Above the Harvest Moon

by Rita Bradshaw

  She brought her gaze away from the cats as Jake and Seamus walked into the kitchen with more dirty dishes. It was Seamus who said, ‘Don’t do these now, lass. There’ll be time in the morning for getting straight. An’ you’ve done all right this week, all in all.’

  She knew him well enough by now to know this was high praise indeed, and her voice reflected this when she said, ‘Thank you, Farmer Shawe,’ her eyes shining.

  ‘Aye, well, I’m off abed, I’m a mite tired the night.’ Seamus clapped Jake on the back. ‘You coming up, lad?’

  ‘In a while. I want to make sure Isaac gets home first.’

  ‘Aye, he was packing it away the night. Mortalious by now and the drink always makes him crabby.’

  The two men went their different ways and when she was alone again Hannah carried everything through to the deep stone sink in the scullery where she put the dirty dishes to soak for morning. When that was done, she tidied the kitchen and prepared the porridge for morning, leaving the oats in a big pan soaking up the creamy milk. She preferred the way porridge was done here, she thought. Her uncle, having been born into a mining family, had his porridge made with water and stiff with salt, and until she had come to the farm she had assumed everyone had it that way. Few mining families had money for several pints of milk for their breakfast.

  Her thoughts brought Adam to mind.Would he come to the farm with Naomi tomorrow afternoon? Her heart began to thud. Did he still look on her as his lass? Or had their silly quarrel spoilt everything? The only thing wrong with the farm was that she was so far away from Adam and couldn’t even catch a glimpse of him passing by, as she had done when working in her uncle’s shop. But if he didn’t want anything more to do with her, perhaps that was the best thing.

  No, no it wasn’t. She bit hard on her lower lip. She wouldn’t be able to bear not seeing him.

  Jake reappeared, his arms full of logs for the range, which he stacked at the side of it. ‘Isaac’s going to need a few raw eggs in the morning,’ he remarked.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  He straightened. ‘Raw eggs. You know raw eggs straight from the shell and beaten in a drop of milk are the best thing out for a headache after having a load?’

  It sounded horrible. Hannah couldn’t repress a shudder. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Aye, well, likely you’ve never needed it.’

  He smiled and she smiled back, and it said a lot for how relaxed she had become around him that she could say, with a twinkle in her eye, ‘Have you?’

  He threw back his head and gave one of his rare laughs. ‘Now and again,’ he admitted.

  She couldn’t imagine him drunk. In fact she couldn’t imagine him being anything but always in complete control. He was easily the most self-contained, assured individual she had come across. His scars didn’t seem to bother him at all, he seemed unaware of them. Except . . . Her thoughts came to a hiccup. It wasn’t often he sat or stood with the damaged side of his face to the fore. A little flustered now, she said, ‘Can I get you a hot drink before you go to bed?’

  ‘No, that’s all right, Hannah. You go up. There’s a couple of things I’ve got to do before I turn in.’

  She nodded and returned to the scullery. She opened the adjoining door leading into the dairy to check that the pan of milk left for morning had been covered. This produced a thin layer of rich cream and Farmer Shawe liked it on top of his porridge. Enid and her three daughters worked in the dairy, churning, skimming and cheese-making, and the golden butter, rich cream, cheese and other produce was used on the farm and sold at market, although little had been done this week due to the harvest. It was fortunate, Hannah reflected, that there was an outside door into the dairy as well, so that Enid and her daughters didn’t have to come through the house all the time. She had seen the woman’s face when she was dancing with Daniel and if looks could kill, she’d be six foot under. It was better they didn’t see too much of each other.

  The pan was on its cold slab, along with a pat of butter and a round cheese covered with a white linen cloth, and by the flickering light of the oil lamp she was carrying, Hannah saw everything was spick and span. She closed the door behind her and silently retraced her footsteps. As she stepped up into the kitchen, she saw Jake sitting in one of the armchairs which he had pulled round to face the fire, his big frame leaning forward on his forearms which rested on his knees. He was staring into the red glow, the two cats curled up at his feet. She couldn’t see the expression on his face, he had his back towards her, but the posture was one of brooding aloneness.

  He didn’t notice her as she slipped out of the kitchen. She paused for a moment in the hall and then walked slowly up the stairs to her room, the oil lamp casting grotesque shadows on the walls. As she sat down on her bed she felt a wave of deep sadness engulf her, but for the life of her she could not have explained why.

  Chapter 12

  ‘So you’re going to the farm then?’

  ‘Aye, I told you. Joe’s coming along an’ all.’

  Rose stared at Adam. She wasn’t concerned whether Joe was going to Clover Farm to see Hannah, and Adam knew the reason why. Clearing her throat, she said quietly, ‘Mrs Fraser said she saw you and Lily talking in the recreation ground at the back of Park Terrace, Southwick way, the other night when she was taking some washing back to one of her customers.’

  Adam shrugged. ‘Not a crime, is it?’

  They were standing in the bedroom the two older brothers shared, Rose having followed Adam upstairs a minute before so she could speak to him alone, and now she glanced over her shoulder before saying even more quietly, ‘You haven’t taken up with Lily Hopkins again then?’

  ‘Course I haven’t, what do you take me for? You know what she’s like, forever trailing after me. I can’t help but run into her the way she is. Sometimes I think she watches the house to see when I come and go.’

  Rose said nothing to this. She knew what Lily was like but the recreation ground was a well-known meeting place for courting couples and it wasn’t too far to open fields and the old sand pit from there. Oh, what was she thinking? Did she have a mucky mind or was it instinct that was telling her Adam had been up to something with Lily? The girl had a reputation for being no better than she should be and she’d been after Adam for years before he took up with her the last time. If he was seeing her again behind Hannah’s back . . . ‘If you go to the farm this week, Hannah will expect you to go again.You know that?’

  Adam met his mother’s eyes. ‘Aye, I know that and for crying out loud stop worrying about her, Mam. Sometimes I think you think more of Hannah than the rest of us put together. She’s sixteen years old, she’s no bairn, and now she’s working away we’ll have to see how things go. She might meet a big strapping farm-hand and give me the elbow. Ever considered that?’

  No, and neither had he seriously. Her son was well aware of the effect he had on women and on Hannah in particular. It would do him the world of good if a lassie didn’t want to look the side he was on but she couldn’t see it happening.

  ‘Look, I’m going to the farm with Joe and Naomi, leave it at that, Mam. Tomorrow there’s a march over the bridge and likely the law will be there again coming the big fellows and arresting a few of us.Worry about that if you want to worry about anything. The last time I ended up with a bruise on my back the size of a cricket bat from their batons and Joe’s broken fingers are only just beginning to let him sleep at night, and all we’d done was walk the public roads an’ peacefully. The owners are bringing in blacklegs to work the pit from miles around and we’re expected to stand by and raise our caps to ’em. There’ll be murder done one day, you mark my words. Everyone’s had enough.’

  Rose stared at the angry face of her son. He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t know. Tempers were getting worse all round and people were so hungry and frustrated they had either become apathetic or so full of rage the slightest thing would spark them off. The Miners’ Hall had been giving out second-hand clot
hing from the beginning of the lockout but Wilbur had forbidden her to ask for anything or take anything that was offered. Which was all very well but the twins were running around in bare feet now because they’d long since grown out of their shoes and winter was round the corner. She stared at Adam a moment more and then turned silently away. She walked down the stairs into the kitchen where Naomi and Joe were sitting. Wilbur had taken the four youngest lads blackberrying in the fields at the back of Fulwell but she doubted they’d find much. The hedgerows were picked clean these days. She hoped Jake would send something back with Naomi and the lads when they went to the farm today, although how Adam would feel about accepting something first-hand she didn’t know.

  ‘Is Adam coming, Mam?’

  Rose nodded at her daughter but she spoke to Joe when she said, ‘How’s your hand the day?’

  ‘All right.’

  Of the lot of them she was the most worried about Joe. He had never been as strong as his father or Adam, and the cough that had been with him since the winter before and which he had never shaken off was worse these days. ‘Why don’t you have a kip this afternoon?’ she said quietly. ‘It’s over three miles to Jake’s farm.’

  ‘It’s not Jake’s farm.’ Adam had appeared in the doorway to the kitchen as she’d spoken and his voice was sharp. ‘He works there, that’s all, like any of the other labourers.’

  ‘I’ll be all right, Mam.’ Joe spoke quickly into the tense pause. ‘We’d best get going, the nights are dropping in and it’ll be better to come home in the light.’

  ‘’Bye, Mam.’ Naomi was fairly hopping from one foot to the other in her impatience to see her friend again.

  ‘’Bye, hinny.’ Rose watched the three of them leave, Joe’s cough echoing in the backyard as they walked out into the back lane. Adam hadn’t met her eyes when he had come downstairs and the niggling feeling he was seeing Lily Hopkins on the sly was stronger.

  She would have loved to go with them to the farm. Rose plumped down on a hard-backed chair, resting her elbows on the kitchen table. Jake had asked her many times to visit him there but she never had although she knew how much he would like her to. She rubbed her brow wearily. But how could she go, knowing how much such an outing would upset Wilbur? Not that they had ever discussed it of course, but she knew how it would affect him if she went.

  The animosity that had grown between her husband and Silas’s son the older Jake had become was as fierce as ever. For her part, she had accepted Larry and Hilda as her own bairns from the beginning, but Wilbur had never tried to break through the reserve which Jake used as a defence mechanism. And that was all it was. Why couldn’t Wilbur see that? Instead he had become surly and uncommunicative with Jake after the first few years, and had acted as though it was a personal insult when her son had announced he had no intention of working down the pit. Worse, he’d bred in Adam the same antagonism until now there was something bordering on hatred between the two half-brothers. It was all Wilbur’s doing.

  And yet no, that wasn’t fair. She stood up and walked over to the window where she looked out into the backyard.The heat shimmered on the stone slabs.There was no bad blood between Joe and Jake so why between Adam and her firstborn?

  She caught sight of her reflection in the window pane and maybe because it was unexpected, she surveyed the face staring back at her as though it was someone else’s. The hair was almost completely grey now but thick and strong, she always had trouble securing every last strand into the bun at the back of her head in the mornings. It was the only thing in the reflection that bore any evidence of vitality and life. She looked older than her mother had when she had passed on and her mam had been all of sixty-six, a good twenty years older than she was now. She touched the lines that ran in furrows across her forehead and bit deep from her nose to the corners of her mouth, wondering how long she had looked like this. She looked old. She felt old.

  Rose straightened her shoulders and turned away from the window. It was no use standing here thinking, that wouldn’t help anything or anyone. And whatever Wilbur was, he wasn’t like Silas had been and that was something to be thankful for. She had long since stopped praying to the Holy Mother for forgiveness for the joy she had felt when they had found Silas’s body. She’d done her penance and she only had to look at her lad’s face to know there was no power on earth or above it that could make her feel differently. It was fear of what Silas might do to her or Jake that had made her tell the doctors that Jake’s burns had been an accident, that he’d pulled the lamp on himself. And then when they had found Silas’s body she’d kept to her story but for her son’s sake. What bairn wants to grow up knowing his own father had done such a thing?

  She walked over to the range and put the kettle on before taking out a basket of mending and sitting herself down again. Maybe Wilbur and the lads would bring back a nice pound or two of blackberries. Maybe Jake would send a sack of vegetables and a piece of meat or two.And maybe, just maybe the lockout would end soon. Although if it did, would Joe survive working underground again? He had never been as strong as Adam and now with this cough having taken a hold . . .

  Rose sighed. In the long stretches of the night when she couldn’t sleep, tired as she was, she would lie at the side of Wilbur and imagine all sorts of things. It might be daft - she prayed daily to the Holy Mother it was just her being silly - but right from when Joe was a baby she’d felt he wouldn’t make old bones. He’d caught every childhood ailment going and the measles had weakened his chest when he’d been four years old so badly they’d thought for a time they would lose him then. But he’d pulled round.

  She closed her eyes, the basket of mending in her lap and her hands limp as she prayed, ‘Let him find something else, don’t let him go underground again. It’ll be the death of him, I know it. But I can’t ask Jake to take him on. Wilbur would know and he’d never forgive me and Adam would go fair mad. But somehow make a way where there is no way.’

  The kettle was boiling and she rose, tipping a little hot water onto the mound of tea leaves in the teapot which had been left from earlier. These days she tried to make them do for three or more brews before they went onto the fire, even though the resulting liquid was as weak as dishwater.

  Once seated again she began on the mending, her hands busy but her thoughts miles away as in her mind’s eye she walked the route to Clover Farm with her children.

  ‘By, Adam, it’s no two-farthing place, this. I hadn’t realised it was so big. Had you?’

  Adam didn’t answer his brother for a moment. He and Joe and Naomi were standing at the end of the lane just past the labourers’ cottages, looking towards the farmhouse.They’d had a merry walk from the town, laughing and joking with each other, but of one accord the three had become silent since entering the lane leading to the farm. Adam’s voice flat, he said, ‘It’s not that big.’

  Naomi opened her mouth to contradict him but fortunately she was forestalled by a tall young man who emerged round the corner of a barn on the opposite track to the farmhouse and called, ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘We’ve come to see Hannah Casey.’ Adam eyed the man up and down as he approached.‘She’s expecting us.’

  ‘Oh aye, you’re Jake’s family, aren’t you?’ The young man was smiling but Adam’s face remained straight.

  It was Joe who said, and quickly, ‘Aye, that’s right.This is my brother, Adam, and my sister, Naomi. I’m Joe.’

  ‘Daniel Osborne.’ Daniel’s eyes lingered on Adam for a moment and then he said, ‘It was the harvest supper yesterday so things are a bit quiet, even for a Sunday. A few aching heads, you know? Come with me and I’ll take you to the house and—’

  He was interrupted by Hannah running from the direction of the farmhouse, her face aglow as she shouted, ‘I saw you from the sitting-room window. I’ve been waiting for ages. Come on, come and have a cup of tea and then I’ll show you round.’

  Adam and Joe remained standing where they were but Naomi sprang forward to
greet Hannah. The two girls hugged and laughed and in so doing passed over what could have been an awkward moment. As Daniel said goodbye, the four of them made their way towards the farmhouse, but it wasn’t until they reached the kitchen door that Adam caught hold of Hannah’s hand. ‘I’m sorry about everything that’s happened,’ he said in a low voice.

  Hannah wasn’t sure if he meant their quarrel or how her uncle had behaved or all of it, but now he was here it didn’t matter. By way of answer, she said, ‘I’m glad you’ve come.’ They smiled at each other before she led the way into the farmhouse kitchen.