Snowflakes in the Wind Page 12

  Each child had left the farmhouse with a bag of sweets, and the farmer would present a gift of a cut of beef or mutton and a bag of shortbread to each householder, which was generous enough, she supposed. It was the singing for her supper that caught her on the raw.

  It was the same rigidity about maintaining tradition on Hogmanay morning too. The bairns of the parish were always invited to the minister’s house to take part in a short service, singing the second paraphrase and a prayer of thanksgiving and kneeling as they were blessed for the coming year. Then each child was presented with an apple and orange and a picture postcard of the church. Some of their friends used to go on from the manse to the surrounding farmhouses and even the Brookwell estate to seek their ‘Hogmanay cakes’ in time-honoured style, receiving sweets and cakes and fruit. Robin had always entered into this wholeheartedly but she had gone straight home. To her, arriving at the door of the houses had seemed like begging, and she would rather have walked barefoot on hot coals than meet the laird’s son in such circumstances.

  Not that she had really come across Nicholas Jefferson-Price since the day he had rescued her from the Cut. She had seen him in the distance once or twice, galloping across the fields on his horse, but that had been in the early days after the incident and she had always made sure she remained out of sight until the coast was clear. He had called at the cottage a short while after that day – causing a great stir among the farm folk in the process – asking how she was, but she had been at school for which she was thankful. She was grateful to him, very grateful, but the whole episode had become infinitely more embarrassing in hindsight, besides which the laird was universally loathed and she didn’t want anyone to think she was friendly with the enemy. Then in the last years she hadn’t seen him at all; common gossip had it that since he’d gone away to university he rarely came home, no doubt making the most of the high life that all young bloods with wealth and influence indulged in to a greater or lesser extent.

  Slipping her cold feet into her boots, she buttoned them up and put all thoughts of the laird’s son out of her mind as she went downstairs to prepare breakfast. Her grandfather liked his porridge thick and creamy rather than stiff with salt and water as was common with Border folk, and once in the kitchen she set about stoking up the range fire that she had dampened down with tea leaves and slack the night before, before warming the pan of porridge she had left soaking in milk overnight.

  They had finished the porridge and started on the eggs and bacon and crusty loaf that followed, when Robin dropped a bombshell that had caused Abby to choke on a piece of bacon and her grandfather’s mouth to gape.

  Smiling happily, steam wafting round his pleasant square face from the mug of tea he was holding, Robin announced, ‘There’s somethin’ I want to ask you, Granda. I’m going to ask Rachel to marry me and once we’re wed I wondered if you’d be happy for us to live here with you. She’s a good cook and she knows what hard work is, sure enough.’

  This last sentence carried a trace of bitterness. Robin had been walking out with Rachel McArthur for twelve months and had often come home with tales of the ill-treatment she received at the hands of her parents. Jack McArthur was the innkeeper of a public house situated in a small hamlet set between Frogden and Linton, and anyone meeting him for the first time would think him a genial enough fellow. He had a big blowsy wife and eleven children, and Rachel was the eldest girl. According to Robin she was worked to death by her father and regularly beaten by her mother who was handy with her fists when she was drunk, which was fairly often. From as young as seven or eight Rachel had been set to work in the inn kitchen and had received virtually no schooling, the excuse given to anyone who enquired as to her absence being that she was ‘weakly and suffered with her stomach’.

  A shy, timid young woman, Rachel was slight in build and looked much younger than her eighteen years, and although Robin was two years her junior he appeared much older, both in his physical appearance and his manner. The courtship had been difficult, not least because Rachel was used like a workhorse by her parents and the occasional minutes when they managed to meet always had to be stolen. But in spite of the rarity of the secret meetings, Robin’s regard for his sweetheart had never wavered. All this Wilbert and Abby had learned from Robin in the past year; they had never met Rachel, although they knew of the family.

  It was Wilbert who now brought this fact to the fore when he said quietly, ‘How can I answer that when I’ve never met the lass, Rob? And what do you think Jack McArthur and his missus are going to say? If what you’ve told us is right, they’re not going to want to lose their chief cook and bottle washer, are they?’

  ‘I know, I know.’ The brightness in Robin’s face dimmed. ‘We won’t have their blessing, that’s for sure, but that won’t matter if we have yours. You’ll like her, Granda, I know you will. She’s . . .’

  He was unable to express what she was, waving his hands helplessly.

  Abby couldn’t contain herself any longer. Her baby brother talking about getting wed? ‘Robin, you’re sixteen years old,’ she said hotly. ‘Far too young to think about marriage. And what if you find out you don’t love her in a year or two? I know you want to rescue her from life at home but she has to do that herself. She could leave, couldn’t she? She’s eighteen, she’s not a bairn.’

  Robin looked at the sister he adored. But for Abby, they would both have been incarcerated in the workhouse, that terrible place of no hope, but by the sheer force of her will she had transported them here to a place he privately called heaven on earth. He had been born to be a shepherd, he knew that now, and it was all thanks to his sister that he’d found the life he loved. But it was her strength that made her impatient with the shortcomings in others at times, like now. ‘Rachel is not like you, she hasn’t got it in her to stand up to them but that’s all right because I love her just the way she is. And aye, I want to rescue her, more than anything else I want that, I won’t deny it. As for me being sixteen, I don’t feel sixteen inside, Abby, and I sure as hell know my own mind. She’s the one for me and she says I’m the one for her. That’s enough for me.’

  ‘She might say that to anyone who was prepared to take her out of the inn and her life there. Have you considered that?’

  Robin took a deep breath. ‘If you met her you wouldn’t think that.’

  ‘But that’s the rub, isn’t it? I haven’t met her. Granda hasn’t met her, because when you see her it’s for half-an-hour here and ten minutes there. I bet if you add up the amount of time you’ve spent together it wouldn’t be more than a few hours in the whole of the year you’ve known her. You can’t know someone like that, it’s . . . it’s artificial.’

  ‘You know nowt about it, about how we feel.’

  ‘I know this whole thing is ridiculous.’

  ‘Shut up, Abby.’ Robin’s fists were clenched by his sides. ‘Just shut up.’

  ‘No, I won’t, because this doesn’t just concern you, it concerns me and Granda too.’

  ‘Oh, and you’re really bothered about Granda, aren’t you? So bothered you’re going to disappear off to Galashiels without a by-your-leave.’

  ‘That’s so unfair.’ Abby was cut to the quick. ‘You take that back, Robin Kirby.’

  ‘No, I won’t, an’ I’ll tell you somethin’ else while I’m about it. I’d have thought if you were really bothered about Granda you’d have been pleased someone is willing to come and take your place here and see to the house and the rest of it. Or are you jealous about another lass coming in?’

  She couldn’t come back at him the way she wanted to because he had hit her on the raw. It was only as he had spoken that Abby realized that was part of it. She didn’t want another woman in what was her home, taking over where she had left off. Which was horrible and petty and mean-minded, but it was how she felt. And hurt – she felt hurt that she could be replaced so easily. She had taken care of Robin all his life, worried about him, protected him, defended him. Even when their
mother was alive her affection for him had been more maternal than sisterly, and now it felt as though her love had been thrown back in her face.

  She must have looked as stricken as she felt, because her grandfather stepped into the fray, his voice still quiet but holding authority when he said, ‘That’s enough from both of you. Robin, you do a man’s job and you do it well and have done for the last two years since you left school. I’m proud of you, but I can understand your sister’s concerns and I echo them to some extent. Bring Rachel to meet us, all right? First things first. Then we’ll talk again, the three of us, because this involves Abby just as much as you or me. Regardless of where she is, this will be her home for as long as she wants it to be and she has a say in who lives here. Do you understand me?’

  Grandfather and grandson stared at each other for a moment before Robin turned his gaze on Abby’s white face, and such was the fury in his eyes that she bit hard on her lower lip to stop the moan deep inside from escaping. He looked as though he hated her, she thought painfully. Never in her life would she have dreamed Robin could look at her like this.

  He stood up, thrusting his chair away with such force that it skidded across the floor and crashed over. And then he stamped out of the cottage, pulling on his jacket and cap as he went and ignoring her anguished, ‘Robin, wait.’

  ‘Let him go, lass.’ Wilbert stood to his feet. ‘He’ll calm down when he’s had time to think.’

  ‘He hates me.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. He should have expected we’d want time to take it in.’ Wilbert was pulling on his coat and cap as he spoke. ‘I’ll have a word with him later, don’t fret.’

  ‘But he didn’t expect it.’ She recalled Robin’s face, so bright and joyous when he’d told them he was going to ask Rachel to marry him, and felt worse than ever.

  Wilbert looked at his granddaughter. He sensed something of what she was feeling and the reasons for it, but he was a man of few words and had no way of expressing himself. Instead he walked over to her and gently patted her shoulder before following his grandson out of the cottage, thinking as he did so, What a to-do, and at Christmas an’ all. Why was it that things always seemed to happen at Christmas with these two grandchildren of his?

  Chapter Eleven

  Abby was still thinking about the altercation with Robin when she left the church hall later that afternoon. The party had gone well, but once the children had been dispatched home – grubby-faced and sticky-fingered – it had taken some time to clear up the resulting mess, and it was after three o’clock when she said goodbye to the group of Morebattle women who had also stayed behind. When she had called on Tessa earlier that day, she’d found both Tessa’s bairns had been up all night with sickness and diarrhoea, and so she had walked to the church by herself. She had been glad of this; her mind was so occupied with Robin it had been a relief not to have to make conversation with anyone.

  All the way to the church she had berated herself for her part in the row that had erupted so suddenly. She should have voiced her misgivings differently; Robin could be as stubborn as a mule at times and she had gone about it all wrong, simply because he had wounded her with his breezy manner when he’d spoken so happily about someone taking her place. Now, whatever happened, this would cause a wedge between her and her brother.

  Stepping out of the building into the winter afternoon, Abby looked up into the low white sky from which the occasional snowflake floated gently down in the freezing, still air. Mr Newton had once described December as a dead, naked month of long nights and brief days, a grizzled, grey month, dreary and barren. Most of the other children had looked at him as though he was mad but she had understood exactly what he had meant. But it could be beautiful too, she told herself as she began the walk back to the farm. Like today. The hedgerows either side of the lane she was following were thick with snow, icicles hanging from the laden trees and bushes and glittering in the winter light like delicate crystals, but far more exquisite than anything manmade.

  Abby smiled ruefully. She would never dare express such a fanciful thought to anyone at the farm. To them, the winter was an enemy that made their already hard life just that bit harder. She had discovered at the high school she had a flair for poetry, but when she had read a couple of pieces of her work that her English teacher had been particularly pleased with to her grandfather and Robin, their faces had expressed surprise and bewilderment. Her grandfather had tried to be supportive in his way once he had collected himself, but not Robin. Her brother had stared at her before shaking his head and saying, ‘I’m sorry, Abby, but I can’t be doing with airy-fairy stuff, and what are them teachers encouraging it for anyway? Waste of time, I call it. Poetry and books won’t help a lass keep house, now, will they? You’re a working-class lass, and marrying and settling down with a good man who’ll provide for you and any bairns is what you should be aiming for. The gentry might have time for such things but not us.’

  She had told him in reply that it was up to her what she aimed for, and that her future was her own business too and she didn’t thank him for mapping it out for her. But the whole episode had emphasized what she had already known at heart – Robin was very much a product of his environment and saw the roles of a man and a woman very differently from her.

  But then she and Robin were different. Abby paused, biting her lip. They might have been born of the same parents but apart from that they had little in common now they had got older. Robin was a Border lad through and through and she accepted him as he was. Why couldn’t he return the compliment? But he made no secret of despising her education and then her decision to go into nursing.

  A snowflake landing on Abby’s nose brought her out of her reverie, reminding her she needed to get home before the forecast snow began in earnest. She began to walk on, but the feeling of aloneness that had begun with her mother’s death and had deepened with the years was strong.

  She couldn’t live the rest of her life as the wife of a man from within the farming community, she told herself for the umpteenth time. Just the thought of it produced a panicky claustrophobia that made her heart pound. Robin and the rest of them would never understand that, though. Even if she hadn’t determined to take up nursing as a career, she would have left the area sooner or later. It wasn’t that she was afraid of the hard life the women led; she had already been warned over and over again that nursing was a tough, exhausting and often thankless task, and that it could be grim and distressing some of the time. But she would be alive in a way she never would here, and making her own way in the world outside the tight constrictions of what was expected of her as her grandfather’s granddaughter. She wanted to live and see more of the world than the Border neck of the woods before she thought about marrying and settling down – if she ever did decide to marry. And she might not; it wasn’t obligatory, whatever Robin might have her believe.

  The last thought brought her mind back to that morning and the frosty state of affairs that existed between Robin and herself. She would have to apologize for the way she had spoken, she decided. Not the content of what she had said because she absolutely believed Robin was too young to think of marriage, but the way she had couched her comments. However, whether Robin would accept her apology was another kettle of fish, of course.

  She had been so deep in thought that she couldn’t have said when she first became aware that she was not alone. There had been no sound as far as she knew, but suddenly she was certain that she was being followed, and with the realization came the knowledge that she had inadvertently put herself in just the position she had guarded against for so long. Her anxiety about the falling-out between Robin and herself had made her careless.

  The familiar sickly feeling that assailed her when Joe McHaffie was anywhere close was strong, but added to it was a dread that quickened her footsteps. She wanted to turn round and face him and tell him she wasn’t frightened of him or his intimidation, but the truth of it was that she was frightened, and confronting him on
a deserted road with no one within earshot would be stupid.

  Frequent falls of snow over the last weeks that had briefly partially melted in places and become slushy, only to freeze again once night fell and then had been covered by more snow, had made the lane treacherous in places. Twice she nearly went headlong as she tried to hurry, and she was forced to slow down to a steady pace once more in spite of her fear.

  She knew he was gaining on her. She could hear the crunch of snow under his feet now, and then a cough, as though he wanted to announce his presence, which of course he would, she thought, as a dart of anger replaced the panic. He would love to think he was scaring her, that was Joe McHaffie all over. The anger helped, putting iron in her backbone.

  She wasn’t going to scurry along like a mouse. Casually, as though she was straightening her hat, she withdrew her hatpin and held it tight in her hand, before stopping and swinging round to face the man she had come to loathe. And then her eyes widened with surprise.

  For his part, Nicholas Jefferson-Price was equally taken aback. When he had first noticed the figure of a young woman in front of him he had checked his long strides for a moment before telling himself he was being silly. He had no wish to alarm her, of course, but he needed to get home for a dinner he was attending with his parents and he was already late. He shouldn’t have gone for so long a walk, perhaps, but as usual the stifling atmosphere at the house had driven him out. He’d taken Jet for a gallop the day before and sprained the animal’s foreleg in the process, which he felt bad about.

  He had coughed to alert the woman in front of him as to his proximity, and he had expected her to turn whereupon he could have passed the time of day and then quickly hurried on. As it was, she had spun round with such ferocity it had stopped him in his tracks. That and the look of her. She was beautiful, lovely, and for some reason he felt he had seen her before. But no, he would remember such a stunning face if he had met her in the past.