It was some minutes before he gave up and she heard him go back into the house. She hadn’t said a word.
Ivor and Nora. Ivor and Nora. The refrain was pulsing in her head. And her da had known. How could he have known and not told her? There was nothing left. Nothing.
She began to sway a little as the hot tears ran down her face but there was no relief in their coming, just a grinding pain that had her gasping. She turned her head and leaned her brow against the brick wall and it was a long time before she moved again.
Chapter Thirteen
C
lara had been at the farm for just six weeks when the sisters received word their grandfather had passed away in his sleep one night. He had gone peacefully, Audrey wrote in her large, childish hand, and she didn’t expect they would be able to come home for the funeral but she wanted them to know, since she wasn’t sure if their mother would write to them. She would be working fulltime at the munitions factory now that she didn’t have their granda to see to, so likely her letters would be fewer. She hoped Abby understood.
Abby stared at the letter for some while, reading it over a few times. Her aunt had never been a long letter writer but the weekly news from home had been welcome the last years, her mother never having put pen to paper once since she’d been at the farm. But this letter . . . It wasn’t just the sad news it held but there was something else, something strange. It just didn’t seem as though it had been penned by her aunt at all, although it was definitely her handwriting. But then Aunt Audrey had cared for Granda for years, she told herself after a time of weeping for the old man she had loved so much, and she would feel his loss badly. That was probably what she was sensing. And her aunt was right, she couldn’t request yet more leave on compassionate grounds as she’d done for her father’s funeral. It was too soon, for one thing, and she was needed at the farm, and also with Clara settling in so well she didn’t want to do anything to upset the child, and taking her back to Sunderland might well do that.
She broke the news to Clara very gently that evening, but although her sister cried for a while she was not too upset. In truth Clara had had little to do with her grandfather and the two had not been close.
With this extra sorrow on top of all that had happened over the Christmas period, Abby was thankful Clara’s second stay in the country was proving so much more successful than her first. She attended the small local school and was doing well, and had made lots of friends. She was also gaining weight for the first time in years and had completely won over the farmer’s wife whom she was allowed to call Mrs Gladys. The two of them collected the eggs together, churned the butter and did other jobs about the farm at the weekends and in the evenings.
Winnie, on the other hand, had become steadily more and more withdrawn of late, and she was beginning to look drawn and pasty in the mornings, the weight having fallen off her. It was the second morning after Abby had caught her friend retching in one of the cow byres that she finally confronted her with what she’d suspected for a couple of weeks. ‘You’re expecting, aren’t you?’ she said softly. ‘And no saying it’s something you’ve eaten again, not you with the cast-iron stomach. How far gone are you?’
Winnie didn’t look at her as she said, ‘I missed me second monthly over two weeks ago.’
‘Oh, lass.’ Abby put her arm round her friend. ‘Have you said anything to Vincent?’
‘Oh aye, I told him,’ Winnie said bitterly, ‘and he told me to go to hell. He says it isn’t his and he’s not copping for someone else’s bit of fun. He called me a stupid fat lump and said I was trying to trap him.’ Her voice broke.
‘How dare he say it isn’t his?’ For a moment the pain of her father’s accident followed so closely by her beloved grandfather’s demise was put to one side and Abby was hopping mad. ‘He knows full well you’ve never looked at another man since you’ve been seeing him.’
Winnie was sobbing so hard she couldn’t say anything for a while. Then she raised her head, sniffed and wiped the tears from the end of her nose with the back of a none too clean hand. ‘That’s what I said to him and I asked him who on earth this other bloke is supposed to be.’
‘What did he say?’
Winnie shrugged. ‘He just repeated it wasn’t his and that I couldn’t prove he was the father. He . . . he told me to get rid of it and that he knew someone.’ Winnie drew in a deep, shuddering breath. ‘That was when
I
told
him
to go to hell,’ she said more strongly. ‘I’m not killing my bairn just because its father is a gutless so-an’-so.’ She looked at Abby, her face streaked with tears and dirt. ‘But I’m scared, lass. I’m scared stiff. Me da’ll go barmy. He’s a grand man, me da, but he’s not easy to talk to an’ he’s got set ideas on things. He’ll look on this as me dragging his name through the mud, I know he will.’
‘Oh, lass.’ Abby didn’t know what to say.
‘What am I going to do, Abby?’ Winnie stared at her, still sniffing. ‘How can I go home and tell them I’m back because me belly’s full and the bloke’s washed his hands of me. How can I?’
‘You’re not going to.’ Abby gripped Winnie’s forearms with some strength. ‘Vincent must marry you and what can your da say then?’ One part of her hated the idea of her friend marrying such a swine but the other, the more practical side, realised that this new development had changed everything. Even with people carrying on all over since the war had started, there were still some things which remained the same, and in the sort of streets where she and Winnie came from, an illegitimate child just wasn’t an option. A hasty marriage and a bairn arriving two or three months ‘early’ was a different kettle of fish. Jumped the gun a bit, did they? Couldn’t wait for the benediction, eh? Still, these things happen. When the sap’s running high and love is in the air it can make fools of us all, and a bairn is a gift from God when all’s said and done. That would be the most that was said if Winnie turned up with a husband in tow, that and a few snide remarks from some of the old wives as they gossiped over their backyards.
But a baby born on the wrong side of the blanket? Those selfsame ‘understanding’ folk would let Winnie know what they thought of that in a hundred and one ways, branding the whole family. And it would be those with their own skeletons in the cupboard who would be the worst. She remembered a family a few doors down in Rose Street who had hounded a lass in Winnie’s position to the point where the girl had hanged herself down by Thornhill Farm, and not twelve months later it had transpired that the man and wife were in fact father and daughter, and that he had more grown-up children and his wife still living in Blyth.
‘He won’t marry me, lass. You don’t know him like I do.’ Winnie shook her head wearily. ‘He’ll swear black is white if he has to.’
‘Will he indeed? Well, we’ll see about that.’ Abby’s mind was working rapidly. ‘His mam and da know he was courting you, whatever he says now, and Mrs Tollett likes you, you know she does. She likes all of us.’
‘What, tell them, you mean?’
‘Why not? You’ve nothing to lose the way things are.’
Winnie didn’t shake or nod her head, she just continued to stare at Abby. Then she leaned against the aged wood of the byre, her head down again as she said, ‘I couldn’t, lass. I’m . . . I’m too ashamed.’
‘Don’t be daft.’ Now Abby almost slapped at her friend’s arm. ‘It should be him that’s saying that. You loved him, lass, and, right or wrong, worshipped the ground he walked on. And he knew that. Oh aye, he knew all right and took full advantage of it, so for him to take the stand he’s taking now makes him the lowest of the low in my book.’
‘It takes two to tango.’
‘And it takes two to bring up a bairn an’ all,’ Abby said grimly, ‘so don’t stick up for him, Winnie. Not now.’
‘I wasn’t, not really.’
‘Good, because much as I care about you I’d have to give you a clip round the ear if you did.’ Abby grinned at her and Winnie grinned weakly back. ‘Now it’s worked out well we’re having lunch indoors for once because with Clara at school it’s the best time to speak out.’ With most of the fields and farm buried in a good few inches of snow, Farmer Tollett had found them work in the barns and outhouses, and his wife had insisted they all come in for something hot at twelve. Unfortunately they wouldn’t be able to have a word with Rowena in private before this as she was helping the farmer’s wife cut and salt a pig which had been slaughtered the day before, as well as turning its innards into faggots, sausages, savouries and lard. Even its trotters and tail needed pickling and boiling, and the head made excellent brawn. It always amazed Abby that Rowena happily plumped for this grisly task; she herself hated it, especially as the three girls fed the animals their swill every morning and got to know individual animals by their different personalities.
‘Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know, lass.’ Winnie gazed at her mournfully.
‘Well, I do. He’s not going to get away with this, Winnie, and you’ve got to stick up for yourself. All right?’
At five to twelve when Abby and Winnie walked into the kitchen after sluicing off in the scullery, Winnie was still umming and ahhing. Rowena and Farmer Tollett were already seated at the kitchen table, and Mrs Tollett was busy removing a pan of beef stew from the haybox she used for the occasional hot lunchtime meal. The haybox cooker was nothing more than a packing case lined with newspapers and packed with sweet, dry hay at the bottom and a hay-filled mattress at the top, with a pan nestling deep in the middle packed round by yet more hay. When the pan was put into the haybox piping hot, the food continued to slowly cook and tenderise, thus saving fuel and producing meat which melted in the mouth.
Abby and Winnie sat down silently and moments later they heard Vincent enter the scullery and start washing his hands in the tin bowl. They glanced at each other and their faces must have given something away, because Rowena nudged Abby with her foot and mouthed, ‘What’s up?’
Abby shook her head in silent warning. She reached across and took a slice of the big farmhouse loaf of bread in the middle of the table as Mrs Tollett bustled across with bowls of fragrant, steaming stew.
‘We’ve had a good morning,’ she said to her husband as she placed a bowl in front of him. ‘There’s only the bits like the sausages and faggots to do later, and starting off the chitterlings. I should be able to have a good hour or two in the dairy this afternoon. You only have to show this lass something once,’ she nodded at Rowena, ‘and she’s got it.’
This was high praise indeed, and for a moment Abby felt a pang of conscience that she was going to ruin the rest of the day for the farmer’s wife.
Vincent sullenly took his place at the table and once everyone was tucking into the meal, Abby nudged Winnie with her elbow. Winnie cleared her throat once, then again and remained absolutely silent. After a second or two she took another slice of bread and bit into it as though she was famished.
This couldn’t go on. Abby glanced at her friend and for the first time the extent of Winnie’s weight loss hit her. Winnie was desperately unhappy and worried to death and she was going to be really ill if something wasn’t done. The spoon in Abby’s hand wobbled and she placed it in the bowl before she said, ‘Farmer Tollett? Winnie has something to say to you and Mrs Tollett.’
The farmer said nothing, merely moving his grizzled head to stare at Winnie enquiringly, as did Mrs Tollett and Rowena. Vincent, Abby noticed, continued to spoon the stew into his mouth, his eyes on his bowl.
To Abby’s surprise, Winnie didn’t prevaricate any longer. ‘I’m expecting a bairn,’ she said, not looking at anyone. ‘Vincent’s bairn.’
If a bomb had exploded in their midst the announcement couldn’t have had more effect, but it was Vincent’s sudden move towards Winnie which brought both Farmer Tollett and Abby to their feet, the farmer to restrain his son and Abby to stand protectively in front of her friend. The words spewing out of Vincent’s mouth would have been worthy of any dockside labourer. Then Mrs Tollett entered the arena. ‘Stop it, boy!’ she cried. ‘Do you hear me? Stop it this instant.’
It was a few moments more before Vincent allowed his father to push him into his seat, but then, his face red and his eyes glaring, he said, ‘She’s trying to trap me, can’t you see? And all three of them are in on it. Loose trollops, the lot of ’em.’
‘Vincent
is
the father, Mrs Tollett.’ Winnie was as white as a sheet but her voice was steady. ‘And whatever he may call me, neither Abby nor Rowena are trollops, far from it.’
Mrs Tollett didn’t answer but stared back at her, her eyes stretched wide. Her husband, his hand still on his son’s shoulder, said, ‘A bairn, you say? Are you sure?’