by Maggie Hope
‘How are you feeling, Mother?’
‘Not bad, Ken, not bad. All the better for seeing you.’
‘Come and sit down, Theda lass, I’ll have the tea made in a trice, the kettle’s boiling.’ There was a new electric cooker to the side of the fireplace but an old iron kettle was singing on the hob of the coal range. ‘Call Walt, will you, Ken? Jack’s in the byre an’ all.’
Walt came in, Richard at his side. A little shy at first, he went straight to Theda and leaned against her knee.
‘This is Richard,’ said Ken.
‘Now then, Richard,’ said Meg. ‘Howay, sit down. I bet you’re hungry, aren’t you? I’ve got some nice new scones and strawberry jam, would you like one?’
‘Yes, please,’ said the boy, and he scrambled on to the chair by his mother. ‘The puppies have no hair and they can’t open their eyes,’ he told her. ‘Uncle Walt says I can come back and see them when their eyes open. He says their eyes will be blue at first.’
Meg sat down suddenly. ‘How old are you, Richard?’ she asked.
‘I’m five. But I’ve started school, you know, I can read.’ Honesty got the better of him and he added, ‘Little words, I can read.’
Theda stared down at her scone. She could feel the heat in her face, even the tips of her ears. There was a silence in the room. Ken, who had taken a bite of his scone, put it down on his plate and swallowed.
Meg gazed hard from him to the boy. ‘So you’re getting married, are you, at last?’ she asked Ken. ‘An’ not afore time, I’d reckon. By, lad, what’ve you been thinking of all these years?’
Ken jumped up from the table and rushed out of the room without looking at Theda, and Walt mumbled something about having things to see to and drank his tea in one swallow. Taking his scone in his hand, he went out to the scullery and could be heard putting on his farm boots.
‘Eeh, lass, do you mean to say Ken didn’t know?’ asked Meg. Jane had risen from her customary seat by the fire and came to sit beside her mother. When Theda raised her eyes, both women were looking at her.
‘Richard, why don’t you go and see if Uncle Walt needs some help?’ suggested Meg, and they waited while he picked up the last drop of jam from his plate with his forefinger and sucked it.
‘All right, Mam?’ he asked, and she nodded.
The women were left on their own and Theda met their eyes. ‘I meant to tell him, it just never seemed to be the right time,’ she said. ‘How did you know?’
‘There’s eyesight in it,’ declared Meg. ‘Anyone can see the bairn’s a Grizedale; he has the family face. Even if he has his Grandfather Collins’s eyes. Not to mention Ken’s.’
‘He’s my grandson too,’ said Jane. ‘You shouldn’t have kept him from us, Theda. I’m sure if Ken had known he would have done the right thing by you. He’s an honourable man.’
‘Yes.’
‘Best go out there and find him, lass,’ advised Meg. ‘Go on now. So you made a mistake. You’ll just have to put it right, won’t you? Walt will watch the bairn or we will.’
Theda went out through the scullery, passing Jack in the doorway and acknowledging his greeting. As she went into the farmyard she could see Walt and Richard just closing a field gate after a herd of cows.
‘Get along there, Daisy,’ Walt encouraged a straggler. And, ‘Go on, Daisy,’ echoed Richard. Walt saw Theda and nodded down the lane. ‘Ken went off down there, I think,’ he said. ‘That’s where he always went when he was out of sorts. The lad’ll be all right with me if you want to go.’
She walked down the lane, feeling sick with a misery that was all the stronger after the happiness of this morning. She should have told him; he had had a right to know. She was in the wrong, oh, yes, she was well aware of that. She walked over the road and along the top of the cliffs to where the Souter lighthouse stood. And there, near the edge of the cliff, she found him sitting with his back against a wall, staring out at the seabirds swooping and diving around Marsden Rock. She sat down beside him.
‘I don’t think I told you,’ he said, ‘Gran left school at nine-years-old and her first job was scrubbing down the steps of the lighthouse. Did I tell you?’
‘No. No you didn’t tell me that.’ She swallowed and looked out to sea. ‘Ken, I’m sorry, I am. I can understand how you must hate me for it.’
‘Hate you? No. I just feel such a fool. It’s you has had all the worry, all the trouble of bringing the boy up on your own.’
‘Yes, but . . . oh, I should have made more effort to get in touch with you. I went to see Tucker Cornish, you know. He said he hadn’t the authority to give me your address. But he didn’t know about the baby, mind.’
Tucker, thought Ken. Well, he couldn’t blame him. It was his own fault, no one else’s. When he first walked out of the farmhouse he had been furiously angry – angry that he hadn’t recognised his own child, angry with Theda that she hadn’t told him, angry at the war, the flaming, bloody war, which had separated them in the first place. He had missed the first few years of the boy’s life. But hadn’t that happened to thousands during the war? He wasn’t alone in it. And why let that poison the rest of their lives? They had had their time for war, now it was a time to heal. Beside him, he could feel how miserable she was. Scrambling to his feet, he held out a hand to Theda and after a moment she put hers in it and allowed him to pull her up.
‘Never mind, sweetheart, never mind,’ he said. A cold wind blew over the North Sea, though the sun shone bravely enough. He opened his coat and held her to him, holding the coat round them both as she laid her head against his.
‘I thought it was over, finished. I thought you wouldn’t want to marry me now,’ she said.
‘Well, like Gran said, it’s about time too.’
‘But it’s not just because of Richard, is it?’
‘Theda, I know I’ve been stupid, but really, you sound as dense as two short planks. I love you, you daft lass. I love you. How many times do you want me to say it?’
She buried her head in his chest. They stood for a few minutes then turned together and walked back to the farm, arms entwined.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Part One: 1936
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Part Two: 1950
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five