Luckpenny Land Read Free Page B

the hens, sliding her hands under their soft bodies to capture warm eggs for breakfast, tickling them under their wings with powder to keep them free of mites. She loved talking to them as they scratched about, telling them her secrets, letting the peace of the night soak into her.
    ‘Stay safe,’ she warned them, hearing in the distance the bark of a lone dog fox.
    The small animals were her province. Looking after the hens, and turkeys in season, feeding the pigs, milking the two cows that provided the family with milk, Meg enjoyed all of that. The animals made her life bearable. But she was not permitted to work with the sheep.
    ‘Not women’s work,’ Joe said, when once she had asked if she might help. In such a way that she had not mentioned it again. The desire for purposeful work, an identity of her own, was challenged only by the greater need now to see Jack Lawson. Meg clasped her hands together and stared about her. The black mountains seemed to shield her, crouching closer as her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, attempting to pick out the familiar detail that scarred their smooth surface. ‘Please help me to find the words to persuade Father to let me go to the dance.’ She couldn’t believe she had been so stupid as to risk missing it. ‘I must see Jack, I must. And don’t let there be a war.’
    She’d heard talk of war a lot lately but never taken it seriously. ‘Charlie’s sixteen, young and headstrong. He thinks only of aeroplanes and adventure, do you see? Not the danger.’
    Would Jack? If there was another war, then he too might be called up. Worry swamped her. Oh, she couldn’t bear it if either of them went away. They might be wounded or killed. It made her go all sick and funny inside to think of it, and her own problems seem small by comparison.
    Back in the kitchen she made a fresh pot of tea to warm herself, trying not to listen as Charlie chattered on about the latest aeroplane that would blast the enemy from the skies.
    Her father came in, looking uncharacteristically smart in his setting-off suit smelling faintly of mothballs, firmly buttoned over his best waistcoat. But then nothing looked more polished than a farmer dressed in his finest. A man’s pride would see to that. He wore his best flat cap, as he did for every occasion whether a birthing or a chapel function, the neb curling downwards from long wear, following the line of his thinned lips.
    ‘I hear you and Meg have been having a bit of a set-to,’ said Charlie, somewhat recklessly in her opinion.
    ‘Aye, you could say that.’
    ‘If you don’t let her go tonight, everyone will want to know why. There’ll be gossip. This dale is famous for it.’
    ‘Pity folks have nowt better to do then,’ he said tersely. But the point had been made. Joe Turner could not bear to lose face. There was a long pause while he considered, then he turned upon Meg. ‘See you’re quick about it then, if thee’s coming. We haven’t got all night. And splash thee face with cold water.’ He indicated Meg’s cheeks, hot from the fire. ‘We don’t want folks to know we’ve been having a few words.’
    The remnants of her pride in tatters, her life in ruins, but the façade of family unity must be kept up. A tearing row passed off as a ‘few words’. But Meg didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was that she was to be allowed to go. She could fight her battles another night.

 
    Chapter Two
    The silence of the Lakeland night was profound as Meg followed her father and brother along the rutted lane to the school where the social was to be held. There was nothing to break the silence but the suck of moist earth at her heels, and the fast beating of her heart. Would Jack be there, as he had promised? She heard a rustling in the undergrowth and paused to watch the fleeting glimpse of the white rump of a roe deer, still clothed in its winter grey, as it blundered away from her.
    ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you,’ she whispered,