‘Granny Ruth, Granny Ruth!’ The next morning, Rachel was straight round to her granny’s little cottage; she’d held her promise to keep a close eye on her. She couldn’t deny that she was worried. She stood for a few minutes, knocking repeatedly and calling out, but there was no answer.
Rachel started to feel very uneasy now.
The cottage was unlocked, so she went on in. The house seemed unusually quiet. There was often the hum of the radio on or the television, or perhaps the kettle boiling ready in the kitchen. But today all was eerily still.
‘Granny?’ Rachel called again, and she checked the downstairs rooms just in case. There was no sign of her grandmother in the living room or kitchen. Had she gone out and left the door open? It wasn’t unheard of. Rachel climbed the narrow stairs, her concern mounting with each step.
‘Granny Ruth?’
‘Here, lass,’ came a frail, gravelly voice from Ruth’s bedroom.
Finally, thank goodness. Rachel relaxed a little, though from the sound of her voice, Ruth didn’t sound that well. Rachel poked her head around the bedroom door and there was her grandmother all tucked up in her double bed, which was unheard of at ten o’clock in the morning. Ruth was always up with the lark, despite her age. Her favourite response to questions about that being, ‘What do I want to be lying around in bed for? Life’s short enough as it is when you get to my age so I’m not going to waste it.’
‘Are you all right, Granny?’
‘Aye, just a bit tired this morning, pet.’
She looked awfully pale and frail there lying under the duvet, with one arm resting on the top, the so-thin skin showing the blue veins beneath. Rachel was floored for a second; this strong feisty old lady, who always seemed so resilient, was today showing all of her eighty-one years. Had she been doing too much, trying to help them out yesterday at the Pantry? They should have realised, Rachel felt awful.
‘I did try and get up, made myself a cup of tea, but—’ Ruth was suddenly wracked with that nasty cough. She pulled a tissue away from her mouth and Rachel spotted some blood in the mucus.
‘Oh, Granny!’ She leaned over and gently tested the temperature of Ruth’s forehead with her palm. It was boiling hot and felt very clammy. Rachel was now definitely not prepared to take any risks; this had gone on too long already. The doctors’ surgery in Kirkton would be closed with it being a Sunday, so she decided to take her directly to A & E. ‘You’ve a temperature. There’s blood coming up too, so at the least it’s a chest infection. You’re not well at all, Granny. Enough’s enough. We’re getting you checked out in a hospital.’
‘I’m all right. There’s no need to fuss, pet.’
But with that, Ruth was taken by another coughing fit.
‘You are not all right at all. I’ll fetch you some paracetamol to get that temperature down a bit then we’re going to get you dressed, and I’m driving you to hospital right away – no ifs or buts.’
‘Oh, pet, no!’ But she knew the game was up, that her granddaughter was right.
‘Come on, let me help you, Granny.’
Rachel had her dressed and down in the Land Rover within fifteen minutes. She phoned Jill to briefly explain what was happening as they headed for the Borders General Hospital. On the fifty-minute journey, Rachel chatted away to keep Granny occupied – about Maisy and the farm and the Pantry, and of course Ruth’s award-winning Christmas Pudding stealing the show at the Christmas Fayre yesterday – which drew a smile from the old lady. Ruth dozed part of the way and seemed forgetful and not herself at all. She twice asked where they were going, bless her.
After a two-hour wait in A & E and eventually being taken for X-rays, Granny Ruth was tucked up in a bed with crisp white sheets on the women’s ward. She looked even frailer in this alien and clinical environment.
‘Maybe I did leave it a bit long, pet,’ she conceded. ‘I’m sorry.’ She began coughing up the mucus and blood once more. Rachel rubbed her back as the old lady arched over, trying to ease her pain. Her cough sounded so raw and uncomfortable.
‘Well, you’re in the right place now. They can get you sorted out. You’ll be just fine.’
There had been mention of pneumonia, and they were waiting for a consultant to get the final analysis from the blood tests and X-ray.
‘Aye, well, I’ve had my life, pet. And, despite the troubles these past two years, on the whole, it’s been a good one. If this is my turn … well, much as I’ll be so very sad to leave you all, I’m not going to live forever.’ Ruth was propped up, looking awfully pale even against the white hospital pillows.
‘Now don’t you go talking like that, Granny. Getting all morbid on me. Of course you’re going to get better! You’ll live to a hundred.’ Rachel was clasping her granny’s hand fast. She looked so damned frail there.
‘I just feel so tired right now, pet. And, come now, Rachel, that’s nature’s way, and well you know it, lass. As farming folk, we see it all the time. Death follows life … spring, summer, autumn and winter. It’s just the way of the world.’
Rachel found that she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t imagine a world without Granny Ruth and her wise counsel in it. The old lady was just feeling weak. They’d soon fix her up, get some antibiotics pumped in to her.
‘Crikey,’ the old lady continued, ‘I’m stiff enough in the mornings as it is, if I live even another ten years I’ll be creaking, or I’ll have seized up altogether.’ She managed a cough-filled chuckle. ‘You’ve got the farm now, you and Jill and Maisy – and despite everything that happened with your dad, I know you’ll do a grand job of taking it forward, lass.’ She managed a gentle pat on Rachel’s arm. ‘You are already. And you’ll soon be teaching young Maisy how to farm – if that’s what she wants, mind; you never know, she might turn out to be an astronaut yet.’
They both smiled at that.
‘And then you’ll be watching her set off in to space,’ Rachel took up. ‘Please, Granny, don’t talk like this any more.’ Rachel couldn’t contemplate losing her granny yet. It was way too soon.
‘Just let me finish what I need to say, pet, just in case … Look, I’m proud of you. I know you’ll do what you can to keep it all going because Primrose Farm has a special place in all our hearts.’ Ruth’s eyes looked distant yet warm, as thoughts of happier days filtered through her mind, memories of her life there with Rachel’s grandad and dad.
‘It is a special place, Granny, and I will do everything I can to keep the farm, of course I will. But you’re not going anywhere just yet, not if I can help it. We need you back there to help with all those Christmas Puddings. There’s a zillion new orders since that Craft Fayre at the castle.’ Rachel knew Granny liked to be useful, to have a role to fill, maybe knowing this would help her recovery. ‘Who else is going to keep us on the right track with your Whisky and Orange Pudding?’
‘Aye, well there is that, pet.’
‘And we absolutely need you home and well in time for Christmas day.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t mind one more Christmas, to see Maisy opening her gifts and everything.’ Ruth was suddenly wracked with another coughing bout. Rachel held the hospital’s grey cardboard sick bowl in front of her, just in case, until the bout passed and then handed her granny a plastic cup of water to sip.
‘Well then, that’s settled. You just have to get better, Granny. There’s nothing else for it,’ Rachel said, trying to smile through misty eyes.