by Pam Weaver
She tried to hold on to every second of those magical days, knowing that in the months and years to come it would be the one precious unsullied time when they lay in bed all morning, walked in the hills in the afternoon to see the famous daffodils, and then dining by the lake.
Jack was gentle with his lovemaking and took her slowly, waiting at first, but she could never quite catch him up. There was an art to this malarkey that neither of them had quite got the hang of yet, but it was wonderful to be lying in his arms so close. In that chilly hotel bedroom there was such a heat and energy when they came together, and for those few nights the war went away.
Mirren wished she could stop the clocks and that they wouldn’t have to separate at Carnforth station, but Jack was due to report to a base in Scotland for yet more hush-hush training. Who knew when they would meet again?
Once back at Cragside it was as if it was all some dream. The cows didn’t know she was married, or the sheep, which were soon due to lamb. By April she knew she mustn’t go near them for a while. Ben would have to see to them and she would concentrate on the dairy for a while. He was furious at her desertion and wanted to know why.
‘Can’t you guess? An expectant woman doesn’t risk being close to the lambs just in case…’ she replied, not able to look him in the face.
Auntie Florrie was ecstatic and got out her knitting needles. It was all round Windebank in hours that there’d be a Christmas baby at Cragside.
In the months that followed Mirren’s whole life was turned upside down. Jack sailed to somewhere hot and dry. Gran was looking tired.
Uncle Tom and Ben took over the farm, with Mirren and another farm hand trying to salvage the oats and barley that were flattened by storms. The stooks flopped over and wouldn’t ripen off. All that effort for a poor yield, just as Grandpa had said, and they all bemoaned the waste of prime pasture.
Suddenly she felt very alone. New life was growing inside her and she ought to be excited but Jack was so far away and his letters were few and far between. He took the news of their honeymoon baby with delight but insisted that there were to be no more family names; no Jacks or Miriams, Reubens or Toms.
‘No disrespect, Mirren, but it’s time for a change. Our baby will have a modern name, one all of its own.’
She knew the Yewells would be disappointed as there was a tradition in the family to name the first girl Miriam. The old carved box, handed down from Miriam to Miriam, was in her possession but Jack, being a stepson, wanted to start traditions all of his own.
These thoughts gave her hope that in years to come they could live out their lives up here with their children and watch them grow and prosper once this wretched war was over. Until that joyful day, she would light the home fires, pray for his safe return and do all she could to keep the farm prospering.
9
Ben caught Gran in the wash house struggling to turn the mangle and fighting for breath. ‘You shouldn’t be doing that, you’ve not been well. Mirren and Daisy can do it later…’
‘I’m not wasting a good dry breeze. Here, peg these out for me while I find one of them pills the quack gave me. Good money after bad, I reckon. They don’t seem to be doing me any good,’ she muttered.
‘Shall I get Grandpa?’ Ben was anxious. Her face was ashen.
‘He’s down the far end at Cowside.’
‘I’ll send for the doctor…’
‘You’ll do no such thing. I’ve had worse than this in the night. Just leave me be, son, and see to your chores,’ came the order, but the voice was weak.
‘No I won’t. You’ll just do as you’re told for once and get up those stairs to bed if I have to carry you myself. Rest is what you need.’ He towered over her with a steely look in his eye.
‘If you put me up there I’ll never get out of it,’ she whispered.
‘Nonsense, a good sleep and you’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll be getting that right enough, the long sleep…Now promise me you’ll see the farm right, and Mirren and the babby I’m relying on you to hold the fort until Jack comes back…if he comes back,’ she muttered as they inched their way slowly up the stairs.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve got a bad feeling about it…just a twinge now and then. It’s not going to be easy for them love birds. Promise me you’ll lend a hand. She’s so like her mam, falling for a roving bloke, it’s worried me.’
Ben flushed, sensing her meaning but not knowing how to respond. Why was Gran spilling all this out now?
‘I’ll do what I can but you’ll be fine, just you wait and see.’
‘No I won’t see, Ben, that’s the trouble, I’m fagged out. I’ve tried to keep going but the spirit’s willing and the flesh’s weak. It’s time I was taken home…’ she sighed and flopped onto the bed.
‘Don’t talk like that, Gran. Come on, let me get those shoes off. Then I’m calling Grandpa and the doc. He’s a right to know…’
The days all melded into one after that as they tiptoed round her bed, one by one, trying not to tire her. Dr Murray shook his head. ‘She’s a stubborn old mule but it’s beaten her this time and she knows it…I told her to rest up.’
Grandpa Joe sat patting her hand, not wanting to leave the room. Daisy brought up endless cups of weak tea that no one could drink. Tom, Ben, Florrie and the yard boys kept the farm going while Mirren walked down to Windebank to send a telegram for Ben’s parents to get on a train fast.
‘I can’t believe she’s going to leave us,’ sobbed Mirren. ‘She won’t see our baby. It’s not fair, and Jack far away.’ She flung herself into Ben’s arms unabashed and he smelled the farmyard in her hair, the earth on her dungarees, felt the bump she was carrying, and he held her gently for fear of spoiling the moment.
‘We’ll manage, all of us, and Florrie will help you. It’s Grandpa who’ll need minding. They’ve been wed for over fifty years. He looks so lost, just standing staring up at the hills. I’ve never seen him so yonderly.’
‘I can’t let her go, Ben, I’m not ready to let her go,’ Mirren wept.
‘We can’t stop her, love. She’s tired out and it’s her time. She wants to go to sleep and we must say goodbye as best we can and she knows you’ll take over her role. You’ll be champion. Remember what she used to say: the eye of the mistress is worth two of her hands. She’s taught you well and you’ll carry on just as she carried on when Joe’s mother died.’
‘How can I follow her?’ Mirren looked up and he so wanted to kiss away the tears and fought his demons to stay calm. She relaxed in his arms and he felt like choking with joy.
‘You will do right by Cragside–we both will. We’ll see it through and make her proud of us. The world’s a sadder place for Gran going but we’ll manage somehow,’ he said, and looked out of the window. The sky was darkening and soon it would rain. Time to be up and doing. Farms wait for no one.
Mirren sat holding Gran’s bony hand. How quickly she had shrunk into the bed, but she was peaceful, half awake and then fading. She lifted the birdlike claw with its tissuey skin and marvelled.
This was a hand that had laid fires at dawn, swept floors, scoured pots, a hand that turned the hind quarters of a lamb in the womb, planted crops, pickled onions, plucked goose feathers, wrung the neck of hens, rubbed saltpetre on beef until her skin was raw. This hand had soothed beasts and bairns alike, grasped the reins of a bolting horse, steered wheels through blizzards, whipped up the best of cream sponge cakes and the lightest Yorkshire puddings in the district, and now this hand was still. It had done its last job, gently plucking at the bedclothes, which Florrie said was a sign that the end was nigh.
How can I let you go? Who will care for me as you have done? She felt the baby turn and put her hands on her own belly. Please God I live to be a good mother myself.
In that second of her distraction, Grandpa cried, ‘She’s gone, she’s passed over to her eternal reward.’ They all bowed their heads and Daisy opened the window to let her soul fly fr
ee out onto the hills.
Mirren felt the chill of autumn whisk around the room. The women left Wes and Tom and their father alone. Gran’s day was done.
Ben watched his cousin get slower and slower, more cumbersome, her swollen belly marked out on her apron, rubbing against flour and coal. He watched her waiting for the postman, only to be disappointed when news didn’t come.
He saw her absentmindedly setting a place at the table for Gran, only to whip it away with tears in her eyes. They sat glued to the wireless with its one precious battery, waiting for weather and news. Sometimes she sat in the big parlour at the piano, fingering the same tune over and over again and then banging down the lid in frustration.
They had their first batch of evacuees, a private arrangement. The family came for safety into the country and the husband came at the weekend to visit them when he could. They were polite enough when he was around, but the mother spoiled them and they ran riot in the farm, teasing the dogs and leaving gates open, tormenting the chickens until Ben yelled at her to keep them in check. The mother had no discipline.
If this was what it would be like with a kid around the place…but no, Mirren would not let her baby grow up like this lot.
She was too busy being in love with the idea of being the farmer’s wife, a married lady and mother-to-be, lost in a world of her own that excluded him.
Perhaps it was time to spend longer out of her way at The Fleece, take out one of the Land Girls or even Lorna Dinsdale, anything to get away from her.
They were busy harvesting the last of the vegetables. Mirren and Daisy were pickling onions and crying tears into the bowl. Mirren’s legs were aching with standing and it was time for a break. Grandpa had brought in a sack of spuds from their veg plot. He had aged in the past months and got so thin.
‘I’ll just go and see to my sermon for Sunday,’ he shouted. ‘I’m preaching at Gunnerside Chapel Harvest Festival and they like a bit of hellfire there but they’ll get the usual “plough the fields and scatter the good seed”. I reckon it’s the carrot that shoves the donkey, not the stick–or happen both,’ he laughed. ‘Praise goes a long way further than punishment. I’m softening in my old age. I used to be all rant and now I prefer a gentler way. I’m learning sense in me old age.’
‘You go ahead and I’ll bring you your tea when it’s mashed. You look done in,’ said Mirren, ready to sit down herself.
‘My, it’s warm for the time of year. Yer gran loved the back end. I can’t believe she’s been taken,’ he said, wiping his brow.
‘I know, but she’s here in spirit, making sure I don’t overboil the jam, just behind my shoulder sometimes. I can hear her voice: “Now think on, Miriam, keep yer mind on t’job.” They both laughed and Mirren turned back to the cooking range.
Somehow the tea got stewed and it was nearly five o’clock when she took in his favourite slice of ginger wodge. He was sitting at his desk, looking out the window with a beam on his face. Mirren called his name and reached out so as not to startle him but his eyes were glazed and his hand was already cold.
How could they be sad that within months those two had found each other again? The whole dale turned out to pack the chapel and schoolroom to sing praise to Joseph Yewell.
‘They don’t make ’em like that any more,’ said the minister.
‘Behind a man like that was some hell of a woman,’ said another to Mirren with a wink. ‘Adey was a stickler but she had a heart of gold.’
‘I know,’ she said through her tears. To have known their love was the biggest gift of all, not the grand farmhouse or the beautiful scenery. It was love that mattered and she prayed that she and Jack would find that steady love when he came back to her and their little one. Her time couldn’t come soon enough now.
10
December 1941
‘I think you’re mad to be going out in that state,’ yelled Ben from the back door. He’d finished the milking for her now that she was too big to bend. Mirren was determined to get to the rehearsal down in the village. It was the last one before the concert on Saturday. She wanted to go out while she still had the freedom. Soon the kitchen would be full of nappy buckets and bibs, all the paraphernalia of a new baby in the house.
‘It won’t happen tonight,’ she yelled back. ‘The midwife’s called in and felt around.’ Mirren was in no mood to be cooped up like a pregnant sow or listen to another of Ben’s lectures.
How easily had she fallen with this baby, but the terrible thing was now she was getting nervous and wished Jack was close by. He was in North Africa and heaven knew when they’d be together again. Like so many couples separated by this war, it was time to keep busy and not fret. Jack wrote hoping for a son and kept nagging her to take care, convinced they were about to sire the next captain of Yorkshire County Cricket team. His letters were always a precious distraction. When they were delayed her blood pressure went sky high with worry.
All that mattered was that the baby was healthy. Boy or girl, it would be a reminder of Jack. It was taking her all her time now to do her chores, lumbering as best she could, like a beached whale, waiting for the waters to break. But not tonight, she hoped, because she needed a good sing.
Rehearsals for Messiah were the one chance to open her lungs and let all the emotion out, all the worry, the uncertainty. There was something in that music that swelled her ribs with pride, stirring her uneasy soul, giving her some peace from this turmoil of eternal worry about Jack. Worry stalked her night and day; always at the back of her mind was the terrible fear of how she’d cope if he didn’t come home. Tonight she was going out, baby or not. It could jolly well wait its turn.
There was a part of her that wished the lump would stay put and melt away somehow, but Tom and Florrie were that excited. She’d tried for a baby for years but to no avail. It was going to have the finest layette in the district.
Once he had got used to the idea even Ben fussed over her like a mother hen. It was quite touching, him treating her as if she were one of his pedigree ewes, one of his best breeding stock, which, she supposed, in a funny sort of way she was. The family were looking to her to continue the bloodline. The first of the few so far, she feared.
Poor Bert was going nowhere, and Ben was hopeless. She’d set him up with dates at the hostel, lovely girls interested in farming, perfect farmer’s wife material, but he took them out and then nothing. He could be so stubborn. It wasn’t fair to them to be mucked around. Then she recalled how his Uncle Tom was a late starter. Perhaps Ben was another slow burner and it ran in families.
There was no one in whom she could trust to confide her growing fear of giving birth. Everyone seemed to assume, being a farmer, she knew the score. She’d seen enough to know things could go wrong: calves got stuck in the womb and needed rope to be pulled out; lambs needed turning and her hands were too big sometimes to do the job. What if the bump didn’t budge?
Perhaps wartime was not the right time to bring a bairn into the world. No one knew the depths of her fear and not having a mother was a real burden to her. Auntie Florrie did her best to help her but she was worried about her son too.
I should have thought of all this when Jack and I were on our honeymoon, she mused to herself. The decision was out of her hands now.
If only it was not the Christmas season, when the post was full of letters and parcels and cards from friends. There was one letter and photo from Jack. How she had pored over every word, giving it pride of place on the mantelpiece. If only she could tell him how she was feeling, but by the time he’d get her news the baby would have arrived.
‘I hope you know what yer doing, going out on a night like this,’ said Ben, watching her putting on her coat that gaped in the middle over her bump. ‘It’s a cold night and happen there’s frost on the tarmac. I don’t want you driving on ice in the dark. I’ll give you a lift. If you must go, stay at Peggy’s in the village for the night. She’ll see you right, but why you want to go gadding in the middle of winter…W
hat’s wrong with your own fireside?’ he said, his blue, blue eyes piercing her own.
Why was he so hostile? What she did was none of his business. They used to be friends but now they snapped and snarled at each other and she didn’t know why. Sometimes she couldn’t look him straight in the face for fear he would see how angry and hurt she was by his attitude. It was all to do with Jack somehow. He was making it plain he didn’t rate him much as a husband and that got her all worked up.
‘There’ll be plenty of nights by the fire when winter sets in and I’ve a bairn at my breast so I’m letting myself run in the meadows while I can. It’s only one night,’ she snapped.
‘We’ll be that worried,’ Uncle Tom added, supping tea at the kitchen table, and she loved him for it. ‘Do as Ben says and stay overnight.’
‘Then I’ll take a pigeon in a basket and let it out with a message in the morning, if that’ll set yer mind at rest,’ she said, patting her bump. ‘This one’s in no hurry to come, I tell you. It’s a lazy lump and doesn’t kick much.’
There was no answering that one since they had no telephone and it was their usual way of communicating when someone left the dale. Pigeon post, they called it.
Messiah night was the one time she could be assured of a bit of female company, a bit of a crack along the line of altos as they waited for the others to arrive. Hilda Thursby, as she now was, and Lorna would both be there. It was a combined choir of all the village chapels in the district, much famed in the area for its rendition of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’.
Why was it that Messiah was never sung, it was always rendered, she mused, like plaster on walls? Every year, Handel’s oratorio made its appearance in the first weeks of December and somewhere throughout Yorkshire there must be a rendering of Messiah every night of the week. Most of the singers knew it off by heart for they went from chapel to chapel to help out.