The Girl From World’s End. Leah Fleming
above Mirren’s head.
No one in the village could talk of anything else because every farmhouse, cottage and hotel was going to be booked up with visitors. There was brass to be made.
‘Aye,’ Joe replied to Adey, mopping up the spilled tea, giving his wife and granddaughter one of his twinkling looks. ‘Who knows what the Good Lord in His mercy, who sets His firmament in the sky and causes the sun to go down at noon, has in store for us? It’s all there in the Good Book. I shall be taking mesen off to the highest spot to stand before my Maker. I’ll be nearer heaven should I be taken up to glory and you should all be doing the same.’
Grandpa Joe was of the old school of local preachers; just like the preachers in the Band of Hope at Scarperton, well drenched in the Holy Bible, never considering he had done service to his Lord unless he had his congregation whipped up into a frenzy of enthusiasm, making their Sunday roast dinners dry out in weariness by the length of his preaching, but she loved him dearly. There was always a sweetie in his pocket for her and a twinkle in his eye.
‘Now then, none of that talk afore the lass,’ Gran said, seeing Mirren’s wide eyes on stalks. ‘I’ll have enough to do making breakfasts for all them folk thronging the hillsides for a good view. It’ll be all hands to the pump, Joe. I want that yard spotless.’
Mirren knew they’d put their names down on the Eclipse Committee to provide field parking, hot breakfasts and some overnight accommodation when the world came to Windebank. All this work for a little extra brass in the kitty would be useful come the autumn when she must be kitted out far winter: clogs, shoes, uniform. Her legs just kept growing out of things. There was a limit to how far the egg money would stretch, but she would do the work and collect the takings. That was what this coming eclipse was all about.
They had seven bedrooms and she must go in the attic while Grandpa Joe could kip in the stable loft for one night and the family visitors would sleep in the upper parlour on a camp bed. Gran would charge ten shillings a night for the privilege of sleeping in her best rooms and full breakfast.
Organising parking in the fields would be Uncle Tom’s job with Uncle Wesley’s boy, Ben, from Leeds, but they were all moaning about the wetness of the spring and the awful summer so far, and Tom didn’t want his fields poached or the lambs disturbed by vehicles.
Gran suggested they open the fields for campers, tents and cyclists, and charge at least a shilling per person. It was only for one night.
‘You’re a hard woman,’ Joe smiled, sipping from his refilled mug of tea with relish.
‘Someone has to be in this house,’ she argued. ‘You’re as soft as butter with yer head either stuck in a milk pail or in another world, on yer knees night and day waiting for the call to glory. If thousands of mugginses want to traipse up here for a clear view, then let them pay for it, I say.’
‘That’s hardly the spirit, Mother, of a good Christian woman,’ he tried to tease her, twinkling those blue eyes, but she was not for soft-soaping.
‘Life’s shown me that you don’t get owt for nowt in this world. We’ve a bairn now to feed and clothe. You have to take yer chances, as well you know, and this event won’t happen again in our lifetime right slap-bang in this dale. The minute the shadows are over, I’ll stoke up my fire and make a hundred breakfasts if I have to. Think of the brass.’
‘There’s more to life than brass, Adey,’ said Grandpa Joe.
‘My name’s Adeline, as well you know, but it’s brass as polishes the silver, keeps us all fed and clothed. We live off our wits and off our land. The land can give us a bonus this year, that’s all,’ she answered. ‘The girl’ll have to do her stuff too and earn her keep.’
Mirren sensed that her gran got tired of having a boisterous child around when the rest of her family was grown up. She tried not to show it but it sort of leaked out at the corners. The coming of the city hordes was a worry to her, not being used to throngs of people.
‘I don’t like offcumdens wandering where they will, knocking down walls and leaving litter, frightening and stealing. I shall keep out of their way,’ Adey added.
‘They’d not want to meet you on a dark night with yer dander up. No need to put up any sign “BEWARE OF BULL” but “BEWARE OF FARMER’S WIFE’”, Grandpa laughed, but Gran was not amused.
They were always arguing and bickering, and sometimes forgot she was there, but they were kindly and welcoming so that the sad life in the Rabbit Hutches seemed a long time ago. She wished she could remember her own mam. All she had of her was the photographs in her father’s tin box, but being here she could imagine her as a little girl on the farm and wonder how she could ever have left such a beautiful place.
Sometimes they sat her by the fire and quizzed her about life in the Hutches but Mirren only told them the good bits. The bad times were hidden at the back of her head and not for sharing.
Cragside was a house full of men with Grandpa Joe, Uncle Tom, the yard boys and shirts to iron. Mirren helped Carrie where she could but Uncle Tom, up at Scar Head, was in want of a wife to do all his laundry, and needed regular pies and bread to keep him stocked up. The news that he was courting was a great relief, but Florrie Sowerby worked in The Fleece, which didn’t go down so well.
Grandpa teased Mirren that she was growing into the bonny bairn of the dale, the bobby-dazzler with golden curls and bluebell eyes, fringed with long lashes. She’d rather be a boy and race around the school playground with a football, never sitting still, scourge of the Sunday school trying to catch up with Jack Sowerby, who ignored her when he was with his friends. She palled up in mischief with anyone who’d let her join their gang. The village girls gave her a wide berth but Lorna stuck to her side.
No one seemed to fuss much over appearance but Uncle Tom knew the way to her heart and sometimes brought her ribbons and crayoning books from the market. Sometimes he brought Florrie’s son Jack to help out on the farm. They would all be coming to help out with the parking and cooking.
Mirren’s hair was bobbed short now. It was easier to manage than plaits. Grandpa Joe complained she looked like a lad, which pleased her no end.
Gran was not one for titivating her appearance to please her man. She preferred sludge colours, plain shirts and pinafores with her greying hair scraped back.
Farm cooking was plain and simple with ‘no frills and fancies’. They baked rabbit pies and rib-sticking milk puddings, food to fill bellies and stave off hunger until the next feed. There was no time on a busy farm for fancy baking and showing off, Gran declared, so each week’s menu followed a regimental order: roast, cold, mince, pie, hash, stew. Who needs a calendar when you can tell the day of the week by the dish of the day? Mirren thought. The days of bread and dripping and what her dad called ‘push pasts’ with Granny Simms were long gone.
As they went about morning chores, Gran was barking out lists and orders for the coming invasion. This kitchen was her world and she ruled it like a sergeant major. Sometimes Mirren caught the sharp end of her tongue and wondered why Gran was being so hard.
It was Uncle Tom who told her the tale of Adey’s parents, who were farmers up the dale, who’d killed a cow for their own use and then when others fell dead and anthrax was discovered, it was too late for them to survive. Gran was boarding with an aunt near Settle and banished from any contact. She never saw her parents again or got to say farewell, and never went back to visit the spot. The farm was boarded up and the land useless. It would never be farmed again in her lifetime. She was the object of curiosity and pity for a while. Who wanted a child of anthrax victims on their land?
This made Mirren sad too, for she knew how it felt to be left alone in the world at the mercy of strangers. She was glad that Grandpa Joe had made Gran happy and she, in turn, ploughed all her love into running her side of the dairy, butter and cheese making and housekeeping as efficiently as she could. No one could ever say Adeline Yewell was a shirker of duty who let dust settle, or a lazy mother whose lads wore grey shirts not white, or one who kept a poor table and empty cake tins. Just when she was due a