A Time Like No Other (4 page)

‘I am well aware of what you have lost, Lally, and it must seem heartless to speak of such a thing so soon after . . . after your . . . your bereavement but will it not give you an . . . a motivation, something to occupy yourself with until it becomes easier? Who knows, you may find you have a flair for it. And the tenants, who, I was told, were all present on the day of the funeral, will surely be pleased to have someone take an interest in their problems, should they have any.’

‘How can I help with farming problems, Mr Sinclair? I do not come from farming stock.’

‘I realise that but . . . well, it was just a suggestion. But I meant what I said. I will gladly accompany you on a round of calls. Now then, Lally, let me help you mount and I’ll take you home.’ He linked his hands for her to step into.

‘There is no need, Mr Sinclair. I know my way.’

‘I’m aware of that, Lally, but that woman of yours will wring my neck if I don’t see you safely to your back door where, no doubt, she is waiting and giving your poor stable lad the rounds of the kitchen.’

‘Mr Sinclair . . .’

‘Harry, for God’s sake. You make me feel like some old fellow who knew your grandfather.’

She smiled then, a lovely smile which smote him to his heart and Harry Sinclair, as he helped her up into the saddle, knew that at the age of twenty-seven he had at last fallen in love!

It was almost dark when she entered the kitchen, the paleness of her face flushed slightly at the cheeks for, with Harry, as he insisted she call him, at her heels, she had ridden hell for leather back across the moor and along the rutted lane that led to the gates of the Priory.

‘You can leave me here, Mr . . . er, Harry. I shall—’

‘Nonsense. I shall drop you in your stable yard,’ and she had no choice but to ride on and into the stable yard where Carly was waiting to take Merry. She had no idea how enchanted Harry was that she had condescended to call him by his Christian name!

‘And where the dickens have you been, lady?’ Biddy greeted her, from the huge kitchen table where her efforts with the ingredients for the soup took up no more than a fraction of the surface. As Clara had remarked to Jenny when she first came to work at the Priory, you could have held a dance on its top!

‘Biddy, for God’s sake, let me be. Mr Sinclair found me and brought me back. Isn’t that enough?’ Lally sat down at the kitchen table and lifted her foot for one of the maids to pull off the boot.

‘Well, have a cup of tea then. There’s one in the pot. See, Clara, pull off Miss Lally’s boots and then pour her a cup of tea.’

‘I don’t want a cup of—’

‘Get it down you. You look fair crammocky and then get upstairs and see the children. Master Jamie’s been playing poor Dora up and that babe’ll starve if we don’t get something inside him. He doesn’t like that baby milk the doctor recommended.’

‘Biddy . . . BIDDY, don’t . . . don’t. I can’t stand it. I just can’t stand it without him. How can I manage on my own?’

Clara began to cry, her sympathy overwhelming her, for the poor little missis was so upset. She knelt at her feet doing her best to pull off the riding boot but Biddy sprang to attention, her demeanour telling them she was having none of that. She was the only one who could keep this household together, as they were all inclined to cry at the slightest thing, even the little lad who helped Barty in the garden and who was called, strangely, Froglet.

‘Now then, my girl,’ meaning Clara, ‘don’t you start. Let us try and get some order in this house and the first thing is to get these children settled. If Master Alec doesn’t take to that milk we’ll have us another . . .’ She had been about to say ‘another death on our hands’, not meaning it, of course, for the infant would take the milk when he was hungry enough. He had the stubborn determination of his mother, and his father, she supposed, though she knew Miss Lally better, and once he had shown his vast disapproval of the teat and the strange milk instead of the friendly nipple he had got used to in the three weeks since he had been born, he would soon get it down him. Already, after a petulant whinge or two, he was beginning to show an interest in it.

‘Now drink your tea and then get up to the nursery,’ which Lally did and when she entered the warm and cheerful room that she and Chris had made for this first child, their firstborn, a mischievous imp they had named James, Jamie for short, she was met at the door by a tottering, handsome boy who flung himself round her knees. Dora sat by the fire, relaxed for the first time with the baby in her arms, ready to doze off as the child sucked sullenly on the teat.

‘Mama . . . Mama . . . Mama,’ the boy shouted, making the baby jump. It was the only word he could say that was understandable and when she swept him up in her arms he shouted again, this time with laughter. He had his father’s cheerful temperament and his joy at seeing his mother, who played with him and sang to him and nursed his drowsy body before the nursery fire, made Lally laugh too, for he and Alec were all she had of Chris. Mr Sinclair, or Harry, as he had ordered her to call him, was right. She had nothing but these two, nothing except them and the estate that was their birthright. She and Chris had taken no heed of the farms – how many were there? – nor of whether the rents had been paid or where their next penny was to come from, but somehow she must make some sort of living, for these boys were her responsibility. Hers to feed and clothe and see that they had a roof over their heads. That they were warm in the winter when the blizzards swept down from Siberia, that their summers were filled with sunshine and play, that they were brought up as Frasers, gentlemen of the county and, though her heart broke for the loss of Chris who had given her three glorious years of love and laughter, she must get on with it. Biddy would help her. Before the menace of winter on the bleak Pennines really set in she must make the rounds of the farms – Carly would know their names and where they were situated – to let them all see that though Chris had gone it was all to be supervised as was right. It did not occur to her that not once in the three years of their marriage had she ever known Chris to call on his tenants!

Tomorrow she would send word to Mr Sinclair – Harry – that she wished him to call on her and discuss the affairs of the estate and when she had the names she would ride round and if it had not been paid, collect the rent and see . . . well . . . what needed seeing to. She had no idea what she meant by that but somehow as she sat on the floor with her son in her lap, studying a book about the beasts of the jungle, listening to his incomprehensible chatter, she felt an almost imperceptible lift to her spirits. It had been the awful sensation of not only losing Chris but of not knowing what she was to do tomorrow, the next day, next week that had borne her down. Now she had something to occupy herself. A task to fill her days and at the same time perhaps keep the estate in heart for the day when Jamie and Alec could do it for themselves. In her blindness she had no conception of what that meant.

The baby slept in Dora’s arms, replete at last and when Dora lifted him expertly, for she was the sister to many young children, and put him in his crib he did not stir. She looked at her young mistress who held the little demon, as Dora called him, her young heart filled with sadness for her plight. She and her two sisters, Jenny and Clara, were lucky to be employed in this big house, for there was no employment for women except in the mills and her mam had kept her at home rather than let her go into one of those. Now she was, at the age of fourteen, in complete charge – apart from Mrs Stevens – of the nursery. She’d soon have the little demon tamed because she was well used to youngsters who tried it on.

Dora sighed contentedly and began to tidy what was her domain.

3

To say that the Weaver family at Foxwell Farm were surprised to see the widow of their late landlord ride into the yard of their derelict farm with a perfect stranger was an understatement of gigantic proportions! Usually the Weavers knew what was happening within a five-mile radius of their ruinous cob farmhouse but somehow, with the landlord dead only a few weeks, they had relaxed their vigil and the whole tribe of them were ensconsed in the farm kitchen, waiting for the rabbit stew which the eldest boy had poached off the ‘squire’s’ land to be ready for eating. The Weavers lived off the land, not their own it might be said, the sons Jed and Ham selling the firewood that came from the squire’s woodland, poaching his deer, rabbits, grouse, partridge and selling what they caught and did not eat themselves to the local butcher in Moorend at a profit advantageous to all. They had ninety acres of mostly scrubland which should have been under the plough and the old man, as they called Arty Weaver, spent most of his time contentedly drawing on his pipe in a patch of sunshine to the side of the farmhouse, or by the fire in the filthy kitchen. They had pigs, and chickens which rooted and strutted about the yard and as the two riders entered the chickens scattered beneath the hooves of the horses. His two eldest girls, twins about sixteen or seventeen years of age, none of them was sure, for the Weavers were not ones for recording events, worked as part-time servants or on their backs in the occasional sale of their admittedly handsome bodies. The two youngest were still babies under the age of five but already one of the twins had given birth to a child which crawled about the floor in happy unconcern.

It was the first time Lally had laughed outright, for the consternation of the family was the funniest thing she had seen for weeks. It was as though a squad of policemen had come upon them with the intention of searching for illicit goods and the panic showed itself in a wild scurrying, for while they were aware of the identity of the lovely lady on her fine mare, since they had caught sight of her with the squire, they had no idea who the man was. He carried a bulging saddlebag.

‘Mrs Fraser,’ Arty babbled. ‘Us weren’t expectin’ visitors, was we, Mother,’ addressing his slatternly wife, Evie, almost as if, had they known she was coming, they would have arranged refreshments.

‘No, Arty, we wasn’t fer we was still sad-like over’t death o’ poor squire. We never thought as yer’d . . .’

‘I’m sure,’ Harry said curtly, swinging down from his saddle, turning to give a hand to Lally.

Harry Sinclair, on receiving Lally’s message that she would be grateful if he could call on her with a view to accompanying her on a round of the farms on the estate, could scarcely restrain himself from ordering Piper out and galloping over Skircoat Moor, through Moorend and on to the Priory at once. He was actually in the carding room discussing with his overseer the revolving cylinder which teased out the blended wool into a fine web of intermingled fibres. The machine was new and as yet the mill-hand who was working it was having a problem or two which he and the engineer were doing their best to put right. The man, or ‘hand’, as he was called in the trade, was accustomed to working the wool in the old way between two hand-held boards set with wires and Harry, who was prepared to, and often did, take off his fine jacket and do the bloody job himself, was doing just that in an effort to get the man to tackle the new method of carding.

‘Jack, just watch me and do exactly the same, for God’s sake. It’s easy, man, and will save time and money and probably earn you an extra bob or two a week.’

‘But, maister, tha’s used ter’t bloody thing an’ . . .’

‘Well, you’ll just have to get used to it if you want to keep your damn job,’ Harry was telling him when a little lad slipped up to him, pulled nervously at his shirt sleeve and told him he was wanted in the office.

‘What the hell for?’ Harry thundered, turning on the boy who cowered back.

‘Ah don’t know, maister,’ the lad quavered, so Harry, muttering about time-wasting, strode across the yard to his office to find Lally’s note waiting for him.

Now he glared round the clearing in which Foxwell Farm was set. ‘Mr Weaver, is it?’ Harry asked, hefting the leather bag and fastening his gaze on the startled farmer.

‘Aye, that’s me bu’ . . . ?’

‘Is there somewhere we might discuss this farm and the rent owing on it?’ though by the look of the yard the interior of the farmhouse would be just as unsavoury a place to sit down and talk about what had to be done. Lally hung back and Harry was sorry to have to put her through this but she must learn one way or the other that she was to be the new landlord and that as such she must deal with shifty-eyed men like this. That she must oversee the farms, see to repairs that might need to be done, collect rents and make sure that her sons’ inheritance was being cared for.

There was a great deal of shouting, denials, false whimpering on Arty’s part as he realised that this chap, whoever he was, would not be put off by tales of how harsh the winters were in these parts and how difficult it was to raise any sort of a crop without a plough-horse. If Mrs Fraser could see her way to lending them one, perhaps from one of the other farms, he was sure he could begin to pay his rent in, say, twelve months but as for the arrears . . .

Harry stopped him with a lift of his hand. They were sitting at a littered table, the family grouped about them, Evie Weaver hovering at her husband’s back, bewildered by the accounts book which had printed on its cover ‘Foxwell Farm’, words she couldn’t read, and which according to the gentleman, Mr Sinclair, he said he was, proved that they had paid no rent for nearly three years. As they none of them could read or write it was double Dutch to them, and they said so, complaining bitterly, since Arty was sure he had been up to the estate office not so long ago and put the rent in Master Chris’s hand, God bless him. Surely Mrs Fraser remembered it, and when Lally shook her head doubtfully Arty gave the impression that he was convinced they were all out to ‘do’ him.

They left Foxwell by a dilapidated gate after Harry had told the family, who collected with an air of acute misery to see them off, that the rents for the past years would be cancelled but on the first of January Mrs Fraser would expect to see one of them in the estate office with a month’s rent in his hand. That they must clear their fields – after all, counting himself, Arty had six able-bodied people to help him – and in the spring a crop must be sown. Arty nodded dejectedly and when the man and Mrs Fraser had ridden off turned to his wife and told her that the good times were over and what were they to make of this chap who seemed on good terms with the new widow. It seemed indecent to him with the poor young chap scarcely cold in his grave for the missis to have taken up with someone else, didn’t Evie agree with him? Despite the looseness of her own daughters’ morals, Evie did!