Terroir by Graham Mort Page A

ought to be grateful that he wasn’t to be hanged. That was what Billy Crapper had said. Not that you could trust much that came from his mouth.
    When her mother and Ben died, she wrote him a letter, telling him everything, saying that surely they would send him home now? She’d sent it care of the magistrate’s court, but she heard nothing. He had three more years to serve. He’d come home to a grandchild and two graves, if he came at all. That thought of the child eased her grief sometimes, allowed her to go on.
    Ellen was hungry now that the pangs of early sickness had passed. She took a knife and cut the crust and a thick slice from the loaf. The fire had just enough heat in it. She took a long fork from a nail on the wall and held bread over the glowing coals. She had a scraping of beef dripping from the butcher to spread on it. It was delicious – bread and dripping and coal smoke all mixed together. The bread would last her two days. After that, she didn’t know what she’d do. The Poor House was always a risk for pregnant girls, but they’d never take her there. She was determined of that. She had her father’s gun and knew how to load and fire it. There was enough powder and shot to see to things. She’d rather end it now than live as a slave, just as he’d said. Then one sin would be taken over by another.
    Ellen dozed and woke and dozed again in front of the fire, only half conscious of the ebbing day, slipping light, of rain ceasing against the window. She dreamed of dark mine shafts where a scaled beast was turning under the earth. Then of a great sea, bright as scattered emeralds and black men casting out nets from tiny boats. Then Michael and Ben were in the nets, fighting for air, their hair stuck down with salt. Then her father helping sailors pull the bodies to shore. Her mother weeping and wringing her hands because her father was taken. Everything broken and mixed together and broken again, sense and nonsense both.
    She woke hungry to an ashen fire. The church clock was tolling seven o’clock. She’d taught Ben to count that way when they were children. The rain had cleared and a big moon was pushing its face between clouds that were scattering and blowing away. She stood at the window, watching the moonlight come and go on stone walls that separated the fields, then opened the door to feel the air. Winter was on the turn at last; the night was warmer than most. She thought of the dead bird in the porch of the church, of her mother and brother buried under low mounds at the far side of the graveyard. A line of lanterns passed on the road below, bringing the heavy tread and low voices of miners on their way home.
    Ellen closed the door suddenly and barred it. She climbed the stairs, changed from her dress and shawl into a shirt, then rooted out her father’s canvas trousers. She’d washed and dried them, but they were still stiff as boards. She had to leave the top button open where she was swelling. She managed to push her feet into his boots and fasten the leather laces. Next she stood on a chair and pushed up the hidden flap of wattle in the ceiling. She reached inside to find the rifle wrapped in an old singlet. The powder and shot were in a tin close by, still dry. She drew them out and let them fall to the bed, then stepped down and took them into the room where the fire was glimmering. In the tin were flasks of oil and powder, a paper packet of ball shot and wadding and some flints. Wiping the rifle on the singlet, she screwed the barrel to the stock. Then she oiled the hammer, smearing oil on her hand which she worked into the walnut stock until it gleamed. She cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger, watching a spark jump at the pan. Then she took the gun apart again, hanging the barrel in a special loop in the trouser and concealing the stock under her father’s thick cotton jacket that he’d brought back from sea.
    Before Ellen