“So he does keep a handful?” I felt so heavy as I asked it.
“It was only a joke. I stay out of it all, really.” He sniffed and I knew he was a horrible liar. “I think he rather likes Theodora.”
“More than the others?”
“I’d say so,” he admitted, before he realised he’d stepped into my trap and told the truth. I know he wanted to take it back by the way his lips moved soundlessly, but his face went red and quiet.
I managed to keep my voice flippant though I felt anything but. “I’d say she’ll be crushed, but I rather fancy she might tear him to pieces.”
“Oh, I wish she would!” he burst out. “Someone should. But I don’t like it being done with bullets. I’d much prefer he stay here and let a girl do it.”
“Bullets?” I tried to find the joke, but I couldn’t piece it together. “Stay here? Where is he going?”
Jonathon looked as confused as I must have. “His enlistment. He’ll be following your Alan to training in two weeks. Surely he told her.”
“No one’s told me!” I stood up, feeling the same anger I’d felt when Alan told me. “How could you let him?” Skip ran to my side and pushed his warm muzzle into my hand. I pulled gently on his ear, grateful for a distraction.
“I couldn’t stop it.” Jonathon’s words fumbled in confusion. “I’ve done the same.”
I looked at his sharp cheekbones and the strange dimples at his mouth. And then I dared to look into his eyes. They were the darkest brown I’d ever seen, but clear as water. You could peer all the way to the back of his mind, and in all that looking I could not find one fierce or fighting piece of him.
“They’ve not announced it yet but we have friends in the War Department. It will be official by the end of the month for the men Marion’s age, and I’ll not have my brother go without me. If we get in before conscription we’ll have first picks.”
I am glad the wind pushed itself down my open mouth because I’d forgotten to breathe. “You just shocked me,” I explained. “I must be the last one who thinks nothing will come of it all.”
“We all still pray,” he answered. “The blasted thing is I might not be called at all. I am older, as you kindly pointed out when we met, and because I manage so much land they might think my work on the home front more important. It looks I may only have a desk job.”
“But Marion…”
“Wants to raise hell. I’m afraid that’s exactly what he’ll find.”
I looked back at the lamb who had lost strength and lowered himself onto his chest again, grunting softly.
“I’m worried it might be his bowels,” I told Jonathon. “It has the look of colic.” I picked the lamb up and turned toward home. “I’m running out of things I can save,” I said under my breath, but if Jonathon heard he had the kindness not to answer. We walked back quietly, the cloud shadows striping the landscape like foreboding black arms reaching their fingers under our feet.
“I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you,” Jonathon said from behind me. “I’m afraid you’ll hold it against me.”
Because I had nothing nice to say, I said nothing at all. I wish now I had been kinder, but the truth is some part of me blamed him for the conscription, as if all the educated men like him could have met in some great hall and come up with a better answer. He offered to stay and help with the lamb, but I think he saw I needed to be alone so he gave me a frank and courteous goodbye when we got to the drive. I took the lamb into the barn and bowed my head over him until my eyes fell into his soft wool. And then I cried a little cry, imagining Alan on his cot and Marion on a train, and most perplexing of all, a man like Jonathon charging into battle. I kept trying to make my biggest tears for Alan, but they wouldn’t cooperate. I once heard that grief is strange and follows no rules. I suppose the people I love the most are the ones I cannot accept losing and so I couldn’t grieve properly for them, even in my imagination. How funny that the man I worried the most for is the one I care nothing about. I suppose I was just certain Jonathon would get himself killed and I certainly liked him well enough not to want that. I sat amongst the lambs and waited for my father to get home, grateful he was nearly sixty and my brother hardly out of breeches. The lamb panted with discomfort and I put my hand over my stomach, feeling the same.
CHAPTER 4
30TH APRIL 1939
It took me a week to get away because the sheep are off-colour. When I finally managed an afternoon with Theo she was strangely reserved and only hummed her answers or gave short nods. I asked about Marion but she avoided the answer altogether by asking me if we should go see Inspector Hornleigh at the pictures. I reminded her she already saw that one but she said she hadn’t seen it with me and wanted out of the house. A few times I got exasperated with her tight tongue and almost said something, but I sensed it would be better if she came round on her own. We went to the cinema and took our seats in the balcony. Down below, school-aged boys threw popcorn at each other and an overworked farmer slept open-mouthed in one corner, but the theatre was nearly empty. We never made it past the newsreel. When the lights went down the loud music blasted the familiar sound of the Royal News. Along the screen young men lined up with valiant smiles as a doctor worked his way down the row, looking in their eyes and ears. The voice announced the conscription and praised the courage and fortitude of the British people. Theo sat still as stone, her eyes not focused on the screen but the empty air in front of it. The lights flickered against her creamy skin as the pictures changed, only making her frozen face more noticeable.
When she spoke her lips were the only things that moved, and barely those. “All of them, Eve. Even Marion. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
“How did you know I knew?”
Her lips turned up into a smile devoid of any joy. “Jonathon talks about you every time we’re together. He said he broke it to you.”
I swallowed that fact to save it for later. “Theo, do you love Marion?”
“Of course not,” she snapped. “I don’t know the first thing about him. He’s just for fun.”
“Then…” I could not think of anything to say to that.
“Then nothing. Business as usual. Let them all go.” She sniffed hard and set her jaw.
“Is he scared?” It is what I should have asked Alan. I should have stopped being angry and horrified and offended long enough to ask him if he felt frightened when he packed his few shirts and trousers into his moldy carpet bag. I wish I’d had the courage to write him and ask him if he looked back at the farm while he trudged through the frozen snow on that black morning or if it had reminded him of the first time he ran away from home when he was just a boy.
Theo made a scoffing sound and scowled. “Marion’s champion. Just chomping the bit. What fun they’ll have. He wants to fly.” Her tough voice caught on the word fly, but she yanked it back into submission after one wayward syllable.
On the large screen boys said goodbye to their proud mothers while the voice went on about duty and victory. Girls my age waved handkerchiefs and dabbed their eyes alight with admiration for their soldiers. I hated them all.
“Think of all the nurses that will swoon for him,” she bit down ferociously on the words. “Won’t he love that?”
“As if one could compare to you. They’ll all look like sows’ ears.”
Theo finally looked at me, the dusty theatre light exposing the frightened creases in the corners of her eyes. “That only works when a silk purse is nearby. When a sow’s ear is all you have I’m sure it does just fine.”
I am pausing, rudely, right there because I see Dad running across the yard, which must be bad since he never hurries. I’m certain something is wrong. The door just flew open downstairs. I must go. He called out, “William! We’ve got some down. Ring t’ vet.”
1ST MAY 1939
I am back in my room and this nearly empty page hangs limp from my Corona. How it looks like a flag of surrender to me. I am a million years older. Or a different
person altogether. I do not know how to continue this journal at all. I thought of starting all over as the person I am now, but somehow it felt like cheating, even though I am not writing this to anyone so I don’t see who I’m cheating. My fingers feel like lead and in my mind the words are almost catatonic, but I will forge on anyway, so I can at least say I made a valiant effort.
I raced down the stairs in my dressing gown (I had done my morning wash up and was not yet dressed because I was trying to sneak in an hour of typing before Sunday School) and got there just as William tugged on his coat. “What is it, Dad? How many?”
“I got no count. A fair number. The bayerns are down and stretched out like.” Even in his grim, steady voice, there was a betrayal of panic and fear. “Ring Holton now. We’ve nowt much time for some of ‘em!”
The men were out the door before I even made it to the phone. The vet’s wife answered and it took two horrible attempts over the crackling line to tell her the problem. “Can’t he please hurry?”
“He just ran to the Nichols’ farm for a calving,” she apologised. “They haven’t a line there.”
Tears burned my eyes and I pressed my fingers against the worn wallpaper until they turned white. “How long will it be before you can reach him?”
“Eve,” she said my name so nicely I knew it was horrible. “It could be hours. You could try the next vet in Feldstone. He is Doctor Bramley.”
“Feldstone is an hour’s drive!” I lamented, as if it were her fault. My brain wasn’t in my head. It was casting itself across all of Yorkshire, searching for help. “What if we drive to the Nichols to retrieve him?”
The line crackled like mad and I lost her answer. I just prayed that plan was agreeable and hung up the earpiece. Surely one cow could manage alone. Without bothering to dress (I had just cleaned up from breakfast and morning chores and my hair was dripping wet) I ran to the barn, my dressing gown beating against my bare legs. I nearly tore the door off the sliders, causing my lambs to look up with surprised faces, their wooly bodies completely at ease. The shafts of light shimmered with flecks of dust and hay, disturbed only by my hasty entrance. Heaving with relief I gave one last look to reassure myself all was well before I closed the door and ran for the pasture.
Instead of a tight ball of sheep grazing together, the field was littered with solitary ewes, some only looked melancholy, others staggered as if blind, and the worst heaved great, gasping breaths. One pitiful lamb bleated beside her trembling mother. As I approached and touched her muzzle, she fell to the ground in a grotesque, stiffened shape. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I gasped. I waited without breathing until her limbs relaxed and she paddled them in the air, unable to regain her feet. At last she blinked and some understanding returned to her empty eyes.
Dad and William were beyond yelling distance, just specks in the pasture, but I caught the sound of my father whistling to Skip. I looked down at my damp gown flapping open in the persistent wind. I wondered for a moment if I should make the drive instead of sending William. Deciding it would save precious time, I raced back to the house, and threw on my brown dress because it was hanging to dry on the line in the kitchen so it saved me a trip to my room, despite still being damp under the arms and around the waistband. It took only a moment to insert the crank into the engine since we always keep it on the front seat instead of the bonnet. After a minute of grinding circles even my strong arm started to burn and the car didn’t make a single sound.
“Not now,” I growled, determined to keep my head. Perhaps there is too much of my father’s Irish in me because after another go I started screaming and kicking the tires before I realised I’d forgotten my shoes again. With tears wetting my face I limped inside for my Wellingtons and my eyes fell the phone box. It was a mad impulse, but it came so clearly I didn’t second guess. I picked up the earpiece with trembling hands and asked the operator for Jonathon Doran at the Buchanan Estate. I thought for a moment she would ask me what right I had to call him, but she calmly clicked over and a woman answered who I assumed was a maid.
“Hello,” I cried. “I am Eve Brannon. Mr. Doran, the young one, not Marion, but Jonathon, visited my farm and I have an emergency.”
With the crackling of our terrible line and my babbling it did take some fixing up before she realised I wanted to speak with Jonathon and I felt an indescribable relief when she asked me to hold. If he were in London she would have said so. Many aching moments later, just as I was about to hang off and go back to cranking, I heard his voice. “Hallo. This is Jonathon Doran.” He sounded more as if asking a question than answering a telephone.
“Jonathon! It’s Eve!” I tried to contain my voice but it came out so very loud and desperate after bottling it up and waiting for him to come on the line. “We’ve an emergency on the farm and my car will not start so I can’t get the vet.” Then the tears flooded my throat and my nose and left no room for anything but terrible sobs I knew would make him think me more a child than ever. But perhaps that was not bad because everyone is quick to help a child and his voice got very stern and rushed as he spoke. He promised to be right over and bring the vet if possible. I replaced the earpiece and snatched up the dish rag to blow my nose and catch my tears. At last I yelled out loud, “Eve Brannon, you stop this instant and go help your father!” I squared up my shoulders, commanded my eyes to stop streaming and set off across the field. Dad and William each had sheep on their shoulders when I ran to meet them. “What is it, Dad?”
He didn’t look at me, just kept his eyes ahead at the large barn.
“How do yer bayerns look?” he asked instead of answering.
“Fine as ever.”
“Get them into the small barn. We need to bring in the sick ones and I don’t want them together until we know what it is.” The skinny ewe on his shoulders trembled.
“Then you don’t know?”
The grim set of his face told me if he did know he didn’t want to say it out loud. I waited until he passed and pressed up close to William who panted under the weight. He looked at me with dark, frightened eyes. “Liver fluke, most likely,” he murmured. “They’re staggering like ‘ell.”
I pictured the dreaded worms squirm through their bodies, the millions of eggs filling their swelling livers. “But we’ve had that before. It never looked like this. And it’s too early.”
“That’s why we’re stumped. But it looks like the beginning of black disease. We found two dead already.”
“But we didn’t let them eat in the boggy pasture.” I nearly shrieked. We had so carefully avoided the wet grass to ensure the snails that carry the parasite couldn’t touch our lambs. For weeks we’d supplemented them with our best feed to make up for the lack of dry pasture, even though it cost us dear. Liver fluke in early stages can be sorted, but when the livers turn black and the sheep start convulsing there is no hope at all.
William shrugged as best he could beneath the load and asked, “When will Holton get here? He’ll know.”
I tried not to but I started to cry again. “I’ve sent Jonathon Doran to fetch him from Nichols’ farm.”
“You did what?” His incredulous face wanted to ask more, but we were nearly to the barn. “Get your lambs out of there so I can bring these ewes in.” Sweat dripped down his nose. I’ve never needed Alan so much in my life. I’d seen him bring in two ewes at a time with hardly a hitch in his breath. If only the sheep could have held off for six more days. I looked across the field, willing him to appear in the hazy sunlight.
It is no easy feat to move more than thirty lambs in a matter of minutes, but fear gave me extra speed and strength. I ran out with my bright, bawling bundles as Dad and William lumbered in with sheep that looked like they waited for death. Our paths crossed until I’d hastily thrown all my lambs into the holding building we use at shearing time. Luckily we’d thrown down hay for some of the ewes during birthing so it wasn’t just concrete. It took me some fair time to bed them down and check again for symptoms, but t
hey pattered after me, unconcerned about anything other than milk. After I knew they were safe I followed Dad and William back to the pasture, despite my strength giving out. The closest sheep had all been brought in. I had to go all the way to the bend in the beck before I came across one with symptoms. She wasn’t trembling too badly so I slowly held out one finger. When I touched her she pushed her head into my hand, opened her mouth, and gave a short bleat.
“You’re not so far gone. We’ll get you right,” I told her as I pulled her onto my shoulders.
If we’d been in the close pasture I would have made it to the barn with only sore shoulders, but being twice as far as usual my neck screamed when the barn was still a distant speck. My feet wobbled on the uneven patches of grass. I heard William call my name against the wind but I was battling so hard to stagger forward I didn’t look up from the ground. With a cry I stumbled and caught myself, then lowered the ewe to the ground. William called my name again, this time closer and I knew he must be running. I looked up only to see it wasn’t him. Jonathon sprinted full tilt, his flapping jacket looking like something from another, cleaner world.
“Are you hurt?” he asked as he reached me. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped my face, which is the first time I realised I’d started tearing again. The clean white cloth came away streaked with black dirt.
To Move the World (Power of the Matchmaker) Page 10