Every Mother's Son Read Online Free PDF

childhood and not be tied to the kitchen chores or looking after the younger children. Nor be like me at that age, already trying to find work to help out with ’family finances … and then she laughed at herself: listen to me, finances , a pittance more like, that my mother brought home from the mill.
    Fletcher had raked the ash beneath the fire and set the kettle over it to boil. She loved him for those little touches and for the fact that he didn’t expect her to do everything for him. She stood by the open door and breathed in the fresh morning air and thought that perhaps she wouldn’t be sick after all, that the nausea was subsiding, so maybe, but only maybe, she wasn’t pregnant after all.
    ‘Good morning, my lovely.’ Fletcher crossed the yard and came towards the house. ‘Did I wake you?’ He kissed the tip of her nose, and then, with his hands on her shoulders, said, ‘You look beautiful this morning.’
    She smiled. ‘You allus know how to get round a woman.’
    ‘Not just any woman,’ he said. ‘Onny one.’ He smacked her rump. ‘Now get inside,’ he joked, ‘and cook my breakfast.’
    It was as she was cooking the bacon and sausage that she felt queasy again, and moving the pan off the heat she rushed outside. Fletcher’s gaze followed her, but he went to the bottom of the stairs and called up, ‘Maria! Daniel! Time you were up.’
    They were both downstairs in ten minutes and by then Harriet was back inside. She’d swilled her hands and face under the outside pump and was back cooking again, but she knew without doubt that she wouldn’t be eating any of it. She saw Fletcher’s eyes upon her and he raised his eyebrows questioningly, and so she nodded. He would guess anyway; no need now to try to keep the news from him.
    There was no further chance to talk as Tom Bolton arrived as she was dishing up and sat down to join them for breakfast; then they heard the clatter of wheels, the rattle of carts and the sound of men’s voices, and the first day of harvesting began.
    Although Tom’s working life had begun as an apprentice on the barges that plied the estuary, whenever he was able to he had worked on the local farms at harvest time or filled in as a general labourer to earn extra money. He had known the farmers in the district since he was a lad, and they regarded him as reliable; it was through one of them that he had heard of the piece of land that was coming up for sale in Elloughton Dale. At a hundred and fifty acres it was too small and too far from his home farm to be of use to the farmer who had told him of it, but to Tom, who, having no wife or dependants, had managed to save some of his earnings, and Fletcher, who was desperate for a fresh start away from the waterlogged marshes where his parents had scraped a living, it was a gift from heaven. Fletcher too had saved money during a period when he’d worked in America.
    After laying drainage pipes on the land they had decided on a mixed farm, growing some crops and keeping livestock, and what Tom didn’t know about cows, pigs or sheep he more than made up for with a head for figures and a practical knowledge of building barns, sheds or fences, as well as understanding the workings of the new machinery which was being invented week by week, but was at present beyond their reach. They had paid good money for a plough, and the next thing on the list to buy when they could afford it would be a manure spreader, which would save them much time and effort. Meanwhile, with one or two exceptions such as the harvest which they couldn’t tackle without the help of friends and neighbours, the two of them could manage just about everything else.
    At midday, Harriet and Maria came out with baskets containing bread and beef, meat and potato pasties, some sweet cake and jugs of cold tea. Many of the local men brought their own dinner or lowance as they called it, an expression that had amused Harriet when she had first heard it, and Fletcher had