Snowflakes in the Wind Read online

  ‘Cold?’ Shirley had noticed her shiver.

  Abby shook her head, reaching into her pocket and bringing out her mother’s purse. ‘How much do I owe Len for the tickets?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, it’s all seen to.’ Shirley didn’t add here that if things went wrong Abby would need every penny she had. Instead she said gently, ‘When you change trains at Tweedmouth, Mr Irvin won’t be with you any more. Len says you have to count seven stations before Kelso, and then it’s the station after Kelso that’s the nearest to Linton. All right? Can you remember that? Ask the stationmaster to direct you to the farm where your grandfather works. There might be a horse and cart or something going that way.’

  They could hear the rumbling of the train now as it approached and then there it was, in a great belch of steam and noise. The last time Abby had stood in this station with her mother and Robin when they had been setting off for her grandmother’s funeral it had seemed an exciting adventure. Now it was just terrifying, the more so because she didn’t know the name of the farm where her grandfather was shepherd, or even his surname. But she hadn’t admitted that to Shirley.

  Aware that Shirley was staring at her anxiously, Abby made herself smile. ‘We’ll be fine,’ she said with a confidence she was far from feeling. ‘Please don’t worry. I’ll write as soon as I can and let you know how things are.’

  The goodbye between the two girls was tearful, although Robin was all agog at the gleaming steaming monster of a train and seemed unaware he was leaving everything that was familiar.

  And then Mr Irvin, a fussy, bespectacled, bald gentleman, appeared at their side and bundled Abby and Robin unceremoniously into a third-class carriage that was already half full. They perched on the hard wooden seats nearest the window to wave to Shirley as the whistle blew and a cloud of steam wafted down the platform. Then they were moving, the great metal beast trundling slowly at first and then quickly gathering pace, its belly sending billows of smoke that obscured Shirley from view and brought a panic into Abby’s chest that made her feel sick.

  ‘All right, hinny?’

  She must have looked as frantic as she felt because a motherly matron opposite her – who had produced a knitting bag even before the train had left the station and was now busily clacking away on her wooden needles – was smiling kindly at her. Abby nodded; she couldn’t reply just at that moment.

  ‘You two bairns travelling by yourselves?’ It was said with an element of disapproval.

  Again Abby nodded, and it was Robin who said, ‘We’re going to see our granda.’

  ‘Oh, aye? Where’s he live then?’

  Abby pulled herself together. ‘On a farm in the Borders.’

  The woman’s bushy eyebrows rose. ‘Quite a journey in front of you. Where’s your mam an’ da?’

  Abby stared at the woman. She was just like old Mrs Tollett at the end of their street, she thought. Her mam had always said Mrs Tollett wanted to know the ins and outs of old Maggie’s backside and not to talk to her. A stiffness in her voice now, she said shortly, ‘Our mam’s passed away – that’s why we’re going to our granda’s.’ Turning her head she pretended an interest in the view outside the window, breathing a sigh of relief when the woman left the train at the next station. Despite her anxiety, Abby found the interest became a reality as the train chugged laboriously on in its journey up the coast.

  The snow-covered landscape dotted with towns and villages and tiny hamlets was enthralling, and Robin remained glued to his window the whole time. Abby had never heard of the names on most of the painted station signs they encountered after leaving Sunderland and then the Tynemouth area. Pretty little stationmaster houses with picket fences marked some of the stops, whilst others were more utilitarian. Names like Widdrington, Chevington, Warkworth and Little Mill passed by, passengers alighting and others climbing aboard.

  After some time, Robin declared he was starving, and so they ate half the sandwiches Shirley had thoughtfully packed for them. Abby decided to leave the rest in the bag – just ‘in case’. In case of what, she didn’t let herself dwell on.

  At the next station, a place called Goswick, Mr Irvin came to their carriage window and told them Tweedmouth was the next station but one and to prepare themselves to leave the train. He would direct them to the right platform and buy their tickets with money Len had given him, he said quietly, and then the train would take them inland to their eventual destination.

  Abby thanked him with more aplomb than she was feeling. She had to give the appearance of being in control, she told herself once the train was moving again. For Robin’s sake as much as anything. He needed her to be strong.

  Once they reached Tweedmouth, Mr Irvin was as good as his word. After handing Abby the tickets and telling them the train would arrive shortly, he left them sitting on a wooden bench. This station was busier than most of the ones they had seen en route, and as the hustle and bustle ebbed and flowed around their little bench, Abby racked her brains, trying to dredge up from the depths of her memory anything that might help them in the hours ahead. She thought back to the previous journey with her mother. When the three of them had left the train station, her mother had told them they had to put their best foot forward to walk to the farm, but what had she called it? She shut her eyes, picturing the scene.

  Suddenly the name Crab Apple popped into her mind. Crab Apple Farm. She frowned to herself; had she actually remembered it or had she made it up? She couldn’t be sure but, nevertheless, a glimmer of hope lifted her spirits.

  Boarding the next train was more of an ordeal without the kindly Mr Irvin smoothing their way, and when an enormously fat, red-cheeked man carrying a sack of flour almost knocked Robin off his feet, Abby said very loudly, ‘Excuse me!’, grabbing hold of her brother’s arm to right him.

  After looking surprised, the man grinned and then bowed slightly, waving his hand for the pair of them to climb on board ahead of him. Maintaining her air of dignity, Abby ushered her brother in front of her and they sat together in a corner of the carriage, the cloth bag on Abby’s lap. Within a few minutes they were on their way once more.

  It was now early afternoon, and as the train chugged onwards the view outside the windows showed the emptiness of barren fields and bare trees, crows gliding like shadowed ghouls above the snowy countryside. Mindful of Shirley’s instructions, Abby counted each station with one part of her mind; the other part was thinking how bleak and desolate everything was. It had been spring when they had made the previous journey and Nature, with the artistry of a great conductor, had been orchestrating the magic of new life. Swathes of blossom and unfolding green leaves had adorned the trees and hedgerows, and wild flowers had painted the landscape. Abby recalled that the sky had been a bright cornflower blue with cotton-wool clouds; today it was hanging sullen and heavy, carrying the promise of more snow before long, only fleeting wisps of silver tingeing the greyness now and again. In Sunderland the only view of the sky was mostly confined to the narrow strips above the terraced streets, and now the great wide expanse seemed menacing and unfriendly.

  Abby checked her thoughts. She was being silly, she told herself firmly. The sky was just the sky, that’s all. She had more than enough problems to contend with without inventing more.

  Kelso turned out to be a large station but the next one, Roxburgh, where Abby and Robin alighted onto an almost deserted platform, was considerably smaller. There was no sign of the stationmaster and Abby found herself praying that Len had known what he was talking about and that they were in the right area. Two other passengers, a man and a woman, had got off the train in front of them, and now Abby took Robin’s hand as she tried to give the impression that she knew what she was doing as the two of them followed the couple out of the station. The pair in front were clearly being met by a youth who was sitting waiting for them on a horse and cart; otherwise the country lane outside the train station was empty. To make matters worse, big fat flakes of snow were beginning to fall.<
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  Abby waited for the couple to climb up into the cart and seat themselves beside the young man before she approached them, Robin at her side. She had to ask directions; she had no idea if they should even turn left or right.

  ‘Yes, lass?’ It was the woman who spoke as she eyed them up and down, but not unkindly.

  ‘I . . . I’m sorry to bother you but I wondered if you could direct us to Linton?’ Abby hoped she looked more confident than she felt.

  ‘Linton, is it?’ The woman turned her head and glanced at the man. ‘The bairns are going to Linton.’

  The man’s eyes narrowed as he surveyed the two-bit bairns, as he had termed Abby and Robin in his mind. There was nothing much at Linton; it was a parish without a village, the original hamlet having disappeared during the agricultural improvements long before he was born. All that remained was the kirk, the mill house, the school and the smith and joiner’s shop, and they were in three separate clusters about half a mile apart. There were farms, of course, and common to the locality they all had steep fields and stony ground, but there was a treacherous bog that formed part of an ancient lake and was dangerous to the unwary. He wouldn’t like to see these two little ’uns venturing near that. He bent slightly forward as he said, ‘Where exactly in Linton are you bound, lass? A farm, is it?’

  Abby nodded. Hoping she had remembered correctly, she said, ‘Crab Apple Farm. Our granda is the shepherd there.’

  ‘Is he, by gum? Wilbert Craggs is your granda?’ Unbeknown to Abby, the shepherds wielded a great deal of power on Border farms and commanded respect. This was reflected in the man’s voice. The sheep were the linchpin of the farming practice, and the farm work and crop rotation revolved around them. A good shepherd was worth his weight in gold, and Wilbert Craggs was a very good shepherd. ‘I own the farm adjoining the boundary of Crab Apple,’ the man said. ‘Farmer Dodds’s the name.’

  Craggs. That name was familiar now that Farmer Dodds had said it. Abby’s knees went weak with relief. She remembered her grandfather being referred to as Mr Craggs at her grandmother’s funeral. Crab Apple Farm was the right place.

  Farmer Dodds was frowning. ‘Frankly, lass, it surprises me that your granda’s not here to meet you. It’s nigh on four miles as the crow flies to Crab Apple.’

  ‘He didn’t know we were coming today,’ Abby said hastily, stretching the truth when she added, ‘We . . . we had to come earlier than planned. Our mam’ – she took a deep breath, it was still hard to say out loud – ‘our mam died suddenly.’ And to pre-empt the inevitable, she said quietly, ‘And our da’s been took bad too and he can’t look after us.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Farmer Dodds’s wife looked horrified. ‘You’re Molly’s bairns, aren’t you? And she’s died? Oh, the poor, poor lass.’

  Abby wasn’t surprised the farmer and his wife knew her mother, and had put two and two together when she said that Wilbert Craggs was her granda. Her mother had told her that the Border community was such a tightly knit one that if someone sneezed ten miles away, everyone knew about it. All the folk hereabouts would have known about her mam running off with her da.

  ‘Well, hinny, we can’t have the pair of you standing here, can we,’ Mrs Dodds said briskly. ‘You nip up on the back of the cart and sit on them sacks there, and we’ll drop you off at the bottom of the track leading to Crab Apple. This is not the weather for gallivanting about the countryside.’

  Abby drew in a shuddering breath. They’d done it. They’d found the farm and her granda. Now all she had to do was to convince him to let them stay.

  Chapter Five

  Wilbert Craggs sat staring into the crackling flames of the fire, his big gnarled hands resting on the worn knees of his old tweed trousers as he puffed on his pipe, a steaming mug of black strong tea at his side. An observer might have been forgiven for thinking that his stance was one of contentment, but they would have been wrong. His temper was simmering.

  After a moment Wilbert’s gaze shifted to the picture above the mahogany mantelpiece. The beautifully embroidered scene of poppies and cornflowers and other wild blooms in a meadow had a Bible verse in a heart in the centre: ‘The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand for ever. Isaiah 40, verse 8.’

  His Moll had sewn that in the first years of their marriage, he thought painfully. After the day’s work was done, she had sat opposite him across the hearth and worked on the picture, each small flower a work of art. Their Bertha had come along after ten months of being wed, and for a while Moll hadn’t had a minute to herself, but then once the babby was going through the night and she had her evenings free, out had come her embroidery. It had taken her nigh on three years to complete the picture, just before their second daughter had been born, and he had framed it himself, hanging it with pride over the mantelpiece. His Moll had been the best of women. The very best.

  Wilbert stood up abruptly, beginning to pace the sitting room for a minute or two before coming to stand with his back to the fireplace, his legs slightly apart. What would Moll say to this latest confrontation with Andrew McHaffie? But then why ask the road you know? Moll had always shied away from any kind of conflict. He shook his shaggy head. But at the bottom of her, Moll must have known that once their Molly had slighted Andrew’s lad by running off and marrying someone else things would never be the same between them and the farm steward and his family. The McHaffies weren’t ones for forgiving and forgetting at the best of times.

  He shifted slightly, warming his buttocks in the heat from the fire as he glanced towards the window. The worsening weather meant he’d be lighting the lamps earlier than usual, but at least the hardware van had delivered the paraffin oil for the farm and cottages the day before so there was no chance of running out if they got snowed in again. Two of the farmhands had had to walk into town the last time that had happened.

  Wilbert reached for his tea, sipping the scalding-hot liquid as he continued to brood about the McHaffies.

  He blamed Joe McHaffie for the tension that existed between Andrew and himself. Joe had been eighteen or thereabouts when Molly had run off, and the lad hadn’t attempted to hide his bitterness at what he saw as her betrayal. Joe must be getting on for thirty now, and he was as sour as a barrel of vinegar. Worse, his resentment had spread like a canker through the whole family. It certainly didn’t make the working day any easier.

  In the general run of things he knew shepherds and stewards could be at odds on any farm, sheep being so central to the business they were all engaged in, and because the steward and shepherd maintained a degree of independence from each other and their positions meant they both had direct access to the master, niggles could arise. Especially if one felt the other was being favoured. But he and Andrew had been all right before Molly had scarpered, in fact they’d been friends. Now Andrew dragged his feet in meeting any request he made, be it getting handling gear shifted or turnips laid out or feeding stuff taken out of the bins in the fields. And this last episode, when Andrew had ‘forgotten’ to let him know that he had had the farm boar, a bad-tempered animal, moved into one of the hay barns could have been downright dangerous. Stupid so-an’-so.

  Wilbert straightened, his bruised backside making itself felt. He had gone into the barn earlier to collect an armful of straw for bedding for an ailing sheep that he was keeping separate from the rest of the flock for a few days. He’d got the animal into a small pen he’d constructed in one of the outbuildings, and his mind had been on the matter in hand when he’d entered the barn. The next thing he’d known was a terrific roar and he’d found himself flat on his back. He’d got the fright of his life before he realized he’d been bowled over by the boar as it had started up from where it had been sleeping amongst the straw. To add insult to injury, Andrew had been passing the entrance to the barn and had stood laughing his head off.

  Wilbert’s jaw clenched. Andrew had soon stopped his guffawing when he’d given him a few home truths, though, the idiot.

 
; Draining the mug of tea, Wilbert set it down but continued to stand brooding about the incident as he gazed across the darkening room. Their Molly had caused more trouble than she’d ever know when she had done the dirty on Joe McHaffie, but it wasn’t that which stuck in his craw when he thought of his youngest daughter. No, it was the fact that Molly had broken her mother’s heart when she had upped and disappeared out of their lives.

  Wilbert turned and looked up at the picture again, his rugged face set in lines of deep sadness.

  After their second daughter, Ruth, had been born, he and Moll had waited for more bairns to come along, but the years had gone by without a sign of a babby, despite them both being as fit as fiddles. Then Moll had fallen for Molly and she had been beside herself with happiness, and when the baby was a girl and could take her mam’s Christian name, Moll had been tickled pink that tradition at last allowed it. And in truth, despite the fact that he’d been hoping for a little lad to follow him into shepherding, he wouldn’t have swapped Molly for ten sons once she’d arrived. And the sun had shone out of the bairn’s backside as far as her mam was concerned.

  He paused in his reflections. Perhaps it was judgement on him and Moll that things had turned out the way they had, because you shouldn’t have favourites among your bairns. The others would always sense it. But if Bertha and Ruth had resented their sister, and he didn’t know if that was the case, when Molly had thrown his and Moll’s adoration back in their faces they’d certainly had the last laugh. And when Molly had come back for her mam’s funeral and acted as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, he hadn’t known which way was up. And her with two little bairns in tow from that fella she’d cleared off with. To be fair, that must have been hard for Joe to take.