Beneath a Frosty Moon Read online

  ‘You’re defying me? Refusing to obey?’

  It was strange, Cora thought, but in spite of the farmer’s wife’s stance and her words, she felt that Mrs Burns wasn’t as angry as she was trying to make out.

  Whether Farmer Burns recognized this she didn’t know, but he suddenly shot to his feet, stretching himself so he appeared to stand a good foot taller and his face red with suppressed rage. ‘You’re trouble, girl. I knew it the minute you walked in. Take after your mother, I’ll be bound. Well, we can do without your sort so think on.’

  Cora didn’t ask herself at this moment what she would do if the farmer and his wife turned them out and they were split up again, because deep down inside she knew there was something very bad here and if she weakened now it would affect not just her but Maria and the little ones. Farmer Burns had liked looking at Enid and Maud in the bath and she had seen his big body move slightly forwards in his chair when the sisters had been handed their flannels by Mrs Burns and told to wash themselves. So this was the reason there were no boys at the farm. It was nothing to do with decency as Mrs Burns had suggested; just the opposite, in fact.

  Her mind grappling with knowledge she didn’t quite understand and couldn’t grasp, she stared at the man in front of her. She was as slender as a reed and the farmer was three times the width of her and more than twice as heavy, but as she continued to glare at him it was he who turned from her, muttering vile profanities as he stomped out of the kitchen, banging the door behind him as he stepped outside.

  For a moment silence reigned. Enid and Maud were still standing with their pitifully inadequate towels held in front of them, Mrs Burns appeared frozen, and Cora felt light-headed with the relief that the immediate danger had passed. It was the familiar sound of Susan snivelling behind her that brought Cora back to herself. ‘Stop it.’ She turned, her voice unusually sharp. ‘There’s nothing to cry about. Go and get ready for bed, the lot of you.’ And when no one moved, she said again, more sharply still, ‘Go on, all of you.’

  As Maria ushered the others out of the kitchen after Enid and Maud had picked up their clothes, Cora found she was shaking inside, the enormity of what had occurred fully dawning on her. But she couldn’t dwell on that, not right now. Instead she forced herself to continue to stand upright although her knees felt weak with shock.

  ‘There will be no more baths like this, not for anyone,’ she said to Mrs Burns, ‘or I’ll tell someone. Mr Travis. He’d listen. He’d believe me. He’d think it’s not right.’

  Mr Travis was the headteacher at the village school and taught the seniors, of which Cora was one; two other teachers – Mrs Fallow and Mrs Dennis – each being in charge of the juniors and infants. She had no idea if Mr Travis would believe something was wrong if she told him what had happened. Children, adults too, bathed in baths in front of the fire all the time – they had done the same at home – but this was different. Farmer Burns made it different.

  Rachel Burns said nothing for a moment. She was aware that if she had spoken the truth to this indignant slip of a girl in front of her, Cora would have been surprised. Oh, yes, very surprised. But of course she wouldn’t do that. All she had left in life was her standing within the community, and if Bernard was exposed for what he was, it would reflect on her. She had been fifteen years old when she had married Bernard Burns, although being thin and flat-chested she’d looked younger. And at first she had mistaken his lust for love. It wasn’t until the tenth year of marriage, when she had caught him handling one of the young children of their farmhand, that she had understood why his passion for her had waned. She no longer looked like a child.

  He had been more careful after that, going further afield for his pleasures, but she had known what he was about when he came home after dark on market days or disappeared for the evening on ‘farm business’. He disgusted her – in fact she loathed the very ground he walked on – but she had been nothing more than a little village brat from the poorest family hereabouts when he had picked her out and courted her, and the life of a fairly well-to-do farmer’s wife was infinitely preferable than returning to her roots. And so, without a word being said, she had moved out of the master bedroom and their life had continued fairly passively until the war had brought the evacuees into their home. Bernard had chosen Enid and Maud and when he had arrived home with them in the back of the cart she had known instantly what he was about, but had made no comment. And she had departed to pick up the next batch with his instructions ringing in her ears. No boys on the grounds of propriety. But again she’d made no demur.

  Now, her voice flat, she said to Cora, ‘Farmer Burns has important friends in the community, child. Mr Travis is one, along with the local magistrate and others in authority.’

  Mrs Burns was saying she wouldn’t be believed. Cora stared at the farmer’s wife. In spite of herself, her voice shook a little when she said, ‘I don’t care. I’ll shout it in the village square, I’ll go into the shops and everywhere until someone takes notice. I will, I mean it.’

  ‘I believe you would.’

  ‘I won’t have my sisters treated like that.’

  Mrs Burns nodded slowly. Saturday night bath time had always turned her stomach from when Bernard had insisted upon it shortly after Enid and Maud had arrived, and not just for the children’s sake. Every Saturday she had felt as though he was rubbing her nose in his filth. ‘I daresay the six of you could have your bath in the wash house. The bath’s always kept in there anyway. It’ll save me bringing it into the kitchen and it’ll be more convenient all round. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.’

  They surveyed each other for a moment more, what had been left unsaid vibrating in the air between them before Cora turned and followed the others. As she walked up the narrow stairs to the attic rooms her head was whirling. She knew. Mrs Burns knew that her husband liked to look at Enid and Maud naked.

  They were all waiting for her in the larger bedroom. Anna and Susan had changed into their nightdresses and were snuggled down in their bed, half asleep, but the three older girls were sitting bolt upright on the other one, faces chalk-white. For once, it was Enid who spoke first. ‘What happened? What did she say?’

  ‘She’s agreed we can have a bath in the wash house from now on, and we’ll make sure the door’s shut, all right?’

  ‘He – he won’t like that.’

  ‘I don’t care what he likes.’

  ‘He’ll be mad.’

  Again Cora said, ‘I don’t care.’

  Enid’s plump body slumped and Maud put her arm round her sister. Looking at Cora, she said, ‘He’ll take it out on Enid, he always does.’

  Cora and Maria glanced at each other and then Cora crouched down in front of Enid who was staring at the floor. ‘What does Maud mean? How does he take things out on you?’

  ‘He doesn’t.’ There was a note of fear in Enid’s voice, shriller than before, and she glanced at the bedroom door as though the farmer was going to come bursting in at any moment.

  ‘He does.’ Maud wouldn’t be shushed by her sister. ‘He makes her do things.’

  ‘Shut up, Maud.’ Enid jumped to her feet, yanking her sister with her and practically dragging her out of the room.

  Cora stared after them and as the door was slammed shut, Maria said, ‘They’re scared stiff of Farmer Burns, Cora. Maud’s just told me their da’s in prison and when their mam came to visit them last year he chased her off the farm and wouldn’t let her talk to them.’

  ‘He can’t do that.’

  ‘Well, he did, and she’s not been back since or written to them.’

  ‘Or if she has, they haven’t got the letters,’ said Cora meaningfully.

  That had been nearly a month ago, and when she had told Wilfred about it the following Monday at school he had been highly indignant, but on her behalf, not Enid’s. ‘If he tries to bully you like he does them, you tell me,’ he’d said angrily, for all the world as though he was a full-grown man rathe
r than a thirteen-year-old lad.

  Cora had smiled and said she would, although she had known she wouldn’t. What good would it do? She was the one living at Stone Farm, not Wilfred. She had to fight her own battles for herself and her sisters. But at least she didn’t have the added burden of worrying about Horace. Not only was her brother under Wilfred’s protection, but Appletree Farm was altogether different from Stone Farm from what Horace and Wilfred had told her. Horace had landed on his feet yet again. Wilfred described the farmer and his wife, who’d had three sons, as salt of the earth, and he and Horace were treated as members of the family. They were expected to do their bit round the farm when they weren’t at school, but they didn’t mind that. Neither did Cora. It would keep her brother out of mischief.

  The youngest son, Jed Croft, was a year older than herself and Wilfred. Cora saw him at school in the company of a couple of friends every day but had never really spoken to him. Being the oldest pupils, Jed and his cronies were the undisputed hierarchy at the small village school – apart from twin girls from a nearby hamlet who had shades of Alma Potts about them – and to Cora they seemed very much aware of their exalted position.

  She didn’t know if she liked Jed or not. He and his friends kept themselves somewhat aloof from the rest of the fifty or so children. But there was no doubt he stood out from the crowd, being a good head taller than his pals and handsome to boot, with thick black hair and vivid blue eyes. But handsome is as handsome does, as her mam used to say in a disparaging fashion. Cora had never really understood what that meant but nevertheless it seemed to fit Jed Croft. Everyone appeared to hero-worship him, even her brother and Wilfred, and for some reason Cora found that grated on her. Not that she had time to muse about Jed once she was home from school, Mrs Burns made sure of that. Every minute until they climbed the stairs for bed was accounted for. School hours were more in the nature of a rest most days.

  The school itself was very different from the one in Sunderland, being a small village building that until the commencement of war had only housed fewer than thirty children. There was a tiny dirt yard outside, divided by a fence into Boys and Girls, with one rudimentary lavatory each. The school had no water supply and every morning several of the boys fetched buckets of water from a horse trough outside the church. The juniors and infants shared one small room with their two female teachers, and Mr Travis taught the seniors in the other. Cookery lessons were conducted at the vicarage due to the kindness of the vicar’s wife who took batches of children from the Seniors and Juniors several times a week, and physical exercise and nature study involved working in the vicarage garden and outhouses where the children were expected to do everything from weeding and growing vegetables and flowers, to digging and bagging potatoes and other produce in due course. ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,’ Wilfred said drily to Cora when they were first told of the arrangements. There seemed quite a bit of this. ‘Agricultural Studies’ turned out to be a team of children from the Seniors class working on any local farms who requested the unpaid help three hours a day twice a week, and science lessons involved practical animal husbandry and crop production with the children being part of the management of resources.

  Farmer Burns never availed himself of the free labour though, and there were no visitors in any capacity to Stone Farm, but it was through the school that Cora first got to see Appletree Farm at the beginning of August. The Seniors, who consisted of Jed and his two friends, the twins, and several other children besides Cora, Maria, Wilfred and Enid, were told that Farmer Croft had consented to furthering their education by allowing them to assist with the haymaking which occurred well before harvest. They would merely be required to rake the cut grass, they were told, but it was an important stage in the process which ensured that all parts of the precious crop were dried out to the right degree to avoid pockets of mould, mustiness or moisture.

  Cora didn’t know what she had expected to see as they had arrived at Appletree Farm. Probably something along the lines of Stone Farm. The day was soft and warm, the sky blue with long streaks of white clouds, and the morning air promised a rising heat to come, but it was the sight of the farmhouse that gripped her as she sat squashed in the back of the horse and cart that Farmer Croft was driving. The house was two-storeyed, with soft red-brick walls spread with vines and climbing roses and the chimneys muffled in ivy. Arched lattices overgrown with honeysuckle framed the windows and front door, and in the small fenced rectangle of front garden grew a profusion of flowers – roses, hollyhocks, pinks, lavender. She stared, spellbound. It was everything she had ever imagined a farmhouse to be and was as different from Stone Farm as chalk from cheese. It spoke of peace and warmth and comfort; it was a home. She wanted to cry.

  The fourteen children who comprised the Seniors worked all morning in the fields, the skylarks swooping and calling overhead and the air scented with the perfumes of summer. The farm had a burn running through the bottom of one of the fields over gleaming pebbles and smooth rocks, the water crystal clear and pure, and mid-morning the group took a break there when Jed’s mother brought them a huge basket of teacakes hot from the range oven and dripping with butter. Cora took off her shoes and socks and dabbled her feet in the icy water as she ate, Maria on one side of her and Enid on the other, and as had happened several times before when she was in close proximity to Enid she noticed the smell that clung to the other girl now and again. It was an unpleasant odour, not least because there was something about it that was faintly reminiscent of Farmer Burns, but perhaps she was imagining this. And sometimes, for days on end, there was no smell at all.

  She glanced at Enid but the other girl was stolidly eating her third teacake, her eyes on the babbling water, not looking to left or right. Cora didn’t attempt to make conversation knowing it was a fruitless exercise, and when in the next moment someone plumped down behind the three of them she looked round, expecting it to be Wilfred. Instead Jed’s cornflower-blue eyes laughed at her. ‘Well?’ He grinned, raking back a lock of black hair that always fell over one eye. ‘What do you think of my mam’s teacakes then?’

  It was the first time he had spoken directly to her and for a moment she was too taken aback to reply; the full force of the beautiful blue eyes was unnerving. And then she collected herself. ‘They’re lovely. It’s kind of her.’

  ‘Aye, well she’s like that, my mam.’

  He seemed different here, on his farm, Cora thought. Nicer. Much nicer. For the first time she could see why Wilfred and Horace liked him. And as though the thought had brought him over, Wilfred sat down beside Jed, his eyes on her face as he said, ‘Didn’t have times like this in our school back home, did we, lass? Old Woody wouldn’t have allowed it.’

  It wasn’t so much what he said as the way he said it that made Cora feel odd. Wilfred’s voice was jolly and he was smiling, but she didn’t think he was smiling inside.

  ‘Bit of a stickler for the rules, was he?’ Jed said, but to her, not Wilfred.

  Cora shrugged. ‘Mr Wood’s all right.’

  ‘Bit handy with the cane.’ Wilfred stretched his legs out so that Jed was forced to move back a little. ‘Remember when he caught Oscar Todd and Larry smoking some tippers Larry had scrounged off his brother? They couldn’t sit down for a week.’

  ‘Tippers?’ said Jed, again to her.

  ‘Fag ends,’ said Wilfred shortly. ‘By, Jed, don’t you know anything?’ He dug the other boy in the side as though he was just joking but Cora had caught a definite edge to his voice. Before anyone could speak, he continued, ‘You lot don’t know you’re born here with Travis, I can tell you. Me an’ Cora didn’t have it so easy back in Sunderland, did we, lass? It’s as different there as chalk to cheese. But we stuck together. We’ve always stuck together, haven’t we, Cora.’

  Cora saw Jed’s eyebrows give the slightest movement upwards. Embarrassed, she reached for her socks and shoes and busied herself pulling them on without replying. She felt flustered and annoye
d with Wilfred and all at odds. Maria and Enid followed her lead and as the three of them stood up Cora didn’t look at the two boys.

  The rest of the morning passed by without incident but as Cora worked at fluffing out the hay with the other girls, she found she was aware of Jed Croft in a way she hadn’t been before. Her senses heightened, she knew exactly where he was at any given time, and when she heard him laugh or call something to his friends, her heart would thud faster.

  They had been packed into Farmer Croft’s cart like sardines in a can on the way to the farm earlier, and on the ride back she made sure she was in the middle of the cluster of girls at the front of the cart with her back to the boys. But even without glancing his way, she could see Jed’s deep blue eyes and black hair, and the way he’d looked at her when he had first sat down earlier. He was there on the screen of her mind.

  He liked her. Jed Croft liked her in that way, and Wilfred had taken umbrage at it. Which meant . . . This thought was unwelcome but had to be faced. Which meant that Wilfred might like her in that way too. She’d suspected this in some recess of her mind for a while, she realized unhappily. She just hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself because if she did then everything would change, one way or another, and she didn’t want it to. Wilfred was her friend. No, he was more than that. He was like a brother and she loved him, she loved him very much, but only as a brother. She could never like him in the way a lass liked a lad when she walked out with him, whereas Jed . . .

  Upset and confused, angry with herself and Wilfred and even Jed Croft, Cora sat with her back rigid in the cart as it bumped along, her head whirling. She hated it here, she told herself fiercely. She hated Stone Farm and the way everyone was frightened of Farmer Burns, even Mrs Burns, truth be told, and yes, herself too. Her stomach knotted. He wasn’t violent, not like Wilfred’s da, but he terrified her and she knew there was something bad happening at the farm, something she couldn’t put her finger on but that was real, nevertheless. The hard work, the smells, the stifling little attic room, the lavatory arrangements, everything else wouldn’t be so bad without Farmer Burns. Even the constant ache of missing her mam. And now there was Wilfred too. Her world was rocking like this cart, not only from side to side but backwards and forwards. From today things would never be the same as they had been.