‘Since you are my employer and I have no wish to find myself out of a job by morning, I dare say I’d best obey. Not that I want you for my own sake, you understand?’
‘I understand perfectly.’
His words were coming out jagged and raw with his efforts to keep control. ‘Shall I be about what you ask of me then, Meg Turner?’
‘If you think you’re up to the job, Thomas O’Cleary.’
‘Dear God in heaven, will you listen to the woman? I should have known better than to have got myself a woman boss. Tis time you learned that in bed the man is master.’ Thrusting aside her staying hands he spread her beneath him, pinning her down with his own body. Meg laughed softly and arched herself to him, winding her legs about his thighs. ‘It’s shameless you are, woman.’
‘Whatever you say, oh, master. Only make it quick, for God’s sake, Tam. I need you.’
‘Did you enjoy the dance?’ Effie stared at the two untouched mugs of tea, still sitting on the kitchen table the next morning, then removed them quietly to the sink. Meg, avoiding Effie’s gaze as she considered her answer, did not notice.
‘Yes. It was fun. The band was excellent and there were loads of people there. I think it did me good to get out.’
She was busy mixing Lissa’s breakfast cereal very carefully with milk in her teddy bear bowl as she talked. Then she set it down upon the kitchen floor for Rust to eat.
‘I can see that it did,’ Effie replied, very seriously, staring at the bowl.
The child gurgled and laughed delightedly as Rust swiftly devoured the luscious treat. Meg rolled her eyes in self-disgust. ‘Would you look at that? What must I be thinking of?’
‘What indeed?’ said Effie dryly, and got on with the washing up.
Meg was in a fever of excitement all day, just longing for the evening when the children would be in bed and she and Tam could be on their own. She had to admit, even to herself, that she had known nothing like this feeling in her entire life before.
Losing her virginity to Jack in the barn had been a painful, clumsy affair by comparison. She could see now that only Jack had gained pleasure from it. With Tam she felt needed, cared for, nurtured, as if she mattered to him more than any pleasure he might get from their loving. It was a wonderful feeling.
She supposed he was her lover. Even the word sent shivers down her spine. She had a lover.
Changes would have to be made. Though they each had their own bed, Effie was still a physical presence in Meg’s big, high-ceilinged bedroom. How could she explain the situation to her? Was it fair to think of carrying on such a relationship with a child in the house? All day she agonised over how she was to approach the subject.
‘I was thinking,’ Effie said, as she served Meg soup at dinner time, ‘that maybe I should move in with Lissa, or take the room next door. What do you think? Would you mind very much, Meg, being on your own?’ She waited for her answer, wide-eyed and mildly enquiring.
Dear, darling Effie, so sensitive to other people’s needs. Right from those early days when she had helped Meg over Lanky’s death, her one concern had been to think of others and not be a bother. As if she ever could be. Meg heard Tam smother a spurt of laughter. She cleared her throat and smiled at her friend. ‘I think that would be an excellent idea. It’s time you had a room all of your own. And Lissa would enjoy having you near, wouldn’t you, darling?’
‘Yes, yes. Want Effie next to me,’ cried Lissa excitedly, and Meg refused to catch Tam’s glance.
It was a simple matter to dust out the bedroom next to Lissa’s, set up the bed and make it up with clean sheets. Meg set a lamp on the chest of drawers and a nightlight by the bed.
‘There you are, Effie. Leave the candle lit till you sleep, if you like. Just make sure the shutters are closed and no light shows out the window.’
‘I will.’ Effie put her arms about Meg’s waist and laid her cheek against hers. ‘Didn’t I say it would be all right? I’m so happy for you.’ Meg very nearly protested innocence of her meaning but then thought, no, this is Effie, my dear friend, so she hugged her close and didn’t pretend.
‘Yes, I am happy.’
Then it was Effie’s turn to look anxious. ‘You won’t be wanting me to leave, will you?’
‘Leave? Heavens no, why should we? We love you.’
‘And Tam loves you,’ Effie said quietly. ‘I’ve known for ages but you were too blind to see.’
‘As always.’ And then with some curiosity, ‘What made you think so?’
Effie laughed. ‘Oh, it was in his face every time he looked at you. In the way he moved close to you whenever you passed by. And once I saw him capture the scent of you from your scarf by holding it against his lips. Then he brought it out to you in the yard as if it were a plain old thing, of no account.’
Meg was stunned by these disclosures, afraid suddenly of what she had unleashed. ‘I can’t love him. I mustn’t love him.’
‘Whyever not?’
‘I just can’t, that’s all. It’s too soon. How will I know if I can ever trust him?’ There was the hint of a sob in her voice and Meg quickly swallowed it. ‘See how weak I’m getting already? It won’t do.’ She snatched up the pillow. ‘Maybe it’s a mistake to move you. Come back.’
‘No.’ Effie took the pillow and placed it on the bed. ‘It’s time I grew up and slept alone. It’s time for us all to grow up. I know you loved Jack, and he let you down. So what? It happens. Now he’s gone, you have his home and you feel guilty. Well, I say you’ve nothing to feel guilty about. It was him who did the dirty on you. Him and that so-called friend of yours. When I meet that little madam...’
‘Kath is still my friend. If she came here in trouble, I would still welcome her.’
‘Maybe you would, because that’s the way you are, Meg. But what you have to ask yourself is, would she do the same for you? Would Jack, if he were here?’
‘I really can’t say.’
‘Yes, you can, you know very well, neither one of them would give you a second thought. No, perhaps that’s a bit hard on them. They’d think about you right enough, and probably be nice as pie to your face, but they’d still reckon that their own needs and wishes were of greater importance.’
Meg gazed at Effie, transfixed. There was an awful logic in her words. How was it some children were born with wisdom? And others, herself included, remained vulnerable and naive, seemingly throughout life?
‘I thought I was getting stronger, a tough woman running a farm practically single-handed.’
‘So you are. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have a heart. Let it love, Meg Turner. Let it love.’
Chapter Six
‘It crossed my mind,’ said Joe, ‘that you might not be averse to letting me buy me own land off you. Well, what I think of as me own land.’
Jeffrey Ellis frowned. ‘I didn’t realise owning land was so important to you.’
‘Well, I have sons to think of, and grandsons now. I happen to have some money saved and, begging your pardon, since I’d heard you weren’t too well, I thought you wouldn’t mind being rid of the worry of it, like.’ Cheap, he meant.
Jeffrey Ellis thought he didn’t care one way or the other about land. The income from the rental that Joe Turner paid for Ashlea was useful but the capital, properly invested, would do almost as well. But he was surprised by the offer. ‘I thought money was tight. Things haven’t been good in farming these last years.’
‘Aye, well. We make do. Just.’
‘I had hoped, one day, to leave it to my daughter.’
Joe shuffled his feet. ‘If you want my opinion on that score, women shouldn’t be trusted, not when it comes to land. They can’t cope with it. It’s a living thing is land and needs a man’s hand to control it.’
‘Your own daughter seems to be managing well enough.’
‘She isn’t on her own though, is she?’ Joe blustered. ‘She’s got that great Irish lout staying with her.’
Jeffrey
Ellis smiled. ‘But the responsibility and the decisions are hers.’
‘Happen.,
‘It’s funny how we fathers never take to the men our daughters choose.’ Not that I know whether Katherine has a man, he thought bleakly, or where she is or why she left. If he knew she was well and happy, he’d have some reason to get up in a morning. He could fight off any illness then. As it was ...
‘You’ve not heard where she’s at?’ Joe, as ever, was blunt.
Mr Ellis turned away to fiddle unnecessarily with papers upon his desk. ‘Not recently, no.’ Not at all, in fact. ‘But I’m sure we will hear soon.’
‘Aye, aye. They come round in the end. Allus do.’ Joe cleared his throat. This conversation was wandering a bit far off track for his liking. Nevertheless he sympathised with this man. Jeffrey Ellis had been a good landlord, leaving Ashlea very much to Joe’s care, not like some who were always poking and prying where they’d no business to. ‘We all have our troubles with family,’ Joe confided, thinking it would do no harm to butter him up a bit. ‘Our Meg took it upon herself to fetch a child home, says it’s an orphan from Liverpool.’
Jeffrey Ellis listened with half his attention. ‘Yes, I’d heard something of the case. Must be plenty about at this time. That was kind of her.’
‘There’s some as say it isn’t an orphan at all but her own brat.’
‘Do you think it is?’
‘Don’t know what to think. She tells me nowt. I’m only her father, aren’t I? But I can put two and two together and it looks very like that lad of Lanky’s.’
‘Jack?’
‘Aye, that’s him. Black curly hair just the same it has. And blue eyes you wouldn’t believe.’ Joe’s tone had softened slightly. ‘Not that it’s any fault of the child’s, but if Meg was going to have a bairn, better if it’d been a son to follow on.’
Jeffrey Ellis laughed. ‘You have to take what you’re given and be thankful where babies are concerned.’
‘Aye, mebbe. But now she has this other chap living with her. No morals that girl. I’m ashamed to call her me own daughter.’
‘How old is this child?’
‘Oh, eighteen months or so by now. Born last March after that hard winter.’
Jeffrey Ellis was looking oddly thoughtful. ‘I saw Meg once or twice around that time. She didn’t say she was having a baby, nor look it. Certainly didn’t mention it or ask for my advice. How surprising.’ It would be easy enough to check. The local midwife would know.
‘You never can tell what daughters are at, can you?’ Joe was regretting ever mentioning the subject, impatient as he was to get back to the question of his land. As a sitting tenant he might get Ashlea for a few hundred and save himself the rent every quarter. He was of the opinion that land would rise in price, after the war. Things always seemed to, and then he’d never get it.
‘I knew she and Jack were very friendly. Katherine too,’ Jeffrey was saying. ‘The three of them went everywhere together, like peas in a pod.’ He lapsed into silence, seeming to forget for a moment that Joe was there.
Joe gave a polite cough just to remind him. ‘So then, about Ashlea. Would you consider selling it to me, as sitting tenant? At a reduced price like.’
Jeffrey Ellis studied Joe with new interest. He didn’t like the man, but he’d always paid his rent each quarter, never a day late. Katherine probably wouldn’t be interested in Ashlea, anyway. She’d get his savings and investments and Larkrigg of course, which should be enough for anyone. All the same, he didn’t want to give it away. He was a careful man and Jeffrey felt surprisingly optimistic all of a sudden, after talking to Joe Turner. If what he suspected was correct, he might find another purpose for Ashlea.
‘I’ll speak to my lawyers about it, first thing in the morning,’ he said, and named a price that made Joe blench.
‘Here! I weren’t thinking in those terms at all.’
‘Ashlea is a fine farm.’
‘Aye, because I’ve made it so.’
‘We’ll see what my lawyers have to say, shall we?’
Joe was forced to doff his cap with unusual deference and leave Jeffrey Ellis to his thoughts.
Nobody would have known, looking at Meg beside Tam in the saleroom, that she was nervous. Dressed in a soft green tweed jacket and cord slacks, she looked relaxed and confident, a woman who knew what she was about.
They had walked her flock of Herdwicks the nine miles or so from Broombank down into Kendal, a long cold trek with all three dogs working hard the length of it. She’d seen each and every one of them booked in and penned. It had taken hours of effort and she felt tired and flustered and very far from confident.
‘What if nobody wants to buy them?’ she whispered, and felt Tam’s body shift beside her as if he were smiling, though she dare not, for the life of her, look up into his face. ‘What if I don’t get a good price?’
His hand closed very briefly but firmly over hers. Held it by his side long enough to reassure, his firm grip telling her to stop worrying and have faith. Meg drew in a great gulp of air, not that it was particularly fresh in the confines of the auction ring but it got her lungs working again. ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ he said briskly, turning away, and she instantly panicked, almost snatching at his sleeve till she realised people were looking at her, smiling and nodding. She thrust her hands in her pockets, and smiled and nodded back.
‘Why? Where are you going?’ she hissed. She was appalled. She needed to know he was there, feel him beside her.
Tam’s eyebrows raised very slightly. ‘I suppose a man might enjoy his day off without interrogation from his boss?’
‘Don’t play games with me, Tam O’Cleary. You said you would be here with me. Morning, Will.’ She nodded at Will Davies as he took his place by the ring.
‘And so I am. But you don’t need me to hang around all morning and hold your hand, now do you? You’re the farmer.’
Doubts beset her. ‘Do you think I’m doing the right thing? It’s not too late to withdraw them. Even if I do get a good price that isn’t the end of our worries. There’s always the danger that the new flock won’t settle. They might simply walk away. It has been known for sheep to walk forty miles or more, with lambs at foot, back to the heaf where they were born.’
‘Then we’ll just have to make them feel at home, won’t we? You have other Swaledales, that’ll surely help. You mean to buy them in young, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Gimmers, first-year sheep.’
‘So there shouldn’t be too much of a problem. As soon as they have lambed in their turn, the new stock will know no other place.’ But she wasn’t to be reassured. ‘Then again, with no natural immunity to the bugs on my land, they might sicken and die. Then I’ll be bankrupt, finished, and have to go home, tail between my legs, and listen to my father gloat over how a woman can never make a farmer.’
Tam leaned back to consider her rump carefully. ‘Then I’d say your father must have docked your tail when you were young. I can’t see one for you to bring home, and I’m sure I would have noticed. It’s a very nice rear.’
‘Oh, Tam. Stop joking with me,’ she hissed in a fierce whisper, even as the corners of her mouth twitched into a smile.
‘Then stop fussing, woman. I’m just the hired help, remember? You’ve bought and sold sheep before and managed perfectly well enough on your own.’
‘But not almost my entire flock.’
‘Don’t exaggerate.’ Tam winked at her with his usual outrageously wicked grin. ‘It’s no more than half of it, and it’s no fainting female that you are, Meg Turner, so don’t pretend otherwise. Not with me who knows you so well. Haven’t I told you that I like my women strong?’ Then hands in pockets, he strolled away, whistling.
Damn him!
Meg gazed in desperation at the first lot of sheep already jostling into the ring. How long would she have to wait before her own came up? Every moment would seem a lifetime, more than enough to wonder at her own sanity in taki
ng this risk.
If she didn’t get a good price for her Herdwicks, then all her plans would fall flat. There was admittedly no hurry for the tractor, but she needed to buy in enough Swaledales to start her off well. She also needed to leave some money over to put in the bank towards the deposit she was saving for Broombank. She had some saved already, but nowhere near enough. And then there was next quarter’s rent. She groaned. What had she done? Today’s sale was vital.
At last Meg went to join her flock in an agony of suspense. She was doing all right with the Herdwicks. Why was she never satisfied? Why make changes?
They came into the ring at last, dark and lively, their hoar frost faces looking faintly bewildered, white ears perked. As Tam had rightly pointed out, there was no room for sentiment in farming, nevertheless she was woman enough to hope they went to a good farm where they would be well cared for.
‘A handsome crew we have here,’ said the auctioneer. ‘Good stock. Miss Turner tells me she is only parting with these splendid animals because she is making some changes at Broombank. Now, who’ll give me the first bid?’
Silence for a moment while a hundred faces turned upon her. Pipes were sucked, eyes of every hue considered her but not a soul moved. Meg strove to keep her face impassive. It wouldn’t do for them to think her weak or anxious. Not that she was, Meg told herself, stubborn to the last. These were good sheep, fit and healthy stock, animals to be proud of, and here she was in the ring with them to prove it. Sometimes you had to take a risk in life, in order to make progress. Her land was clean, her plan sound. She lifted her chin with fresh resolve and waited. All she needed was a good price to get her started.
‘I did it, I did it!’ Meg was almost bouncing with delight as she met up with Tam for a quick bite of lunch at the Duke of Cumberland. There was a fire in the inn’s hearth for which she was grateful as there was a bite to the air this autumn day. ‘They’ve gone to Blencary, a good farm in the Langdales. Perfect spot for them. Didn’t I do well?’
Storm Clouds Over Broombank Page 8