As Meat Loves Salt (46 page)

Our future companions came the next day to talk dreams, drink ale and eat meat pasties. Aunt was keeping away, leaving Becs to serve everything, and so all the duties of hospitality fell on us two. I was eager to redeem my past wickedness, and would have welcomed any idiot as a brother had Ferris told me to.

Eunice Walker, she of the heart and arrows, arrived first, in a gown all of pink stuff. A servant brought her to the door, but was not suffered by her to enter: I wondered if her visit was being kept a secret from someone at home. The lady was in her forties, plump and coquettish, and ogled both Ferris and me straight off in one practised glance. I saw she was so accustomed thus to flirt at men, it was become her ordinary way of looking. The bowing and curtsying over, she began:

'How many men and women will you have under your command, Mister Ferris?'

'Not my command,' he hastened to correct her. 'The thing is to be fraternal, no trace of servitude or the army about it.'

A very good notion!' She walked up to the bookcase and examined the titles quite openly, as if offering to buy them. From behind I noticed that she wore false hair: the few strands that had slipped out from her cap were much greyer than those framing her face. 'So,' she went on, 'how many persons?'

I began to smile to myself. 'There might be perhaps five women, Madam. Be assured you will not lack for the company of your own sex.'

She eyed me behind her smirk. I recalled seeing her or someone very like her, stranded in pink, the day we walked home in the rain.

'We have about equal numbers of men and women,' said Ferris more kindly. 'Persons of all conditions: spinsters and bachelors, married and widowed.'

She nodded in acknowledgement.

'What draws you to this meeting?' he asked her. 'Have you skill, er—?'

'O, I excel in salting, pickling and all kinds of preserves,' she answered.

'But Madam, the work at first must be rough: there will be the ground to break, and all still to plant and sow,' Ferris urged.

She smiled, showing black teeth. I was now sure that this was the woman I had seen sheltering in the doorway.

'I'll tell Becs to start bringing up the drinks,' I said. On the way down I allowed myself a quiet laugh.

The girl was lounging in the kitchen, reading a letter. She looked up eagerly as I entered, then her face blanked over and she drew herself up tall.

'There's a fine sight upstairs,' I said to her. 'A pink galleon. Pray bring up the ale and you'll see it.'

Becs folded up her letter, laid it on the table and turned to the stone jar of ale. I saw her jaw set as she tilted it to get a hold.

'Let me take that,’ I said. She let it rock upright and went immediately, without thanking me, to get the drinking vessels from the shelf.

'Are we still friends?' I asked.

'You have no need of me,' Becs replied.

'Nor you of me, I guess. But may I not help anyway?'

She ignored this and went out of the room with the cups. I followed with the jar.

When I entered the room Mistress Walker's eyes darted towards me; she wasted no time on the girl. Ferris seemed ill at ease. My arms trembled as I set the ale down on the table.

'Could you bring up some of those little pies you made?' Ferris asked Becs. She curtsied demurely and turned to go.

'Mistress Walker has just been telling me—' he began, when there was a knock at the door below. Becs ran down stairs. We all waited in an awkward silence, lapped in smiles, until the upper door opened to admit a gentle-looking young man, hatless and dressed in sober black.

'God give you good day, Masters! I trust this is the right place? My name is Wisdom Hathersage. Good day, Madam.' I wondered what was become of his hat.

'I am Christopher Ferris, this is Mistress Walker and this my friend Jacob Cullen,' my friend rattled off. We all made a leg; I wondered how many times we would go through the same thing. Mistress Walker seemed rather taken with Hathersage, whose features were delicate. He had a brown skin and very dark eyes, almost not English. Put Zeb and himself side by side and you would see a great difference, my brother being altogether superior in beauty and vigour, but describe them both to another party and he would conclude they were much the same.

'Tell me, Mister Hathersage, was it difficult for you to come here?' I asked, remembering what he had written.

'My master is in poor health,' he answered. 'If I wish to leave the house for any length of time he needs another man in, and that requires notice.'

'Could not a maidservant help?'

'He falls. The maid is not strong enough to lift him.'

'Ah,' said Ferris.

'But you can leave him on the Sabbath?' I asked.

'Yes, I am at liberty for church or other godly pursuits, because his sisters come on that day. Between them they manage.'

'Poor, poor gentleman!' sighed Eunice Walker. 'Has he been afflicted since birth?'

'Why, no, Madam. He was cut in the head during the war, and has never been the same since.'

'Is he much deformed?' She shuddered fleshily.

'No.' He turned to Ferris. 'I am not sure, Sir, what you are seeking in those who are to live alongside you.'

Ferris hesitated. 'We must mostly take one another for better or worse. But there's no use starting unless all will do heavy work.'

'I know something of gardening,’ offered Hathersage.

Ferris began, 'And can you—' but was interrupted by the arrival of three persons together, the Domremys and Christian Keats, and we had the round of introductions to go through again. I poured ale for everyone.

Catherine and Susannah were fine-looking, the first young and the second not yet old. They were as alike as sisters, the late Mister Domremy having, after the fashion of many men, married a woman resembling those of his own family. They had the clear unpocked skins of milkmaids everywhere, and the hair which dropped forwards out of their white caps (which were laundered very fresh) had a reddish sheen to it. Eunice Walker studied them for half a minute before going to stand close by Keats.

These younger women were excited at the thought of our venture, and it seemed to me that, like Ferris, they were much taken with fantastical notions. The late Mister Domremy had been a great lover of harewitted pamphlets, deeming them wholesome even for women's light brains. Now Catherine and Susannah held forth freely on their ideas, and perhaps showed more sense than some of the men, for they could undoubtedly do useful work. They spoke in particular of a new receipt they had discovered for a cheese which matured early and made excellent eating, and of the use of simples to cure diseases of the udder. An innocent good humour shone from them — their enthusiasm was not of the sour-faced kind — and I thought that women so sanguine and practical would be able to turn their hands to most things.

Keats, the widower, was a very different type of person, and appeared to be suffering from melancholy. Like Hathersage, he was of a brownish complexion, but in his case the skin was a sickly yellow and gave him a liverish look. There were deep sags beneath his eyes, yet to judge by his coal-black curls he was, or should have been, in the prime of manhood. He turned his drooping countenance shyly, but not unkindly, upon the Domremys as if wondering how anyone could be happy in this vale of tears. When he told me that his youngest child was but three months old I understood him better.

'Your wife departed this life three months ago?' I asked.

'Two. She never recovered from her last lying-in. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away'

'Amen,' said I.

Keats bowed his head. 'God be praised in all things. He has seen fit to try me in the furnace of affliction.'

I ventured to think Ferris would find him dispiriting company: I had never yet heard my friend thankful for the spiritual benefits of Joanna's death. But, I reminded myself, this man's bereavement was very new, and Ferris no longer hot and bleeding.

All this time Mistress Walker was prowling near so as not to miss a word, and she now began speaking to Keats of the great sorrow she had felt when her own dear husband, a veritable Saint, had passed away of the fever. As she spoke she drew nearer to Keats, edging between him and myself, until she at last cut me out altogether. He did not seem sorry, so I left him to her consolations.

More folk arrived: Jonathan and Hepsibah Tunstall, the woman carrying their boy. The child was a roguish little thing, and once set down he rolled about the floor, crowing and unfastening the company's shoes, which caused much laughter. The parents were both strongly built, clearly used to hard work: they looked much as country servants do, if their food be good. Ferris caught my eye and I could see we were of one mind.

'Why would you leave your employ?' I asked of these two, for they had spoken of their master as being a decent man.

'London is not for us,' the husband answered. 'The Master came into a house and business here, but we had rather be in the old place. Without offence, Mister Cullen, the filth oppresses us. We would rather dig and sow.'

I thought how it had oppressed me also, at first; and yet there were most precious pleasures to set against the stinks. I guessed the Tunstalls must be like those plants that, once moved from their first plot, never thrive: no matter how starved the soil, it is what they know.

Ferris asked, 'Could you not return where you were, and seek a place?'

Surprised, Jonathan returned, 'That were to throw ourselves on the parish,' and I thought how poorly my friend, for all his goodness,

understood a servant's life. 'Besides,' the man went on, 'if we are to do farm work, we may as well work for ourselves. Who knows, if things go right, Parliament may grant us the land.'

This answer pleased Ferris, for it was exactly to his own tune. I longed to ask him why he thought Parliament should concern itself with us at all, but could not put the question in company.

There were also Jack and Dorothy Wilkinson, these two somewhat older than the Domremys and the woman pretty far gone in pregnancy. For all that, she was evidently the keener of the two; when I remarked how the husband kept shaking his head and saying, 'I know not, I know not, best let see,' etc., I saw how it was that their letter was come from the wife, and felt that they would not join us in the end, or would not stay, for his heart was not in it. But they were pleasant enough, and the meeting might tip him one way or the other. They stood a little apart from the rest, examining the room and the company and conversing together in low voices except when addressed by some other person.

Alice Cutts came up and at once showed herself too old and feeble to do the work. Ferris spoke with the utmost gentleness to her, showing her what manner of hardship she must undergo, and made her take a pie and some ale before she departed.

The next to appear were Fleming and Botts, and by ill luck these two not only arrived together but knew and disliked one another. Fleming might be twenty, and affected as much dash as was possible for one neither a Cavalier, nor rich: a stained jacket, most likely some man's cast-off, with brocade down the front, and a pair of bucket boots. He swept off an elaborately trimmed hat to reveal pale curls which he kept pushing back from his brow with a languid hand. The effect was somewhat spoilt by the smell of horses which clung about him and reminded me of Harry Beste. His letter had said he knew something of smithing, but he looked too frail to beat out metal. I asked him could he shoe a beast. He replied that he should think he could, for he was experienced in most things pertaining to horses. 'I drive the coach to Durham and back,' he told me.

'Not all in one go,’ put in Botts, whose flat voice grated.

'No.’ Fleming was evidently peeved at admitting it. 'I take some of the stages.'

'How many days from London to Durham?' asked Ferris, curious.

'Four days, more. No time is guaranteed.'

"That's a fearful long journey,’ put in Keats.

'Near four hundred miles.'

If Fleming could work in metal he was valuable. But I could not see this man trenching, or sleeping in a ditch with his fine feathered hat over his face. What a fool I had been to lose us Harry.

Fleming and Botts could have been exhibited as examples of natural antipathy. All the time that Botts was standing near me I could catch that peculiar sweetish whiff which exhales from red-haired people. He was red altogether: red hair, jowls adorned with spreading scarlet grog-blossoms and inflamed blue eyes, the whites of which appeared to be bleeding. He had the build of a barrel. His unfortunate clothes strained to hold in the flesh pouring from the neck and sleeves of his jacket, swelling into a great bulbous head and hands meaty as pig's trotters.

'You assisted in surgery on the battlefield?' asked Ferris, rigid in face and body. I judged him to be gripped by as violent a disgust as my own.

'Aye. Seen a few sights there—!' He downed the ale in one gulp and held out the vessel to me. I filled it, wondering did he take me for a servant: Ferris had introduced me as his friend not five minutes before.

'Man with the whole of his face shot off, nothing left but shreds. In the end we found a hole in it — the throat.'

I shivered at his
in the end,
wondering how long those clumsy paws had prodded and probed.