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.
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.