‘No, Mam, it’s for you. I don’t love Mr Brooksbank, but I do love you.’ Susie got down off her chair and went and kissed her mother.
‘I love you too, my little angel. Now you go and have a lovely afternoon with Lucy, and don’t show her up. Mr Brooksbank is her boss, and we don’t want him to think we have no manners, no matter where we live.’ Dorothy kissed Susie’s blonde hair and picked up baby Bert, who was beginning to cry yet again. ‘I’ll get his dummy and lie on the bed with him – he’ll soon drop off. Now get yourselves gone. It’ll be dark before you know it, although the days are beginning to draw out a little now. Spring should be here: it’s April after all.’
Lucy tied Susie’s cape around her and put the dyed eggs into a basket, before pulling her own shawl around her. ‘You sure you will be alright, Mam?’ she said as she opened the kitchen door into the yard.
‘Yes – get yourself gone. Will’s waiting for you both. Your father will be glad to get him out from under his feet. He’s too young to help and is only hindering the job he’s trying to do.’ Dorothy stood up and walked to the bottom of the stairs with Bert in her arms and watched as her two daughters left the house. She’d be glad for a bit of peace, once Bert had dropped off to sleep. An hour or two without anyone else in the house but her and her youngest would be a welcome respite from the usual bustle of her family and its noise.
‘What are you up to, Father?’ Lucy looked around her as Nathan and Thomas Farrington dug deep into the earth of the yard.
‘I’m making drainage from that pit to the beck. Every time it rains, that pit overruns and flows down the yard nearly to the back door. It needed doing. So I thought I’d do it while we haven’t many men at work. Tom here’s being a good help; he said he’d nothing else to do with his time, so he might as well earn some brass. And Nathan’s not at school today.’ Bill stood with his hands on his shovel and wiped the sweat from his brow as he looked at Thomas Farrington and his son digging out a small trench, which he aimed to fill with some secondhand drainpipes that he’d managed to find, and which would cover just the first drain of many that he now knew he had to dig. He’d no intention of telling anyone about the conversation that had taken place between himself and Adam Brooksbank. ‘I hope you are taking Will with you up to Black Moss. He’s hindering us something terrible, and he’ll get the rough side of my tongue, if he doesn’t bugger off.’
‘Yes, I’ll take him. He’ll enjoy the walk and it’ll get him out of your way.’ Lucy glanced up and noticed Thomas Farrington looking at her, as he shovelled dirt to one side of the trench. She turned and shouted at Will to stop hindering Nathan and to join her and Susie.
‘Can I bring my jam jar? I might find some frogspawn or tadpoles up where we are going. I’ve never looked in those streams up there,’ Will yelled, as he ran for his jam jar from behind the kitchen door, with a piece of string tied around it for a handle.
‘Hurry up then.’ Lucy set off walking with Susie out of the yard. The sooner she was out of Thomas Farrington’s gaze, the better, as he looked darker than ever in mood and manner.
Thomas leaned back on his spade and looked at the lass that he was besotted with. He’d watched her growing up into a good-looking young woman, and with every day he admired and needed her more. The trouble was that she never looked at the side he was on, preferring to wind up Archie Robinson with her flirting. If Lucy flirted with him like that, he’d show her what sort of man he was. She’d have no need to look at any other man ever again. She didn’t know it yet, but she was going to be his – he was going to make sure of that. He’d longed for her for too long, and now he was going to make Lucy his, before any other man sullied her.
‘Stop your bloody gawping at our Lucy, and put your back into it,’ Bill shouted at Thomas, as he caught him watching Lucy disappear from the yard.
‘Yes, boss. I was just having a rest,’ Thomas replied, as he swore under his breath. He was going to show the bastard; he’d plans for Bill’s daughter and for his yard. Bill would not be boss for ever, not if he had his way.
Adam raised his head from the job in hand, as he heard the sound of young voices approaching his yard. He’d decided, since the sun had started to show its strength, to turn over the much-neglected garden, which had always been so neatly planted in his youth. Now it was a mass of dock leaves and nettles and was taking longer than he had anticipated to clear. The packets of seeds that Lucy had requested on his first visit to Keighley still stood on the mantelpiece in the kitchen, where he had placed them after showing her the selection he had bought her; but that had not been followed up by digging the plot over. Now, with it being Easter Monday, he’d been reminded of his father saying that early potatoes and broad beans should be planted at Easter, and had decided that if he needed
