Christmas at Emmerdale

by Pamela Bell

  Tucking a hunk of fruitcake and a jar of Dot’s blackberry jam into her pocket, Maggie set off up the overgrown track, missing Toby as always. It wasn’t the same without his bristly body bustling ahead or his pink tongue lolling as he galloped back towards her, dark eyes black and bright with pleasure.

  Little more than a single room, Elijah’s cottage was dark and pungent-smelling and a peat fire was burning. His seamed face showed no surprise when Maggie turned up at his door. He took the cake and the jam with a nod of gratitude and invited her to sit on the settle as courteously as if it were the drawing room at Miffield Hall.

  He spat into the fire when he heard about Joe’s decision to join up. ‘That lad were never a farmer,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t have t’backbone for it. He were always a disappointment to his pa. Mind, Orton Sugden were a hard man,’ he allowed. ‘Joe were allus running after summat he thought he wanted, then throwing it away as soon as he got it.’

  Like he had done with her, thought Maggie.

  ‘Orton hoped leaving t’farm would be the making of him,’ Elijah went on. ‘He reckoned Joe would never amount to anything as long as he was around, so off he upped and went to Australia.’ He spat again. ‘Might as well have stayed here for all the good he did. Joe Sugden weren’t never going to be t’man his father were.’

  Elijah looked doubtful when Maggie told him that she was planning to run the farm herself in Joe’s absence. ‘It’s a lot for a lass to take on.’

  ‘I just need to know where to start with the sheep.’

  ‘You can’t do owt wi’ sheep without dog,’ he told her. ‘A proper dog,’ he added, obviously remembering that Toby used to accompany Maggie everywhere. ‘Not a house dog like that one you take around with you.’

  ‘I don’t have Toby any more,’ said Maggie evenly. ‘Joe killed him.’

  Elijah regarded her for a moment before spitting into the fire once more. ‘Joe’s a bad ’un,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘What about Joe’s dog?’ asked Maggie, thinking of the collie Joe had never even bothered to name. He kept it in a bare kennel in the barn and fed it occasionally with scraps of meat. On the few occasions Maggie had seen it, it had cowered away.

  ‘Aye, she might do. She’ll take some coaxing,’ Elijah warned. ‘Joe, he never knew how to treat a dog. A good dog will look to you, so if you’re in bad temper, you’d best take it back to its kennel. And he were always in a bad temper.’

  It was almost an hour later that Maggie made her way thoughtfully back to the farmhouse. Elijah had given her a lot to think about. But she had been encouraged to learn that the sheep would be fine on their heaf, the familiar patch of moor they rarely wandered from, so she could leave them up there while she trained the dog.

  ‘You need to treat it right,’ he had told her. ‘Not too soft, mind. It needs to know who’s boss.’

  Ignoring Dot’s protests, Maggie cut off some slices of roast beef and went out to the barn. Hens pecked around the door and as she pulled it open, one of the wild farm cats streaked past her. Inside, the barn smelt of straw and dung and old wood. A bare pen had been constructed in one corner, and when she unfastened the door, she saw the dog press back into the corner.

  Her throat closed at the fear in its expression. It’s all right,’ she soothed, putting down a slice of the meat where the dog could see it. ‘It’s all right, he’s gone. You’re my dog now.’

  She called the dog Fly. It took her much patient coaxing with scraps of meat, but eventually Fly would crawl out of her kennel on her belly when Maggie opened the door and take the food from her hand. Very gently, Maggie lifted a hand to stroke the soft ears, her heart cracking when the dog immediately shrank back.

  ‘You’re a good lass, I can tell,’ she told Fly. ‘Joe didn’t deserve you.’

  ‘Do you think I’ll be able to work her?’ she asked Elijah, when she walked Fly up the track to see him.

  Elijah studied the dog who waited warily at Maggie’s side. A black and white border collie, she had the nervous air of a dog who might break and run at any moment. ‘Think you can get an understanding between you?’ he asked.

  Maggie crouched down and stroked Fly’s head, pleased to see that this time she didn’t flinch. ‘I think so.’

  ‘You make sure you’re boss and you’ll do all right,’ said Elijah. ‘She’ll want to please you and it’s bred in her to work. Wasn’t her fault young Joe never had the patience to train her up.’

  Under Elijah’s direction, Maggie taught Fly to lie down on command, and when that was mastered, to go left when she shouted, ‘way here,’ and right if called, ‘come by’. They trained every day, and it warmed her heart to see how Fly’s eyes brightened and how her coat was gradually losing its dullness. The dog loved to work and was in her element running up a hillside. She spent the day at Maggie’s side. Whatever Maggie was doing, there was Fly. Maggie wanted to take her into the farmhouse at night, but Elijah told her firmly that she should leave her in the kennel.

  ‘She’s a working dog, not a pet,’ he said. ‘Don’t spoil her. She’ll be happy where she is.’

  Maggie took his advice but when no one was looking, she snuck an old blanket for Fly to lie on in her kennel. ‘Don’t tell Elijah,’ she told the dog.

  ‘I reckon you can try her with some sheep now,’ Elijah decided one day. He had been leaning on the wall while Maggie and Fly demonstrated what they could do.

  ‘Really?’ Maggie flushed with pleasure.

  ‘And you’ll need this.’ Elijah held out his crook.

  She took it, feeling the warmth of the wood worn smooth by years of use.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t …’

  ‘It’s no use to me now,’ he said gruffly. ‘You’ve got the dog, but you can’t deal with sheep without a crook, too.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Absurdly moved, Maggie held it between her hands and thought about how many times Elijah had climbed the fells with the crook in his hand. ‘Thank you.’

  There were encouraging moments over that autumn, but there were times when she had to admit defeat, too. Frank was happy to milk the dairy cows, but Maggie had swallowed her pride and sold the rest of the cattle to Ava Bainbridge’s father, Tom Skilbeck, a flinty-eyed farmer who made no secret of his distaste at dealing with a woman, but who nonetheless drove a hard bargain.

  ‘I’ll take them fields off yer hands too,’ he suggested once he had beaten her down on price. They were standing in the field with the grazing cattle and he jerked his head in the direction of the half-ploughed fields with their tumbledown walls and raggedy edges adjoining his land.

  ‘They’re part of our tenancy.’

  ‘Nowt to stop you sub-letting.’ He cocked a grizzled brow at her. ‘You’d be wise to let me have the ploughing of them. We all know Joe’s left you with nowt but that lackwit Frank Pickles. You won’t manage.’

  Maggie drew a breath and folded her hands tightly together. She knew what he was thinking: there was no way a woman would be able to run a farm by herself, let alone one as hoity-toity as Maggie Oldroyd. She could practically hear him telling the other farmers in the pub that she didn’t know the arse end of a sheep from another. She would come crawling back, she was sure Tom was calculating.

  They would see about that.

  ‘I don’t want to sub-let,’ she said.

  ‘On yer own head be it,’ he said sourly.

  Maggie was sad to see the cattle being driven off by Tom Skilbeck’s man, but she knew she had done the right thing. She was left with five milking cows, a small herd of a hundred or so sheep and yearling lambs, the hens, and Blossom the carthorse. Two of the fields had been requisitioned for the training camp, but that left her with two to grow oats, three hay meadows and the hillside pasture where, as Elijah had told her, the sheep rarely wandered far from their heaf.

  Frank milked the cows twice a day and loaded the churns onto the trap to take them to the bottom of the lane. They were collected there and eventually made their way by train to Br
adford. Maggie had no time now to make butter or cheese. Dot maintained she had enough else to do with the cooking, cleaning and laundry, which Maggie supposed was fair enough. She spent her days feeding the animals, cleaning out the barn and stables, and then walking her boundaries with Fly. Together they counted the flock, kept an eye out for any sheep in trouble and note any repairs that were needed. The list grew dismayingly long: tumbledown walls, broken gates, crumbling troughs.

  She soon abandoned her skirts which dragged in the grass and got snared in brambles, and adapted a pair of Joe’s trousers to wear, tightly belted at the waist. Dot’s mouth tightened with disapproval when she saw them for the first time, and Maggie was sure the news that she was wearing scandalous trousers would be around Beckindale in no time. She didn’t care. The trousers were comfortable and practical and that was all she cared about.

  As it grew colder, she started carrying hay up to the sheep on their heaf high in the hills. The first time, she had to almost crawl under the weight of it, but she soon grew stronger.

  I wish you could see me, she wrote to Ralph. I must look like an old crone from a fairy tale, bent almost double under my load of hay, as I climb the hill with Fly trotting beside me. When I reach the top and drop the hay, the sheep converge as if by magic from all the ghylls and walls where they’ve been hiding, and Fly and I get out of the way sharpish or we’d be trampled underfoot. You don’t want to get between a flock of sheep and its feed!

  It is so beautiful up there, Ralph. So quiet and cold. On frosty mornings the ground glitters and sometimes the light is so bright and clear that I feel as if I could reach out and touch High Moor across the dale. And then I think of you at the front, slipping and sliding through the mud, with shells exploding around you and gunfire and screams, and it is hard to believe we exist in the same world. Please stay safe, my dear and only love. I am waiting only for you to come home.

  Sometimes Maggie felt as if she were living two separate lives. The Maggie who yearned for Ralph at night seemed to have little to do with the Maggie who spent her days tramping over the fields or pitchforking straw and manure out of the stable.

  Rose Haywood had been as good as her word and forwarded the letters between Maggie and Ralph. Every Sunday Maggie walked down to the village with Frank. She sent him to see his mother while she went to church and waited for an opportunity to slip Rose a letter for Ralph and with any luck receive one in return. Sometimes there were none, but at others she would receive two or three at once.

  She hoarded those letters and read them again and again on the long, lonely evenings as if to remind herself of who she really was, to remind herself of him: of the warmth of his skin, of the way the edge of his eyes creased when he smiled, of the thud of her own heart whenever he was near.

  As the weeks wore on there was less mention of the war being over by Christmas, but in her head Maggie had that fixed as the date when everything would change. She refused to think beyond it, to what would happen to Frank and the farm and the animals when she left with Ralph.

  She thought only of Ralph and of being together at last.

  Christmas, she reminded herself whenever her courage flagged or whenever she was so tired she could hardly crawl up the stairs to bed. All she had to do was to hold on until then.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rose could never walk up to Miffield Hall without thinking of Ralph. As she and her mother turned into the long avenue, she couldn’t help remembering how hopefully she had almost run up to the Hall when she heard that Ralph had returned in July, fizzing with excitement at the prospect of seeing him again. Was it only three months ago? So much had changed since then.

  How carefully she had dressed! How pleased she had been with her new cartwheel hat! Rose cringed now at her own foolishness, at the silly dreams she had had, of herself as Lady Miffield one day, entertaining to tea in the drawing room, no longer a guest but at home. That had been before she had realised how hopeless her feelings for Ralph had been.

  Acting as a go-between had brought her closer to Ralph. He wrote to her often, enclosing a letter to Maggie but with news for Rose, too, and always telling her how grateful he was. Rose wasn’t sure whether she missed Ralph himself or just the idea of him, but she always read his letters with a pang. Of course she was glad to hear from him, but the letters only underscored how brotherly he felt about her. They might have been written by John.

  Naturally, her correspondence with Ralph hadn’t gone unnoticed. Her father was delighted when he heard that Ralph had written to her.

  ‘You don’t mind if I write to him, do you?’ Rose had said.

  ‘No, no, not at all. He’s just the kind of young man I hoped you would develop a fondness for.’ Rose could practically see him planning the speech at her wedding, puffed up with pride at the idea of his daughter as the future Lady Miffield.

  ‘It’s nothing like that,’ she said honestly, glad that Arthur had gone back to school. She would never have heard the end of this otherwise. ‘He’s writing as a friend.’

  It was true, but her father would never believe it.

  Rose let out a sigh thinking about it, and her mother eyed her in concern. ‘You seem very low at the moment, dear. Is anything worrying you?’

  How unlovable she was. How useless she was.

  ‘No,’ said Rose. ‘It’s just … oh, everything! The war is so depressing.’

  Edith acknowledged that. ‘But you can’t give in to despair. We are all in the same boat, after all.’

  ‘I know. I’d feel better if I could do something.’

  ‘You are doing something. That’s why we’re going to Miffield Hall.’

  Regular bandage rolling sessions had been instituted by Lady Miffield, who invited all the ladies in the area to tea and conversation, with an hour or so of rolling strips of gauze in the dining room to make them feel as if they were all doing their bit for the war effort. It wasn’t that Rose didn’t think the bandages would be used, but she couldn’t help feeling there was more she could do.

  ‘I mean something useful,’ she told her mother. ‘I’ve heard girls are going to work in munitions factories to release men for the army. Couldn’t I do that?’

  ‘Your father wouldn’t hear of you doing anything like that, Rose,’ said Edith. ‘He’d say it wasn’t suitable work for a young lady.’

  Rose looked at her sideways. ‘What would you say, Mother?’

  There was the tiniest of pauses. ‘I would agree with your father, of course,’ Edith said, faint colour staining her cheekbones. ‘I don’t think you would cope at all well working in a factory.’

  ‘I can’t work in munitions because it’s not suitable. I can’t go to London because it’s too dangerous …’ Rose lifted and dropped her arms in frustration. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Rolling bandages is useful,’ said Edith firmly. ‘So is knitting socks. So is keeping cheerful and writing to those we love who are fighting to protect us.’ She paused. ‘I know it is hard, Rose, and frustrating at times, but you must accept that there is a limit to what you can do, especially when we cannot easily leave the village.’

  ‘I wish the army hadn’t requisitioned Dora,’ said Rose. The vicar had been furious when they had taken the pony that pulled their trap away. Rose hated to think what Dora might be doing now. She had been used to a pampered existence at the vicarage – just as she was, Rose acknowledged. At least Dora was part of the war effort. She sighed again.

  ‘Please put on a cheerful face for Lady Miffield,’ Edith said quietly as she rang the bell, and Rose fixed on a smile.

  The butler led them across the tiled hall with its grand staircase and opened the door into the drawing room. ‘Mrs Haywood and Miss Haywood,’ he announced them.

  Violet, Lady Miffield jumped up and came towards them with her hands outstretched. ‘Oh, my dears, I am so grateful you could come! I have been going quite mad with only Gerald to talk to, and he has nothing to say except about recruitment for this wretched war!’
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  Four years earlier the village had been astounded to hear that the widowed Lord Miffield had been snared by a pretty young debutante some thirty years his junior. Very obviously delighting in her new title, Violet found herself with a handsome and charming stepson who was only a couple of years younger than herself. Rose had sometimes wondered if Violet’s fury at Ralph’s love for Maggie was partly jealousy that he hadn’t fallen in love with his pretty new stepmother.

  Still, Violet had duly presented Lord Miffield with a second son, George, who was occasionally brought down from the nursery to be admired. Violet claimed to dote on the child, although as far as Rose could see, he spent most of his time with his nanny.

  George was the only male they ever saw at Miffield Hall now, apart from the elderly butler. Lord Miffield was busy with the Territorial Force, Ralph at the front from where the news seemed to get worse daily. Most of the footmen and grooms and gardeners seemed to have enlisted too.

  ‘Now, you’ll remember Mrs Haddington? And Mrs Dauntry and Sylvia?’

  How could they forget, thought Rose irritably. They had all been there the previous week. Mrs Haddington was a relentless social climber who lapped up Violet’s stories of staying at Windsor Castle for Royal Ascot week, dinner with the Northumberlands or a ball at Blenheim Palace. From a neighbouring village came Mrs Dauntry and her daughter Sylvia, who had somehow managed to avoid having their pony requisitioned, much to the Haywoods’ envy. Sylvia was always bright and cheerful in spite of being nearly thirty and unmarried and possessing a mouthful of unnaturally large teeth. Rose was terrified of turning into Sylvia, which she knew was unkind and unfair, but surely, surely, there had to be more to life than living with her parents for ever?

  The ladies exchanged greetings and sat down while Violet rang for tea. It was a large room with long windows looking out over the terrace to the lawn and the ha-ha beyond. Wallpapered in rose pink and hung with paintings and portraits, the room was furnished in a grand but rather old-fashioned manner: elegant armchairs with padded backs, a slippery sofa with gilt arms and elaborately carved legs, a writing desk, occasional tables covered with framed photographs. There was a grand piano where Rose had once sung a duet with Ralph, and in the middle, a huge palm in a brass pot, reaching almost to the ceiling.