Feathers in the Fire (15 page)

‘Be quiet, girl!’ His face had a bleached look, even the mottled pattern of blood veins on his cheekbones had paled.

She remained quiet for a moment while they stared at each other and then in a controlled but stiff voice, she said, ‘He’ll be gone tomorrow and if you’re wise, Father, you’ll say nothing against him to Winnie, for things are not so bad over the countryside that she wouldn’t be snapped up; there’s still Farmer Hetherington, and his wife is still alive. And I must remind you, Father, that I cannot take on any more, my hands are full from morning till night, I’m . . . ’

Her words faded away as she watched his head droop heavily forward and his shoulders hunch as he lowered himself down into the chair, and with his fists pressed together on the desk he brought out in a voice like a groan, ‘Don’t . . . don’t keep on, Jane.’

When, after a moment, he raised his head and looked at her she was so swamped with pity she wanted to put her arms about him and press his head to her, for she had never seen such need for comfort in any human being; his need she felt was greater than her mother’s, or the child’s . . . or her own . . . What was her need? She refused to go into it now; this was something that one wrestled with when unable to sleep. And anyway, it was only a part of life, for as the Bible said, the body was not one member but many. The Bible also said, ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have no charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.’

The thought urged her to carry out her desire and comfort her father, but as she made towards him he turned his head from her as if in shame, then rose from the table and went out of the room. The moment was lost never to return, and she knew this and was saddened to the depths of her . . .

When she went to collect Amos from the kitchen, where she had left him, Molly turned from the stove and said, ‘It’s no use, Miss; might as well try to tether a streak of lightnin’. He scooted out of the door afore I could stop him.’

‘Oh dear! Molly; why didn’t you hold him?’

‘Hold him, Miss? I tell you I’d just as soon try to hold on to the bull. But don’t worry’ – she gave a thin smile – ‘he’ll come to no harm, he’s gone down to the Armstrongs.’

‘Dear, dear! He’ll make a nuisance of himself.’

‘I don’t think so, Miss.’ Molly lifted the black stock pot from the stove and brought it to the table.

Jane noticed that Molly had made no further reference to the visitor in the Armstrong household, so she herself did not bring his name up. Under the circumstances it would, she felt, have been indelicate.

Molly now said, ‘Would you like a blackberry pie made, Miss? The bushes at the back are laden.’

‘Yes, that would be nice. Could I gather them for you when I get the child?’

‘No, no, Miss; you’ll get all messed up and you’ve got your new print on. I like that one.’ She nodded at the mauve print dress that Jane was wearing which had a thin gold stripe running through the material; the skirt was full and the bodice fitted her narrow waist. ‘It suits you; mauvy tones suit you.’

Jane flushed slightly as she passed her fingers over the front of the skirt; she was feeling a deep embarrassment as if she were being paid a compliment by a man, for it was the first time anyone had ever remarked about her clothes, or her appearance. She thought again that Molly, in spite of everything, was a kind creature.

Molly watched her young mistress go hurriedly from the kitchen, then she went to the window and watched her progress across the yard. She was running like a young girl should. She watched her pick up her skirts away from the slime as she jumped the drain down the centre of the yard, and aloud she muttered three words, ‘God help her.’ She was as sorry for Miss Jane at times as she was for herself. In a way they were both in the same boat. Miss Jane had as much prospect of getting married as a bitch in a brothel; and then there was herself; she’d had two offers in the past year, not counting Will Curran, who watched her like a chained dog. Both the offers would have given her a better life than she had here, so why hadn’t she taken them, why? In the past she had refused to answer this question; now as she returned to the table she cried at herself, ‘Stop damn well askin’ the road you know.’

He was along there, a few hundred yards from her, Lord Davie Armstrong . . . God Almighty Armstrong, and he had never opened his mouth to her. She thought she would have dropped down dead when she saw him through the dusk two nights ago, and she had tossed and turned half the night as she lay with the child at her side, knowing that there were only two layers of brick atween them.

The dawn had come before she closed her eyes, for she had faced up to the fact that she had been a bloody young fool. Yet she wasn’t going to take all the blame, she wasn’t going to pour more guilt on herself than she had already done; she had enough to carry; she looked back on the episode with the master as a sort of summer lunacy. Her Grannie Talbot used to tell her about such happenings when she was a girl, things that happened after the Harvest Supper; things that had made her put her hand across her mouth and giggle and say, ‘Eeh! Grannie, you’re spinnin’ ’em.’ Now she knew her grannie hadn’t been spinning them; the master had taken her and, let her face it, she had enjoyed it. When John Curran had first taken her there had been no joy in that. She hadn’t wanted it, but he had forced her and she had been frightened. But John Curran was a babe in arms, in fact an unborn child compared to the master, and yet what had taken place between them had not frightened her. Looking back on it though, over the distance, the mere thought of it now sickened her; it was as if she had been mesmerised and changed into another being.

If she had at that time taken any of Mother Reckett’s medicine she would have blamed it on that, for Mother Reckett’s doses had been known to do funny things to people; she had known that the mistress had visited Mother Reckett for she had found the hiding place where she put the bottles. She had never let on to anyone about that, not even to Winnie, and certainly not her ma, though her ma knew all about Mother Reckett. The old woman had got rid of three of them for her ma, although each time it had made her feel bad, and she had never been right since the last do, tired all the time. Anyway she couldn’t blame Mother Reckett for what had happened between herself and the master, she only knew that her whole attitude towards him changed when she had stood on the side of the bog with the child in her arms. She had known then that the master was the kind of man who would sell God to the devil if it suited him; and it was strange that what rankled in her mind most was that she had allowed herself to be flayed by him. She did not think of it as a piece of utter hypocrisy, she just thought that no real decent man would have put her up to it, then done it himself. But the bitterest pill of all she was constantly swallowing was the knowledge that through her madness she had thrown away the chance of getting a decent man. And not only that; she had a feeling for Davie Armstrong, not the same kind of feeling she’d had for the master, it was different, deeper, going right back to the days when she first began to follow him into the fields when he was crow-scaring. He had never pushed her off when she pestered him, and as she grew up she had thought of him as her property. She was fourteen when she had slapped their Lena’s face for saying that she, too, liked him. She had wanted to tell him about John Curran, but she didn’t dare for she felt he would have bashed his face in for him, and she knew it was very important that everybody should get along with everybody on the farm.

But from the night the master had gripped her thigh she seemed to have lost her senses, gone stark staring mad. Strange, she had thought no less of Davie, but the master’s passion and attention had drugged her almost to death. It was as if she had chewed foxgloves and raw poppies.

The whole thing now appeared to her like a bad dream, something that could not have happened in reality. But she had only to look at the master, watch his thin legs in the cords and polished gaiters hanging each side of a horse; it was at such times that she knew it wasn’t a nightmare for she had seen those legs, hairy and bare, prancing and dancing like a dervish.

What madness got into people! She couldn’t understand it. She couldn’t understand why, when Davie Armstrong wouldn’t look the side she was on, when his contempt for her was deep in his eyes, that the feeling inside her for him should grow, and keep her lying alone when her body ached for lack of use.

She picked up her basket and went out of the kitchen by a side door, through the arch into the paved court, and through a gate into a lane that led to a copse where grew the low blackberry bushes.

There was a tangle of undergrowth behind the bushes and she hadn’t put out her hand half-a-dozen times to pluck the berries when Davie walked round from behind the bushes.

Although he had been in her mind up to that very minute, nevertheless the sight of him made her start. Determined not to speak first she went on picking until he said, ‘Why hello, Molly Geary’ – it could have been that they had just met after a long time, except that his tone was weighed with mockery – ‘Fancy running across you. I would have thought you would have been up and gone to the big city years ago.’ And then she turned on him saying, ‘Think you’re funny, don’t you?’

‘Me funny? I never thought I was funny in me life . . . me funny?’

‘You’re born but you’re not buried yet.’

‘Tut! tut!’ He made a clicking sound with his tongue. ‘Where’ve I heard that afore. Aye, me da; it’s a favourite sayin’ of his. And it’s a daft saying when you come to analyse it. Of course we’re born, and some of us get the chance to live . . . ’ He paused and their gaze held before he finished, ‘Long enough to know that they’ll be buried some day.’

‘You still don’t believe me, do you?’ Her voice was quiet now, full of pain. ‘You’ll go down to your grave not believin’ me; nothing will ever make you think other than I meant to do it, isn’t that true?’

‘Aye, that’s true.’

‘Well—’ she gulped in her throat. Then her voice rose. ‘You’re wrong then, you’re blasted well wrong. You think as you do ’cos you wanted to think the worst of me. It gave you something else to pin on me . . . t’other wasn’t enough.’

It was a few moments before he said, ‘T’other was enough, but you went a long way with the bairn afore you changed your mind, didn’t you?’

‘Aye, I did; right to the very brink. But I did change it. I’d changed it afore you came on the scene and played God . . . You’re good at playin’ God, aren’t you?’

‘Sailor! Sailor!’

They both turned sharply and looked down the road, where Amos was hobbling towards them on his crutches, followed by Biddy. Both children were panting when they came up to them and Amos cried, ‘I’ve been looking all over for you. Do you know I’ve been looking all over for you? Where have you been?’

‘Up to London to see the Queen.’

Amos didn’t follow this, but Biddy did. On a high clear laugh she looked up at Davie and chanted, ‘Pussy cat, pussy cat what did you there?’ And laughing, Davie finished with her, ‘I – chased – a – big – mouse – from – under – her – chair.’

‘Good, good!’ As Davie looked kindly down on the child, the while ignoring her mother, Amos put in sulkily, ‘I don’t like that.’

‘You don’t?’ Davie turned to him. ‘Then you don’t know a good rhyme.’

‘I know ’nother one, Mister.’ Biddy was smiling up at him, and without more ado she repeated:

What’s your name?

Mary Jane.

Where do you live?

Up the lane.

What do you keep?

A little shop.

What do you sell?

Gingerpop.

Amos was supporting himself now on one crutch, the other was lifted breast high, the point end thrust towards Biddy, when Davie cried, ‘A-ah! you do young fellow, you do. Remember yesterday?’

Their eyes held, the boy’s and the man’s; the crutch was lowered and tucked under his arm, and then he said, ‘She shouldn’t say lines to you.’

‘And why not, boy?’

‘Because I don’t want her to.’

‘Oh! Well, let me tell you somethin’, young man.’ Davie went down on his hunkers before them both. ‘What you want, and what you’re going to get out of life, are two different things, and the quicker you learn this the better. Now off you both go on to the green there and play.’

‘I want you to come.’

‘I’ll come in a minute; go on with you.’ He gave the boy a push that almost overbalanced him, then stood watching him hobbling off, sulking, following Biddy this time. When he turned towards Molly she was staring at him, and he returned her glance for a full minute before saying, ‘There’s not much resemblance atween them, is there? None at all I should say. But it should show somewhere, don’t you think?’

Her lips were quivering, and the muscles of her face worked before she said from deep in her throat, ‘You’re a cruel bugger, Davie Armstrong! That’s what you are, a cruel bugger . . . ’

Jane did not have her private word with Davie until about an hour before his departure the following day. Her determination to reprimand him with regard to his treatment of Amos had faded, but even if it hadn’t she doubted if she would have been able to carry it through.

Thinking of what to say to Davie Armstrong when out of his presence was a simple matter, to say it in his presence was a different matter altogether. Although his manner was pleasant, even jocular, he had an air of authority about him which she had noticed from the beginning. Nevertheless, they talked of Amos, and in the boy’s presence.

Davie stood at one side of the hearth in his mother’s kitchen with Amos clinging to his leg while Jane stood at the other side. She watched him put his hand on the boy’s head and ruffle his curls, curls that had taken her quite some time to comb into place; and he looked down on the child while he addressed himself to her, saying, ‘He wants a firm hand; as I said yesterday, the bit wants tightenin’.’ And when he added with a glance at her, ‘Though it’s none of my business, Miss Jane,’ she prevented herself from answering, ‘You’re right, it isn’t.’