Above the Harvest Moon

by Rita Bradshaw

  It was midday on a bitterly cold morning in the last week of October and as usual she had been up at six o’clock to prepare the men’s breakfast before beginning the baking for the day and tackling a huge basket of ironing.The afternoons she always tried to leave free for scrubbing and cleaning and polishing and already the farmhouse was beginning to look a different place. She had transformed the kitchen first, it being the place that had niggled at her the most, and now it was bright and gleaming. The lustrous black-leaded range, the sparkle on the dishes and pots and pans, the shining brass on the mantelpiece and the freshly laundered covers on the old armchairs and rocking chairs all contributed to the impression of loving care. The floor was spotless - or had been until Jake’s feet had trodden in clumps of mud - and the clippy mat had been shaken and beaten until its teeth had rattled. Every corner of the room was bright.

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ Hannah stood in front of the big broad figure of Jake like a small virago. ‘It doesn’t take long to rub your boots clean and if you can’t be bothered, your slippers are there, there,’ she emphasised, pointing to the men’s slippers at the side of the mat. ‘Just put them on, Jake. It’s simple, it’s so simple!’ She paused for breath and as she did so the temper which went with her chestnut hair and which neither Jake or Seamus had seen before began to subside. Aghast, she realised she had screeched at him like a fishwife and furthermore so forgot herself as to use his first name.

  Seamus, who had followed Jake into the house but had remained on the mat, was the first to speak. ‘By, lass,’ he said, ‘you remind me of my Bess. She used to go for me an’ our Terence like that and for much the same reason.’

  But Bess had been the farmer’s wife and she was just their housekeeper. Blushing furiously, Hannah brought her eyes from Seamus’s astonished face to that of the man in front of her who had said not a word. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said weakly.

  Jake glanced over at Seamus and he was grinning. ‘I told you she had a temper,’ he said mildly, before looking into Hannah’s red face. ‘Do I take it this has finally broken the ice and you can bring yourself to call me Jake? If so, it was worth a roasting.’

  ‘An’ while we’re on the subject, you can do away with the Farmer Shawe an’ all, lass,’ Seamus put in from the mat. ‘That’s all right for them out there but I can’t do with it in me own house. The name’s Seamus.’

  Hannah didn’t know what to say. She nodded at them both before saying again, ‘I’m sorry for flying off the handle.’

  ‘Nowt to be sorry for, lass,’ said Seamus as he took off his boots and put on his slippers, handing Jake his with a wide grin. ‘I like a lass with a bit of spirit meself. My Bess could curdle milk with a flash of her eyes when she was in a fratch with me. The thing is, me an’ Jake had got used to behaving like pigs in muck since Enid starting doing for us.’

  ‘I wouldn’t exactly say that.’ Jake’s voice reflected his distaste for the comparison and Hannah couldn’t help smiling.

  When she had dished up the meat roll and vegetables that was the lunchtime meal, she sat with Jake and Seamus at the kitchen table. This practice had begun once the harvest was over when Jake and the farmer had declared the kitchen was good enough for everyday meals and the dining room could be kept for Sundays. At first she had felt awkward and shy eating with the two men but this had soon passed, and the shared meal-times had gone a long way in helping her to get to know them both. They usually continued to sit in the kitchen once the evening meal was over these days too, smoking their pipes and chatting in their armchairs in front of the range while she busied herself with clearing away the dishes and washing up, and then preparing the breakfast for the next morning. Sometimes she sat with a pile of mending at the kitchen table or finished the day’s ironing, other times she would pore over Bess’s old recipe book she’d come across recently, one of the cats on her lap. She did think it was a shame the sitting room wasn’t used except for Sundays because it was beautiful, or it would be once she had a chance to get to it and clean and polish everything. She had seen to the kitchen and Seamus’s study now, and the next room was the dining room. Only then would she move upstairs.

  Jake and Seamus had been to a neighbouring farm that morning on business. Once they had finished their meal they disappeared to the study to look at some accounts and, being short of eggs for a fruit cake she wanted to bake before she began on the dining room, Hannah collected her basket and put on her coat and boots.

  At the hen crees she collected a dozen warm eggs from the boxes and while she was doing so, a cold, late-autumn sun began to shine through the ragged fringes of the thunderclouds. After all the rain and storms of the previous weeks, it was enchanting, and in spite of her desire to begin to tackle the dining room, which stood under layers of dust and grime, Hannah didn’t immediately return to the farmhouse. Instead she continued round the stables, past the pigsties and barns, and emerged on the path she had walked with Adam, Joe and Naomi some weeks previously. She walked to the same ridge they had stood on then and tarried for a while, surveying the delicate play of light and shadow on the fields and hedgerows in front of her. Every blade of grass and inch of ground at her feet was soaked with moisture but there was none of the thick cloying mud which had proved such a burden lately. The route the cattle took from the fields to the farmyard was below her.

  As she watched, a double rainbow slowly climbed the sky in the far distance, its colours vibrant against the steely grey. Would Adam come tomorrow afternoon? If not it would be the third Sunday in a row he hadn’t made the journey to the farm. The first week Naomi and Joe had said he was involved with strike business and last week Joe had been alone, both Naomi and Adam apparently laid low with bad colds. She believed Naomi was poorly but she wasn’t so sure about Adam. It hadn’t been so much what Joe had said but the look in his eyes when he said it. He wasn’t a good liar, Joe. She bit her lip, shutting her eyes tightly for a moment. Joe could come to the farm every week so why couldn’t Adam? And yet when he did come he swore he felt the same about her, that she was the only lass for him, so why was she worrying?

  ‘Bonny, eh?’

  She had been so lost in her thoughts she hadn’t heard or seen Jake’s approach on the path below, and now she jumped so violently she almost dropped the basket of eggs.

  ‘No, don’t come down,’ he said when she made to move. ‘Enjoy the sun for a minute or two, it’s going to pour again from the look of that sky.’ He climbed up the ridge to where she was, shading his eyes as he stared in the direction she was looking. ‘Rain, rain, rain,’ he said softly, without glancing at her. ‘It happens like that sometimes in October and the winter is worse. Do you think you’re going to be able to stand it?’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked at him in surprise, amazed he could ask.

  ‘Of course,’ he repeated in a way she didn’t quite understand. ‘You work from dawn to dusk, you have to fetch water from the well when you’ve been used to a tap in the yard, you have big galoots walking all over your clean floor with muddy boots—’

  ‘But then I can come up here and see the rain smiling from the hills when the sun’s shining,’ she interrupted solemnly. ‘It makes up for the big galoots.’

  ‘Really?’ He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and she grinned at him, whereupon they both laughed out loud.

  ‘Seriously, Jake, I can’t thank you enough for giving me a chance.’ It was something she had been meaning to say for a while but now seemed the right time. ‘And I like it here, I really do. The farmhouse is beautiful and I want to make it nice, and all the food for cooking . . . Well, anyone would like it. And I can’t believe I get paid too.’

  He smiled. ‘You should come into town with me the next time I take the horse and trap, treat yourself to something.’

  ‘Could I?’ she said eagerly. ‘I’d like to buy some material and make a couple of new dresses.’ Her clothes were so worn she had felt embarrassed when Farmer Dobson and his daughter had
called to see Jake and Seamus the other day.

  Jake’s eyes were intent on her face. ‘We’ll go next week. Tuesday or perhaps Wednesday. How about that?’

  She nodded, and then because the sky had become overcast again they made their way back to the house. Thunder rolled in the distance.

  Much later that day, when the evening meal was over and Hannah was sitting at the kitchen table mending the sleeve of one of the farmer’s shirts, Seamus got up from his armchair opposite Jake and left the room. When he returned he was carrying an armful of clothes which he dumped on the table in front of her. ‘There’s a few of my Bess’s things,’ he said gruffly. ‘She was a one for clothes, was my Bess, and she had an eye for a good bit of cloth. Likely you’ll have to be busy with your needle, she was a slip of a thing when we first wed but she’d have made two of you later on.’

  ‘But . . .’ Hannah glanced from Seamus - who had resumed his seat in front of the range - to Jake, and then back to the farmer. ‘But I can’t take these. They’re your wife’s. You . . .’ She couldn’t very well say, ‘You would be upset to see me in her things,’ so she altered it to, ‘You don’t have to do that.’

  ‘I know I don’t have to, lass.’ Seamus appeared very busy attending to his pipe and did not look at her. ‘But I’ve a feeling Bess wouldn’t like ’em to go on gathering dust and getting moth-eaten when you could have some use out of ’em. Hated waste, my Bess did. There’s a canny little sewing machine she used to use somewhere in the loft, I’ll look it out tomorrow and you can have that an’ all.’

  Hannah stared into the rough old face and then looked at Jake who was smiling. She glanced down at her faded blouse and skirt which had had the hem let down twice, and then fingered the rich thick material of the dress on top of the pile. They were so kind, the pair of them. They were like the father and brother she had never had. Her lips trembling, she voiced this, and it was Jake who said, ‘Then as your big brother I command you not to get upset, all right? That’s an end to the matter. Right, Seamus?’

  ‘Right enough.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Knowing how much the farmer hated any show of emotion, Hannah gathered up the clothes and disappeared to her room, and when she returned a few minutes later no one commented on her pink-rimmed eyes or red nose.

  That night Hannah did not extinguish her oil lamp once she had retired to her bedroom. She stood gazing round the interior for some moments, her eyes taking in the comfortable bed, chest of drawers, small dressing table and wardrobe the room contained, and - luxury of luxuries - the glowing fire in the grate. Jake and Seamus scorned a fire in their rooms on the floor above, but as soon as the weather had turned chilly they had insisted wood and coal be brought upstairs for her every day. She was glad of it, the bedrooms were very draughty and when the wind was in a certain direction the curtains at the window in her room blew as though it was open a crack.

  Pulling a blanket from the bed round her shoulders, she positioned herself on the clippy mat in front of the fire and took up the dress she had decided to alter that night with her sewing box. She couldn’t wait for Seamus to find the sewing machine, she wanted to be wearing something new and bonny when Adam came the next day. She knew she would be up most of the night; every seam needed unpicking and re-sewing once she had trimmed the material with her scissors. Seamus hadn’t been exaggerating when he had said Bess had been twice her size. But the material was beautiful. She stroked it reverently.Thick and smooth and the colour of corn-flowers. She would never have been able to afford cloth of this quality but now she could use her money for a pair of shoes. She would continue to wear her ugly old boots for weekdays but oh, to be able to have a pair of pretty shoes for Sundays and high days. She hugged herself, grinning like a Cheshire cat, and then began work on the dress.

  It was an hour before dawn when she finished and she didn’t bother to go to sleep. She was too excited anyway.

  After Sunday lunch Hannah left the two men at the table enjoying their glass of port and nipped upstairs to change into her new dress. When she walked back into the dining room, their reaction was all she could have desired. The amazement on both faces turned to smiles and Seamus said, ‘Well, I don’t know how you’ve done it so quickly, lass, but that dress fits you like a glove. By, you’re a bonny one and no mistake.What say you, Jake?’

  Jake looked at the girl who up until a moment ago he had thought of as little more than a child. The dress showed the slim young figure off to perfection and above it the face, with its cream-tinted skin and enormous eyes shaded by long dark lashes, was more than bonny. She was a beauty, a real beauty, and she was still only sixteen. What was she going to be like when she was eighteen, nineteen? For some unknown reason he felt a constriction gripping his throat. It was a second or two before he realised it was the painful emotion which always welled up in him when confronted by pure unspoilt beauty. Swallowing hard, he managed to say, ‘You look lovely, Hannah.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Her youth was brought to the fore in the next moment when she twizzled round in the manner of a very young child, saying, ‘See how it flares out? It’s so beautiful, Seamus. I can never thank you enough.’

  ‘Aw, go on with you. It was Jake who put the idea in my head if you must know.’

  ‘I thought it might be.’

  Her sparkling eyes thanked him and he said, ‘Even the weather seems to have conspired to fall in with you. The sky is as blue as your dress.’

  ‘I know.’ She had hugged the knowledge to herself all morning. After the fierce storms, this Sunday was the sort of nutty autumn day when it was good to walk in the tawny sunlight. He would come. She was sure he would come and then he would see her in the new dress and . . . Well, he would see her in the new dress. That was enough. She glanced down at her hands which were chapped and red and wished for a moment they were soft and white like a lady’s. But that was daft. He wouldn’t expect that.

  Joe had arrived early the week before because the days were short now, but by three o’clock there was still no sign of anyone. Hannah had prepared a sack of food as usual - Jake left it up to her what she gave. She checked the bag of potatoes, stone of flour, tea, sugar, cheese and whole ham as though something would have changed from the last time she looked through the sack half an hour before.

  They had to come. Apart from anything else, it was only the food Jake gave that was standing between the family and starvation now. She glanced at the basket next to the sack which contained a dozen eggs and a big slab of butter. Naomi’s mam would need this. She walked to the kitchen window and peered out, and saw Jake and Joe walking towards the house.

  Adam hadn’t come. For a moment the disappointment was so acute she wanted to burst into tears. Then she pulled herself together. Naomi wasn’t with them either. Was she still ill? Was Adam ill?

  She hurried to the door and was standing in the open doorway when Jake and Joe reached the house. ‘You look bonny the day, Hannah.’ Joe’s voice was cheerful but his face was strained and Jake wasn’t smiling.

  Sensing something was seriously amiss, she waited until they had both scraped their boots clean before quietly saying, ‘I’ll make some tea and help yourself to some seed cake, Joe.’

  ‘Ta, thanks, Hannah.’ Instead of sitting down and taking a wedge from the plate on the kitchen table, Joe raised his eyes and looked straight at her as he said, ‘Adam’s not coming, lass. Neither’s Naomi, but she’s still bad. The cold’s gone on her chest . . .’ His voice dwindled away and he glanced helplessly at Jake.

  ‘Adam’s in a spot of bother.’ Jake had been standing by the range and now he took the teapot out of her hand before she could fill it with water and put it on the steel shelf next to the hob. He led her to the table and pushed her down on a chair. ‘It seems he has been accused of something which he is denying.’

  ‘It’s a lass, Lily Hopkins. She says she’s expecting a bairn and it’s Adam’s,’ Joe said in a rush. ‘Mam an’ Da have gone round hers with Adam this
afternoon.There’s been ructions . . .’

  Hannah stared into Joe’s troubled face. She had heard him, the words had registered, but strangely she was feeling numb. ‘Is the bairn Adam’s?’

  ‘He says not. He says she’s not too particular who she goes with and it could be any one of a number of blokes.’

  ‘What do you say, Joe? Has . . . has he been seeing this girl?’

  Joe’s hesitation was all the answer she needed. Hannah rose swiftly from her seat and left the kitchen. When Joe stood up and opened his mouth to call her, Jake said quietly, ‘Leave her a while, Joe. She’ll come back when she’s ready.’