Evie by Julia Stoneham Page A

the yard behind the cottage. What she would do then she did not know, nor did she have time to consider, because Norman’s heavy shoulder was already making her front door creak.
    Ferdie Vallance, hearing Thurza cry, had known what Hester would do. Disregarding her own safety she would go to her child. Grabbing the pickaxe he had been using on the construction of the wall, Ferdie hauled himself from his hiding place near the slurry pit, arriving in the yard behind Hester’s cottage just as she emerged from it. They heard the hinge on the front door give way and by the time Norman had pushed through the cottage, lurched out of the dim scullery and was standing, blinking into the sharp sunlight, casting about him and breathing like an inflamed bull, Ferdie had placed himself defensively in front of Hester.
    For a moment they stood, a small, middle-aged, lame David and a towering, enraged Goliath. Norman made short work of Ferdie. Seizing the pickaxe in both his huge hands he wrenched it upwards pulling Ferdie off his feet and then, catching him neatly under the chin with a swiftly lifted knee, sent him sprawling at Hester’s feet.
    Hearing the arrival of the tractor and Dave’s raised voice shouting for his wife, Norman snatched up his kitbag and bolted. Had he known that Dave was alone, he might have stayed, but as his objective was a singular determination to assert his will where Evie was concerned and because being arrested for assaulting a lame farmhand did not seem likely to get him closerto this, he struck off, skirting the slurry pit, pushing through a hedge and loping away along the valley floor before veering uphill, towards The Tops and avoiding the higher farm.
    Dave found his daughter crawling happily round his backyard and his wife cradling Ferdie’s head.
    ‘’E bain’t, dead, be ’e?’ she asked her husband, anxiously. But Ferdie was already stirring, blinking, struggling to sit up and rubbing his jaw.
    ‘Where did the bugger go?’ he asked, his head swimming.
    ‘Down along there and then up over,’ Hester told him, pointing to where Norman had last been visible. Then, turning to her husband she said, ‘’Tis no good you chasin’ ’im, Dave. He be well gone be now! And even if you caught ’im he’d most likely kill you!’
    At that point Mabel had arrived in the main yard and her voice could be heard, shouting loudly for her husband. Seconds later she emerged from the cottage like a rotund and frantic dervish. Seeing Ferdie still befudddled she hurled herself onto the ground beside him and wrapping her stout arms round him, rocked him.
    ‘What have they done to you, my lover? Just look at the state of you! Oooh! You’ve bit your poor tongue! There’s blood all down you!’ While his wife fussed over him and Hester told her how brave he had been, Ferdie began to enjoy the situation, wincing convincingly when Mabel examined his grazed jaw and modestly dismissing his heroism.
    ‘’Twas nothun, Hester, my dear. No more’n any bloke callin’ ’iself a man would do for a defenceless woman an’ child like you and young Thurza was.’
    At this point Roger Bayliss joined them. He had suggested to Alice that she use their car to drive into Ledburton village to warn Evie that Norman was in the valley, while he himself, and on foot, took the short cut down to the lower farm.
    During the war all firearms had to be strictly accounted for. Roger Bayliss had unlocked his gun cupboard and loaded a double-barrelled shotgun. Arriving at the lower farm he found Ferdie back on his feet, supported by a tearful Mabel.
    ‘Evie’s bloke be heading Mr Lucas’s way, sir,’ Dave told his master. ‘Reckon he could be lookin’ for Giorgio.’ Roger agreed that this was a possibility and that he had already taken the precaution of telephoning Edwin Lucas and warning him that Norman Clark was in the area.
    ‘You alright, Vallance?’ he asked Ferdie.
    ‘Me, sir? Oh, yes, sir! Reckon I give that varmint