A Country Marriage (19 page)

‘Little Jack Horner sat in the corner, eating his Christmas pie…’ It was the first song that came to her mind and although blurted out only to drown the disturbance and suffocate the pictures in her mind, the dairy fell silent, and before she could even remember the words to the next line a door slammed behind her and boots were stomping across the cobbles in the direction of the gate. With her heart thudding, she didn’t need to look to know that it was Tom storming out into the lane or to realise that, inside the dairy, Annie was sobbing.

‘You know, I’m minded to put
some
of the cherries in brandy.’ The normality of Ellen’s voice almost made her leap from the chair. ‘Lord, you all right there?’

She nodded.

‘Fine. Just didn’t hear you coming.’

‘Aye, well maybe don’t eat no more cherries,’ Ellen suggested, looking at the number of stones in the bucket and then glancing to the dairy. ‘And perhaps the sun’s got a bit too warm for you now. Your face is awful red.’

She shook her head.

‘Maybe. I’m finished here, anyway.’

‘All right. Well, I’ve no time to do the plain ones until tomorrow,’ Ellen said, helping her up and then leading her back into the kitchen, ‘but you can do the ones going in the brandy if you want.’

When Ellen pulled a chair from under the table, she sat down and pressed her hands onto her lap to hide the way that they were trembling, the pictures in her mind proving impossible to banish.

‘Yes, all right. If it’ll help.’

‘Then I’ll bring you over what you need.’ While Ellen ferried a succession of jars, she glanced out through the back door but there was no sign of Annie. ‘Now, these
May
Duke
cherries are real sweet so you only wants about one spoon of sugar for every four or five spoons of fruit but sprinkle it in evenly as you go,’ Ellen was saying above her head. ‘Leave a gap at the top of the bottles and then fill them up with this.’ In front of her landed a bottle of brandy, and without taking her eyes from the label she nodded, grateful for the sound of Ellen’s footsteps departing back to the scullery. Lord, how she disliked this place.

*

‘Are
you
to blame for this?’ Hannah’s voice bellowed from the hallway, breaking into the quiet activity of the kitchen where, later that afternoon, Mary was standing with Ellen, preparing supper. Without stopping what they were doing, they exchanged glances.

‘No I am not,’ they heard Annie answer her. In Mary’s hand, the bread knife hovered above the loaf while next to her Ellen lowered a stack of plates onto the table, neither woman wanting to draw attention to their presence. ‘
You
know what he’s like; least thing sets him off. He’s bad-tempered on the best of days but I assure you, this wasn’t
my
doing.’

‘Well I’d better not find out that it was,’ they heard Hannah warn. ‘There’s been scarcely a word of trouble these last few days an’ now we’ve got all this stomping about. I don’t know what’s the matter with the pair of you but you could put a stop to all this quarrelling by just knuckling under and doing as he says, my girl. For heaven’s sake be a bit biddable now and again.’

‘But he—’

‘No buts, missy. Show him some obedience and a bit of respect and much of this trouble will go away.’

‘Oh I hate it when it’s like this,’ Ellen whispered, as they crept into the scullery to avoid having to come face to face with either of the women.

‘What is it that’s happened now?’ she whispered back, thinking that clearly, the quarrel in the dairy hadn’t ended there.

‘No idea, although you should have heard Tom and Annie upstairs just now.’

‘Oh…?’

‘And that’s why I werret so. Just think, one day Tom will be in charge of the whole farm.’

Watching the ferocity with which Ellen was scrubbing at a pottery bowl, she shivered. Perhaps she should have gone to Annie’s rescue earlier; she’d seen well enough what Tom could be like. But then Annie wasn’t exactly defenceless and there had been the very real possibility that she might just have made a fool of herself.

‘Maybe I’ll just go an’ wait for George,’ she said and left the kitchen to wander towards the gate.

Earlier, she had been unable to decide as to whether or not to tell him what she had overheard, and until this latest upset with Hannah, had been coming down against the idea. But she needed reassuring that she had been right not to intervene; she needed to have him tell her to put it out of her mind and think no more of it. If only! In her heart, though, she didn’t need George to tell her that the stark truth of the matter was that if Tom wanted to treat his wife that way, then that was up to him. Although now that she realised what Annie had to endure, she did feel sorry for her. It might even explain why she was so hostile at times. After all, who knew how being treated so badly by her husband affected her? Indeed, how would she herself feel if George treated her like that? No. He was nothing at all like Tom and so she wouldn’t torture herself thinking about it.

Reaching the gate, she leant against the pillar and, lost in her thoughts, started to pick idly with her thumbnail at the vivid green tufts of moss. She had a good husband. But it could so easily have been different because in truth, it was a state of affairs that had come about largely through luck.

‘You all right there?’

She looked up, squinting. Somehow, George had walked all the way down the track without her noticing.

‘What?’

‘I just asked if you were all right. You looked miles away.’

Licking her forefinger, she rubbed at the green-stained tip of her thumb.

‘Oh, yes, I was,’ she replied flatly.

Turning her towards the house, he kissed the top of her head.

‘Baby wearing you out?’

‘No, it’s not that. It’s just that there’s been something of a… mood… this afternoon an’ now everyone’s afraid of putting a foot wrong and upsetting somebody else.’ Oh, how wearisome that sounded, she realised then.

‘I told you; take no notice. Somebody’s always goin’ at someone else. Pay no heed.’

‘I
can’t
take no notice. It just ain’t possible. I didn’t want to come here anyway and now I remember why.’

‘Look,’ he said, holding his head at an angle to look at her, ‘it’s like I said a while back: there ain’t hardly an inch of space to breathe down here, which is why you and me are better off up Keeper’s Cottage.’ Just short of the doorway, he caught her arm and pulled her to a halt, lowering his voice to add, ‘And much though they wouldn’t admit to it, there’s some folk in this house who’d rather be up there too and it’s surprising the resentment that sort of envy can breed.’ She looked back at him, her lips pressed tightly together. ‘Not much longer and you’ll be home again anyway.’

‘Hm. Not soon enough for me,’ she muttered and followed him reluctantly into the kitchen.

*

Supper that evening proved to be even more agonising than usual; knives scraped on plates and mouths chewed loosely at food but when Mary looked around the table, it was to see that most heads remained bowed as everyone tried to avoid inciting trouble with an unwitting look or comment.

George, though, she noticed, had finished with his food and was looking across at his father.

‘Done cutting the hay, now then, Pa?’ she heard him ask.

Around her, cutlery quivered in mid-air as everyone seemed to hold their breath; the ensuing silence overwhelming everything except the ponderous tick of the hall clock and the sound of Thomas Strong swallowing.

‘Not quite.’

‘Oh. Only, last night it sounded as though you were expecting to finish today.’

‘Aye, we were.’

From further along the table came a smirk and flicking her eyes towards it, she was unsurprised to see Tom shaking his head.

‘What?’ Beside her, George’s sudden question made her flinch.

‘Nothing.’ As quickly as the lightness of Tom’s answer made her think that was the end to it, she heard him adopting a harder tone to add, ‘I
suppose
I was just wonderin’ what concern it is of yours, since being foreman up that estate don’t carry any weight around here, you know.’

‘It’s of no
concern
to me at all,’ George was replying. She glanced back to him. ‘I just happened to be making conversation. With Pa.’

‘Sounded like criticism to me.’ At Tom’s comment she bowed her head and staring at her dusty skirt, realised that it was
far
from the end of it. ‘You know, brother, until these last weeks, I would never have thought a foreman’s job came with enough power for it to go to a man’s head in such a way.’

Under the table, she fumbled for George’s hand and squeezed it hard. Not now, she willed. Not here.

‘It may or it may not come with enough power, as you choose to put it. But one thing’s for certain; I recognise jealousy when I see it.’

Almost before George was even finished, Tom was on his feet, his eyes bulging as his chair crashed backwards behind him.

‘Outside!’ their father bellowed into the stunned silence, such that next to him, Ellen’s hand shot out, knocking her teacup sideways and rattling its saucer.

‘Sorry. Forgive me,’ she whispered, scrambling to right her cup and mop the dregs from the tablecloth with the corner of her apron.

‘Both of you!’ Thomas roared when neither son showed any sign of moving.

Feeling George let go of her sticky hand, she could see from the corner of her eye that he was scraping back his chair, standing up and then slowly and deliberately straightening his shirt before eventually following his father and brother out into the yard.

‘Now, does anyone need anything else to eat?’ she heard Hannah’s voice break into the collective astonishment. No one seemed able to answer. ‘Well, it’s come to summat when my own family can’t even hold a civil conversation,’ they heard her remark as she rose stiffly from her own chair and picked up the breadboard with its remains of a loaf. ‘Summat
I
never thought to see,’ they heard her muttering as she carried it through to the pantry.

Some long minutes later, when the back door opened and George came back in, Mary was in the doorway to the scullery helping Ellen to finish the clearing-up.

‘Ma in the parlour?’ he asked with a glance in her direction.

She nodded. And then, quickly depositing her drying cloth on the table, she waited until he had gone into the parlour before following on tiptoe behind him. Surprised by her own boldness, she stood a pace back from the cracked door, trying to silence her breathing. From the little that she could see, the air was thick with dust motes shifting randomly in the low shafts of evening light and Ma Strong was standing by the window staring out at the summer-parched garden.

‘We really ought to make more of an effort to keep this rose in check,’ she was saying, apparently gesturing in the direction of the rampant foliage crowding in at the window’s edge.

‘Um, aye…’ she heard her husband agreeing. ‘Look, Ma, forgive me if I caused a disturbance just now. I didn’t intend it.’

She held her breath. It was beyond the pale to be listening and she had no idea at all how she would defend herself if she were caught, but on the other hand, George would never see fit to tell her anything later on, no matter how carefully she asked him.

‘I know you didn’t son,’ his mother was continuing. ‘I’m well aware that the upset wasn’t of
your
making.
You’re
not the one who needs to apologise but that’s a separate matter. All I will say, since I’m sure your pa has already said plenty for the both of us, is that you know what your brother’s like. And yes,’ she said, appearing to wave away any protest that George had been about to make, ‘I know I shouldn’t have to ask you to tread carefully on his account but in that regard you’re the better man and hold it within your gift to help keep the peace, not stir up trouble. There’s already enough of that going on around here.’

She glanced back over her shoulder towards the kitchen. What she didn’t need now was Tom to come storming back in.

‘Aye.’

‘So between you an’ me, son, let’s leave it there, shall we? And maybe it’d be best to say goodnight to Mary and then take yourself off home, eh?’

‘Yes, all right, Ma.’

‘And mark my words, when I mention to Thomas about cutting back this rose, he’ll say it’ll spoil the blooms but at this rate, we soon won’t know whether ’tis night or day in here.’

‘No.’

Turning carefully about, she started to tiptoe away. At least Ma Strong knew, then, that the trouble hadn’t been of George’s making, and deciding that she’d had quite enough of the family for one day, she slipped into the room where she slept and sat heavily on the bed.

‘What happened then?’ she asked, when a few minutes later, George poked his head around the door.

‘Let’s not talk of it,’ he replied, coming to sit alongside her and reaching for her hand. ‘Pa had a right go at both of us but it’s all over and done with now.’

Feeling how her heart was gathering pace again, she let out a long sigh.