Family Drama 4 E-Book Bundle (147 page)

In the days afterwards she crawled out of bed hoping for oblivion, praying for the celebration day to come again so she could rearrange it differently but as each new dawn crept into the sky, she crawled down again, hoping for night never to end.

Of Jack there was no sign. He hadn't spoken a word since the accident, the terrible accident that had robbed her of two lives. The doctor had sent him into the hospital to bring him round. It was as if he had never come home.

All Mirren knew was that Sylvia was taken and
she would never see her again. She had gone to a place where she couldn't follow. One morning they were dressing up to go to the biggest party in the village and then she disappeared from them.

Florrie and Daisy had taken all Sylvia's clothes and the toys from her bedroom and stripped it bare, and the door was locked on it to make it easier for them to bear. Mirren hadn't the strength to protest. It was all she could do to put one foot after the other and creep from room to room, calling her name in case she was hiding from them.

In chapel, funereal voices whispered all around her. It was no comfort to say Sylvia had gone to a better home and only the good die young. It was no comfort that her little body was put in a box in the churchyard out of sight where it was windy and chilly. When she wanted to call out her name, someone whispered, ‘Hush, don't upset yourself. Crying won't bring her back. Time's a great healer…You'll have other children one day.' ‘How dare you say that? I want Sylvia!' she screamed out, and everyone heard her pain. Jack was too sick even to hold her up. It was Ben who kept her upright at the graveside.

It was as if Sylvia had never lived in Cragside, never kicked the banisters and got told off for picking the plaster from the wall, never sang in her bath or raced over the fields chasing sheep. There were no photographs and she was never
spoken of in front of Mirren except in hushed tones. Friends passed her on market day in the street rather than face her raw grieving.

‘Our Sylvia was too good for this world so she was taken, not spared. It didn't make any sense. She was taken for an angel in Heaven,' wept Florrie with a quiet voice, not looking at her.

Mirren spent hours sitting up in her eyrie at World's End, the wind battering her and rain pouring down on her face, but she didn't care. Ruins were what suited her now. The nights when sleep wouldn't come she spent looking at the photograph, the only one she salvaged, the one Jack kept in his pocket, creased with looking at: a baby shot of Sylvia smiling. She was never for sharing after that, and she hid it in Dad's tin box under her bed.

Sometimes she forgot and when it was dusk she looked for her coming down from the top field on Ben's shoulders, coming through the kitchen door full of chatter. It was hard waiting for that little voice to shout, ‘What's for tea?' and her saying, ‘Wipe your feet!' But it never came.

There were no words to explain that terrible moment when life's gone from a body or any sense in the death of a precious child. It took only seconds for Sylvia to leave them, ribs crushed and skull broken, and for Mirren's world to end. To bury her precious kiddy was an abomination on
the face of the earth and she would never get over it as long as she lived. It went against nature. It was agony to speak even her name in company.

Her dreams were full of her child running through the house in her Fair Isle jumper and dungarees made from worn cord breeches.

Sylvia would never grow old or marry and have children, or roam the world and do as she pleased, and it was all their fault. Two men who should've known better than to mess about with engines when there was an excited child in the yard. The coroner said as much himself. She would never forgive Jack and Ben for her death.

They were named and blamed and shamed. It was an accident, one of those tragic things that can happen on any farm if people were careless. Farms were and always will be dangerous places for children. Sylvia died because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That is what Mirren's head was saying: not drowned or killed on the road, lost on the fell or abducted, but in her own back yard where she should have been safe and something in her died alongside her child that day.

The tractor was just a machine and should not have been left like that with the key in the lock parked at an awkward angle. The yard was too busy. Sylvia was distracted but Mirren blamed them for the loss of the baby too.

Shock had brought on the labour too early. The little lad was too small to live and didn't stand a chance, the doctor explained to her. She couldn't feel anything. They had taken him away before she'd even seen him, taken him away like rubbish in the bin, not buried decently. It was cruel, he said, but for the best. How did he know, her heart cried out, but he was the doctor and they knew best, didn't they?

The sheep, the lambs and the cows didn't know what had happened. People took over while she recovered her strength, but Dalesmen knew that hard work and silence were the best solace. So they just got on with life as best they could through the slow procession of the seasons in turn. Dalesfolk made no show of grief, or they didn't until now. No amount of repainting the barn doors would ever wipe the memory of that accursed day. Nothing would bring Sylvia back to Cragside.

Each morning Mirren took her hen bucket of grain and walked past that door. How she hated that tractor, but it wasn't hers to destroy. It disappeared one morning, never to return. She hated herself and Jack for being alive when their child was dead.

Something between them died that afternoon.

Ben drove Florrie to the hospital near Scarperton in silence. None of them had slept for weeks. His
dreams were filled with the noise of the engine, his feet trying to run to help but stuck in thick mud, trapping him, a helpless looker on at a needless tragedy.

He had never seen a young man collapse so quickly into a crumpled shell of humanity. Jack was in total shock, brought on by the sight of his little girl being killed by his own carelessness. His eyes were dead, gazing far from any words spoken to him. He had not uttered a coherent word. Florrie tried to bring him round but he retreated into such strange behaviour that they feared for his life.

The news of Mirren's miscarriage tipped him over the edge to a point where Dr Murray wanted him off the farm–‘I can't vouch for his safety after this.' Now Jack was twenty miles away and poor Florrie was dreading seeing him locked up in an asylum.

Ben sat outside in the van, ashamed, but Jack's mother wanted to see her son alone. Weakness like this was not for sharing outside immediate family. Ben hadn't even time to visit his own parents.

Returning to Cragside, Ben watched Mirren's anger grow but said nothing.

‘Jack's not coming near this farm when he gets out of the loony bin,' she shouted. ‘He killed his baby. You tell him he's not coming back here,' she snapped.

‘But he's your husband,' wept Auntie Florrie. ‘He's been in hospital a month. He's not himself. He knows what he did and it's floored him. You have to make your peace with him. If he could turn the clock back, believe me he would. Don't make it any worse than it is, love.'

Florrie and Tom were in a losing battle with their daughter-in-law, thought Ben. Mirren was lost in her own guilt and loss. She wanted to lash out at all of them, and most of all at him. Her eyes were hard as steel when she barked orders to Umberto. There was no reasoning with her. This stalemate couldn't go on. It was affecting everyone on the farm.

‘If you're going to be hard on someone, blame me,' he butted in. ‘It was me as brought Jack up from the village. If only I'd left well alone but I thought…You must go and see him. He needs your help.'

‘I know what you thought: better get me laddo home before he drinks too much. We all know what Jack's like when he's blathered. He can't keep away from an engine.'

‘But he's sick and weary, Mirren. Have some pity. Don't do this to him. Blame me, but go and see him…Make your peace.'

‘I do blame you. I blame everyone, but most of all myself,' she snapped back. Her eyes flashed, hard, flinty. ‘How can we live here after this?'

‘There must be a way,' he replied, thinking of his long-ago promise to Gran to see them both right. How he wished he could pack up and go back to Leeds, away from the bitterness, but that was the coward's way out.

There was no reaching the woman when she was in this mood. They were all hurting, going through the motions of daily routine like automatons.

It was high summer but the sun couldn't lighten the gloom over Cragside. They all needed to spread out and find some peace away from prying eyes.

Mirren was needed on the farm, but her living here every day was agony for all of them, and a cottage in Windebank was too public. What she and Jack needed was a private place to grieve and he knew just the place.

Ben looked to the heavens for the first time in weeks. ‘Don't worry, Gran,' he whispered. ‘I know just the place to set them right again…'

The hospital outside Scarperton stood like a fortress, set high on the moor overlooking the River Wharfe; a world of its own with high forbidding gates, a palace with tall windows with bars across them. It had taken two trains to get here. Why was she coming?

Mirren gulped. Was it to see Jack suffer? One look at the place and she sensed it was like a prison. Her husband was under lock and key and she must face him for the first time since Sylvia died. How could she look on his eyes and hair and not see the image of her own child? How could she face the murderer of her unborn baby? She would soon know.

The pills that Dr Murray forced upon her were long flushed down the pan. They had done nothing to dull her pain. They made her woozy and dry in the mouth, but she couldn't face this journey without some strength from somewhere.

In her bag was a cake in a tin from Florrie, a copy of the local
Gazette
and a little package from Tom that looked like a bottle, a bit of comfort to help him. There was no point in giving him that, she sneered. It had done enough damage. She would chuck it in the nearest dustbin.

Anger rose like bile in her throat. What was the point in giving him liquor to drown his sorrows when she couldn't drown hers with anything stronger than tea?

There was a small crowd gathered at the door for visiting time. She wished she'd asked Ben to come for support, but he was too busy, and Florrie came when she could. The visitors made a row of anxious faces as they were ushered down tiled corridors to the wards, hearts beating faster at the thought of what they must face and the smell of mopped floors and bed pans.

It was a strange subdued meeting. Jack sat there staring out the window, not even looking up when she came. His eyes were like dead fish on a slab, cold and glassy and drugged. He was in a borrowed dressing gown that was too big for him, his cheeks were sunken and he looked like an old man. She wondered if he had even recognised her. The sight of him overwhelmed her.

‘Jack! It's me, I've come to see you,' she offered.

He turned, looked at her unsmiling, nodded his head and she sat down. He didn't speak so she filled
the gaps by telling him she'd lost the baby and had to have a scrape-out and wasn't up to visiting before, making excuses why she had put off this moment.

He listened, his face blank as if he was a stranger, fiddling with his dressing gown cord, not looking at her. She didn't understand.

‘I thought you'd be glad I'd made the effort to come and clear the air,' she offered. This was hard work and it was making her angry. ‘Look, speak to me or not, but we've got to have this out,' she nagged. Where had this fishwife voice come from? ‘I blame you and Ben and I blame me. It never should've happened. If only you'd kept out of that blessed pub, but, oh no, you have to have your nips. Ben should have let you get sozzled and stay put, but he was interfering, as usual. Sylvie would've been with us and none of this…' She was yelling at him now.

Jack turned away and blanked her out as she wagged her finger at him.

‘And you can stop all this funny business, shutting me out. You heard what I said. No use hiding away in the madhouse, getting folks sorry for you. It's not fair. Face what you've done like a man, fair and square on. You killed our beautiful little girl!'

‘Mrs Sowerby! A moment, please,' said a man in a white coat with a foreign accent.

‘I've not finished yet, Doctor. I need to get this off my chest but he won't listen.'

‘Not here, not now, Mrs Sowerby. Be patient.
Jack's not well, he can't listen to you. He can't think straight yet but he will, given time and rest. I'm Dr Kaplinsky.' He held out his hand but she ignored it.

‘But he killed our child,' she screamed, and everyone in the ward stood listening to her.

‘It was a terrible accident. Your child ran into the tractor,' said the doctor with the soft voice.

‘How do you know? You weren't there. I was! He did it,' she said, pulling on Jack's sleeve to try to wake him out of his torpor.

‘Come,' the doctor insisted, ‘let's talk in private. Jack is not listening. The war has left him with many problems. He needs time and treatment. Peace and quiet to heal his spirit.'

‘But what about me? Don't I get time to recover? This nightmare will never end as long as we live. I haven't gone doolally. Someone has to get up and see to the cows, no matter how bad it gets,' she snapped at him.

‘And that is the best way, Mrs Sowerby Keep busy and keep going from day to day. Push the pain away. It's hard but I see you are strong. Jack is different,' he added. His eyes were dark and kindly enough, but what did he know of her pain?

‘What is it to you?' she sneered.

‘Believe me, I know,' said the young man with the beard. ‘Come, sit down and rest. Just hold his hand for a while. It is good you have come.'