Free Red Sky in the Morning by Margaret Dickinson

softened. ‘You get off to the village and I’ll pack you some food up
now and you can call for it on your way back.’
    Eddie swallowed, feeling trapped. He hadn’t planned on coming back this way, but on taking Mrs Jessop further along the lane and in by the track round the far side of the woods to reach
the cottage. He couldn’t risk Bertha seeing Pat Jessop riding on his tractor complete with her midwife’s bag. But all he could say was, ‘Righto, love. That’d be
grand.’
    As he rode into town on his tractor, Eddie worked out a plan.
I’ll take Pat straight to the cottage, then double back round by the lane and into the farmyard. That way I can collect
what she’s packed up for me and then go back up the track from the farm to the cottage.
It was lucky, he thought, that the lane was not visible from the farmhouse. Bertha wouldn’t
be able to see him going past the gate and then coming back again. Not unless she was out in the yard near the gate. And he very much doubted she would be. Not in this weather! He smiled to
himself, beginning to enjoy the intrigue.
    ‘Who’d have thought it?’ he muttered aloud. ‘Quiet old Eddie Appleyard having a bit of excitement in his life.’
    Left in the cottage with Anna and the two dogs and with twelve sheep now huddled in the next room, Tony was mentally counting the seconds from the moment his father left.
    ‘Can I – get you anything?’ he asked tentatively.
    Anna, lying quietly for the moment, with her eyes closed, shook her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘that you’re having to see this. You shouldn’t be
here.’
    Tony shrugged, suddenly feeling important. ‘S’all right. I’ve seen lambs and calves an’ that born. I know all about it.’
    Anna smiled weakly. Did he? Did he really know the whole process? How a lamb, a calf, a child was conceived? Perhaps he did, she thought. He lived on a farm. Had done all his young life. He must
have seen the ram in the fields with the sheep, the bull with the cows and maybe Eddie even allowed him to watch when the boar visited. For an intelligent boy it wouldn’t be too great a step
to imagine what happened between a man and a woman . . .
    Anna groaned and covered her face with her hands, trying to keep the memories at bay.
    ‘Is it hurting again?’ Tony asked.
    She let out a deep sigh and tried to relax her body. ‘Not just now.’
    But only a minute later she was doubled up again and thrashing about the bed in agony. Tony backed away from her, standing pressed against the far wall, wanting to run, but knowing that he could
not, must not, leave her.
    He had promised his dad.
    Rip whined and pressed against the boy’s legs. Even the puppy’s lively scampering was quietened. Giving little whimpering cries, he nestled between Rip’s paws.
    If only, Tony agonized, she would stop crying out in pain.
    Eddie banged loudly on the door of the village midwife’s little cottage. Wintersby village was lucky to have a trained district nurse cum midwife living there. Not all
villages had one and a trip to the market town of Ludthorpe would have been impossibly slow in this weather, even on the tractor.
    The door was flung open and the tall, buxom figure of Pat Jessop stood there.
    ‘Eddie.’ She smiled in welcome. ‘What brings you here? Something wrong, ducky?’
    ‘I need your help, Pat.’ At her gesture of invitation, he knocked the snow from his boots and stepped inside the door. As she closed it, he pulled off his cap.
    ‘Slip your boots off and come into the kitchen. Tell me all about it,’ she said leading the way.
    Eddie and Pat Jessop, Pat Anderson as she had been then, had attended the village school at the same time. They had played together as children and Pat had loved nothing better than visiting
Cackle Hill Farm and helping with the harvest or, as she had grown older, lambing time. She always said it had been that experience that had led her into nursing. Yet, because she had gone to