***chapter 35***

***A New Arrival***

Prudence gave a squeal of horror as the bawling infant suddenly kicked so fiercely that she almost slipped from her grasp and could so easily have joined the baby shawl that already lay crumpled on the carpet. The alarming possibility of an accident snapped Jimmy out of his daze. Wondering afterwards wherever he found it in him to be so bold, he strode purposefully to the centre of the room and held out his arms.

"Give her to me, please, ma'am," he demanded firmly.

Only too willing to hand over the responsibility, Prudence deposited the child without hesitation, sighing a sigh of pure relief as she poured herself a glass of wine from the bottle set in the ice bucket. (Presumably the couple had intended to wet the baby's head in low-key fashion, but it seemed the cause of the celebration had other ideas about the celebrations, low-key or otherwise.)

The tiny bundle nestled safely in the crook of his arm, Jimmy stooped to retrieve the shawl, wrapped it around her and sank into an armchair near the hearth, the first time he'd ever made himself at home in the Maddocks parlour without being invited to sit down. But so many things were different today. The small tears that streamed down the baby's face and her frantic wails tore his heart asunder. Even the normal deference he kept towards Lord and Lady Maddocks as their "being of a higher class" flew from his mind. The poor, poor little mite! Whoever she was, whoever she belonged to, however the Maddocks had come by her, what a cruel, cruel welcome into the world!

"Shhh, shhh," he hushed, emotion swelling up inside him, as he remembered rocking his own children, Peggy and Johnjo, to sleep, and, much later, his grandaughter Susie. All gone now. All. Nothing left to say they ever were, but faded photographs and dusty memories."Shhh," he soothed again, and then, in a gentle voice barely more than a whisper: "It's alright. It's alright. We have each other." Why he said this, he did not know.

The child was calming now, warm and secure, her cries becoming exhausted whimpers. Firelight shadows flickered on the walls and through the large French windows, although it was mid-May and they had no business being there in the pale yellow sunshine of spring, feathery snowflakes, almost silver in the sunlight, danced and swirled. It reminded him of a game Susie invented one winter's evening, when Peggy and his son-in-law Tom had been invited to a "do" at friends' house nearby and had asked Jimmy to babysit.

His little granddaughter was finally drifting asleep. He closed the fairytale book he'd been reading to her, clicked off the light and made to draw the curtains when, in that breathless night, the snow began to fall quietly, timidly at first, and then, as though making up its mind, tumbling down in a flurry of white, quickly blanketing the roofs and chimneys of the little Yorkshire town of Ashtree and the distant fields beyond. The sight was so beautiful that that he stood there for a while watching, glad he had no need to venture outdoors. The Maddocks had hired a temporary chauffeur for the weekend and a bed had been made up for Jimmy in the cosy spare room. He was looking forward to later snuggling under the covers with a cuppa and listening to the supposedly-true spooky tales on the wireless.

"Granddad! GRANDAD, it's SNOWWW-INGGG!" Susie announced. "Can I build a snowman?"

He was quite sure he hadn't made a sound, but some noise must have disturbed the little girl, for she was wide awake.

"Tomorrow. Bairns can't be playing out at this hour. Come on, pet, settle down." Jimmy tucked the blankets around her again, wondering how on earth he was going to persuade her to sleep now. But Susie unintentionally put herself to sleep.

"It's like floating," she said excitedly, as he sat down with her, realising too late that he hadn't fully closed the curtains so the lamplight still shone through and gave a theatre-like quality to the winter show. She sat up in bed, clutching her grandfather's arm and rested her head against him, aware he was putty in her hands. "Grandad, let's play we're going up in the sky, let's play we can float higher and higher and higher and higher…"

And, as they gazed together, till Susie's eyes closed in sleep, at the silently hypnotic flakes fluttering down, just as they did now through the French windows of the Maddocks firelit parlour, it really did seem as if another world far away, where dreams were spun on golden threads, would carry them home…