‘Are you hoping he might stay in Porthcurno if she gives him any encouragement?’
‘The thought had crossed my mind.’
Sheila made a face but said nothing. She rather thought that Grace was too thick with Caroline to look twice at Jack Treedy. That wasn’t any of her business, though. ‘Well, it’sgetting dark. I’ll start tidying away and when Joe gets back, I’ll close up the shop until tomorrow. There are still plenty of canned goods here. Anyone still needing food can come by in the morning.’ She turned to her sister. ‘Maggie, are you sure you don’t want to come up the farm? It’s awfully cold down here.’
She had asked Margaret up to stay with them during the worst of the snow and been rebuffed. Her sister valued her independence too much, she supposed. Besides, she and Violet had never got on, so keeping them apart was probably for the best.
To her surprise though, Margaret nodded. ‘I will come with you tonight, Sheila. I’m sick of the electric heater cutting out when the electric goes off … Anyway, I can help carry some of this. Don’t forget you need to take your own rations up to the farm for Violet. And a bag of animal feed for Joe’s livestock.’
Mrs Treedy made an unhappy noise, and they turned to see Jack waiting outside the shop for his mother, shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets. No doubt Grace had sent him packing yet again.
It was a shame for the poor boy. But a good lesson too. Some things in life were simply impossible and you had to learn to let them go, Sheila thought, glancing at his flushed face. She kept this nugget of wisdom to herself though, having also learned that people didn’t always want to hear the truth. Not when a little white lie made them feel better. Or even a great big whopper.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
‘Finally!’ Selina threw aside her lap blanket and rushed into the hall at the sight of the postie doggedly battling the sludge of thawing snow to reach the steps of Thornton Hall. Only the day before, the groundsman and his boy Walter had finally been able to dig out a path for vehicles to reach the hall from the main road, which had apparently been gritted by the local council, though snow still lay in thick drifts on the verges.
Looking half-frozen, the postie thrust a bunch of envelopes into her hand, touched his cap with a muttered word of greeting, and turned back to his van.
‘Can I offer you a hot drink before you go, John?’ she called after him.
‘Very kind, Miss, but no thank you. I’ve a dozen properties yet to reach before dark.’ He grinned. ‘Thaw’s setting in though, thank goodness.’
‘Yes, a blessing.’
She watched until he’d successfully turned his van in the wet snow, then hurried inside to pull off her wellies again, her gloved hands already numb with cold.
She imagined that Mrs Hawley, who had not been able to reach the hall since early in the new year, when snow had begun to fall in earnest, would soon be back at work. Since the first week of the year, Bodmin Moor had been blanketed in white – a beautiful sight but chilling too. Thankfully, the housekeeper had struggled to the telephone at the village stores and called to apologise, and also to direct Selina towards stores of food in their various pantries and larder, to keep them going through the cold snap.
‘Don’t worry, Aunt Selly … I can always take Father’s hunting gun out and shoot some rabbits for the pot,’ Peter had told her on hearing they would need to be frugal with their meals. ‘And Jemima can skin them, if I show her how.’
‘I’ll do no such thing,’ his sister had exclaimed with a shudder, while little Faith copied her, both girls pulling disgusted faces.
Selina had chuckled. ‘Thank you, Peter, and I’ll bear that in mind,’ she’d told the boy fondly. She knew he was trying his best to be the man of the house.
The groundsman and his son lived in a cottage on the estate, of course, and had soon made themselves useful, dragging a cart of logs and kindling up to the great house to keep the range lit and at least one downstairs fire burning all day, earning them Selina’s heartfelt gratitude and a hot mince pie apiece. She thought their own stores must be quite low, although she had seen young Walter heading out with a dog and rifle before, and rather suspected the boy to be a dab hand at rabbiting himself.
Most of the post bundle turned out to be Christmas cards, held back due to the snow and only now being delivered. But among these she found a letter from Caroline, andretreated to her cosy fireside seat, blanket over her knees, to catch up on gossip from the farm.
Having spent several winters working as a Land Girl at Postbridge Farm, Selina knew how grim it could get at this time of year … Pitch-black mornings, water frozen solid in the animal troughs, the windows and attic skylights frosted over. But there would also be beautiful, ice-frilled cobwebs on gates and fences, dazzling white fields begging for someone to sink their boots deep into them, and a chance to slip and slide over frozen puddles on the lane down to the village.
Caroline’s letter made her sit up though, concerned. Among her anecdotes about Tilly finding a rat frozen to a drainpipe, and Joe losing his pipe when it fell into a snow drift, was news that dear old Barney, the farm’s loveable shire horse, had died, and Caro was having ‘a wretched time of it’. It also seemed that Caro and Grace had been forced to spend Christmas in Penzance, and from the letter’s despondent tone she guessed something had happened there to cause an upset between the two young women. She only wished she could be on hand to give her friend comfort.
The final paragraph made her smile, at least. There’d been a food drop to the snowbound village, apparently coordinated by Violet Postbridge’s mum, Mrs Newton. It all sounded rather dramatic and she was sorry to have missed it. But Caroline’s description of the eccentric old shopkeeper stomping about in wellies, organising a human chain and the distribution of food parcels, left her chuckling.
One of the other envelopes was more official-looking. Tearing it open, Selina discovered that her driving test had been cancelled and would need to be rearranged for spring.
‘Good news,’ she muttered. She’d been worried about the prospect of her test, having had little opportunity so far to drive on a regular basis.
There was a knock at the door, and Peter stuck his head around. ‘Aunt Selly, may I help Mr Underhill and his son dig out the coal bunker? We gave up at the last attempt. But now the snow’s thawing, Walter says we should easily reach it this time.’
‘Of course, but stay warm. The last thing we need is for you to catch pneumonia.’
Already winding a thick brown scarf about his neck, her nephew nodded, unsmiling, and took himself off to help the groundsman and his boy.
Selina sat listening to his footsteps dwindle, and wished she knew how to get the boy out of his doldrums. Like Caroline, her nephew was struggling with this wintry weather, but also some deeper issue … Could Helen Bourne be right when she’d said his misery was down to this having been his first Christmas without his mother? In which case, perhaps it was simply a matter of waiting. This thaw and the brighter weather might give Peter a fresh zest for life, better suited to a boy his age than constant low spirits.
On impulse, Selina drew out a sheet of writing paper, and found pen and ink. Sitting at the desk, still wrapped in a blanket, she penned a reply to Caroline’s letter, commiserating over the horse’s death, laughing at Tilly and Joe, but also touching tentatively on her own problems over Christmas. She couldn’t help Caroline get through this bad patch, being miles away on Bodmin Moor, but she could perhaps reassure her friend that she wasn’t alone in having a complicated life …
