The Yearning Heart Read online

  She felt grateful for her father’s compassion, but how could it last? As she sipped the hot liquid, Fran glanced at Agnes who was seated across the kitchen table from her. She looked calmer now, but Fran knew she was itching to say something, so she held her gaze and waited.

  ‘I’ll go and see Bertha Moxon first thing in the morning and tell her what her Charlie has done to my innocent daughter. We’ll see what she has to say.’ Agnes’s green eyes flashed with the knowledge that no one got the better of her.

  Will nodded in agreement. ‘Now are going to have owt to eat?’

  Fran felt herself go feverishly hot, and then a chill ran through her body. She had to tell them. They thought Charlie was to blame. She forced her body to the edge of the chair and opened her mouth. But no sound came out. She coughed, clearing her throat. ‘It’s not,’ she whispered.

  Agnes looked at her sharply. ‘What are you blathering about?’

  Fran felt physically sick and her stomach heaved. She made a dash for the outside lavatory. She stayed outside as long as possible, wanting only to crawl into bed and sleep, and forget.

  She heard the back door open. ‘Frances! Get in here, now,’ her mother commanded.

  Wearily, Fran pulled herself to her feet and went indoors. She had to tell them before Isabel came home from work. Taking a deep breath, she said. ‘It’s not Charlie.’ Her parents looked at her simultaneously. ‘It’s Victor. He’s the father.’

  ‘Victor?’ questioned Agnes. Then, her eyes filled with realisation. ‘Not our Isabel’s Victor?’

  ‘Yes.’ And, with that, Fran fled from the room.

  In the sanctuary of her attic bedroom, Fran flung herself onto her bed. She didn’t cry, not any more. What was the use? She half expected her mother to come charging up the stairs, but she didn’t. After a while, Fran turned over on her back and stared at up the ceiling, wondering about her future and that of her unborn child. What would become of them? She drifted into a fitful sleep until she was woken by raised voices coming from downstairs. She could hear her mother’s high-pitched shouting and the mention of her name. Fran shuddered. Then, the most pitiful crying seemed to fill the whole house. Isabel.

  Fran could smell her own fear as she drew up her knees and hugged them close to her trembling body. She could imagine the whole scene downstairs and the pain on Isabel’s face. At that precise moment, Fran wished she were dead. She remained in the same position for what seemed hours, or was it minutes? She wasn’t sure. The back door banged and she heard the heavy footsteps of her father on the gravel path outside. Eventually, the cramp of her legs made her move. Her head was clearer now and her heart beat faster as she realised the terrible nature of her situation. She was pregnant, unmarried and the man responsible was her sister’s husband. He had taken advantage of her vulnerability and now she was in disgrace. Her thoughts raced. Would her mother send Isabel away to make a home of her own for herself and Victor? For it was impossible for them to live under the same roof. Surely, her mother would see that.

  Her thoughts in turmoil, not able to think of anything logical, Fran lay awake for a long time until she drifted into fitful sleep. She tossed and turned, waking up in a cold sweat and a feeling of rising panic. The room felt airless, crowding in on her. She flung back the bedclothes and went over to open the window, pulling up the lower sash frame. She leant out to breathe in the night air, pungent with the tangy smells of the river. The moon, high in the dark sky, sent its silvery beam down to catch the ripples on the slow-moving water. The distant sound of an owl, seeking its prey, broke the silence of the night. She stared out of the window for a long time until the grey dawn appeared. A new day. And she wondered what it would bring.

  She crept downstairs and into the empty kitchen. She raked the fire, threw on a log from the basket on the hearth and curled up on her father’s big, leather armchair, wondering what Agnes would decide to do about her younger daughter becoming pregnant by her elder daughter’s husband. It felt strange, as if it was someone else who was in this dreadful predicament.

  Stretching and yawning, she felt different this morning: she didn’t feel sick. She sighed with relief. She didn’t know much about babies, only odd snippets gleaned from overheard conversations. Babies were a subject not talked about in the Bewholme family. Isabel, it seemed, was unable to conceive. Fran was lost in thoughts when her mother came into the kitchen.

  ‘What are you doing up?’ Agnes demanded.

  Fran scrambled from the chair, saying, ‘I couldn’t sleep.’ She turned to leave the room.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to get ready for work.’

  Agnes sprang forward. ‘Oh no you’re not, my girl!’

  Recoiling from her mother’s anger, Fran stepped back a pace. ‘I feel all right.’

  ‘You feel all right. What about the rest of us?’ Agnes shouted. ‘You stay in your room until our Isabel has gone to work. And then I’ll deal with you.’

  Now that she had all the energy and vitality of her sixteen years back, Fran didn’t want to spend time shut away in her bedroom. She spent three whole days confined to her room and was only allowed down when Isabel was not home. She wondered what had happened about her absence from work, but a tight-lipped Agnes only said, when asked, that it was now none of Fran’s concern. She’d much sooner be at work. If she was earning, at least she could pay for her keep. She fretted that she had added another burden to her parents. When Agnes was calmer, Fran would try and persuade her mother to let her return to work.

  On the fourth morning, Agnes came up to Fran’s room and instructed, ‘Pack your case.’

  Fran’s mind raced. Were they going away on holiday? ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’ With that, Agnes closed the door behind her.

  Fran stared at the closed door and her heart began thudding, not with excitement like when she was a child going away on holiday, but with trepidation and fear. She stood up and put her hands over the slight swell of her belly and thought of the baby growing inside her. She did not want to think of the unknown ahead, but her thoughts persisted and they frightened her. Never again would she be that innocent girl of sixteen, but a woman and a mother. What kind of future would she have without a husband to provide and care for her? Her father had business worries of his own, especially with all the uncertainties of the war. Although she was never her mother’s favourite daughter, and less so now, Agnes was her only support. For that Fran was grateful.

  As the train rattled and chugged along, Agnes closed her eyes. How could history repeat itself? It was a question she asked herself repeatedly. She thought back to her own miserable childhood and how she had suffered for being illegitimate. It made her even more determined that a grandchild of hers would not endure the stigma. Her head ached with trying to come up with a workable solution. And Isabel: she had threatened to divorce Victor. What a scandal that would cause. He had got off lightly, escaping back to his unit, facing no shame, leaving behind a heartbroken wife and a trail of destruction. Could she repair the damage?

  After the long wait on a windblown station at Doncaster, they boarded the connecting train. Fran had been glad of the warmth of the crowded compartment. But now, the heat of stale bodies, smelly feet, tobacco smoke, mixed with the strong cheese and pickle being devoured by the big woman opposite, made her feel nauseated and uncomfortable. She wasn’t complaining, because they were lucky to have a seat. In the corridor outside the compartment, people, mostly men in uniforms with blank faces, were jostled and squashed, cigarettes dangling from their mouths, blowing smoke into what bit of air was free. At last, the train pulled into a station with no visible name. Agnes reached for her overnight bag and nudged Fran to get her case. ‘Where are we?’ she asked her mother.

  ‘We’re not there yet,’ was her terse reply.

  As they trudged along the platform, Fran felt the despair seeping into her body and into her heart. She’d been trying to think of th
e journey as an adventure, something thrilling as a sixteen-year-old girl might. But with her mother’s stony silence, Fran knew she was deluding herself.

  They caught a slow country bus which stopped at every village. She listened to two women sitting behind her, grumbling about the bus service being cut. ‘Shortage of petrol, they say, but how are we supposed to shop and feed our families? Tell me that.’

  The other woman replied, ‘It’ll be a man that’s made the rule. They don’t have much sense.’

  A glimmer of a smile flicked across Fran’s face as she agreed with the last sentence. She was never going to trust a man again. If Charlie Moxon hadn’t ditched her so cruelly, she wouldn’t have gone home early from the dance and encountered Victor Renton, who used her vulnerability for his own gratification. She wouldn’t be in this predicament. She slipped a hand across the slight swell of her stomach as she had done countless times over the last few weeks, always with the naive hope that there wasn’t a baby growing inside her. She let out a low sigh. Poor baby, she thought, it wasn’t its fault what had happened. Suddenly, she felt her heart tug, sending a warm, protective feeling through her whole body. She closed her eyes and made a vow to love and cherish her baby, and to do right by it, whatever it would take. She sat back in her seat, the warmth still glowing. It was her first positive decision.

  The last leg of the journey found them walking down a muddy, rutted lane. ‘I thought they could at least have met us off the bus,’ Agnes muttered angrily.

  At last, out of the greyness of the long, tedious day, a rambling farmhouse came in sight, built of red brick and two storeys high. They went round to the backyard where a chained dog howled at their arrival. A barn door flapped in the wind and chickens pecked around the yard, but no one came out of the house to greet them. Agnes knocked on the brown-painted wooden door, long past its prime. There was no answer, so she turned the knob and pushed open the door. ‘Anyone at home?’ she called as she peered inside the empty kitchen. ‘They must be out working; we might as well go in. Wipe your feet.’

  Fran wondered who they were. She stepped down the two steps into the kitchen, where a cat was curled up on a chair. On top of the stove was a big iron kettle, black with soot. Everything in the kitchen seemed to be of various shades of brown. It was dark and gloomy and it took a few seconds for Fran to accustom her eyes.

  Mother and daughter sat in silence, Agnes, with her eyes closed. Fran, looking at her mother, noticed her lovely auburn hair, usually so neatly curled, was hanging lank and dull, and flecked with grey. Her shoulders sagged, as did her whole posture. It was as if the fire had gone out of her. Guilt assailed Fran and she turned away to stare out of the window on the flat landscape, wondering why she and her mother were here in this house. At the bottom of her heart, she knew the reason, but she didn’t want to voice it out loud, not wanting it to be true.

  It was about an hour later when there was the sound of voices in the yard outside and the barking of the dog. The cat on the chair stirred for the first time, flipped up one ear, leisurely stretched and then slid off the chair and went under the table out of the way.

  Edna Gembling, larger than life, burst into the kitchen. Fran stared at her. She’d never before seen a woman with a sack tied round her shoulder, only the coalman back home. ‘Made yerself at home, I see,’ Edna boomed. She turned to Fran. ‘Jump to it then, girl, make a pot of tea.’

  Startled, Fran glanced at Agnes. ‘You heard Mrs Gembling. You’re here to work.’

  Her fears had been spoken out loud. In a trance, Fran set about the task. The woman had taken off the sacking and was now sitting on the chair vacated by the cat, toasting her smelly, woolly socked feet on the hearth of the kitchen range, a big cast iron stove, with two hotplates on the top, an oven to the side and a fuel burning compartment at the other side.

  ‘Put a log on,’ said Mrs Gembling, motioning to a huge basket of logs in the dark recess next to the stove. ‘Mr Gembling keeps the basket full, but it’ll be your job to keep the stove going.’

  That night, after a meal of greasy mutton stew, which lay heavy in Fran’s stomach, she tried not to toss about in the bed she was sharing with Agnes, who was deep in sleep. But her mind kept going over what had been decided by her mother and the Gemblings. She was to stay here until the baby was born and work her passage as housekeeper. Mrs Gembling would be working on the farm with her husband, as their two sons were away fighting for king and country.

  Morning came, and Agnes was preparing to leave. Mr Gembling was going into the village and was giving her a lift to catch the bus. By now, Fran was in a state of panic. She was hot and trembling inside and yet on the outside she felt like ice. She wiped her clammy hands down the sides of her skirt, her mouth dry. She blurted, ‘Mam, when will I see you again?’ looking pleadingly into Agnes’s cold, green eyes. For a moment, she thought her mother was going to show her some compassion.

  ‘There’s a war on, in case you’ve forgot, and I’ve our Isabel to think about. You have only yourself to blame for getting into this mess. Be thankful the Gemblings have agreed to have you in your state.’ She buttoned up her best brown coat, straightened her felt hat and pulled on her gloves, all the time avoiding Fran’s eye.

  ‘But, the baby, what will I do?’ Her voice broke.

  Agnes turned and took her daughter by the shoulders and looked her full in the face. ‘I’ll make all the necessary arrangements. When the time comes, Mrs Gembling will get in touch with me and I’ll come.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Fran mouthed. She watched her mother climb into the cab of the battered old pickup and raised her hand to wave, but Agnes never looked back.

  Fran went back into the kitchen, empty save for the cat on the chair. She wanted to cry, but felt too stunned to do so.

  Chapter Three

  Cut off from all contact with her family, the next months on Gemblings’ farm were long and tedious for Fran. Although she wrote to her mother regularly, Agnes never replied. The Gemblings were hard-working folk, dedicated to their land and animals. From what Fran could grasp from their sparse conversation in the evenings, theirs was a mixed farm. She knew there were cows, and a few hens and geese waddled and pecked about the yard because it was one of her many tasks to feed them, and Mr Gembling talked about his potatoes and turnips, and mentioned ploughing fields, and sowing oats and barley. The one bright spark to enter Fran’s life in those dark, lonely days was Maisie.

  One day, as she fed the hens and geese, Fran chattered to them, speaking her thoughts out loud in despair of having no one to talk to about her condition. ‘The baby’s kicking like a footballer today. I hope it’s all right.’ She put the pail down and ran her hand over her growing belly.

  ‘First sign of madness when yer talk to yerself.’ Startled by the voice, Fran nearly fall over the pail. A strong hand steadied her. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to fear yer.’

  Fran stared into the soft, pearl-grey eyes of a round-faced young woman whose mass of light brown, curling hair tumbled onto the collar of her dark green coat. Having never met anyone but the Gemblings, and now being confronted by a stranger, Fran was conscious of the shame of being unmarried and pregnant. Against the stranger, she was aware of her own shabby appearance: her skirt held together by elastic, of the buttons of her blouse straining across her swelling breasts and of her humiliation of being wrapped up like an ungainly, bulky parcel in Mrs Gembling’s outsized, faded cotton pinny. Fran bit on her lip and lowered her eyes, and it was then she saw the battered attaché case resting at the young woman’s feet. Before she could speak, the other girl spoke again.

  ‘I’m Maisie Thomas. I’m a Land Army Girl,’ she said, her voice full of pride. ‘I’m billeted here.’ She waved a hand in the direction of the farmhouse.

  At last Fran found her voice. ‘I’m Fran Bewholme. I’m the maid of all work.’ There was a bitter edge to her voice, but if Maisie detected it she didn’t comment.

  ‘When’s bairn due?’

  Fran was
shocked by Maisie’s directness, but answered, ‘March.’ Wearily, she bent to pick up the empty pail. ‘I expect you could do with a cup of tea.’

  Inside the kitchen, Maisie took charge. ‘You put yer feet up. I’ll mash up.’

  The two girls chatted with ease. Maisie was to share Fran’s bedroom and the other two land army girls were billeted in the village. Town girls, they wanted excitement on an evening and the local pub was full most nights with the RAF crews from the nearby aerodrome.

  In the evenings after supper, when the table was cleared and the pots washed up, Fran and Maisie escaped up to their room. Here, they would drink cocoa and talk about the day’s happenings and on these dark cold nights, Fran slipped on the thick woolly bed-socks which Maisie’s mother had knitted for them for Christmas. This evening, Maisie led the way upstairs with the candle and Fran, now heavy and in the last month of her pregnancy, followed slowly. She was glad to undress and crawl into bed. On and off, all day, she’d had this terrible back ache. When she mentioned it to Mrs Gembling, she replied, ‘Backache! If you had ter work yon fields, you’d soon knew about backache.’

  ‘I thought it might be the baby coming,’ Fran persisted.

  Mrs Gembling sniffed, then replied, ‘According to yer mother, you’ve got another two weeks ter go.’ With that statement, she turned away.

  Fran confided in Maisie. ‘Do you think it’s the baby coming?’

  Maisie thought for a moment, her mother had had ten children, then said, ‘Mam always had ’em quick. When we got up in the morning, the bairn was there.’

  Fran watched Maisie fiddle with the battery wireless. Restlessly, she tried to move into a more comfortable position. She sat up to drink her cocoa, but still the ache persisted. Suddenly, she let out a loud moan.

  Maisie looked up from the wireless and, seeing her friend’s distress, quickly offered, ‘I’ll run down and fill yer a hot water bottle.’