Catheri Cookson: The Desert Crop

Money was tight in the farming communities around Fellburn in the 1880s, so when Hector Stewart, only two years after the death of his long-suffering wife, announced to his children, Daniel and Pattie, that he was to marry Moira Conelly, a 'wealthy' distant relative who lived in a 'castle' in Ireland, it was Daniel, the younger of the two, who guessed the purpose behind the proposed union. As for Moira, who had not been entirely honest about her background or her finances, she had convinced herself that she would be marrying into landed gentry, with the requisite number of servants allowing her the lifestyle to which she believed herself entitled. It was with surprise, therefore, after she arrived with her companion, Maggie Ann, that she realised not only was the farm run down, but there were no servants other than the domestic drudge, Rosie. Nevertheless, with her ever-cheerful disposition, she soon settled into the routine of the farm. Wealthy Moira certainly expected to become, although that depended entirely on the generosity of an aunt, whose money she had been promised on her demise. When, however, some years later the aunt died and her will was read, to Moira's dismay it was not she who benefited. The effects of this bombshell were to spread far and wide throughtout the Stewart family, now enlarged by children born to Hector and Moira during the intervening years. Pattie, always the rebel, had already left home to be married. Daniel, deprived of an opportunity to study at university by his father's insistence on his working on the farm, could see no escape, but a family tragedy was to open the way for him to expand his horizons and find the love and happiness he had thought was unattainable.