodbye? If he still loved me he would have done that, wouldn’t he? He blames me and he’s right. It’s all my fault.’
‘If it’s anybody’s fault it’s Farmer Burns’s and to my mind he got what he deserved.’
‘Jed said that, about it being Farmer Burns’s fault and not mine.’
‘There you are then.’
‘But I don’t think he can be thinking like that now. Actions speak louder than words, Maria.’
The two girls stared at each other, pain and desperation in one
face and deep pity in the other.
‘He’ll come back, Cora. I know he will. Once the war’s over. And then this will just be a bad memory. You two love each other too much not to be together.’
‘He wouldn’t have left like this unless it was over between us. I pray he’ll come home after the war. I’ll go mad if anything happens to him because of me, but I don’t think there’s a future for us now, not as far as he thinks. I’d – I’d just be a reminder of something he wants to forget.’
For the life of her Maria didn’t know what to say. She loved her sister, perhaps more than anyone else in the world, but she didn’t know how to help her. For the first time since she had found out that her mother had abandoned them all and run off with some man or other, she found her feelings to be on a par with Cora’s where their mother was concerned and hated her for not visiting them or writing or just being at home where she should be. Cora needed their mam, she thought now. Their mam would have known what to say and how to comfort her. That’s what mothers did, proper mothers.
Cora began to lay the fire and tidy the small hearth and Maria stood up. Once Cora joined her they left the room together and when Maria took her sister’s ash-smeared hand as they walked downstairs, Cora squeezed her fingers in silent thanks for Maria’s sympathy. Just before they joined the others, she said quietly, ‘You can never say a word about this, Maria. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Of course, but I’m glad you told me. We’ll get through this together, lass. We always have, haven’t we? And I know it’s not much comfort in the circumstances with Jed gone and everything, but you’ve always got me and always will have.’
Cora looked at her sister, her eyes full of sadness and her cheeks without colour, and forced a smile. ‘It means more than you’ll ever know,’ she said softly. ‘I love you, hinny.’
‘And I love you.’
Later that night as she lay awake in the darkness with Maria breathing steadily beside her, Cora found herself thinking not of Jed, nor of Farmer Burns, but of her mother. How could you hate someone and love them at the same time? she asked herself bitterly. She didn’t want to love her mother but she did, and she wanted to hate her but she couldn’t do it wholeheartedly no matter how she tried. And she had tried over the last months, she really had. But right at this moment, in spite of all her mam had done, she wanted her. She felt like a little bairn again, small and all at sea, and she wanted her mam, it was as simple as that.
Scalding tears slid down her cheeks but now she didn’t know if she was crying for Jed or her mam; perhaps both, she thought wearily, her head thudding with pain. Which just showed how stupid she was because she couldn’t have either one. Maria had said she would always have her and that they would get through this together, and she was thankful for her sister, she really was, but she was frightened. Frightened she would go mad with how she was feeling, with the terror that Jed might be injured and badly hurt or worse, and all because he had stepped in and saved her from Farmer Burns. It wasn’t fair, none of it was fair. Why hadn’t Farmer Burns got himself killed some other way; why had Jed gone without coming to see her one last time, and why did her mother love some man called Ken more than her, than them all?
She lay still so as not to wake Maria, a stiffness in her muscles that had no connection with the exhaustion assailing her body and mind, and wondered how she was going to get through the next day and the ones after it.
Many miles away, in a dismal little room in a dismal house in a dismal street in Newcastle, Nancy Stubbs was asking herself the same question. She could hear Ken and his pals in the kitchen of the two-up two-down terrace and knew they were playing cards and drinking as they did most nights into the early hours. When she and Ken had arrived in Newcastle the morning after they’d fled from Sunderland, he had brought her straight to this same house close to the docks at the back of the saw mills. The North Eastern Railway ran almost at the bottom of the yard; there was a goods station and an oil works and a timber yard and other industry all around, and when she had protested that it was a prime target for Hitler’s bombs Ken had told her shortly that this was where they were staying and that was that. His two pals rented the house and they had let her and Ken have the front room which had been filthy when they had first moved in. She had scrubbed it from top to bottom; ripped off the old bug-infested wallpaper and fumigated the walls, ceiling and floorboards; and thrown out the crumbling table and chairs that were full of woodworm holes. Apparently Ken’s pals had used the front room for their gambling nights – which seemed to be every night as far as Nancy could tell – and these now took place in the kitchen, which she had also had to clean with bleach and disinfectant before she could cook any meals. She’d complained to Ken that his friends lived like pigs but he’d just laughed at her. The two bedrooms upstairs she’d never set foot in; she dreaded to think what they were like.
They had furnished the front room with a double bed and new bedding, two second-hand easy chairs and an old wardrobe, and she had bought a small thick rug for in front of the little fireplace, either side of which the chairs stood. She had also had a lock fitted to the door, something that had caused a huge row between herself and Ken when he’d said his pals would be offended, assuming he didn’t trust them. She’d retorted that she was quite happy to take the blame and it wasn’t that she didn’t trust them, she merely wanted to be sure of her privacy and he could tell them so.
She turned over in the bed, as wide awake as when she had got into it an hour ago. Of course what she’d said to Ken wasn’t true. She didn’t trust Nat or Terence, and she didn’t like them either. Nat in particular had a way of looking at her that always riled her, and in subtle little ways he had let her know that he thought she was no better than a common tart for leaving her husband and living with Ken. It didn’t seem to matter that she contributed to the household with her wages for working in the local munitions factory – he still made her feel as though she was a kept woman at best, a whore at worse.
She sat up and plumped her pillow before lying down once more. All the women she worked with said they were asleep the minute their heads touched the pillow; twelve-hour days making piston rings for aircraft saw to that. She didn’t mind the work except when bits of hot steel came flying out of the machine and stuck in your eyes, necessitating a trip to first aid where the factory nurse would put drops in and get the fragments of steel out with a magnet. Everyone complained about the unattractive uniform too – navy blue overalls and hats with a snood to stop the operator’s hair getting caught in the machines – but again, it didn’t bother her. The pay of three pounds a week was more than twice what she had earned in the shipping office, after all, and the women she worked with were a friendly bunch on the whole. No, it wasn’t the munitions factory that kept her awake at night, it was everything else in her life.
She bit down hard on her bottom lip, determined not to cry. She cried herself to sleep most nights, alone in the double bed while Ken drank and gambled with his cronies. Nat and Terence had got Ken set on at the docks with them as soon as they had arrived in Newcastle, and there was a group of men, the same lot who were in the kitchen playing cards at the moment, who were involved in the sort of black-market activities Ken had dabbled with in Sunderland.
She couldn’t remember when she had first admitted to herself that she had made the biggest mistake of her life in leaving Gregory, along with her home and everything that was familiar. Perhaps it had been the night she had smelt cheap perfume on Ken’s clothes when he had rolled in at midnight after supposedly doing a ‘bit of business’ with Nat and Terence at the docks, or yet again when he had slapped her round the face for objecting to him not coming home at all one night. Then there was the time he had thrown his dinner at her, plate and all. She only knew, when she had finally accepted that she had given everything up for a man who wasn’t worthy to lick Gregory’s boots, that it was far, far too late to do anything about it. She had lost her husband, her family and her home, but wors
e than that she had lost herself. She wasn’t the same person any more and it frightened her. The old Nancy would have given back as good as she got but Ken had beaten her down, here, in her head, where it mattered.
She sat up again, reaching for the glass of water on the bedside table, and as she did so a guffaw of laughter reached her from the kitchen along with the sound of breaking glass. They were getting blind drunk in there, she told herself angrily, and in the morning the kitchen would be a mess of empty beer bottles and bottles of whisky, food, broken glass and debris. It was the same most mornings and if she didn’t clear it up before she went to work it would still be in the same state when she came home at night. She was sick of it, she was so sick of it, but what could she do? She had confided in one of the girls at work a little while ago, a woman about her own age called Myra, and Myra had listened askance and then told her to walk out on Ken. But how could she? She had nowhere to go. And in spite of everything she kept hoping that Ken would change back into the old Ken, the one she had loved and adored. To leave him would be the final proof that she had made a terrible mess of her life, that she was a failure in every regard. She had to make it work with him.
The men in the kitchen began to sing a particularly foul dockside ditty at the tops of their voices, one so filthy it would make a sailor blush. For the first time in months, Nancy felt her temper rise, sweeping away the misery and apathy she existed in from day to day. They knew she could hear every word; this was yet another way of Nat showing her how little he respected her. And this was her home too – she paid her bit towards the rent same as the three men and did more than her fair share, cooking the meals and cleaning and so on because those three wouldn’t lift a finger. Oh, no, they deemed it far beneath them to so much as wash a cup and saucer. What was Ken doing letting this go on? She had long since stopped hoping he would ever want to marry her if she started divorce proceedings, but this, this was beyond the pale.
Beneath a Frosty Moon Page 18