God Is an Englishman (9 page)

Henrietta turned her back to drop the bags out on to the gravel, but when she faced around Mrs. Worrell had already waddled as far as the door, so that the girl, GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 38

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with a little cry of dismay, ran across the room, threw her arms about her, and kissed her perspiring cheek.

“Darling Martha! I made sure you’d stop me. Why are you doing this? Is it because you hate my father?”

Demonstrations of this kind embarrassed Mrs. Worrell and she shrugged herself free. “Nay, lass,” she muttered, “there’s far worse nor Sam Rawlinson around.

Besides,” her brown eyes half-closed as though searching the past, “it was kick out or go under where your father started from, but nobody would have wed him to t’wrong lass! Makepeace Goldthorpe indeed! Sharing the bed of a lass I’ve raised.

I’d see all of ’em burned first, along o’ t’mill!” She went out and a moment later Henrietta saw her beckon from the foot of the stairs. She whistled softly to Twitch, moving along to the front door that was standing wide open. Outside, at the den win dow, she paused to retrieve her bags and looking up at the face of the west turret noted how the glare in the northern sky had coloured it coral. She knew then, with certainty, that she would never see this ugly house again.

6

Beyond the copse that bordered the wilder section of the grounds the sky over Seddon Moss was bright orange laced with crimson, and the whiff of the burning mill, and who knew what else besides, was carried for miles on the soft currents of the night breeze. It could not have been mistaken for a bonfire smell for deep within it was the smell of the city, rank and sulphurous, the stink of a dozen factory chimneys out of hand.

The smell and the coral sky scared Enoch, and it bothered the pony. Neither knew what to make of it and each, from time to time, lifted a head and snorted.

They pushed on, however, beyond the fork of the dust road that led left-handed over the common towards Lea Green and the string of halts serving Cheshire folk living south of the factory belt. It was about here that Henrietta, on her rare ex cursions to Liverpool had seen the goose-children tending their flocks on the manorial waste, but there was no one here now; just her, the scared pony, and Enoch, Mrs. Worrell’s odd-job man, who had no roof to his mouth and was reckoned half an idiot.

Because, underneath her outward composure, she was just as frightened as man and beast, Henrietta decided to concentrate her thoughts on remembering how he had wandered up to the backdoor one winter’s day, honking his willingness GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 39

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to sweep the drive free of snow in exchange for a drink and a bag of crusts.

Henrietta had pitied him then and so, in her practical way, had Martha Worrell.

She filled his belly, set him to work, and gave him a place to sleep, two planks laid along the rafters of the gardener’s toolshed. Since then Enoch had been the gardener’s drudge, but the staff called him the Boffin Boy, for the “boffin” was their name for where he slept. From time to time she had seen him at work in the yard and about the flower-beds, washing down setts, grooming the carriage horse, or hoeing and weeding under McEwan’s direction. She had thought of him with compassion but genteel compassion, the kind one felt for blind beggars standing outside the Corn Exchange. Now, by a miracle, or series of miracles, he was her secret agent, helping her to escape from the clammy embraces of Makepeace Goldthorpe, and she warmed towards him, wishing with all her heart that she could afford to reward him with a bright new shilling when he left her to await the train at Lea Green in obedience to Mrs. Worrell’s instructions. But she could not afford such generosity. It would have to be a penny, or perhaps, if a train was due, two pennies.

About a mile down the track the last of the timber fell away, and they began to cross a wide stretch of open moor. The glare in the sky remained constant on the right, where lay Seddon Moss, and over her shoulder Henrietta could see streaks of crimson in the blue-black fringe of horizon. She could contemplate the devastation without any feelings other than relief. Sam could build another mill. She had but one life and could not afford to share it with Makepeace.

Then it happened, suddenly and without the slightest warning if one discounted the interval of airlessness and oppressive silence that had endured since they emerged from the trees. A shaft of lightning forked across the whole width of the sky, its tongues leaping down on the glow in the north-east as though eager to join in such a bonus display. And within seconds of the glare thunder rolled from west to east, a long, long caravan of empty barrels trundled across the arch of the sky, pushing other barrels before them and trailing a string of laggards behind.

She was aware at once of the effect upon Enoch and the pony. Enoch began to honk, just like one of the geese that grazed here abouts, and the pony stopped dead, bracing itself against the shafts so that the trap tilted violently and the basket-trunk, reposing on end against the box-seat, slithered over the edge and thumped down on to the road. Henrietta cried out and Enoch turned on her, mouth open, eyes almost starting out of his head, and then the whole countryside was brilliantly lit by a second flash, far more extensive than the first, and the thunder crashed down on them like a moun tain avalanche, sealing them between GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 40

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walls of booming, thumping, ear-splitting sound that sent every thought but terror skittering across the moor for sanctuary.

This time the pony reared, and although she could not hear Enoch’s terrified honks on account of the thunder she knew that he was screaming, for his mouth was wide open and his tongue flickering like a snake’s. He dropped the reins and threw both hands across his face, and as the trap spun in a half-circle Henrietta lost her grip upon the rail and half-rolled over the shafts and down on her hands and knees in the road. The dog Twitch, who had been cowering be side the holdall, leapt after her, and when the third flash lit up the sky the pony was already tearing across the open moor, with Enoch hunched in the driving seat so that he looked like a mound of luggage rather than a boy.

It had all happened so quickly that Henrietta had no time to gesture or call out to him to stop. Before she rose upright, conscious of a smarting pain in her palms and knees, the trap was already fifty yards away and heading towards the main road at a prodigious pace. She saw it once again, silhouetted against the fourth flash, but then it looked infinitely far off, a speck on the empty landscape. Then, preceded by a few heavy drops, the rain began to fall in great, hissing sheets, solid water bucketing out of a world of darting flame and stunning uproar.

She acted solely on the promptings of instinct, trudging back along the road to retrieve her trunk, but by the time she reached it she was dripping wet. She stood there for about a minute, water cascading over her head and streaming down her shoulders, so that her shawl stuck to her and small rivulets dribbled from its ends, losing them selves in the ridges and flounces of the crinoline. Then another blind ing flash revealed the shepherd’s hut built of cunningly stacked stones and roofed with turf, no more than ten yards off the road, and she ran to it, the dog yapping at her heels. There was no door but inside it was warm and dry, and, to an extent, the cacophony of the sky was shut off, as though ten thousand romping children had been banished to another part of the house. She lay on her side gasping and whimpering, the dog close against her breast, the basket-trunk under her head. And presently, while she still trembled, the storm rumbled and grumbled across the moor in the direction of Seddon Moss, and the rain settled to a steady downpour that fell on the turf roof as a shower of peas.

How long she lay like that, or whether or not she dozed, she could not have said but presently reason began to assert itself, its herald a fall in body temperature. The front of her, where the terrified Twitch crouched, was warm, but her back and shoulders grew cold under the dripping shawl and she realised, if she was to survive out here at all, she would have to make some attempt to help GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 41

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herself. She put no faith in Enoch returning to look for her. If he reached home at all he would be most likely to leap out of the trap and seek the shelter of his loft. He would not, perhaps, be questioned by Mrs. Worrell until morning, and even then he would have the greatest difficulty in making known to her what had occurred. He might even lie about it, implying that he had seen her as far as Lea Green, and if this was so Mrs. Worrell would assume she caught a train, write her letter to Nelly, and sit back to await a reply. In these circum stances it might be days before she was missed.

The very bleakness of the situation injected courage into her, but it was not the courage of desperation that had caused her to flee from the embraces of Makepeace Goldthorpe. She now saw her survival as a kind of apprenticeship in the craft of freedom, an ordeal set her by Providence to test her nerve and hardihood, and because she was Sam Rawlinson’s daughter she began, albeit slowly, to take stock of her reserves. Putting aside the dog she carefully raised her self, finding that she could stand upright, her head all but touching the roof.

She reached behind her and grappled with the first six hooks of the bodice, and when the lowest of them did not respond to her blundering fingers she tore at the fastenings until the material parted and the skirt dropped away, settling itself at her feet. She unfastened the strap of the cage and her three petticoats, all as wet as the dress, fell by their own weight, and soon she was standing in camisole and linen pantalettes, and it was at this stage that she made a pleasant discovery.

Torrential as the rain had been it had not penetrated be yond the last petticoat, and under the tent of the skirt the lower part of her was dry and warm. She went down on her knees again and loosened the strap of the basket-trunk. She had no recollection of what she had stuffed into it and now she made another welcome dis covery, for her muff and braided mantle were there, together with two pairs of drawers and one pair of worsted stockings.

Everything that emerged from the trunk gave her infinitely more pleasure than she had experienced when the items had been acquired. There was a comb and silver-backed hairbrush, a square of flannel and a small piece of scented soap, and then, best of all, the tin of toffees, with heroes of the Crimea emblazoned on the outside. She crammed three toffees into her mouth and set about towelling her self with the mantle. The friction was exquisite. She could feel the blood flowing back into her numbed shoulders and the upper part of her arms, and in less than five minutes she was glowing and the little hut began to take on a kind of cosiness, as though it accepted her as its new mistress. Outside the rain still fell but there was no urgency in the downpour. Inside with Twitch, already asleep GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 42

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and snoring gently, it was warm and dry and safe, and she found, to her surprise, that she did not care a rap whether Enoch returned or not. Methodically she settled herself crosslegged on a truss of bracken and began the process of wringing out her shawl and petticoats. She could do nothing with the dress and threw it, together with its cage, into the far corner. It did not occur to her that she had no spare skirt.

When the petticoats were as dry as she could get them she hooked them to protruding twigs in branches supporting the turf roof. Not withstanding the storm the white glare in the east provided enough light to distinguish outlines even inside the hut that now looked like Mrs. Worrell’s laundry-room on a Monday. The thought made her giggle, the first time she had giggled since her father had told her why the Goldthorpes were coming to supper. But that was already a thousand years ago.

Presently, having eaten the last of the toffees, she pulled both pairs of open-legged drawers over her head and wore them like two short nightdresses, with the free legs hanging like empty sleeves, and this made her giggle again. Then she put on her nightgown and over the gown her mantle, pulling it closely around her, turning up the fur collar and arranging the basket-trunk and her muff as a pillow. Twitch went on snoring and the rain went on drumming. Soon the two sounds fused into a steady rhythm and she slept.

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Two

the black DwaRFs

1

He would have thought that seven weeks’ shipboard life, with nothing to do but stare at an empty ocean, would have enabled him to marshal his thoughts, but in this respect he was disappointed. As the clipper rounded the Cape, and tackled the interminable haul up the coast, his imagination atrophied. He could isolate factors, but they were unrelated to one another.

The necklace represented capital, over and above the few hundred pounds he had saved from his pay and allowances, but he had no idea how much money it might yield or, indeed, what purpose that money would serve. He was free for the first time in his life, but he had no idea what he would do with freedom. The predictability of service life had armoured him against uncertainties for thirteen years, and now he wondered if it was not too late to shed that armour and walk naked into the ring to compete with men who fought without benefit of lance, sabre, and drill-book.

His confidence, he discovered, tended to shrink with every sun set, and it was not until the vessel had entered the Channel approaches that he formed any kind of plan concerning the immediate future. It was a very indeterminate plan, embracing what he recognised as obligations, arranged in order of precedence.