Born of Woman by Wendy Perriam Page A

hard. And Nan. All the women did.’
    â€˜I had six bairns,’ said Nan. ‘And we didn’t even have running water until 1945. Wash-day meant what it said—a whole day put aside for the laundry—not just a quick whirl in a machine. We had to collect rain-water in a butt, heat it on the range, then scrub away by hand with a bar of soap. You have to be dedicated if you farm up here. It isn’t just a job, it’s a way of life. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have my forty winks. There wasn’t time for naps in my younger days, but now I’m over seventy I reckon I deserve one. Goodbye, my dear. And tell that man of yours it’s only the guilty who can’t sleep at night.’
    She banged the door behind her. Molly grinned. ‘She’s quite fond of Lyn underneath,’ she said. ‘Often talks about him. Look, leave all that. Ruth’ll do it. Go and put your feet up.’
    Jennifer stretched herself out on the sofa. The old Jack Russell, lame and almost blind, padded over and flopped down at her feet. There was more room in the kitchen now. Four of the children had disappeared upstairs. Only Ruth remained, humming as she put the plates away. There was a general hum of satisfaction—cats purring, the chunter of the hens outside, stockpot burbling to itself beside the gently sizzling onions, the rasping snore of the terriers, replete after their lunch.
    â€˜Molly …’ Jennifer said.
    â€˜What, love?’
    â€˜Could an outsider make a go of it?’
    â€˜How d’ you mean?’
    â€˜Well, live up here. Be accepted. Even if she was one of those … aliens from the south?’
    Molly laughed. ‘Oh, yes. The shepherd’s wife at Nettleburn used to live in London. She worked as a check-out girl in Tesco’s and the only sheep she ever saw were those in the advertisements for New Zealand lamb stuck over the frozen meats section. She was terrified when she first came up here—said she’d never imagined anywhere so lonely. Yet now she admits she’s got more friends than she ever had in a city of seven million.’
    Molly had turned the onions off and was heating milk for her shedful of orphan lambs. ‘Nan tends to sneer at people like that. Calls them foreigners and says they don’t fit in. But one or two of them have made a real success of it, gone back to all the old traditional crafts—quilting, smocking, patchwork, curing bacon, making their own sausages. There’s another girl who married the farmer at Biddlehope. She only came up here two years ago, yet she took half the prizes at our local show.’
    Jennifer longed to do the same, leave her Cobham neighbours with their gleaming labour-saving homes and start again up here. She already had the skills. She was trained in domestic science, good at sewing, knitting, homemaking. Even Lyn had a feel and flair for gardening. Only one step further to set up a smallholding or market-garden and try to make a living from it. He might well be more contented self-employed and self-sufficient, instead of slaving in the city with Matthew as his task-master. All right, he’d never want six children, but even one would be a start. And they could maybe take a lodger in, or let out part of Hernhope to holiday guests. Nice to have more to cook for, a family around her, people dependent on her skills. She had never had sisters or brothers, grandparents or aunts. Just her and her parents becalmed in a small, quiet, cosy home on the commuter-line to London, and—after her father’s death—she and her mother cowering in a bungalow with a couple of ageing cocker spaniels. It had been too sheltered, too restrictive. Lyn was as bad—almost a recluse. They must expand, develop, become part of a larger whole, part of a community. Lyn already had a long tradition behind him. He was a native, born and bred here, not an outsider like the girl who