The Girl From World’s End. Leah Fleming

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      Miriam sat in the railway carriage, stunned with the suddenness of being torn away from everything and everyone she knew. Dad was barely laid in the hard ground and already his face was fading from behind her eyes. Now she was going to live with strangers in a foreign land like Ruth in the bible story. The lawyer said she was a lucky girl to get this change of sky but his words weren’t sinking in.

      Her new relation was sitting across from her, bolt upright, staring out of the window, but every so often Mirren caught her snatching glances at her face as if she had snot on her nose end.

      Grandma Yewell had appeared in the lawyer’s office when Granny Simms packed a little parcel of clothes and took her down to Keighley on the tram.

      ‘Now you be good for yer new gran. She’s come a long way to fetch you. Remember your Ps and Qs and don’t fidget,’ she whispered as they sat in the corridor waiting for the door to open to the old man’s office.

      ‘Now, Miriam,’ he said, when they were admitted, pointing to the lady in the seat. ‘I want to introduce you to Mrs Yewell, mother of the late Ellen Miriam Gilchrist, who’s your grandmamma now. She’s kindly agreed to take you back to the family’s farm for a little holiday in Windebank.’

      Mirren bobbed a curtsy like they did to the managers of the school when they came visiting. Her tongue stuck to her teeth.

      ‘She’s tall for a seven-year-old,’ muttered the woman before her, in a thick tweed coat, brown felt hat and with a dead fox round her neck. She eyed Mirren up carefully.

      ‘I’m eight and a half,’ Mirren piped back.

      ‘And sharp with it!’ said the woman.

      ‘You’re a very lucky girl that your grandparents are offering to take full responsibility for your welfare. Needless to say I hope you will repay them with good behaviour, diligent service.’

      ‘But I don’t know them,’ Mirren cried suddenly, realising that she must leave with this lady, and clinging to Granny Simms.

      ‘Now none of that, young lady,’ the old man with the whiskers down the sides of his face continued. ‘You have a whole train journey to get acquainted…It’s as much a burden for them to have to take you in as it is for you to make minor adjustments to your change of circumstances. You were not left in any position to support yourself, my dear. If these kind folk hadn’t offered—’

      The lady cut his words off, saying, ‘Come along, lass. We’ve a train to catch or your grandfather will be left standing at the station. It doesn’t do to keep a farmer waiting.’ She smiled with her eyes and Mirren picked up her parcel, knowing there was no other way. She hugged Granny Simms, who wiped tears from her eyes.

      ‘You’ve got a good ’un there and wick as a weasel, just like her mam, a real lady…’ Granny Simms told Mrs Yewell. Then she was gone.

      Why had her gran and granddad never visited her before? There was a big bust-up, Mirren knew, a falling-out over her dad, long before she was born. She knew nothing about farms except that they were smelly places full of cow muck and horse dung. They once went on a Sunday school trip to one up on Howarth Moor, which was a right wild place where some lady had written a story called Withering Hats.

      She smiled now, looking at Mrs Yewell’s hat. It was withering at the edges, all floppy with feathers that looked faded and frayed. It must be windy at Windebank. How would she live up in the wilds? She stared out of the window, trying not to snivel as her eyes filled with tears.

      There was nothing but green fields and stone walls flashing past the window, walls running in all directions, making strange patterns over the hills: squares, oblongs, triangles and curves, and in the middle were dotted sheep like balls of cotton wool.

      ‘Are we nearly there?’ she asked. ‘When do we see the farm?’

      ‘All in good time,’ whispered the woman. ‘Be patient. Everything comes to them as waits…’

      Mirren sighed and turned back to the window. She had never seen so many walls and sheep, men on carts and not a mill chimney in sight. This was a funny place to live, all strung out on your own. Where were the streets and the crowds?

      Adey couldn’t take her eyes off the child opposite. She was the spitten of her mother at that age: the same long sandy plaits and those blue Yewell eyes. If she’d walked past her in the street, it would’ve been like seeing a ghost. How could she have gotten her age so wrong? Miriam must have been born at the war’s end. The son died as a baby. They ought to have visited but farms couldn’t run on their own and bridges had been burned when Ellie ran away.

      The truth was she couldn’t bear to see her daughter living in the rough, running after a navvy into goodness knows what conditions. No wonder she…but this lass would get her chances even if she did have Paddy’s wild blood inside her. There was a spark to her eyes and an edge to her tongue, and she was quick to defend herself like all the Yewells.

      So they called her Mirren not Miriam, the Scotch way, the old Granny had whispered. The lass had a right to her name but the Yewells were proud of Miriam and doled it out to their firstborn daughters for generations. Ellie had done the same for her daughter and that was touching.

      Adey had to admit she was warming to the bairn even if she could see a few battles ahead with stubbornness. Mirren was a town child and not easy to settle up the dale, not used to shutting gates and doing chores. They were used to shops and dens of iniquity round every corner, cinema houses showing bare flesh as if it were decent. The child’d need watching and fattening up; all legs and elbows and bony knees. The kiddy was sitting in a dark serge coat two sizes too small, with her skirt hem showing and her stockings in need of a good darn: more holey than godly. Heaven only knew what was underneath. Full of fleas no doubt, but a good scrub would sort that out.

      ‘Do you like the country?’ she asked, trying to interest the girl away from picking her nose.

      ‘If you’ve seen one sheep you’ve seen the lot,’ Mirren sighed.

      ‘Oh, but that’s where you’re СКАЧАТЬ