Читать книгу Wait for Me - Caroline Leech, Caroline Leech - Страница 12

Craigielaw Farm, Aberlady

Wednesday, 28 February

Dear John Jo,

Sorry it’s taken me a few days to write to you again, but I hope you are doing well and that it’s not as cold wherever you are as it is here.

Everything is fine. Mrs. Mack told me to send you her love and said that as soon as she’s finished knitting this last sock, she’ll get all of them wrapped up and sent to you in the hope that the parcel will reach you sometime before summer comes! If you are very lucky, you might get one of the fruitcakes she made the other day (not that there’s much actual fruit in it, or sugar, but she still gets it to taste good all the same!).

Iris and I are knitting scarves for Red Cross—shall I send you one of our marvelous creations? I’m not as good a knitter as Iris, you won’t be surprised to hear, but you’ll have to put up with one of mine since Iris has another neck to wrap hers around now. Yes, your greatest admirer is now madly in love with William Urquhart, of all people. (I know, disgusting!) She might have adored you her whole life, but now you’re out and William is in. Bad luck!

Are there any pretty girls where you are? (Where is that? I wish you could tell me!) If anyone can find one, I’m sure you can!

Dad is fine, but it’s almost lambing and there’s always too much to do. The Ministry of Agriculture sent us a new farmhand to take over from Old Lachie. Dad says the new man isn’t afraid of hard work and seems to know what he is doing, but the only thing is

I know you won’t like this, but

I can’t tell you how angry I was when

Lorna put her pen down on the blotting paper. How could she tell her brother that a German was working at Craigielaw?

But did she have to? Surely Dad would have already told both John Jo and Sandy the news in one of the letters he wrote to each of them every Sunday. They were never long letters, and Lorna doubted that he ever told them how much he missed them and wished he had them home again like she did, but two letters were sitting on the table every Monday morning without fail, ready for Derek Milne, the mailman, to pick up.

She lifted her pen, but put it down again immediately. She really wanted to be the one to tell her brothers about the prisoner, so they would know how angry she had been—how angry she still was—at the idea, so that they knew she was standing up for them, and so they would write back to her that they were angry about it as well. Then perhaps they would write to Dad and tell him he had to get rid of the German immediately.

But then again, perhaps they would feel reassured to know that their dad had a replacement for Lachie on the farm. And perhaps that also felt reassuring to Lorna. Perhaps the extra help would be … well, helpful.

So maybe she should say nothing. Yes, that was probably the best idea.

And anyway, how could she find the words to describe the way the burn had tightened the skin on that side of the prisoner’s face, the way that she’d noticed that no beard grew through the scar tissue, but that the blond stubble that grew on the undamaged cheek was so fine as to be almost invisible. Or about the way his smile tugged at the pink scar and how it made his gray eyes sparkle …

Lorna jumped as Nellie banged open the door from the yard, shattering the evening’s peace. She grabbed the unfinished letter and stuffed it into her pocket, as if she’d been caught writing something naughty.

But Nellie didn’t even come in. She just called through the open door.

“Can’t come in, love, muddy shoes, but is there any chance of another cup of tea? Your dad says the first ewe’s about to drop, and it looks like she’s going to need a bit of help. He says a cuppa would be spot on for us lot who could be up the rest of the night.”

“Of course, I’ll bring it over in a minute.”

“Cheers, m’dears!” Nellie called back as she pulled the door closed.

Once the tea was made, Lorna placed the steaming mugs onto a tray and put on her coat and rubber boots. Outside, she balanced the tray on her hip, as she pulled the door closed carefully behind her to make sure no light escaped. The blackout restrictions they had lived with since the beginning of the war had been lifted across the country a few months earlier, except for those who lived in towns and villages on the coast like Aberlady, in case of an attack from air or sea.

Caddy and Canny were slumped outside the door. They both sat up as she made her way across the moonlit yard, tails wagging, but they made none of the fuss they had made over the German.

They were both traitors.

Inside the lambing shed, Lorna found her father kneeling by a ewe lying on the straw, rubbing her belly. This wasn’t good. Sheep usually gave birth standing up, so this ewe must be exhausted by a difficult labor. Sure enough, every so often the animal would bleat pathetically.

Nellie was also kneeling, but at the tail end of the ewe. She looked disheveled but excited.

“Everything all right?” Lorna asked quietly as she laid the tea tray on the top of a wooden barrel just inside the door and rested a hand on Nellie’s shoulder.

“Aye, it’s her first time, but she’s doing fine,” Lorna’s dad said, without looking up.

“Yes, I’m all right, really,” said Nellie with a nervous smile.

“I was talking about the ewe,” said Lorna’s father with a sigh.

“Oh, right,” said Nellie. “Sorry.”

Her father palpated the ewe’s distended belly again with gentle hands.

“Almost there,” he said to Nellie. “Are you ready?”

At that moment, the ewe gave one agonizing bleat and a huge purple bag of semitransparent slop burst from her rear end. With a sickening squelch, the membrane burst. As the waters gushed out, Lorna could see the nose and front feet of the lamb for the first time. She waited for movement, but the lamb lay still on the damp straw.

“C’mon, girl!” Lorna’s father urged Nellie. “Get a move on and get the lamb out of there. Use that towel to give it a rub. You need to get it breathing and then give it to its mother quick as you can.”

But Nellie was still staring at the messy bundle that had almost landed in her lap, the color draining from her face.

“What are you doing,” Lorna’s father asked, “sitting there as if tomorrow would do? C’mon, girl, look lively!”

But still Nellie didn’t move; her eyes were glued to the thing in front of her. Then she simply tipped over to one side in a dead faint.

“Oh, for crying out loud!” muttered Lorna’s dad.

Lorna jumped to help. She pulled the towel from Nellie’s inert fingers, leaving her where she was, and laid it across her own lap. Using the towel, she eased the sticky membrane off the lamb’s nose and mouth. Then she rubbed its chest vigorously as if she were kneading life into a rag doll. The ewe lifted her head to see what was going on behind her and gave out another pitiful bleat. Lorna had done this many times before, but it didn’t get any easier, and frustration prickled in her throat.

“Come on, come on,” she implored the lamb. “You’ve got to breathe for me, wee man.”

Suddenly one of the legs jerked, then another, and a tiny shudder rippled through the lamb’s body. Lorna stopped rubbing and put her hand flat onto its chest. Yes! She could feel a fluttering; the lamb’s heart was beating. Then a cough, a breath, and a wriggle, and suddenly Lorna was struggling to keep ahold of the lamb as it strained to get to its feet. Relief flooded through her and a tear escaped her lashes and dropped with a splash onto the lamb’s sticky coat.

“Well done, lassie.” Dad’s voice was soft now. “Now, give him to his mother so he can get cleaned off and have a suckle. And then you can see to your other patient.” He nodded toward Nellie, who was lying with her face on the straw, as if she were asleep. “Even if she can fix a tractor and milk a cow, it’ll be a pain in the arse if she can’t stay upright for a birthing.”

Lorna waited for him to chuckle, but he never did. Looking up at her father’s face, she saw only exhaustion. As he moved down to the next pen to check on the ewe in there, he muttered, “Something else I’ll have to do myself.”

“But I can help you, and we’ve got the German during the day,” Lorna said, realizing again that his presence at Craigielaw was perhaps not so awful after all.

Once the lamb was suckling hard, safe in the care of its mother, Lorna went over to the windowsill, where there was a pile of freshly washed rags. She dipped one of them in a bucket of chilled water and returned to Nellie’s side.

Squeezing the cold rag slightly, she wiped it across Nellie’s face.

“Wake up, Nellie,” she said. “It’s all over and there’s a cup of tea for you. Come on and look at the wee lamb.”