by Pam Weaver
Mirren wasn’t Ellie, nor could she ever be her replacement. There was much about her that needed licking into place but her coming had brought new life and joy to their old age and for that Adeline Yewell would be forever grateful.
The third miracle was that Tom was getting wed at long last. Wilf Sowerby’s widow had said yes and there was going to be a wedding in September.
Praise the Lord…no more washing Tom’s overalls and smelly socks and feeding his hollow legs. Perhaps then she could rest up a bit for she’d been feeling a bit off, of late.
After the wedding breakfast Jack, Ben and Mirren climbed the path to World’s End, stuffed to the gills with ham salads, trifles, curd tarts and wedding cake. Mirren had been pestering the boys to come to find it again.
‘Isn’t it grand?’ she said. ‘What do you think?’
‘You’ve brought us all this way to see a ruin?’ said Jack, eyeing the old house with disdain. ‘It’s just a shepherd’s hut and perishing cold.’
Ben was being tactful and said nothing.
‘The walls are thick and strong,’ she argued, wanting to defend her secret place, wishing she hadn’t brought them now.
‘But there’s no roof left; it’s all collapsing.’
‘But with a new roof on…I’m going to rebuild it one day.’ She could see it all done up in her mind’s eye.
‘You’re not a roofer. You couldn’t lift one of those sandstones,’ Jack laughed.
‘But we could help her,’ offered Ben.
‘If I can survive a night in a blizzard, I can put a roof on a house.’ She could see the place with paned windows and gleaming glass, a new front door.
‘Look, you can see right down the valley to the railway and the river. I bet the Brigantes held out here long ago.’ Ben was into history and battles.
‘We could camp up here and it could be our secret den.’ Mirren was trying to impress Jack, to no avail.
‘No, thanks, none of your mad ideas. I’ve enough of my own. Ben can come in the holidays and you can play hide-and-seek,’ Jack scoffed.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Mirren. ‘This is a shepherd’s house and I’ll be a proper shepherd with my own flock, so there!’
‘Girls can’t be shepherds!’ Jack laughed again. ‘Your cousin is soft in the head,’ he said turning to Ben.
‘You’ll be going to grammar school soon,’ Ben smiled. ‘How’ll you manage to do both?’
‘I can try,’ she replied, feeling dumped.
‘Well, you won’t catch me chasing sheep up a mountain. I want to be an engineer,’ said Jack. ‘You’ve got Cragside and we’ve got Scar Head. How many more places do you want?’
‘I want a place of my own one day,’ Mirren told him.
‘Suit yourself,’ said Jack. ‘Let’s get cracking. This place gives me the creeps.’
It was at that moment, standing on the edge, looking out, queen of all she surveyed, that Mirren sensed a flicker of excitement. World’s End was hers and hers alone. She had found it and it was her destiny. How could those silly clots not see its magic?
Part Two
Darkening Skies
6
1939
‘You’re going to have to rest up a bit more, Mrs Yewell,’ said Dr Murray, taking his stethoscope from Adeline’s chest. ‘That ticker of yours is showing its age.’
She pulled up her underslip quickly and got dressed. After the last dizzy do, Joe insisted they call the quack out to the farm.
‘It’s a tonic bottle I need, not a lecture. That’ll get me right enough,’ she smiled.
‘Adeline Yewell, like it or not, you’re no spring chicken and those puffy ankles tell me the pump’s not working as it should. I’ll give you some pills. You farmers’ wives are all the same, up from dawn to midnight and no proper holidays. Let that young lass of yours take up the slack.’
‘Miriam’s got her studies to do. We want her to do well and not waste her chances shovelling muck of a morning…She does her share. Happen I’ll take things lightly for a few days.’
‘Days won’t cure this, Adey, and you know it! Perhaps I’ll have a word with Joe downstairs,’ the doctor threatened.
‘You do that and you won’t get any of my brass again. Just give me the pills and I’ll try and put my feet up. Joe’s enough on his plate with all the rules and regulations coming in. I don’t know what the world’s coming to, setting us up for another war, sending sons out as gun fodder again…You’d think we’d learned summat after the last packet.’
John Murray shook his head, having lost his only son at Gallipoli. ‘We have to stop this madman in Germany,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll be too old to do much, though it has to be done.’
‘I just wish they’d get on with it after all the shillyshallying. How can I rest up with all the rules landing on our doorstep?’
‘If you don’t, I can’t vouchsafe for your strength holding out, tough as you are.’ The doctor patted her wrist. ‘Get some extra help in and bring Miriam back from college for a while. Think on.’
‘So be it then. The world’ll just have to get on without me. Mirren’s staying put.’
Where had the years gone since Ellie’s child arrived in rags at their doorstep? Now she was a strapping lass, full of plans to be a teacher. She’d not been a spot of bother in her in-between years, always up at the ruin at World’s End with Lorna and Hilda Thursby, camping out with the Girl Guides or at the Young Farmers’ dances with Jack and his gang, when she hadn’t got her head in a book.
She was good with sheep and bred some ewes and tups for showing. Now her world was going to be turned upside down by war and there was talk of single girls having to be sent to work like in the Great War. It wasn’t fair.
Adey hoped for peace in her old age, not another dose of worry and hard work, but another war…It was bad enough losing George, but now there was Ben and his brother, Bert, Jack and the girls to worry about. How could it have happened all over again? This Mr Hitler was too big for his boots and needed taking down a peg or six, shouting and screaming on the wireless.
There was talk of billeting strangers out in the country and with the spare rooms in their big house she’d be first in line to take them.
The last time she’d had lodgers for one night at the eclipse it was bad enough. The new live-in, Elsie Paget, was a hard worker but there was too much to do.
Adey didn’t want Mirren coming home just yet. She was a bit too stuck on Jack Sowerby, and Adey wasn’t sure what to make of that harum-scarum. He’d already joined up; give credit where credit was due. Florrie confided that she was worried about him.
They would have to take young Ben up on his offer to come and help out. She didn’t need the quack to tell her that she was always out of puff and that tired when she crawled into the four-poster bed of an evening her legs ached all night.
Perhaps these pills would do the trick for a while, but she didn’t want Joe worried. He’d fuss and make her go to bed. If war was coming she would do her bit whatever the consequences.
Two days later there was a letter from Mirren saying she was coming home at the end of term for the duration. ‘You’ll need me when the farm lads get called up. Teaching can wait, Gran.’
Adey wept to herself with relief at the news. Miriam was a good lass, like her mother at that age, the runaway daughter who’d never got a chance to prove them wrong.
How mysterious are the ways of Providence in giving us a second chance, she sighed.
Reuben Yewell whistled to himself as he set about filling the gap in the wall. There was no other life for him from now on. He had left Leeds without a backward glance. This was the life. He loved setting out his stones, hand and eye working together in the ancient art of knowing which stone to place where, finding the exact one or dressing another with a chisel to fit into the shape. It was like a giant jigsaw puzzle. They never went back the way they had fallen.
From the top field he got a grand view of the dale. Its greenness
never tired his eye. It was hard work for little more than his keep but he was where he wanted to be at long last.
Walling couldn’t be skimped if it was to last for centuries to come; his wall reshaped and strengthened, one upon two, two upon one in the old pattern, with big through stones placed evenly as the wall rose and narrowed off. A good wall could see them all out. If only other things in life could be so certain.
Uncle Tom trusted him with jobs, especially with sheep. He trusted him over Jack because he sensed that Yewell instinct in him. He might be a plodder but when he walked the fields he did it with care and a sharp eye. Tom had shown him how to spot a ewe in trouble, to listen to see if she’d lambed and was making the right noise, pointed out the signs of weakness and strength in a new-born lamb, how to skin a dead one and mother on an orphan.
Grandpa Joe pointed out how weather came in mostly from the west, how to spot rain clouds, haze and sun dogs, how the wind changing direction was important. There was so much to learn and now that war was coming, he knew he’d made the right choice in helping them out.
What would happen to Cragside if all the men left? Someone had to keep the nation fed and the land safe. Bert had gone into the RAF, Jack was in the army, but he knew his job was right here. Mirren was at college.
He was glad Jack was off. He always made him feel a bit of a clodhopper. Jack had never been keen on farming. He cut corners and had no feel for the animals. Mirren was more like him. She took time to do things properly. She was a nature girl, interested in flowers and birds and knew the Latin names of everything. He’d been hopeless at Latin.
He’d lived for the weekends and school holidays to come and help out at Cragside for years. Now he had a chance to pay them back.
He’d learned to fish down by the river and walked the paths with the river warden, knew the lie of the land and once took Jack out to poach a salmon from the river, which he’d then not had the nerve to sell on. Jack had whisked it down to the pub and pocketed the cash.
Jack bought a motor bike and offered to teach him to drive but he preferred slower things. He was a good horseman now.
‘Boring old Ben,’ Jack teased as they eyed up all the girls at the Young Farmers’ dance. Jack got the best partners in Windebank: the glamour girls with painted faces and long nails, who loved riding pillion on his bike.
Mirren’s girl friends, Lorna and Hilda and Aly, were grammar school girls and he was wary of them, a bookish, giggling gang and always whispering. It was best to keep out of their way.
He and Mirren were offcomers, townies on the surface, but both of them now were country through and through. His dad had smiled and told him to go and do his war service in the dale. ‘At least we’ll know one of you is safe,’ he quipped, making out it was an easy option. Ben almost went the opposite way with Bert for a while but the pull of the land was stronger than any other service. His ancestors might have been on the muster roll for Flodden in 1513 but he was going to stay put and put his back into the war effort. He was going to keep the nation fed.
7
In the weeks following the declaration of war, Mirren felt as if the whole of the dale was cranking itself up for a fight. Boys from the grammar school suddenly appeared in uniform, parading themselves proudly in blue, navy and khaki. Jack went into the Royal Engineers. Uncle Wesley’s Bert joined the RAF, and his brother, Ben, came to work with Uncle Tom. It was good to have him around and he lodged with Uncle Tom at Scar Head.
How Auntie Florrie sobbed when Jack left the farm. For all his wild gadding about he was good to her, fetching errands from town, teasing her rotten when she tried a new hairdo, playing tricks to get her flustered. Who could ignore Jack when he was so suntanned and bronzed from haytiming, making the most of his last few days on the farm helping Uncle Tom?
They’d spread picnics in the fields for everyone and held a hop in the barn as a farewell party for Lorna’s brother, Freddy, and Jack’s friends from Windebank. The fiddler kept them dancing over the stone flags until dawn.
Mirren felt so grown up in her checked dirndl skirt and voile blouse, and Jack had twirled her round and made a fuss of her.
Mirren wasn’t going to be left behind teaching, and volunteered for the Women’s Land Army. She was based at the unit down in Scarperton but got a dispensation to work at Cragside in the place of young Derek Sumner, the farm lad who’d disappeared one night to join the navy.
Grandpa Joe, in his fustian breeches and outdoor clogs, was eighty, still upright and fit enough, but his rheumatics got to his back in damp weather. Grandma Adey had shrunk to nothing but had a will of iron when it came to keeping the farmhouse stocked and sparkling. With Tom and Ben’s muscle they made a good team.
Suddenly farming was on a wartime footing with the War-Ag Ministry breathing down their necks, inspecting fields, ordering quotas, issuing demands for extra yields in all their food production.
The Yewells paced over their bottom fields with heavy hearts, knowing some of their best pastures must be ploughed over and sown for oats, barley, kale and root crops.
‘It’s a waste of time,’ said Joe, shaking his head in disgust. ‘This land isn’t meant to grow arable. They’ll not get owt off it, you’ll see. Who’s going to plough it over?’
‘I am,’ Mirren piped up. ‘We’re bringing over a tractor tomorrow, just the job; I’ve been practising on it for days. I’ll have those furrows as straight as tramlines.’ They all looked at her as if she was mad. Ploughing was man’s work but she’d show them!
The past weeks of training were taken up with lectures and demonstrations, visits from advisors round the farm giving out orders. The villagers were busy extending their allotments and hen coops, pig arks sprouted in back gardens. Florrie and Adey were sewing up blackout curtains, grumbling that no one could possibly see into their small windows until the ARP warden told them that torchlight could be seen from the air and they must cover every opening.
Granny cursed old Josiah Yewell for building such fancy front windows for show. Ben boarded them up with wooden shutters and the house felt dark and gloomy.
‘We’ll never hear any sirens or whistles up here,’ Florrie wittered every time she came to visit. ‘We’ll be taken in our beds!’
‘Happen the cellar or under the stairs will have to do the job for us. There’s always the big rock hole in the field to jump behind,’ teased Mirren.
‘And get ourselves shot trying to run across the grass?’ Florrie snapped. ‘You can’t go anywhere off the track. There’s tanks and shooting ranges on the moors. It’s not safe to wander too far out. They’ll be roasting our sheep if we don’t watch out.’
‘We’ll all be roasting our sheep if they get a broken leg,’ winked Uncle Tom, quoting the new regulations that did allow lame sheep to be slaughtered as food.
There was a big searchlight being built at the back of Windebank looking down over the valley, hoping to catch night raiders taking a short cut across Yorkshire.
The village seemed full of strangers; children evacuated from Leeds and Bradford billeted around the green, climbing trees and splashing in the beck. The Fleece was packed with soldiers off duty from the moor, according to Uncle Tom and Ben, squeezing locals from their benches by the fire.
Not that Mirren went anywhere near, being strictly teetotal. She’d never forgotten what drink had done to her father. It was like pissing away hard-earned brass to her, but it was supposed to warm chilled bones and some of the strangers weren’t used to the sharp damp air yet.
On the morning of their turn to use the Fordson tractor, she crawled up the narrow lanes, praying no cart would be coming in the opposite direction or that the gateposts weren’t too narrow. Some of the girls had had to demolish posts before they could get through to do their work. She felt like a queen on her chariot, smart in her fawn corduroy breeches, green jersey and turban, riding high overlooking the stone walls with her instructor, Reggie Pilling, who could plough blindfold, backwards, without a wobble.
With her chin stuck out, her eyes glued to the task ahead, she didn’t want lanky Ben smirking or Uncle Tom making silly faces. Tractors were rare treasures in this part of the dale and everyone would want a go when she was finished. Grandpa Joe waved her on, shaking his head. Ben was all for horses, not machines. Hercules and Hector were his finest Clydesdales. He would be hard to impress.
‘We’ll do Honey Mires first and then Stubbins and then Top Meadow,’ said Reggie, looking at his papers. ‘They’ll be sown down to oats.’
‘Will they grow this high up?’ Mirren asked, knowing how cold and wet it could get even in summer.
‘That’s what the War-Ag have decided. Only time’ll tell if it works. Doesn’t have to be top quality; it’s only for cattle feed. Oats have been the staple diet up here for centuries,’ he added, seeing the look of scorn on her face.
‘Yes, but this is sheep country, not arable.’
‘Don’t argue, lass. Ours is not to reason why,’ he laughed. ‘Just get on with it! You’ve got an audience.’
Mirren set off determined to keep a straight line, up and down without a hitch, turning the pasture brown side up, the meadow where clover and rattle, buttercups and rich grasses scented the air in June. All those wild flowers ploughed in. It was a good field for keeping bees. The loam was rich and moist, and weeds would sprout with the oats. It would be her job to weed and keep an eye on the crop until the stalks were ripened off.
Up and down she trundled, hoping everyone had got on with their own jobs by now, but just as she was turning round the bottom end a blackened-up face leaped up and screeched, ‘Geronimo!’
It was Jack, back on leave, up to his old tricks, giving her a surprise, scaring her witless, making her laugh and lose concentration. She wobbled and her line went to pieces.