Feathers in the Fire (7 page)

Winnie looked towards the door that had banged closed, and she muttered under her breath, ‘Aye, I’ll tell her, but not that she’ll care much what time you’ll be back, not from the looks of her this mornin’.’

In this moment she loathed the master. She had always looked upon him as a good master, not too easy to get on with, but fair and honest in his dealings. But now that she knew him for what he was, she realised that she had never liked him, and she hated him now for being the cause of her losing her son, and she was going to lose Davie for he was bent on leaving. Any day now he would just walk out and tramp to Newcastle, that was what he was going to do, and there find a ship, a ship that would take him round the world so that he could see places. That’s what he said. He was glad, he said, things had happened as they had done, or otherwise he would have been stuck here for life and never known what he was missing.

She stopped kneading the dough in the big brown earthenware dish and looked down at her hands half lost in the elastic mounds of paste. Her life would be empty without her lad. She had never imagined them parted. He would marry of course, oh aye, and have children, but she had imagined her life would start over again with his children. And now she was to be left with her father and her husband; her father, galloping rapidly towards the grave, and her husband a creaking door that might go on forever, yet so eaten up with rheumatics that he had forgotten, even now, how to live. The prospect of life ahead was dull and empty because the days would pass and the weeks would pass, aye, and the years would pass, and she might never see her lad again.

McBain returned at a quarter to three in the afternoon. He was wet to the skin, for the weather, which had been unusually fine for the past two weeks, had suddenly changed and he had driven through heavy rain. He was highly irritated and not a little troubled. The meeting with the Hospital Governors should have been pleasant. Usually, the manner of individual members towards him conveying their respect which he had come to look upon as his right, pleased him; but there had been something lacking in their attitude today. One, a farmer from as far away as Haydon Bridge, had slyly prodded him with the words, ‘Hear you had to do a little chastisin’ of a female yesterday gone.’

He had stared at the man fixedly for a moment; he was a person for whom he had no feeling, a type of farmer who smelt strongly of the byres even in his best clothes. He had answered him, ‘News travels fast,’ and the man had come back with, ‘As fast as the crow flies.’

The crow would have had to fly all of fifteen miles to get to this man’s farm, and he gauged that if he knew about the incident then so did the others present.

During the remainder of his short stay in the Assembly Rooms he had searched one face after another, looking for some reaction to the news that he had flayed a maidservant, for, to a man, he would have expected them to say, ‘Those days are gone, the time is past when you can flay a servant.’ All except one, that is, old Parson Hetherington, the parson was for subjugation of the flesh.

When he entered the yard no-one ran to take the horse’s head, and he glared about him before he got down from the trap. Where was everyone, skulking away because of the wet?

It was his practice whenever embarking on or returning from a journey, however short, always to leave and enter the house by the front way, but as he crossed the yard he saw Winnie coming from the direction of the kitchen door. She had a ripped sugar bag over her head, the corner not standing straight up but weighed down with water, and the expression on her face and her wet condition brought from him, ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

‘The Mistress, Master, she left the house shortly after you was gone; to take a walk, she said, but now it’s past four o’clock an’ has been stormin’ hard this two hours or more.’

‘Where did she go?’ As he spoke he glanced around as if about to dart off, and she said, ‘It’s no knowin’, Master; I’ve sent them out in all directions. I was anxious afore it started to rain an’ sent Mickey lookin’. And Miss Jane was along the road waiting for her long afore that. But there wasn’t a sight of her, and so I took the liberty of tellin’ my Davie to take Prince and ride over towards Harper Town.’

‘Harper Town? She would never get as far as Harper Town.’

‘The Mistress is a good walker, Master, and she had a hankerin’ after that part, to look at the castle over Featherstone, an’ the river. On the other hand, she might have skirted it and gone straight over to Plenmeller Common.’

‘Don’t be a fool, woman.’ He turned on her angrily now. The very thought of Delia walking as far as Plenmeller Common, let alone being on it in a storm such as this, filled him with anxiety for the mist coming down unheralded, as it was apt to do in these parts, could in a matter of seconds turn a warm atmosphere into an icy blast and blind one to direction; unless you knew the ground with the knowledge of a shepherd you could wander for hours.

‘You have no idea of the direction she took?’

‘None, Master.’ Winnie’s tone was stiff.

‘Well then,’ he cried at her, his voice still angry as if she alone was responsible for the situation, ‘she could have gone over there . . . over there . . . or over there!’ He pointed rapidly in three different directions, ‘to Whitfield Moor, or Slaggyford, or she could even have reached Glen Dhu and gone over the waterfall, or to Nine Banks and taken up residence in the Peel.’

Winnie stared at him. He was being sarky, but that showed he was very troubled, and right he had to be troubled an’ all.

He was stalking away from her when he turned and shouted, ‘Why had you to give him Prince?’ and forgetting for a moment that she was talking to her betters she bawled back at the top of her voice as she would have at one of her own men, ‘’Cos he was the fastest thing on the place if you want to know.’

Her manner checked him for a moment; but only for a moment, there would be time to deal with her later.

There was no-one in the stables, no-one in the harness room. He grabbed up a saddle and hurried with it to the stable, passing the gig and the patient standing horse. He could have gone searching in that, but only on the main roads, and then they too would soon be quagmires. Anyway, of one thing he was sure, wherever Delia had gone it wouldn’t be for a walk along the main roads. She had done this to spite him. If anything happened to his child, if this brought her on before her time he would . . . he paused, checking the thought that he would kill her with his own hands.

As he galloped out of the gate little Mickey Geary came plodding along the road towards him, and he pulled the horse up and shouted down at him, ‘Well?’

‘No sign of Mistress, Master. Bin up on Peel and as far away as the start of Whitfield.’

He urged the horse on and into a gallop and in the direction of Beltingham; this way he could take in Plenmeller Common from the east side.

The rain increased and when a distant roll of thunder came to his ears he gritted his teeth. God help her if she succeeded in thwarting him.

Two hours later, soaked to the skin, outwardly cold yet burning inside with a mixture of righteous indignation and fear, he entered the farmyard to hear sounds coming from the cow byres which told him the animals were in and had been milked. He barked at a figure crossing the yard half hidden by a sack. ‘Here! take him,’ and Fred Geary turned and came towards him.

Dismounting stiffly he said to the man, ‘Your mistress, has she returned?’

‘Aye, she’s returned, Master.’ Geary’s tone gave him no information, it was just a statement.

He drew in a deep breath and hurried from him and into the house. Winnie was coming down the stairs. She paused halfway, then came on towards him.

‘How is she? Where had she been? How long has she been in?’

She answered the three questions in their order. ‘She’s in some distress, Master. She lost her way on the Common in the rain. She’s been back this half-hour.’ Then she added, ‘Miss Jane found her.’ She prevented herself from going further and saying, ‘The child was in as bad a state as her mother,’ for she knew he wasn’t concerned with his daughter’s welfare, nor yet for that matter with his wife’s – his main thought centred round what she was carrying. He was a single-minded man was the master, always had been, except for diversions now and again. Since yesterday she had called to mind a diversion he’d had some years ago. That had been with a girl hardly out of childhood an’ all. A strange man was the master. She went on into the kitchen, he up the stairs, and without ceremony he entered the bedroom.

Delia was undressed and in bed. Her face looked colourless; her breathing was deep and inclined to gasping. He stood over her and stared at her, but she did not return his look. Her eyes were hooded, their gaze directed over the mound of her stomach towards her feet.

‘What madness have you been up to?’

She remained silent while she imagined, as she had often before, that there was no measurement she knew of which could take the depth or width of his voice when he was angry or merely displeased, the tone was so thin it flattened the words until they had no substance, yet held and maintained some element that pierced like the point of a knife.

‘You did this on purpose, didn’t you? In retaliation.’ He waited for some response before going on, ‘All right, retaliate against me, but save it until the child is born. You can spend the coming weeks working out ways and means to make me suffer for my lapse, but I warn you’ – now his body was bent over hers, drips of water from the front of his hair actually dropping on to the breast of her nightgown – ‘if you purposely harm that child, if you have harmed it by your escapade today, you will live to regret it. You know me, Delia. When I speak as now, I don’t make idle threats.’ Slowly he straightened his body, and again he waited, but still she made no response.

Not until he had left the room did she raise her eyes. Then she looked towards the door, and when she heard him shouting from the top of the stairs: ‘Winnie! See that I have hot water for bathing in the closet room immediately,’ she knew how far she had tested him, for he never shouted his orders around the house; always on his guard, always giving the good example; his tone might be icy, but he kept it controlled. Now, like any ordinary common farmer, he was bawling at his servants.

She lay staring up at the ceiling. She felt exhausted, slightly ill. She’d had no intention of hurting the child. What had happened today had come about purely by accident. She was on the Common and about to turn for home when the storm had overtaken her. At one period she had become frightened, at another resigned, and had thought, if I lie down and this rain continues all night I could be well on the way to death in the morning, and it with me. But she had not lain down, she had tried to find her way home. She had not known that she was only a short distance from the road until she heard Jane’s voice crying, ‘Mother! Mother! Are you there, Mother?’ But for her daughter’s timely coming she might have had to lie down through sheer exhaustion. That being the case he would have said it was deliberate, as he did now. But what matter? What matter anything? She was very tired and no longer cold, her body was burning, her heart was burning, scalded.

Three

‘Don’t talk of the morrow, lad.’ Winnie, her shoulders stooped with weariness, gazed sadly at her son. ‘Wait until I have time to get me breath an’ talk to you, quiet like, and know what you’re going to do. As it is I’m run off me legs over there and I’m droppin’ for want of sleep. He says I’ve got to sit by her the night again. I wonder what he thinks I am, a machine that doesn’t need rest? . . . So lad’ – she put out her hand and touched Davie’s shoulder – ‘let it rest for a day or two. He hasn’t actually told you to go, now has he? If you’re determined to go, well you can pick your own time, but wait until the mistress is on her feet again?’

‘But when will that be, Ma?’

‘Soon as the fever goes down, a couple of days at the most I should say.’

‘Is she goin’ to lose it?’ Sep leant forward in his chair. ‘A fever such as this could bring it on.’

Winnie bit on her lip and turned her head to the side as she said, ‘I hope to God she doesn’t, there’ll be hell to pay, he’ll go mad. Yet I could bet ten to one she’s havin’ her pains though she doesn’t say.’

‘How could she keep quiet havin’ pains?’ Ned cast a disdainful glance at his wife.

‘She could.’ Her voice was harsh. ‘She’s got an inner stubbornness. It doesn’t show, but it’s there. I’ve ’tected it more than once. Still I hope to God I’m wrong; she’s had enough to put up with in her life without this final blow. An’ if he were to lose his son . . . ’

‘Son be damned!’ Davie’s voice cut her short. ‘How does he know what it’ll be, has he had a word on the side with God Almighty? I bet he thinks he has, the psalm-singing holy lecher.’

‘That’s enough!’ His father’s voice cut him short, but he turned on him, crying, ‘It isn’t enough, Da. An’ don’t try to shut me up here; if I can’t speak me mind in me own home then I’d better clag me mouth up altogether, for I can’t open it outside.’ He paused and looked from one to the other, then ended, ‘By God! things want changin’ in this country; they’ve got us all so bloody nooled, we’re no better than the niggers, it wants a Wilberforce here. Charity begins at home. An’ they’re pattin’ themselves on the back for freeing the Boers from the Zulus, when it’s us that wants freeing. As do the Irish; no wonder there’s risin’s there. If they can free the bloody Boers why can’t they let the Irish rule their own country and not have them floodin’ us an’ takin’ the bread out of our mouths. They hate Parnell; I say good luck to him.’

Mother, father and grandfather gaped at him. They had never heard of Parnell, nor yet of Wilberforce, not one of them could read. The bedroom in the roof held a conglomeration of old newspapers and three books, all passed on to him by Parson Hedley. He never discussed what he read but in this moment his garbled smattering of world events made him appear as a being apart, a creature of another species, older than themselves, very learned.

Winnie felt a warm pride flood her, a pride that brought a smarting of tears to the back of her eyes. This lad of hers would go places, he would become something; with a mind as knowledgeable and inquisitive as his, nothing could stop him once he got away. No matter what her private feelings were she knew it was a good thing for him that he was leaving the farm.

To stop her tears from falling she applied herself to everyday necessities by saying, ‘That’s as it may be, but there’s a meal to see to and I cannot get it; you’ll have to fend for yourselves ’cos I’m away across again.’ She went hastily towards the door, but there she turned and looked at Davie, and as their gazes linked and held she knew he would do as she had asked and not go yet awhile.

As she went out of the front door of the cottage Ned rose from his seat and went out the back way, down to the midden. He was distressed at the thought of his son going, but could not show it. But not so old Sep. The old man, looking at his grandson, said slowly, ‘You’re fixed in your mind then, lad?’

‘Aye, Granda.’

‘Well, I’m not blamin’ you, no fraction of me is blamin’ you, but I’ll tell you one thing, things’ll never be the same when you’re gone  . . . If you take to the sea how long do you reckon you’ll be away?’

‘Hard to tell, Granda. It could be a year, two maybe, or three.’

‘Aye, that is what I was fearin’.’ He nodded. ‘Well, I only hope I’ll be here when you come back. Now’ – he raised his hand – ‘I’m not latherin’ you with soft soap, I’ll go when me time comes an’ not afore. But I can tell you this much, if I was your age and livin’ in this changing day – although I can neither read nor write I can tell the signs, you’ve only got to be half an hour in the town to see them – aye, things are changin’ and changin’ fast, an’ as I said if I was in your shoes, lad, I’d be off the morrow and matchin’ up to the times, for after all what is life but a feather in the fire. We’re all feathers in the fire; time passes on us like a lick of flame, one minute we’re there, the next we’re gone, forgotten, as if we’d never been.’

‘I wouldn’t say that, Granda.’

‘It’s true, it’s true, lad, and remember it. Kings and great men are forgotten, so why should the likes of us be remembered.’

‘I’ll never forget you, Granda, never fear.’ Davie walked towards the old man and, bending, put his hand on his shoulder. It was an unusual gesture of affection, perhaps the first open expression of their love for each other since he had been a small boy. ‘You’re a wise man, Granda. I have always known you to be a wise man, and you’ll not be forgotten, at least not by me. Anyway’ – he punched the old man playfully in the chest – ‘what you talkin’ about? You’ll likely be smokin’ that stinking old pipe of yours when I’m pushin’ the daisies up, or more likely chasing the mermaids at the bottom of the sea.’

Although old Sep laughed now, he said, ‘Don’t talk like that, lad. If you pray for anything, pray that you die on dry land and be settled to rest firmly in the ground.’

At this point the back door opened and Ned entered. Looking from one to the other he asked abruptly, ‘Does nobody want to eat?’ and at this they all three set about getting the evening meal, which was, as usual on a Friday, as on Thursday, Wednesday and Tuesday, mutton broth.

For the second night running Winnie sat by the mistress’ side, and tonight there was more need for her presence. Although the mistress wouldn’t admit it, Winnie was positive she was having pains; if not, then she must be suffering some sort of cramping seizure.

The truth was that Delia was having pains. Though her temperature was high and at times her head swam and was full of strange thoughts, she nevertheless knew she must not admit to the pains. She told herself to lie still, perfectly still, and everything inside her would settle. Anyway they were not true pains; the intervals between them, she considered, were too long to be true pains, and she mustn’t have true pains. When she thought of true pains she saw McBain’s face hanging over her. She heard his voice again saying, ‘If you purposely harm that child, if you have harmed it by your escapade today, you will live to regret it. You know me, Delia. When I speak as now, I don’t make idle threats.’

She was aware that he visited her frequently, but she never looked at him. Although her hidden strength had come to the surface and she dared now to defy him, there still remained in her a fear of him. The fear had been with her too long, and was too well founded on her private knowledge of him for her to erase it now, and she dreaded the consequences if she failed to carry his child to its time . . .

It was towards eleven o’clock at night that a pain attacked her which told her that the child was coming and nothing she could do would prevent it. She had been woken from a nightmarish dream by a grinding in her loins; it was a well remembered experience and couldn’t be disregarded. As it forced the truth on her she gripped handfuls of the bed tick in an effort to stifle her moans and still her fear. Winnie was sitting by the bedside, her head was drooped in sleep, and she put out her hand towards her, but Winnie didn’t move. The pain subsided, and she gave herself the ease of gasping.

She leaned on her side and stared towards the fire. It was bright and had recently been tended. The lamp too was burning steadily. Should she waken Winnie? No, no, what was she thinking about? She’d run straight to her master. Anyway, she was tired, worn out, let her sleep. She lay back and looked at her servant and wished from the bottom of her heart that she could change places with her. She was the centre of a close family, the pivot around which father, husband and son revolved. She envied her her life.

Winnie opened her eyes and blinked; then bending forward, said quickly, ‘You all right, Mistress?’

‘Yes, Winnie.’

Winnie put out her hand and touched the deep brow. ‘Ah, that’s better, you’re cooler.’

‘Am I, Winnie?’

‘Yes, Mistress.’

‘Winnie.’

‘Yes, Mistress.’

‘Hold my hand.’

Slowly Winnie put out her square, broken-nailed hand and clasped the slender white one held towards her, and after a moment she asked softly, ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Mistress?’

Delia didn’t answer, she just nodded, and at this point Winnie, who was never given to tears, had for the second time in two days a strong inclination to cry . . .

At seven o’clock the next morning when she handed McBain his tea in the kitchen she answered his question. ‘She’s better in that the fever’s gone down.’

As he took the cup from her he said shortly, ‘Well, is there anything else?’

‘I can’t say, Master, only that she seems tired.’

‘Rest will cure that. There’s . . . there’s no sign of the child coming?’

‘She doesn’t say, Master.’

‘Say or not’ – his voice had risen – ‘you’d be able to tell.’

And now, also for the second time in two days, her voice rose to answer his. ‘How can I tell when she gives no sign? I am no doctor.’

He gritted his teeth while he stared at her; then forcing himself to calmness, he added, ‘Well, you don’t think the fever has had any effect?’

She turned her head to the side and shook it as she answered, ‘Not that I can say at the moment, Master. Yet the mistress is not herself.’

He turned away and walked to the door. He was well aware that she was not herself, but her emotional condition didn’t trouble him; as long as she held on to what was in her and gave it a chance of life, that was all that he was concerned about at the moment.

So much did this matter take up his mind that Molly, coming out of the far door of the dairy, caused no ripple to pass through him. She was carrying two large pails of skim, and she dropped them with a clatter on a small platform ready for Johnnie to pick up and take to the pigs, and when she hitched up her full breasts with the cushions of her thumbs there was no tightening of his loins, no deep drawing in of breath.

He finished his tea and turned from the door and, coming back into the kitchen, said, ‘You think she necessitates the doctor?’

Again Winnie turned her head to the side and shook it before saying, ‘That’s up to you, Master. That’s up to you.’

Yes, that was up to him, but the last person he wanted to talk with Delia at this moment was old Cargill. He was a fusspot, a gossiping, probing fusspot. By now, like all those in Hexham, he would have heard of the flaying and were he to call, he would, with a question here, a nudge there, as he sauntered around the farm, come to the truth quicker than any judge, after which he himself would be in for a long rigmarolling admonition. No, he didn’t want Cargill here just to attend her in a fever. But if he thought there was the slightest suspicion that the child was affected then he would gallop into the town himself and fetch him.

He glanced at Winnie again. She’d know. She was a knowledgeable woman, a sensible woman, and she had an affection for her mistress, so therefore her perception would be keener.

Winnie brought his attention to her again as she said, ‘Who’s to stay when you’re all at church, Master? I think it should be somebody who could use his legs just in case; me da’s not much use in that way.’

He was walking towards the door again as he said briefly, ‘I’ll be here.’

Although Delia in her present state could not carry out her threat of denouncing him in church, he thought that her indisposition would not only supply an excuse for his absence today but also for the coming Sundays ahead until the child was born. After that he would meet events as they came. One thing he was certain of, once the boy was born he’d put her in her place again.

The pain that now rent her body seemed to split it in two. It had attacked her quite suddenly, waking her from a half-dazed sleep. To save herself crying out against it she bit tight down on the side of her hand, and when it had passed she lay gasping.

The sound of her heavy breathing should have brought Molly from the dressing room, but it didn’t. When the sweat had cleared from her eyes she looked towards the open door where, reflected through the mirror of the wardrobe in the light of the lamp, she could see the girl, her head lolling to the side as she slept in an upright chair.

She had said to Winnie, who was very tired, ‘Go and rest, I’ll be all right,’ but Winnie wouldn’t listen until McBain commanded, ‘Go to bed, woman, the girl will take your place,’ then she herself had been forced to protest and had cried at him, ‘I do not need a watchdog. Anyway, Jane can sit with me.’

To this he had replied calmly, ‘Jane has been on her feet all day, she is worn out. Anyway, you need a night-attendant, a nurse, and tomorrow morning I’m sending into Hexham for one, and the doctor too. You have been too long in this state for your health.’

She had lifted her hand and dismissed Winnie from the room. Then looking at him fully for the first time in days, she had muttered from deep in her throat, ‘I will not have the girl in this room. Nor will I have her in the house once I am about.’ And he had turned his back on her as he gave her his reply, ‘She will sit in the dressing room within call. As for your whims, we will deal with them when the time comes.’

Winnie had come up before going home at nine o’clock and said soothingly, ‘I will just take a few hours, Mistress. In the meantime, if you should feel you want me call to her and she will come and fetch me.’

She had almost put her hand out and said, ‘Sleep here, Winnie,’ but had she done so it would have shown her alarm, and so she had allowed them to install the girl in the dressing room, and for well into the night she had lain and watched her. Twice she had disappeared from view and gone into the closet room. At this, she had wanted to shout, ‘Come away from that room, girl. How dare you! Go out to your midden, that is your place, the midden.’