Family Drama 4 E-Book Bundle (168 page)

Ah well, one day she would laugh about his coming with Tom and Florrie round the fire. ‘There was me, poor Jill all alone in the blizzard, and who did I dig up but my long-lost cousin. Then he was off before I had time to wash his socks! That’s Yewells for you.’

She watched as he plodded forward, his knees plunging into the snow. Now and then he stopped and waved and looked back to the safety of their snow house. He’d looked so guilty as he walked away with a faraway gaze in his eye. Her own eyes were smarting but it wasn’t the wind.

His body was bent into the wind, his trousers bagged and his coat flapping; his outline fading into the landscape. She wanted to call out to him to come back but her lips were cracked and no sound came out of her throat. So that was that then?

If he made it to the lane end and took it steady,
he could walk on the wall tops like the postman. Ben knew the lie of the land. He had his snap and a hip flask of hot cocoa and brandy. There were icicles to suck like lollies, but whether there would be a train to catch was another matter. When he got to the crossroads there were plenty of places where folk would give him a bed.

She’d done her bit and kept him safe. He in turn had helped her out and given her the courage to look at Sylvia’s face. That was what family was for, but there was something in his unexpected return that had taken her by surprise. His warmth had stirred up feelings, memories of what it was to be young and alive to the attraction of a handsome face. Auntie Florrie was right: ‘You should get out more. You allus were the bonny one. Why’ve you let yourself go? You’re only young the once.’

She did her chores watching the sky for any change, any sign of the thaw. It was getting colder and the clouds were like lumps of lead. Once the wind blew in it would start all over again, and she hoped that Ben would be well on hs way down the valley by then.

The weather might not be thawing but she had, she mused. She was not so frozen up and dead to feeling. Ben had given her back some hope, she thought as she made her way to the hen hut with the chicken feed. There might be a frozen egg if she was lucky.

When she reached the netting she saw disaster had struck. There was a hole and a trail of blood and feathers. A bloody fox…She needed no soothsayer to know what she was going to find in there. With a sinking heart she stepped into the cage and gathered up the remains of her chickens. Only one sat shivering on the roost pole.

The worst of it by far was the fact that there was no one back in the kitchen. No one to share this bad news. For the first time in weeks she needed a drink.

There was one bottle she kept for old time’s sake down in the cellar on the top shelf. She went down every now and then to polish it, inspecting it and talking to it. It was good to know it was there. She knew she could go down those steps and help herself any time she chose to do so. It had felt the right thing to do to remind herself that temptation was round every door, but tonight it felt like a step too ambitious. She was frozen through and her corns were on fire. The house felt so empty.

Mirren opened the cellar door, sniffing the air. She fingered the bottle and took it off the shelf, hugging it to her chest. You were my comfort in times past, my comfort in times to come, she thought. Your time has come…

It was like old times on night exercises, yomping over the snow towards the lane end, but the usual
landmarks were hidden by the drifts and hard to make out. One wrong turn and Ben was off track again. His reinforced leggings were hard to lift; he prodded his stick like a blind man testing the depth of drifts. It was slow and exhausting work but the day was still fresh, plenty of time, and yet each step was taking him away from Cragside and the woman whom he loved dearly; the girl who must face the rest of the snows alone.

He prayed there was a supply of letters and supplies waiting at the lane end, that she could bring the horse down and the sled to collect provisions and news of her farm hands. He strained to hear the noise of wagons cutting through the deep tunnels that gathered on the road down towards civilisation, but there was none.

That would be a sign that he was doing the right thing. ‘Who’re you kidding?’ he sneered out loud. He just wanted to ease his own conscience, to make his desertion more comfortable, soothe his confusion, but he felt like a heel. He was taking flight from Cragside because he was a coward. He’d seen the evidence and he couldn’t face all the lies and deceit again. Yet she always seemed so sober.

How many times had he wanted to tell her how he felt but sensed his words would bring only rejection and awkwardness between them? Better to bugger off now and make the best of a bad job. If only she’d given him a sign that what
they felt for each other was more than kinship and companionship. How could it be any other way? They were bound together by suffering and misunderstandings.

Mirren had a passionate heart, frozen still, dormant, waiting like the poor sheep sheltering even now under walls and drifts, waiting to be rescued, breathing, scratching, waiting for the thaw to save them. One day she’d blossom and love again, but not him.

Jack had never been the right man for her right from the start. Ben’d hung back and watched them pair off, knowing his step-cousin was too wild and wilful to make her happy. Whereas he, like a timid tup, hovered around, hoping she would notice him. ‘You have to grab life by the balls,’ his old sergeant used to say. He was more like a useless tup in a field full of ewes, not up to the job.

The two of them were rooted to this spot by generations of breeding. Hill farming was bred in their bones so why was he running away now, making excuses, leaving her in the lurch?

He was afraid of that bottle in the cellar. Its power was too strong for him to overcome. He was afraid of there being no loving responses in her. He was afraid of being turned down.

The sun pierced through the clouds for a few seconds as he reached the lane end and saw what remained of the crossroads shimmering like silver
glass where the telegraph poles went in two directions. This was where he must have stumbled off track the first time. The silence was eerie, the wind whipping his earlobes and the end of his nose. It was time to kick the ice off his leggings and take out a snack from his bag.

It wasn’t that far to make for Scar Head and give them a surprise, though better to make down the lane leading up from Windebank. It felt like weeks since he had left the train, the longest time he had ever spent with Mirren alone. The more he’d lived with her the more he’d loved her.

He got up and shook off the snow. No more dithering. Time to head down the valley before the light went. He would face the huge barriers of uncut snow when he came to them. No diggers had got close to this moor yet and nothing was left but a pile of letters and bills for the farm. No sign of boxes hidden on the slate shelf halfway up the wall.

Dieter would be out on digging patrols. All the POWs would be made to work off the farms. As Ben walked, his legs got heavier and heavier and his heart sank into his boots. Funny how he could hear her voice in his head teasing. ‘Move along, slowcoach, stop flither flathering. Get on with it!’ He brushed the crumbs from his frozen coat. If only there was another way…
Mirren found she’d laid the table for two and whipped up the cutlery with annoyance. Ben would be where he wanted to be by now, no doubt propping up the bar at The Fleece, boasting about being off to foreign parts.

She could do with making off to sunshine and leaving this whole sorry mess behind. The house was as quiet and empty as it used to be, and somehow that was no comfort at all. Something was missing–rather someone was missing–and she’d let him go without even a murmur of protest.

How would the family pay for all their losses? Only by pulling in their horns. If truth were told, she didn’t want Tom and Florrie taking over again, having to share a kitchen with another woman. Doreen was different. Florrie wanted to gossip about folk who didn’t interest Mirren.

It was Ben who would’ve made this harsh life bearable. Now he was gone. Perhaps it was a sign she’d lived too long with only the grandfather clock for company to be looking to him for something that wasn’t there.

They’d danced a bit and he’d comforted her over the lost snaps. It wasn’t exactly lovey-dovey candlelit dinners with soppy words. He’d sat on his hands. That sort of stuff was for the pictures. It didn’t happen in real life, not up here in the Dales. Courting was a shifty sort of arrangement, made on the dance floor or at the Young Farmers’
club. She was far too old for any of that now. Then she smelled the milk burning in the pan and jumped up. Just time for her comfort.

She flopped down with the whisky bottle and the bowl of hot water, and poured the contents into the bowl to soak her feet. If she couldn’t drink at least she could use the spirit to dab on her corns.

She felt a sudden draught, a blast of ice and wind, and the door banging open, the dogs barking and wagging their tails, jumping up at the open door.

There was a snowman in the doorway grinning, his beard full of icicles, his coat sticking out like a crinoline. She dropped the bottle in shock.

‘Now don’t go blaming me for that,’ said a familiar voice.

‘Ben! What are you doing back here? Is it that bad outside?’ Her heart was thundering with pleasure at the sight of him. ‘Sit down, sit down…I’ll get you a brew.’

‘I got halfway down the hill and then I saw how bad it was. It’s not good. Then I thought to myself, there’ll be other ships but now’s not the time to be deserting yer post. Cragside is my home as well as yours, and I don’t want to see you all ruined for want of another pair of hands. I hope you don’t mind…’ He paused, looking down with furrowed icy eyebrows at her standing in a bowl of water.

She burst out laughing. ‘You’ve caught me at
my ablutions…but I think you thought I was back on the hard stuff and came back to spy on me. Oh, Ben! Look, it’s all here to soothe my corns. Smell it! Proper medicine this time.’

Enough shillyshallying, it was now or never. ‘You’re a good man, Ben Yewell. I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in all my life. The house’s been that quiet. I can’t believe you’ve come back. I want to hug you. I missed you so!’

‘Then what’s stopping you?’ he laughed, his ice-blue eyes sparkling with mischief at giving her such a shock.

She tore at his frozen clothes and flung them on the floor. Her heart was racing as she fingered his icy cheek. Her kiss was closed, dry and tentative, testing, hesitant, just a peck, waiting for him to draw back in shock. He searched her face with his eyes. Then she kissed him hungrily, her lips apart as if she was drinking in the very heart of him. They rolled down onto the old sofa that smelled of dogs and coal, lying in each other’s arms, laughing.

‘Oh, Mirren, can you forgive me? I thought the worst. I wanted to catch you out and now it’s me who’s ashamed.’

She stopped his mouth with a kiss.

Ben was home and this time she was going to give him such a Yorkshire welcome that nothing would make him go away again.

In the early dawn she woke to feel the warmth of the bed and the big hump beside her. She wanted to shake him and kiss him awake, and leaned over.

‘This’s the only way to keep warm from now on, better than any hot-water bottle,’ she whispered. The bed was rumpled and the sheets awry, but Ben turned towards her and cupped her breast, flicking her nipple alive with one finger and feathering her in a slow deliberate caress as if there was all the time in the world.

Her hands explored him back. There were no boundaries or stone walls between them now, nothing but pleasure given and received.

Somewhere in that precious evening they had crossed the river, over the wooden bridge from friends to lovers, and now her body yearned for more. This was how it should be. This is what she needed, feelings long forgotten as his fingers roamed across her skin and lit a fire no blizzard would ever quench.

Ben leaned over his lover with a smile. To think if he had walked away he’d have missed the fire in her eyes as she welcomed him home. This was his home for good, hefted to her side for the rest of his life. Who needed promised lands when all the world was right here in this bed, burning up with eagerness to draw him back into her? In this curtained-off cocoon was life and
courage and hope; all he had ever wanted. Mirren, his lover, his woman, his friend. He nuzzled her cheek and grinned. ‘Let’s be having you again…’

Outside the wind turned from the east towards the south, warmer air crept northwards, changing snow to fat goose feathers. Everything looked the same but wasn’t.

The sheep sensed the change, the crows rasped and the cows snorted. Soon the icy gargoyles on the drainpipes would shrink and melt in the morning sun, ice glistening to the sound of sliding snow.

Down in the valley the mechanical diggers ground their way up the gritted track, banks of brown slush parted as the plough divided its spoil. Footprints left a damper patch.

Winter was losing its stranglehold at long last. The curlews bubbled and called, flying over a shrinking sea of snow to find their nesting places. Spring was on the move and new life growing, safe under the blankets in a bedroom at Cragside Farm.

The house creepers sank back into the darkness, content.

Author’s Notes

You will not find Windebank or Scarperton on any map of the Yorkshire Dales for they are fusions of many villages and townships in the Craven area. My story and its characters are entirely fictitious but I have based some incidents on local events before and after the Second World War.

I am indebted to the following for sharing their stories of their farming lives: Anne Holgate, Olive and Joe Coates, Elizabeth Hird, Gordon Sargeant and Dick Middleton but especially to the late Mrs Edith Carr for the loan of photographs. I have drawn inspiration from her detailed account of surviving the winter of 1947 from her memoir:
Edith Carr-Life on Malham Moor. A mini-biography
by W.R. Mitchell, Castleberg Publications (1999).

I also drew ideas and inspiration from local exhibitions at the Folly Museum, Settle, and Victoria Hall, and from local publications:
North Craven at War: A Collection by the North Craven Historical Research Group
, Hudson History publications of Settle (2005) and
How they lived in the Yorkshire Dales
by W.R. Mitchell, Castleberg Publications (2001).