A Nurse's Duty (45 page)

‘No. I just wondered where he was, that’s all. Thank you, Nick.’ Karen went back to the children but a tiny nagging question was pushing into her thoughts. Patrick had been quieter than usual
these
past weeks, perhaps a little withdrawn. Was he unhappy?

When he came home, around two o’clock, she questioned him with her eyes but he offered no explanation as to where he had been. He sat down at the table and she brought his meal from the oven where it had been keeping hot. His manner forebade enquiry and as she bent over the table she caught a strong smell of whisky.

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, visibly shaken.

‘What is it?’ Patrick said coldly. He looked up at her unsmilingly, challenging her to comment.

‘Nothing.’ Karen collected herself quickly and turned back to the fire. She put a hand up to the brass rail, leaning on it, and gazed into the glowing turves. Deliberately she closed her mind to her suspicions though she didn’t even know what it was she suspected, she told herself angrily.

‘Good God, woman, do I have to tell you everywhere I go?’ demanded Patrick, unappeased.

‘“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”,’ quoted Brian primly. He had been learning the Ten Commandments at school.

Patrick exploded. ‘Get to bed!’ he shouted at the boy, and Brian fled, his lower lip trembling.

‘Don’t shout at him,’ said Karen, turning to face Patrick.

‘You’re turning him into a bloody little hypocrite,’ he snapped. ‘He has to learn not to speak to his father like that.’

Jennie was staring at them, her eyes wide and troubled, so Karen bit her tongue and turned back to her contemplation of the fire. And after a while Patrick seemed to regret his outburst for he went upstairs to Brian and brought him down again. The boy’s face was tear-stained but he brightened when his father sat with the two children on the settee and told them stories of Ireland. He told them of the merrows, or
morhuads
, which were sometimes to be seen on the wild coast of Clare, and Karen listened too. He spoke so infrequently of the land of his birth.

‘The men have green teeth and green hair,’ he told them, ‘but the women are lovely except that they have the tails of fishes.’

‘Mermaids! You mean mermaids,’ interjected Brian.

‘No, that I don’t,’ said Patrick. ‘I mean merrows, though maybe the English would call them mermaids.’

Karen smiled as she brought out the flour and yeast to make bread while she listened to the story of Jack Dogherty who looked for them and eventually saw one and followed him beneath the waves to the country of the merrows beneath the sea where he fell in love with a lady merrow.

‘What’s the sea like, Daddy?’ asked Brian plaintively. ‘I’ve never seen the sea.’

‘Oh, but you will, when you go on the Sunday School trip to Redcar,’ put in Karen. And somehow, the mention of Sunday School seemed to mar Patrick’s mood again and he stood up abruptly.

‘I have work to do,’ he said, and went out to the barn.

Jennie started to cry fretfully. She wanted to hear more stories, so Karen told them how they would go to Redcar and see the sea for themselves. And maybe, if they were very lucky, they would see a mermaid.

When the snow barricaded them in again Karen was happier. She felt safe, her fears silly to her now. And Patrick was snowbound too, he had to stay on the farm. After a while, she forgot about his little outings. She even forgot about the man she’d thought she had seen in Bishop Auckland.

‘There’s a man in the lane, Mam! He wants to see you, he gave me a penny to run and tell you!’

Brian’s eyes were bright and sparkling, he was bursting with the importance of the message he had to give. He clutched his penny tightly in his fist then held it out for her to see.

‘A man? Why doesn’t he come here then?’ Karen’s surprised
question
turned into an admonishment. ‘You shouldn’t have taken his penny, Brian. I’ve told you that you must not take money from anyone.’

He was crestfallen. He hadn’t thought of that. Not many pennies came his way and when they did he usually had to share them with Jennie.

‘But, Mam, he said I was doing him a favour.’

‘Why doesn’t he come up to the house?’ she repeated, mystified.

‘I don’t know. He said he wanted to see you in the lane. “Tell her it’s Dave, he said …”’ Brian stopped abruptly, startled by his mother’s exclamation.

‘Dave? You’re sure he said Dave?’ In her anxiety and shock she bent down on one knee and took hold of Brian by the arms, speaking harshly and urgently. He began to cry, sure now he had done something wrong. But what? Karen forced herself to moderate her voice, to keep it under control. She was being stupid, there were hundreds of Daves in the world. Loads and loads of Daves, and anyway, her Dave was dead. Someone was playing a game, on and on ran her chaotic thoughts.

‘All right, son, you can keep your penny to buy sweets when the travelling shop comes around. As long as you share them with Jennie, mind. Now go and have your tea. Nick’s in the kitchen and there’s some strawberry jam.’

Brian’s face brightened as he saw things were not so bad after all. He skipped into the house to tell Nick and Jennie about the penny.

Karen stood straight, squaring her shoulders and smoothing down her apron, forcing herself to be sensible. Dave was dead, she told herself, hadn’t Joe told her he was dead? And Joe wouldn’t have told her that if it wasn’t true. These last few years had been more settled for her and Patrick; his periods of withdrawal had lessened, he was as any other husband and father. Their
coming
together in bed had become more relaxed and natural and a source of quiet joy. A sense of fulfilment and security marked her life. She had begun to put on weight and was supremely happy. It was 1924 and they had been married for six years.

Now she looked out through the gate at the lane. All she had to do was walk past the rowan tree and along the track to the bend and she would find all her silly fears were without foundation. She had had a letter from Joe only last month, and if Dave had been alive and there had been a mistake he would have known and warned her. It was someone else. It had to be someone else.

Yet still she stood rooted with dread that somehow Dave was not dead but had come back. The memory of the man she had seen at Bishop Auckland station a couple of years ago came back to her and she shivered.

‘Will I go and see who it is, missus?’ Karen hadn’t heard Nick coming up behind her. He had got the tale from Brian and was gazing at her anxiously. When she was disturbed so was he, even after all these years.

‘No, you stay with Brian and Jennie,’ Karen decided as she looked back at him. ‘It’s all right, Nick. Really, I’ll be fine. I’ll just walk up to the bend.’ She put her hand on his arm in reassurance; it wasn’t right that he should be disturbed.

‘Just watch the bairns for me.’

‘Aye, I will. You know I will.’

Karen nodded her thanks and resolutely stepped out of the gate, trying to convey confidence. Nick watched until her slight figure turned round the bend in the track then went in reluctantly to watch the children. At three and a half Jennie was full of mischief and not to be trusted for long on her own. But his instincts were to go with Karen. He was disturbed by some nebulous, unknown threat.

Karen approached the dip in the lane with a thumping heart even
while
she was telling herself that this must be some other man, for Dave was dead. Dead at Gallipoli as Joe had told her, so how could it be him in the lane? She walked on, her whole being focussed on seeing
the man
. At last she realized she was on the last stretch of the rutted track before the road and it was deserted. She stared down it, sure she must be wilfully not seeing anyone.

Hardly daring to hope, she went to the end and looked up and down the winding moorland road. There was no one there, not a soul, only the faint sound of a motor bike further along. The relief was shattering. It had been her imagination, Brian had mixed up a message, that was all. She almost danced back to the yard, her spirits bubbling.

Just before the gate she stopped abruptly. Someone had given Brian a penny. What was a strange man doing giving the boy a penny? Her forehead puckered as she leaned against the sturdy trunk of the rowan tree. She would make sure he was accompanied in his walks to and from the bus which now ran along the end of the lane. It could have been a neighbour, she thought, someone they knew, though she couldn’t bring to mind a Dave living nearby and she knew everyone in the dale. But that must be it, Dave was a common name, perhaps he was visiting someone.

Her brow cleared and she went back into the kitchen smiling, deliberately putting the puzzling incident out of her mind. As she seemed to be doing so often these days. Nick’s face lightened when he saw her and he moved to the door to meet her.

‘I’ll just get on now then, missus,’ was all he said, but he stepped out jauntily into the yard.

Karen soon became busy with the evening meal and seeing to the children and didn’t mention the episode to Brian who seemed to have forgotten about the man.

Patrick came in and if she seemed unusually quiet he didn’t notice. He had been sledding firewood from the plantation of trees further along the fell and was tired for it was hard work hauling
over
the uneven ground. But it was necessary to prepare for the long winter ahead; they couldn’t afford to buy a great deal of coal and there was only so much peat he could cut and dry on the high moor.

‘I buried a dead ewe on the fell,’ he volunteered, ‘liver fluke.’

Karen compressed her lips but said nothing as she placed his plate of stew and dumplings before him. Liver fluke was a problem with the flock, something they had to watch out for.

‘The weather’s on the turn, there’s a coolness in the wind,’ he observed.

‘Yes, it’ll soon be winter again.’

Karen sat down at the table and poured herself a cup of tea. She considered whether to share her fears with him but after all, what were they? Fanciful imaginings. Sighing she went over to the oven and brought over his barley milk pudding which had been keeping warm for him.

Brian and Jennie were sitting close together on the settee reading, or rather Brian was reading a story to Jennie. Karen looked at them with pride. Brian was only five and a good reader already. Both of them looked healthy and happy in their nightclothes, with shiny hair and rosy, plump cheeks.

‘Nearly time for bed,’ she reminded them.

‘I’ll just finish this, Mam, can I?’ Brian asked as he looked up with pleading dark eyes.

‘All right. Then off you go. I’ll come up later.’

‘Are we going to Stanhope Show on Saturday?’

Karen stared at Patrick, startled. He was smiling at them across the table. It wasn’t like him to suggest an outing. Most of the time he was quite reluctant to leave the farm, apart from those times he went off on his own and they were growing fewer as time went on.

‘Oh, can we?’ she exclaimed, the prospect of a little holiday brightening her eyes and colour suffusing her cheeks. She had
become
used to taking the children out on her own and it was lovely to think of Patrick coming too. Nick would stay at home, he would be happier here, she thought, and he could see to the stock. Though his nerves were so much better now, he still got worked up in crowds so he would rather stay and keep an eye on the place.

Karen forgot her fears in her pleasure at Patrick’s suggestion. She cleared away and prepared for bed in a light-hearted mood.

Saturday came cloudy but dry and Karen packed a picnic and dressed the children in jerseys for there was a chill wind blowing over the fell. As the trap took the road leading down into Stanhope, however, they were more sheltered and the sun came out, gleaming through the scudding clouds and promising well for the afternoon.

Brian sat beside his father in the front seat while Karen and Jennie sat in the back. Jennie laughed in delight as they rode briskly over the ford with the water tinkling and gleaming in the sun and Polly’s hooves splashing it up in sparkling sprays. She leaned out over the side of the trap so that Karen had to catch hold of her around the waist to hold her.

‘Careful,’ she warned. ‘You’ll get wet. You don’t want to have to go home before we get there, do you?’

At last they came to the show field and all climbed down on to the grass. Jennie stood staring round at all the bustle with her thumb in her mouth, suddenly shy.

‘I’ll take the trap over to park,’ said Patrick. ‘You’ve got everything now?’ Karen nodded.

The family was dressed in their Sunday best, Karen in a new shorter length cotton dress she had made for herself from a pattern in
Woman’s Weekly
. It was dark blue with white daisies, cut straight and with a belt around the hips. She had got the material in the remnant sale at the Co-op Store and Jennie’s dress was made from the same material but her skirt was full and gathered and the
little
girl’s plump dimpled knees showed brown and sturdy beneath it. Her jersey was blue too and now Karen took it off and folded it into her basket as the day had grown warm. Jennie suffered her attentions impatiently, eyes round with excitement as she looked at the crowds and tents and animals.

‘Give me your jersey, son.’

‘Can we see the sheep dog trials, Mam?’ Brian asked as he struggled out of his jersey. He had recently acquired a puppy and was sure he could train it to be an absolute miracle worker, much better than his father’s Floss.

‘If you wait, we’ll see everything,’ promised Karen.

The show field was crowded with farmers and their families all dressed up for the holiday. Before long, Brian saw a school friend and begged to be allowed to go round with him so Karen arranged a meeting place by the tea-tent.

‘Mind, don’t get lost. And watch what you’re doing,’ said Patrick.

Karen and he were interested in the livestock, casting now experienced eyes over the pigs and rams and cattle. They inspected the new machinery, a little wistfully. Maybe they could invest in some one day. And of course there were the produce and flower tents for their critical scrutiny.