Red Sky in the Morning

by Margaret Dickinson

  A fleeting look of pain crossed his face, but he nodded. ‘I’ve always thought,’ he said carefully, ‘that if you let birds fly free, they’ll come home all the more readily. I think it applies to people too, don’t you?’

  How sensible Tony was, Anna thought. She nodded. ‘We’ll have to let her decide.’

  ‘I know,’ he whispered. ‘I know.’

  She touched his arm. ‘It’ll come right. I know it will.’

  He smiled, but the doubt was still deep in his eyes.

  Changing the subject Anna asked, ‘What about your mother?’

  Tony shrugged. ‘She’s hopping mad, of course, but I think deep down she half expected it. He’s left her some money and I’ve to pay her a monthly allowance – which I would have done anyway,’ he added hastily.

  Anna nodded. ‘So she’s staying on the farm?’

  Now Tony laughed. ‘Oh no. She’s packing her belongings this very minute. She can’t wait to get away. She’s moving into Ludthorpe. Going to live with her sister for a start.’

  The smile began slowly on Anna’s mouth, spreading until it lit up the whole of her face. Now she could open the envelope. Reading the words of Eddie’s generous and, yes, loving gesture, Anna felt a happiness and contentment flooding through her that she had never expected to feel ever again. Although her feelings were tinged with sadness that her current fortune had come about because of Eddie’s death, she knew he would want her to be happy. It was all Eddie Appleyard had ever wanted for her.

  There was only one cloud in her otherwise clear blue sky.

  What had become of her mother?

  Fifty-Two

  PC Jenkins wheeled his bicycle down the track towards the little cottage. He leant it against the wall and knocked on the door. While he waited for an answer, he looked about him. Sheep grazed on the slope of the field in the sunshine. It was an idyllic scene and he wished he had better news for the young woman who was now opening the door to him.

  Anna smiled a welcome. ‘Come in, Mr Jenkins. You must have known I’ve got the kettle on.’

  The constable stepped into the kitchen, laid his helmet on the table and sat down whilst Anna mashed the tea and set out home-made biscuits on a plate.

  ‘I’ll come straight to the point, Anna. We’ve been making enquiries about your mam, but we can’t – at the moment – trace her.’

  Anna sighed and sat down. She busied herself pouring the tea, but could not hide her disappointment. ‘Well, I’m sure you’ve done your best. I can’t ask more than that.’

  ‘Oh we’re not giving up. Be assured of that. Besides, we’re still building a case against the two we’ve got in custody.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘From the bit you were able to tell us, it seems there’s a lot more wants looking into.’ He nodded knowingly. ‘A lot more.’

  Anna looked him straight in the eyes. ‘Tell me honestly – do you think she’s dead?’

  He sighed. ‘I don’t know, love, and that’s the truth, but we want to find out anyway. If she’s alive, she could help us with our enquiries.’ He smiled at the use of the official-sounding term. Then his expression sobered. ‘If she’s not, then we shall be making enquiries into the nature of her death.’

  Anna nodded, unable to speak for the lump in her throat. It was defeatist, she knew, but knowing the Whittakers as she did, she could hold out no hope that her mother was still alive.

  ‘There’s one thing we did find out that might interest you. That cinema you thought he owned or at least managed—’

  Anna looked up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Seems he had nowt to do with it at all. I’ve talked to the chap who runs it and he remembers him well. “Oh him,” he said. “That fly-by-night! He’s nothing to do with this place and never has been. He fancied himself as something of an entrepreneur or whatever they call it. Reckoned he knew all the stars and used to stand outside the front there when there was a big name appearing here, making out he knew them and that it was all down to him that they’d come here. And he used to chat up the girls in the box office to get the best seats in the house. Lots of folks thought he owned the place. Oh yes, I remember Douglas Whittaker all right,” he said, “I’d like to get me hands on him myself.”’

  Anna tried to smile, but her thoughts were still on her mother.

  PC Jenkins must have read her mind for he touched her hand and said softly, ‘Don’t give up hope yet, love. We’ll keep searching, I promise you.’

  Eddie’s death had hit Pat Jessop hard. She had stood close to the graveside during his interment, weeping openly, not caring who saw her. Beside her stood a grim-faced Maisie.

  Anna stood alone beneath the shadow of a tree some distance from the other mourners around the grave. She had slipped into the back of the church at the last moment, quietly and unobserved. But Maisie had had no such compunction. Boldly, she had marched into the church to sit beside Pat. She had walked out with Pat and followed the coffin to watch it being lowered into the earth. Her eyes were dry, but bright with anger, her mouth tight. Though her arm was linked through Pat’s, it was Tony’s face that Maisie’s glance sought constantly.

  Tony was standing, white-faced, beside his mother, his mouth set in a hard line. Only his brown eyes showed any sign of the tumult of emotion raging inside him. Deliberately he avoided meeting Maisie’s eyes, even though he could feel her glance upon him.

  His overriding emotion was anger. Anger that his father should have been killed. Why should a kind, considerate man like Eddie Appleyard have his life snatched away so violently by a vicious thug?

  But there were so many other emotions struggling within him. He felt sorry for Maisie – her natural father had been the one to take the life of the man who had been more than a father to her. And for Anna now there was understanding. Her fear had been justified. Yet he couldn’t help wishing that she had had the courage to confide in his father and him too. Perhaps if they had known all about it, they could have prevented the tragedy.

  And his mother. Oh, what about his mother? His loyalty and, yes, his love for his mother was being sorely tested now that he knew her part in the terrible events. Her vindictiveness towards Anna had led to his father’s death.

  And he felt guilt too. Guilt because, even in the midst of his grief, his heart was leaping with joy at the knowledge that Maisie was not his half-sister.

  It had been difficult to assess Bertha’s feelings that day. She had stood at the side of the grave, her face expressionless, and afterwards she had got into the funeral car with her sister, Lucy, and been driven back to Ludthorpe, offering no refreshment back at the farm. It had been left to Anna to invite Tony and Pat back to the little cottage, the cottage that was now rightfully hers.

  Pat had sat outside the front door, an untouched cup of tea in her hands, just staring across the fields towards the sun as it began to sink in the sky.

  Anna sat down beside her. ‘He loved this view.’

  ‘He loved a lot of things. He loved this farm, his land, his son and, once, I suppose – ’, there was a strange reluctance in her tone as she went on – ‘he must have loved Bertha.’ She paused and then said quietly, ‘And he loved you, Anna.’ As Anna opened her mouth to protest, Pat hurried on, ‘Oh, I don’t mean in the way Bertha accused him of. No, as a dear friend, or even a daughter perhaps. The same way he loved Maisie. Do you know what I mean?’

  Anna, tears choking her throat, nodded.

  Then, quite simply and without any shame, Pat said, ‘And I loved him and in exactly the way Bertha thought.’ She sighed. ‘Such a pity he never knew.’

  Huskily, Anna said, ‘I think he did, Pat. I’m sure he did.’

  Pat smiled through her tears as she whispered, ‘I hope so.’

  Life settled into a new routine. Bertha was gone and Tony now lived alone in the farmhouse, though he seemed to spend far more time with Anna and Maisie in the little cottage than he did in his own home.

  ‘We need more help on the farm and – ’ he smiled ruefully – ‘
I need some sort of a housekeeper, or at least someone to come in to cook and clean for me. And to wash and iron my clothes. I’m beginning to smell.’

  Maisie pretended to sniff the air. ‘No worse than usual,’ she quipped.

  ‘Well, I could do that,’ Anna said, but Tony shook his head. ‘No, you’ve enough to do about the farm and when you get back here. Specially looking after madam here. That’s a full-time job.’

  ‘Ta very much,’ Maisie tossed her curls and pretended indignation. ‘You know what you need?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A wife.’

  ‘You could be right. You applying for the job then?’

  The banter was spoken light-heartedly, yet Anna was aware of an undercurrent between them.

  ‘Who me?’ Maisie feigned astonishment, her eyes wide. ‘What makes you think I want to bury myself here? My teachers say I’ve already got enough qualifications to get into teacher-training college.’

  ‘Is that what you want to do?’ Anna asked.

  Questioned directly, Maisie faltered. ‘I’m thinking about it? I want to get my A levels first, though.’

  Anna glanced at Tony. His eyes were lowered and she could not read their expression, but by the slump in his shoulders she knew that Maisie’s words had dashed his hopes even further. But, strangely, Maisie did not look exactly ecstatic about her own tentative plans either.

  I wonder, Anna thought.

  Anna was sitting outside the front door of her cottage, watching a glorious sunset. The sun slipped down slowly, streaking the sky with burnished gold. Maisie had taken her homework – reading two chapters of Pride and Prejudice – to sit beside the stream. Anna could just see her, on the bank, head bent, engrossed in her book.

  Something, she wasn’t sure what, perhaps a movement or a slight sound, made her look to her left, up the hill. Tony was walking towards her. He waved and she lifted her hand in response.

  He reached her and sat beside her. For a few moments they watched the sunset together in silence. Then he said gently, ‘Anna, there’s someone to see you.’

  She turned, a moment’s fear leaping into her eyes before she remembered. There was no longer any need to be afraid. All the years of hiding were over.

  ‘Who?’

  Tony glanced up the track and Anna followed his line of vision. Coming down the hill was the slight figure of a woman. Anna’s heart seemed to stop and then began to thud erratically. She rose slowly, her gaze still on the figure coming closer and closer.

  Then she gave a cry, held out her arms and began to run up the hill.

  ‘Mam! Oh, Mam!’

  Fifty-Three

  There was so much to say and yet, for the moment, they could say nothing.

  ‘I’ll go and tell Maisie,’ Tony said tactfully. ‘We’ll give you a few moments.’

  As he turned away, Anna cried, ‘Oh, Mam, can you ever forgive me?’

  ‘It’s you who need to forgive me, Anna.’ Easy tears welled in May’s eyes and, in spite of her obvious joy at seeing her daughter again, she still seemed anxious and unsure.

  ‘But I left you with – with them. I ran away,’ Anna insisted.

  ‘When I told you to run, I didn’t mean you to go right away,’ May said. ‘Why didn’t you go to Jed? He would have helped you. He was frantic when he found you had gone. And then, when we couldn’t find you—’

  Anna lifted her head slightly and whispered his name softly for the first time in years. ‘Jed. Oh, Jed.’ Her voice broke as she added, ‘Mam – I couldn’t. I was so – so ashamed.’

  May’s face was still haunted by the memories. ‘If it was anyone’s fault, it was mine. I should have known better. I should have listened to your grandfather. And to Betty and Rita.’

  They sat down together outside the cottage, mother and daughter watching the golden sunset with their arms around one another, as if, never again, would they allow themselves to be parted.

  ‘But you,’ May went on, stroking Anna’s hair tenderly, ‘you were just an innocent young girl, full of romantic dreams that were smashed in a violent and terrible way. No wonder you wanted to run and hide from everything and – and everyone. Oh, Anna – ’ May’s voice cracked – ‘did you hate me? Did you blame me?’

  ‘Blame you? Oh, Mam! Never. Not for one moment. But I thought you would be ashamed of me, that it had been somehow my fault.’

  ‘No,’ May whispered. ‘Oh no, it wasn’t you. It was them. Both of them.’

  ‘I felt so guilty though, and so – so cowardly, running away like that. Just leaving you. What – ’ she stumbled again over his name – ‘what did Jed do when he found out what had happened?’

  May stared straight ahead, watching the glorious colours, the blue and gold and pink, realizing that over the years since Anna had gone, she had never even noticed a sunset. Her life had been dark and gloomy and so very sad. She gave a deep sigh and said, ‘Jed didn’t know. I – I couldn’t tell him, Anna. If he’d known and he’d caught up with Bruce – or even Douglas for that matter – there would have been murder done and an innocent boy would have gone to the gallows, or at best served life imprisonment, just because he loved you. I couldn’t risk Jed knowing. So – no one knew.’

  For once, Anna thought, her mother had shown surprising strength in her decision.

  ‘And he – he still doesn’t know?’

  May turned and looked deeply into the lovely eyes of her daughter, eyes that were so like her own. ‘Not all of it. Not – not why you ran away. You should tell him that yourself. But Jed knows I’ve found you, Anna, and he wants to see you.’ She smiled. ‘He would have come today if I’d let him.’

  Anna closed her eyes. ‘Soon,’ she whispered, her heart lifting at the thought of seeing him again. ‘I’ll see him soon, I promise. But just now—’ Her voice faded away.

  ‘So, tell me – what happened to you, my darling? Where did you go?’ May asked unsteadily. Her newfound happiness was hard to believe after all the years of anguish.

  ‘Oh Mam.’ Anna closed her eyes, trying to blot out the memories, yet they had to be relived. For her mother’s sake. May had a right to know, so haltingly, she began to tell her sorry tale.

  ‘I just ran – like you told me to. I thought about going to the city, but then, big though it is, I thought they might find me. Douglas had his cronies there and all I could think of was getting as far away as I could. So I struck across country, living rough, sleeping in barns, stealing food.’ She smiled grimly. ‘I had no identity card, no ration book. But I thought if I could get to the coast, maybe to Grimsby, I could stow away on a ship. It was a stupid idea, but I didn’t care where I went or even what happened to me.’ Anna paused, remembering vividly her feeling of hopelessness, not caring then if she lived or died. If it hadn’t been for Eddie . . .

  She took a deep breath and went on.

  ‘I got as far as Horncastle and it was market day. I set about stealing some food. How I never got caught, I don’t know, but I didn’t. And then – then there was a young woman who left her handbag on the edge of one of the stalls whilst she moved away to look at something. Before I realized what I was doing, I’d snatched it up and walked away with it in the opposite direction. My heart was thudding. I expected any minute that someone would shout, would come running after me, but nothing happened. Perhaps part of me even wanted to get caught. I don’t know. I walked and walked, never looking back, just taking the first road that took me out of the town. I didn’t even know where I was heading.’ Anna licked her lips and paused in telling what to her was another shameful episode in her story. ‘I know it was wrong, Mam. I’m not a thief, yet after what had happened to me stealing seemed nothing.’

  ‘No,’ May said huskily, ‘it wasn’t wrong.’ There was a pause and then May prompted. ‘And what did you find in the handbag?’

  Anna shook her head in wonderment. ‘You’ll not believe this, Mam. I could hardly believe my luck. I still felt so guilty and yet – yet it seemed – m
eant to happen.’

  ‘What did? What do you mean?’

  ‘The girl’s identity card and her ration book were in the handbag. And do you know – ’ even now after all the intervening years there was incredulity in Anna’s voice – ‘do you know, her name was Annabel Woods.’

  May gasped. ‘So – so you called yourself Anna Woods?’

  Anna nodded. ‘I just hope the real Annabel Woods didn’t get into too much trouble. I hoped she’d be able to replace the lost items.’

  Now there was a long silence between them until, haltingly now, Anna came to the part where she had been standing in Ludthorpe marketplace on a cold, wet evening just before Christmas . . .

  When she had finished, Anna said, ‘Now you must tell me what happened to you.’

  May’s voice was unsteady. ‘I had to take the beatings for a while. I tried several times to get away, but he always found me and dragged me back, and then, suddenly, about two years after you’d gone, he stopped hitting me and became much nicer. Just like he had been in the early days.’ She glanced at Anna as she added, bitterly, ‘But there was a reason. He’d found out that if you were declared dead, then – then I was your next of kin and could inherit the farm. That’s what they were after all the time. The farm. They’d planned it all.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘At first, because we couldn’t sell it, we put a manager in. The farm did well and earned quite a good living for us. But Douglas wanted the lump sum. He wanted to buy the cinema he was involved in.’

  At this point, Anna interrupted her mother’s tale to tell her what PC Jenkins had said.

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me.’ May’s mouth was grim. ‘Believe me, Douglas Whittaker owned very little that had been legitimately bought, unless,’ she added bitterly, ‘it was something I’d paid for.’

  Anna said nothing.

  ‘When you’d been missing a few years he consulted a solicitor. But he must have been advised to wait a little longer. I think he was told that we ought to make more effort to find you first. So the farm had to stay in your name and we couldn’t sell it, only continue to work it.’ She sighed. ‘Douglas was furious, so the beatings began again for a while. And then he stopped again, though the cruelty still continued, but it was only verbal now.’