Above the Harvest Moon Page 6

  He began to pick his way down the narrow lane, careful of the ice underfoot which made walking treacherous. There were more lights than usual in the windows, it being New Year’s Eve, and once he’d emerged into Southwick Road there were more folk about too. He’d already decided not to take a cab and continued down Southwick Road into Sunderland Road, but it wasn’t until he’d walked a couple of miles and North Hylton Road stretched before him that he began to breathe more easily.This area was more open, with just the odd house and farm dotted here and there, and by the time he had reached the old quarries at the back of Hylton Red House, the lights of the town were far behind him.

  It was only then he permitted himself to acknowledge the truth which had been gnawing at him since he had left his mother’s house. That little lass in the kitchen had been scared to death of him. He’d noticed before she was nervous and on the quiet side but he hadn’t been sure if it was him or whether she was the same with everyone. But tonight when she had looked at him he had known. He disgusted her. Why it should bother him when he had been used to a similar reaction from people most of his life he didn’t know. But it did. Damn it, it did.

  He stood for a moment staring over the white fields in front of him before turning off the main road and into the narrow lane which led to Clover Farm. The night was quiet and still, every twig on every tree and bush in the hedgerow either side of the winding lane outlined in silver tracery against the moonlit sky. The frozen tufted grass was especially lovely, each blade encrusted and edged with filigree frost-work. It brought the mingled pain and pleasure that beauty always produced in his chest and he shook his head at what he considered shameful weakness. He would rather cut out his own tongue than confess that such things - the sun setting like a ball of fire in a copper sky, shimmering films of mist rolling over a field in the pearly light of dawn, even a nightingale’s song - had the power to create a rhapsody in his soul. He was different enough already without adding to it.

  He could remember the very moment he discovered he wasn’t like everyone else. He had been five years old and the day had started when his mother had set him on her knee and explained he was going to have a new da along with a new brother and sister. Their own mam had died, like his da, but now they’d be one family again. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? He’d thought so. Grandma Hedley had never let him play out in the street with the other bairns and the thought of playmates had been exciting. But his new sister had screamed with fright at the sight of his face and had had to be taken home early.

  There had been no mirrors within his reach at his grandparents’ house where he and his mother had lived since he’d returned from the infirmary just after his second birthday. Later that afternoon he’d crept away into his grandmother’s hallowed front room, used only on high days and holidays or when the priest or doctor called at the house. He had pulled a chair over to the small black-leaded fireplace which held a dried flower arrangement and peered into his grandma’s brass-framed mirror above the wooden mantelpiece holding two candlesticks and a clock.

  He had stared at his reflection for a long time.When he had finally climbed down and wiped his eyes, restoring the chair to its place by the door, he had understood why the pretty little girl who had come to the house had been so frightened. The very next week he had started school and the limited but happy world within the four walls of the house was gone for ever. There were folk who labelled the animal kingdom as cruel. He had discovered animals couldn’t hold a candle to humankind.

  There were no lights in the windows of the four labourer’s cottages built in a terrace at the end of the lane, but he hadn’t expected there to be. Everyone would be in the barn Farmer Shawe had ordered to be swept and cleared out for the end of year feast and celebrations to welcome the New Year in. No doubt the revelry was well underway by now and everyone would be making merry on homemade wine and beer and cider. Seamus Shawe was a good master in plenty of ways and progressive in his views, treating man and beast well, and he always provided plenty of food and drink.

  Once past the cottages which had no gardens at the front but long narrow strips of land at the back where each labourer’s wife and children cultivated their own crop of vegetables, the lane divided into two wide tracks. One led to the large sprawling farmhouse with its massive farmyard to the front and enclosed garden to the rear, with a wash-house and separate privy and beyond that an overgrown tangle of lawns and flower beds. The other snaked past a number of barns, the stables and other buildings, including the pigsties. It wound along at the side of fields enclosed by drystone walls until it came to the edge of a steep quarry. Here all the human excrement from the privies at the famhouse and cottages was dumped weekly by a farm cart kept specially for that purpose. Jake had visited other farms with Seamus and he counted himself fortunate there were no foul, stinking cesspools at Clover Farm. In some places the smell from the human waste far exceeded that of the animals.

  Taking the right track, he walked along the frozen ridges of dirt and snow to the back of the farmhouse which he entered by way of the kitchen. This room was enormous and the heart of the three-storey building which had been built towards the end of the seventeenth century by an ancestor of the present farmer. As well as the kitchen, there was a pleasant dining room and study on the ground floor, a sitting room and two bedrooms on the first floor and three bedrooms at the top of the house underneath the attic, but it was showing signs of severe neglect. Dust was thick, the stoneflagged floor didn’t look as if it had been scrubbed in weeks, and the black-leaded range was caked in fat and grime. Nevertheless the smell of bacon and burning wood was comforting; it meant home to him.

  Jake had first come to live at Clover Farm as a lad of fourteen, initially residing with an old couple in one of the labourers’ cottages before moving to the farmhouse itself shortly after the Shawes’ son was killed at the Somme in 1916. In those days Bess, Seamus’s wife, had been alive and the whole farmhouse had been as clean as a new pin. Enid Osborne, one of the labourers’ wives who cooked and cleaned for the two of them now, was not so particular.

  ‘You’re back then.’ Seamus was sitting smoking his pipe in front of the glowing fire, his slippered feet resting on the fender and a glass of whisky in one hand.

  ‘Aye, I’m back.’ Jake smiled down on the shining bald head of the man he thought of as a father. The man who had been instrumental in lifting him out of the suffocating hell of the town and into what he privately termed as heaven on earth.

  He’d come across Clover Farm as a lad of ten one Sunday afternoon. As was his wont, he’d escaped the town to walk the countryside. Skirting any buildings to avoid human contact and the inevitable staring, he’d stopped to drink at the brook which fed the farm with water. He had noticed a horse lying on its side at the edge of the bank some distance away, and what looked like a new-born foal half in and half out of the water.

  Realising something was seriously amiss, he’d pulled the foal onto the thick grass by its mother and then raced across a couple of fields of waving corn towards the barns he’d seen, shouting as he went. He was brought up short as he rounded the corner of the first barn by a man grabbing hold of his arm.

  ‘Hey, what you think you’re up to, trampling my corn and hollering like that?’ the man had shouted in his ear, shaking him like a terrier with a rat.

  He’d gabbled his story, upon which the man, who had turned out to be Seamus himself, had called for a couple of men in the distance and the lot of them had returned to the brook, Seamus keeping hold of his arm when he’d tried to disappear. The mare, a favourite of the farmer’s, was already dead, but thanks to his prompt action the foal was saved, and that had been the start of his friendship with Clover Farm. Seamus had offered him a weekend job cleaning the cow-houses and stables, working in the fields, feeding the animals and the hens and turkeys which made a substantial profit at market come Christmas. When he had completed his schooling he had gone to live at the farm and begun work properly.

 
It wasn’t an easy life. In winter the wind could be like a carving knife, cutting hands and cheeks until they bled, and when added to driving snow it had the ability to turn coats, mufflers and gloves into frozen boards. The fourteen-hour-plus days, longer at harvest time, tested strength and stamina, but Jake had taken to the life like a duck to water.

  The farmer and his wife and son had always treated him differently to their other employees, but for the first time in his life the distinction had been a good one. They had looked beyond his face, and everyone else on the farm had taken their cue from their master. Consequently he had found a contentment bordering on happiness.The feeling of belonging had grown when, after his son’s death, Seamus had made him his manager and invited him into the farmhouse to live.

  ‘I told them we’d put in an appearance a bit later,’ Seamus said now as Jake took his coat off and sat down in the other big armchair at the side of the range. ‘We needn’t stay long, they’ll be dancing and carrying on until the early hours most likely.’ He pushed a second glass to Jake, along with the bottle of whisky.‘There’ll be a few sore heads in the morning, sure as eggs are eggs.’

  ‘I dare say.’ Jake poured himself a good measure, knocking back half of it in one swallow before relaxing in the chair and stretching out his long legs. Drinking was the least of the shenanigans that went on at times like these. After the last harvest supper, young Herbert Lyndon had come cap in hand to Seamus to announce he was going to wed Florence, one of the other workers’ comely sixteen-year-old daughter, a mite sharpish. Seamus had given his blessing and the wedding had gone ahead forthwith, and both mothers were already knitting baby clothes.

  The two men sat talking for some time in front of the fire, their conversation easy and punctuated by comfortable silences. It was after one of these that Seamus straightened in his chair, saying, ‘I want to talk to you about something, lad, and tonight is as good a time as any, it being the end of one year with a new one about to come on us. How do you see Daniel fitting in here?’

  ‘Daniel? Daniel Osborne, Jack’s lad?’

  ‘Aye, him.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘You think he’s brighter than average?’

  Jake stared at Seamus. He didn’t understand where the conversation was going. Nevertheless, he considered the question for a moment or two before he said, ‘Aye, Daniel’s a canny lad, but more than that he’s one of them you can give a job to and know it’ll be done come hell or high water and done well.’

  Seamus nodded. ‘I want you to start giving him a bit of responsibility over the others. He can take the load off your shoulders to some extent which’ll give you time to take on the accounts and office work.’

  ‘You do the office work.’

  ‘Aye, I know. Now I want to show you what’s what.’ As Jake went to speak, Seamus held up his hand. ‘Look, lad, I went to see the old quack afore Christmas after that last turn I had.’

  ‘That was indigestion.You’d just polished off one of Enid’s baked jam rolls single-handedly.’

  ‘Aye, well, I hadn’t let on to you but that wasn’t the first time I’d felt bad. Anyway, he says there’s something wrong with my ticker. Now don’t look like that, lad. I’m not about to pop my clogs, but I want to set certain things in order, just to ease my mind. For that reason I want you to know everything there is to know about the financial side of things, just in case you have to step in sharpish at any time. And if Daniel’s coming up alongside to do the sort of job you do now, a manager so to speak, it’ll be plain sailing rather than everyone disappearing up their own backsides. I can’t abide disorder. You know that.’

  Jake’s face was ashen but his voice was quiet when he said, ‘Tell me exactly what the doctor said.’

  Seamus took a swallow of his whisky. ‘Like I said, he reckons my heart’s none too good. Mind, I’m getting on a bit, like I told him. I’m no spring chicken.’

  Jake didn’t return Seamus’s smile. ‘You should have told me before.’

  ‘Not at Christmas, lad. That’d have put a damper on things. But while we’re sitting quiet like this there’s something else an’ all. I want to tell you now so you’re prepared. I’ve made a will, it’s with me solicitors in Bishopwearmouth, Appleby and Jefferson, and I did it just after our Terence bought it at the Somme.You get the lot, lad. Farm, bit in the bank, the lot. Just so you know and there’s no mix-up. All right? I’ve got that nephew that came sniffing about when Terence died and I wouldn’t put it past him to try something. I told him then and I’ll tell you now, from early on I thought of you as a second son. You don’t always have to sow the seed that lands in your field.’

  The burning in Jake’s eyes became unbearable and as the tears ran down his face he was aware of movement in the chair opposite. He felt the old farmer’s arms go round him and hold him tight. For the first time in his life he knew what it was to be hugged as a beloved son.

  Chapter 6

  Hannah was enjoying herself. The feeling of achievement that her mother had agreed to let her see in the New Year at Naomi’s was heady. Naomi’s four younger brothers were in bed but several of the neighbours were present, along with Larry and Hilda, Mr Wood’s children from his first marriage, and their spouses. Everyone was very merry, their jocularity only partly due to the beer and whisky which had been consumed.There was also a kind of defiance to the gaiety. Times might be bad, they might be in the grip of a slump that was worsening by the month with dole queues lengthening and a quarter of the country’s miners out of work, but they still knew how to enjoy themselves. The coal owners didn’t own their souls.

  The front room was crowded and laughter filled the house. Mr O’Leary from three doors up had brought along his accordion and was doing requests. As one of the hits of the previous year, ‘Fascinating Rhythm’, bellowed forth from a number of throats, Rose and Hannah smiled at each other.They were in the kitchen making up yet another batch of sandwiches, the third of the night.

  ‘It ought to be Naomi doing that,’ said Rose, waving at the pile of ham sandwiches Hannah had prepared. ‘You’re a guest when all’s said and done, lass.’

  ‘I like helping, Mrs Wood.’ She did like to be useful but she liked being with Naomi’s mother even more.

  ‘I don’t know what we’d have done without them joints of ham and beef Jake brought, and the ham and egg pie. He’s a good lad, my Jake.’ Rose was deftly slicing Hannah’s fruit cake into small squares as she spoke. ‘The lot’s gone now though but it’s nearly midnight, things slow down after that. Go and find Mr Fraser, hinny, and remind him he’s first-foot. Tell him to come an’ get the coal and bread and his bottle, I’ve got it here ready. It’s time he got himself away. I don’t want him rushing and ending up flat on his back on the ice with everyone waiting in the hall for his knock at the front door.’ Rose made a face and they both laughed.

  Hannah was still smiling as she left the kitchen with the plate of sandwiches in one hand and the fruit cake in the other. She nearly dropped the lot when she was grabbed from behind and Adam’s voice whispered in her ear, ‘I was wondering where you’d got to.’

  As he turned her round to face him, his flushed cheeks and bright eyes told Hannah he’d had more than a few beers. Quickly she said, ‘I’ve got to take these through and your mam wants me to tell Mr Fraser—’

  ‘Blow Mr Fraser.’ He took the plates out of her hands and put them on the bottom tread of the stairs. Then he pulled her against him as he said again, but under his breath now, ‘Blow Mr Fraser.’

  Hannah’s heart was beating so violently she could hardly breathe but she didn’t resist as he lowered his head and took her lips. She wanted Adam to kiss her. She’d dreamt of this so many times and it was actually happening. His mouth was warm and firm on hers, his hands moving up either side of her face as he murmured, ‘Oh, Hannah, Hannah, you’re bonny. And sweet, so sweet.’

  The front-room door opened and brought them jerking apart. As Mr Fraser lurched past them making for the
kitchen, Hannah let out a silent sigh. Her first kiss and she had liked it. She had liked it very much. ‘I’d . . . I’d better take the sandwiches and cake through,’ she said shyly, knowing she was blushing scarlet.

  ‘Aye, all right. I’ll help you.’

  Adam’s voice was soft, like his eyes. Hannah blinked, then as Adam smiled at her she returned the smile. Adam Wood had kissed her. She felt as though she was floating a foot above the ground as he followed her into the front room.

  When the stout wooden clock on the mantelpiece began to chime midnight and the ship’s whistles down in the docks along with myriad church bells rang out, everyone began to embrace each other. The men shook each other’s hands or clapped each other on the back and everyone said, ‘Happy New Year. Happy New Year.’ There was some laughing and hugging and one or two of the women were crying but not in a sad way.

  Hannah drank it in.This was lovely, lovely. Everything was lovely and Adam had kissed her.

  When the clock struck for the twelfth time they heard a loud knocking at the front door. As though no one had any idea it was going to happen, there were shrieks and cries as Mr Fraser came into the house, grinning widely and shouting, ‘First foot! First foot!’