Above the Harvest Moon Read online

  Above the Harvest Moon

  Rita Bradshaw

  Hachette UK (2010)

  Tags: Sagas, Historical, Fiction

  * * *

  SYNOPSIS

  With the magic of Catherine Cookson, Rita Bradshaw once again enthrals us with her stunning new novel of love and survival. It’s 1926 and the Depression is claiming its victims every day. Hannah and her mother Miriam, who have lived with Hannah’s uncle and aunt since her father died, have never really been close. As Hannah develops into a beautiful girl, so Miriam’s jealousy and resentment of her grows. At least Hannah can escape to spend time at her friend Naomi’s, whose kind mother gives Hannah the affection she so lacks at home. And Hannah is not indifferent to Naomi’s handsome, charming brother Joe. But when she is forced to flee her house and the unwanted attention of her uncle, it is the grave, taciturn Jake, Naomi’s other brother, who shines through as Hannah’s protector...

  Above the Harvest Moon

  RITA BRADSHAW

  headline

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 2007 Rita Bradshaw

  The right of Rita Bradshaw to be identified as the Author of

  the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication

  may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any

  means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case

  of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences

  issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2010

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 7593 6

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  PART ONE - 1898 - Suffer the Little Children

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  PART TWO - 1925 - Entanglements

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  PART THREE - 1926 - Piecrust Promises

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  PART FOUR - 1927 - The New Life

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  PART FIVE - 1929 - The Resurrection

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Rita Bradshaw was born in Northamptonshire, where she still lives today. At the age of sixteen she met her husband - whom she considers her soulmate - and they have two daughters and a son and three young grandchildren. Much to her delight, Rita’s first attempt at a novel was accepted for publication, and she went on to write many more successful novels under a pseudonym before writing for Headline using her own name.

  As a committed Christian and passionate animal-lover Rita has a full and busy life, but her writing continues to be a consuming pleasure that she never tires of. In any spare moments she loves reading, walking eating out and visiting the cinema and theatre, as well as being involved in her local church and animal welfare.

  To read some fascinating facts about the harvest moon and the countryside of the past and to find out what Rita Bradshaw’s most proud of, don’t miss the exciting extra material at the back of this book - Just for You.

  This book is especially for our darling grandson, Connor Joshua Thompson, as he prepares to start big school. Such a precious, comical and amazingly determined spirit in so small a body. Pappy and I love you so very much, little man.

  And my Cara, already mourning the end of an era.Take comfort in the knowledge your boys love you all the world and that you and Ian are raising them to be the sort of men the world is in huge need of. I’m so proud of you, sweetheart, and the wonderful mother you are.

  Out of much research material special thanks go to Treasured Tales of the Countryside, published by David & Charles, A Remembered Land edited by Sean Street and Tommy Turnbull, A Miner’s Life by Joseph Robinson.

  ABOVE THE HARVEST MOON

  How often did he come to me

  Beneath the harvest moon,

  Take me in his arms awhile

  Beneath the harvest moon,

  Whisper that he loved me,

  That sweethearts we’d remain,

  Though all would try to part us

  He’d not forget our sweet refrain.

  But then the days turned colder

  And I waited there in vain,

  Until another came and spoke

  And took away my pain.

  And when I gave my heart to him

  I knew he would be true,

  That beneath the fire and brimstone

  He was of softer hue.

  Now when the harvest moon comes

  peeping

  And sweet whispers fill the air,

  I can give my love so freely

  Because I know how much he cares.

  The twilight holds a magic

  And nature sings a finer tune

  Because my love he takes me

  Far above the harvest moon.

  ANON

  PART ONE

  1898 - Suffer the Little Children

  Chapter 1

  Rose Fletcher glanced at the clock then her mother, her voice anxious and apologetic when she murmured, ‘I’m sorry, Mam . . .’

  ‘Aye, I know, I know.’ Her mother hugged the small child nestled on her lap and it was to him she spoke next. ‘I’ve got to make myself scarce before your da comes home, Jake,’ she said into the bright little face looking up at her. ‘By, it comes to summat when I’m not welcome in me own daughter’s home.’

  ‘Aw, Mam, don’t.You know how much I love to see you but Silas . . . Well, you know what he’s like.’

  Aye, she knew what Silas Fletcher was like all right. Ada Hedley said no more. Her poor lass had enough on her plate without her adding to it. She stood up and placed her grandson on his feet, whereupon he toddled over to the thick clippy mat in front of the glowing range and picked up the tin lid and wooden spoon he had been playing with when she had arrived earlier. Her voice soft, Ada said, ‘He’s a grand little lad, Rose, and so bonny. Bright as a button an’ all.’

  Rose smiled. ‘Thanks for the brisket and dripping and everything, Mam, but you shouldn’t. You can’t afford it.’

  ‘Go on with you.Your da’s in work and there’s only the two of us at home. If I can’t see me only bairn all right it’s a poor lookout. Here.’ Ada glanced over her shoulder as though there was someone else in the kitchen with them before thrusting some coins into her daughter’s hand. ‘Put this where he can’t get his mitts on it. I bet you’re behind with the rent again.’
/>
  ‘Mam, no, I can’t take this.’ Rose stared down at the two half-crowns and shilling. ‘It’s too much. You don’t have to do this all the time.’

  ‘Look, hinny, it fair kills me to see you taking in all that washing and ironing and working every hour the good Lord sends, while that one drinks and gambles his wage away with them pals of his. Take it, Rose. It’s for you and the bairn. I know how you whittle about paying the rent.’

  ‘Aw, Mam, Mam.’

  ‘An’ don’t cry, lass.You’ll upset the bairn, now then. It’ll work out in the end, things always do.’

  ‘I’ve been such a fool.’

  ‘Aye, well, we can all say that at some time or other, hinny. There’s not a man nor woman can say, hand on heart, they’ve not made a few mistakes along the road.’

  ‘But most of them didn’t have to marry their mistake.’

  Both women’s eyes were drawn to the child who was banging away at the tin lid with the spoon, jabbering nineteen to the dozen in baby talk. Becoming aware of their gaze, he stopped and gave them a big smile, showing his small white teeth, before resuming his game. ‘You can’t say some good didn’t come out of it when you look at him,’ Ada said warmly. ‘He’s the bonniest bairn I’ve ever seen and no mistake.’

  ‘I wish Da would try and see it that way.’

  ‘Lass, lass, you know how your da is. He’s a proud man and it knocked him for six, especially it being Silas Fletcher. He’s never had any truck with the Fletchers, thinks they’re the lowest of the low, he does.’

  Rose couldn’t argue with this. She agreed with it. Instead she lifted her apron and dried her face, a little catch in her voice when she said, ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Mam.’

  ‘An’ me you, lass.’Ada reached out and gently touched her daughter’s cheek, a rare gesture from one who was not physically demonstrative. Then, as the wooden clock on the shelf above the range chimed the hour, she pulled on her worn hat and coat, sliding woollen gloves over chilblained fingers. ‘I’d better be off but you keep your chin up, hinny. Like me old mam used to say, worse things happen at sea. I’ll see meself out, lass.’

  Worse things happen at sea. Once the door had closed behind her mother, Rose walked across to the loose brick at the side of the range which Silas knew nothing about. She carefully withdrew it and placed the coins next to the sixpence and odd pennies in the little hollow over which the brick fitted and slid it back in place. Then she cleared away every trace of her mother’s visit and set the table for dinner, her mind churning. She couldn’t think of anything worse than being married to Silas. If it wasn’t for Jake she would have walked down to the river months ago, like poor Emily Burns had after her three bairns had been taken with the fever within weeks of each other. All the old wives hereabouts had had a field day gossiping about that, saying Emily shouldn’t have done it, that it was a mortal sin to do away with yourself, but Rose had understood that life could be such that facing the Almighty’s wrath in the hereafter was preferable to living.

  Jake’s grizzle told her he was hungry.‘I’m sorry, hinny. We’re all behind with Grandma coming, aren’t we?’ she said softly, picking him up and putting him into the stout high chair her father had made for her when she was a baby.‘You’ve normally had your tea by now. Here,’ she handed him a crust of bread, ‘have that till Mam can feed you your bowl of broth.’

  After checking the mutton broth simmering on the range, Rose hastily sliced one of the loaves she had baked earlier and put it on the table. She then filled the big black kettle and placed it on the hob, putting the teapot on the steel shelf at the side of the range so it would warm through. Outside, the January day was raw, the smell of snow in the wind, but in the kitchen the mellow light from the oil lamp increased the cosiness. All the furniture had been bought second-hand - with her mother’s help - in the frantically busy days before her hasty marriage to Silas. The kitchen table with its two narrow benches tucked underneath, the stout old sideboard and massive clippy mat - so heavy it took two to lift it but which provided some comfort against the cold stone flags - had all come from the house of an elderly widow who had died. Silas’s very ugly high-backed chair with a slatted back and flock cushions had been going cheap in the old market due to its condition, but after she had re-covered the cushions it didn’t look so bad.

  Silas hadn’t lifted a finger to provide so much as a teaspoon. Rose’s soft mouth tightened.That should have told her something about the nature of the man she was marrying. But of course it had been too late by then. She’d been in the family way and had been grateful he was marrying her at all.

  Shaking her head at the foolish young girl she had been in those days, Rose bit down hard on her bottom lip. She’d counted herself fortunate when a friend of her mother’s had tipped them off about these rooms becoming vacant due to the previous tenants doing a moonlight flit. The family who lived on the top floor in the two-up two-down terrace had to lug buckets of water up a steep flight of stairs every day from the outside tap shared among four houses. At least she’d been spared that.

  But there were worse things than carrying heavy buckets of water upstairs. Rose crossed her arms over her middle and her hands gripped the sides of her apron. She swayed back and forth, her eyes shut. She had been near to blurting out to her mam that it wasn’t only Silas’s drinking and gambling she had to put up with and she mustn’t do that. Her da loathed Silas as it was; the two of them had come near to blows at the colliery because of her father’s attitude to her husband - Silas had told her so. What her da would do if he knew about the indignities Silas heaped upon her when the mood took him she didn’t dare imagine. Sober, Silas could be violent and unpredictable. Drunk, his brutality took on an altogether more unnatural and depraved twist. And if it came to a confrontation with his son-in-law, her da wouldn’t stand a chance. The Fletchers’ reputation for dirty fighting was well known throughout Monkwearmouth.

  Why had she got mixed up with Silas in the first place? she asked herself for the hundredth time. His bad-boy reputation had fascinated her, that was the thing, along with his dark good looks and glib tongue. But she had paid for the clandestine assignations.

  She had only met Silas twice before he had got her drunk in the old quarries off Cemetery Road Southwick way, one baking hot summer’s afternoon. He’d had his way with her right there in the open. She had been but fifteen years old to his twenty-six, and she had never tasted strong liquor before. Afterwards she had prayed and prayed there would be no result of their union but after three months she had been unable to fool herself any longer. She was expecting a bairn, Silas Fletcher’s bairn. That same month she had turned sixteen. And now, two years on, she had a son who was the light of her life and a husband she hated and feared.

  The sound of the back door opening brought her springing to the range. When her husband entered the kitchen from the tiny scullery moments later Rose continued stirring the broth. Her voice flat, she said, ‘There’s a fresh loaf on the table and I’m about to dish up if you want to sit down.’

  She knew he’d sat because she heard the scraping of the bench on the flags as he’d pulled it out. She made sure his plate held three good-sized dumplings along with most of the scrag end of mutton and some vegetables, and then she ladled more broth over the whole. This left little meat for herself and Jake but it was preferable to Silas throwing his plate against the wall as he’d done once or twice when they were first married, yelling that a plate of slops wasn’t a fit meal for a man after a hard day’s work down the pit. When she had protested she couldn’t manage on the housekeeping he gave her, a night of such torment had followed that she had never answered him back again. That had been the start of her taking in the washing and ironing to make ends meet, although they never did.

  She placed Silas’s plate in front of him, her gaze on the table. She could smell the coal dust thick in the air. When her father had come home from the pit he had always stripped off in the scullery and sluiced himsel
f down before pulling on his other set of clothes. Her mother would take his work clothes out into the yard and bang the dust out of them as much as she could before hanging them over the chair in the scullery ready for morning. She had imagined everyone did this before Silas had disabused her of the notion.

  He wanted his dinner on the table when he walked in, he had growled at her, and he would change when he damn well wanted to. It was her job to clean up after him and she’d better get used to it. She had got used to it. She’d had no other option.

  After blowing on Jake’s bowl of broth to cool it down, she fed the child his dinner and then gave him another crust to eat while she ate her own meal. Not a word was spoken, the only sound besides the odd spit and crackle from the fire that of Silas slurping at his food like a pig at a trough.