Lucy Charlton's Christmas (3 page)

So Miss Sheane couldn’t help. After school finished at noon, Lucy went to her father’s office, waiting because he had other things to attend to. She felt guilty bothering him, especially when it was only a few days before Christmas, but eventually he waved her into his office and asked –

‘Have you no idea, Lucy, where she could have gone?’

‘To wherever she was before she came here.’

‘And where’s that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Think. Did she say anything to you at school?’

‘Not that I remember.’ And then she did. ‘Oh, yes, she told me the name of the place. Snowsfield.’

‘And that is?’

‘I don’t know.’

*

That night she dreamed of Snowsfield. It was ridiculous and even within the dream she knew it was but she saw it – saw the white fields and the graveyard where it said the names of the people who had lived there. There was a square and a lot of houses with stone roofs and also narrow fields crossways and, at the bottom, a river and it was not the Tyne, somehow she knew that but she didn’t know which river it was. It couldn’t be the Tweed above them either as that was wide and brimming with fish. It could only, Lucy thought when she awoke, have been the Wear, which trundled its way from Wearhead to the North Sea, via Durham and Sunderland.

*

‘Snowsfield could be anywhere,’ her father said later.

‘But it isn’t. I think it’s in Weardale.’ She told him of her dream, and when he looked at her she said, ‘I know it sounds silly, but Shamala needs help. Can I go there?’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes. May I?’

He shook his head.

‘You shouldn’t do this.’

‘I have to try, and I think Shamala would accept my help if I wasn’t alone.’

‘She ran off.’

‘Let me try.’

‘All right. If you have to stay my solicitor friend Alex Paterson lives in Stanhope. I’m sure he will take you in for the night.’ Her father scribbled the address on a piece of paper and gave it to her.

*

From Newcastle she took the train to Durham and on to Bishop Auckland, and after that it chugged its way up the dale. As she sat there, snow began to fall, great big square flakes, which meant, her mother always said, that they were in for a hap up.

She saw the little grey towns go by, they were close to the railway as it was a narrow valley and the houses clustered around the bottom of it just above the river. The sheep huddled with snow like icing sugar on top of their rough fleeces. The first town was Wolsingham so she got off the train and asked the shopkeepers there whether they had heard of Snowsfield, but they had not. She ventured to the parish church and saw the vicar and he hadn’t heard of it either. So Lucy got back on the train, when another came after two freezing hours on the platform, wishing she was at home. From there she went through Frosterley, a tiny place she could go back to, and ended up at Stanhope, which was the next significant town. The only town, the ticket inspector assured her, before the train ended at Eastgate. She had to walk into the centre from the station, and though the ticket inspector had thought it was a significant place, it seemed tiny to her after Newcastle. It was nothing but one long winding street with little roads going down to the river on one side and up to the tops very steeply on another. She began to feel as though she was on a wild goose chase, but then she remembered how hurt and upset Shamala had been and went on.

The main street had on one side bare black trees and on the other houses and shops. There was a magnificent Georgian house which claimed to be the vicarage and beyond the market square the castle on the left, which seemed recent and the church on the right, which was not and above that some kind of quarrying which left deep gashes in the hillside.

Lucy thought she would go to the vicar but as she got halfway up the graveyard she caught sight of the word ‘Snowsfield’, more than once. Here apparently people had on the gravestones the places where they had belonged, some of them towns and some of them villages. In the end, she ventured into the church and saw the Vicar at the front, doing she was not quite certain what. She went down the aisle and he turned as he heard her. He was quite young and smiling and she said to him,

‘Is there a village called Snowsfield?’

‘It’s just a farm,’ he said.

‘There are several gravestones marked with this name.’

‘It’s the same family,’ he said, ‘they have lived here for generations beyond knowing. They are very tightknit, a good family.’

‘They took in a girl, Shamala Henderson?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I’ve only been here three months.’

She asked him where the farm was and she might have known, it was a long way from the village. She had to climb up and up, but at least he gave her good directions. She walked about half a mile out of the village and there she came to a place called Greenfoot House, where she turned right and set off. The road led to Rookhope, according to the signpost.

She walked up. And then she walked up. And then she walked up some more. Every time she turned and looked around the view became better, the fields like a patchwork quilt, the farms tiny, the sheep lost in the white weather. They looked like moving snowballs when they moved away from the sanctuary of the stone walls.

She walked and walked and the further she got up the winding road the more snow there was until she was beginning to wish she had never come. It was cold too and although she was dressed for it her hands and feet became numb. After an hour, and then another hour, she finally reached the top.

She no longer cared what the view looked like. All she knew now was that she had to find the farm. But there were several up here, and the wind was like knives and the snow was blinding, and Lucy thought the farm had a fitting name. However, the trouble was that none of these buildings had any name. They were dotted at the sides of the road and some of them were so far over in against the hillside for shelter that she didn’t care to walk all the way. She was exhausted.

Then the snow began to fall again and hard, and she could have cried she was so tired. She should have listened to her father. She sat down by the side of the road, but nobody came to help and it was beginning to get dark. Lucy began to worry.

In the end, she went to the nearest farm and knocked on the door. When a small red faced woman answered she asked where Snowsfield was. Sure enough, it was as far away as it could be. She had to go along and down the dip and up again to where the road leveled out and if she took the left fork, which led to Blanchland, she would find it.

So she walked on and on and on. The snow was worse now so that she could barely see, but she walked up and then down and then up again until the road evened out. Then she took the left fork and walked on and on until it was so dark and she was so frightened that her heart beat hard. And just when she was beginning to think that the house would never appear there it was, off to the left, clinging to the hillside as though it feared the drop. She made her way down the narrow road that led to it, and then hammered on the door. It was opened by a tall young man who seemed surprised to see her, or surprised to see anyone in such weather.

Lucy said, ‘I’ve come to see Shamala Henderson. Is she here?’

He hesitated and as he did so Lucy walked inside.

She followed him down a step and then through a dark hall and into a low-ceilinged room where a fire blazed and the stairs rose out of the room on the left and into the darkness.

The room was empty, but it felt to her that it had not been empty for long and that she was not welcome there.

‘I’m Lucy Charlton.’

‘Jeremiah Walton,’ he said and took her hand. He looked vaguely at her, she had not noticed before because she was too eager to get inside.

‘Is Shamala here?’

As she spoke the girl stepped into the room and she was so differently dressed that Lucy would barely have recognized her. She wore old washed out clothes which were too big, and an apron which wrapped around her almost twice because of her slender form. She came to him and touched him on the arm and he smiled.

‘We were worried about you,’ Lucy said.

‘I’m sorry. I thought I couldn’t be found. I had stood enough, you see.’

‘Of us?’

‘Oh no, your parents were very kind but I couldn’t stay. Jeremiah is alone now and so is his child.’

As she stopped Lucy heard screaming from a room behind and Shamala disappeared and soon came back with an infant, red-faced, which she rocked in her arms. She beckoned Lucy through the passage and into the kitchen where a good fire burned.

‘This is where you have lived all these years?’ Lucy said.

‘These people were good to me. My aunt told me that if I didn’t go back to Newcastle with her I would have nothing. I wanted to help here so much, but I’ve come to realize there are more important things. There were three brothers, two of them died in France, Jeremiah has lost most of his sight and his young wife died having this baby. His father and mother are asleep, they have looked after him and his child, but I am staying here. I don’t care about the money any more. I thought I could help that way but I am more use here and I belong here. I had a good life before my father died and my aunt came here. She tried to turn the clock back and I believe she thought I would marry her son.’ Shamala laughed. ‘How ridiculous,’ she continued, ‘I’m home now. I’m sorry, Lucy, that you have had to come here and find me.’

‘I didn’t have to, I wanted to.’

‘You must stay.’

‘What will you do?’

‘Stay here and help the parents, and I will marry Jeremiah. I will be his eyes and his child’s mother and I will make butter and cheese and go the markets with his mother and help his father in the fields and I will be his lover.’

Lucy’s face warmed at the idea but she was pleased too. Shamala was already someone different.

Shamala laughed.

‘In time he will love me,’ she said.

The child was now asleep in her arms in a way that made Lucy long for something similar. How vulnerable the baby was, how tiny, with perfect limbs. Shamala sensed her need and handed the child to her. It was the first time that Lucy had held an infant and she felt so sorry for the child’s mother and for the father.

‘It is a girl?’ she said.

‘Oh yes. Her name is Heather. We have so much of it here and it was her mother’s wish. I will remind her of her mother as she grows. In August the bees come to the heather. Oh Lucy, it is a sight to see, purple lakes all across the land.

The baby, not quite asleep, waved a tiny hand in the air. Shamala took her back and Lucy felt the lack of the baby in her arms, but the baby snuggled against Shamala just as though she was its mother.

*

Her father was relieved when she walked into his office the following afternoon.

‘Your mother has called me filthy names for letting you go,’ he said.

She kissed his cheek and told him what had happened and he nodded and was pleased, she could see.

‘Will Shamala lose her money?’

‘Certainly not. It will be hers when she is twenty-one. That woman had no right to tell her otherwise.’

‘She thought to gain a fortune.’

Her father looked at her. ‘It isn’t a fortune,’ he said, ‘her aunt was wrong.’

‘How much is it?’

‘Five hundred pounds,’ he said.

‘It will come in useful,’ Lucy said.

*

Lucy and Gemma and their parents went to the midnight service at the cathedral but Lucy felt as though she had nothing to wish for other than the new dress her mother had promised her and several novels which her father had promised her and a dinner of goose stuffed with apricots which she knew would happen because she had seen her mother busy in the kitchen.

The next day there would be every luxury their lifestyle allowed, and in spite of Lucy and her father going to the kitchens to the feed the poor folk that day, in the evening they would make merry and there would be candles and presents and fires in every downstairs room and Gemma would play the piano.

Lucy thought of Shamala. No doubt she was in a feather bed, hopefully with Jeremiah. Lucy felt a touch guilty at this since they were not married and he was so recently widowed, but she thought Shamala would make him a very good wife and in the meanwhile she wished them joy and closeness and sleep.

She had not gone back to her own room since Shamala had stayed there. She remembered when she was small and how she and Gemma had always slept in the same bed and looked up at the stars and talked into the night. That night they did so once again. She hoped they would always do so. Her sister was so dear to her.

The sky was clear. They opened the windows and watched the river, and looked as they looked every year for the star which meant that the Christ child was born.

Available from February 2013

1920, Durham. Since she was a child, Lucy Charlton has dreamed of working with her father in the family solicitor's firm. But a scandal shatters her dreams and, when her father disowns her, she finds herself on the streets, fighting for survival.

Joe Hardy has returned to London after the Great War to find his life in tatters - his father is dead and his pregnant fiancée has disappeared. Then Joe learns he's unexpectedly inherited an old river house in Durham from a stranger called Margaret Lee. With nothing left for him in London, he makes arrangements to travel north and claim it.