Wind on the Heath: a moving wartime Yorkshire saga Read online

  Wind on the Heath

  A moving wartime Yorkshire saga

  Naomi Jacob

  Copyright © The Estate of Naomi Jacob 2017

  This edition first published 2017 by Corazon Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1955

  www.greatstorieswithheart.com

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  For

  JOYCE WEINER

  with my love and admiration.

  Mickie.

  ‘There’s night and day, brother, both sweet things;

  Sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet things;

  There’s likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother;

  Who would wish to die?’

  Borrow.

  Other titles by Naomi Jacob

  available from Corazon Books

  The Gollantz Saga:

  The Founder of the House

  That Wild Lie

  Young Emmanuel

  Four Generations

  Private Gollantz

  Gollantz: London, Paris, Milan

  Gollantz and Partners

  More titles coming soon

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Preview: The Founder of the House by Naomi Jacob

  Preview: Promises by Catherine Gaskin

  Preview: A Shaft of Light by John Finch

  Preview: The Wine Widow by Tessa Barclay

  Preview: Wonder Cruise by Ursula Bloom

  Preview: The Ruby Ring by Grace Macdonald

  Preview: Hardacre by CL Skelton

  Chapter One

  ‘Yes, I’ve had my ups and my downs,’ Ada Anderson said, not without a touch of self-satisfaction, as if implying that she had successfully surmounted all difficulties. ‘But generally speaking, things have not turned out too badly.’

  ‘I should say not!’ her friend, Mrs. Brisco answered with admiration in her voice, ‘for never did a woman face adversity so bravely as what you have done, Mrs. Anderson. Never!’

  The two women were seated in Ada Anderson’s front room. A low-ceilinged place, where some excellent old pieces of furniture stood. The window with its small panes looked out on to a fairly small, but beautifully trim garden. The walls were panelled and painted a low tone of grey, against which the rich, polished wood of the beautifully kept furniture shone and gleamed. There was the Sheraton desk, dignified and satisfying, the good old Georgian chairs with their gracefully curved legs and restrained but elaborate backs, the Chippendale table, its wood shining like glass from much polishing.

  Mrs. Brisco said, ‘Aye, this is a nice room. The polish you get on the furniture beats me, and I reckon that mine’s kept pretty well.’

  Mrs. Anderson smiled, ‘Elbow grease and no French polish! I make my own polish and see that it’s laid on with elbow grease, Mrs. Brisco.’

  Mrs. Brisco nodded, ‘Aye, a true Yorkshire woman, eh?’

  ‘Nay, I’m not really a Yorkshire tyke,’ she laughed a small mechanical sound as if she tried to revive a joke which was long since dead. ‘Nay, I’m from Lancashire. Colne is where I was born. Just over the border. Yes, my father had a very good bakery business in Colne ‒ Alfred Cawther. Very successful it was. People used to come from miles distant to buy my father’s pies. Then,’ she smiled, ‘Enoch came over and we met at a dance ‒ a church dance it was ‒ and well,’ the smile widened and became somewhat deprecating, ‘we fell in love. My Enoch, a good husband if ever there was one. That’s how I came to live at Huddersley, Mrs. Brisco.’

  The stout little woman said eagerly, ‘I’ll lay that you’ve never regretted it neither.’

  ‘No, I’ve not regretted it.’ The tone was slightly pontifical. ‘Once I set my hand to the plough, I don’t look back.’

  When Mrs. Brisco took her leave, Ada Anderson allowed herself the rare luxury of leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes. Not that she slept, but she found that with closed eyes she could come to a more accurate estimate of those things which demanded her attention.

  She was a small, spare woman with smooth brown hair showing scarcely a trace of white, her closed lids hid eyes which were very bright and clear, her skin ‒ though slightly weathered ‒ was barely wrinkled, and her whole figure betokened tremendous activity and energy. She had come to Yorkshire as a bride, very much in love with her husband, Enoch Anderson. He was gentle and kindly, though there were times when she regretted his lack of forcefulness.

  Yet, he had done well. In addition to the farm, not large but well kept, tended and productive, he had opened a general store in Huddersley. Ada, as yet unburdened by the claims of children, had taken over the management of the place. Each morning saw her, wearing a large, spotlessly white apron, ready to minister to the wants of customers. The phrase, ‘If you can’t get it, Mrs. Anderson will get it for you’ became current over half the county.

  ‘Madam, I’m sorry. There’s been no call for it, but let me write down the name and you shall have it by the end of the week. No, it’s no trouble at all ‒ it’s a pleasure.’

  Then, when she was expecting her first child, news came that her father, Alfred Cawther, had died ‒ suddenly. Ada went over to Colne, she arranged everything, she did her best to comfort her mother, and disposed of the business ‒ at a considerable profit. She brought her mother back with her to Huddersley, and installed her in the farm-house where she and Enoch lived. It could not be said with strict truth that the arrival of old Mrs. Cawther brought actual joy and gladness into the old stone farm-house at Huddersley. She was a domineering woman, she had never hesitated to bully her husband and saw no reason why she should not now bully Enoch Anderson. Ada, during the first months of her mother’s stay often remonstrated, ‘Nay, mother, don’t for ever be nagging on at Enoch. After all it’s his house you’re living in!’

  Her mother, spare, thin lipped, with eyes which seemed to see everything, paying particular detail to the very things you did not wish her to see, sat bolt upright in her chair.

  ‘That’s a bonnie road to talk to your mother! I wonder what your poor father would say if he had lived to hear my daughter talk to me that road? It’s Enoch’s house, is it? I wonder where Enoch, aye and you either, ’ud find anyone who’d do the thousand and one things I get through in a week ‒ in a day if it comes to that. Never an idle moment. I’ll teach you one thing, I’m worth my weight in gold ‒ aye, gold to you an’ Enoch!’

  Finally it was Enoch, not Ada, who wore the old lady down. She enjoyed her verbal battles with Ada, but Enoch was in no way worthy of her steel. He was a mild man, with a quiet v
oice and very gentle blue eyes. When his mother-in-law grumbled at him, found fault, contradicted him flatly, or gave it as her opinion that he ran the farm in a way which ‘i’ Colne we’d think was properly far back’, he returned the soft answer which is reputed to turn away wrath.

  ‘Why happen they would,’ Enoch would admit, ‘it’s the road I find best for here, maybe in Lancashire they’re smarter nor what we are in Yorkshire.’

  She snorted, ‘I wonder you like to admit it!’

  ‘Nay,’ his eyes twinkled, ‘I didn’t say that I liked it.’

  By the time Ada’s baby was three months old, Mrs. Cawther decided to leave Enoch alone. She felt a half-formed grudge against him, felt that he was ‘soft’, she preferred Ada’s temper, and enjoyed watching her flare up in sudden fury.

  ‘However you came to marry that man,’ she said to Ada, ‘beats me. He’s over meek and mild to say “Boo” to a goose! No spirit!’

  ‘He suits me,’ Ada retorted, ‘and seemly I suit him.’

  ‘I like men to be men, like your poor father was!’

  Ada laid down the frock she was making for her son, Michael. ‘Now listen to me, Mother. Happen you’ve forgotten, happen it suits you to forget ‒ Father scarcely ever opened his mouth, except to say “Yes, Ellen” or “No, Ellen”. You’d knocked all the spirit out of him years ago. Compared with Father my Enoch’s a wild man of the woods, a roaring savage! Now, we’ll have no more of it. I won’t have Michael grow up in a house where there’s always nattering and nagging. Leave Enoch alone, leave me alone and we’ll get along all right.’

  ‘Leave Enoch alone!’ The scorn which the old woman put into the words was the essence of bitterness. ‘That’s exactly what I intend to do from now on. And you and all. Let’s hope that blessed baby won’t grow up to be a mealy-mouthed, poor-spirited creature ‒ a worm, a milk and water ‒’

  Ada went on with her sewing. ‘Don’t worry, he won’t.’

  Things did improve; true, Mrs. Cawther still looked at Enoch Anderson as if he were something beneath contempt; her attitude amused him, and there were times when he chuckled softly at the thought of the old woman to whom an argument ‒ and for preference a heated one ‒ was one of the chief pleasures of her life.

  She was devoted to her grandson, and when Ada resumed her work in the shop, which she did at the earliest possible moment, her mother assumed full responsibility for Michael. He was, she declared to everyone with whom she came in contact, the most beautiful baby she, or anyone else had ever seen. When she had taken him in his perambulator into the town, she returned to recount long and slightly pointless stories of how people had stopped her, begging to be allowed to ‘take a peep’ at Michael, how they had exclaimed at his beauty, the colour of his hair and the smoothness of his skin.

  ‘Mind you,’ Ada said to Enoch in the privacy of their own room, ‘I don’t believe half of it’s true.’

  ‘Half!’ he smiled, ‘that’s an over-generous estimate, my dear.’

  ‘Mind you, there’s no denying that he’s a lovely baby.’

  ‘Now, I’d say that is an over-generous understatement!’ Enoch chuckled. ‘The lad’s a picture, and bright as a button.’

  Michael was three when Ada’s second child was born. The child arrived at a most inconvenient time, during the hay-making, and when Ada at the shop was preparing for the annual stocktaking and sale.

  ‘Miss Mellows will do her best,’ Ada grumbled, ‘but it’s a poorish best. No method, that’s what’s wrong with Clarice Mellows.’

  The second boy, who was named James for no particular reason, was sturdy and strong, but lacking in the grace which his brother possessed. He was a contented, placid baby and gave little or no trouble to anyone. From the first it was obvious that Michael adored him.

  Michael was twelve and Jimmy nine when Mrs. Cawther sat reading her morning post, which consisted of an appeal for funds for the new Methodist Hall, a catalogue from a drapery store in Peckham where she had once bought some stockings by post and they had kept her name on their list of customers ever since, and a letter.

  She turned the letter over in her gnarled, stiff fingers, and announced to the company in general, ‘From my niece, my brother-in-law’s daughter. You remember Uncle Joe, Ada, died four years after your poor father. Well, this daughter of his, Elizabeth ‒ though she always gets Lizzie, married a chap from Barnsley way ‒ a farmer.’

  Enoch said, ‘Why don’t you see what she’s got to say, Mother?’

  ‘I shall ‒ in my own good time, Enoch.’

  ‘That’s right ‒ hurrying over much never gets you anywhere.’

  ‘There’s some as might well hurry a bit more! You lads ’ul be late for school, I’d not wonder.’

  Enoch looked at his watch. ‘Nay, they’ve gotten enough time.’

  ‘So’ve you seemly,’ she said tartly.

  He laughed, ‘That’s true ‒ I’m getting old, like to take things a bit easier. Ada, luv, I’ll have another cup of tea.’

  Mrs. Cawther made no reply, with dignity and unhurried movements she opened her letter and retired behind its sheets to read in private. Enoch finished his third cup of tea, rose and kissed his wife, then turning to the boys said, ‘Time you were both off to school. See that you behave yourselves,’ and with an amused glance at his mother-in-law, who made no attempt to speak to him, walked out.

  The two boys gone, Mrs. Cawther sighed deeply, and laid down the letter.

  ‘You’ll be late at the shop, Ada,’ she said. ‘Seems to me that the whole family are taking things easy. Well, while you are here you might as well hear the news. Lizzie ‒ your cousin ‒ and her husband, George Tancred, have taken Cummings Farm.’

  ‘No!’ Even Ada was astonished, for Cummings Farm was barely half a mile away from their own. A place which stood high in the estimation of the neighbours. A large, well-kept farm, with a fine Georgian house, good out-buildings and a couple of cottages. ‘No!’ she repeated. ‘George Tancred’s taken Cummings. Well, look at that!’

  Her mother nodded, ‘Aye, it’s what I expect from my family ‒ or the chaps they marry. Not content to stick in a rut, always wishing to better themselves. If he’d enough smeddum your Enoch might have been moving into Cummings!’

  Ada said sharply, ‘Now Mother, leave Enoch be! We’ve enough for our needs and we’re satisfied.’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to know as you’re satisfied. Yes, Lizzie says they hope to be here quarter day. They’re going in for graded milk!’

  ‘It ’ul be no better than ours, that I will lay,’ Ada said.

  ‘Happen it won’t ‒ happen it will.’

  Ada left for the shop, she knew that the housework, under her mother’s capable management and the hard work of Violet, would be done perfectly, knew, too, that the dinner which would be served to Enoch and the boys would be well cooked and well served. She herself remained at the shop, lunching off a couple of sandwiches and a cup of inferior coffee sent in from the confectioner’s next door.

  She drove her little car ‒ which Enoch had given her last Christmas ‒ capably and efficiently. As she drove into Huddersley, her mind went back to her cousin, Lizzie Tancred. They were going to take Cummings. She was not jealous of Lizzie, but at the back of her mind there was a faint, half-nagging regret that Enoch had not had sufficient ambition to get the place. She knew the state of his finances, he was not wealthy, but he was safely, and comfortably off. What is called in Yorkshire, ‘a warm member’. They could afford to live in a much more ambitious style, the shop was flourishing, and the farm did well. The boys ‒ Michael and Jimmy ‒ could be brought up as well, if not better than any brats Lizzie Tancred might have. Then and there she registered her determination. It was high time that the boys went to a good school, never mind the Grammar School ‒ it was all right, but it didn’t ‒ she halted for the right word and found it ‒ confer anything on the boys who attended it.

  Michael with his good looks, and Jimmy with his alert mind were wo
rthy of the best ‒ and Ada Anderson decided ‒ the best they should have. All day the thought was running through her head, while she attended to customers with her usual pleasant courtesy, when she watched the arrival of packing cases containing new goods, when she ‘kept an eye’ on the assistants ‒ there were four of them and Ada maintained a certain distrust of them all except Miss Mellows ‒ she was thinking of this new idea concerning the boys’ schooling. It seemed providential that Mrs. Blenkiron ‒ wife of Colonel Blenkiron ‒ and always referred to in Huddersley as ‘Mrs. Colonel Blenkiron’ ‒ should come into the grocery part of the store that morning.

  She was a tall, haggardly handsome woman wearing a heavy linen suit, immaculate shoes, and a hat which was in itself a disaster. Ada watching her thought, ‘That suit’s four years old to my certain knowledge, and that awful hat looks as if she’d bought it at a jumble sale ‒ yet how does she manage to look as she does? That’s what’s called ‒ class, I suppose.’

  She walked in, carrying a walking-stick, with her two Cairns at her heels. Ada hurried forward, she ‒ whenever possible ‒ attended to the ‘County’ herself.

  ‘Good morning, Madam. How are the little dogs? Come for their biscuit?’ She moved towards the rack where the biscuit tins with their glass lids stood.

  Mrs. Blenkiron replied heartily, ‘Little brutes, all they think of is cadging food! Disgusting creatures.’

  It was well known that she would have sacrificed her life for one of the Cairns, but it was her ‒ possibly only ‒ affectation to disparage them in public. Ada gave them each a biscuit after which they took not the slightest notice of her, but lay down their heads on their paws, extremely bored and not taking the trouble to hide the fact.

  Mrs. Blenkiron looked at them, her hard, good-featured face filled with sentimental affection.

  ‘Selfish little beasts! Mannerless into the bargain. Well, Mrs. Anderson, have the things from Fortnums come? Good! Let’s have a look.’

  Ada said, ‘I’ve scarcely had them unpacked yet, Madam. I’m thinking of starting a small ‒ well, shall we say, side line? Dealing only in what you might called luxury lines. Nothing big, but the things which will appeal to people of taste. Caviar, pâté, cocks’ combs, and the like. There’s a make of curry powder which I believe is very special. If I might ask, how does the idea strike you, Madam?’