The Farm at the Edge of the World : A Novel (2016) by Vaughan Sarah

Author:Vaughan, Sarah [Vaughan, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-four

Then: 28 October 1943, Cornwall

Late October and the farm basked in the glow of an Indian summer. The blackberries wizened in the hedgerows, but the land still clung to its warmth.

The ewes were being tupped for spring lambs. Those that had been covered were branded with the mustard-coloured dye dipped on the ram’s stomach. As the week went on, more and more fleeces became discoloured until they matched the gorse fringing the cliff path: a sea of cream with mustard spots. After lambing, these blotches would change to signal the number of lambs. The ewes were marked whatever they did, so that her father knew exactly how fertile they were and exactly when they had been covered. There was nothing private in the life of a ewe.

Maggie, watching the sheep, wondered if her own secrets would soon be made this public. For something was happening inside her body, she was almost sure. A baby was growing there, beneath her ribs. There was no evidence yet – her stomach didn’t dome, her breasts weren’t full – but she had missed two periods, and she felt nauseous the whole time, as she had when she’d gone out fishing. A new life seemed to be growing: future – unwelcome – proof of the fecundity of the farm.

She didn’t know for sure, of course she didn’t. There was no one to ask and no way of checking. Perhaps if she limited the amount she ate, it wouldn’t show for a while. At school, she could keep her blazer on at all times and, on the farm, wear overalls over a thick jumper to hide any change. But her mother was no fool. Come the spring, and the lambing, her belly would be tight as a ball, and it would be impossible to hide.

She felt sick at the very thought. If she were growing a baby, what would she do with it? What happened to babies with no fathers, or girls with no husbands? Wicked girls, sinful girls. They were sent away to ‘relatives’ for two or three months; or to the mother and baby home, Rosemundy House, down at St Agnes, where they could be squirrelled away until they gave up their baby for adoption. She only knew this from Joanna. Eileen Brooke was being sent there, she said, because of what she’d done with one of the Polish pilots up at Davidstow. Maggie had thought her absolutely wicked, but it seemed she was no different from her at all.

She wouldn’t be like Eileen, though: she wouldn’t be sent to the home – however well-meaning the ladies of the Cornwall Social and Moral Welfare Association. However determined her mother. She would have her child here, and present it to her parents as a grandchild. Faced with such a sweet offering – for the baby would be beautiful, she decided, a prettier version of herself, and she had looked angelic as an infant – then, surely, they wouldn’t force her to give it away?

She thought of what happened to unwanted animals.

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