All the dear faces Read Free Page B

nice hot cup of tea to steady her but how was she to manage that with the hundred and one jobs that were to be done every day on the farm? You'd think with him being so desperate to have a living son he'd find some way to get her a bit of help but no, she must work just the same, just as hard and just as long and if anything happened to the unborn child it would be her fault .
    The dog, she musn't forget the dog, but in her effort to appease her husband, to keep him from venting his spleen on the child, from becoming more irritable than he already was, she lunged awkwardly, tripping on the long skirt of her grey woollen dress. She righted herself but in doing so she knew she was going to step heavily on Joshua's sturdy potato plants and though it would do them no harm since the potatoes ready for lifting were still deep in the soil, she had a horror of arousing his uncertain temper. The child in her womb fluttered feebly and, unbalanced, with her hand on her belly, she fell heavily. She was up again at once, as light as a feather rises, smiling to let him see there was no harm done, though the awful, familiar sinking in her womb told her it was too late.
    “ Tha's a clumsy beggar," he said, the ale he was slurping down his long, muscular throat making him good humoured.
    “ I know, Joshua, that's me. Well, I'll get meself home then," turning, desperate to get to her kitchen, to sit down, to lie down in an effort to hold on to what she carried.
    “ Tha's goin' wi'out dog now, woman. Bloody hell, it beats me how tha' manages ter get through t'day. Tha's in a maze half the time."
    “ Tha's right, Joshua." She had the dog now, leading him by the scruff of his neck until she reached the gate which led into the yard, flapping at the anxious animal with her apron until he was through. She chained him to the wall, even managing to tell him to 'be a good boy, then' whilst all the while the liquid flowed down her leg and into her wooden-soled clogs as the child she carried drained away from her on a tide of blood.
    “ I'm sorry, lass," she said later to her daughter who, being a child brought up on a farm, though she was only eleven years old, knew exactly what had happened to her mother five months ago when she had conceived in the bedroom next to hers, and understood the miscarriage she had just suffered in the very same bed.
    “ It's all right, Mother. Me an' Faither'll manage," Annie answered stoically.
    “ But how's tha' to do that, child, wi' me stuck up here in me bed? Tha' can't do milkin' an' butter an' cheese an' tha' faither'll want them ter go ter market at week's end."
    “ Mrs Mounsey'll help me."
    “ Aye, " sighing weakly. "An' 'appen I'll be up afore long. ”
    And so she was, for Joshua was not a man to sit with his knife and fork in his hands waiting for his supper and the girl was too busy in the fields and the dairy to be of much use in the kitchen. He said nothing, not even in recrimination, when it became apparent he was not to have his son, at least this time, and when in the next eighteen months his wife, despite his nightly assault on her, failed to conceive he began to realise, and to accept that Annie was to be all that he would have. His bitterness was intense and he eyed Jem Mounsey's lad with a jealous loathing he found hard to contain .
    It was the day before Annie Abbott's twelfth birthday that he dropped his bombshell, though he gave no reason for his decision since that was not his way. He knew why he was taking this course of action and that was enough .
    Annie and her mother, their fingers busy with the rushlights they were making in readiness for the long winter nights ahead, froze in their seats when he spoke, their mouths falling open in astoundment.
    “ Tha's ter go ter school, girl. Next week. Mornings. Jem Mounsey's lasses go so you might as well an' all. ”
    Annabelle Abbott, Joshua and Lizzie Abbott's fifth child, stood up and the rushes she was coating with mutton fat fell to the