Feathers in the Fire (14 page)

Davie stared down into the long narrow eyes and, assuming a stance, he said, ‘Well now, let’s see; when does this watch finish?’ He looked round at his mother, ‘Twelve o’clock dinner, is it?’ And when, laughing, she nodded at him, he returned his gaze towards the boy, demanding, ‘What time do you have your dinner?’

‘Three o’clock.’

‘Then at two o’clock meet me at the burn and we’ll have a swim. What about it?’ The last words were addressed to Jane; and now she blinked and stammered slightly as she said, ‘He . . . he has never been in the water.’

‘Well, then it’s about time he made a start. All right, young master’ – he pointed his finger down at him – ‘two o’clock sharp. Not a minute afore, nor a minute after. Meet me on the cow path.’

The boy stared at him for a moment longer, his face alight; then swiftly he took his arms from about Davie’s legs, scrambled on all fours to where his crutches were leaning against a chair, tucked them one under each arm, and was out of the door, all within a matter of seconds, and his voice came to them as he cried loudly, ‘Biddy! Biddy! I’m going to the burn. I’m going with the sailor to the burn.’

‘Oh dear me.’ Jane was turning hastily to the door when Winnie put her hand on her arm, saying, ‘He’ll be all right, Miss Jane; just let him go his own road. It’s got to be like that, he’s doin’ no harm. Remember he’s a lad an’ he’s got to run his energy off.’

‘But . . . but I promised Fa . . . ’ she stopped, aware that Davie Armstrong’s eyes were on her, and aware too that there was still one thing left of the second cowman, his hate of her father, and her father’s hate of him. She ended haltingly, ‘You won’t let him stay in too long, he may catch cold not being used to it?’

‘He won’t catch cold; there’s no chill on the water, I was in this mornin’.’

‘Oh!’ She stared at him, until a flush came to her face, then she turned quickly away and went out of the door. Slowly he followed her and watched her walking to where the boy was standing leaning on his crutches looking down on a little girl who was sitting on the grass verge cuddling a wooden doll, and he thought, it’s a damn shame.

He carried the boy pick-a-back down from the cow path to the burn. It was a strange feeling because there were no legs around which to entwine his arms. He carried the crutches under his arm and did not hold on to the boy’s hands clasped round his neck for he was clinging like a monkey and his arms seemed as strong as any man’s.

He did not stop at the bottom of the steps but walked along the bank until he came to the shelf of rock from which he had dived since he was a small boy. He couldn’t remember having learned to swim, only that he had once fallen in and after that it was easy. The water above the shelf of rock ran two feet deep but he had never yet touched the bottom beyond the shelf, although he had tried many times.

He sat down on the grassy bank and let the boy slide from his back. ‘There, get them all off.’ When the boy hesitated he cried at him, ‘Come on then, off with your gansey first.’ He laughed as he watched the boy struggling with the tight neck of the jersey, and he helped to ease it over his head, saying, ‘Don’t start by chokin’ yourself.’

In a matter of minutes they were both naked.

‘Come on.’ Davie held out his hand, but the boy didn’t rise from the grass, he was staring up at the firm, thickset bare body. His eyes moved up and down it two or three times, and then he turned his gaze on to his stumps with the protrusions, which should have been feet, and his face crumpled as if he was about to cry. Whether or not he would have cried he didn’t know, for the next minute he was jerked from the ground and Davie was saying, ‘No, not on all fours, stand up straight, you can walk on them. Use them like feet; come on, let’s see you. Hang on to my hand. That’s it, come on. Toss your body from side to side like this’ – he demonstrated – ‘an’ you’ll get it. Come on now have a shot . . . Aye, aye, that’s it.’

When they reached the water’s edge he said, ‘There now, you keep that up and you won’t need those crutches half the time; and your muscles will harden and be as good as any feet.’

Amos looked up steadily into his face and Davie nodded down at him, saying, ‘I’m tellin’ you, it’s true. Try standin’ straight, try walkin’ straight. Keep off your benders; that’s no way to get about, on all fours it isn’t. Come on now.’

When the water rose above his stumps and touched his loins Amos shuddered, then gurgled, then laughed aloud, and when it reached his chest he closed his eyes for a moment as if experiencing ecstasy.

‘There now, let yourself go, I’ve got a hold of you. Just let yourself go, you’ll float on the water. Move your arms . . . Aw no, not like that, not up and down like the dogs. Look, stand there a minute and watch me.’ He now lowered himself from the shelf of rock into the deep water and swam back and forth for a short way, calling as he did so, ‘Like this, see. Like this. Use your arms and your shoulders.’

When he got back on to the shelf he laughed out loud when the boy fell fearlessly on to his face in the shallow water and began to imitate him.

‘That’s it, that’s it. Well I never! You’re like a duck.’

Amos righted himself and stood up, and still with the ecstatic look on his face he began to move his hands over his naked body as if he were feeling contact with it for the first time. Then of a sudden he seemed to go mad. He jumped and waved his arms about and shouted. He did not shout words, just sounds, but the sounds indicated glee, pure unadulterated glee. When, the water supporting him, he began to prance like a mythological horse, Davie cautioned, ‘Steady on, steady on’; but Amos had found that by jumping up he went further down into the water and hit the rock bottom, which sent him up again.

It happened so quickly that Davie didn’t realise that it had taken place until he saw the body sinking into the depths; and then he dived. Head first he went through the water that appeared like a silver curtain. His mouth was closed tight but he knew that he was bawling out inside, ‘God Almighty! God Almighty!’ For a moment he couldn’t see the child; then there he was. His hand darting out, he grabbed him by the hair and in the filtered sunlight he saw the boy’s face and it had not a vestige of fear on it. So calm was the countenance that for a moment his mind cried at him, ‘God! he’s dead. He’s dead.’

When he broke the surface again he held the boy up under the armpits and he pushed him on to the ledge and scrambled after him. Then stooping quickly, he carried him up out of the water and on to the bank, and there, putting him on to his face, he began to pump him. When, after a few minutes, he realised he was breathing he turned him round and on to his back, and the boy gazed up at him, his eyes wide. Then swiftly the child thrust his arms around his neck and pulling himself up to him pressed himself close while a deep gurgle came from his throat before he exploded on a high piercing note, ‘I can swim! I can swim!’

‘Swim!’ Davie gazed into the face so close to his. His own body was trembling; he’d never had a shock like that in years. It would be odd that, having once saved his life, he had now to go and drown him. By! he was a little marler; he was going to be a handful all right. He didn’t envy Miss Jane, or anybody else who had to look after him. By God! he had got a shock. What he could do with was a drink; he was shaking like a leaf. ‘Come on,’ he said, loosening the arms from around his neck; ‘it’s time to dry off and get into your togs; enough for once.’

‘No! No!’ Amos now threw himself on the grass and began to gambol about on all fours; then lying down, he rubbed his body backwards and forwards like a dog rolling in excrement, and with much the same delight on his face.

‘Here, come on, stop your antrimartins and get into your togs.’

As he went to pull the boy upright he let out a high cry of pain, for with a lightning movement Amos had plucked a long black hair from his groin. ‘God Almighty! you young devil you. Now why had you to go and do that, eh? For two pins I’d lather you.’

They stared at each other now intently, so intently that they did not see the small figure, until Davie, catching sight of Biddy out of the corner of his eye, again exclaimed, ‘God Almighty!’ He dropped on to his face and reached out for his shirt and pulled it roughly about him. Knotting the sleeves at the back, he now looked at the little girl who was surveying them both; but before he had time to give her any greeting Amos had risen on to his stumps and was shouting at her, ‘Go away you! Go away. He’s my sailor.’

‘I don’t want your sailor; I was just lookin’.’

‘You mustn’t look. Go on, go away.’

‘I’ll not.’

The blow from Amos’ flat hand knocked the child on to her back; the next second he himself was swung round and knew what it was like to be really struck for the first time in his life. The blow across his ear was not forceful but it was hard enough to knock him too on to his seat and make him gasp, as much in surprise, as in pain.

Biddy was crying now and Davie, attempting to maintain the shirt in its precarious position, lifted her to her feet with one hand, saying soothingly. ‘There now, there now, you’re all right. Go on away with you to your ma. Go on now.’ He turned her about and tapped her bottom gently; then he returned to the boy and said sharply, ‘Let that be a lesson to you. By the looks of you you’ve had too much your own way, young man. Get into your clothes, and sharp.’

‘Jane helps me.’ The voice was sulky now.

‘Well Jane’s not here to help you now, and you’re big enough to dress yourself. If you’re big enough to belt little girls you’re big enough to get into your togs, so the quicker you start the quicker you’ll finish.’

Davie got dressed and waited patiently for the boy to get into his clothes. He knew as he slyly watched him that he was purposely lengthening the process. By! he was a strange youngster. Loving you one minute, not like a lad might but like a little lass would do, then pulling the hairs out of you wholesale the next. His granda had been right, there was a vicious streak in him, and if it wasn’t curbed somebody was going to suffer, and by what he was learning of this young gentleman it wouldn’t be himself.

‘I’m going to tell Jane that you slapped me.’

Davie jerked his head round and looked sternly into the face looking up into his, and he said, ‘Do that. You do that, and you can tell her that I’ll do it again if I catch you at the same trick. Come on, up with you, get on to your crutches.’

‘Aren’t you going to carry me?’

‘No. You’re a big fella, at least to yourself, so you walk up those steps. Get goin’.’

And casting speculative glances at the sailor, Amos got going . . .

It wasn’t until Jane was putting him to bed that night that he said to her, ‘The sailor struck me.’

‘What! you mean Davie?’

‘Yes, Davie, the sailor. He boxed my ears like Mr Geary does the boys!’

‘He never did!’

‘He did.’

‘But . . . but why?’

He blinked at her, then grinned, saying, ‘I slapped Biddy, I knocked her down. She wouldn’t go away when we were bathing. I told her he was my sailor and she had to go away and she wouldn’t, so I slapped her; and he slapped me. But I still like him, he’s still my sailor.’

Jane ignored this last, she felt highly indignant. How dare Davie Armstrong slap the child, even if he had first of all slapped Biddy; children often slapped each other. She would have a word with him about it, indeed she would. He would have no right to do such a thing even if the boy had been an ordinary boy. Had he no feelings for his handicap? She was surprised at Davie Armstrong, especially as the child had taken to him and had openly shown affection for him.

She couldn’t really believe it; perhaps the child was romancing. Anyway, she would find out tomorrow, she would ask him outright. And if Amos had been speaking the truth, well then – she paused in her thinking. How did one chastise a man like Davie Armstrong had turned out to be? He had been a headstrong youth before he had left the farm, even Winnie admitted that, but now he was a man who sailed the seas and he had gained a certain position. Whether this had given him his authoritative attitude she didn’t know; what she was aware of was that he wasn’t a person one could chastise. Still, if he had struck the child it was her duty to do something; after all, he was but a labouring man . . . Oh really! Some part of her flounced at her priggishness, but she defended herself by muttering aloud, ‘Well, you just can’t let a thing like that happen and do nothing about it.’

Before she went to sleep she definitely decided to have a private word with Davie Armstrong in the morning. But before nine o’clock the following morning she was standing in the dining room defending him . . .

‘Why,’ said McBain angrily, ‘did you not tell me that Armstrong was back?’

‘It . . . it never crossed my mind, Father.’

‘It never crossed your mind!’ He brought his closed fist down on the dining-room table. ‘You are no child, so don’t act like one. You’re bound to know that the very sight of that man will make me want to use a gun on him.’

What she did know at this moment was that five years ago the enraged man before her would not have thought of using such an expression, no matter what his feelings were. She had always been aware that he had despised the more ordinary farmers round about, but now his own manner of living and speaking wasn’t much removed from theirs, and this unfortunately was reflected in the farm.

There was no real outward sign that the standard of the farm had depreciated, but she was aware that it had. The hand that had once held the reins of the business had been a sober hand, sober, strict and knowledgeable, and this made for good husbandry, but now his knowledge wasn’t used because he woke each morning to a mind fuddled from the excess of the night before.

The name of Davie Armstrong had never been mentioned from that awful night they had faced each other across the newborn child in the kitchen, but instinctively now she realised that Winnie’s son had been growing like a canker in her father’s breast, because but for Davie’s interference Molly, he felt, would have carried out his orders and there would not have been gambolling round the place like a child he looked upon as a monstrosity.

She said quietly, ‘You cannot stop him visiting his parents.’

‘Can’t I? I can turn the whole damn lot of them out.’

The muscles of her face tightened, her mouth set against the unreasonable injustice of this threat; and now, her voice rising, she dared to say, ‘You’d be hard put to it to find anyone like Winnie; you don’t appreciate what she does. Have you ever thought what it’s like looking after mother seven days a week?’