Above the Harvest Moon (7 page)
‘Did she, lass? That’s right nice of her.’ Rose smiled at her daughter’s friend, thinking the while, how on earth did she manage to get out of that prison, poor lass? It had long been her private opinion that Miriam Casey was a nasty bit of work. ‘Grab a knife, hinny, an’ start buttering that stack of bread. Once everyone arrives these sandwiches’ll melt away like the morning mist before the sun.’
‘Thank you for letting me come, Mrs Wood.’ Hannah was painfully aware of the big dark man watching her. She hadn’t looked at him directly, she never knew quite what to do if he was at Naomi’s. She didn’t want him to think she was gawping at him. He must have people do that all the time, poor thing.
And then, as Jake said,‘Hello, Hannah,’ she did glance at him, forcing a smile as she answered, ‘Hello, Mr Fletcher.’
‘So you’re going to let your hair down the night?’ He turned his gaze to his sister. ‘Just you watch Naomi, that’s all I’d say. I have it on good authority she was tiddly last year.’
‘Oh you, our Jake.’ Naomi feigned indignation. ‘I wasn’t, was I, Mam? It was Adam and Joe who were three parts to the wind.’ Catching Hannah’s hand, she added, ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you. Jake is going to have the last kitten at the farm ’cos no one will take her. I said he’s got to call her Buttons because that’s what you and I named her. He’s taking Polly too’ - Polly was the kitten’s mother - ‘’cos Da told Mam to get rid of her now everyone’s on short time.’ She grimaced eloquently, letting Hannah know what she thought of her father’s hard-heartedness.
‘Oh, right.’ Hannah smiled awkwardly, wishing she could be herself in front of Naomi’s half-brother. She could normally converse with anyone but Jake Fletcher was different, and it wasn’t just his scars, bad as they were. It was only the left side of his face which was affected, the puckered lumpy skin emerging from under his hairline and running right down his face and into the collar of his shirt.The eyelid was half closed, giving his face a faintly malevolent expression, and the ear was badly distorted. In contrast, the good side of his face which was only marked with a couple of tiny scars was unusually handsome. Perversely this only increased the slightly sinister effect. But the main thing which always tied her tongue in his presence, certainly for the last little while, was that Jake Fletcher was such an altogether
masculine
man. Big, broad shouldered, powerful. Adam and Joe had their father’s slight build and Naomi’s four younger brothers were small for their ages. Jake was the odd one out in more ways than one. And he scared her.
masculine
man. Big, broad shouldered, powerful. Adam and Joe had their father’s slight build and Naomi’s four younger brothers were small for their ages. Jake was the odd one out in more ways than one. And he scared her.
Her thoughts brought hot colour into her cheeks and she busied herself with buttering the slices of bread stacked on the table, her head down. The atmosphere in the kitchen changed abruptly a minute or so later when the door to the hall opened and Adam Wood came in. Glancing over them, Adam’s eyes narrowed on his half-brother. ‘You still here then?’
‘As you see.’
The two men stared at each other for a moment longer and then Adam turned and spoke directly to Hannah. ‘The old witch let you out then? Never have there been such days.’
Hannah forced a smile but she felt uncomfortable. Adam’s boyish good looks hid a tongue that could be as sharp as a knife on occasion, and although she might share her resentment about her mother’s treatment of her with Naomi, she didn’t like Adam calling her mam a witch.
‘You staying to see the New Year in then?’ he asked when she said nothing, reaching for a slice of the bread she’d buttered and folding it in half before biting into it. At her nod, he grinned. ‘That’s a turn-up for the book. What’ve you promised the old witch to persuade her to let you come then?’
‘
Adam
.’ Rose’s voice held a note of admonition.
Adam
.’ Rose’s voice held a note of admonition.
‘What?’Adam’s blue eyes were laughing.‘We all know what Hannah’s mam is like. I’m only saying what everyone else thinks.’
‘Perhaps your mother is suggesting you’re embarrassing a guest.’ Jake had risen to his feet as he spoke. He reached for his overcoat and pulled it on.
‘Huh.’ The smile slid from Adam’s face. Flinging the half-eaten slice of bread on the kitchen table, he said to Hannah, ‘Have I embarrassed you?’
His eyes like black marble, Jake said, ‘Shut up, Adam.’
‘Shut up yourself.’ Like David squaring up to Goliath, Adam glared at the older man. ‘Just because you come here playing the big man and bountiful benefactor doesn’t mean you own the place.’
‘I never said I did but I dare say you’re not above having your share of what I bring your mam, eh?’
‘Hark at him. Dead easy you have it compared to the rest of us, and you know it. You want a few shifts down the pit and you’d soon see what was what.’
‘You didn’t have to go down the pit any more than I did,’ Jake said quietly. ‘I looked for work elsewhere, you could have done the same, but you chose to follow your da. Don’t gripe about it now.’
‘Who are you to tell me anything, you freak?’
‘
Adam!
’ Rose had sprung in front of Jake as he made a sudden movement towards the younger man. Holding on to Jake but speaking to Adam, she said, ‘You talk like that again and so help me you’ll be looking for somewhere else to lay your head. And get out of my kitchen.’
Adam!
’ Rose had sprung in front of Jake as he made a sudden movement towards the younger man. Holding on to Jake but speaking to Adam, she said, ‘You talk like that again and so help me you’ll be looking for somewhere else to lay your head. And get out of my kitchen.’
Jake’s face was bereft of colour, his jaw clenched and his eyes blazing, but he could not push his mother aside without being rough, so tightly was she clinging to him. ‘I’ll see my day with you, boy,’ he ground out, the threat soft but deadly as he looked at his brother.
‘You and whose army?’
The defiance in the words belied the expression on Adam’s face. Hannah had seen him jump when Jake had made to get to him and she knew he was frightened. She didn’t blame him. He was half the size of his brother. She lowered her eyes again, not wishing to add to his humiliation. Then ten-year-old Stephen came rushing into the kitchen, saying, ‘Mam, Mam, the Father’s just arrived,’ and she experienced a feeling of deep relief as the tension broke.
As Adam left the kitchen with Stephen, Rose turned to Jake who was now pulling on his cap and muffler. ‘I shall have to go and say hello to Father Gilbert.’
‘Aye, you go, Mam. I told you I was only staying for an hour.’
‘Thanks for all the stuff, lad.’ Rose’s voice was low, apologetic. ‘And for dropping by. It wouldn’t have been the same if I hadn’t seen you although that’s daft in a way. New Year’s Eve is only a night like any other.’
‘Aye, mebbe.’
‘Lad, about Adam—’
‘Leave it, Mam.’ And then as though to make up for his brusqueness, Jake said quietly,‘It’s all right, don’t fret. I’ve had folk say worse and it’s water off a duck’s back. You go and enjoy yourself the night. If anyone deserves a bit of jollification, you do.’
‘You sure you won’t stay?’ And as her son lifted his eyebrows, she bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry, lad.’
The catch in his mother’s voice brought a tenderness to Jake’s face. ‘I’ve told you, don’t fret.’ Turning to Naomi who, like Hannah, was keeping her gaze fixed on the sandwiches they were making, he added, ‘You make sure your mam enjoys herself tonight. All right, lass?’
‘Aye, all right, Jake.’ Naomi’s face had brightened. The fight had been averted. Jake wasn’t going off in a strop which would have meant her mam would have been miserable the whole night long. All was well.
Jake walked across the room but before he stepped into the scullery and left by way of the backyard, he turned. ‘Happy New Year.’
Hannah added her voice to those of Naomi and Mrs Wood, but when after a moment or two Naomi said, ‘I wish Jake could have stayed for once, Mam,’ she remained silent. She was glad he had gone.
In the back lane Jake stood for a moment breathing deeply with his eyes shut. Then he drove his fist into the brick wall with a sickening thud, not so hard as to break bones but enough to relieve some of the murderous rage inside him. At least, that’s what he told himself he was feeling - rage. Never for a moment would he allow himself to term it pain.
The cocky little snot. He flexed his bruised hand, wiping the blood from his knuckles with his handkerchief. Showing off in front of the Casey lass.
It was a fine night, the snow crisp with a coating of frost beneath his feet and the air as sharp as a blade. He looked up into the black sky. It was high and star filled, beautiful, and for once the stench of the privies was absent. Nevertheless, the sensation which always assailed him when he came into town to visit his mother, that of being hemmed in, enclosed, was as strong as ever.
He hated the town.The gridiron acres of Sunderland’s narrow streets with their back-to-back terraced houses and heaving humanity, and the tight-packed industries bordering the river were stifling, choking the life out of their inhabitants. As a lad he’d sometimes walked along the river bank, past the factories and workshops, roperies, glassworks, potteries, limekilns, ironworks and shipyards, all the time wondering what he was going to do when he was grown up because even then he’d known he couldn’t stomach the colliery.
His mother had always insisted his fear of being shut in had come from the months he’d been in hospital as a little bairn. He unconsciously touched the left side of his face. He didn’t know about that. What he did know was that living in the warren that was Monkwearmouth was not for him. He didn’t fit in, in more ways than one. He smiled grimly. And he hadn’t wanted to fit in.
He began to pick his way down the narrow lane, careful of the ice underfoot which made walking treacherous. There were more lights than usual in the windows, it being New Year’s Eve, and once he’d emerged into Southwick Road there were more folk about too. He’d already decided not to take a cab and continued down Southwick Road into Sunderland Road, but it wasn’t until he’d walked a couple of miles and North Hylton Road stretched before him that he began to breathe more easily.This area was more open, with just the odd house and farm dotted here and there, and by the time he had reached the old quarries at the back of Hylton Red House, the lights of the town were far behind him.
It was only then he permitted himself to acknowledge the truth which had been gnawing at him since he had left his mother’s house. That little lass in the kitchen had been scared to death of him. He’d noticed before she was nervous and on the quiet side but he hadn’t been sure if it was him or whether she was the same with everyone. But tonight when she had looked at him he had known. He disgusted her. Why it should bother him when he had been used to a similar reaction from people most of his life he didn’t know. But it did. Damn it, it did.
He stood for a moment staring over the white fields in front of him before turning off the main road and into the narrow lane which led to Clover Farm. The night was quiet and still, every twig on every tree and bush in the hedgerow either side of the winding lane outlined in silver tracery against the moonlit sky. The frozen tufted grass was especially lovely, each blade encrusted and edged with filigree frost-work. It brought the mingled pain and pleasure that beauty always produced in his chest and he shook his head at what he considered shameful weakness. He would rather cut out his own tongue than confess that such things - the sun setting like a ball of fire in a copper sky, shimmering films of mist rolling over a field in the pearly light of dawn, even a nightingale’s song - had the power to create a rhapsody in his soul. He was different enough already without adding to it.
He could remember the very moment he discovered he wasn’t like everyone else. He had been five years old and the day had started when his mother had set him on her knee and explained he was going to have a new da along with a new brother and sister. Their own mam had died, like his da, but now they’d be one family again. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? He’d thought so. Grandma Hedley had never let him play out in the street with the other bairns and the thought of playmates had been exciting. But his new sister had screamed with fright at the sight of his face and had had to be taken home early.
There had been no mirrors within his reach at his grandparents’ house where he and his mother had lived since he’d returned from the infirmary just after his second birthday. Later that afternoon he’d crept away into his grandmother’s hallowed front room, used only on high days and holidays or when the priest or doctor called at the house. He had pulled a chair over to the small black-leaded fireplace which held a dried flower arrangement and peered into his grandma’s brass-framed mirror above the wooden mantelpiece holding two candlesticks and a clock.
He had stared at his reflection for a long time.When he had finally climbed down and wiped his eyes, restoring the chair to its place by the door, he had understood why the pretty little girl who had come to the house had been so frightened. The very next week he had started school and the limited but happy world within the four walls of the house was gone for ever. There were folk who labelled the animal kingdom as cruel. He had discovered animals couldn’t hold a candle to humankind.
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