Red Sky in the Morning

by Margaret Dickinson

  ‘I promise and if I have to leave before you wake up, your mammy will stay with him until you do.’

  They listened whilst the child climbed the ladder and then Pat leant across the table towards Anna. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me that’s upsetting you.’

  Anna smiled wanly. ‘You’re too sharp by half, Nurse Jessop.’

  ‘It’s me job, ducky,’ the nurse grinned. ‘Besides, I’m a nosy owd beezum. Everyone in the village ses so.’

  Yes, Anna wanted to say, but they all know too that their secrets are safe with you. She sighed. ‘It’s Tony,’ she began and found herself confiding in the friendly woman. ‘He’s begun to believe his mother’s vicious lies. He can’t understand why I can’t talk about the – the past. I just can’t. Not to anyone.’

  Pat touched her hand. ‘Not even to me?’ she asked softly.

  Anna pressed her lips together and tears welled as she shook her head. ‘No, not even to you,’ she said huskily. ‘But if I – ever did – you’d be the first. Even before Eddie.’

  Pat nodded. ‘Well, you know I’m always ready to listen if you ever decide you do want to unburden yourself. And I use that word purposely, ’cos it is a burden you’re carrying. I can see that. A very heavy burden. And you know I’d never tell a soul—’

  Now Anna smiled. ‘I know.’

  Pat stood up. ‘I’ll have to be on my way, but I’ll take a look at Buster first.’ She wagged her forefinger at Anna playfully. ‘Just so long as you remember to tell Maisie I did so.’

  A few moments later the nurse said, ‘He’s doing fine.’ She stood up again. ‘I wouldn’t have wished for any of this to happen, but I have to say I’m glad you’re not going.’

  Anna’s eyes clouded. ‘We – we’ll have to go this summer. Maisie will have to start school and – and they’ll start asking to see her birth certificate and—’

  ‘Listen, ducky. The headmistress of the village school is a friend of mine. And there’s only her and her assistant teacher. Why don’t you let me have a word with her?’

  Anna opened her mouth to protest but Pat hurried on. ‘No one else will ever hear about Maisie’s birth certificate not having her father’s name on it. Only she and her assistant need to know and I suppose the Education Offices at Lincoln—’

  ‘Lincoln?’ Anna’s head shot up and her eyes widened.

  Pat stared at her, her mind working quickly. Anna, realizing she might have given away far more than she intended, floundered. ‘What I mean is, why does anyone have to know anywhere else but at the school?’

  ‘That’s where the County Offices are. They’re a sort of headquarters, if you like, for all the schools. But,’ she hurried on, trying to reassure Anna, ‘to them you’re just a name on a piece of paper. But there’ll be plenty of other bits of paper with only the mother’s name on, believe you me.’

  Anna still looked doubtful.

  ‘It’ll be the same in every county. It’d be the same wherever you went,’ Pat said and was immediately sorry to see the defeated, haunted look in Anna’s eyes that had been there when she had first met her return; a look that had been banished during her years of safety in the little white cottage.

  Now the fear was back.

  ‘So you’re going to stay?’

  Anna couldn’t fail to hear the eagerness in Eddie’s tone. She sighed and said dully, ‘It seems there’s nowhere any better.’

  He put his head on one side. ‘Is that a compliment? ’Cos it doesn’t quite sound like one.’

  Anna smiled apologetically and repeated what Pat had told her. ‘So it seems it’ll be the same wherever I go. But I just felt I wanted to be further away.’

  ‘From where?’ Eddie asked very gently, but Anna would not allow herself to be caught off guard. ‘You mentioned Lincoln once. Is that where you lived?’

  ‘Just further away from this area, that’s all,’ Anna answered evasively.

  They were silent for a moment before Eddie said, ‘But you think now that it might be all right to stay here?’

  ‘Well, for a while anyway. Pat’s going to talk to her friend at the school, so maybe—’ She sighed. ‘Oh I don’t know. Now there’s Tony—’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He – he read the wrong meaning into you comforting me the night the dogs attacked the sheep and – and poor Buster. When I – I ran to you and you – you hugged me.’

  ‘Ah,’ Eddie breathed. ‘So that’s what’s up with him. I’ll have a word. You leave it with me. I’ll put him straight.’

  Anna never learned what Eddie said to Tony – if indeed he said anything. Over the following weeks and months, the boy did not visit the cottage, and if he came to the sheep, he skirted their home and was brusque with Maisie when she ran to him, lifting up her arms to be swung round.

  ‘Tony won’t play with me any more,’ she told her mother tearfully. ‘Is he cross with me?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘No, darling. It’s me he’s cross with. Not you.’

  ‘Then why won’t he play with me? That’s not fair.’

  ‘No, it isn’t, but then I’m afraid a lot of things aren’t fair.’

  It isn’t fair, Anna thought resentfully, that I have to hide myself and my daughter in the back of beyond just because . . .

  Her mind shied away from the bitter memories. She forced a smile onto her face. ‘Don’t cry, Maisie. I know, let’s go and play hide-and-seek in the woods.’

  The child pouted and shook her head. ‘You don’t do it properly. Tony plays hide-and-seek better than you do.’

  Anna sighed. ‘Oh well, in that case you’d better come and help me round up the sheep. And bring Buster. He’s well enough now to be getting back to work. I think he’s malingering.’

  Maisie, always intrigued by big words, said, ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Pretending he’s still poorly when he’s not.’

  Diverted from her distress over Tony, Maisie fetched the dog from the kitchen. ‘Come on, boy,’ Anna heard her daughter say sternly to the dog. ‘No more mal’gring.’

  Anna smiled.

  Twenty-Two

  The summer passed uneventfully and it was time for Maisie to start school.

  ‘I know she’s not five until next February,’ Pat said, ‘but Miss Drury says she can take her at the start of the autumn term this September, if you like. I told her she’s a bright little thing and—’ Pat stopped, unwilling to say that she had also indicated to the head teacher that the child needed to begin to mix with other children of her own age. ‘She’s been well brought up,’ the nurse had confided in the teacher. ‘She’s a credit to her mother, but she’s been forced to live the life of a recluse.’

  ‘Why?’ the thin, grey-haired woman, who had devoted her life to the education of other people’s children, had asked.

  Pat had sighed. ‘That’s all part of the great secret – whatever that is. I can only guess because Anna won’t trust anyone enough to divulge anything about herself or her past.’ She shrugged her plump shoulders. ‘That’s her privilege, of course, and I respect it, but it can’t be good for the child, can it?’

  Edna Drury shook her head. ‘No, it can’t.’ She pondered a moment and then said, ‘Well, I can take the child in September if the mother agrees.’

  Pat beamed. ‘I’ll make sure she does.’ Now, to Anna, she finished the sentence she had begun, ‘I told her she’s a bright little thing and Miss Drury respects your desire for privacy. Betty Cussons will be Maisie’s teacher, by the way.’

  ‘Is she nice?’

  ‘Lovely. She’s only young and the little ones all adore her.’

  So Maisie started at the village school at the beginning of September. For the first few weeks Anna met Maisie in the lane just outside the village and listened to her chatter about her day. They always walked the long way round the wood, alongside the brook and up the track to the cottage to avoid going near the farm.

  ‘Why don’t you come through the yard
and up the hill?’ Eddie asked Anna. ‘It’s much shorter and the little lass must be tired after all day at school.’

  ‘No,’ Anna replied shortly. ‘I don’t want her to think she can come that way. She might be tempted to try to see your wife again.’ She forbore to say that Tony’s offhandedness was still causing heartache to the child – to them both, if she was truthful.

  But it wasn’t many weeks later that Maisie said, ‘I can walk home on me own, Mammy. I can walk with Geoffrey Johnson. He lives just down the lane from Mr Eddie’s farm.’ She leant forward as if imparting a confidence. ‘He hasn’t got a dad either. His dad was killed in the war. That’s what Geoffrey said.’ There was a loaded pause whilst Anna held her breath. She knew, even before the child opened her mouth again, what was coming. ‘Was my daddy killed in the war?’

  Her heart was beating rapidly, but Anna replied carefully, ‘No. You haven’t got a daddy.’

  ‘Not at all? You mean, I’ve never had a daddy?’

  Anna avoided her small daughter’s trusting gaze and shook her head. ‘No. There’s only ever been just you and me.’

  The child looked crestfallen and said in a wistful voice, ‘Meg’s got a daddy. He made her a swing in their garden. She said she’ll let me have a go on it if I’ll be her friend. She ses I can go to her house for tea. Can I go, Mam?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Anna said, but silently determined that she would have to think up an excuse. She didn’t want Maisie visiting people’s houses in the village. Questions might be asked. ‘Now come along, we must fetch the water from the stream. It’s bath night.’

  Maisie jumped up and down and clapped her hands. She loved bath night on a Friday when her mother put the tin bath in front of the fire and filled it with hot water and then knelt beside it to soap Maisie’s sturdy little body and wash her bright copper curls. Afterwards, dressed in a clean nightgown, she would cuddle up with her mother in the big, old armchair and Anna would tell her stories.

  Her mother needed no book to read from. Anna had enough imagination to weave a magical world for the child.

  ‘Tell me “Mr Mumble’s Gold Walking Stick”,’ Maisie would plead and Anna would begin, making the story different each time. ‘That’s not right,’ the child would say laughing.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Anna would pretend innocence.

  ‘No, last time he lost it on the beach and the sea came and washed it away, but a mermaid brought it back.’

  ‘Oh yes, well, this is a different time. This time he lost it in a snowstorm and . . .’ And off Anna’s imagination would lead them into another adventure.

  It was just before Maisie’s fifth birthday, when they were already busy with the lambing that Anna rose early to see the red sky of an ominous dawn. The sight unsettled her. She believed in the country sayings and feared the onset of stormy weather. But for Anna there was more to it than that. She tried to quell the memories, tried to forget her own superstition that it was not only troubled weather that such a sky foretold but something more.

  She shook herself and told herself she was being silly and fanciful.

  ‘I can’t spare the time to take you to school, so you’re to walk on your own, but you come straight home,’ Anna told Maisie. ‘No dawdling and no going to anyone’s house. You hear me?’

  To Anna’s relief the burgeoning friendship between Maisie and Meg had withered and died. As little girls do, they had fallen out the very next day after Maisie’s conversation with her mother, but Anna was still not convinced that Maisie would be able to resist another invitation.

  ‘And you’re to come round by the wood. You’re not to go through Mr Eddie’s yard.’

  For a brief moment, Maisie eyed her mother and then said meekly, ‘Yes, Mam.’

  She skipped away towards the brook, the little satchel carrying her lunch swinging from her shoulder. But if Anna had known what was already going through the child’s scheming mind she would have felt even more agitated.

  Later that morning, Eddie climbed down from his tractor, his face solemn. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard . . . ?’ he began and Anna’s heart seemed to leap in her chest and then began to thud painfully.

  She’d known by the sky that morning that something awful was going to happen.

  ‘What?’ Her face was white, her voice a strangled whisper.

  ‘The King’s died – poor chap – in his sleep.’

  Anna felt a rush of relief flood through her. She almost said aloud, ‘Is that all?’ but bit the words back.

  ‘He was a good man,’ Eddie was saying solemnly. ‘And the poor lass that’s to follow him is so young.’ He shook his head. ‘So very young for such an awesome task.’

  Now Anna could not prevent the words spilling out. ‘But she’s got a husband at her side to help her. She’s not alone. Not like—’ She bit her lip and dropped her gaze. Guilt flooded through her that she could have been so caught up in her own fears that she had not spared a sympathetic thought for the poor man and his family. She turned away, uncomfortably aware that Eddie was staring at her, shocked and disappointed.

  Her words were not only lacking in compassion for the bereaved family, but were insulting to Eddie, who had done everything he could to help her.

  And that, Anna thought with shame, was how she repaid him.

  Maisie obeyed her mother’s instruction for a week. Each morning she walked down the track, turned to the right and walked towards the lane with the stream on her left and the woodland on her right. Turning to the right again, she passed the wood and came to the gate leading into the yard of Cackle Hill Farm. And each evening she returned the same way. It was a long way for the little girl. She had already walked more than twice the distance it would have been if she had taken the short cut through the farmyard.

  As Maisie reached the farm gate late in the afternoon of her birthday on her return from school, it was raining hard. Her footsteps slowed and she lingered in the lane near the gate. She could hear clanking sounds from inside the cowshed and wondered if Mr Eddie was in there. She glanced up the hill. Her mother couldn’t see her. The cold, wet winter’s afternoon was already growing dark as she glanced at the back door of the farmhouse, imagining the warm kitchen and the smell of freshly baked bread and pies and those delicious scones with jam and cream.

  It was really Mrs Bertha she wanted to see, but maybe if she pretended to see Mr Eddie in the cowshed first . . .

  The little girl pushed open the gate and marched boldly into the yard.

  ‘Mr Eddie, are you in here?’ she shouted, knocking on the lower part of the door into the shed. The upper part was open and fastened back to the wall, but the lower part was shut. The noise from inside stopped and she heard footsteps. Then Eddie’s head peered over the half door.

  ‘Well, well, and what are you doing here, Maisie?’ His welcoming smile faded as he remembered the reason Maisie had been sent to fetch him last time. ‘Has your mam sent you to fetch me? Is something wrong?’

  Her curls danced as she shook her head. ‘No, she doesn’t know I’m here.’ She pulled a face and then smiled impishly. ‘I’ll be in trouble if she finds out.’

  Eddie chuckled. ‘Ah well, I’ll not tell her, eh?’

  ‘Is Mrs Bertha at home?’

  Now Eddie could not prevent the surprise from showing on his face. ‘Why, yes. She is.’

  ‘Can I see her?’

  Eddie took off his cap and ran his hand through his thinning hair. ‘I don’t rightly know, love. I mean . . .’ He faltered, not liking to intimate that the older woman might not want to see the little girl against whom she still held such resentment.

  ‘I’m all wet,’ Maisie said plaintively.

  ‘I know, but . . .’ He sighed and muttered. ‘I suppose it can’t do any harm. Come on then, let’s go and see if she’s got the kettle on.’

  As they walked across the yard, Maisie put her tiny hand into Eddie’s large one and skipped along at his side. And that was how Bertha saw them from her sculler
y window.

  ‘So you’ve come to see me again, ’ave ya?’ Bertha said as the child perched herself on the stool near the table. ‘After my scones, I bet.’ And she ruffled the child’s curls affectionately.

  Eddie stared in amazement. He couldn’t believe what was happening before his eyes. Bertha was actually being civil to the child. More than civil, she was being nice to her. Very nice.

  Bertha’s tone sharpened. ‘Well, Eddie Appleyard, ain’t you got work to do?’

  ‘Yes, but—’ Eddie glanced helplessly from one to the other, not knowing what to make of it. He turned and left the house, shaking his head in bewilderment. He knew his wife was a funny mixture, but this beat all.

  As he crossed the yard, he passed Tony returning from the school bus. Seeing the puzzled look on his father’s face, the boy said, ‘Summat up, Dad?’

  Still mesmerized by what he had just witnessed, Eddie shook his head. ‘No, lad. At least – I don’t think so.’ He did not stop to enlighten his son any further and carried on walking towards the cowshed. Tony watched him go, then shrugged and went into the house.

  The moment he stepped into the kitchen, he saw the reason for his father’s bafflement. Tony stood in the doorway and stared. There was Maisie sitting at the table, munching a scone and chattering to his mother as if they were bosom pals.

  ‘It’s my birthday today, y’know,’ she was telling Bertha. ‘I’m five.’

  Bertha looked up and smiled at Tony. ‘We’ve got a visitor,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think I need to introduce you, do I?’ There was a hint of sarcasm in her tone that was lost on the little girl, but not on Bertha’s son.

  Tony’s face coloured as he muttered, ‘What’s she doing here?’

  ‘Just visiting a neighbour, aren’t you, lovey?’

  Maisie nodded happily, completely unaware of the undercurrent of tension in the room. ‘Why don’t you come and play with me any more?’ she asked Tony, her brown eyes staring candidly at him.

  Tony scowled and, embarrassed, glanced at his mother. But she answered Maisie. ‘Tony’s getting a big boy now. He’s at the grammar school in the town. He has ever such a lot of homework and then, of course, he has to help his dad.’