i 57926919a60851a7 (27 page)

BOOK: i 57926919a60851a7
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Cissie had found her voice enough to say, "Do ... do you want something?"

"Yes, I want something." The big woman walked towards her.

"I want me man back. I've come to give you a word of advice. It's just this. If you don't stop 'tidng him away I'll have you hounded out of the place, an' I can an' all. Where is he? in there" --she nodded towards the other room"--sleeping it off?"

"M... Matthew isn't here."

You're lying! "

"Well" --Cissie straightened up"--go and look for yourself."

Rose Watson turned away and went to the opening of the door, and there before her was Matthew striding up from the track.

Standing with her back to the poss tub, Cissie put her hand to her throat and gripped it as she saw him bend forward as if about to spring. Like this he stopped for a moment, then walked slowly up to his wife; and after staring at her while a bitter silence enveloped them, he said, "Get away home."

"Why should I? It's free land, I'm out for a walk. You're not the only one that can take walks."

"Get yourself away home."

When she didn't move, he cried at her in a terrible voice, "I'm warning you. Rose. And remember what I said last night. I'll carry it out to the very letter. Do you hear me?

"Cos I have power over every penny, and I'll do what I said."

At this her body jerked as if she had been prodded from behind, and, her mouth in a straight line and her dim knob bled which emphasized her ugliness, she walked past him and across the slope to the road where she had left the pony cart, and he, standing looking helplessly at Cissie, said, "I'm sorry. But I can promise you it won't happen again; she'll never come this way again." And at this she had become afraid and, gripping his hands, she had begged him, "Matthew, please, don't touch her. It... it isn't her fault. If you touch her it will only worsen things, you know it will; it'll really be the end then."

And he had soothed her, saying, "Don't worry. I won't lay a hand on her;

I have other weapons, the money. I've threatened to sell everything up an' go off. And you know, it's a funny state of affairs, but I'm empowered to do just that. She has no say over what she's got; I'm master over the mill and the money, and the property; and she thinks more of the mill than even she does of . " He didn't finish but looked down; then after a moment he said, " Don't let it worry you.

You've seen the first and the last of her here. Believe me on that now. "

And she did not see Rose Tumbull again; nor did she see Matthew so frequently; a month would pass before he came. But now there was a difference about his visits, for when he came at night he always took her in his arms and kissed her, and she did not repulse him for he was all she had for herself.

And then came the day when she heard the child laugh.

She had been out looking for Joe. Although Joe was nearly six and growing fast and promising to be big made, which was, in a way, a guarantee of his not being picked up by the scrapers, she still felt uneasy when he was out of her sight for any length of time. And it was another irony of fate that since she had money to buy food he had become more adept at trapping rabbits; he even came in with a hare now and again, and these fly creatures kept to the open land.

This day he had been gone for two hours or more, and although she had been up on the high ground and called and screened her eyes against the sun she couldn't see him. Then, feeling that he had been caught, she had run along the road that led to the North Lodge and towards the hole in the bottom of the wall, and it was when she was still some distance from this place that she heard the sound of childish laughter, and she was brought to a stop and bounced back as if she had come up against a wire fence. There it came again, playful, childish screeching, the noise a child made when at play; and as the sound went ahead of her she began to follow it, and she was almost up to the place where she hoped to find Joe when the laughter faded into the distance.

Leading from the rough road there were the signs of what appeared to be a fox track disappearing into the tangle, but she knew that it was no fox track but Joe's lead to the wall, and she called softly, "Joel You Joel" And when she received no answer and no sound came from the undergrowth she went up on the fell again and gazed about her. And it was as she stood thus that she saw Joe come crawling from the hole on to the road, and at the sight of him she was filled with anger and, rushing down the slope, took him by the shoulders and hissed at him,

"Where do you think you've been all this time? Why couldn't you come when I called?"

When he was free from her hands he looked up at her in surprise and, hitching his clothes straight, said, "Oh, our Cissie, I couldn't come out. I didn't do it on purpose, they were there with the hairn at the corner. I ... I daren't move."

Her mouth opened and closed a number of times before she said, "You...

you could see the hairn?"

He nodded twice.

"How?"

"From the space where the trap is. It's right near the end where they've cleared. There's a part where you can see right across into the park. I... I thought maybe's they were going to clear right up to the gates and they would find the hole; but they didn't, they stopped dead at the corner where the wood starts."

"How long have you been watchin', I ... I mean the child?"

He blinked his eyes and looked to the side and said, "A few weeks. It happened when I came in the afternoon to see to the trap, not in the morning 'twas then I saw him."

Her voice was quiet as she asked, "Why didn't you tell me afore?"

He kicked at the dust on the road, he looked at his fingernails, he scratched his forehead, then muttered, "You couldn't have got in, the hole's not big enough."

Tenderly now she looked at his averted face. This wasn't the reason why he hadn't told her; he didn't want her to be hurt. Joe was older than his years, he knew more than a six-year child should. He was impish and full of fun but he was also thoughtful and caring; he, next to herself, had missed Richard more than any of the others, perhaps because he was a boy.

Very quietly she asked now, "Does he come out at the same time every day?" and Joe, looking quickly up at her, said, "Aye, when it's fine.

But. but you couldn't get in, our Cissie. "

"No," she said.

"No, I couldn't, I know that. Come on." She held out her hand and together they went back to the dwelling.

The thought of the child behind the high stone wall and Joe's hidey-hole in the bramble haunted her. She knew she mustn't enlarge his entry to the undergrowth for that would give the show away; and there were times when the gentry out riding came along this road, and they had sharp eyes, had the gentry.

But after days of thinking her mind led her to an oak tree. The oak tree stood on the verge of the road with only a foot or so of its trunk exposed to a height of six feet or more, and there were ribbons of ivy circling even this part.

When one evening, in the twilight, she examined the tree she saw that if she cut the strands of ivy the tangle of bramble could be pushed back from it like a door, that is if she could dear a way behind it.

It she could accomplish this then she could cut a path through the tangle to the wall, and along it right up to Joe's hole, then enlarge that so she could crawl through. But one thing at a time.

It took her nearly a month to make the passage to the hole because, to be on the safe side and to make sure that no one on yon side of the wall would hear her, she went out before first light in the morning.

Only once did she meet anyone. It was the morning when she had reached the hole in the wall. When she heard the distant rustling in the thicket she thought for one panic-stricken moment that there must be someone of the same mind as herself; and when the creature lumbered forward and a badger, more scared now than she was, scampered away from her feet she lay back against the wall and actually laughed silently to herself.

The most simple part of the long process was the removing of another four stones to make the hole sufficiently large for her to crawl through, because a hundred years of weathering had perished the mortar.

By the time the sun came over the horizon she had the stones out and, lying flat, dragged herself through the three-foot hole into the dim miniature glade that Joe had made for himself over the years.

Breathless, her heart pumping against her ribs, she peered through the deep gloom. Then, attracted to where the gloom lifted a few feet above her outstretched hands, she pulled herself forward over the ground and, rising to her knees, which brought her head in contact with the bramble roof, she saw the opening. It was about three inches long and at an angle that caused her to keep her head on one side. It was like looking through an elongated keyhole, and in it, pictured in the rising morning light, she saw the park.

When she shivered with the cold she brought her gaze from the hole and pushed herself backwards, and as her foot hit a thick branch sticking out of the ground and the root above her swayed she twisted swiftly round and righted one of the supports that Joe had placed, like pit props, along the side of the clearing. A few minutes later she pulled back the bramble door near the oak tree and stood for a moment looking right and left before stepping on to the road.

When she reached the habitation Joe was standing at the door and he greeted her with a crack in his voice, saying, "Where you been, our Cissie? Where you been? I heard you get up. Where you been again?"

She led him back into the room and, stirring the fire, pulled him down towards her and whispered, "Listen to me. I can get through the wall...."

"But you...."

"I said listen to me. I've been workin' on it for weeks; I'll show you this afternoon how I done it. Now what I want you to do is this. When I go in there I want you to play about on the fell, and when I'm comin'

out I'll whistle like a pee wit and if there's nobody on the road you don't do anything, but if there's anybody comin', you'll whistle back.

Now you understand that?"

"Our Cissie." His face was screwed up.

"It's not very high in there, you mightn't be able to turn round.

You...."

"I've been in and I got out again. And listen to what I say. You're not to tell the others, do you hear?"

He nodded at her.

"On fine days we'll take the sack and go lookin' for wood or some such.

Anyway, they know I always try to keep you in sight so they won't be made to wonder."

Long before two o'clock that same afternoon she was lying in the bramble waiting, and when, in the far distance, she saw through the slit two figures, one tall and one small, zigzagging through the trees, she put her hand to her mouth.

It was a full five minutes later, when her view of them was clear, that she almost cried aloud as the child, running away from the nurse, came straight towards her as if into her arms.

He was wearing a dress made of some cream material. It had a deep collar and wide sleeves and it flounced up and down as he ran. Her eyes were stiff with staring. One hand was pressed tight on her mouth to check her breathing. He was not more than three arms' length away from her when the nurse caught him and, swinging him about, said, "No, not that way, dearie. You mustn't go that way," And he laughed and struggled in her arms, then ran away again. The last Cissie saw of him that day was the soles of his white kid boots as he fell on his face; and when this happened and a wail filled the air she instinctively thrust her hand forward into the brambles. Then pulling it back bleeding, she held it to her mouth while she sat back on her hunkers, her head on her chest and the tears raining down her face.

This was the beginning of her daily vigil. Only when the weather was so bad that she knew the child wouldn't be allowed out did she resist crawling through the hole in the wall. There were days when it was fine and she caught no glimpse of him, and she worried in case he was ill. But quite suddenly he would appear, and nearly always accompanied by . him. And he was always running and laughing.

Then came the day when she saw the lady with them. She saw them afar off and she thought. He's showing him off to company. That His Lordship loved the boy she had now not the slightest doubt; it was in his face as he looked down at him, it was in his voice as he called to him. There was, she thought, a sort of pride in him concerning the child, and this puzzled her greatly. When they gradually came into her view she found herself staring at the lady, and when memories stirred she shook her head against them trying to deny what her eyes were seeing. The figure had developed; it was full and taller but the face was the same, dark, not only the eyes and brows and hair, but the expression was dark, forbidding. She had come home. His daughter had come home. She was moving nearer and nearer; she was going to walk down the path. She could have put her arm out sideways through the bramble and touched her skirt.

She heard His Lordship say something to his daughter. She didn't take in what it was. Although she couldn't see her now, she knew she was standing still; she felt that she was looking at her, glaring at her through the thicket, and she slipped from her elbow on to her side, and some dry twigs cracked beneath her.

She let them get well away before she moved backwards and through the hole, and when she reached the oak tree she stood for a time leaning against it before she pulled aside the dead ivy-threaded bramble door;

and having passed through it she still kept her back pressed against the tree and slanted her eyes up and down the road, for there was no Joe to give her a signal now, and hadn't been for some weeks past since he had started at the mill.

As she walked over the tells she found she couldn't stop trembling.

That woman frightened her; she had frightened her when she was a girl, but now she looked even more ferocious than she had done then. And what effect would she have on the child? That the child was happy she had to admit; but would it remain happy living with that woman? And there was another thing; if she was back . was he back? What would she do if she ever came face to face with him again?

BOOK: i 57926919a60851a7
10.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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