LEAH FLEMING

The Girl From World’s End

Copyright

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.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2007

Copyright © Leah Fleming 2007

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

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9781847560063

Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007334957

Version: 2018-06-19

Dedication

In memory of Kathleen, who loved these hills.

Epigraph

…grief has no wings. She is the unwelcome lodger that squats on the hearthstone between us and the fire and will not be moved…

Arthur Quiller-Couch

Armistice Day Sermon, November 1927

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One A Change of Sky

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Part Two Darkening Skies

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Part Three The Snow House

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Author’s Notes

About the Author

About the Publisher

Part One A Change of Sky

1

West Riding of Yorkshire, 1926

A girl of about eight sat swinging her legs to and fro to keep them from going numb, watching the sky growing dark above. The weak December sun dipped behind the high moor and soon the cobbled streets would be crusted with frost. When was Father going to come out of the Green Man and take her home? The church clock had struck half-past four. Soon the mill hooter would buzz across the rooftops and the clatter of clogs would deafen the streets.

It had been a grand afternoon: one of the good days when Paddy Gilchrist woke up by himself, whistling and promising her a ride on a tram to Bradford to look in the shop windows and hear the Christmas brass bands. They had got as far as the park, where he’d pushed her on the swings and slides, but then they’d made a detour through the back streets of Scarperton.

‘I’ll not be a minute, Mirren. Time for my medicine–just a wee nip to keep me warm,’ he laughed, his dark eyes pleading as he saw the little blue ribbon on her coat lapel and the wince of disapproval on her face.

She was proud of that badge and the signed certificate from the Band of Hope that said not a drop of liquor would ever pass the lips of Miriam Ellen Gilchrist.

‘Don’t be long,’ she pleaded, trying not to pout as her lips trembled. ‘You promised me a ride up to town.’

‘Aye, I know, lassie, but you don’t begrudge yer dad a little comfort now, do you? You sit tight and I’ll buy you some sweeties when I’ve had my snifter.’

She had sat on this bench so many times, dreading that the father who went in standing would be the one who’d come out on all fours. The Green Man was that sort of pub.

Paddy and Mirren didn’t live alone. There was a master in their rooms: one who ruled over them night and day, whose presence lurked like a ghost in the corner of the compartments of the disused railway carriage that was now their home. He was a magician, full of piss and wind and wild schemes, who could turn her dad into John Barleycorn, the drunken sot who needed a guiding hand to round the corners on his way home, knocking folk off the pavement as he sang out of tune at the top of his voice. Sometimes she opened the latch and he fell through the door, stiff like a board.

John Barleycorn had stale breath and leaking pants. He stole her father’s hard-earned wage and the food from their table, shaming her before school pals playing in the street, who would look up and snigger as she and her demon-possessed father wound their way down the ginnels from the pub, Mirren staggering under the weight of him. She worshipped her father–he was tall, handsome and strong–but she hated John Barleycorn, the drinker who was so weak and silly.

Demon Drink was not like the pantomime devil with horns and a forked tale, all red and black, shouting from a stage, or the wily tempter from the pages of her Sunday school prize book, with forked tongue and goatee beard. He came and went for no reason.

Sometimes he disappeared for weeks and gave her back the father she loved: the Paddy Gilchrist who had wooed and won young Ellie Yewell away from her farming family in the big Yorkshire Dales farmhouse, the railway navvy with his squeeze-box and fancy dancing and Scottish charm, who promised her the moon, sun and stars if she would be his bride. Then he went off to war, leaving his new bride with a bairn, Mirren’s angel brother, Grantley, and with no family to support them until he returned wounded right badly in the leg.

If only Mother and little Grant hadn’t died in the terrible sickness that came when she was a baby, leaving her motherless. How she wished they were all together, snug by their fireside of an evening, not freezing to death outside a public house.

Now the lamps were lit and Mirren was fed up of waiting. He’d forgotten she was there again and at the mercy of rough lads, making fun of her for being ‘Jill all alone’. Soon Woodbine Winnie would be touting for business and taking men in mufflers down the alleyway to lift up her skirts–to do quite what Mirren wasn’t sure, but it was something sinful.

At last Mirren recognised one of the men coming out of the pub as Mr Ackroyd, who lived in one of the far carriages that made up their row of houses in Chapelside Cuttings; old rolling stock being the only homes left for returning heroes from the war. Some wags laughingly called them ‘the Rabbit Hutches’, but Dad shrugged off the gibe and so did she.

Living in a neat line of compartments with steps up to their railway carriage was better than living back to back, up a steep hill with no garden to play in. She could sit for hours watching the engines shunting up and down the line, engine drivers waving and hooting. She knew the names of all the great iron boilers puffing and snorting out of the station on their way to Scotland and London; Duchess of Hamilton was her favourite.

Dad was a ganger on the line repairing the track. When he was in work there was always plenty of coal for the stove and treats. When there were layoffs they still had vegetables from the allotment and eggs from the chicken coop, but money was always a worry. Granny Simms, who lived next door with her son and his one leg, cooked for them and took in the washing in return for coal and treats, baccy and beer for Big Brian, who hobbled about the town on crutches, begging.

In Mirren’s life Granny Simms was a guiding light like the moon peeping through clouds. A neighbour who was mother, friend and comforter, she would know what to do. On nights like this Mirren could always knock on the window and Granny would open up, wrapped against the cold in the faded shawl she wore summer and winter, the long printed pinny with rubbed-out patches. Her face was leathery and lined with soot, hair scraped back in a knot, and she wore iron clogs, which rattled on the wooden carriage floor, and rolled-up stockings. She would take the little girl in and shove a fat rascal bun in her hand, spicy and full of currants.

It was Granny who taught her to knit, to peg a rug and bake bread, railway slice and dumplings. She saw that she got a proper schooling at St Mary’s and was turned out neat to all Sunday school treats going in the town.

‘He can’t help himself, Mirren,’ Granny Simms would sigh, showing empty gums with two yellow cracked front teeth. ‘Drink is a terrible thing. There’s many a red nose makes a ragged back in this town. It’s a pity the Paddy Gilchrist what came back from France was not the young lad who went to war, nor the man yer mam wed. A wild-eyed stranger he returned, not able to keep down a job, but she got him straight again. But when the Spanish flu came to visit us, it went through the town like a dose of Epsom salts. Yer dad just couldn’t get his head round that carry-on. He did his best with you, but men are useless when it comes to babbies. It’s a terrible temptation to drown yer sorrows, lass.’

These words made Mirren sad, for she knew her love would never be enough to mend her father’s heart. What he needed was the Word of God in his life, like the pastor in Sunday school preached, but Dad just laughed at her pleas for him to go to church.

‘Where was God when we needed him in the Battle of Arras? Where was he when the Angel of Death knocked at our front door? Ask your preacher man that!’ he would scoff. She had learned not to talk to him in drink but to hide in the little bench bed, under the quilt and blankets, pretending she couldn’t hear his sobs and rantings, praying that he would be in time to go to his work in the morning. Without work there was no rent money and no rent money would lead to the workhouse and pull them apart.

Then, without explanation, the sun would rise in the morning, bright and dazzling, full of promise when her real dad rose, bleary-eyed but ready for work, unaided, bringing home gobstoppers and fish and chips. She would dress quickly and take his hand before the clouds came back.

On such days Mirren could go to school and learn her tables and not worry about him being sent home. She liked to bury her head in a reading book and pretend she was the Little Princess in the attic or one of the Railway Children. On such days Dad would swing her round to ‘Charlie Is my Darling’ and call her his ‘own wee darling’, telling her she was pretty like her mother and what a lucky chap he was to have such a beautiful, clever daughter. When he held her hand and whistled to himself, she felt so safe until they stopped by the pub door and her heart sank with fear.

Now, tonight, was going to be another of the bad nights.

‘Is my dad still inside?’ she asked the old neighbour, Mr Ackroyd, as he passed.

‘Aye, lass, stuck to the bench a while yet. There’s some as never knows when they’ve had enough. Better get off home now. It’s no night to be out in the cold. Happen you’d better come along with me.’

‘Thank you, but I said I’d wait,’ she smiled, torn between wanting the warmth of Granny Simms’s iron stove and the need to see her dad home safely. Why should she wait when he didn’t care? Why should she believe any of his broken promises? He deserved to slip on the ice and crack his head but then he wouldn’t get to work on time and would be laid off and soon it would be Christmas and she had seen a little doll in the window of Bell’s Emporium with a sticky-out skirt and real hair.

But what was the point? He’d already spent his wages supping with his cronies. It was always the same palaver: he’d be ashamed and crawl home to sleep off the drink when she wasn’t looking, and then pretend none of this had happened.

Why should she wait a minute longer when there was someone at hand to guide her through the dark streets?

‘Wait, Mr Ackroyd, I’ll come with you…’

She spent the night at Granny Simms’s, sleeping in the chair. When it was morning, and there was no sign of Dad’s return, Mirren thought he would be lying snug in one of the refuge huts on the side of the railway track, hiding until he was sober enough to face her sullen anger. So she went to school with a heavy heart and thought no more about it.

She ran home at dinner break, hoping there would be smoke coming out of the carriage, but there were strangers waiting on the doorstep with Granny Simms, who nodded gravely as she saw her. There was a funny look in her eyes as Mirren approached more slowly.

She recognised Constable Fletcher, who was kind. He took off his helmet as he spoke.

‘You’ll have to be brave, lass. There’s been a terrible accident. Yer dad got knocked over on the track.’

Mirren shook her head, not wanting to hear what was coming next, wanting to run, but her legs had turned to jelly so she shoved her hands over her ears. It was Granny who put her arms around her shoulders and held her tight.

‘He wouldn’t’ve known a thing, love. He fell asleep on the line. He must have taken a short cut and slipped.’ Her eyes were full of tears.

Mirren couldn’t believe what she was saying. ‘Dad’d never cross the line at night. He said I must never do that. Where did it happen? You’ve got it all wrong. The track’s miles from the Green Man.’

‘I’m sorry, lass, but he must have been taking a short cut down the line in the early hours. He was hit on the down line–the night sleeper from Glasgow and him Scotch-born and all…Let yer granny make you a cup of tea,’ said the constable.

‘She’s not my granny,’ Mirren screamed in fury. ‘My real granny lives up the dale on a farm.’ At Christmas there was usually a parcel of clothes from Grandma, which never fitted, and a printed card from the Yewells of Cragside Farm. The rest of the year there was nothing.

‘I want to see my dad.’

‘That’ll not be possible,’ whispered the constable. ‘There has to be an investigation.’

‘I have to go and see if it’s him. It might not be him,’ Mirren said, not listening. This was all some strange nightmare she was living in and soon she would wake up. How could her dad be gone and have left her all alone?

‘Come on, Mirren, you’ve had a shock,’ Granny Simms whispered, ignoring the earlier betrayal. ‘She’ll stay with me until such times—’

‘But it’s all my fault,’ Mirren cried out. ‘I should’ve waited and brought him home.’

‘Now how do you make that out, young lady?’ said the policeman, kneeling down so close up she could see the hairs sprouting out of his nose.

‘I should have stayed on. He told me to stay outside on the bench, but I was cold and came home. He needed me and I wasn’t there. It’s all my fault.’ The hot tears began to roll down her cheeks. ‘I want my dad. I have to tell him I’m sorry.’

‘Now none of that, child,’ said one of the strangers, a man wearing a clerical collar. ‘Mr Gilchrist was a grown man and should’ve known better than to leave a child alone in the dark outside a pub,’ he tutted in her defence, but his words gave no comfort.

‘I’m afraid there’s many as does round here,’ answered the constable. ‘The child was right to go home. In his befuddled state, Paddy wouldn’t know what time of day or night it was. Don’t fret yerself, lass. It were an accident and a cruel one at that, just before Christmas.’

‘That remains for the coroner to decide,’ the parson replied. ‘The railway line is always a temptation, an easy way out of life’s troubles.’

‘Not in front of the kiddy, sir,’ snapped the constable. ‘She’s got enough to bear as it is, without putting that burden on her.’

But the words were spoken and a seed of doubt sown in turbulent soil. Mirren had sensed early that a force greater than her childish adoration always drew her father towards danger. He’d once lived in a world of soldiers. When he sat in the Green Man there were old pals from the war who supped and sang that ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ song that made him cry. Once she had rooted in his tin box of papers and found a likeness of him, standing so straight in his uniform, his dark hair plastered down and his moustache waxed. He looked so strong and handsome, but when he caught her staring down at it he almost slammed the lid on her fingers.

‘Put that away. There’s nothing in there for you!’

‘Is that you?’ she’d asked, looking at his kilt.

He’d stared down at the young man and shook his head. ‘Never seen him afore.’ His voice was cracked and his breath smelled of stout, his skin was grey, his shoulders stooped as he fought the demons she was too feeble to conquer. She never opened the tin box again because it was where he kept his wounds and pain, out of sight of a child’s prying eyes.

‘It is good to see this child Miriam has signed the pledge.’ The parson pointed to the badge on her lapel. ‘A weakness for strong drink is bred in the bone. Do you belong to the Band of Hope?’ He was changing the subject, trying to make polite conversation.

‘Yes, she does,’ Granny Simms interrupted. ‘She’s a regular at their banner parades and treat in the summer. She wears that blue ribbon all the time.’

‘Good. That’s a start, young lady, and next we must get the Welfare to sort out accommodation. She can’t stay here alone,’ he added.

‘She’ll bide with me tonight. This lass’s not budging from where she knows best,’ Granny said, holding her tight. Mirren’s eyelids were drooping, her mouth was dry, her head whirring as her legs buckled. ‘Look at the poor mite. She needs a mash of sweet tea. There’s friends enough round here to see to the poor bairn in her sorrow.’

They stumbled up the steps and into the fug and clutter of Granny Simms’s compartment, where Brian sat dosing with his dog on his lap. He didn’t know yet. He hadn’t heard the news.

For a second, life was as it always had been, bread and dripping on the table as if her world had not been turned upside down and she left alone.

If only she’d stayed with Dad, if only it was yesterday all over again. But the mill buzzer hooted at dinner time as normal. How could something terrible happen and the mill chimneys went on smoking just the same? She started to shake and couldn’t stop.

Granny shoved something bitter on her lips. ‘Sip it slowly, lass. It’ll calm you down,’ she coaxed, but Mirren spat it out.

‘It’s spirit. I know that smell. Don’t make me break my pledge.’

‘Bugger the pledge…It’s the only medicine for shock.’

‘What am I going to do?’ Mirren cried, feeling the hot whisky slipping down her throat. It tasted bitter. How could anyone pay good brass for such poison?

‘First things first. We’ll see yer dad buried good and proper and you kitted out to do him proud. Everything else can wait until then. Yer a good lass and sharp as a knife, but you’ve not gone far to find your sorrows. Happen something will turn up for you.’

‘I’ll have to go in the orphanage, won’t I?’ Everyone at school knew of the orphan kids, in their grey uniforms and cropped hair, who walked in lines around the town and had no parents to care for them.

‘Over my dead body! You deserve better and, as you said, I’m not yer real kin. It’s time them as are got to know what’s happened,’ Granny Simms smiled. ‘I’m no good with lettering but we’ll get someone to write and get them down here fast. It’s time they took up their responsibilities. Yer mam would have wanted that.’

‘But I’d rather stay here with you.’

Granny shook her head. ‘Be that as it may, there’ll be nothing but bad memories for you here. You deserve better. Happen it’s time you were changing yer sky!’

Adeline Yewell was too busy finishing off the Christmas pig to see the letter that George, the postman, delivered to the kitchen table at Cragside Farm. He would be wanting his forenoon drinkings and a bit of gossip with Carrie before he headed across the moor on foot to the next farm.

The farmer’s wife had trapped Myrtle, the brown pig, against the wall so she squatted on her fat rump. Then Adeline shoved a ball of oatmeal down the pig’s throat and gave her a sup of good buttermilk from the bucket to swallow. ‘That’s a girl, stuff thyself!’ She wanted some fat sweet flesh on this porker before she got seen to with an axe, strung up and bled off. At least her pigs died happy and belly stuffed. No place for oversentiment on a farm, she thought.

There was so much to see to before the big day and she didn’t want George holding up Carrie Sutcliffe from her chores. They were getting a bit sweet on each other, them two. She hoped that didn’t mean another live-in domestic giving notice. It was hard to get girls and lads to stay overlong up on the tops. They wanted to be in nearer the town.

Oh, what it was to be love-struck and silly! She could still recall the time when she’d made eyes at Joe Yewell at the Christmas dance, nearly forty years ago. It’s a good job she had collared and bagged him by the New Year stir-up in the village hall as he stomped across the wooden floor in his shirtsleeves, before the fiddle and the stamp of dancing feet became Satan’s snare.

Once he got ‘saved’ in Brother Handel Morton’s tent he hadn’t time for worldly gatherings, only preaching and chapel meetings. She’d caught him just on the turn, and her being Church not Chapel, it could have made things impossible.

The two didn’t mix in Windebank village, never had and never would, but love conquers all, so they say. The two of them went their separate ways each Sunday morning.

If only he could have made Ellen, their daughter, see sense when she fell for that Scotch navvy Gilchrist. They both felt it was a grave mistake, but the lass burned her bridges good and proper, and paid the price. They’d not even gone to her funeral for fear of catching the flu and passing it on up the dale.

That act of cowardice had never sat easy on her; cost many a sleepless night. To abandon their own daughter was not something either of them was proud of but Ellie’d made her bed and all that. It was her choice to go rushing up to Gretna Green making a fool of them all, having a bairn not six months afterwards. It was not easy to stomach having a thankless child.

Adeline’d done her bit for the kiddies but had never seen the last one nor wanted to, but her father being a Catholic and fond of drink was a worry. Sometimes she lay in bed and wondered if the girl had Ellie’s fair hair or the blue Yewell eyes renowned in the district for the distinctive dark ring round the iris, making them sparkle like sapphires. It was those blue globes that had drawn her to Joe’s side. When he gazed into her face she was lost.

‘Get a grip o’ thyself,’ she sighed at such memories. There were geese to be plucked and sent down to market and the butcher. She hoped the prices held up for Christmas as it had been a tough year for farmers and workers, what with the General Strike and lay-offs.

She must parcel up a few bits for the Gilchrist lass down in Scarperton. She wasn’t sure whether Miriam was six or seven, but Mildred at the haberdashers always set aside a few items that hadn’t sold for her to parcel up. Time flew past so quickly. Where had the years gone?

There’d be many cutting corners this Christmas, making do with a cheap joint or scraps down in the market town. Joe would have to temper his chapel sermons; a little less hellfire and a little more goodwill to all men, she hoped. He could get so carried away when he got in that pulpit.

‘Remember those good women have scrimped and saved to put a Sunday meal on the table for their kin. Don’t you go spoiling their Yorkshire puddings with your rantings. Have a bit of Christian charity.’

‘You’re a hard woman, Adey! Come with me and give me a signal.’

‘Never,’ she would laugh. ‘I like my pew comfortable and quiet, with beautiful words and no bone shaking. The vicar gives us ten minutes’ pulpit talk. That’s enough for me.’

Joe would be out on the moors now, foddering the sheep, reciting the good bits of his sermon to himself, rendering choruses from Messiah and making sure none of his flock strayed too far, for the weather looked set for a blow-in of snow. He was a good shepherd to his flock through and through. He was for sheep and she was for cows so together they made a good team.

Cragside Farm sat on the slope of the fell, tucked into the hillside with windowpanes looking south and west to get the best of the sun to warm the stone a treat. Once it was thronged with children, dogs and yard boys, but now it was quieter as their son Tom farmed higher out at Scar Head, and his brother, Wesley, was a teacher in Leeds with no interest in farming at all.

This perch was fine while they were fit and strong, and Yewells were long livers, but come the next few years Joe would have to slow down a bit. Things were tough for farmers now and getting tougher, Adey thought as she sat with Carrie plucking the goose feathers into a sack. Nothing must be wasted.

‘There’s a letter come from Keighley,’ Carrie said, shoving the envelope across the table. ‘Who do we know in Keighley? Happen it’s a Christmas card from Paddy and the girl. What’s her name again?’ Carrie was fishing; always curious about the prodigal daughter and her infamous family who never darkened the door.

‘I’ve never had a card from him nor the girl, and she’s called Miriam, after Joe’s mam, as well you know. Little good that’ll do her. I’m surprised she didn’t get Theresa or Maria or some fancy saint’s name.’

Adey stared at the handwriting, curious for a second. The address was written in a neat copperplate hand. It looked official and it was addressed to both of them.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ Carrie was at it again, rooting for information, but Adey wasn’t going to give her satisfaction so shoved the letter in her pinny pocket and promptly forgot all about it. That was the trouble with girls who lived in: they got a little too nosy about family affairs. It was none of her business who was writing to them.

‘Now what’s all this about you and George Thursby?’ It was Adey’s turn to go fishing.

‘He’s asked me if I’m going to the Christmas hop in the village hall. What shall I wear?’

‘Clothes would be a start if you don’t want to stir them all up,’ Adey laughed. ‘I’m sure you’ll find something to dazzle him with, but I want you back at midnight and no hanky-panky. It’s a long walk up that hill in the dark. Let him wait for his favours.’

Carrie was blushing, her neck a circle of pink weals. ‘Mrs Yewell, what do you take me for?’ she muttered.

‘As silly a lass as any in the dale, as daft as a brush when it comes to a handsome face and clean shirt, but with a canny eye for a good bargain,’ she replied. ‘You could do worse than one of the Thursbys’ lads. They’re reliable, sturdy and don’t squander their brass. His mother is that careful she’d skin a dog for its fleas.’ Carrie laughed at her joke but her eyes were far away.

‘Mind, I was young once: only the once and look where I landed up: plucking geese, scouring pigs, mucking out and general farm dogsbody stuck on the moors in all weathers. At least George won’t make you tramp with him. It’s a good job in the Post Office, steady and secure in hard times. You could do worse. Take our Tom. When’s he ever going to get himsen wed? He’s over forty and too set in his ways.’

Adey had been hoping her son might have taken a shine to this girl himself but he was tongue-tied when he came into female company, preferring to go his own gait and a game of darts in The Fleece, much to Joe’s dismay. If he didn’t get a move on there’d be no grandsons to take over the tenancy and run the family farm.

He was a good catch. The Yewells were a family of standing in the district. Joe was a lay preacher in the Methodist Circuit. She was a Boothroyd from a farm across the Ribble valley: two of a kind. It didn’t do to marry off the moor, like Ellie. You never knew what you were getting or what sort of stock they came from, its strengths and weak points. Better to be in full knowing of the facts before signing up for life, she thought.

All in all she’d had no regrets. It was a pity you couldn’t choose yer own bairns. They all needed kicking with a different foot: Wesley was all brains with no feel for the land; Tom was all brawn and no business sense; Ellie, well, she was bonny and bright but as stubborn as they came, wanting to go her own road into a town. Bradford was no life for a country-born girl, especially in the war, with rations and shortages and two babies to rear and a husband away fighting.

If she’d come home for a bit of fresh air they wouldn’t have turned her away from their door, but she didn’t because a Yewell was too proud to admit a mistake and they were too proud to go running after her. What a carry-on for good Christian folk!

As the morning wore on Adey was too busy to dwell on what-might-have-been. There was the farm lads’ dinner to line up in the large stone-flagged kitchen, the chicken coop to see to and the ironing of shirts. She wanted to get the oven range hot for a bit of special baking: spice bread and ginger cake to put away for when company came calling. Joe would be wanting his tea before his last rounds, and tomorrow was the slaughterman’s day when Myrtle would give her all. They would be at the butchering until midnight.

It was after eight before she sat down to the basket of mending by the half-finished peg rug. No rest for the wicked, she smiled, and then remembered the letter in her pocket.

‘There’s summat come from Keighley Shall I open it or you?’ she asked, seeing Joe was half asleep in his big leather chair. He grunted as she opened the page, then opened his eyes when there was silence from across the table.

‘What’s to do? Give it here…’

She shoved the letter across the table. ‘You’d better read this,’ she muttered.

He fumbled for his spectacles and gave it the once-over, paused and then searched the flickering flames as if looking for a reply. ‘By heck, that’s a turn-up. I shall have to get on my knees to the Lord about this. Poor lass…and just before Christmas, but it’s too much for us to take on at our age.’ His eyes were pleading with her to agree.

Adey read the letter then she too searched the flames, trying to blot out the image of Ellie’s likeness that lay face down in her dressing table drawer. This was their own flesh and blood they were assigning to an orphanage, their only grandchild, named after their own famous kin, Miriam of the Dale, who had rescued children in a blizzard at great cost to herself.

If only it weren’t Christmas, with stories of wandering strangers and no room at the inn. How could you turn your back on a bairn at such a season and look your neighbours in the eye?

Joe stood up and stomped around the room. ‘The daft happorth! Crossing the line in the dark, getting torn to pieces by an express. It don’t bear thinking about. I’ve seen what engines can do to a dog trapped on a rail. Railway sidings are no place for a kiddy.’

‘It was good enough for two of ours, Joseph Yewell.’

‘And look where it landed them. Ellie and Wesley are backsliders and town dwellers,’ he argued, not looking his wife in the face; not wanting to see her anguish.

‘We were hard on Ellie. Miriam’s not to blame for her parents, now is she? Do we turn our backs on her? What good reason is there for that? Answer me?’

‘We don’t know anything about her,’ Joe snapped.

‘Would you turn out one of yer own stock for running with a tup in the wrong field?’

‘That’s just an animal.’

‘We’re animals too when it comes to looking after our own. Whether we like it or not, she’s one of us: a Yewell with yer own mother’s name. What sort of life will she have if we say no to their request? Can you live with that ’cos I can’t, not now, knowing what we do…’ Adey flushed with heat and began to snivel.

‘I shall have to pray over it. It may not be the Lord’s will.’

‘I don’t know where you dreamed that one up, preacher man. Doesn’t the Good Book say, “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not”? If it’s good enough for the Master then happen it’ll be good enough for us too.’

‘Adeline, you’ve no idea what you’re taking on…she’s someone else’s child.’

‘Our daughter’s child, mind; a motherless lamb. How many of them have we mothered on in our time?’

‘Let’s sleep on it and see how it feels in the morning. I’m off to check the byres,’ Joe said, anxious to be out of the room, far away from this unexpected request.

Neither of them slept much that night, tossing and turning, pulling the bedclothes this way and that. In the morning the slaughterman would be about his killing business. There’d be no time for private discussions until late.

Adey rose and lit a candle, opening her private drawer, the one that held stuff that was women’s business: douches, sponges, pads and belts. Soon she would be at the end of all that palaver, but to start again with a kiddy and a stranger to a farmhouse? Whose fault was that? It was too much to ask of them.

But as she lifted Ellie’s portrait, those Yewell eyes pierced her through like a spear straight into her heart. ‘Don’t abandon my child,’ they cried out.

She closed the drawer and dressed ready to face this bloody day.

2

Miriam sat in the railway carriage, stunned with the suddenness of being torn away from everything and everyone she knew. Dad was barely laid in the hard ground and already his face was fading from behind her eyes. Now she was going to live with strangers in a foreign land like Ruth in the bible story. The lawyer said she was a lucky girl to get this change of sky but his words weren’t sinking in.

Her new relation was sitting across from her, bolt upright, staring out of the window, but every so often Mirren caught her snatching glances at her face as if she had snot on her nose end.

Grandma Yewell had appeared in the lawyer’s office when Granny Simms packed a little parcel of clothes and took her down to Keighley on the tram.

‘Now you be good for yer new gran. She’s come a long way to fetch you. Remember your Ps and Qs and don’t fidget,’ she whispered as they sat in the corridor waiting for the door to open to the old man’s office.

‘Now, Miriam,’ he said, when they were admitted, pointing to the lady in the seat. ‘I want to introduce you to Mrs Yewell, mother of the late Ellen Miriam Gilchrist, who’s your grandmamma now. She’s kindly agreed to take you back to the family’s farm for a little holiday in Windebank.’

Mirren bobbed a curtsy like they did to the managers of the school when they came visiting. Her tongue stuck to her teeth.

‘She’s tall for a seven-year-old,’ muttered the woman before her, in a thick tweed coat, brown felt hat and with a dead fox round her neck. She eyed Mirren up carefully.

‘I’m eight and a half,’ Mirren piped back.

‘And sharp with it!’ said the woman.

‘You’re a very lucky girl that your grandparents are offering to take full responsibility for your welfare. Needless to say I hope you will repay them with good behaviour, diligent service.’

‘But I don’t know them,’ Mirren cried suddenly, realising that she must leave with this lady, and clinging to Granny Simms.

‘Now none of that, young lady,’ the old man with the whiskers down the sides of his face continued. ‘You have a whole train journey to get acquainted…It’s as much a burden for them to have to take you in as it is for you to make minor adjustments to your change of circumstances. You were not left in any position to support yourself, my dear. If these kind folk hadn’t offered—’

The lady cut his words off, saying, ‘Come along, lass. We’ve a train to catch or your grandfather will be left standing at the station. It doesn’t do to keep a farmer waiting.’ She smiled with her eyes and Mirren picked up her parcel, knowing there was no other way. She hugged Granny Simms, who wiped tears from her eyes.

‘You’ve got a good ’un there and wick as a weasel, just like her mam, a real lady…’ Granny Simms told Mrs Yewell. Then she was gone.

Why had her gran and granddad never visited her before? There was a big bust-up, Mirren knew, a falling-out over her dad, long before she was born. She knew nothing about farms except that they were smelly places full of cow muck and horse dung. They once went on a Sunday school trip to one up on Howarth Moor, which was a right wild place where some lady had written a story called Withering Hats.

She smiled now, looking at Mrs Yewell’s hat. It was withering at the edges, all floppy with feathers that looked faded and frayed. It must be windy at Windebank. How would she live up in the wilds? She stared out of the window, trying not to snivel as her eyes filled with tears.

There was nothing but green fields and stone walls flashing past the window, walls running in all directions, making strange patterns over the hills: squares, oblongs, triangles and curves, and in the middle were dotted sheep like balls of cotton wool.

‘Are we nearly there?’ she asked. ‘When do we see the farm?’

‘All in good time,’ whispered the woman. ‘Be patient. Everything comes to them as waits…’

Mirren sighed and turned back to the window. She had never seen so many walls and sheep, men on carts and not a mill chimney in sight. This was a funny place to live, all strung out on your own. Where were the streets and the crowds?

Adey couldn’t take her eyes off the child opposite. She was the spitten of her mother at that age: the same long sandy plaits and those blue Yewell eyes. If she’d walked past her in the street, it would’ve been like seeing a ghost. How could she have gotten her age so wrong? Miriam must have been born at the war’s end. The son died as a baby. They ought to have visited but farms couldn’t run on their own and bridges had been burned when Ellie ran away.

The truth was she couldn’t bear to see her daughter living in the rough, running after a navvy into goodness knows what conditions. No wonder she…but this lass would get her chances even if she did have Paddy’s wild blood inside her. There was a spark to her eyes and an edge to her tongue, and she was quick to defend herself like all the Yewells.

So they called her Mirren not Miriam, the Scotch way, the old Granny had whispered. The lass had a right to her name but the Yewells were proud of Miriam and doled it out to their firstborn daughters for generations. Ellie had done the same for her daughter and that was touching.

Adey had to admit she was warming to the bairn even if she could see a few battles ahead with stubbornness. Mirren was a town child and not easy to settle up the dale, not used to shutting gates and doing chores. They were used to shops and dens of iniquity round every corner, cinema houses showing bare flesh as if it were decent. The child’d need watching and fattening up; all legs and elbows and bony knees. The kiddy was sitting in a dark serge coat two sizes too small, with her skirt hem showing and her stockings in need of a good darn: more holey than godly. Heaven only knew what was underneath. Full of fleas no doubt, but a good scrub would sort that out.

‘Do you like the country?’ she asked, trying to interest the girl away from picking her nose.

‘If you’ve seen one sheep you’ve seen the lot,’ Mirren sighed.

‘Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong. Every one of them is different and some of them have names, just like children, no two alike. The shepherd like the Good Lord Himself, knows them all. There’ll be a lot for you to learn, but farming’s in your blood so you’ll soon catch on. Your grandfather will walk you round the fields and introduce you to his flock so they’ll come to you,’ she added, hoping he would take to the child as she had done.

Joe would be shocked when he saw this mite standing, the image of their lost daughter. Why had they kept away so long? This child had been allowed to run wild into all sorts of danger just because they were too proud to bend a little. Now they must make up for lost time.

The man who came in the cart to collect them was like a giant with a sandy moustache and tufts of sandy hair coming out of his nose. He stared at her.

‘So this is our Ellie’s bairn, skinny as a lath but bonny with it? We’ll do summat with this one, Mother,’ he laughed, eyeing Mirren up like a prize calf.

‘No guessing she’s one of ours, Joe, is there?’ said his wife.

‘Oh, aye, right enough, but not in front of the lassie…So what did you think, coming all this way on a steam train?’ he offered, thinking she’d never been on a train before.

‘I’ve been everywhere with my dad…Leeds, Bradford and to the sea once at Filey,’ she answered politely. ‘This one was a bit slow.’

‘I see we’ve got a right little wanderlust here but I bet you’ve never lived on top of the world before,’ he said with a wink. She stared back, not sure if he was teasing or not. He was so tall and broad, like a giant in fustian breeches and big leather boots. His jacket had patches at the elbows, and from his waistcoat hung a real gold chain.

‘Now don’t go upsetting the lass. It’ll all be strange to her at first,’ said the woman.

‘All aboard then, and let’s be getting back, young lady.’

They seemed to be climbing uphill for ever, past grey stone village houses, past a small church with a stubby tower, past a duck pond, up walled tracks, higher and higher to the top of the hill where jagged white rocks jutted out and sheep scuttled past on bare grey hillsides. Down in the valley Mirren could see more stone walls and fields of sheep grazing, greens and greys and blue sky. A damp wind mopped her cheeks and she felt dizzy at the sight of such strangeness. It was another world with no people, no buses, no lines of houses lining the road, no smoking chimneys.

Then they turned off the track to the left towards a large white house with windows shining, sparkling like eyes. It was a house grander than she had ever seen before and this was Cragside, her new home. This was where Mam had lived as a girl. How could she have ever left such a dwelling for a railway hut?

Perhaps it was the marble pillars in the hall, the clack of her clogs on the tiled floor, or the high ceilings with piped icing corners, the large square rooms off the hall or the fact that the back of the house seemed to be tunnelled into the rock, but Mirren thought that Cragside wore a frown, not a smile, on that first viewing. It was like walking into the town hall or the Wesleyan Chapel and asking for the lavvy. She was dying for a pee but too shy to ask.

A kind girl in a white apron, called Carrie, showed her into the parlour, which smelled of lavender polish and woodsmoke, and she crossed over to the long window, staring out at the view. You could see for miles and miles, right down to the river and the railway line.

‘The sheep have all got coloured bottoms,’ was all she could think of to say. ‘Why?’

Nobody answered, but Carrie smiled. What had she said wrong?

This might look like a palace but at that moment her grandmother looked stern and forbidding, and Granddad looked awkward.

‘Go with Carrie into the kitchen and she’ll find you some tea,’ her grandmother ordered as she flopped down on the big armchair, pulling off her withering hat with relief. ‘It’s been a long day.’

‘I need the lav,’ she whispered to the maid.

‘The what?’

‘The lavvy. I’m bursting…’

‘Oh, the nessy…outside in the yard, or you can go to the water closet upstairs but it’ll be a bit high for you to pull the chain,’ said Carrie.

Mirren didn’t wait for an answer and shot out into the cobbled yard to look for the toilet.

From what she had seen so far, this was one of those fussy houses with ornaments to knock over and photographs to admire. There was a shawl over the big piano that might come hurtling down if she caught it and then she’d smash all the glass. She must remember to walk slowly and not make a noise on the flag floors. The kitchen smelled like a bakery and she felt hungry for the first time in days.

If only this was just a holiday it would be wonderful. If only Mam and Dad and Grant were here visiting together, playing in the fields and then going back home on the train, back to Scarperton and her friends…But this was for ever and ever, amen, and they were her family now, strangers who called her by the wrong name, who lived in a cold house and spoke different.

Mirren sat on the lavvy seat and howled. She was Jill all alone and it was all Dad’s fault, but she couldn’t be cross with him because he was gone. They were all together now without her in heaven. It wasn’t fair!

3

In the days that followed Mirren’s arrival at Cragside Farm there were a whole new set of chores to be learned. Carrie took her in hand to feed the chickens, to rummage for precious eggs and clean out the huts carefully, and look for holes in the fence where Brer Fox could get in. Mirren wrinkled up her nose at the smell of chicken dung but knew the score.

Uncle Tom, her mother’s big brother, showed her how to sweep up properly and take water to the cattle in the winter barn. The yard boy helped her scoop oats for the big Clydesdale horses. There was so much to learn and being busy made her forget about starting the new school down at Windebank.

Sometimes in the evening they gathered round the piano and Granddad placed his fingers up and down the keys to find a chord and smiled, showing her a set of gleaming teeth that Carrie said Granny had given him as an early Christmas present. He played tunes without even looking at his fingers. ‘“Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low…”’ His voice was rich and deep, but Granny got upset.

‘Don’t sing that, Joe…George used to sing that in the chapel concert. He was your mother’s brother, Mirren, but he never came home from France. They never found him; so many lost boys. At least you’re a lass and won’t have to face that carry-on.’ She sniffed, pointing to the photo of a soldier in uniform in the black frame on the mantelpiece. ‘That’s yer uncle, God rest his soul. Thank goodness some were spared, but there’s one or two round here who’re not the men they once were; the schoolmaster for one. I’ve heard that Annie Burrows has a lot to put up with these days.’ She lifted her hand as if she was swallowing something from a bottle. Then she saw Mirren watching and put it down quickly. ‘I’m glad to see you’ve signed the temperance pledge. Joe’s a Methodist so we don’t drink.’

‘Was my mam a good singer?’ Mirren asked.

‘She could render a good Messiah chorus when pushed but no solo work. George was our baritone. He’s sorely missed. They don’t do concert parties down Windebank any more. There aren’t enough men to go around now,’ she sighed.

‘Can I learn the piano?’ Mirren asked, hoping to be able to accompany herself singing like Granddad.

‘We’ll see when you’ve done your chores. Chores first and foremost, lass. The farm must come first, then making meals, sewing and mending, church, of course, and if you’re quick about them all, happen you’ll pare off a slice of time for a bit of music but only after you’ve done your homework.’

So that was how Mirren got her piano lessons, driving them mad, thumping out the wrong notes with hammer fingers until she got the knack of placing them correctly, which wasn’t easy. She soon got bored with scales, preferring to read all the books left on the shelf: Boy’s Own adventures that were full of derring-do and excitement. Getting lost in a book was one way to shut out the noisy comings and goings of the farm and the strangeness of her life high on the hills, but most of all the dreariness of Windebank school.

The school in Scarperton was large. There were hundreds of children, from infants to part-timers at the mill. They drilled like soldiers in a barracks, lining up with masters and mistresses to the sound of the bell, the whistle and the booming voice of the headmaster, who eyed up his pupils with interest and shoved Mirren into the class above because she could read well and help others. There were marching songs and country dancing, singing hymns and object lessons about nature and stars.

The school at Windebank couldn’t have been more different. There was one master, Mr Burrows, and his assistant, Miss Halstead. It was a mean matchbox of a building with windows high up on the wall. A big coke stove at one end belched out fumes. It had railings round that smelled of dirty socks and wet wool, and wet knickers now and then. Everyone was mixed up together on benches; the quiet and serious ones with rough boys in holey jumpers and thick boots that stung when they tripped you up.

Miss Halstead took the littler children into another tiny classroom out of the Head’s way after assembly. Mirren went to the front on her first morning to be registered, eager to show off how well she could read and write, but Harold Burrows barely gave her a glance.

‘That’ll do,’ he muttered while she was finishing the page. His breath smelled like Dad’s had done. He pointed her towards the back bench among tall lads who couldn’t read or write much. Everyone stared and then giggled at her accent. At playtime the other girls crowded in a corner but didn’t make friends, just stood staring at her.

It was too far to walk home at lunch so she sat on her own, eating her pasty and apple, trying not to feel miserable.

‘She’s one of them posh clever clogs, a townie,’ sneered Billy Marsden in his jacket with his shirt hanging out of the elbows. ‘My mam heard she was living in a railway hut when they found her.’

‘No…it’s a bungalow,’ she lied.

‘It were a railway shed, fit for donkeys on our farm,’ laughed another lad.

‘Shut up, dumbo. At least I can read,’ she shouted. ‘It was a special carriage all on one level so it is a bungalow.’

‘Who does she think she is, bloody offcumden!’ Billy was not for being outfaced by this newcomer.

‘My granny lives at Cragside and I’m a Yewell, so there!’ Mirren hated being singled out. She just wanted to have a friend and be left alone.

‘So what’re you doing living in a railway hut? Mam says you’re not a proper Yewell. Her mam was a whore who ran away and had a bastard!’ He put his hands on hips, waiting for her to get out of that insult.

Mirren didn’t know what a basted was, or a hoor, but she sensed it was rude and when everyone started laughing she leaped up and flung herself into Billy’s face, scratching his cheek accidentally. ‘Shut up, numpty! You’re as thick as shit!’

Mr Burrows was standing in the doorway of the school. He’d heard none of the teasing and saw only her take action. Everyone stepped back, seeing the look on his face.

‘Gilchrist and Marsden, my desk, this minute. Not another word!’ he screamed, cuffing them both round the ears, not listening to Mirren’s attempt to explain.

‘I don’t want wildcats in this school. If you want to behave like an animal, you can go and amuse the infants in their room. Get out of my sight, Miriam Know-all. You’re too cocky for words, with your town ways and impudence. Hold out your hand.’

The cane struck her palm, bringing tears to her eyes but her mouth was drawn tight, wincing as the next blow hit the palm, biting into her flesh. She was not going to let him see her pain. She took five strokes but Billy Marsden got off with a caution. It wasn’t fair.

She was banished to the infants’ cupboard with her face to the wall. Her hands were stinging and cut but she turned her face to hide her tears. The silent battle of wills with Harold Burrows had begun.

He ignored her in class when her hand was raised to answer a question. She sat sullen and unresponsive to anything he offered to the class as a whole. Billy Marsden left her alone. In fact the whole school pretended she wasn’t there, avoiding her after lessons. It got to the point where there was no point in attending school any more but no one at Cragside had any idea of her unhappiness. If they found out, she might be sent away to the orphanage.

Every morning she waved them goodbye and set off for the track down to the village but once out of sight she veered off on another route. In this way Mirren got to know every nook and cranny of the Yewells’ fields and gullies, becksides and hidy-holes. With her pasty and bottle of milk to sustain her, she could amuse herself for hours. If it was raining there were hidden caves and boulders to shelter under, like the sheep, outbarns full of hay to hunker down in and read the book she’d hidden there at the weekend.

There was this wonderful book called Scouting for Boys, all about making dens and campfires and signalling. It taught her how to lurk out of sight of shepherds and workmen. For days on end she stayed up in the hills but knew soon she would have to return to the school with some excuse of sickness in case the Welfare man came calling to see why she was absent.

December was not the month for staying out too long. The first flurries of snow sent her scurrying for cover but it was better to have frozen fingers than be caned and bullied and ignored. There was more to learning than sitting on a hard school bench.

In the fields there were hares to watch and foxes to follow, gullies and waterfalls and leaping fish. There were birds she’d never seen before, berries to identify and mushrooms that she was warned not to eat.

As long as she wrapped up in her new thick wool coat with a flannel lining sewn in for winter, a hand-knitted scarf and beret like a cloche helmet, thick stockings and leather boots, she was warm enough if she kept on the move.

Now the sun was low in the sky, making long shadows. Mirren sensed by the way the sun moved when it was time to head back down to the track as if she was coming from school. The last bit of hometime was the worst, having to creep through the dark copse in the shadows where the tawny owl hooted and sometimes the eye of the fox glistened as the moon rose at dusk. It was dark by four thirty.

It was such a relief to leave the wood behind and watch for the twinkling lanterns in the yard and farmhouse windows before they closed the shutters. They always waited until she was home before doing that, while she sat with a slice of bread and dripping, making up stories of her happy day at school.

Two weeks before Christmas the snows came; flutterings of goosefeathers at first, turning to ice and then rain on the sodden ground. The wind turned to the north-east, making puddles into skating rinks and icy slides. Mirren decided to make a quick recovery just in case there were lots of Christmassy things to do at school but she needn’t have bothered for there was not even a string of paper chains or Nativity play to enliven the season, and no part for her in the carol service in the parish church. She was Chapel, after all.

Mr Burrows had forgotten she was on the register by the look he gave her over his half-moon glasses. ‘Back in the land of the living again, Miss Gilchrist? We thought you’d gone back to town.’

She stuck it until dinner break and told Miss Halstead in the playground she felt sick and could she be excused. The teacher looked concerned, felt her forehead and packed her off with a wave.

The sky was purple and grey, but nothing to worry about as she sneaked off over the track, glad to be away from the sticky sweaty smells of the school hall. The fact that everything on the hillside was going in the opposite direction never struck her as odd.

Sheep were heading down, butting and nudging each other like the kids in the playground queue. They sensed a change in the weather. Cows were bellowing from their stalls, no bird chatter in the tree tops, as if the silent wood was waiting. She was so intent on getting away, Mirren didn’t notice the darkening sky above her.

Yet it all looked so sparkly, ice like tinsel on the stone walls, sugary tree trunks. The air was sharp at the back of her throat, nothing to warn her of the storm ahead, but she pulled her tammy over her ears.

The snow came speckled at first, the wind pushing her forward. Then it slowed her pace as she rose higher and it got thicker and whiter, the feathery flakes sticking to her coat and chapping her bare knees. Only then did she realise she was too high and must turn back.

Sheep passed her by like walking snowballs. They were taking shelter behind the bield of the stone walls and so must she. Her coat weighed a ton, stiff like cardboard, and her cheeks were stinging with the chill. Miriam sensed she mustn’t stop, but finger her way along the stone walls, hoping to find the shelter of a barn. This, however, was new territory. Her eyes squinted at the whiteness that disguised where she was, her fingers ached in her mittens and her boots were like lead weights.

It was then she realised how stupid it was to be wandering alone in a snow storm. She had no strength against the wildness of these moors, being just a silly, disobellient little girl who was lost. There was trouble in the wind and no one to help her.

The fleeting warmth of her tears was no comfort. This was her own doing and her own fault, and now she was going to freeze to death and no one knew she was even missing. They thought her safe in the schoolroom. She would be found frozen like a dead sheep with its eyes pecked out by rooks.

The thought of that fate stirred her into one last effort to find a gate or a barn. ‘Help me…’ she cried, but there was none there to hear her, yet her stubborn spirit was not going to give in without a fight.

No use turning back, for the trackway was covered and she could stumble down a gully and be stuck. It was forwards or nothing, and she wasn’t going to lie down without cover. Slowly she edged forward, following the wall end. The effort took all of her strength and she felt herself struggling.

Just when she couldn’t go another step, she saw an outline in the whirling white, a jagged line of high stones, walls and a chimney stack. Her eye fixed on that marker with hope in her heart that she’d found a farmhouse or a barn. Listening for the bark of a dog or the bellow of a cow, she made for the shelter. The silence, stillness and swirling snow like a veil hid what was before her but she knew there was something there if only she could get her legs to work properly. To be so near and yet far…

‘Help me,’ she called again, but no one came.

Those last few yards were like agony, carrying a load of ice on her shoulders, but she fell into the stone porch with relief. It was already half filled with a snowdrift. She shouted but no one answered. Desperation fuelled her arms to batter the oak-studded door and it yielded even to her puny weight. How she yearned for firelight and the glow of a storm lantern, the smell of bacon or an open fire, but there was nothing, just an empty shell.

Part of the rafters were stove in and she could see snow falling through the gap in the roof, little drifts piling up, and it was just light enough to see the old stone fireplace behind a great arch of stone spanning the width of the room. Inside there it was dry and sheltered. There was even old straw bedding on the flagged floor, musty and dusty where it was dry, old cattle bedding. There was a broken ladder to a small loft but she daren’t risk going up there.

Through another arch she spotted the cold dairy with slate shelves. The storage holes were empty of jars. No one had lived here for years. There were a few bits of broken chairs, nothing else but four bare walls.

The disappointment rose up like bile in her throat. No fire, no welcome. There was not even a lucifer to light a fire, not even a beast to warm herself by, but it was shelter from the blizzard outside and it was getting dark.

‘Be thankful for small mercies, child,’ came her Sunday school teacher’s voice in her head. Looking around in the gloom, she had to admit that there was everything here for her to ride out the storm.

If you were silly enough to do what she had done then this was about the mercy she deserved, she decided. She was safe and this would have to do. Outside the wind was roaring up a gale. Bits of roof rattled and clanked but stayed put.

Mirren gathered up the driest bits of straw she could find to make a nest under the stone arch. She sat in the grate, trying to be brave. There was snow to suck on and she still had her store apple to feast on in her coat pocket. Every bite would have to be savoured slowly and eked out as if it was a proper meal, skin, pips, core, the lot.

Where she was, she hadn’t a clue, but it was high up above Cragside. The chimney breast smelled of old soot and woodsmoke, and the straw itched. She thought of mangers and cheered her flagging spirits singing ‘Away in a Manger’. She was away in a manger but no one knew where she was and there’d be hell to pay when they found out.

She heard little rustlings and scratchings beside and above her: night creatures scurrying into the walls. At least the house had other things here, mice and wrens seeking shelter…maybe wild cats, foxes, wolves…No use scaring herself with fairy tales. For one night she’d be glad of company, whatever it was. She was one of them, trapped, penned in, safe enough. The house will look after us, she sighed, and curled up in a ball to save heat.

Down in the valley Windebank school would be dismissed early. They had a snow drill and roll call, and children would have been collected. Others would be forced to stay by the stoves and stay the night in Burrows’ den, poor buggers! She could swear out loud and there was no one here to tell her off. This was better than being stuck with that hateful man. This was all his fault…

Mirren woke from a deep sleep feeling numb, legs aching with cramp. She scoured around hoping there might be a provender sack, something to stuff with straw to keep her teeth from chattering. There was a small store under the ladder stairs with a pan and a brush, and to her joy some rotten sacks. Once more the little house had come to her rescue. If only there was enough kindling to get a flame going.

It was then she remembered the scouting book. There was a section on lighting fires with sticks of wood and bits of cloth, making sparks to smoulder into kindling. She wished she’d read it more carefully.

Just thinking about it gave her courage to ferret in the darkness. The sky was clear and the moon was up high enough to be a lantern if she opened the window shutters. Her eyes were getting used to the half-light. It was better to keep moving than to freeze, so she packed the straw into the sack to make a little mattress, and pretended it was a feather quilt and she was the princess in the pea story. Then she gathered up any bits of wood she could find, scliffs from the stairs.

There were holes built into the inglenook, crannies where things were kept dry like the one in the old bit of Cragside for salt, and a bread oven. Feeling her way into the holes with fear in case a rat jumped out of its nest, like one had in the chicken coop the other day, scaring her half to death with its beady eye, Mirren tried to be brave. Inside was dry and she touched something hard and jumped back. It didn’t move. Her fingers found a cold metal box about the size of a baccy tin.

Please let there be lucifers inside, she prayed. The tin was rusted and hard to prise open, all ridges and bumps in fancy patterns made of brass, and her fingertips were numb. In frustration she banged the edge on the hearth and it fell open.

Inside was a kit of some sort. Dad had one of these on the mantelpiece to keep his pipe bits in. It was an old comforts tin for soldiers, he had told her, once full of chocolates and cigarettes. This one had the face of the old Queen on, but nothing inside but a bit of rag, some chalk ends, a peppermint lozenge and two dry lucifers. Two chances to make a flame: another prayer was answered.

How did they do it in the scout book? She had to have some dry cloth. Her clothes were damp-even her knickers were wet where she had leaked–but she did have a thick vest and liberty bodice though she couldn’t cut them. Then she found the hanky rolled in her knicker pocket, full of snot but dry enough now.

She must make a little triangle tent of straw and bits to catch alight but she needed stuff to put in the fire too, wood and bits to keep it going. Dad once told her that poor people used cow dung to heat their fires. Dried dung didn’t smell, he said when she turned up her nose. There was plenty of that scraped along the walls, if she searched hard enough.

She piled everything she could and tried to light the lucifer, but it flared and went out before anything smouldered and she threw it away in disgust and frustration.

She set out her little fire again and hovered over it as she struck the last match. This one flared and dropped onto the tinder. As it smouldered she recalled she had to blow it gently, adding little pieces with trembling fingers, just like Granny Simms did when her fire wouldn’t catch.

Slowly the little fire grew from a few twigs to a flaring ember of warmth and needed feeding with fresh stuff to burn. Just the sight of it made Mirren feel warm. If only there was a candle somewhere. Back to the storage holes and a fingertip search in case there was something there, and there was: just a stub, but a candle for company.

Up the stairs she went gingerly, in search of kindling and bits of plaster laths.

‘Thank you, house,’ she whispered into the walls. ‘Thanks for shelter and firelight but I need more wood. Where can I find wood?’

Then a strange thing happened. It was as if she could hear her dad’s voice in her head for the first time since the accident.

‘Mirren Gilchrist, use yer gumption, lassie. It’s all to hand.’

With her candle end she crawled up the ladder and saw the broken laths lying around the walls, a pile of dry kindling. She must chuck them down onto the flags and make a pile. This was dusty work but it kept her mind off the roar of the blizzard and the piles of snow gathering from the hole in the roof.

Downstairs was warmth, a feather bed, a lozenge to suck if she dared. Water could be heated in the brass tin over the fire and she popped in the lozenge to give it taste. This was using her gumption too. Whatever happened, the fire must be fed in the hearth. No one would come in the storm, but perhaps in the morning…

Waking at first light shivering, Mirren smelled smoke and smouldering embers. Her hoard was well and truly exhausted but there was a good supply upstairs. Time to melt more snow in the tin. Through the gap she could see blue sky and a few drifting flakes. She opened the shutter to a mysterious white mound, strange shapes, no walls or barns or rocks, just great waves of snow, in peaks like whipped cream. The devil wind was whipping up new shapes. Her tummy was rumbling with hunger and her legs were wobbly but there was nothing to eat here.

It was warmest sitting right by the fire, hidden under the archway, and when the blackened tin was hot she wrapped it in a sack to warm her feet like a hot-water bottle. The stones were now hot and if she stayed tight she was thawed enough to tingle, but the fire was the only thing being fed. She was feeling dizzy.

What was happening at Cragside? Had they discovered she was wagging off school? In some ways she was glad to be found out. Wasting schooling was doing her no good.

‘Whatever you do in life, lassie, get an eddy-cashun,’ her dad once said when he was sobered up. ‘You dinna want to end up like me. Even a girl needs a schooling.’

It had been easy in Scarperton, but this school was teaching her nothing and the teacher didn’t care. He was useless and smelled of whisky. How she hated that smell.

Up here it was peaceful, safe between thick walls. Someone must have lived here once, but who? If only she could live here with Mam and Dad. They could keep stock and make butter and cheese, and she could show Dad all she’d learned from Granddad.

Had Mam played here as a little girl? Was her spirit watching over her now? Mirren hoped so.

It was hard to be a motherless lamb with no memories of her mam, just a snapshot in a print dress. The mother of her imagination would be tall and pretty, with golden hair, and clever and sparkling, but no one at Cragside ever talked about her much when she asked questions. They clammed up and looked the other way when she pestered for more.

Did they own this house or did it belong to the bigwig in London who came for the shooting at Benton Hall? Why was it left to rot, unloved, abandoned?

Mirren made for the door, thinking if she kept in a straight line she might just make her way down like the sheep. Her courage failed when she opened the door on to a mountain of snow. She was trapped, fast in, as they said round here. Time to bank up the fire and pray. She was no match for the devil wind and the snow giants.

She sipped her hot water, pretending it was cocoa laced with the top of the milk. Mam and Dad would have loved this house but they weren’t here now. They were gone and she was on her own again. If someone didn’t come soon she would starve. How quickly night-time fears flee when the sun shines, but she sat like Cinderella at the hearth, too weak now to move.

When would they come?

4

Adey took one look at the sky and knew school would be out early. They must send a cart to see the child got back safely. Country kiddies took shelter in bad weather. They knew to lie low until it was safe, but Mirren was different and secretive these days and she might not do the right thing. Adey sent Joe to collect her just in case.

Now they were used to having her around the place, grown accustomed to her noisy chatter and questions. Questions. She was a bright one and her piano playing was coming on. All she lacked was practice and concentration, but she was little Miss Head-in-a-Book. It would be nice if she got to the girls’ secondary school like her mam. Her coming had brought life back to the place and no one could say she didn’t help out…

Then Joe blew in from the doorway, covered in snow.

‘You’re back, praise the Lord. Thanks for getting her, Joe. Where’s her ladyship?’ Adey searched for the child behind him.

‘She wasn’t there, Mother. Burrows said summat about her going home early and that’s not all. I had a word with Lizzie Halstead at the door. Mirren’s hardly been in school at all…’ he muttered.

‘The little minx, wait till I get my hands on her. What’s going on?’ Adey was all worked up with worry and fury.

Carrie was lurking at the stove and she turned pink. ‘Perhaps I should’ve said something earlier, Mrs Yewell, but our Emmot says that Mirren hates school and got the cane for fighting. They’ve been calling her names and Burrows makes her go in the baby class so she’s been off sick.’

‘Now you tell us!’ snapped Adey. ‘How long has this been going on? Oh, my giddy aunt, she’s out in that snow. Send for Tom. We’ll have to get up a search party.’ She felt the fear and panic rising and went for her coat.

‘Hang on, Mother. What good’ll that do in this wild darkness?’ came Joe’s predictable reply. ‘She could be anywhere by now. She’s a sensible lass even if she’s stubborn with it. She’ll have found cover. Tom and the village boys will look for her in the morning.’

‘We can’t wait that long. She’ll catch her death,’ Adey was shouting back. ‘Wait till I see her, scaring us half to death. You’ll have to take the strap to her and teach her a lesson.’

‘Wait on, Adey. Lass’s in enough trouble as it is, gadding off into the hills. She doesn’t know the lay of the land and not the size of tuppence ha’penny. We should have kept a closer eye on her ourselves. We used to be able to sniff out trouble with our lads but we’ve got out of the habit, and she’s a deep one, at that.’

‘You could take the dogs out with a storm lantern,’ Adey pleaded.

‘Don’t be daft. And have two of us lost in the snow? We’ll do the job proper with a gang stretched over the moor. Mind you, she’s a right devil running off from the schoolmaster. I thought only lads did that,’ said Joe, scratching his head.

‘We’ve got to do something,’ screamed Adey, pacing up and down the kitchen, clattering her pans.

Carrie started to cry. ‘I’m not a tale teller, as you know, but I reckon Burrows had made her life a right misery. Emmot says she’s top of the class but she has to sit at the back and shut up or teach the dunces to do their letters. That’s not right, is it?’

‘Poor lass has had a right miserable time but never thought to tell us,’ said Joe, slurping his tea in a way that always got on Adey’s nerves.

‘We didn’t bring her all this way to lose her in the snow,’ Adey sighed. ‘Happen we should never have brought her here in the first place. It’s not like living in a town. She never said a word…’

What if Mirren was already lost? What sort of Christmas would they have in mourning? How would she ever forgive herself? The girl’d been taking her bullying in silence and that showed courage, and to put up with Burrows in the state he was in nowadays. He ought to be reported. Were they such ogres that she couldn’t tell them her troubles?

If she came out of this alive, they’d have to think things afresh, perhaps put her in a private school, but where would they find the cash for that?

‘Dear Lord, keep the child safe for one more day, temper the wind to the shorn lamb,’ Joe prayed, and they bowed their heads in the kitchen. ‘Show us the way…’

Outside the wind roared and the blizzard raged but no one got a wink of sleep that night. They were helpless in the face of the storm. It was out of their hands now.

The fire was still crackling with more broken-off laths but Mirren was now weak with hunger and fear. Why didn’t they come? Would they ever find her? Perhaps they had given her up for lost?

Outside the door a cruel silvery world shimmered with icicles cascading down from the roof ends but she was too tired to wonder at the beauty of it all. She wanted to be home with Gran in Cragside kitchen, back with Carrie making faces, back sneaking titbits to Jet under the table.

It was melting, though. There were drips plopping from the hole in the roof, but no other sound. Then she heard the faint bark of dogs in the distance. Her heart thumped with relief. Someone was out there searching for her.

‘I’m here, over here!’ she squeaked, but her voice was too quiet. She couldn’t open the door for the weight of snow and she was desperate. What would the Scouts do now?

Uncle George’s book had served her well so far. There was a chapter on camping and sending signals, but she’d skipped that bit. If she was high up perhaps they would see her smoke.

Mirren piled on more laths. The only thing to hand was her new winter coat and she was in enough trouble as it was, so she grabbed a smelly sack and tried wafting it over the flames but it caught alight and she had to throw it onto the fire. Perhaps the blue smoke might be visible.

She sat down, exhausted and tearful. Come on old house, she prayed, help me one more time and I promise, on my blue temperance badge, I’ll pay you back.

There was always the hope that the kindred spirits who had once lived here would come to her rescue. She opened the one working shutter and yelled until she was puce and dizzy.

Then a tall boy in a peaked tweed cap, carrying a proddy stick, climbed over a drift and waved.

‘She’s here! Over here! Now then, young Miriam, let’s be having you,’ smiled a pair of dark brown eyes. She’d never seen him before in the village. He was about fourteen.

‘Who are you?’

‘Jack Sowerby, from The Fleece. You must be wrong in the head to go gallivanting up World’s End…’

‘It wasn’t snowing when I left,’ she answered back. No wonder she’d never seen him. Yewells didn’t go in pubs. They were Satan’s houses. ‘Anyway, the house found me and kept me safe.’

Her rescuer didn’t seem interested in her explanation but kept on whistling and shouting.

‘She’s alive, up here!’ he called, and suddenly there were dogs sniffing at her, faces peering under sack hoods with burning cheeks, and she was pulled through the window to safety.

‘So you spent the night at World’s End,’ laughed Uncle Tom, shoving in her hand a flask of hot soup, which burned her throat. ‘Sip it slowly. You’re a lucky blighter to find this ruin and hole up like a lost sheep. Happen you’re a Yewell through and through. Now, young lady, don’t you ever do such a daft thing again. You have to treat these hills with respect or they’ll take your fingers off in a few hours and your life by nightfall. Mam and Dad are going mad with worry at Cragside. Don’t you go putting lives at risk again…silly mutt!’ Uncle Tom stared at her with cold eyes and she cried.

‘Now what’ve I said?’ he muttered. ‘Don’t take on. Drink yer soup.’

It was creamy broth with bits of meat and veg in it, the most wonderful soup in the world at that moment, but she still felt dizzy and floppy.

Uncle Tom had never shouted at her before. The lad, Jack, peered in through the window. ‘She’s got a fire going…She’s canny enough, Tom, to think of that.’ He turned to her with smiling eyes. ‘I reckon we’ve got another Miriam o’ the Dale here. How did you think all this up?’

‘I read Uncle George’s book.’ At least Jack Sowerby didn’t think she was stupid. ‘I tried to do smoke signals but it didn’t work.’

‘That’s grand. They’ll be right proud of you when they find out,’ he said, but Uncle Tom was scowling.

‘No they won’t. She’s for it when she gets back, if the look on my mam’s face is anything to go by. She’s lost us a day’s work.’

‘The snow did that for you. We can’t blame her for a blizzard. The poor kid’s half starved. Do you want a piggyback?’ Jack offered.

But Mirren shook her head. ‘No thank you, I’ll walk. I’ve caused enough bother. I don’t suppose you’ve done anything as daft as me?’ she asked them both.

Uncle Tom suddenly roared. ‘His mam says Jack ran away on the first day at school ’cos he couldn’t count up the cardboard pennies so he hid in the cellar of the pub and she and Wilf were run ragged trying to find him.’ He lifted her up as she was struggling and her legs had turned to jelly. He carried her down to the waiting sled, to the warmth of a horse steaming, then homewards over the snow.

It was a cold crisp morning with a weak winter sun, but the journey down was like bumping over ice and the poor horse slithered. How could she have wandered so far uphill–and to the end of the world, they said?

She turned to say goodbye to her house but it had already disappeared from view, hidden and secret once more. One day she must come back and thank it properly.

They were all lined up waiting in the kitchen as she was carried in and inspected for frostbite. Someone had blasted off a gun to give notice that she was safe. Two blasts and it would have meant she was a goner, so Carrie whispered.

‘You’ve given us such a fright, Miriam. Whatever were you thinking off?’ said Granny, rubbing her dry with a towel.

‘Not now, Adey,’ said Grandpa Joe. ‘She’s frozen through. Get her in that zinc tub and warmed up. Plenty of time for a sermon when she’s come to. Carrie can see to it.’

Soon Mirren was soaking in the warm tub, her hands and toes tingling, and then Carrie was towelling her dry.

‘Weren’t you scared all alone at World’s End?’ she asked.

‘I wasn’t alone. There were animals sheltering in there, and when the fire was lit, I heard—’

‘They say that ruin is haunted. You wouldn’t catch me up there for love nor money,’ Carrie added.

‘It’s a kind place. I didn’t see anyone. The walls are thick and warm.’

‘You’re a braver lass than me…World’s End is unlucky for some. That’s why it’s been left. It belonged to one of yours years back. They said his wife was a witch but I never believed it…your great-granny, Sukie Yewell. She never went to church. They say…but I shouldn’t be putting ideas in your head. You’ve had a lucky escape. We thought you were a goner. The snow’s taken many a soul off these moors. They know about you skipping school, by the way. I had to tell them.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Mirren, splashing the water with her foot. Carrie was wrong. World’s End was a kind house. It had sheltered her and saved her life. Now she must get dressed and face the grilling downstairs.

Soon everyone in Windebank knew the child was safe, found in the old ruin at World’s End. George Thursby, the postman, brought an update straight from Cragside lane end, telling Miss Halstead how the town child was found. Soon it passed from cottage to shop and pub that Mirren Gilchrist was a truant from school on account of her beating by Mr Burrows. He was called by the managers to account for such rumours and reprimanded for taking whisky bottles into school. Only his war record prevented his dismissal. His wife went to her mother’s on account of her health. The village was agog at the gossip, but Mirren was to know nothing of all this.

She was trying to be extra good for her grandparents, keeping her head down, waiting for the moment when she would be summoned to make an account of her behaviour. And so near to Christmas too.

‘Why does nobody like World’s End?’ she asked at the dinner table.

‘Don’t talk with your mouth full, child,’ said Gran. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Carrie said it’s haunted by a witch,’ she replied.

‘Nonsense, she’s making a cake out of a biscuit again. There’s nothing wrong with that place that a bit of repair wouldn’t sort out but it’s too far out to be much use to us, especially in winter. You did well to find it.’

‘It found me, I think. Can we mend it?’

‘Of course not, lass. There’s no money for that sort of whimsy.’

Grandpa was taking his tea into his study to do his sermon for the Christmas carol concert. Being a preacher was important and he was not to be disturbed when she passed his door.

Carrie began brushing Mirren’s hair out. It crackled on the brush.

‘Ouch!’ she cried as the lugs were combed out.

‘We should be paddling your backside with that brush, young lady, not pampering your vanity. Disobellience in one so young is a black mark. Truanting is what boys do, not nice girls,’ said Gran.

‘She’s learned her lesson, haven’t you?’ said Carrie, pulling Mirren’s hair so she nodded meekly.

‘Spare the rod, spoil the child, the Good Book says,’ sniffed Gran.

They all lined up against her two days later-Gran, Grandpa and Uncle Tom–and she stood as if a culprit before the constable.

‘We’re really disappointed in you, Miriam. If you were unhappy you should have told us instead of wagging off like that. You could have fallen in the waterfall or in a bog and no one would have known where you were. We are led to believe you’re a clever girl not a dunce…We never took you for a quitter.’ Grandpa Joe wagged his finger like he did in the pulpit when he spat out about the fiery furnace waiting for sinners. ‘What have you to say for yourself?’

‘I hate it there. I want to go back to St Mary’s school,’ Mirren sobbed.

‘That’s no answer,’ he said, ignoring her outburst. ‘It’s bound to take time for you to settle in. Tomorrow you will go down and apologise to Mr Burrows, and knuckle down to be a good scholar.’

‘I won’t,’ she snapped back. ‘He hates me. He won’t teach me anything.’

‘You will do as you’re told, young lady. I give the orders in this house. You must learn that when you do something wrong you take your punishment. Write a neat letter of apology in your best handwriting and I will check it over. You’ve got to get back to study. We’ll help you with that bit and that’ll be the end on t’matter. As for punishment, I’m sure you realise that there’ll be no pantomime trips or Christmas treats for you this year. Father Christmas doesn’t bring gifts to naughty children. There’ll be no outings until I’m sure you’ll not let the family name down.’

‘I hate you all,’ Mirren screamed, and Gran cuffed her around the ear, a right sidewinder. It stung her cheek and she stared, shocked. The room fell silent.

‘Out of my sight, you rude ungrateful child. You put other lives in danger and shamed us before the village. I will not speak to you until you show due remorse. Go to your room at once.’

Even Miriam knew she’d gone too far and pushed Gran into clouting her, but she would not go back to that boring classroom to be caned and humiliated all over again.

The next day she sidled out of the side door, down the cinder path from the yard to the little summer hut where, she’d been told, on sunny days Grandpa sat outside, smoking his pipe and looking down the valley at the view, dreaming up words for his preaching.

It was just a wooden shed with an open front and railings round, and a bench inside out of the breeze. No one would find her there, she thought. She needed to calm her thudding heart and think of what to write to Burrows.

The bench was icy, and icicles hung from the roof like lollipops. How she wished she was back up on the tops at World’s End, far away in her own fireside. If she was grown up she would run away for ever and make that hidy-hole safe from prying people; somewhere to get away from meddlers.

She sat hunched up, trying to summon up courage to go back in, when she sensed at the corner of her eye someone standing to the side, hovering, not knowing whether to cough or not. It was Jack Sowerby. She glowered at him, hoping he’d slink away.

‘Hutch up,’ he said. ‘In a bit of hot water, I hear. Tom was down at The Fleece telling Mam all about it. I thought you might need a friend.’

‘No, go away!’

‘Pity I sort of wondered if we could find a way round the bother at school. It’s not a bad school.’

‘It’s a rubbishy school,’ Mirren snapped. ‘I hate old Burrows’.

‘Why?’

‘I just do, and he smells of whisky,’ she replied, sitting with her arms folded in defiance of Jack softening her up.

‘Let me tell you a story about Harold Burrows. For one, he’s not old, just over thirty. For two, he’s a brave man who won medals in the war. For three, he saved many men’s lives and he was injured in the head. For four, I’m told he gets terrible headaches that make him scream out in the night with pain. The whisky gives him heart. Shall I go on?’ Jack paused, searching her scowling face.

‘So what? He’s caned me for nothing and doesn’t teach me anything.’ Mirren stared at him.

‘What do you do to help him?’ Jack stared her back, his dark eyes piercing into hers. She looked away into the distance, not sure where all this was leading. Teachers were there to drum stuff in. Mirren had never thought of them as having headaches and homes and pain, just like everyone else. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Come on, you know how to be helpful, fetch and carry, look interested when he’s talking. You could be quite pretty if you smiled more.’

‘Thanks for nothing,’ she quipped, but was interested just the same.

‘There you go, thinking of yourself. You’ve got the brains, so use them. Work it out like arithmetic. Don’t sit there feeling sorry for yourself. Give him some hope by passing the blessed qualifying exams. Show him you’re a winner. If you get stuck I’ll always help if I can.’

Why was Jack being so kind? Was it something to do with the fact that Uncle Tom was visiting his mam a lot?

‘Is World’s End haunted?’ she asked, changing the subject.

‘What do you think? You’re the one that slept there.’

‘I wish I could go and live up there like a shepherd, and go for walks and keep hens and not have to go to school,’ she sighed.

‘By the time you’re ready to leave, it’ll have fallen down. It’s like an eagle’s eyrie up there, but very lonely,’ Jack smiled, showing a line of white teeth.

‘We mustn’t let it fall down. It’s my friend and I want to live up there one day,’ Mirren replied.

‘Don’t be daft. Whatever could you do up there? It’s a poor living off thin topsoil. Even I know that.’

‘I don’t care. They mustn’t pull it down. Uncle Tom could mend it.’ Then she remembered that she was in the doghouse and Uncle Tom wouldn’t do anything if she didn’t go back to school.

‘Why should he help you when you won’t go back to school?’ Jack had read her thoughts.

‘If I go back and behave, will he mend the roof for me?’ she smiled.

‘Well, that’s a start, but you’ll have to ask him yourself and he’s got other ideas in his head at the moment. He’s courting my mam, by the looks of things.’

‘Do you mind?’ she asked, not sure what courting meant.

‘Nothing to do with me…Mam’s a widow. As long as he doesn’t want me to be a farmer. You’ve got a few bridges to mend before you ask any favours off anyone.’

She looked at Jack, her hero, with growing admiration. He was already at the boys’ grammar school, and if he was on her side the battle was as good as won.

Her battle was yet to come in going down to Windebank with her tail between her legs but if it meant a new roof on World’s End, then it was worth it.

That night on the moor had changed everything. She knew now she was part of these hills like her ancestors before her: Miriam and Sukie and Adey and Mother.

Sitting in the twilight of that icy December afternoon, Mirren knew that one day she would make this farming way of life her own, but how she wasn’t sure. Tomorrow she must make her peace with Mr Burrows. That was enough to be going on with…

In the days that followed the snow fell hard and there was no school, no chance to find a path to World’s End. By the time New Year came and went, she was much too busy with lessons to think much about it again.

5

29 June 1927

The total eclipse of the sun was going to be the most exciting event in Mirren Gilchrist’s life since that snowstormy night at World’s End.

Granny Yewell was throwing a leaflet from the council on the table, telling them the hours when they must dowse their fires, so as not to spoil sightings of the sun with smoke. ‘If I hear one more word about this blessed eclipse…’ she called out to Grandpa Joe, who was kicking off his boots in the back porch and then knocking over his mug of tea on the clean tablecloth.

‘There, look what you’ve done,’ she snapped. ‘What a fuss about nothing. You’d think it were the end of the world!’

Poor Gran got so flustered and crabby when the farm workers invaded her kitchen, but there was always something warm waiting for Mirren on the table after school: a pot of broth or warm oven-bottom teacakes dripping with rhubarb jam. Adey Yewell had taken a great interest in her schooling ever since she’d marched down to Windebank with her hackles raised on her granddaughter’s behalf and tore a strip off Mr Burrows.

‘We can’t have our lass wasting that brain of hers trying to knock some learning into lumps o’ lard like Billy Marsden. You should be grateful to have such talent. I want no more nonsense. She’s taken her punishment from us so just you treat her right or you’ll have me to deal with!’ Of course, news quickly spread and the whole village was agog at Adey’s stand. Mirren felt so proud of her.

Now that Mirren and Mr Burrows had come to an understanding after she wrote her own letter of apology, and the vicar had stepped in as referee with the family over the runaway episode, school was not so boring. She was going to be put in for a prize scholarship. The Head was giving her extra coaching and he didn’t have whisky breath any more. A new girl called Lorna Dinsdale arrived in Mirren’s class. They became best friends and they were both trying for the scholarship together: no skiving off for Mirren with Lorna chasing her heels in class for top marks.

One of their projects was to study the total eclipse of the sun, due that summer, and the vicar brought in lantern slides to explain the ‘fenominer’ and how their dale was to be honoured with the best view in the whole of England. It was the centre of Totality. The sun was going to be eclipsed completely right above Mirren’s head.

No one in the village could talk of anything else because every farmhouse, cottage and hotel was going to be booked up with visitors. There was brass to be made.

‘Aye,’ Joe replied to Adey, mopping up the spilled tea, giving his wife and granddaughter one of his twinkling looks. ‘Who knows what the Good Lord in His mercy, who sets His firmament in the sky and causes the sun to go down at noon, has in store for us? It’s all there in the Good Book. I shall be taking mesen off to the highest spot to stand before my Maker. I’ll be nearer heaven should I be taken up to glory and you should all be doing the same.’

Grandpa Joe was of the old school of local preachers; just like the preachers in the Band of Hope at Scarperton, well drenched in the Holy Bible, never considering he had done service to his Lord unless he had his congregation whipped up into a frenzy of enthusiasm, making their Sunday roast dinners dry out in weariness by the length of his preaching, but she loved him dearly. There was always a sweetie in his pocket for her and a twinkle in his eye.

‘Now then, none of that talk afore the lass,’ Gran said, seeing Mirren’s wide eyes on stalks. ‘I’ll have enough to do making breakfasts for all them folk thronging the hillsides for a good view. It’ll be all hands to the pump, Joe. I want that yard spotless.’

Mirren knew they’d put their names down on the Eclipse Committee to provide field parking, hot breakfasts and some overnight accommodation when the world came to Windebank. All this work for a little extra brass in the kitty would be useful come the autumn when she must be kitted out far winter: clogs, shoes, uniform. Her legs just kept growing out of things. There was a limit to how far the egg money would stretch, but she would do the work and collect the takings. That was what this coming eclipse was all about.

They had seven bedrooms and she must go in the attic while Grandpa Joe could kip in the stable loft for one night and the family visitors would sleep in the upper parlour on a camp bed. Gran would charge ten shillings a night for the privilege of sleeping in her best rooms and full breakfast.

Organising parking in the fields would be Uncle Tom’s job with Uncle Wesley’s boy, Ben, from Leeds, but they were all moaning about the wetness of the spring and the awful summer so far, and Tom didn’t want his fields poached or the lambs disturbed by vehicles.

Gran suggested they open the fields for campers, tents and cyclists, and charge at least a shilling per person. It was only for one night.

‘You’re a hard woman,’ Joe smiled, sipping from his refilled mug of tea with relish.

‘Someone has to be in this house,’ she argued. ‘You’re as soft as butter with yer head either stuck in a milk pail or in another world, on yer knees night and day waiting for the call to glory. If thousands of mugginses want to traipse up here for a clear view, then let them pay for it, I say.’

‘That’s hardly the spirit, Mother, of a good Christian woman,’ he tried to tease her, twinkling those blue eyes, but she was not for soft-soaping.

‘Life’s shown me that you don’t get owt for nowt in this world. We’ve a bairn now to feed and clothe. You have to take yer chances, as well you know, and this event won’t happen again in our lifetime right slap-bang in this dale. The minute the shadows are over, I’ll stoke up my fire and make a hundred breakfasts if I have to. Think of the brass.’

‘There’s more to life than brass, Adey,’ said Grandpa Joe.

‘My name’s Adeline, as well you know, but it’s brass as polishes the silver, keeps us all fed and clothed. We live off our wits and off our land. The land can give us a bonus this year, that’s all,’ she answered. ‘The girl’ll have to do her stuff too and earn her keep.’

Mirren sensed that her gran got tired of having a boisterous child around when the rest of her family was grown up. She tried not to show it but it sort of leaked out at the corners. The coming of the city hordes was a worry to her, not being used to throngs of people.

‘I don’t like offcumdens wandering where they will, knocking down walls and leaving litter, frightening and stealing. I shall keep out of their way,’ Adey added.

‘They’d not want to meet you on a dark night with yer dander up. No need to put up any sign “BEWARE OF BULL” but “BEWARE OF FARMER’S WIFE’”, Grandpa laughed, but Gran was not amused.

They were always arguing and bickering, and sometimes forgot she was there, but they were kindly and welcoming so that the sad life in the Rabbit Hutches seemed a long time ago. She wished she could remember her own mam. All she had of her was the photographs in her father’s tin box, but being here she could imagine her as a little girl on the farm and wonder how she could ever have left such a beautiful place.

Sometimes they sat her by the fire and quizzed her about life in the Hutches but Mirren only told them the good bits. The bad times were hidden at the back of her head and not for sharing.

Cragside was a house full of men with Grandpa Joe, Uncle Tom, the yard boys and shirts to iron. Mirren helped Carrie where she could but Uncle Tom, up at Scar Head, was in want of a wife to do all his laundry, and needed regular pies and bread to keep him stocked up. The news that he was courting was a great relief, but Florrie Sowerby worked in The Fleece, which didn’t go down so well.

Grandpa teased Mirren that she was growing into the bonny bairn of the dale, the bobby-dazzler with golden curls and bluebell eyes, fringed with long lashes. She’d rather be a boy and race around the school playground with a football, never sitting still, scourge of the Sunday school trying to catch up with Jack Sowerby, who ignored her when he was with his friends. She palled up in mischief with anyone who’d let her join their gang. The village girls gave her a wide berth but Lorna stuck to her side.

No one seemed to fuss much over appearance but Uncle Tom knew the way to her heart and sometimes brought her ribbons and crayoning books from the market. Sometimes he brought Florrie’s son Jack to help out on the farm. They would all be coming to help out with the parking and cooking.

Mirren’s hair was bobbed short now. It was easier to manage than plaits. Grandpa Joe complained she looked like a lad, which pleased her no end.

Gran was not one for titivating her appearance to please her man. She preferred sludge colours, plain shirts and pinafores with her greying hair scraped back.

Farm cooking was plain and simple with ‘no frills and fancies’. They baked rabbit pies and rib-sticking milk puddings, food to fill bellies and stave off hunger until the next feed. There was no time on a busy farm for fancy baking and showing off, Gran declared, so each week’s menu followed a regimental order: roast, cold, mince, pie, hash, stew. Who needs a calendar when you can tell the day of the week by the dish of the day? Mirren thought. The days of bread and dripping and what her dad called ‘push pasts’ with Granny Simms were long gone.

As they went about morning chores, Gran was barking out lists and orders for the coming invasion. This kitchen was her world and she ruled it like a sergeant major. Sometimes Mirren caught the sharp end of her tongue and wondered why Gran was being so hard.

It was Uncle Tom who told her the tale of Adey’s parents, who were farmers up the dale, who’d killed a cow for their own use and then when others fell dead and anthrax was discovered, it was too late for them to survive. Gran was boarding with an aunt near Settle and banished from any contact. She never saw her parents again or got to say farewell, and never went back to visit the spot. The farm was boarded up and the land useless. It would never be farmed again in her lifetime. She was the object of curiosity and pity for a while. Who wanted a child of anthrax victims on their land?

This made Mirren sad too, for she knew how it felt to be left alone in the world at the mercy of strangers. She was glad that Grandpa Joe had made Gran happy and she, in turn, ploughed all her love into running her side of the dairy, butter and cheese making and housekeeping as efficiently as she could. No one could ever say Adeline Yewell was a shirker of duty who let dust settle, or a lazy mother whose lads wore grey shirts not white, or one who kept a poor table and empty cake tins. Just when she was due a rest, along came Mirren to spoil the show.

Now Gran was going to make sure that the money pot on the mantelpiece would be stuffed full of brass by the end of this eclipse but she’d not be giving this sun dance a second glance herself.

Mirren loved Cragside. No one had a house as big or grand as this one. Only Benton Hall was bigger and it had been a hospital for the soldiers in the war who couldn’t walk or talk. In her eyes Cragside was a fairy castle high on the hill. She was the princess in the turret, huddled under the goosedown quilt as the wind whistled around, the candle flickering in the draught, while Jack Frost painted ice pictures on her window. She felt safe here, the house wrapped its arms around her, shielding her from ghosts and ghoulies of the night.

Sometimes she thought she heard the voices of children laughing and playing across the landing but when she got up to find them there was only silence and creaky floorboards. Here she was queen of all she surveyed. This was her world and she’d never leave this kingdom.

Now the valley would be flooded with visitors. Tomorrow the world would come to her kingdom and she was afraid, not of the eclipse for they had done that at school for months, but of having to share this space and give up her room.

She loved the magic lantern and slides show with the blinds down, showing pictures of the moon eclipsing the sun and how the light would be blotted out for twenty-three seconds. It would go very dark and she was not to be frightened because Jack said the light would not be destroyed.

Jack’s class in the grammar school were doing the topic, and he knew about everything and kept going on about ‘the Totality’ and that was why everyone wanted to come to Cragside to see it all.

Very important people were setting up telescopes at Giggleswick, down the dale, and the Prince of Wales would come to see it if he could. Grandpa Joe said they must all pray each night for a perfect viewing with no clouds to hide the sky or no one would see anything.

Uncle Tom was busy, and Florrie Sowerby was running round with a pink face shouting at Mirren to shift this, shove that, and tidy everything away. She looked so pink all the time, trying to butter up Gran into liking her.

Jack had plans to go car spotting, for there would be thousands of motor cars and motor bikes heading in their direction. He could not imagine there being so many cars in the whole world. Only the squire and the doctor had a car in Windebank.

When the first few cars began to scrunch their gears up the hill, Mirren and Jack were sitting on a five-barred gate that shut the road from the young lambs on the moors. It was Jack who opened the gates for the driver in goggles and a leather helmet. Mirren waved at them and the ladies smiled. Then the man held out a penny for Jack so they shut the gate behind them carefully and scrapped over how they would spend it.

There were three such gates at strategic points across their stretch of the moor track from Windebank village. They sat on one apiece with Uncle Wesley’s son, Ben, who’d arrived on the train from Leeds. He was ten and nearly as tall as Jack. There would be pennies galore to collect if they smiled and opened the gates.

What started as a game soon was a deadly endeavour to see each gate stayed closed, opened, and then reclosed after each vehicle. Cyclists were happy to open their own gates, nodding to the children but giving nothing. Motor bikers with side cars were not much better, but it was the large stately cars that yielded the richest pickings.

Mirren’d never possessed so much brass in her life. Pocketfuls of halfpennies and pennies, three-penny bits and even some silver sixpences were thrown at them by ladies, who patted her shiny bob as she curtsied, in case any of them were real lords or ladies.

By the evening of the Tuesday night there was a steady stream of cars heading to spend the night on the hills, waiting for the 5.30 a.m. start of the eclipse.

It was Jack who decided they would make most money during the night, guiding motorists up towards the parking fields with lanterns.

‘But it’s our secret, right?’ Jack whispered. ‘We’ll go to bed no bother and sneak out later, but it won’t go dark until nearly midnight. Don’t go blabbing owt to yer gran, Mirren.’

Mirren had never been up at midnight before. She was a little afeared of the darkness, but she’d do anything to impress Jack and Ben. Everyone knew there would be great revels in the valley: eclipse dances and cinema shows, cafés open all night, midnight parties. The newspaper was full of notices of events and Grandpa Joe read them all out with a sad face.

‘This’s no way to prepare for the Lord’s coming, in such drunkenness and dancing. They should be on their knees in prayer, asking the Lord to be merciful to sinners and temper His wrath. Much is expected of us, children,’ he exhorted.

Mirren was that wound up with excitement she stayed wide awake in the attic, watching out of the window as their visitors arrived by the front porch to stay in the grander rooms at the front of the house. Gran and Florrie were decked out in their best checked pinnies and hats, and never noticed Jack and Mirren in their lookout tower.

Mirren didn’t like the thought of strangers using her jerry pot under the bed in the night but Gran’d clipped her ears and told her not to be cheeky to visitors. It was only for one night.

Where were they going to hide all their pennies? She was dreaming of the sweetie shop down the village with a shelf of jars: rainbow crystals, liquorice straps and dolly mixtures, sherbert dabs and chocolate drops. She spent her money ten times over in her head, slavering with delight. For the first time in her life she was going to be rich beyond her wildest dreams. How she wished Dad could be here to see it all.

At last she fell asleep, dreaming of cars dancing across the sky and coins falling like rain.

Jack woke her with a start, shouting in her lug hole, ‘Gerrup! Time to get cracking…out of the window.’

Getting out of the attic window was not for the faint-hearted. Jack had done the old sheet rope trick as best he could but it didn’t stretch down far enough. He just jumped the rest, falling on the grass and waving Mirren on.

In the half-light she was terrified but tried to be brave and climbed down backwards, feet touching the stone walls until she ran out of sheet and had to let go. The jump took her by surprise as she fell on her side, cracking her elbow. Tears welled up in her eyes but Jack pulled her up roughly and she winced.

‘Hurry up, slow coach…follow me,’ he whispered, but Mirren was struggling to keep up in the darkness, trying not to cry as they made for the barn loft to meet Ben, guarding the lanterns, which Jack knew how to light.

‘I can’t carry one now, me arm…’ she cried, pointing to her elbow. Jack yanked the lamp off her.

‘Give it here and make for the gate,’ Ben offered, and she trundled on, watching Jack every step of the way.

Out on the fellside they could hear sheep bleating at the noise of harmonicas and gramophone records echoing out into the night air. There seemed hundreds of twinkling lights dotted around the fields: campfires and the flickering of car storm lamps. It was as if the hills were alive with an army before some battle. Uncle Tom would go mad at all the mess in the fields.

There was a snaking light along the river road in the valley, cars edging their way north to see this great show. If only her arm didn’t hurt so much, Mirren thought, but Jack kept rushing her to do gate duty.

‘I can’t open the gate, Jack. Me arm hurts,’ she said.

‘Don’t be a girl’s blouse,’ Jack snapped. ‘We should never have let you come.’

‘Am not! Look yerself, it sticks out funny,’ she snapped, swallowing her snot, trying to be brave.

‘We’ll have to do it together then, but yer not having my share of the brass.’ Jack glanced at her arm. ‘This was my idea.’

‘It’s not her fault she can’t use it,’ said Ben with concern. ‘Why couldn’t you both have used the back stairs?’

Mirren was glad someone understood. It was hard trying to stand her corner but the pain was yelping now.

Jack ignored her protest and did the best he could, but the takings were down without the full workforce.

Mirren knew she was letting the side down but even Jack could see her arm wasn’t right.

‘It’s sticking out funny. You’d better go off home,’ he yelled. But both of them knew if she was caught out of bed she’d be for it and in trouble for taking money from strangers in the dark.

‘Better stay put here,’ said Ben, pointing to the old barn, ‘until first light and we can pretend we got up early.’

Mirren was so tired all she wanted was to curl up and sleep if she could lie comfortable. She crept behind them to the shippon. It was a fine warm summer night and excitement grew as dawn broke over the valley. The day was clear and promised a good view. She lay on the tussocks of hay sheltered by the stone wall, letting Jack and Ben deal with the stragglers. Her eyelids dropped and soon she was dreaming of a wonderful eclipse.

There he was making a fool of himself as usual, thought Adey, watching Joe at his antics. He was sitting on the high ridge at World’s End, marvel-ling at the sight of such a throng of people now assembled on the slopes, just like the Sermon on the Mount. He had it on good authority that only a miracle would open the skies for he had been to the open prayer meeting that night and heard about the Reverend Charles Tweedale, Vicar of Weston, who had attached himself to the Astronomer Royal’s party at the Giggleswick Observatory in order to make sure that they would have a pure viewing of the corona.

There was no stopping him when he was on one of his missions. He’d sent word for all Christians to kneel down and pray for the parting of any clouds, for he had dreamed that a great black cloud would obstruct the view if left to its own devices. He’d decided the least he could do was to hold a vigil on this side of the hills to back up any emergency should it arise on the other, where the Anglicans were gathered. Better that Chapel and Church should work together for the good of all, for a change.

He’d tried to get Tom roped in but he was far too busy calming his restless cows. It was rumoured that animals could run amok at the first signs of shadows and darkness.

He should have had more sense than to get Adey out here when she was busy up to her elbows in flour, baking baps with the last heat on the range. She might be hard as flint on the outside but he knew her heart was warm. She’d never got over losing George, and Ellie running off like that, and blamed herself for being a bad parent.

Sometimes it was hard to fathom why Joe had taken to her so strong. The Yewell boys were known for being one-girl men. She’d not let him down, running the farm on tramlines. He couldn’t fault her housekeeping but even she knew she was laced up too tight. No one ever saw her sit down to count the daisies, allus on the go. There was never a grin on her face. Perhaps a bit of laughter would do her good, crack the enamel on that stiff mask into something close to pretty.

If Adey stood still she would flop down and be a limp rag. It was better to be on the go. But Joe had dragged her high up the fell. The ridge might have a great view but there was nothing else going for World’s End but the old ruins that had saved the child last winter.

She surveyed the sky. It was nearly 5.30 now and already light. She hoped Florrie had dowsed the fire but she could see in the distance a bank of cloud gathering that might scupper their view. Soon the clouds were playing hide-and-seek with the sun.

Joe was looking at his fob watch. It was 6.10 and one black cloud was progressing ever closer to the sun. The eclipse was beginning to happen and the crowds on the hillsides were ready with their spectacles and smoked-glass eye shields.

Even Adey was peering out anxiously. Everyone was willing the clouds to break. Then she saw her husband fall on his knees and throw out his arms, heedless of the curious looks from bystanders. It was time to wait upon the Lord as the cloud moved ominously on.

‘O Lord of the Heavens and Earth, open our eyes to the wonders of the Firmament. Just budge that cloud a little lower down,’ he was pleading, a single voice in the silence of anticipation and dread. Suddenly the sun stood alone with the moon creeping to its position through a window in the sky. Joe got up and came rushing over.

‘Come on, Adey, leave yer fiddling, come and see the miracle,’ Joe yelled from his perch. ‘Come up here and see the eclipse.’

‘Leave me be, Joe. I ought to go down and see to things,’ she snapped, but he strode over and grabbed her by the arm roughly.

‘For once you’ll do as yer bid. There’s more to life than griddle cakes and bacon. The porridge’ll keep. Have a bit of soul, woman…’ He pulled her towards the edge facing east, overlooking the fells where people now crawled like ants in the gathering gloom.

Have a bit of soul indeed, she thought, as she stared up at the broken cloud watching the shadow pass across the sun. Suddenly there was a chill of air, and darkness was falling fast. The silence was unnerving. She was glad Joe was watching by her side.

A hush fell over the crowds. A silence you could cut with a knife, so sharp and powerful. Then came the racing shadow over the fells like the wings of some black angel brushing across the earth, an eerie shadow of death passing over their heads.

Adey watched the black moon devouring the sunlight. Joe shoved the smoked glass in front of her and she glimpsed briefly the sight of the corona of fire and bowed her head.

All the songbirds were silent and the chill made her shiver, for she felt the whole world was wiped out and for a second she felt such panic. How many of their ancestors had stood and watched in terror as this mysterious act was performed in front of their eyes? They would have looked with fear and dread at this unexpected darkness.

She thought of Mam and Dad, George and Ellie, and of the terrible war. All that grief and suffering, and for what? She was flooded with grief, and tears welled in her eyes. It was all there in that black shadow blotting out life and warmth and happiness, all the shadows of her own life rolled into one.

Yet even this shadow could not blot out the sun’s rays and fire. It was an illusion of time and circumstance, just an illusion. The sun’s life burned regardless, the crown of fire would win through with power. Each of those twenty-three seconds seemed like an eternity of suffering burned up, devoured in the heat of life.

Would the sun ever return them to brightness? What if Joe was right and this was the end of the world? Was she fit to meet her maker, this sad, shrivelled-up, old-before-her-time woman? More than anything she longed for it to be over, for colour and life to return, for the warmth to touch her very heart as it had when she was a child so many years ago.

She turned to look at Joe afresh, her husband, her boys, Tom and Wesley safe, this farm, her life, and young Mirren, their second chance. This was what mattered now, not the past lives.

Suddenly the Totality was over and the shadow slipped away. Light was beginning to return. The clouds raced in, closing the curtain on the sun. There was nothing to see.

Huge cheers went up, a stirring of relief and excitement as the dark moment passed. The moors began to clatter with the roar of vehicles and engines revving up. Normality would soon return, but Adey was transfixed by what she had witnessed; something so unexpected, so personal, enlightening.

It felt like a message just for her–as if scales had fallen from her eyes and she saw all things anew. How small the world below looked from this perch; how magnificent were the hills around them, grey and green. ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,’ she sighed.

There was such a vivid green to the fields, a sharpness to the grey walls, a freshness of the breeze on her cheek as she raced down the slope towards the outline of Cragside. She noticed the white blossom dripping from the hawthorns, their scent wafting up her nostrils. She looked up at the frontage of their ancient farmhouse as if seeing its grandeur for the first time. This is my home, my family, she thought, though Joe might be standing in his midden clothes, still smelling of the farmyard, scratching his head at all he has seen, no doubt thinking his prayers have opened the skies. She saw Jack and Ben strolling among the crowds, eyeing the girls with interest. It was good that those two were becoming friends, but where was Mirren?

Mirren woke in the hayloft at the sound of cheering, her eyes crusted, and she wondered where she was. Then she felt the pain in her arm and heard voices whispering down below.

‘Tom, behave yourself! I’ve got the breakfasts to do!’ giggled Florrie Sowerby. Mirren leaned over to see more. Tom was on his back pulling Florrie into the hay, fooling around, tussling her. What were they doing? He was jumping on her like a tup at a ewe. They were kissing and making silly noises. Wait until she told Jack.

She was leaning so far out to see more that she rolled off the edge, falling between them with a scream. Uncle Tom lay back at the sight of her, laughing, scratching his head in surprise.

‘Look what’s jumped out of the hay.’

‘I’ve hurt me arm,’ she sobbed.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Florrie, trying to examine it. ‘I don’t like the look of this, love…It’ll need a looking-at and some of Dr Murray’s bone-setting liniment and plaster of Paris.’

The two lovebirds straightened down their clothes and made for the door. Jack came tearing across the yard and in through the barn door.

‘Did you see it, Mam?’ he said, looking up at them all with a cheeky grin on his face.

‘Of course,’ Florrie smiled. ‘It were that grand it made my eyes water. It makes you think…’

Mirren began to howl again, great rasping sobs that brought all her family running.

‘Does it hurt that bad?’ Uncle Tom asked.

‘I missed it,’ she sobbed. ‘I missed it all. I were asleep and they never waked me.’ She stared hard at Jack, one of her darkest glowers. It was then that Uncle Wes took a snap of her holding her elbow and scowling with his little box camera.

Gran gathered her up to comfort her, trying not to touch the sore bit. ‘Don’t fret on it, lass. Happen you’ll be young enough to see it again,’ was all she could offer. ‘I nearly missed it myself and that would have been a great pity, Mirren. There’ll be no second chance for me.’

If only she’d stayed in her own room and out of mischief but she had to go following Jack Sowerby It was all his fault and she wasn’t ever going to speak to him again; not never.

‘Look at the mess!’ shouted Uncle Tom, surveying the litter over the fields. No sooner had the world and his wife departed, and the farmers mopped their brows and counted the cash, than the real price was there to see. There were makeshift camps and fires, broken bottles, tyre marks and ruts and spilled petrol cans.

‘The dirty buggers!’

‘Thomas! Not in front of the children, please,’ shouted his mother.

Before the day was over there was news of other farms where lambs were caught and roasted on makeshift spits over fires.

‘Never again!’ sighed Tom.

Mirren had had to have her arm set in plaster down in Scarperton and that meant a trip on the bus and more expense, so she offered her cash and then out it came about Jack’s little scheme. Gran was not impressed.

‘I can’t leave you lot, five minutes…Now there’s doctor’s bills to pay and the house to clean out. Those mucky beggars from Bradford left the bedrooms in a tip. They’ve broken crockery, and my fancy towels are missing and the little china horse that belonged to Great-Aunt Susannah. Don’t go asking me to take in lodgers again, not so much as a please and thank you, and them with a car and a chauffeur.’

‘Oh, don’t take on so,’ said Grandpa Joe. ‘They’re only things. They can be replaced. Pity the poor devils who’ve to go back to soot and smoke and toil. Town folk don’t know how to behave in the country. They think it’s a big park to play in. They forget it’s our livelihood, but no mind…’

Mirren emptied her pockets of coins and put the whole lot on the table with a scowl.

‘There’s three shillings in coppers and two shilling pieces and sixpence…You can have that, Gran, for my doctor’s bill,’ she sighed. The furry sweets she was keeping back in her pocket. No one was having those.

‘We’ll put it in your piggy bank for a rainy day,’ Gran said, siding it all away. ‘I have to admit it was a grand do seeing such wonders in the sky.’

Mirren scowled again. ‘But I didn’t see any of it, it’s not fair…’ She turned for sympathy but none was coming.

‘You can take that look off your face, young lady. Life’s not fair and the sooner you learn that lesson, the better.’

Adey reckoned there were three miracles delivered on that June morning. The first was the easy one: the opening of the clouds to let them have the only clear view of Totality in the entire country. But the second was much harder to quantify. It was as if that eclipse brought such a change in their household and in herself that even she couldn’t understand. It wasn’t so much as if she got in the habit of cracking smiles more often or bothering a bit more about what she dolled herself up in, it was more as if she were one of them pictures that got itself hand-tinted with a bit of colour wash. Her knitting patterns were a bit brighter and her pinnies took on a bit more of red and blue and brightness.

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