A Song Twice Over (84 page)

It no longer even entered her mind to leave him where he lay.

‘You'll have to get up, Christie.'

He was conscious and the obscenity he groaned at her made her smile.

‘Yes you will. Come on. I don't care how much it hurts you. And neither do you. Because if you don't make the effort you'll die. Ned O'Mara will be back when he's had another drink or two, with his axe to grind – right in your skull, I reckon. And if
he
doesn't get you, then some tinker will come along and cut your throat as soon as look at you, for that gold medallion you wear, and your gold rings. So get up, Christie. Come on. Let's hurry up about it, shall we?'

‘I'm coming,' he said.

If he fainted from the pain and effort she had no idea what she would do with him, his unconscious weight being totally beyond either her physical powers or her ingenuity. But at last she had him half-sitting, half-lying on a low rock while she wrapped his cloak around him to ease his shivering and hide the blood all over his shirt front. All over the front of
her
dress too, and her sleeves, seeping through the soft fabric to stain her chest and her arms, running down her hands. Giving her a brief and disturbing sensation of familiarity.

When had this happened before? Because it
had
already happened, exactly like this. This same man. This same blood making patches of gore on her bodice; disgusting her. Although she had held on – that other time – just as she was doing now.

The same thing? When? Her head swam with a spasm of dizziness and then cleared. Of course. On the night he had put the dog in her arms. The fighting dog which had lost the fight. One ear torn off. One leg horribly mangled. The ugliest, most vicious, most ungrateful brute in the world. That was it. The night of her twentieth birthday, eight years ago.
‘Happy Birthday, Miss Adeane.'
And, without any warning, he had tossed her that wounded carcase which even then, as she had clutched it and held it instead of letting it fall, had snarled and tried to bite her. And had been snarling at her ever since.

‘Come on,' she said. ‘Stir yourself. You're supposed to be a hard man, aren't you? Put your arm around my shoulder – and get on your feet.'

And even though she was prepared for it the weight of him crushed her, as the weight of the dog had made her gasp and stagger on that other night. But she had carried it, nonetheless, up the hill of St Jude's, cursing and grumbling at every step, fretting about the bloodstains on her one good dress. Without the least idea what she meant to do with him when she got there.

It had simply not occurred to her to put him down.

The first steps he took now were so drunken, his breath grating so painfully through his shattered chest that, for a moment, hope left her.

But he did not intend to die.

Neither did she. And the fusion of their two wills produced, not a weapon, but a crutch adequate – if only barely – to their needs. She made no attempt to spare him pain. She had no time to discover the nature and exact location of his injuries. She simply grabbed him where she could and staggered on while her own strength lasted, her back-bone endured, her heart went on beating, her head remained steady enough to locate first the road and then which of its various twists and turns would lead her to Frizingley.

She would be quite safe, of course, to ask help of any passing carriage. None came. She stumbled on. Not thinking. Enduring. As he was doing. If he fell she knew she could not pick him up. If she turned her ankle on a stone …? Thoughts. Suppositions. Useless things. If she paid any heed to them she would simply sit down and die. Of fright. Or violence. Or cold. And it was only speculation.
Reality
was the iron bar of his arm tearing a path of muscles from the nape of her neck and along her shoulders, the sound of breath rising through splintered bone, the jarring at the base of
her
spine with every slow, dragging step
he
took, the pounding and aching in her head and chest. Reality was the almost unbearable ferocity of his undamaged will, the complete absence of mercy with which it drove his wounded body on. Her will, too.

It did not occur to her to drop him.

It did not occur to him to fall.

The first sight of St Jude's hill in the distance came to her like a mirage in the desert. She did not believe it. Yet, ten agonizing minutes more, and there it was, grimy, squalid, incredibly – if only for that one night of her life – beautiful and blessed.

‘Leave me now,' he said, ‘and run down to the Fleece.'

But somebody could cut his throat here as easily as on the moor, for the same reasons.

‘No. Come on.'

‘You are saving my life, Adeane. I wonder why?'

‘I don't know.'

She was speaking the truth.

Down the hill of St Jude's where drunken and wounded men abounded they were an unremarkable couple. And it was downhill now, no more rabbit-holes and the sudden, icy plunge into a moorland stream hidden in coarse grass. Just uneven, sharp-sided cobbles, gutters running foul with sewage, indifferent passers-by who did not recognize their landlord as he hobbled and groaned and cursed his way home.

She took him in through the back door of the Fleece, knowing he would not care to be seen in the station hotel in this condition, spreading consternation among the pot-boys and barmaids who were all strangers to her now until Oliver Rattrie came hurrying down the passage, smooth and suave and painfully elegant, the strong musky scent of him – copied from Christie – mingling with the blood and mud and sweat to turn her stomach.

‘My word – Good Heavens.' But Oliver Rattrie, who had seen his mother die of disease and childbirth, his father hanged by suicide, his brothers and sisters carried off to the workhouse where they had died like flies, one after the other, of ‘workhouse fever', was not the man to be moved by a few broken bones and a little gore. Not the man to be moved by anything at all, these days, as he glided smoothly through the ‘administrative tasks' of rent collecting and eviction which Christie had set him. A power in St Jude's, Mr Oliver Rattrie. A man to be reckoned with. To whom the proper reception of his injured master, the whisking away of curious onlookers, and the calling of a doctor, were simple matters. Nor did the requirements of his master's mistress prove beyond him.

‘I will have them send up hot water, Miss Adeane. And then tea – or something stronger? – by the fire. And we should all feel easier, I think, if you would permit the doctor to have a look at you, too. Such an ordeal. My goodness.'

She was taken to the sitting-room – now Oliver's – which had once been Christie's; Christie himself in the room next door. Now Oliver's too, she supposed. She sat down by the fire – a fire in July? This too he had copied from Christie – took off her shoes and tried hard, because her mind had emptied now of its immediate fear and pain, to fill it only with inconsequential things. Anything that was not Daniel – where was he? How was he? Not Christie, standing in the inn door, smiling at her and killing her with his
‘Thank you, Cara. I'll make it worth your while, of course.'
Not Christie, bleeding all over her dress. Not that damned dog, doing the same thing, years ago.

Why did she keep on remembering that? Why should it mean so much to her? She had been a green girl then, not half so clever as she pretended. And smooth, suave Oliver with his musky African perfume and his roaring log fire had been a scabby, flea-bitten urchin playing barefoot in the St Jude's gutters and stealing rainwater from her barrels.

And Daniel? Footloose and light of heart, fond of Justice, of course, but madly in love with Fun and Freedom. Only Christie had been the same, all those years ago. Or was it that he had not appeared to change because he allowed no one close enough to notice? Well, he had nearly died tonight, and although he hadn't pleaded with her to save him she
had
saved him nevertheless. Just like the dog. Would it make amends to the demon in him for finding her with Daniel?
His
woman with another man. Had that been it? The jewel he had polished and faceted for his own pleasure running around the moor in a plain wool dress without her petticoats, like the common trollop she used to be? But she had saved his life at the risk of her own. Her motives being uncertain, her feelings in such confusion that – oh, God dammit – she hardly knew where she was and certainly not why. There had been tremendous changes tonight. Tremendous forces. It had been one of those central pivots, those key experiences, after which things might be better or worse but never quite the same again.

Getting up she walked through into the familiar bedroom and stood by the bed.

He was lying on one side, his back towards her, one bulky shoulder visible above the heavy quilts, his head in profile on the satin pillow in evident pain, one eye bandaged over, the other closed.

‘Cara …?'

She thought that he made an effort to turn towards her.

‘Yes?'

Reaching down she put her hand carefully, lightly, on his shoulder and bent over him, a gesture which held all the beginnings of concern, which might have become very concerned indeed had not his body suddenly stiffened beneath her touch, his one eye shooting open and glaring as balefully as ever that damnable, vicious brute of a dog had glared, first at her and then at Oliver Rattrie who was hovering solicitously behind her.

‘Get that woman out of here, Oliver,' he snarled, ‘and see to it she doesn't come back.'

Escaping from the ‘physical force'men who did not greatly wish to detain him in any case, Daniel lay flat on his back in a fold of the rough grassland, staring at the sky and wondering, mainly, why he had so little inclination to get up and be on his way.

He knew approximately where he was. He had enough of Cara's money in his pocket to take him anywhere else he wished to go. It seemed only right, then, for her sake, to go somewhere, since she had risked life and limb to bring it to him. He should not have involved her, of course. He knew that. Yet, finding himself at the Gamecock, penniless and on the run as she had always expected to see him, calling out to her for help – giving her the chance to say ‘I told you so' – had seemed natural. Not
right
, perhaps, as he had realized ten minutes after sending the tinker girl with his message. After which it had been too late.

She had not failed him. Although when Goldsborough had stood like a black peacock in the inn doorway and thanked her for turning him in, he had, for just a moment, believed her guilt. But no. Not Cara. She would never do a thing like that. And if he still had faith in her could he not learn to have faith in himself again? Even though the time when they might have been lovers had passed so imperceptibly for him that he could remember no precise moment when his desire for her as a woman had lessened and, by some strange chemistry, had increased her value to him as a friend. What she had done for him tonight he would do tomorrow for her. He hoped she knew that.

He had been wrong about too many things. Or had wanted too much too soon. Too many grand and noble designs for which no one – including himself – seemed to be ready. And from having believed too fervently, with too whole a heart, he found it impossible now to believe in anything at all. He had dedicated his life and health and vigour to a Charter which now lay in a government office somewhere gathering dust, an object of ridicule and scandal, its undeniable truths just as undeniably tarnished by grubby-minded, grubby-handed men. As religions were often tarnished, he supposed, by those who practised them. He understood that. Yet, since that damp squib of a Revolutionary Tenth, his understanding of human frailty had brought him no consolation. Had, indeed, only caused him to wonder if such a feeble, fickle species could be worth the trouble?

He had not wanted blood. He had wanted justice and dignity, for which he had been prepared to bleed. And all he had won was a choice between exile in an alien land, or the company of his fellow idealists, his fellow fools, in jail.

Ought he not to be making himself busy now about organizing the one and avoiding the other? Running away, in fact, instead of lying on damp grass looking up at the sky and finding it very large and very empty. Far too big for him. And far away. He had better go, then. Cara had kept faith with him. She had wanted him saved and so the least he could do was get up on his feet and go through the motions.

That was as much as he felt about it.

Leeds was over there. And then Liverpool. Then safety. With money there would be no difficulty. Cara had always said money was all it took. If safety was what he wanted? Perhaps not. But since, at the moment, there was nothing else he wanted either, he sprang up suddenly and set off at speed. While the mood lasted.

And then, as suddenly, he stopped.

What was it? He had not intended to be moved or stirred by emotion ever again. After the famine had dried him and scourged him and then remoulded him, a stranger to affluent humanity, he had judged himself incapable of it.
Wanted
to be incapable. Had he been wrong about that too? What, after all, had he achieved? Nothing and less than nothing since, hypnotized by the vast needs of mankind
en masse
about which he could do nothing, he had deliberately turned aside from the individual needs it had been well within his power to fulfil. He could not save the people of Ireland from hunger but there were other and very human hungers which he had himself aroused and, quite knowingly, left unfed.

In Gemma – he could no longer close his mind to it – who, in exchange for his obsessions, had given him warmth and love and who could have made him happy had he allowed it. But he had set personal happiness aside, sacrificed it, like everything else, to the Charter. Thrown it away. Despised it. He knew now that he could have approached his exile with less desolation had he been able to tell himself that he had made her happy too.