Authors: Tania Anne Crosse
‘We’m going to try the quarry!’ Ambrose hollered as the rescue party huddled in the shelter of the barn at Eva’s Farm. ‘She might’ve gone to look for Arthur there!’
They set off again, battling against the ferocious tempest, most of the men clambering up and around the quarry rim. Down inside the amphitheatre, though, it was eerily calm, while the wind raged and roared overhead. Ling stumbled over the treacherous ground, tearing at any stray rock with her bare hands in case her mother might be hidden behind it.
‘Listen to me, Ling! She bain’t yere!’
It took some moments for her crazed brain to accept Barney’s words, and she became aware for the first time of her own exhaustion, the penetrating cold and damp that had frozen her to the marrow and the ache that racked every inch of her body. The men were congregating back at the quarry entrance, and she allowed Barney to half carry her there, since the last vestige of her strength had suddenly drained away.
‘We’ll start searching the moor.’ Mr Warren was issuing instructions as he took charge. ‘We’ll go towards Princetown, spread out in a line.’ He turned towards Ling, his face lurid in the lamplight. ‘If we don’t find her soon, we’ll have to leave it until daybreak.’
A whimper of protest lodged in Ling’s throat. But she knew he was right. The men would be dead with fatigue, their loyalty to one of their own pushed beyond endurance.
‘And you
must
go home!’ Barney insisted, raising his voice. ‘If Fanny wakes up, she’ll wonder what the hell be going on.’
Fanny! In her frantic anguish, she hadn’t thought of Fanny, fast asleep – at least she hoped she still was – in the upstairs room. ‘Yes, of course! You go on now.’
She watched the search party go, the maddened wind abating a little now but the darkness so intense that the lights from the hurricane lamps were soon no more than pinpricks in a coal-black void. Ling turned away, groping along the path back to the cottages since it was almost as if her eyes had been put out.
The little room seemed uncannily quiet. She stoked up the range, stripped off her sodden clothes and dressed in some dry ones, ready to go out again at dawn. Weariness clawed at her, but she could not relax, her muscles so tense that every inch of her hurt and each spasm that clenched her stomach was indistinguishable from the rest of her torment. She waited, every minute a tortured eternity. She wanted to crawl away, to hide in some safe and secret hole and wake to find it had all been a horrific nightmare.
There was just a faint glimmer of light in the sky when Barney came in, his shoulders drooping. Ling had drifted into some agonized, twilight sleep, and came to with a start, the memory of the night ripping into her mind.
Barney came towards her, lines of fatigue deep in his young face. ‘We found her,’ his tired voice grated.
Ling gasped, the relief not quite registering in her brain, but Barney’s eyes dropped as he took her hands, and she knew before he spoke. ‘She were alive when we found her. Just,’ he whispered. ‘But you knows how ’twas freezing cold out there. We men, we kept on the move, but she . . . We tried to revive her but . . . by the time we carried her back, she were gone.’
Ling froze. She was stunned. This wasn’t real. It was what she had feared, what she had dreaded, but now it had come, she felt indifferent. Too drained. She stood for a moment like a block of stone, motionless and scarcely breathing. And then the pain that cramped her protruding stomach made her bend double, and she lifted her head to stare wide-eyed with shock at her husband.
Good Lord! What on earth was that?
Ling jerked in the bed and her ears at once latched on to a low, menacing grumble that rolled, deep-throated, across the moor, echoing lingeringly until it died away with reluctance. Thunder. Ling relaxed with a heavy sigh. She might have known. The still air had been sultry and oppressive throughout the previous day. She had been working in the vegetable garden to help Barney, who was obliged to nurture the vegetables in his father’s plot as well, seeing as Mr Mayhew senior was as lax in that as in all his other responsibilities. But better that than have her father-in-law give up the rental of his own cottage and move in with Ling and Barney and Fanny, bringing Eleanor and the boys with them. There were plenty of families who lived like sardines in a tin, but Ling felt her parents would turn in their graves if Barney’s lackadaisical family ever took over their ordered abode!
Another rumbling peal of thunder crackled ominously across the night, drawing Ling back from her wandering thoughts. The July evening had been so warm and uncomfortable, it had taken her some time to get to sleep. When she had finally drifted off, it had been into a fitful doze and only needed the distant summer storm to disturb her again.
She tried to go back to sleep, but as so often happened if she woke in the small hours, her mind was troubled by her enduring grief over her stillborn child. During the four years since those tragic events, the highlight of her life had been her summertime visits with Fanny to the swimming baths. They had strengthened their friendship with Mrs Penrith, sometimes returning with her to her beautiful house set in magnificent grounds up on Mount Tavy. Mrs Penrith was a rich widow with, sadly, no family of her own. While Ling appreciated the woman’s intelligent company – just as she did her occasional visits to Fencott Place, where two little girls had added to Seth and Rose’s happiness – Fanny lapped up the hot chocolate and other delicacies Mrs Penrith provided. Ling wasn’t sure being spoilt was good for Fanny. She had blossomed, becoming almost
too
confident of late, Ling sometimes considered, since her sister still seemed young and naive to her, and had recently taken to disappearing on her own to God knew where. But Ling’s protection was tiring. Fanny was almost seventeen, and Ling couldn’t keep an eye on her for ever.
She turned over, trying to ignore the vociferous weather that was obviously some way off, but her mind refused to shut down. She had just closed the little school for the summer. Mr Norrish and his family had moved on, and Ling had taken over as school mistress, her salary meaning they were relatively well off, a fact that hadn’t escaped the eagle-eyed notice of Barney’s family. Fanny kept house, but, generally speaking, she was becoming a liability. Though Ling loved her devotedly, she was at her wits’ end to know what to do about her. Beautiful, a wisp of a thing like some spirit of the air, she remained slow-witted and vulnerable. It was like having a young child to look out for.
A child. Ah! Ling knotted her lips in rebellion. Wanting to lash out at, well, God knew what. Three times she had appeared to have fallen since she had lost that first infant. And on each occasion she had gone through an agonizing miscarriage at about thirteen weeks. So that now, whenever her monthly was due, she mentally held her breath. Would she become pregnant once more, only to have her hopes dashed yet again three months later? She almost prayed that her period would arrive on time so that she wouldn’t have to repeat the dreadful torment. Besides, if she had a child, she would have to give up her teaching post, and they would be hard pushed to survive on Barney’s income alone. She would be forced to return to taking in washing, committed to a life of drudgery. Oh, how different it might have been if she had remained in the Warringtons’ employment. And who did she have to blame but herself?
She pressed her hot cheek into the pillow. Oh, she must get some sleep! Although there would be no more school until September, there was much to do during the summer months: pickling and preserving their own produce, and picking wild whortleberries to make into pies and jams, with any left over to be sold in Tavistock market. There was peat turf to be cut on the allotted ties towards King Tor, turned and dried, and stored in the ‘backs’ for winter. Heavy, men’s work, but Ling would help where she could. And trapping the multitudes of rabbits that inhabited Big Tip, as they were permitted to do, was far more pleasant in the summer. Rabbit stew was constantly on the menu, and the skins could be sold to Mr Perkins, who came once a fortnight to collect them.
And they were lucky that there had been plenty of work at the quarries over the last few years. Pethicks, the owners, were also the main contractors for the London and South Western Railway, who had been constructing an alternative track to the one they had shared with the GWR, taking a completely different route between Tavistock and Plymouth. This had required amazing feats of engineering, including a massive viaduct over the northern part of Tavistock. Wherever possible, Pethicks had naturally used their own granite – mainly from Swell Tor Quarry, which was but ten minutes’ walk from Foggintor – so Barney had been in full employment. But the work was completed now and the new line open, and who knew what the future might hold, especially with concrete gradually ousting granite in the building industry?
Another violent crash, this time so much nearer, snapped Ling from her reverie. Barney mumbled his displeasure, and then as a blinding flash scorched through the curtains on to his closed eyelids, followed a second later by the explosion of a thunderclap that rocked the sturdy cottage on its foundations, he sat bolt upright. Almost at once another bolt of lightning ripped across the sky, and the air was torn asunder by a deafening roar that burst in their eardrums and rattled the glass in the open windows.
‘Bloody hell,’ Barney muttered, leaping from the bed and standing naked by the window as he had discarded his nightshirt earlier because of the heat. The sky lit up like a beacon once again, and, for an instant, Ling saw the silhouette of his body, tall but stockier now with his twenty-five years, thirteen of which had known nothing but hard, physical toil. It was strong and dependable, giving her a sense of security, but there was something lacking, she knew, in what she felt. She repaid his support and his love with her own loyalty and affection, giving him the comfort of her own body. But it was a duty not a passion, and she was always relieved when it was over.
‘Ling!’ Fanny stood in the doorway like a little ghost in her white nightgown, and Ling threw back the covers to invite her sister into bed. Fanny dived in beside her, in her panic clearly oblivious to Barney’s naked form by the window. Ling saw him reach at once for his underdrawers and trousers, which lay on the floor where he had left them, but he need not have worried. Fanny was terrified of storms at the best of times, and this one was phenomenal. It raged over the moor like some demented fury, ferocious and angry, until the rain began to fall, in huge, heavy splashes at first, then gathering force until it plummeted from above in torrential, unstoppable sheets. Ling had to run to fetch a bucket from downstairs as water began to drip through the ceiling, and Barney cursed, something he did more often now, as it meant he would have to search out the leak and repair it. The storm itself was over, leaving the rain, which came down in stair-rods.
When dawn finally broke, the sky was slate-grey with dark clouds that still seemed intent upon drowning the world in an apocalyptic deluge. Ling joined her husband by the window, and her heart flipped over as she saw the reason for his grim expression. The summer vegetables had been flattened, and the seedlings of sprouts and cabbage and other winter produce they had planted had been washed away. The entire crop, and all their hard work, was ruined.
Ling stared over Barney’s shoulder on the verge of tears. But then she heard a horrified cry and realized that Widow Rodgers was leaning out of her upstairs window next door, moaning in utter hopelessness as her garden had suffered the same fate. The poor woman had struggled for years, her only income since her husband’s death in a quarry accident being from the laundry she took in and her two weekday lodgers. Her elder daughter was now in service and sent home a few coins each week, but the widow’s own produce was essential. And now it was gone.
‘Don’t you worry, Mrs Rodgers,’ Ling called out, hoping her voice sounded more cheerful than she felt. ‘We’ll help you put it back together.’
‘Thank you, Ling dear,’ the woman sniffed back. ‘But I doesn’t know as us can.’
In truth, neither did Ling. But if something went wrong, you just had to get on and put it right as best you could, even if it meant your hopes and dreams fell by the wayside. Life had taught Ling that! There was no point, though, doing anything until the rain stopped. They had breakfast and Barney left for work early. He knew it would be all hands to the pumps since the quarries would be flooded and would need to be emptied before work could begin. And as they were only paid by what they produced, rectifying the situation was paramount.
It was well into the morning before the rain eased off. Ling had discovered that it had got into the shed; the chicken feed they had stocked up on recently was so wet it would have to be discarded for fear of developing dangerous mould, and their prize laying hen had drowned. Ling’s sole relief was that the pig they were rearing jointly with Mrs Rodgers appeared to be wallowing in the sea of mud that was its pen.
Everyone pulled together. With the men and their apprentice sons at the quarries, the women and younger children were left to clear up the unholy mess the storm had wreaked. Ling and Fanny helped Mrs Rodgers first, rescuing anything that might be salvaged. Exposed root vegetables were reburied in the swampy earth, and it was prayed swelling onions would not rot in the ground. Stronger seedlings that weren’t totally ruined were replanted, though how much hope there was of their surviving, Ling wasn’t sure.
By lunch time, Mrs Rodgers’s patch had been returned to some semblance of normality, though it was now only half full. Ling’s back ached wretchedly. She had been squelching up to her ankles in a mire of well-manured earth that seeped inside her boots, the hem of her skirt was plastered in mud to her knees, and her hands were encrusted with filth. When he returned for the midday meal, Barney was dismayed at the sorry state he discovered the womenfolk in. But it was the same at every one of the cottages, and Mr Warren, the manager, had apparently offered money to any of the men who would help put his pretty ornamental garden, of which he was so proud, back together that evening.