Now that Mirren and Mr Burrows had come to an understanding after she wrote her own letter of apology, and the vicar had stepped in as referee with the family over the runaway episode, school was not so boring. She was going to be put in for a prize scholarship. The Head was giving her extra coaching and he didn’t have whisky breath any more. A new girl called Lorna Dinsdale arrived in Mirren’s class. They became best friends and they were both trying for the scholarship together: no skiving off for Mirren with Lorna chasing her heels in class for top marks.

  One of their projects was to study the total eclipse of the sun, due that summer, and the vicar brought in lantern slides to explain the ‘fenominer’ and how their dale was to be honoured with the best view in the whole of England. It was the centre of Totality. The sun was going to be eclipsed completely right above Mirren’s head.

  No one in the village could talk of anything else because every farmhouse, cottage and hotel was going to be booked up with visitors. There was brass to be made.

  ‘Aye,’ Joe replied to Adey, mopping up the spilled tea, giving his wife and granddaughter one of his twinkling looks. ‘Who knows what the Good Lord in His mercy, who sets His firmament in the sky and causes the sun to go down at noon, has in store for us? It’s all there in the Good Book. I shall be taking mesen off to the highest spot to stand before my Maker. I’ll be nearer heaven should I be taken up to glory and you should all be doing the same.’

  Grandpa Joe was of the old school of local preachers; just like the preachers in the Band of Hope at Scarperton, well drenched in the Holy Bible, never considering he had done service to his Lord unless he had his congregation whipped up into a frenzy of enthusiasm, making their Sunday roast dinners dry out in weariness by the length of his preaching, but she loved him dearly. There was always a sweetie in his pocket for her and a twinkle in his eye.

  ‘Now then, none of that talk afore the lass,’ Gran said, seeing Mirren’s wide eyes on stalks. ‘I’ll have enough to do making breakfasts for all them folk thronging the hillsides for a good view. It’ll be all hands to the pump, Joe. I want that yard spotless.’

  Mirren knew they’d put their names down on the Eclipse Committee to provide field parking, hot breakfasts and some overnight accommodation when the world came to Windebank. All this work for a little extra brass in the kitty would be useful come the autumn when she must be kitted out far winter: clogs, shoes, uniform. Her legs just kept growing out of things. There was a limit to how far the egg money would stretch, but she would do the work and collect the takings. That was what this coming eclipse was all about.

  They had seven bedrooms and she must go in the attic while Grandpa Joe could kip in the stable loft for one night and the family visitors would sleep in the upper parlour on a camp bed. Gran would charge ten shillings a night for the privilege of sleeping in her best rooms and full breakfast.

  Organising parking in the fields would be Uncle Tom’s job with Uncle Wesley’s boy, Ben, from Leeds, but they were all moaning about the wetness of the spring and the awful summer so far, and Tom didn’t want his fields poached or the lambs disturbed by vehicles.

  Gran suggested they open the fields for campers, tents and cyclists, and charge at least a shilling per person. It was only for one night.

  ‘You’re a hard woman,’ Joe smiled, sipping from his refilled mug of tea with relish.

  ‘Someone has to be in this house,’ she argued. ‘You’re as soft as butter with yer head either stuck in a milk pail or in another world, on yer knees night and day waiting for the call to glory. If thousands of mugginses want to traipse up here for a clear view, then let them pay for it, I say.’

  ‘That’s hardly the spirit, Mother, of a good Christian woman,’ he tried to tease her, twinkling those blue eyes, but she was not for soft-soaping.

  ‘Life’s shown me that you don’t get owt for nowt in this world. We’ve a bairn now to feed and clothe. You have to take yer chances, as well you know, and this event won’t happen again in our lifetime right slap-bang in this dale. The minute the shadows are over, I’ll stoke up my fire and make a hundred breakfasts if I have to. Think of the brass.’

  ‘There’s more to life than brass, Adey,’ said Grandpa Joe.

  ‘My name’s Adeline, as well you know, but it’s brass as polishes the silver, keeps us all fed and clothed. We live off our wits and off our land. The land can give us a bonus this year, that’s all,’ she answered. ‘The girl’ll have to do her stuff too and earn her keep.’

  Mirren sensed that her gran got tired of having a boisterous child around when the rest of her family was grown up. She tried not to show it but it sort of leaked out at the corners. The coming of the city hordes was a worry to her, not being used to throngs of people.

  ‘I don’t like offcumdens wandering where they will, knocking down walls and leaving litter, frightening and stealing. I shall keep out of their way,’ Adey added.

  ‘They’d not want to meet you on a dark night with yer dander up. No need to put up any sign “BEWARE OF BULL” but “BEWARE OF FARMER’S WIFE”,’ Grandpa laughed, but Gran was not amused.

  They were always arguing and bickering, and sometimes forgot she was there, but they were kindly and welcoming so that the sad life in the Rabbit Hutches seemed a long time ago. She wished she could remember her own mam. All she had of her was the photographs in her father’s tin box, but being here she could imagine her as a little girl on the farm and wonder how she could ever have left such a beautiful place.

  Sometimes they sat her by the fire and quizzed her about life in the Hutches but Mirren only told them the good bits. The bad times were hidden at the back of her head and not for sharing.

  Cragside was a house full of men with Grandpa Joe, Uncle Tom, the yard boys and shirts to iron. Mirren helped Carrie where she could but Uncle Tom, up at Scar Head, was in want of a wife to do all his laundry, and needed regular pies and bread to keep him stocked up. The news that he was courting was a great relief, but Florrie Sowerby worked in The Fleece, which didn’t go down so well.

  Grandpa teased Mirren that she was growing into the bonny bairn of the dale, the bobby-dazzler with golden curls and bluebell eyes, fringed with long lashes. She’d rather be a boy and race around the school playground with a football, never sitting still, scourge of the Sunday school trying to catch up with Jack Sowerby, who ignored her when he was with his friends. She palled up in mischief with anyone who’d let her join their gang. The village girls gave her a wide berth but Lorna stuck to her side.

  No one seemed to fuss much over appearance but Uncle Tom knew the way to her heart and sometimes brought her ribbons and crayoning books from the market. Sometimes he brought Florrie’s son Jack to help out on the farm. They would all be coming to help out with the parking and cooking.

  Mirren’s hair was bobbed short now. It was easier to manage than plaits. Grandpa Joe complained she looked like a lad, which pleased her no end.

  Gran was not one for titivating her appearance to please her man. She preferred sludge colours, plain shirts and pinafores with her greying hair scraped back.

  Farm cooking was plain and simple with ‘no frills and fancies’. They baked rabbit pies and rib-sticking milk puddings, food to fill bellies and stave off hunger until the next feed. There was no time on a busy farm for fancy baking and showing off, Gran declared, so each week’s menu followed a regimental order: roast, cold, mince, pie, hash, stew. Who needs a calendar when you can tell the day of the week by the dish of the day? Mirren thought. The days of bread and dripping and what her dad called ‘push pasts’ with Granny Simms were long gone.

  As they went about morning chores, Gran was barking out lists and orders for the coming invasion. This kitchen was her world and she ruled it like a sergeant major. Sometimes Mirren caught the sharp end of her tongue and wondered why Gran was being so hard.

  It was Uncle Tom who told her the tale of Adey’s parents, who were farmers up the dale, who’d killed a cow for their own use and then when others fell dead and anthrax was discovered, it was too late for them to survive. Gran was boarding with an aunt near Settle and banished from any contact. She never saw her parents again or got to say farewell, and never went back to visit the spot. The farm was boarded up and the land useless. It would never be farmed again in her lifetime. She was the object of curiosity and pity for a while. Who wanted a child of anthrax victims on their land?

  This made Mirren sad too, for she knew how it felt to be left alone in the world at the mercy of strangers. She was glad that Grandpa Joe had made Gran happy and she, in turn, ploughed all her love into running her side of the dairy, butter and cheese making and housekeeping as efficiently as she could. No one could ever say Adeline Yewell was a shirker of duty who let dust settle, or a lazy mother whose lads wore grey shirts not white, or one who kept a poor table and empty cake tins. Just when she was due a rest, along came Mirren to spoil the show.

  Now Gran was going to make sure that the money pot on the mantelpiece would be stuffed full of brass by the end of this eclipse but she’d not be giving this sun dance a second glance herself.

  Mirren loved Cragside. No one had a house as big or grand as this one. Only Benton Hall was bigger and it had been a hospital for the soldiers in the war who couldn’t walk or talk. In her eyes Cragside was a fairy castle high on the hill. She was the princess in the turret, huddled under the goosedown quilt as the wind whistled around, the candle flickering in the draught, while Jack Frost painted ice pictures on her window. She felt safe here, the house wrapped its arms around her, shielding her from ghosts and ghoulies of the night.

  Sometimes she thought she heard the voices of children laughing and playing across the landing but when she got up to find them there was only silence and creaky floorboards. Here she was queen of all she surveyed. This was her world and she’d never leave this kingdom.

  Now the valley would be flooded with visitors. Tomorrow the world would come to her kingdom and she was afraid, not of the eclipse for they had done that at school for months, but of having to share this space and give up her room.

  She loved the magic lantern and slides show with the blinds down, showing pictures of the moon eclipsing the sun and how the light would be blotted out for twenty-three seconds. It would go very dark and she was not to be frightened because Jack said the light would not be destroyed.

  Jack’s class in the grammar school were doing the topic, and he knew about everything and kept going on about ‘the Totality’ and that was why everyone wanted to come to Cragside to see it all.

  Very important people were setting up telescopes at Giggleswick, down the dale, and the Prince of Wales would come to see it if he could. Grandpa Joe said they must all pray each night for a perfect viewing with no clouds to hide the sky or no one would see anything.

  Uncle Tom was busy, and Florrie Sowerby was running round with a pink face shouting at Mirren to shift this, shove that, and tidy everything away. She looked so pink all the time, trying to butter up Gran into liking her.

  Jack had plans to go car spotting, for there would be thousands of motor cars and motor bikes heading in their direction. He could not imagine there being so many cars in the whole world. Only the squire and the doctor had a car in Windebank.

  When the first few cars began to scrunch their gears up the hill, Mirren and Jack were sitting on a five-barred gate that shut the road from the young lambs on the moors. It was Jack who opened the gates for the driver in goggles and a leather helmet. Mirren waved at them and the ladies smiled. Then the man held out a penny for Jack so they shut the gate behind them carefully and scrapped over how they would spend it.

  There were three such gates at strategic points across their stretch of the moor track from Windebank village. They sat on one apiece with Uncle Wesley’s son, Ben, who’d arrived on the train from Leeds. He was ten and nearly as tall as Jack. There would be pennies galore to collect if they smiled and opened the gates.

  What started as a game soon was a deadly endeavour to see each gate stayed closed, opened, and then reclosed after each vehicle. Cyclists were happy to open their own gates, nodding to the children but giving nothing. Motor bikers with side cars were not much better, but it was the large stately cars that yielded the richest pickings.

  Mirren’d never possessed so much brass in her life. Pocketfuls of halfpennies and pennies, threepenny bits and even some silver sixpences were thrown at them by ladies, who patted her shiny bob as she curtsied, in case any of them were real lords or ladies.

  By the evening of the Tuesday night there was a steady stream of cars heading to spend the night on the hills, waiting for the 5.30 a.m. start of the eclipse.

  It was Jack who decided they would make most money during the night, guiding motorists up towards the parking fields with lanterns.

  ‘But it’s our secret, right?’ Jack whispered. ‘We’ll go to bed no bother and sneak out later, but it won’t go dark until nearly midnight. Don’t go blabbing owt to yer gran, Mirren.’

  Mirren had never been up at midnight before. She was a little afeared of the darkness, but she’d do anything to impress Jack and Ben. Everyone knew there would be great revels in the valley: eclipse dances and cinema shows, cafés open all night, midnight parties. The newspaper was full of notices of events and Grandpa Joe read them all out with a sad face.

  ‘This’s no way to prepare for the Lord’s coming, in such drunkenness and dancing. They should be on their knees in prayer, asking the Lord to be merciful to sinners and temper His wrath. Much is expected of us, children,’ he exhorted.

  Mirren was that wound up with excitement she stayed wide awake in the attic, watching out of the window as their visitors arrived by the front porch to stay in the grander rooms at the front of the house. Gran and Florrie were decked out in their best checked pinnies and hats, and never noticed Jack and Mirren in their lookout tower.

  Mirren didn’t like the thought of strangers using her jerry pot under the bed in the night but Gran’d clipped her ears and told her not to be cheeky to visitors. It was only for one night.

  Where were they going to hide all their pennies? She was dreaming of the sweetie shop down the village with a shelf of jars: rainbow crystals, liquorice straps and dolly mixtures, sherbert dabs and chocolate drops. She spent her money ten times over in her head, slavering with delight. For the first time in her life she was going to be rich beyond her wildest dreams. How she wished Dad could be here to see it all.

  At last she fell asleep, dreaming of cars dancing across the sky and coins falling like rain.

  Jack woke her with a start, shouting in her lug hole, ‘Gerrup! Time to get cracking … out of the window.’

  Getting out of the attic window was not for the faint-hearted. Jack had done the old sheet rope trick as best he could but it didn’t stretch down far enough. He just jumped the rest, falling on the grass and waving Mirren on.

  In the half-light she was terrified but tried to be brave and climbed down backwards, feet touching the stone walls until she ran out of sheet and had to let go. The jump took her by surprise as she fell on her side, cracking her elbow. Tears welled up in her eyes but Jack pulled her up roughly and she winced.

  ‘Hurry up, slow coach … follow me,’ he whispered, but Mirren was struggling to keep up in the darkness, trying not to cry as they made for the barn loft to meet Ben, guarding the lanterns, which Jack knew how to light.

  ‘I can’t carry one now, me arm …’ she cried, pointing to her elbow. Jack yanked the lamp off her.

  ‘Give it here and make for the gate,’ Ben offered, and she trundled on, watching Jack every step of the way.

  Out on the fellside they could hear sheep bleating at the noise of harmonicas and gramophone records echoing out into the night air. There seemed hundreds of twinkling lights dotted around the fields: campfires and the flickering of car storm lamps. It was as if the hills were alive with an army before some battle. Uncle Tom would go mad at all the mess in the fields.

  There was a snaking light along the river road in the valley, cars edging their way north to see this great show. If only her arm didn’t hurt so much, Mirren thought, but Jack kept rushing her to do gate duty.

  ‘I can’t open the gate, Jack. Me arm hurts,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be a girl’s blouse,’ Jack snapped. ‘We should never have let you come.’

  ‘Am not! Look yerself, it sticks out funny,’ she snapped, swallowing her snot, trying to be brave.

  ‘We’ll have to do it together then, but yer not having my share of the brass.’ Jack glanced at her arm. ‘This was my idea.’

  ‘It’s not her fault she can’t use it,’ said Ben with concern. ‘Why couldn’t you both have used the back stairs?’

  Mirren was glad someone understood. It was hard trying to stand her corner but the pain was yelping now.

  Jack ignored her protest and did the best he could, but the takings were down without the full workforce.

  Mirren knew she was letting the side down but even Jack could see her arm wasn’t right.

  ‘It’s sticking out funny. You’d better go off home,’ he yelled. But both of them knew if she was caught out of bed she’d be for it and in trouble for taking money from strangers in the dark.

  ‘Better stay put here,’ said Ben, pointing to the old barn, ‘until first light and we can pretend we got up early.’

  Mirren was so tired all she wanted was to curl up and sleep if she could lie comfortable. She crept behind them to the shippon. It was a fine warm summer night and excitement grew as dawn broke over the valley. The day was clear and promised a good view. She lay on the tussocks of hay sheltered by the stone wall, letting Jack and Ben deal with the stragglers. Her eyelids dropped and soon she was dreaming of a wonderful eclipse.