LEAH FLEMING

Winter’s Children

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers in 2010 This ebook edition published by HarperCollins Publishers in 2017

Copyright © Leah Fleming 2010

Cover layout design © Becky Glibbery 2017

Cover photographs © Shutterstock

Leah Fleming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9781847561046

Ebook Edition © November 2010 ISBN: 9780007352487

Version: 2017-08-28

For all the Wiggins, past, present and future who love this season.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Christmas Eve

At the Eve of All Souls

Yorkshire, November 2001

Sutton Coldfield, October 2001

Northbound

Hepzibah Snowden, 1653

Stone Walling

Farmhouse

Anona Norton, 1653

Village School

Quiz Night

A Stormy Forecast

Joss Snowden and the London Painter, July 1816

Christmas Shopping

Agnes, 1869

1874

Shadow Fire

Refuge

Shirley and the German Christmas, December 1946

Understanding

Evie, December 2001

The Search

Christmas Eve 2001

A Jacob’s Join Christmas

Author’s Note

Reading Group Questions

About the Author

By the same author

About the Publisher

Christmas Eve
Sutton Coldfield, December 2000

When the doorbell rang on Christmas Eve, at first Kay and the Partridge family were too busy wrapping up last-minute presents to answer it.

‘Tim’s forgotten his key again,’ Kay shouted to her mother-in-law. ‘Trust him to be home late!’ Since their house had been sold, they were living with Tim’s parents until the move to London in the New Year. ‘Evie, go and open the door for Daddy!’ she yelled to their small daughter, who was as high as a kite on chocolate decorations that had been destined for the Christmas tree. Kay hoped Tim had stopped off at the garden centre to pick one up. He’d promised to dress it with Evie a week ago but the firm had wanted him to go north to secure a deal in Newcastle.

‘Is that you, darling? You’re so … late!’ she yelled down the stairs. There was no response so she trundled down to hear his excuses. Evie was standing at the foot of the stairs looking puzzled.

‘A policeman’s come, and a lady one, they want to speak to you,’ she said smiling. ‘Has Daddy been naughty?’

Kay looked beyond her child to the open door and her knees began to buckle. The expression on the two faces said it all …

At the Eve of All Souls
Yorkshire, November 2001

She glides through Wintergill House, drifting between the walls and closed-up passageways. No floorboards creak, no plasterwork flakes as she brushes past, only a tinge of the scent of lavender betrays her presence. The once mistress of the hearth lists where she wills. She knows every nook and cranny, every dust bowl and rat run, loose boards and lost tokens, cats’ bones crumbling in the roof spaces.

Hepzibah Snowden patrols her kingdom as she did in her own time, keys clanking on her leather girdle, a tallow candle in the pewter hold, still checking that the servants are abed and Master Nathaniel, lord of her nights, is snoring by the fire. She knows her dust is blown into every crevice of the old house, circled by the four winds of heaven. The autumn mists rise from the valley but Hepzibah has no eyes for the outdoors. Her spirit imbues its benign presence only within the confines of these stone walls.

November is the month of the dead. The barometer falls and daylight shortens its path across the sky. She knows the year is beginning its slow dance of death when the leaves curl and rust and sap sink to the roots.

The air is stale, silence reigns. The house is empty of joy. These tenants, an old woman and her son, ignore the patches of damp, the peeling plasterwork, loose slates on the dairy roof. It is a cold, empty and barren hearth. No servants warm their master’s bedpans with hot ashes. No wife warms the master’s buttocks. No horse’s muck steams in the cobbled yard. She hears no shepherd’s cough or stable boy’s whistle. They have made another dwelling of the barn.

It saddens her heart to see all Nathaniel’s toil fall into disrepair. The Lord in His wisdom hath rained down such a plague upon these pastures of late. Now not a living beast bellows from the byre; not a sheep bleats across the meadows. The Lord hath shown no mercy to Godless Yorkshire. All was lost to the summer slaughter in the killing fields below. Now is only silence and tears.

Hepzibah peers out from the window into the dusk. There is another out there she fears. Watching. Waiting. Her erstwhile cousin patrols around the walls, ever searching. The restless spirit who hovers between two worlds. The tortured soul who roams the fells with fire burning in her eye sockets. Blanche is out there in the gathering darkness, waiting to sneak through any open door, seeking what can never be found

Hepzibah shakes her head, safe in the knowledge that this fortress is ringed against this troubled spirit by circles of rowan and elder, by lanterns of light no human eye can see, by sturdy prayer and her own constant vigilance. For she is appointed guardian of this hearth. It is both her pride and penance to stay on within this place.

Each year the two of them must play out this ancient drama with dimmer lights and ever-fading resolve; an endless game of cat and mouse for nearly four hundred years. When, O Lord, will Blanche Norton’s spirit be at peace? Who will help me guide her home?

Soon the yule fires will burn and the seasons will turn towards the light. Hepzibah senses her own powers must fade in a Christmas house without the brightness of a child.

Wintergill House needs new life or it will crumble. It is time now to open her heart for guidance and cast her prayer net far and wide.

Wintergill waits for the coming of another winter’s child.

Yet with such a coming there is always danger, Hepzibah sighs. For if her prayers are granted she must summon her most cunning ploys to protect such an innocent from Cousin Blanche’s consuming fire.

Lord have mercy on Wintergill.

Yorkshire, November 2001
Mincemeat

1 lb Bramley apples

1 lb mixed dried fruit (currants, seedless raisins, sultanas, dates)

8 oz chopped mixed peel

1 lb finely chopped suet of choice

1 lb demerara sugar grated rind and juice of 2 lemons

2 oz chopped nuts, almonds (optional)

1 tsp ground spices (ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon)

4 tbsp whisky, rum or brandy (optional)

Chop the apples, add the lemon rind and juice, and mix with the dried fruits together in a bowl. Add the peel, nuts, spices, suet and sugar.

Stir in alcohol and leave at room temperature covered with a cloth overnight. Restir the mixture. Heat in a low oven for an hour.

Pack into clean, dry jars, cover with wax discs and Cellophane or pretty cloth circles and store in a cool dark place.

Makes about six 1 lb jars.

Sutton Coldfield, October 2001

‘There’s a Place for Us.’ Kay stood transfixed in the supermarket aisle lost in the West Side Story tune in her head until her mother-in-law nudged her with a basket. ‘Oh, there you are, Kay … chop chop! You’ll be late for Evie at the school gate again.’ Eunice was hovering over her. ‘They’ve got a special offer on Christmas cake ingredients …’

‘Christmas already?’ Kay felt the panic rising. It was only October, not yet half term. Her head was spinning at the thought of the coming season. She looked at her watch and knew they must dash. Evie got upset if there was no one waiting for her. After the checkout she pushed her trolley into the car park with a sigh as she looked around the familiar tarmac where a flurry of women were bustling shopping into their boots. Eunice was loitering by the car door with that impatient look on her face.

I don’t want to be here any more, Kay thought. Ever since Tim’s accident she’d been living in a daze of indecision knowing this wasn’t the place for them any more. Then there was that summer painting exhibition in Lichfield Cathedral that still haunted her.

It was just one of Terry Logan’s Yorkshire landscapes: sheep grazing in snow by a stone wall, taking her straight back to Granny Norton’s cottage in the Dales where she’d spent the long summer holidays. Oh, for open space, grey-green hills and daydreaming by the beck … Suddenly she felt such a rush of nostalgia for her childhood. If only she could snuggle back into that dream, back to the old farmhouse set like a doll’s house high on a hill; a house with windows on fire, catching the low evening sun as it drifted across the snow; a sunset of pink, orange and violet torching the panes of glass, a winter house amongst the hills.

She sat in the car with tired eyes averted from the halogen town lights. Always the same haunting dream calling her, tapping into her deepest yearnings. Why was it always the same stone house set above a valley? What did it mean? Was there somewhere waiting for them?

For nine months they had camped out with her in-laws and she could face it no longer. Since the terrible events in America only weeks ago, nothing felt safe in the world. Eunice was protecting them both like lost children … doing her best to keep them close by and Kay had gone along with it for Evie’s sake.

Now with a certainty she’d not felt for months, she knew it was time to move on and away.

‘I need hills around me,’ she whispered with a sigh.

‘What was that?’ Eunice Partridge edged closer.

‘Nothing,’ Kay replied. ‘Just thinking aloud.’

The phone was ringing in the hall of Wintergill House Farm. Let it ring, thought Lenora Snowden as she threw another log in the wood-burner. She was in no mood for a chat, or making mincemeat. What was the point? Christmas preparations were supposed to wrap up the fag end of the year in some festive package. Who could wrap up this terrible season in anything but sackcloth and ashes, she sniffed as she banged the basket of Bramleys on the chopping board.

She inspected the dried fruit, the apples and suet shreds, the box of spices, the cheap whisky, without enthusiasm. Why was she tiring her legs standing on the stone flags in the old still room, now reclaimed as her private kitchen, little more than a cubbyhole, she sighed, choking back the tears.

Things had to go on. The WI needed jars of preserves for their Christmas stall. She always gave to the village school bazaar and the party for the old folks. Though her world had collapsed around her there were still others worse off than herself. She could make a pie for Karen and her boys, who were burying their dad this afternoon.

‘Damn and blast it!’ she muttered, chopping with vigour, as if to release all the tension of the past few months. The dale had never seen such a back end – storms, floods, snow keeping them stuck in for days. Then had come the distant threat of foot-and-mouth, and they’d made a desperate attempt to disinfect and stay protected, all to no avail.

The newly converted barn, which had taken the last of their capital, lay unlet for the whole summer season as the footpaths were closed and the moors cut off. The tourists stayed away dutifully but the bank still required monthly payments on their borrowings. All their diversification plans came to naught.

Chop, chop! She nearly sliced off her thumb in anger. Just when it was all over, just when they thought they’d escaped, when the lambs were gambolling across the fields, a phone call from their neighbours blew Wintergill’s hopes apart.

‘Nora! We’re being taken out! I’m sorry but they’ll be taking you out too …’

Foot-and-mouth had arrived silently across the tops weeks before. The Wintergill sheep were doomed as part of a contiguous cull, but both the cattle and sheep were already infected.

Her eyes were watering recalling those anxious hours. Waiting for the auctioneer to value their stock, a circus of army and vets trampled over their fields. Their death wagons parked up waiting to remove the carcasses, sinister slaughter-men in white suits sweltering in the sun. All she could do was make cups of tea and hide indoors, but the pop of the bolt guns would stay with her for ever, and she was glad her husband, Tom, wasn’t alive to see the destruction of his life’s work.

Nik, her only son, stayed at his post, grim-faced. No amount of compensation would make up for the loss of his prize-winning tups and ewes. They were his life’s work. Now there were green fields but no livestock, proven sacks of feed and nothing to give it to. She was sick of the silence. The heart had gone out of both of them after that day. The bombing of the Twin Towers and all that suffering only added to their gloom that autumn.

Nora sighed, knowing it was easier to hark back to happier times when the making of mincemeat heralded the annual run-up to Christmas: choosing the cards, the gathering for the pig kill. All the old rituals of farm life were going fast. How could they carry on after this? Nik was finished but he did not grasp that there was no future for him now. What was the point, she had argued, and he had stormed off to his part of the house, not wanting to listen to common sense or reason.

So why am I here at my post, chopping apples and grinding spices: cinnamon, ginger root, nutmeg? she mused, wiping her eyes. In her heart she knew she was drawn back instinctively to something ancient and female, soothed by the ritualistic comfort of a seasonal task.

Tosh and bollocks, she sneered, surprised by such sentimental humbug. I’m here because I’ve nothing better to do on this drab morning.

Life must go on and the cooking would take her mind off the funeral this afternoon of a young man who could not face the future without hope.

Since he lost his stock Nik was like a knotless thread, poring over Defra reports on his computer, filling gaps in walls, sorting out his compensation bumf and waiting for the all clear to restock his farm. Six months living on a knife edge of loneliness and despair, and now Jim, his friend, taking his own life just when the worst was over. It didn’t make any sense. It was so unfair on his wife and kiddies, but who said life was fair?

You get what you get and stomach it as best you can, she mused, grabbing her coat and plonking her beret on her head, glancing in the mirror with disgust. You look about ninety, old girl, she sighed, watching the creases and lines wrinkle up her weatherbeaten face. Her country bloom was lost years ago. The mirror had never held much comfort. Her face was too sculpted and her chin too pointed, her tired blue eyes were more like ice than cornflowers, and there were telltale shadows under them from sleepless nights.

All she yearned for now was a quiet hearth and a peaceful retirement. Surely the compensation package would release them now from this hard living. I’ve served my sentence on these harsh northern uplands, battered by winds and wild weather, she argued to herself, bruised by a lifetime of disappointments. Only the turning of the seasons brought life and renewal each year but now time was out of joint. There was no seedtime and harvest, no crop of lambs, no rewards for all their labours, only death and destruction and a tempting cheque. Lenora Snowden could see no future for Wintergill House Farm. It was time to take the money and run.

The phone rang again and the unexpected news she learned sent her scurrying out to the far fields to find Nik. He would be out somewhere avoiding her. It was some good news at last. Perhaps this was the turning point they needed: a sign of hope.

In the far field by the copse Nikolas Snowden was hacking off the branches of a felled ash with a ferocity that satisfied the rage inside him. He knew a chain saw would tackle the job in no time but this was the day for an axe. The physical effort to pit his strength against the ancient trunk was just the challenge he needed to take his mind off this afternoon’s funeral.

He should be beginning to feel a little calmer; quarantine would soon be over and he had been planning his restocking, preparing the fields to restart the cycle with lamb ewes. But his heart was leaden and he felt sick.

He paused to wipe the sweat from his furrowed brow, staring out across the green to the valley below, to the patchwork of grey stone walls rising as far as the eye could see and not a white dot among them. The rooks were cawing down in the churchyard, the curlews had long gone, a flock of redwings were grazing in the distance in the field where his best-in-show tups should have been preparing to service his flock. His eyes filled with tears when he thought of them. They were not just rams, they were old mates, tough proud stock.

How trustingly they had followed his shaken bag of feed nuts as he led them down to their deaths. His ewes were edgy amongst strangers and sheltered their lambs at their side. He had stood with the slaughtermen to the very end, trying to calm their panic on that terrible afternoon when the world was watching the Cup Final indoors, unaware of his terrible betrayal. Like lambs to the bloody slaughter indeed.

It was all in a day’s job for the slaughtermen, but the young vet, new to the job, had the decency to blanch as she grabbed each lamb with her needle. He could hear the bleating panic of his ewes crying, the panic rising as some made a dash for it in vain. And gradually as his flock was destroyed, there was only the silence of a summer’s afternoon, the blaring of the wagon driver’s radio, trying to catch the latest score.

He could see that heap, all he had worked for, piled up lifeless and he’d broken down, unashamed of his grief at such a loss. It was unspeakable the way the diggers scooped up their bodies like woolly rags but he’d seen it through to the end. They were his flock. He had seen each calf born and he must watch them die. It felt like mass murder.

They lambed late in the Dales to avoid the harsh winter and wet spring. It made no odds. How could he have unwittingly nurtured such a disease in his flock? No amount of compensation would ever drive that terrible scene from his mind, or the fact that Bruce Stickley was on the phone minutes after the cull to bid for the valuation of them for compensation.

Nik raised the axe and swung down. It was tempting to give up. The house was a millstone around his neck. His mother was weary. What was the point in all his research, the advice being dished out right, left and centre to the small farmer? ‘Try this, buy that'. Everyone knew there was money in the Dalesmen’s pockets and Nik was wary.

Wintergill had cost him dear; his first youthful marriage had foundered because his town-bred wife, Mandy, couldn’t stomach the loneliness or the harsh winters. Yet he was tied to the place by myriad invisible threads. He was damn near forty-two! Was it too late for life outside the dale? Perhaps he could retrain or retire – and do what?

For God’s sake, this is the only life you’ve ever known, he cried. How do you go on with nobody to follow? Even Jim had taken flight and topped himself, and he had two sons. He had made his own decision. He did not want his children to suffer the burden of being farmer’s sons. It was a terrible solution.

Nik was no longer certain about anything as he looked once more to the beautiful scene before him: how the farm stuck out on a high promontory overlooking the valley and the river snaking through the autumn woods down below; the trees turning into russet and amber and the wind sending storm clouds racing across the darkened sky. The first snows were on their way.

He felt a familiar tingling in the back of his neck. He was not alone.

She was watching him.

Even if he whipped round suddenly he would not see her face, whoever she was, this ancient phantom who wandered over his fields and hid in his copse. There was no comfort in her presence, no benign aura in her haunting. She flitted from lane to wood and moor. Only once had he ever seen her face, years ago, by the Celtic wall when he was young.

‘Bugger off, you old hag!’ he yelled, and swung his axe again in fury.

To be reduced to bagging logs for sale, fixing gaps and repairing machinery – it was no life for a farmer, but it kept his muscles firm and his thighs stretched. He had seen too many of his mates turn to fat in the last few months when reality had kicked in. The bar of the Spread Eagle was a tempting crutch to lean on to sup away sorrows. If he lost his fitness, he would lose what little pride he had left.

Not even his mother knew he could sense stuff with his third eye. It was usually reserved for the female Snowdens to inherit. ‘The eye that sees all and says nowt’ was how his father had once described it. It was not a manly thing to feel spirits up yer backside so he kept quiet about this unwanted gift. If only it had warned him of the danger to his stock.

A movement caught his eye and Nik looked up to see his mother waving from across the gate, calling him inside. What did she want now? He dropped his axe, stretched his back and made for the house. He could do with a coffee and a pipe.

‘What’s it now, Mother? If it’s another rep … put them off again!’ Nik yelled, bending under the lintel of the back kitchen scullery door, unpeeling his waterproofs and muddy boots. His mother was standing in his kitchen with a mug of coffee. She usually kept to the front portion of the old house, looking south onto the garden – he kept to the rear with ready access to the courtyard and outbuildings. He looked at his watch and supposed it was time to set aside farm chores in favour of a scrub and polish, ready for the funeral.

His mother was looking flustered, already dressed in a navy two-piece wool jersey suit. ‘Would you believe it! That was Stickley’s. They’ve got us a winter let for six months … someone from the Midlands saw the house on their website and booked it up on the spot. They’re on their way. Fancy, a winter let out of the blue after all this time.’ She made her way to the ironing board, which always sagged under a mound of creased washing.

‘Honestly, Nik,’ she said, looking around. ‘If you think I’ve got time to do this load … Get your skates on and shift yourself … I hope there’s a decent shirt among this pile. I’m not having you turned out like a crumpled rag, not with half the county coming to see Jim off. Can you bring me in some logs before you shower?’

Nik grunted, banging his boot across the stone-flagged floor, sending the house dog, Muffin, a collie cross, scurrying for cover under the table.

‘Who on earth would want to come up here in this weather? I thought we’d told them to hold back on lets. It’s been empty all summer. It’ll need a good airing.’

‘Don’t look a gift horse, Nik. Be thankful for small mercies after the season we’ve not had. Shift yerself and fill the log basket, turn on the water for me. They’ll not be here until late, and I’ve got Annual Parish Survey meeting tonight so you can let them in when they arrive.’ She paused, looking at him. ‘And no scowling. Be civil.’

Nik was watching his mother glancing around his living room with dismay at the unwashed pots in the sink, the grubby tea towels and the cluttered table, but she buttoned her lip. This was his half of the house and how he organised his affairs was none of her business. Washing up and clearing away was women’s work, he muttered, and he’d no mind to change his old ways. Ever since Mandy left him years ago, this back-to-back living suited them both. The hall door was their own Berlin Wall, dividing north from south, mother from son, chalk from cheese, Mozart from Bach.

Nik could see she was itching to clear up his mess and put the room back to times past when you could lick your porridge from her shining floor, but there was no time for arguments if they were to sort out the Side House and make the service on time. Damn the estate agents for conjuring up this holiday let out of thin air! Perhaps Bruce Stickley had a conscience after all and was trying to make up for that insensitive intrusion.

‘We spend a fortune doing up that barn and now you grumble because it gets let out. After the summer we’ve had, we should thank the Good Lord that we still have this asset left,’ she added.

‘Yes, and look what it cost us!’ Nik thought of the antiques they’d had to sell to fund the project. ‘I don’t like townies cluttering up the place, leaving gates open and asking silly questions.’ He did not want any post mortems with strangers, their pitying glances when they realised what had happened. He had good reason to hate what the summer had done to farmers. Was he not burying one of them that very afternoon?

‘Bruce Stickley gave good advice when he suggested we went for a top-of-the-range conversion: double glazing, central heating. We’ll be getting top whack for the let. It has a view second to none down the valley. There’s no pleasing you, son,’ Nora snapped. ‘It’s the only decent investment we’ve got left apart from the house. If we decide to sell up–’

He did not want to hear another word about selling up. ‘Stickley’s not having the house. Over my dead body! I know what he’s really after; soft-soaping you with a good letting, for once. He’s got his eyes on Wintergill for himself, always has had … He’ll slap planning permission on every bloody barn, shed, nook and cranny, strip the assets and keep the real prize for himself. I know his little tricks.’

Nora knew he was right. ‘Bruce has a point, you know,’ she replied. ‘This place is too big for the two of us. We rattle round like dried peas in a drum. What do we need twenty rooms for? It’s not as if–’ She stopped abruptly. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Stop that, Mother. Wintergill House has been in this family for generations and I see no reason to change. Snowdens have made a good living from this land. Peaks and troughs, ups and downs, this is just a bad patch but we’ll survive,’ he argued, standing his ground.

‘Do you really think so in this climate, son? Be reasonable. I’m getting too old … I’m the wrong end of seventy and you’re not getting any younger … Who’s going to follow us then?’ She paused for breath, sensing this was not the time for recriminations. There were no other Snowdens left to inherit … ‘Rationalisation is the word on everyone’s tongue,’ she continued. ‘It makes common sense to take the money and run. We’ve got choices now. You haven’t decided on spending anything yet.’

‘That money stays in the bank for restocking and I don’t intend to restock until I’m sure where I’m going,’ Nik argued. ‘I’m not listening to your doom and gloom; I’m off for a quick bath.’

‘What about the logs?’ she shouted up.

‘Later, there’s plenty of time,’ he replied, bounding up the stairs, peeling off his clothes as he went in search of his dark best suit, peering at his outline in the tallboy mirror. He paused to examine his torso: not in bad shape at all, broad shoulders, not much of a beer belly when he stood sideways, strong haunches, muscular legs from years of rugby, and a decent set of tackle in fine working order but underused lately.

He would still make a good tup! If only he had sired a son to pass on the name and the heritage. How could Mother begin to understand how he felt about this house, the farm and its land? The love of it was bred in his bone. Damn it, this was the only thing he had left to love!

Nik dipped his head in the lukewarm water to rinse off the shampoo. If only there was a son to follow him, but he’d left it a bit late now. Oh, Mandy! I thought you were the one … He’d met her at a Young Farmers’ ball in Harrogate. She was a hairdresser out for fun, dancing on fire with gorgeous black hair and a figure to match. It was lust at first sight. She’d been dazzled by the size of the farm, enchanted by the James Herriot setting for a while until the reality of this life dawned. They married in haste, too young and love blind to the fact that their worlds were too far apart to make a lasting relationship work.

Nik shut his eyes to block out the image of her in the barn with her legs coiled round Danny Pighills’ waist as he pumped himself into her. If his gun had been handy he’d have shot them both like vermin. He’d torn them apart and given Danny such a beating. He wasn’t proud of himself but he was drunk, shamed and humiliated. She’d left that night and returned only for her clothes under armed guard. It was all around the district that Nik Snowden couldn’t keep his wife. He was deeply hurt by her rejection of all he held dear. The bitterness he’d felt then had eased to a dull ache of regret. He had not heard from her in years.

Now he was resigned to the single life – once bitten and all that … Occasionally there was a fling with one of the pub crowd but nothing serious. He was never in a sound enough financial position until now to take on another partner, and he was wary. Women were not to be trusted. The world around had changed since his youth, when farmers’ wives knew their place. Now they ganged up together and argued their corner, demanding equal shares in the business and working outside the farmstead just to keep their kids clothed and heeled. In his heart he knew that such women deserved respect but if the truth were told, the confidence of some of those brass-faced lasses scared the pants off him!

Now Jim Grimoldby’s sudden death had shaken his faith in his own judgement. There he had sat, on the same bar stool at the Spread Eagle with his old school mate for years, moaning on about Defra and all the EU regulations, working out plans for their compensation, laughing at Jim’s terrible jokes, playing darts, the occasional game of rugby, while Jim was going through hell.

You never knew what was going on in someone else’s head. That space between the ears is always a lonely place, he thought. Was it just depression at the sight of his sheep culled, too much to drink, or was it utter weariness with the whole damned shooting match that made his friend walk onto the moor with his shotgun and blow his head off? What sort of friend had he been not to recognise such despair? There’d been enough leaflets and confidential phone numbers to ring for counselling but Dalesmen are proud and stubborn – shy of talking to strangers, however well-meaning.

Brian Saddleworth had had a stroke when his stock was taken out, and was selling up. Poor Nigel Danby was in the last stages of lung cancer and in no fit state to carry on. It had been a bad year for the dale farmers on top of foot-and-mouth. So he must stomach this coming intrusion and think about the monthly rental cheque. If his father could see the state things had got to … Tom Snowden once refused even to consider bed and breakfast as a small sideline. Now every farm had a sign at the lane end. That was, until the blanket closure of every footpath, and the walkers all but disappeared.

When he thought how they had slummed it over the years in this cold barn of a house with its winding oak staircase, dark panelling, mullioned windows and ancient furniture. It didn’t seem right to sell off their heirlooms to help fund a project that would have their guests living in a luxury his own mother had never enjoyed.

Old Joss Snowden, Nik’s great-great-grandfather, would be turning in his grave if he knew what he had done. If truth were told, he’d been dipping into the family silver for years, oak settles here, a piece of silver there, topping up his losses. It couldn’t have gone on for much longer. Now there was money coming out of his ears and Stickley was suggesting they sell the place, lock, stock, to some London magnate for a shooting lodge, though even the grouse here were thin on the ground in this grim weather. Who would want to take on this albatross?

Sandringham it wasn’t – more like Wuthering Heights on a bad day – but he loved every wooden nail of it. It was his castle and his domain, his kingdom. There’d been a dwelling here since before recorded history. He was always digging up shards of Roman pottery, Celtic pin brooches, clay pipes and medieval tiles and coins. Nik had quite a collection stashed away somewhere.

The rear of the house went back to the fifteenth century, with its arching roof timbers. Nathaniel Snowden had added to the house in the seventeenth century: sturdy rubble-filled walls and square neat windows befitting the Puritan gentleman. Then his grandson Samuel restored the fortunes of Wintergill with the purchase of enclosed land, rebuilding the house looking south down towards Pendle Hill and the River Ribble. He had sired sixteen children, ten sons to expand his fortunes across the globe.

Then came George and his son, Joss, and his son, Jacob, the teetotal Methodist whose festive spirit was the talk of the dale, who prospered when Victoria was Queen. All of them had built on the strengths of their forebears, all were famous for their hospitality and open house. Grandpa Jo lost three sons with the Yorkshire Light Infantry and Tom, Nik’s own father, had ploughed a straight furrow for the war effort in the forties, seeing some of Wintergill’s most prosperous years.

How could he now be the one to finish them off?

Nora couldn’t settle while Nik was in the bath. She opened up the Side House, put on the heating and brought the linen down from her own airing cupboard. There would be time after the funeral to buy some bread, milk and flowers for the welcome basket. It was such a long time since the last let that she was nervous.

Now she was sifting through her glove box to find a leather pair big enough to hide her gnarled fingers. No one wore hat and gloves much to church, but she believed a woman was undressed without them. She sat at the dressing table stool, staring at her hands.

What a sturdy pair of friends these had been over the years, grasping the hind legs of newly delivered calves, planting vegetables, pickling fruit, plucking feathers, grabbing sheep, soothing sick beasts and children, grasping reins, steering wheels, holding the hands of the dying and whipping up the best sponge cakes in the district.

Now they were gnarled and horny, coarsened by wind and rain, with mottled liver spots, as wrinkled as cooked apple skins. They were long and square with over an octave span: more a man’s hand than a woman’s. No amount of elderflower and lanolin ointment would alter that.

Her dad’s only compliment on her marriage to Tom Snowden over fifty years ago was to look at her hands with pride. ‘You’ll earn your keep with those spades,’ he said. By then any dreams of further education and foreign travel as far from Scar Top as possible were blighted by war and the sense of duty that sent her scurrying back home to do her bit. There was never choice in the matter when Ben Frost, her dad, gave his orders.

As a child she had lived off the moor, boarding in school houses in the town to attend the local girls’ grammar school, matriculating with honours with a place at university a certainty. Then war broke out and it was all ploughs to the furrow, trying to grow arable crops on wet, sodden hilltops. There was no time for regrets when there was a nation to feed.

Where was that nation in the last few years when their produce was bottom of the heap of imported meat? When fleeces lay rolled in the shed and lambs were not worth the slaughter – and as for the poor pig farmers … If only supermarket shoppers would buy British then this terrible disease might not have happened.

Once upon a time it was one sheep, one lamb, one acre but the temptation to intensify had taken over. There was little humanity in farming – not a local abattoir left in the district but a plethora of regulations and directives. Now nature had had the last word. Suddenly her hands started to twitch again as she fingered a silk scarf from the bottom drawer.

Every Christmas for forty years, one new scarf was added to her collection from Tom. He was not one for lavish presents or romantic gestures. They weren’t bred like that in the Dales, but what he bought was always quality and long lasting so she picked out a navy and lilac stripe, not too flashy for a funeral. No one bothered much with full mourning but it was right to make the effort. The old-fashioned symbols were long gone: mourning veils to hide your tears, black armbands, funeral cards and mourning wreaths on the door, curtains closed in respect and hats off as the cortège passed. She would wear a hat out of respect and make sure that her son was decently dressed for the occasion.

There was a time when Nik was one of the smartest, handsomest young men in the dale, with his rugged good looks. He reminded her so much of Tom in his prime; the man who stopped her heart with one of his grins and his blue, blue eyes. If Nik’s shoulders were stooped now it was for good reason. Worry was weighing them down. He was fighting a lost cause and she feared trying to hold back the hungry tide. This afternoon he must shoulder his friend’s coffin to an early grave.

Jim’s suicide brought the pain of the collapse of their industry right to their doorstep. There was anger and confusion. If the vicar doled out any platitudes in his service, she

would lynch him personally. She was not on familiar terms with their new vicar, being more a Mother Earth than God the Father believer, but she would attend high days and holy days as neighbours must, to honour the dead and their living. Solidarity was the word they bandied about but actions spoke much louder.

They would bounce down from the tops to the church by the gill, with its stream coursing down the rocks that gave their village its name, and park Land Rovers and pickups where they could. There would be tea and sandwiches in the Spread Eagle, and the women would crack and gossip until it was time for evening milking and farm chores, but there were gaps now to fill in the farm routine. She powdered her red cheeks mapped with red veins. She had not missed doing her own farm chores one iota.

How she longed for a cottage down by the village beck, centrally heated, draught free, with lamps lit in the dusk and a good fire. She would soon get her energy back if she had only a small house to heat and clean instead of this barn. Lately she had found herself dosing off in the afternoons over her reading, breathless at the slightest exertion, but now was not the time to moan about her health when there was a young man in his forties, leaving a wife and children to bury him.

The service was mercifully short. She had to admit there was dignity in the old Prayer Book proceedings. It carried the distraught family through the ordeal. Even non-believers could take refuge in its language. Nik stood grim-faced, supporting the widow as the mourners stepped out into the autumn wind and rain towards the burial plot.

She did not want to see the look of incomprehension on Karen’s face as she gripped her sons in anoraks. The farm hand had found Jim in the field with a note thoughtfully pinned to his jacket in a plastic freezer bag. He was a proud man. He wanted to free his children from the curse of being farmer’s sons. This was his only way out, but what a legacy for his poor kids. The mourners gathered awkwardly just as the clouds parted and the sun glinted for a second, bathing the stone walls in a soft pink light.

It was more an afternoon for a ramble across the moor, if only the footpaths were open, than the burial of a young man gone mad with fear of failure. Nora stood silently for the final part of the ceremony, knowing a little of the grief Karen Grimoldby must be feeling. Time was not a great healer. It just took the edge off some of the pain so that you could breathe and carry on. The pain would never go away.

She was not one for small talk. Women had to be brick walls when it came to their children, appearing tough and hard. Family was what mattered most, she believed. If you indulged your unhappiness then it would linger longer. Feelings were best kept under control.

There would be time later to take Karen a plate pie and a tin of flapjack for the twins. When the sympathy letters were answered and the funeral expenses paid in the months to come – when winter held them in its iron fist– that would be the time to bob in and encourage the girl. That was when the chill of grief took its hold on a woman. Karen would be selling up and moving away, and another farm would be broken into lots to be bought as a holiday cottage for some blessed offcomers.

She turned towards the corner of St Oswald’s that would always be her own. All that was once precious to her was buried there. There were just two simple headstones with Latin inscriptions.

‘Nos habebit humus.’ Earth will hold us.

‘Mea filia pulchra.’ My beautiful daughter. Latin was such a dignified language to hide one’s grief in. She didn’t want the world to read her sorrow. It was enough that Father and child were together under the maple, Acer pseudo-platanus ‘Brilliantissimum', that fired each spring.

Farmers were used to death and the cruelty of nature, she mused. The hooded crows pecked out the eyes of newborn lambs if the ewe did not birth quickly enough. Foxes tore the heads off them for fun. Nature separated the weakest and picked them off, but this contagion levelled all in its path. Only the fit would survive the rigours of this coming winter.

Tom had a decent span, Shirley did not. She never talked about it much. What good would it do? There was no point in weeping and wailing and falling apart when there was another child and a farm to run. Sorrows were best kept in the family under lock and key. That’s why offcomers often called Dales folk cold, unfeeling, a subhuman species, impervious to suffering, but Jim’s death and foot-and-mouth showed otherwise. Underneath the weatherbeaten faces assembled on this bleak afternoon were the same fears and sorrows. Farmers had their own ways of dealing with them. Some took to religion or drink. She was the worst of all when it came to bottling things up.

‘Sad business is this, Mrs Snowden,’ whispered Bruce Stickley in her ear, looking every inch the successful country land agent in his navy Crombie coat and knife-edged trousers. She never trusted a man who had time to put his trousers in such a shape. But she nodded quickly and looked away.

Bruce Stickley was quick to strike up conversation these days. ‘It makes you think what’ll be happening next, doesn’t it?’ he continued. ‘Soon there won’t be any farms to manage, if this climate continues. You’ll be the last farm left in the dale.’

Nora shrugged in reply.

‘Don’t look so worried,’ he continued, oblivious to her disinterest. ‘You’ve got one of the most sought-after properties in the Dales with those three magic ingredients.’ He grinned.

‘Go on, surprise me,’ she quipped sharply.

‘Location … location, location,’ he replied. ‘There’s nothing to beat a south aspect, a hilltop view and a splendid array of ancient buildings to create interest in a sale. You’d get a tidy packet for all of it, even in the condition it’s in. If ever you think of selling I hope I’d be your first port of call.’

If she’d been a man she’d have socked him in the bollocks just to wipe that smug expression off his greasy face: odious little man with his slicked-back hair and hooded eyes. He thought he was the bee’s knees, but he was nothing but a blowfly feeding off a carcass. ‘This is hardly the time or place,’ she sniffed haughtily, piercing him with her icy stare.

‘Of course … but I just wanted you to know,’ Stickley countered with about as much sensitivity as a wolf on heat.

‘What gives you the idea we’ll be selling up?’ she snapped back.

‘With Nik having no one to take over, and the change in your circumstances,’ he answered, not so sure of his ground now.

‘So?’

‘I know how it is for hill farmers now. I saw Nik at the diversification lecture. Have you thought about developing the other barns?’

‘What we decide to do is none of your damned business, young man,’ she snapped. ‘Like father, like son, so I see. I knew your father. He always drew a hard bargain, always on the lookout for something cheap or run down. You’ve done well out of other people’s sorrows over the years … We’re here to honour a poor man who couldn’t take any more bad luck, not to do deals over his corpse. Show some respect!’ She turned her back on the estate agent and made for the open grave to throw her handful of soil into the hole. She did not want Bruce Stickley to see that his words had hit home.

So the news was out that they were hovering on the brink of a decision like so many here today. You need only be seen going into the estate agent’s office on market day for nosy parkers to put two and two together to make five. Nik was right: Bruce had an eye on their house for himself. Well, tough, she’d rather sell it at a loss than allow him the deeds.

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