Beneath a Frosty Moon

by Rita Bradshaw

  Cora glanced at her father and he nodded in agreement with his wife.

  Cora relaxed back in her seat, feeling as though a weight had been lifted. With her parents being on her side in this and her mother seeing the situation so clearly, it portended good for the future. Once Wilfred’s mam’s funeral was over she’d give it a few weeks and then have a word with him and make it absolutely plain where he stood, no matter what he said. It would upset him and she felt awful about that, really awful, because Wilfred was the last person in the world she wanted to hurt, but it was better to be cruel now so as to be kind in the long run. For a start, while he was thinking there was a chance with her, he wouldn’t be looking at other lassies.

  It was exactly a week later and winter had certainly arrived. The sky looked full of snow and there was a bite to the wind that penetrated any amount of clothing. Now, as Cora walked home treading carefully on the icy pavements, she was almost tasting the beef broth they were having for lunch. No one could make beef broth like her mam. Like her da always said, it warmed the cockles of your heart, and if ever she needed something warm inside her it was today. The small electric fire that she normally had in the front of the shop had broken the day before and it had been as cold inside as it had been outside. In spite of this Mrs Gray wouldn’t countenance her keeping her coat on and she had practically frozen, her teeth chattering so much she’d hardly been able to talk. Any customers – sorry, clients, she corrected herself bitterly – had been ushered through to the back of the premises to the workshop and dressing room where Mrs Gray and Miss Williamson were as snug as a bug in a rug, thanks to a substantial coal fire in the black-leaded fireplace. She had been counting the minutes to lunchtime, it being her half-day.

  Cora sniffed, admitting that she felt more than a little sorry for herself. She knew Mrs Gray and Miss Williamson had numerous cups of tea throughout the working day as a rule but she was lucky if they offered her even one. Normally this didn’t bother her unduly although she thought it was a bit mean, but considering she had been in an icebox today she would have thought they might have been a little more considerate. But no.

  A few flakes of snow began to blow in the wind as she walked on, wishing with all her heart that it was six months or so in the future and Maria was about to leave school and she, herself, could start her life again. Because this wasn’t living, this treading time.

  Oh, stop your whining. The self-admonishment was fierce. Fifty-five million dead in the war, countless more like her da maimed and injured, and barely a family in the country that hadn’t been ripped apart by tragedy and loss, and here was she griping about her job. But it wasn’t just her job.

  She stopped, turning her face up to the sky and the snowflakes that were falling more thickly minute by minute.

  She had heard it said more than once that time was a great healer, but if that was true she’d experienced nothing of it thus far. She could say that for a large part of the day at Mrs Gray’s, and certainly for most of the night hours when she lay awake or dreamed nightmarish scenarios of loss and aching grief, she was thinking of Jed and what might have been.

  She began walking again, quicker now, impatient with her maudlin thoughts and life in general. It was Wilfred’s mother’s funeral tomorrow and Mrs Gray had given her the afternoon off whilst making it clear her wage packet would be docked accordingly. Much as she didn’t want to lose an afternoon’s pay, she knew she had to go to the funeral for Wilfred’s sake. When she had popped round to see him the evening after his mother had passed away he had asked her if she would partner him at the funeral; his brothers had their wives and families, he had said, but he was on his own and was going to find the day difficult. She had agreed – what else could she have done? she thought now – but it had made her all the more determined that once things had settled down she needed to make it clear how she felt.

  All the neighbours had contributed to the wake being held after the funeral at Wilfred’s house, dipping into their rations to provide food for ‘the poor lad’ as she’d heard him referred to more than once, and not just by her own mam either. But somehow, and she felt horribly guilty about this, she admitted to herself, she had a niggling doubt that Wilfred’s grief over his mother’s demise was real. She, more than anyone, had been privy to how much he had hated his mam and da from a little bairn. Could you change so radically in just a few weeks? But it wasn’t her concern. She nodded to herself. She would support Wilfred tomorrow and get through the day as best she could, she owed Wilfred that. He was her friend when all was said and done.

  When she walked into the back yard there was a faint aroma of beef floating on the air and she lifted up her face and sniffed. Unlike in the summer there was no discernible odour from the neighbours’ privies, something Cora appreciated more than most, having a keen sense of smell. Her mother had slow-cooked a piece of brisket the day before which they’d had for dinner, and it was with the remains of this that she’d made their lunch. Beef broth and her mam’s home-made bread, Cora thought, as she opened the back door, feeling like a bairn again. It had been a regular meal in the past, being cheap and tasty. So much had happened since those far-off days of childhood, but by some miracle her mam and da were back together and even expecting another bairn, and the family were united once more. For the present at least. She had to count her blessings. Her da was a great one for saying that but he was right.

  The kitchen was wonderfully warm after the bitterly cold morning she had endured in the shop, and her mother had a cup of tea waiting for her. As she sat down at the table with her da, Nancy passed her an envelope. ‘Came in the post,’ she said quietly. ‘Looks like Rachel’s writing.’

  Cora took it with a word of thanks but didn’t open it straight away. She and her mam had had to agree to disagree about Rachel Burns after she’d told her about Farmer Burns and Enid and the rest of it. Her mother maintained that by looking the other way about her husband’s behaviour, Rachel had been complicit in what had happened to Enid and had also put Cora and the other girls at risk. Cora couldn’t argue with that – if you looked at it in the cold light of day it was the truth – but she had tried to explain to her mother that nothing was black and white. Rachel wasn’t a bad person, she had argued, she had just been under Farmer Burns’s thumb and frightened of him like everyone else, but her mother refused to see it that way. It had been her da taking her aside one day and whispering in her ear that he thought Nancy was jealous of the regard she had for Rachel that had persuaded Cora to drop the matter. But she did like Rachel, loved her even, and in spite of leaving Stone Farm had no wish to lose contact with the woman with whom she’d become fast friends any more than she did with Maud, with whom she corresponded regularly.

  It was after lunch and before she started on a pile of ironing that she opened Rachel’s letter. They had written to each other a couple of times but Cora knew that Rachel, busy as she was from morning to night working and running the farm, barely had a moment to herself let alone time to put pen to paper. Rachel’s other two letters, the last one being in August, had been short, just saying how much she missed Cora and the others and how the farm was doing. She now employed three farmhands and a woman who helped in the house and dairy, but said woman, according to Rachel, wasn’t a patch on Cora for hard work.

  Cora saw straight away that this letter was longer, and she curled up in one of the armchairs in front of the range to read it while her mother busied herself at the kitchen table making a humpty-backed rabbit pie for dinner, and her da sat in the other armchair smoking his pipe and immersed in his paper. The snow was falling more thickly now and although it was barely two in the afternoon the light was muted, the glow from the coal in the open fireplace of the range a deeper red in the semi-twilight. It was cosy, quiet and peaceful, but within moments Cora had sat up straighter, her heart pounding fit to burst.

  Nancy had noticed the movement and now she said, ‘What’s the matter?’ but Cora couldn’t reply, not even when her father l
owered his paper and said, ‘Cora, lass? You all right?’

  It took her a minute or two to read the letter in full, and when she had finished she still didn’t speak but handed it to her mother who was now standing by her father’s armchair. Nancy took it and then gasped after reading the first couple of lines, causing Gregory to say irritably, ‘Read it out loud, woman, for goodness’ sake.’

  Nancy glanced at her daughter, whispering, ‘Oh, lass,’ before raising her voice and beginning to read:

  Dear Cora,

  I need to tell you right away that what I’m going to say is going to come as a shock and for that reason I’m not going to beat about the bush. Jed is alive. Not only that, he’s back home. I’ve been worrying about whether to write and tell you for weeks, since just after my last letter in fact which is when he came home, but Jack says it’s the right thing to do and so here’s the full story. Apparently he was taken as a POW after he was injured and transported to one of those terrible concentration camps. The Nazis wouldn’t allow any letters in or out and so he had no way of letting anyone know he was alive. Those places were hell on earth as we all know now so what he went through is anyone’s guess. His mam says he won’t talk about it, not even to his da.

  Nancy raised her head for a moment and glanced at Cora who was sitting perfectly still and looking like a ghost, her face drained of colour. Again she said, ‘Oh, lass,’ before beginning to read once more.

  Near the end of the war when the Allies were closing in, the Germans abandoned the camp and took the POWs on a march. It was in the dead of winter apparently so how many survived is questionable, poor things. You can’t believe what the Nazis have done, can you, but I digress. Anyway, Jed and two of his pals managed to escape after weeks of walking umpteen miles every day and sleeping out in the open in the snow and what have you. They were in Czechoslovakia but on the border into Germany and a Swiss woman who’d been married to a German doctor took them in. One of Jed’s pals was injured and this woman helped him recover. When they left her after a number of weeks they travelled across Germany and only found out the war was over when they ran into some Yanks. They were flown back to England eventually but Jed was poorly for a while, after-effects of what he’d been through, but then he came home. You can imagine how his mam and da felt to get him back.

  Oh, yes, Cora thought. Yes, she could imagine that, and she was so glad for his mother especially.

  Now I come to the most difficult part of what I have to tell you, lass.

  Nancy paused, looking first at Cora who remained sitting with her head bowed, and then at Gregory who was staring up at her. He knew Cora had been in love with a farmer’s son who had gone off to war and got himself killed, but that was all. Clearing her throat, Nancy went on:

  When Jed was home I went across to see him and his mam and da and wish them well, to be neighbourly, you know? I thought he might ask after you but he didn’t, but his mam mentioned that Wilfred had written to her once or twice. I don’t know if you were aware of that? Anyway, there was something I couldn’t put my finger on and I came away feeling all unsettled, I can’t explain it. I whittled about it for weeks and in the end Jack took me across to see Mrs Croft in the day when the men would be out working so I could have a woman-to-woman chat in private. Well, lass, what she told me was news to me and I reckon it might be to you too. According to Jed’s mam, Wilfred had told her that you and him were courting before he left their farm and not only that but you were going to get wed in the future. Then in these letters, he led her to believe you were betrothed and he was getting his house ready for when you married. He said how pleased you were to be able to live next door to your mam and da and because of that he had given up all hope of returning to work at the farm in the near future, but that it was still a dream for him, perhaps in the years to come. He had a way of making his dreams come true, he’d said. Well, I was amazed, so amazed she went and got the letters to show me and there it was in black and white. And there’s something else, lass, something important.

  Nancy took a deep breath as Gregory muttered, ‘He lives in cloud cuckoo land, that lad. I’ve never heard such tripe. And to write and tell this woman all that. He’s barmy.’

  No, not barmy, Nancy thought as a little chill shivered down her spine. Clever, very clever. There was more here than wishful thinking. Motioning with her hand for Gregory to be quiet, she began reading again:

  Jed’s mam told me that when he got back the first thing he did was to ask about you. Course she felt duty bound to tell him what Wilfred had said before you’d all gone home and then about the letters, and she said the look on his face broke her heart. She’s regretted saying anything ever since because she reckons, and he didn’t say this, mind, but she’s reading between the lines, but she thinks he was going to come and find you and see if you wanted to give him and you a second chance. But once she showed him the letters he shut up like a clam. The only thing he said was that he could understand you wanting to be near your family because they were everything to you. So that’s it, lass, and I hope I haven’t put my foot in it by writing or offended you if you and Wilfred are thinking along those lines. I wouldn’t want us to fall out, not for anything.

  Oh, and my other bit of news is that Jack and I are going to get married next year, in the spring we thought. He said we’re both too long in the tooth to waste time and I agree with him. He’s going to sell his cottage and smallholding and come and live here and we’ll manage the farm together. Him and his wife had no bairns before she died and so there’s no one to consider but ourselves. No doubt there’ll be a bit of talk in some quarters but Jack says while they’re gossiping about us they’ll be leaving some other poor beggar in peace. The thing is, I love him, Cora, and that’s all that matters, isn’t it. And he loves me. If you’ll come to the wedding it would make the day for me, lass. I’ll let you know the date when we decide, probably May time. So you take care and write and tell me when you can that I haven’t upset you, all right? I only want the best for you, I hope you know that.

  With love from your friend, Rachel.

  There was a moment of deep silence in the kitchen when Nancy finished speaking, and Cora looked up to see both her parents staring at her. It was Gregory who said, ‘This lad, this Jed. You still care about him, hinny?’

  Cora swallowed. There were no words to describe how she was feeling and so she simply whispered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I know the answer but I need to ask the question just the same – all this that Wilfred’s said, it’s just in his head? There’s been no arrangement between you, no promises given?’

  ‘None.’

  Gregory nodded and Nancy came to sit on the arm of Cora’s chair, putting her arms round her daughter as she said, ‘How soon do you want to leave?’

  It was one of those moments when she and her mother were perfectly in tune. Gratefully, Cora whispered, ‘Tomorrow.’ She couldn’t wait a moment more than was absolutely necessary. He was alive. She had her miracle. If God never answered another prayer for the rest of her life then that was all right. ‘Do you think I’m being awful if I miss the funeral?’

  Nancy was amazed Cora could even ask that after all Wilfred had said and done. She would never have expected such cold manipulation from the lad, not from Wilfred who thought the world of her daughter. But then that was the trouble . . .

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘You must go, lass. It’s the right thing to do. However it turns out, it’s the right thing. Only don’t expect too much, hinny, just in case.’

  Cora knew what her mother meant. The reason that Jed had left was still there. He had killed a man because of her. And it was only supposition on his mother’s part that he had been going to find her and ask that they begin again. But however this panned out she had to see him. Even if it was only to look into his face one more time before she knew she had to face life without him. But he was alive, warm and breathing, able to feel the sun on his face, to laugh, to eat and drink and live in the cou
ntryside he adored. If this didn’t work out, that’s what she had to remember. She hadn’t been the means of him dying. He had come home. He had come home. She buried her head in her mother’s arms and let the tears come.

  Wilfred was humming to himself when the knock came at the back door. When it opened he had composed his face into a suitable mask of grief and his voice was equally subdued when he said, ‘Cora, I didn’t expect to see you tonight. I thought you said—’

  ‘This isn’t about your mam or the funeral.’ She stared at him, at this dear friend who had become a stranger. ‘I had a letter from Mrs Burns today.’

  ‘Oh, aye?’ He didn’t like the farmer’s wife and he sensed she didn’t like him. ‘Getting on all right, is she?’

  ‘She’s going to be married but that isn’t the only reason she wrote.’ Cora came fully into the kitchen but when he waved to a chair indicating for her to sit down she continued to stand and face him. ‘She had some news she thought I ought to know.’

  Wilfred’s eyes narrowed. ‘Which is?’

  ‘Jed’s alive. He was a POW but he’s home now, back at the farm with his parents. That’s wonderful, isn’t it?’

  Wilfred’s face stiffened. With some difficulty he made himself say, ‘Of course.’

  ‘Rachel said when he got back to the farm he asked after me and his mam got the impression he was going to come and see me. That’s when she told him about what you had said.’

  ‘What I’d said? I don’t follow.’

  ‘About you and me, Wilfred. That we were going out together and going to get married.’

  He looked her straight in the eyes. ‘She’s mad, barmy. I never said that. I might have said I liked you but that was all.’

  ‘And she showed Rachel some letters you had written to her, Jed’s mam, that is. About us being engaged and planning to live here, next to my mam and da. Did she write those herself too? How could you lie like that?’