The Cuckoo's Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

products and factory effluents as it was lower down. A large sprawl of buildings, and rows of low weaving sheds from which issued a deafening racket, were dominated by a five storey mill with a smokestack taller than any of the others in the town, aggressively proclaiming ownership. ‘BEAUMONT’ was painted in giant white letters from top to bottom of its length, which were reflected in its gently steaming mill dam. An imposing wrought iron arch into a cobbled yard proclaimed the name: Cross Ings Mill. Oddly, in all this stood an old-fashioned, low-roofed dwelling house with open windows and white lace curtains, built on to one side of the mill itself. Was this Farr Clough House, where Mr Beaumont lived?
    The question appeared to afford John Willie Sugden a sardonic amusement. ‘Ainsley Beaumont? Nay, not him! We’ve a bit to go, yet. This is nobbut t’mill.’ He pointed with his whip. ‘Yon’s Farr Clough, up on th’ Edge.’
    Laura was able to catch only a glimpse of a large stone edifice perched near the top of the highest of the hills beneath which the town sheltered before it disappeared from view in the curve of the road, signposted ‘Moortop Road’. She looked for the house again, but in vain, as the road made wide upward zigzags, each turn seeming to take them only a little higher up the Pennine slope. The distance they covered could not have been far but it seemed miles away from the valley they had just left. The wind became even keener, flattening the tussocky grass, unhindered by anything other than a few stunted trees and the millstone grit outcrop thrusting its way through the thin soil.
    A few black-faced sheep skipped bleating into the heather as they passed, the road became rougher, Laura’s teeth rattled and at any moment she was convinced a wheel must come off and overturn them into one of the bright narrow streams of water that gushed down the hills – to end up in that stinking river below, she assumed. Nevertheless, with the ugliness of the industrial sprawl below left behind, and now above the smoke-pall, she began to feel exhilarated, and moved by the sombre grandeur of the scenery which now surrounded her. Of all the people who had been ready to warn her of the inhospitable weather and general discomforts of life in the North, why had none of them ever mentioned the upland splendour of these hills, moors and valleys, their rushing streams? Her dismay disappeared, she felt a quickening in her blood and a sense of expectancy.
    â€˜â€™Ere we are, then.’
    Abruptly the rough, drystone walls that ran apparently at random over the wild moorland revealed an opening on to a rough road driven along this side of the hill, along which the trap now passed. There was still no sign of Farr Clough House but on a sudden impulse she cried, ‘Please stop. I believe I should like to walk the rest of the way.’
    â€˜It’s all of a mile yet to th’ouse.’
    â€˜I’m used to walking, and I need to stretch my legs after sitting for so long.’ And to get my circulation going again, in case I might never be warm again, she might have added. ‘Please take my luggage on and I’ll follow.’
    â€˜Suit thissen. It’s straight on.’
    The wind tore at her hat and the tendrils of her wayward hair whipped across her face as she followed the trap, watching it disappear into the distance. Now that she was moving the wind stirred her blood and brought bright colour to her cheeks, and with it a magic feeling, as though she could run and jump, throw her arms in the air. Although the sky was grey and clouded, darkening the shortening afternoon further, there was a cosmic feeling about the great empty spaces tumbling around her as she walked, listening to the whistling wind and a bird with a piping, plaintive call. Lillian would have felt amply justified to know how cold it was, Laura thought with a laugh. Yet, here and there