A Whisper of Life Read online

  There would be another generation at Ford Farm, something the older inhabitants of Hennaford would welcome. There had been so many changes in the village since the war ended that some pensioners were feeling unsettled. After years of long service both the shopkeeper and the schoolmaster had retired. The pub landlady had died, and so had Tom’s dear old grandfather who had lived at the farm. People had moved away, one young family had uprooted to Australia. The village’s most astringent gossip, Mrs Moses, had been buried two days ago, although that was one change people didn’t really mind – few had bothered to pay their respects at her funeral. Her family, as mean as she had been, had not held a wake. There was a granddaughter whom Jill had heard owned a pleasant nature, and was a ‘poor little soul’, much unappreciated for seeing to Mrs Moses’s care and who had unfortunately witnessed the dreadful event of her choking to death on a large mouthful of food. ‘Served her right,’ a passerby at the time had stated. ‘I heard she tearing into that little maid just a minute or two before. Choked on her own venom, if you ask me. Caused a lot of trouble over the years, the Moses woman did, with her evil tongue. It’s been silenced for ever and a good job too!’ The village would be a pleasanter place without the frightful Mrs Moses.

  Movement further up the field caught Jill’s eye. A girl was shambling down towards the stream, her head bent to watch for safe passage over the uneven surface of springy pasture, but it was easy to see she was thoroughly dejected. With the evidence of her limp, her unflattering haircut and grim clothes, she could be none other than Mrs Moses’s granddaughter. It was natural for her to be distraught in the circumstances but there was something about her that worried Jill. She seemed overshadowed by some crushing burden, as if lost in the depths of something she couldn’t cope with, as if living itself was almost too much for her. Jill picked up her pace in the girl’s direction, putting up a hand in a friendly wave. ‘Hello there!’ The girl didn’t seem to hear so Jill called again.

  Kate heard a shout and the shock made her wobble. It was a strain to keep her balance. When she was stable she froze like a lump of iron. A young woman was striding up towards her. She had been caught trespassing and was in for a telling off. Was there no end to her miseries? ‘I’m sorry, honestly I am,’ she blurted out before the stranger reached her. ‘I know I should have asked permission to be here, but I was careful to shut the gate. I won’t do it again, I swear.’

  ‘It’s all right. Everyone is welcome to wander across Bosweld land as long as they follow the country rules, as you have just done,’ Jill reassured her with a smile. There was a dimness about the girl, not because she seemed unintelligent, but through living a life impoverished of all joy and never knowing a simple pleasure. She kept her head down but Jill looked up. ‘It’s Kate Viant, isn’t it? I’m Jill Harvey. Mrs Bosweld is my mother-in-law. I’m sorry about your loss. How are you bearing up? Is there anything I can do for you?’

  Faced with unexpected kindness and sympathy while at her lowest, Kate was unable to keep back a fresh surge of tears. ‘Th-thank you, I’m fine…’

  ‘You obviously are not. Would you like to come to the farm with me and have a drink and a chat? Perhaps I can do something to help. Tom and I have our own part of the house so no one else will be there.’

  ‘You mean it?’ Kate sniffed into her hanky. She felt guilty for thinking about ending her life. She wouldn’t have done it, but what she would have done, God only knew. She wasn’t going to shun the chance of a little hospitality.

  ‘Of course.’ It would be quicker by way of the fields, where they could reach the farmstead round at the back, but Jill led Kate out to the lane where it would be easier for her to walk. As she closed the gate a sharp pain stabbed at her lower abdomen. Instantly worried, she rubbed there.

  Kate noticed. ‘Are you all right, Mrs Harvey?’

  Jill waited a moment, concentrating on where the pain had been. ‘Yes, I think so,’ she answered, although she was worried and prayed the pain would not recur. ‘Call me Jill. Would you like to tell me something about yourself as we go along, Kate?’

  Kate gazed down at the dusty road as they moved off. ‘I come from Tregony. My father and eldest brother are coalmen and my other brother does odd jobs.’

  Jill walked slowly to compensate for Kate’s inevitably slower gait but even so Kate was keeping slightly behind her, as if she had no right to be on a par. Jill shortened her steps to Kate’s pace. ‘And your mother is a housewife?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kate said in a breath of a voice. She had spoken about all those who had just rejected her. Her family. There wasn’t even a suggestion that she keep in touch with them. There would be no invitation to attend her brother’s wedding. The hedgerows were dotted with primroses. She had picked bunches of the creamy delicate flowers for her mother every year in the hope of appeasing her, of gaining her approval, even a touch of her love. Her gifts had either been ignored or scorned. ‘You can’t get round me with silly gestures. You’re up to something, aren’t you? Get on with your work. Bleddy girl!’ This was the most common reference to Kate. She had nothing but bad memories and no future to look forward to. A cry of despair was just under the surface and she didn’t know how much longer she could keep it under control.

  Jill sensed her heartache. ‘Kate, what’s wrong? You don’t have to tell me, of course, but if you want someone to talk to I’m ready to listen.’

  Kate looked into her face and saw only genuine concern there. This woman, who by her well-toned voice didn’t originally come from a farming background, and with soft youthful fair looks, her long rolled-under hair the colour of honey, was the kindest person she had ever met. Jill saw the hurt and torment in Kate’s avid expression and made to put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure—’

  Suddenly an agonizing pain ripped up through her stomach, echoing throughout her body and flooding her with fear and alarm. ‘Arrgh!’ She doubled over, gripping her middle and falling to her knees.

  ‘Jill!’ Kate screamed, stooping to her, hands reaching for her. ‘What’s happening?’

  The panic rising in Jill for her baby made it impossible to speak. She felt wetness between her thighs. She yelled and gripped her stomach tighter and tighter, instinctively trying to protect her child.

  Kate beat down her own panic. Jill was writhing on the ground, curled up and making horrible groaning noises. Something was dangerously wrong with her. It might be her appendix. A youth in Tregony had suffered a burst appendix. He wasn’t taken to the infirmary in time and the septicaemia had killed him. She had to get Jill to Ford Farm where someone could ring for an ambulance. She had never been there but from what she had heard the ford couldn’t be far ahead and the farm was reached by the short hill up above it. She tried to get a hold under Jill’s shoulders but Jill refused to let herself be unfurled and lifted. ‘Jill! You’ve got to let me help you!’

  It was hopeless. The more she tried to touch Jill and attempt to lift her up the more Jill screamed and fought her off. Kate straightened up and stared down the lane in desperation. How on earth could she get Jill to the farm?

  She looked back the way they had come. A woman of about Jill’s age, carrying a suitcase and something folded under her arm, was ambling towards them. ‘Help!’ Kate screamed to her. ‘Please help us!’

  ‘I’m on my way!’ Abbie dropped her things and ran up to them.

  Chapter Two

  Jonny was on his way to Ford Farm. He was down in the dumps, but heaven alone knew what Tom and Jill were going through. Why did bad things happen to good people? It didn’t make sense. Somehow the war had made sense, the world fighting off dictators and evil regimes, but these little personal tragedies were always hard to accept. Tom and Jill had lost the baby they’d wanted so much. They would make perfect parents. It just wasn’t fair. Their marriage was a love match. In Jonny’s experience there weren’t many of those about. His own parents’ marriage had come to a bad end – although if his mother hadn’t embarked on a
disastrous affair his wonderful half-sister, Louisa, who lived in Truro, would not have been born. He couldn’t ignore that his father had married again, very happily, until his wife had died in an accident, and he was now blissfully in love with his third wife.

  All was quiet as he turned out of Back Lane into the main street of the village. There were usually people about, arms folded in the way of those involved in chitchat. The blacksmith’s, the butcher’s, the shop and sub-post office, and the farm shop were all shuttered up, as if closed down for good. There weren’t any children out playing or even a dog taking a wander. It was as if the population had decided to stay indoors and quietly mark the sadness that had come among them. Homes were set on either side of the main road, singly, in pairs, or in short terraces, some at odd angles. All seemed to have assumed a shadowy greyness, the picturesque or quirky sacrificing their character, the drab even more drab. Taking a lengthy puff on a cigarette, Jonny sighed and kicked a stone into a short stretch of hedge. He hated seeing Hennaford deserted. It was unsettling, foreign to him.

  After several yards he’d passed the shops, the village court, and the little Anglican mission church planted by thoughtful Victorians to compensate for the parish church being two miles distant down Church Lane. The pub, the Ploughshare, came into view across the road. The new landlord had painted the walls pale pink. The usual half barrels of spring flowers on the courtyard had been replaced by long terracotta troughs. ‘Bloody cheek,’ Jonny snarled. People had no right to come in and make changes. The window displays of the shop, he had noticed, were rearranged in unrecognizable order. Roughly across the road from the pub was the redoubtable grey Wesleyan chapel, rightly shorn of its iron railings for the war effort, now with the addition of a small hole high up in one of the plain window panes. Sacrilege! Damn the perpetrator, probably some ignorant youth throwing a stone. Jonny balled his fist. How dare someone sully his village? But he must shake himself out of this grimness. He had no right to be selfish. Tom and Jill were the ones who really had something to be depressed about.

  A moment later he was surprised to see Tom, in the company of a young blonde, emerging from Church Lane. ‘Tom!’ He ran to his cousin, grabbing his hand and placing a grip on his shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry. You and Jill must be devastated. I was horrified to hear the news when I arrived at Tremore. Thank God Jill came through the operation OK. I was on my way for an update.’ All the while Jonny jabbered away, his heart was wrenched over Tom’s stricken expression. Tom was usually a blend of quiet resolution, dignity and laughter. Now he displayed the emotion of one who had lost an essential dimension of his being. He chewed his lip when troubled; now it was red and raw. ‘Oh, were you on the way to Tremore?’

  ‘Thanks for coming, Jonny.’ Tom’s voice was thick with unshed tears. He clung to Jonny’s hand. ‘Actually, we’re on our way to the Moses place. This is Abbie Rothwell, by the way, Honor and Archie’s daughter. Abbie, this is my cousin, Jonny.’

  ‘How do you do, Miss Rothwell.’ Jonny treated her to the well-practised smile he used on women, but he didn’t linger over her as he’d normally have done, but returned to Tom.

  ‘Why are you calling there? Father told me about the demise of the Moses woman. What’s the latest news on Jill?’

  ‘Um.’ Tom shook his head and pressed his fingers above his eyes to call up the dreadful facts. In the last few hours he’d been tossed back and forth between fear and horror. He was numb and confused. ‘They’re keeping her in for a few days. It was what they call an ectopic pregnancy. The baby was growing outside of Jill’s womb, in a fallopian tube. The tube ruptured. The surgeon had to operate swiftly. Thank God, Mrs Moses’s granddaughter happened to be with her when she collapsed, and then Abbie came along. I could have lost her, Jonny.’ Tom sniffed, gulped and tossed his head away, no longer able to hold back the tears.

  ‘Steady, old man,’ Jonny whispered, taking Tom in a hug. Tom brought himself under control. His voice stayed watery. ‘I saw her when they brought her out of the theatre. She was so pale and grey. Her whole body had gone into shock, you see. They had to remove the damaged tube. Jill doesn’t fully realize what’s happened to her yet, and that it means it will be even harder for her to conceive again. I can’t bear it, Jonny. I can’t bear to think of her suffering.’

  ‘I know,’ Jonny soothed. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m sure Jill’s quite comfortable now, out of pain and being well looked after.’

  Abbie had moved away to give Tom space. Poor man. What a day it had been. She had only been in Hennaford a few minutes before being faced with the traumatic scene of Jill Harvey on the ground in terrible pain, blood staining her trousers and her heavily sweating face an unearthly pallor. And the girl, Kate Viant, frightened and bewildered, but bravely trying to help her. Abbie, who was never easily fazed, had taken charge, while Kate, after explaining who the casualty was, had gratefully followed her orders. Jill had passed out. ‘We must get her off the road. You stay with her and I’ll run on to get help and tell them to ring for an ambulance.’ Emilia Bosweld and her husband, a former Army surgeon, had rushed back with Abbie to the scene. Perry Bosweld had tended Jill. Tom had been fetched from the fields in time to go to the infirmary with Jill. After Jill had been loaded into the ambulance it was realized that young Kate Viant had slipped away.

  Tom had not long ago arrived home with the news that Jill had recovered consciousness and was fussing about Kate. ‘She was very groggy but also insistent,’ he’d told those in the spacious kitchen in his mother’s half of the house, the usual gathering place at the farm. ‘I couldn’t make out all that she said but it was something to do with the girl being upset and needing help. I reassured Jill that I’d go to see her. I need to thank her properly anyway. I hope she wasn’t too distressed. It’s not long since she witnessed her grandmother’s horrible death.’

  ‘Would you like me to come with you?’ Abbie had offered. ‘I think she trusts me.’ Abbie had soon realized she had come amid a close family who cared about the community. Her mother had stated that the Harveys and Boswelds were a fascinating lot, and although Abbie hardly knew them, she was already sure this was true. With an unfulfilled marriage behind her, Abbie had believed all the love and romance stuff was nonsense until seeing the fear and panic in Tom Harvey for his adored wife. His mother, still an earthy beauty in her middle years, and her husband Perry, exuded the same affinity. Unwittingly they touched each other as they talked and gazed into each other’s eyes. Abbie should have known such a deep sensual and abiding love existed. Her own parents shared it. They automatically finished off each other’s sentences, answered each other’s unspoken remarks.

  She sensed Tom to be perceptive and genuine, one who saw no point in ceremony. The Harvey males had powerful physiques, of the sort that drew admiring looks from women and envy from weedier men. Tom had an attractive face, but Jonny Harvey’s was gorgeous, a stunning piece of sculpted maleness, with strong lines, cheekbones in just the right place, and divine dark grey eyes. Suave in his uniform, he looked as if he had been born to be a warrior and looked even more the part with his slightly marred face and ruined hand, yet she sensed in him a loss of spark and direction. The way the wholly masculine cousins gave and sought comfort, unembarrassed to do so in public and in front of her, a relative stranger, touched her soul. These were real men, as opposed to Rupert whose flashy fagade had hidden a shabby weakness.

  A moment later, Jonny said, ‘I’ll tag along with you to the Moses place.’ Knowing Tom needed to be alone in his thoughts, he joined Abbie during the short walk. ‘I knew your parents well, Miss Rothwell, as a boy when I lived at Ford Farm.’ He was taking her in. She was a ‘looker’ and totally at ease under his appreciative gaze. She was open and satisfied with herself, with no secrets to keep and no particular struggles after her recent widowhood. Very good company too, he was sure. He liked women for company as much as he enjoyed bedding them. Abbie Rothwell had something of Honor’s sweet femininity and Archie’s vibrant watchful
eyes. Archie had been his friend and he wanted to start off with Abbie as a friend, so he adjusted his manner appropriately.

  ‘Really. I’d like to hear all about that.’ Out of interest and to enjoy the chat with him. From the way he’d swept his eyes over her it was obvious Jonny Harvey was a dedicated woman-chaser. She didn’t mind. She could handle that sort of attention and she had no inhibitions about enjoying sex. He was a charmer, he kept women guessing and hoping, but she didn’t figure him as a rat. There was something going on, however, behind his potent bearing, something new to him – for he didn’t have the grimness of one long dragged down. This enigma made him a perfect subject to paint. Few people needed persuasion to sit for her. She usually picked out those who would not be compliant but she had no idea which way he would react.