by Pam Weaver
It was hard to be a motherless lamb with no memories of her mam, just a snapshot in a print dress. The mother of her imagination would be tall and pretty, with golden hair, and clever and sparkling, but no one at Cragside ever talked about her much when she asked questions. They clammed up and looked the other way when she pestered for more.
Did they own this house or did it belong to the bigwig in London who came for the shooting at Benton Hall? Why was it left to rot, unloved, abandoned?
Mirren made for the door, thinking if she kept in a straight line she might just make her way down like the sheep. Her courage failed when she opened the door on to a mountain of snow. She was trapped, fast in, as they said round here. Time to bank up the fire and pray. She was no match for the devil wind and the snow giants.
She sipped her hot water, pretending it was cocoa laced with the top of the milk. Mam and Dad would have loved this house but they weren’t here now. They were gone and she was on her own again. If someone didn’t come soon she would starve. How quickly night-time fears flee when the sun shines, but she sat like Cinderella at the hearth, too weak now to move.
When would they come?
4
Adey took one look at the sky and knew school would be out early. They must send a cart to see the child got back safely. Country kiddies took shelter in bad weather. They knew to lie low until it was safe, but Mirren was different and secretive these days and she might not do the right thing. Adey sent Joe to collect her just in case.
Now they were used to having her around the place, grown accustomed to her noisy chatter and questions. Questions. She was a bright one and her piano playing was coming on. All she lacked was practice and concentration, but she was little Miss Head-in-a-Book. It would be nice if she got to the girls’ secondary school like her mam. Her coming had brought life back to the place and no one could say she didn’t help out…
Then Joe blew in from the doorway, covered in snow.
‘You’re back, praise the Lord. Thanks for getting her, Joe. Where’s her ladyship?’ Adey searched for the child behind him.
‘She wasn’t there, Mother. Burrows said summat about her going home early and that’s not all. I had a word with Lizzie Halstead at the door. Mirren’s hardly been in school at all…’ he muttered.
‘The little minx, wait till I get my hands on her. What’s going on?’ Adey was all worked up with worry and fury.
Carrie was lurking at the stove and she turned pink. ‘Perhaps I should’ve said something earlier, Mrs Yewell, but our Emmot says that Mirren hates school and got the cane for fighting. They’ve been calling her names and Burrows makes her go in the baby class so she’s been off sick.’
‘Now you tell us!’ snapped Adey. ‘How long has this been going on? Oh, my giddy aunt, she’s out in that snow. Send for Tom. We’ll have to get up a search party.’ She felt the fear and panic rising and went for her coat.
‘Hang on, Mother. What good’ll that do in this wild darkness?’ came Joe’s predictable reply. ‘She could be anywhere by now. She’s a sensible lass even if she’s stubborn with it. She’ll have found cover. Tom and the village boys will look for her in the morning.’
‘We can’t wait that long. She’ll catch her death,’ Adey was shouting back. ‘Wait till I see her, scaring us half to death. You’ll have to take the strap to her and teach her a lesson.’
‘Wait on, Adey. Lass’s in enough trouble as it is, gadding off into the hills. She doesn’t know the lay of the land and not the size of tuppence ha’penny. We should have kept a closer eye on her ourselves. We used to be able to sniff out trouble with our lads but we’ve got out of the habit, and she’s a deep one, at that.’
‘You could take the dogs out with a storm lantern,’ Adey pleaded.
‘Don’t be daft. And have two of us lost in the snow? We’ll do the job proper with a gang stretched over the moor. Mind you, she’s a right devil running off from the schoolmaster. I thought only lads did that,’ said Joe, scratching his head.
‘We’ve got to do something,’ screamed Adey, pacing up and down the kitchen, clattering her pans.
Carrie started to cry. ‘I’m not a tale teller, as you know, but I reckon Burrows had made her life a right misery. Emmot says she’s top of the class but she has to sit at the back and shut up or teach the dunces to do their letters. That’s not right, is it?’
‘Poor lass has had a right miserable time but never thought to tell us,’ said Joe, slurping his tea in a way that always got on Adey’s nerves.
‘We didn’t bring her all this way to lose her in the snow,’ Adey sighed. ‘Happen we should never have brought her here in the first place. It’s not like living in a town. She never said a word…’
What if Mirren was already lost? What sort of Christmas would they have in mourning? How would she ever forgive herself? The girl’d been taking her bullying in silence and that showed courage, and to put up with Burrows in the state he was in nowadays. He ought to be reported. Were they such ogres that she couldn’t tell them her troubles?
If she came out of this alive, they’d have to think things afresh, perhaps put her in a private school, but where would they find the cash for that?
‘Dear Lord, keep the child safe for one more day, temper the wind to the shorn lamb,’ Joe prayed, and they bowed their heads in the kitchen. ‘Show us the way…’
Outside the wind roared and the blizzard raged but no one got a wink of sleep that night. They were helpless in the face of the storm. It was out of their hands now.
The fire was still crackling with more broken-off laths but Mirren was now weak with hunger and fear. Why didn’t they come? Would they ever find her? Perhaps they had given her up for lost?
Outside the door a cruel silvery world shimmered with icicles cascading down from the roof ends but she was too tired to wonder at the beauty of it all. She wanted to be home with Gran in Cragside kitchen, back with Carrie making faces, back sneaking titbits to Jet under the table.
It was melting, though. There were drips plopping from the hole in the roof, but no other sound. Then she heard the faint bark of dogs in the distance. Her heart thumped with relief. Someone was out there searching for her.
‘I’m here, over here!’ she squeaked, but her voice was too quiet. She couldn’t open the door for the weight of snow and she was desperate. What would the Scouts do now?
Uncle George’s book had served her well so far. There was a chapter on camping and sending signals, but she’d skipped that bit. If she was high up perhaps they would see her smoke.
Mirren piled on more laths. The only thing to hand was her new winter coat and she was in enough trouble as it was, so she grabbed a smelly sack and tried wafting it over the flames but it caught alight and she had to throw it onto the fire. Perhaps the blue smoke might be visible.
She sat down, exhausted and tearful. Come on old house, she prayed, help me one more time and I promise, on my blue temperance badge, I’ll pay you back.
There was always the hope that the kindred spirits who had once lived here would come to her rescue. She opened the one working shutter and yelled until she was puce and dizzy.
Then a tall boy in a peaked tweed cap, carrying a proddy stick, climbed over a drift and waved.
‘She’s here! Over here! Now then, young Miriam, let’s be having you,’ smiled a pair of dark brown eyes. She’d never seen him before in the village. He was about fourteen.
‘Who are you?’
‘Jack Sowerby, from The Fleece. You must be wrong in the head to go gallivanting up World’s End…’
‘It wasn’t snowing when I left,’ she answered back. No wonder she’d never seen him. Yewells didn’t go in pubs. They were Satan’s houses. ‘Anyway, the house found me and kept me safe.’
Her rescuer didn’t seem interested in her explanation but kept on whistling and shouting.
‘She’s alive, up here!’ he called, and suddenly there were dogs sniffing at her, faces peering under sack hoods wi
th burning cheeks, and she was pulled through the window to safety.
‘So you spent the night at World’s End,’ laughed Uncle Tom, shoving in her hand a flask of hot soup, which burned her throat. ‘Sip it slowly. You’re a lucky blighter to find this ruin and hole up like a lost sheep. Happen you’re a Yewell through and through. Now, young lady, don’t you ever do such a daft thing again. You have to treat these hills with respect or they’ll take your fingers off in a few hours and your life by nightfall. Mam and Dad are going mad with worry at Cragside. Don’t you go putting lives at risk again…silly mutt!’ Uncle Tom stared at her with cold eyes and she cried.
‘Now what’ve I said?’ he muttered. ‘Don’t take on. Drink yer soup.’
It was creamy broth with bits of meat and veg in it, the most wonderful soup in the world at that moment, but she still felt dizzy and floppy.
Uncle Tom had never shouted at her before. The lad, Jack, peered in through the window. ‘She’s got a fire going…She’s canny enough, Tom, to think of that.’ He turned to her with smiling eyes. ‘I reckon we’ve got another Miriam o’ the Dale here. How did you think all this up?’
‘I read Uncle George’s book.’ At least Jack Sowerby didn’t think she was stupid. ‘I tried to do smoke signals but it didn’t work.’
‘That’s grand. They’ll be right proud of you when they find out,’ he said, but Uncle Tom was scowling.
‘No they won’t. She’s for it when she gets back, if the look on my mam’s face is anything to go by. She’s lost us a day’s work.’
‘The snow did that for you. We can’t blame her for a blizzard. The poor kid’s half starved. Do you want a piggyback?’ Jack offered.
But Mirren shook her head. ‘No thank you, I’ll walk. I’ve caused enough bother. I don’t suppose you’ve done anything as daft as me?’ she asked them both.
Uncle Tom suddenly roared. ‘His mam says Jack ran away on the first day at school ’cos he couldn’t count up the cardboard pennies so he hid in the cellar of the pub and she and Wilf were run ragged trying to find him.’ He lifted her up as she was struggling and her legs had turned to jelly. He carried her down to the waiting sled, to the warmth of a horse steaming, then homewards over the snow.
It was a cold crisp morning with a weak winter sun, but the journey down was like bumping over ice and the poor horse slithered. How could she have wandered so far uphill–and to the end of the world, they said?
She turned to say goodbye to her house but it had already disappeared from view, hidden and secret once more. One day she must come back and thank it properly.
They were all lined up waiting in the kitchen as she was carried in and inspected for frostbite. Someone had blasted off a gun to give notice that she was safe. Two blasts and it would have meant she was a goner, so Carrie whispered.
‘You’ve given us such a fright, Miriam. Whatever were you thinking off?’ said Granny, rubbing her dry with a towel.
‘Not now, Adey,’ said Grandpa Joe. ‘She’s frozen through. Get her in that zinc tub and warmed up. Plenty of time for a sermon when she’s come to. Carrie can see to it.’
Soon Mirren was soaking in the warm tub, her hands and toes tingling, and then Carrie was towelling her dry.
‘Weren’t you scared all alone at World’s End?’ she asked.
‘I wasn’t alone. There were animals sheltering in there, and when the fire was lit, I heard—’
‘They say that ruin is haunted. You wouldn’t catch me up there for love nor money,’ Carrie added.
‘It’s a kind place. I didn’t see anyone. The walls are thick and warm.’
‘You’re a braver lass than me…World’s End is unlucky for some. That’s why it’s been left. It belonged to one of yours years back. They said his wife was a witch but I never believed it…your great-granny, Sukie Yewell. She never went to church. They say…but I shouldn’t be putting ideas in your head. You’ve had a lucky escape. We thought you were a goner. The snow’s taken many a soul off these moors. They know about you skipping school, by the way. I had to tell them.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Mirren, splashing the water with her foot. Carrie was wrong. World’s End was a kind house. It had sheltered her and saved her life. Now she must get dressed and face the grilling downstairs.
Soon everyone in Windebank knew the child was safe, found in the old ruin at World’s End. George Thursby, the postman, brought an update straight from Cragside lane end, telling Miss Halstead how the town child was found. Soon it passed from cottage to shop and pub that Mirren Gilchrist was a truant from school on account of her beating by Mr Burrows. He was called by the managers to account for such rumours and reprimanded for taking whisky bottles into school. Only his war record prevented his dismissal. His wife went to her mother’s on account of her health. The village was agog at the gossip, but Mirren was to know nothing of all this.
She was trying to be extra good for her grandparents, keeping her head down, waiting for the moment when she would be summoned to make an account of her behaviour. And so near to Christmas too.
‘Why does nobody like World’s End?’ she asked at the dinner table.
‘Don’t talk with your mouth full, child,’ said Gran. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Carrie said it’s haunted by a witch,’ she replied.
‘Nonsense, she’s making a cake out of a biscuit again. There’s nothing wrong with that place that a bit of repair wouldn’t sort out but it’s too far out to be much use to us, especially in winter. You did well to find it.’
‘It found me, I think. Can we mend it?’
‘Of course not, lass. There’s no money for that sort of whimsy.’
Grandpa was taking his tea into his study to do his sermon for the Christmas carol concert. Being a preacher was important and he was not to be disturbed when she passed his door.
Carrie began brushing Mirren’s hair out. It crackled on the brush.
‘Ouch!’ she cried as the lugs were combed out.
‘We should be paddling your backside with that brush, young lady, not pampering your vanity. Disobellience in one so young is a black mark. Truanting is what boys do, not nice girls,’ said Gran.
‘She’s learned her lesson, haven’t you?’ said Carrie, pulling Mirren’s hair so she nodded meekly.
‘Spare the rod, spoil the child, the Good Book says,’ sniffed Gran.
They all lined up against her two days later-Gran, Grandpa and Uncle Tom–and she stood as if a culprit before the constable.
‘We’re really disappointed in you, Miriam. If you were unhappy you should have told us instead of wagging off like that. You could have fallen in the waterfall or in a bog and no one would have known where you were. We are led to believe you’re a clever girl not a dunce…We never took you for a quitter.’ Grandpa Joe wagged his finger like he did in the pulpit when he spat out about the fiery furnace waiting for sinners. ‘What have you to say for yourself?’
‘I hate it there. I want to go back to St Mary’s school,’ Mirren sobbed.
‘That’s no answer,’ he said, ignoring her outburst. ‘It’s bound to take time for you to settle in. Tomorrow you will go down and apologise to Mr Burrows, and knuckle down to be a good scholar.’
‘I won’t,’ she snapped back. ‘He hates me. He won’t teach me anything.’
‘You will do as you’re told, young lady. I give the orders in this house. You must learn that when you do something wrong you take your punishment. Write a neat letter of apology in your best handwriting and I will check it over. You’ve got to get back to study. We’ll help you with that bit and that’ll be the end on t’matter. As for punishment, I’m sure you realise that there’ll be no pantomime trips or Christmas treats for you this year. Father Christmas doesn’t bring gifts to naughty children. There’ll be no outings until I’m sure you’ll not let the family name down.’
‘I hate you all,’ Mirren screamed, and Gran cuffed her around the ear, a right sidewinder. It stung her cheek and
she stared, shocked. The room fell silent.
‘Out of my sight, you rude ungrateful child. You put other lives in danger and shamed us before the village. I will not speak to you until you show due remorse. Go to your room at once.’
Even Miriam knew she’d gone too far and pushed Gran into clouting her, but she would not go back to that boring classroom to be caned and humiliated all over again.
The next day she sidled out of the side door, down the cinder path from the yard to the little summer hut where, she’d been told, on sunny days Grandpa sat outside, smoking his pipe and looking down the valley at the view, dreaming up words for his preaching.
It was just a wooden shed with an open front and railings round, and a bench inside out of the breeze. No one would find her there, she thought. She needed to calm her thudding heart and think of what to write to Burrows.
The bench was icy, and icicles hung from the roof like lollipops. How she wished she was back up on the tops at World’s End, far away in her own fireside. If she was grown up she would run away for ever and make that hidy-hole safe from prying people; somewhere to get away from meddlers.
She sat hunched up, trying to summon up courage to go back in, when she sensed at the corner of her eye someone standing to the side, hovering, not knowing whether to cough or not. It was Jack Sowerby. She glowered at him, hoping he’d slink away.
‘Hutch up,’ he said. ‘In a bit of hot water, I hear. Tom was down at The Fleece telling Mam all about it. I thought you might need a friend.’
‘No, go away!’
‘Pity I sort of wondered if we could find a way round the bother at school. It’s not a bad school.’
‘It’s a rubbishy school,’ Mirren snapped. ‘I hate old Burrows’.
‘Why?’
‘I just do, and he smells of whisky,’ she replied, sitting with her arms folded in defiance of Jack softening her up.
‘Let me tell you a story about Harold Burrows. For one, he’s not old, just over thirty. For two, he’s a brave man who won medals in the war. For three, he saved many men’s lives and he was injured in the head. For four, I’m told he gets terrible headaches that make him scream out in the night with pain. The whisky gives him heart. Shall I go on?’ Jack paused, searching her scowling face.