Red Sky in the Morning (3 page)

They were nearing the cottage now and Anna could see that it was as tumbledown as he had said. It was a small, lime-washed, mud-and-stud, thatched building with a central front door and a window
on either side. To the left of the door, there was a gaping hole where the mud had crumbled away, leaving the wooden slats of the framework exposed. On the same side of the cottage the thatched
roof was badly in need of repair. Several of the windowpanes were broken and the front door leant drunkenly on its hinges. When Eddie pushed it open, it scraped the mud floor.

‘This place is only used at lambing time. I stay here, specially if the weather’s bad. My lad comes too – if his mam’ll let him.’ The last few words were murmured,
almost as if he did not intend the girl to hear them.

The door opened into a tiny hallway with steep stairs, more like a ladder than a proper staircase, leading to the upper floor.

‘It’s two up and two down, but I only ever use this room,’ Eddie said, leading her into the room to the right. He laughed as he jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the
other room. ‘I put the sheep in yon one.’ He stood looking about him. ‘But it’s not too bad in here. At least it’s weatherproof. We’ll get a fire going in
there.’ He nodded towards the grate, beside which, built into the brickwork, was a bread oven.

Anna glanced around. It was like stepping back into the last century – or maybe even the one before that. There were no rugs to clothe the coldness of the beaten-earth floor. In one corner
there was a rusty iron bedstead, but there was no mattress on it. A wooden rocking chair stood near the fireplace, and in the centre of the room there was a table and one kitchen chair. But to the
girl, who had lived rough for months in barns and outhouses, the promise of somewhere dry and warm was heaven-sent.

‘It’s a bit sparse.’ Eddie smiled apologetically. ‘But we don’t need much when we stay here. Anyway, I’ll fetch you the feather mattress I use. It’s in
our loft at the moment.’ He pointed. ‘That door there’s the pantry. I’ll soon get that stocked up for you. And this one’ – he opened another door that led
directly out of the kitchen at the side of the cottage – ‘goes outside to the privy. It’s down the path there. And you’ll have to fetch your water from the stream, I’m
afraid. But it’s fresh and clean. Comes from a spring up the hill.’

Anna nodded.

‘Like Tony said,’ Eddie went on, ‘I can repair the walls and the windows. I’ll rehang the front door and I’ll ask Joe Wainwright if he—’

‘I can’t pay for work to be done,’ Anna said at once. Then, realizing she might have sounded ungrateful, she gestured with her hand and added, ‘It’s –
it’s very kind of you, but I – I have nothing.’

Gently, Eddie said, ‘I wouldn’t expect you to pay, lass. The cottage belongs to me and it’s high time I got it repaired up.’

‘But I can’t afford to pay you rent, at least not at the moment.’

The man dismissed the idea. ‘Don’t you worry about that, love. Besides, you’re going to help me with the lambing.’ He paused significantly, as if he realized he was
forcing her to make up her mind, before adding quietly, ‘Aren’t you?’

They regarded each other steadily for several moments before she nodded slowly.

When Tony arrived home from school it was already dusk. He rushed into the kitchen and skidded to a halt, surprised to see his mother standing behind the table unpacking her
shopping. Before he could bite back the words, he said, ‘You’re home early. I didn’t think you’d be back from Auntie Lucy’s yet.’

Bertha smiled. ‘I couldn’t wait to get back to show you what I’ve bought you. Here – ’ she held out a brown paper bag towards him – ‘open it.’

Tony sat at the table. ‘But it’s not Christmas yet.’

His mother smiled at him. ‘Oh, that’s just a little extra one from your mam.’

Inside the bag was the usual bar of chocolate she always brought him after her trip to town, but today there was another present. A Dinky toy.

‘Aw, Mam – thanks! It’s that tractor I wanted.’ He opened the box and ran the toy along the table, imitating the sound of a real vehicle.
‘Chugger-chugger-chugger.’

Bertha watched him fondly. ‘That’s all right, love.’ She sat down opposite him and rested her arms on the table. ‘Now, tell me,’ she said, ‘what you’ve
been doing at school today.’

‘We had writing this morning and sums and then we played footie this after.’ The boy reeled off the events of his day.

With deceptive mildness, Bertha asked, ‘And did you enjoy the piece of pork pie and the cold sausages as well as the sandwiches I packed for you?’

The boy sat very still. His eyes were still on his new toy, but now he was not moving the tractor or imitating its sounds.

‘You can tell your mam, Tony love. I won’t be cross. I just want you to tell me if you took them. That’s all.’

The boy’s lower lip trembled. He opened his mouth once, then twice, but no sound came out. The back door opened and closed and there was the sound of Eddie removing his boots in the
scullery.

He appeared in the doorway into the kitchen and stood there for a few moments, glancing between the two seated on either side of the table. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing.’ Bertha snapped. ‘Me an’ Tony are just having a little chat. That’s all.’

‘Oh aye. What’ve you been up to now, lad? Not in trouble at school, are you?’ Eddie moved into the room and went to stand beside his son’s chair. He smiled down at the
boy and ruffled his hair. Tony shook his head but still did not speak. Instead he stared miserably at his new toy as if all the joy had been taken out of the gift. Eddie looked across the table at
his wife, a question in his eyes.

‘I was just asking him if he’d enjoyed the pork pie and sausages that’s gone missing out of my meat safe in the larder. That’s all. Simple enough question,
I’d’ve thought, but it seems as if he doesn’t want to answer me.’

‘Ah.’ Eddie let out a long sigh. ‘Now I get it.’ Heavily, he said, ‘Go out and feed the hens, there’s a good boy. Me and ya mam need to talk.’

Tony scrambled from his chair, leaving his new toy on the table. Quietly he closed the door from the kitchen into the scullery, but he did not leave the house. Instead, he stood with his ear
pressed to the closed door. He could hear every word clearly.

‘You know very well the lad didn’t take the food, but it’s your way of trying to find out. You shouldn’t
use
him, Bertha. It isn’t his fault you an’
me don’t get on nowadays.’

‘And whose fault is it, I’d like to know?
I
don’t disappear off to market every week and come home rolling drunk, after being with goodness knows how many trollops in
the town. And then you have the gall to bring one of ’em home with you. Into my house.’ She beat her chest with her fist.

Wearily, Eddie said, ‘Bertha, I don’t go with trollops, as you put it. In fact, I don’t go with other women at all—’

Bertha snorted. ‘Spect me to believe that. I know what men are like.’

Eddie regarded her with pity and shook his head slowly. ‘Bertha love, I wish you’d believe me. We’re not all the same. Just because your dad was a ladies’
man—’

‘Don’t you say things about my dad, Eddie Appleyard. You’re no saint.’

‘The whole town knew about your dad and his carryings on, love.’

‘I aren’t sitting here listening to you calling my dad names just to mek ya’sen feel better.’ She wagged her finger in his face. ‘He didn’t get drunk and come
home and knock his wife about.’

Appalled, Eddie stared at her. ‘Bertha, I’ve never—’

‘Oh ’aven’t you? How do you know what you do when you’re sow drunk?’

Eddie dropped his head into his hands. He couldn’t believe it. He was not a violent man. Never had been. And though things were not right between him and his wife, he couldn’t
imagine that he would ever attack her physically. But then, he had to admit, he did get ‘sow drunk’ as the locals called it, a state that resembled a snoring, snorting pig. And, to his
eternal shame, Eddie had to admit that he could not remember what he had done when he was in that state.

He couldn’t even remember having brought the girl home from the town until Bertha pulled him from the trap and there the girl was, just sitting there. But that was something he was never
going to admit. Not to his wife and certainly not to that poor lass. He didn’t want her to think that he hadn’t meant to help her, that he couldn’t even remember making the
offer.

‘So?’ Bertha was leaning towards him. ‘What did happen to my pork pie and sausages?’

‘It – it wasn’t Tony,’ Eddie stammered. ‘It was me. I – I was hungry. In the night.’ He wasn’t used to telling lies. That was yet another thing he
hadn’t known he was capable of doing.

‘If you expect me to believe that, Eddie Appleyard, you’re even dafter than I thought you were.’ She paused and her small, piercing eyes were boring into his soul. ‘Is
she still here? Is she still in the hayloft?’

Now he could answer honestly and even Bertha could detect the note of truth. ‘No, she isn’t.’

‘Well, good riddance is all I can say. And if that’s the truth, Eddie, then we’ll say no more about it. And now I’ve got work to do even if you haven’t.’ She
levered herself up and turned away, leaving her husband sitting at the table, his head still in his hands, vowing that as long as he lived he would never touch another drop of drink.

From the scullery the boy heard his mother’s chair scrape along the floor as she got up from the table. He scuttled out of the back door. He was halfway across the yard
when the collie, chained up near its kennel, barked a greeting. The boy hesitated, glanced back towards the farmhouse and then hurriedly released the dog’s collar from the chain.

‘Come on then, boy.’ Together they ran across the yard and out of the gate. In the gathering dusk the boy began to run up the track, the dog loping at his side. At the top of the
hill Tony stopped to look down to where the cottage nestled against the trees. He could see a dim glow from the windows and knew that the girl was there.

He shivered, but whether from the cold or the misgiving he felt he could not be sure. Yesterday’s rain had gone and stars shone in a clear sky, the moon a gleaming orb. There’d be a
frost tonight. Though he was only ten, Tony knew about the weather and the changing seasons. He bent and pulled up his knee-length grey socks. He hadn’t had time to change from his short
school trousers. Nor had he stopped to put on his wellingtons. His mam’d scold if he messed up the leather lace-up boots he wore for school. He didn’t want to make his mother cross with
him. She seemed to spend a lot of the time cross these days, but mostly with his dad. The boy frowned and chewed on his lower lip. He couldn’t understand why his mam and dad argued so much.
But maybe all parents did. He didn’t really know. He had some school pals whose homes he sometimes visited. He went to a birthday party now and then and one or two of the boys in his class
had been to Cackle Hill Farm. But he still didn’t know if other mams and dads carried on at each other like his did.

A gust of wind nibbled icily at his knees and his mind came back to the girl.
She’ll be cold
, he thought. Without making any conscious decision, he began to walk slowly down the
hill towards the cottage.

Anna had lit a fire from the kindling Eddie had brought her. Thoughtfully, he had also left a box of matches. She had drunk the milk and eaten most of the loaf of bread he had
brought too. The hurricane lamp he had given her hung from a hook in the ceiling, casting eerie shadows around the walls.

‘I’ll bring you some more bits and pieces as soon as I can and I’ll start work on the repairs tomorrow. I reckon the chimney’ll need sweeping an’ all.’

She’d looked him straight in the eye then. ‘What about your wife? I don’t want to bring trouble on you, Mister. You – you’ve been kind and I’d like to stay
here for a few days. But maybe I’d better move on when I’ve rested a bit.’

‘No.’ His retort was swift and surprisingly firm. There was no way he was going to allow this girl to be turned away, especially not just before Christmas. ‘No,’ he said
more gently. ‘I – I want you to stay. Bertha needn’t know. Not if we’re careful. She never comes up this way. She never – ’ there was a bitter tone to his words
now – ‘goes anywhere about the farm. The only time she goes out the house is to town. She dun’t even use the village shop. Says she dun’t want to give the gossips any more
to chatter about. She – she dun’t mix wi’ folk easy.’ He had smiled then, his eyes crinkling with a spark of mischief. ‘But that’s all to the good. She’ll
never know if I get things for you from the local shop, will she? And when I go into town next market day, I can get you some more bits of furniture.’

‘Furniture? However are you going to get that past her?’

His smile broadened to a grin, his face looking suddenly years younger. ‘I don’t have to. The road to town runs yon side this wood and there’s a track that comes round the
other side of the trees to here and then on to our farm.’ He gestured with his left hand in a vaguely northerly direction. ‘We don’t use this way, because the gate from our
farm’ – now with the other hand he pointed southwards – ‘leads out onto the road between the town and the village.’

Anna could not hide the fear in her eyes. ‘So – so does anyone use this track past the cottage?’

‘Not many, love. Just farm workers now and again and mebbe – ’ he chuckled suddenly – ‘a poacher or two.’

She had dropped her gaze and breathed more easily.

And now, as the early darkness of a cold December evening came, she sat huddled against the fire. He had been right. The chimney did need sweeping, for every so often smoke puthered into the
room, making her cough and her eyes smart. Once that was cleaned, she would be able to build up the fire to use the bread oven, and when the holes in the walls and the roof were mended she could
make this a very cosy little home.

If only . . . Her thoughts started to drift but she shook herself physically and pulled herself back to the present.

It was then that she heard a scuffle outside the door from the kitchen and her whole being stiffened. It was too late to turn out the lamp and hide. She jumped at the soft tap on the door. She
could not move, could not call out. She just sat there rigid with fear as, slowly, the door opened.