The Pesthouse (16 page)

'Well, I don't know.'

'Just ask her, then.'

'What do you want, he says.'

So this was hardly normality. For all their goats and windfalls, their garden gates and washing lines, these were people living with fear, a fear that extended even to a single woman with a child. If this had been a village in the America that Margaret and the Boses had been born into, she could have expected a smile, a little curtsy from the girl. Her father would have reached his door not with a stick but with the immediate offer of a bench to sit on and a cup to drink from. In small communities like this, if not in places such as Ferrytown, where there were too many people for these observances to survive, passing guests could expect a dozen offers of a bed for the night. Neighbors would have competed 'for the honor' of having
her
dent in
their
mattress. Who could be more generous? Who could promise most?

Margaret could remember being told by Grandpa that when he'd been young — and that was going back a bit! what, fifty years? — he'd gotten lost high in the hills, during a blinding storm. But he'd been taken in by a family of fur trappers and allocated their only bed. They had no meat to give him for his supper, and so the father of the family had walked across the valley in the rain to his nearest neighbor's quarters and, finding him asleep, had stolen a hen and brought it back to pluck and roast for Grandpa. When the neighbor showed up early next morning to protest about the theft, the trapper simply said, 'We had a guest. He had to eat. We thank you for your hen. I've got a herd of sheep, still out in the pasture half a day from here. You'll know which ones. My sign is three green bars. Next time you pass them, take two, take three, whatever you like. It makes no difference. We had to feed our guest.' That used to be America.

But all Margaret was getting from this small, fat family was hostility. Showing them the baby made no difference. Her offers to undertake any work that needed doing were ignored. Her smiles and her determined cheerfulness were wasted. And every time she made to take a step closer to the girl, her father lifted his stick and growled.

It was a struggle, but in the end she got her way, though only after pulling off her scarf and threatening to sit in the middle of their path 'until the both of us, my kid and me, are full of worms'. She liked the sound of that, 'my kid and me'.

'I feel sorry for that child, and that's the only reason,' Pa said eventually, justifying his surrender to the bullying and evidently dangerous young woman. Now that he had seen her scalp, the man was desperate to find some way to compromise and give his visitors a good excuse to leave. So finally he let her sit on the garden wall, among the woody stalks of dead vegetables, and feed Bella a little goat's milk, sweetened with honey and simmered. 'We'll not want that pot when you've done with it,' he said. 'Just throw it down. I want to hear it break.'

The girl stood and watched, breathing heavily, too uneasy to ask any questions of her own.

'How far is it before we reach the ocean?' Margaret asked her.

'I've never even been.'

'Ask your father. Has he been?'

The answer was a shock if it was true. Perhaps he was lying, giving Margaret false hope, just to see the back of her. He'd never 'witnessed' the ocean himself, he said, calling from the safety of his front door, and he hoped his fortunes would never make him want to or need to. He touched the end of his surprisingly elegant nose for good luck. But he had been to the nearby town many times — a one-day walk — to trade the produce of their holding, and he had heard that less than three days forward on foot from there, in the direction of sunrise, there was a river that was widening and salty and that breathed in and out twice a day, spreading to its banks and then receding, as if its lungs were being pumped by some outrageous giant 'a thousand times my size — and that's not small'.

'Is that the ocean there? Is that where we can take the ships?'

'It's near. It must be near. When there's salt in the water, there'll be ships in water, too. Sea ships. That's what I've heard,' he added, repeating what everybody who'd never witnessed the ocean said about it, that you know it 'like an old friend' when you come to it, that it roars at you like a cougar, that it smells like blood, that the ocean's got only one bank, that if you drink a cup of it your piss turns blue.

Only four more days to reach the salt? The Boses did not seem to know whether this was good news or bad, nor did Margaret. At this rate it was possible that they might make it onto one of the last boats before the sea packed in for the winter. Exactly what they'd wished for. But four days was too soon to abandon any hope of finding Acton and Franklin, of just discarding them like corn husks and getting on with life as if they'd never been born. How could they go aboard a ship and say their farewells to America without first knowing what had happened to their men, asked Margaret, as they progressed among the little fearful farms toward a skyline that seemed to promise larger habitations.

'What other choice is there for us?' asked Andrew Bose. 'We can hardly ask the sailors to wait around to watch the sea block up with ice while we stay on shore hoping for a miracle. There never is a miracle, in my experience.'

In Andrew's view, the country was too wide and long for them to be able to pick out a single group of horsemen. And even then, even if they ran the rustlers to ground, they'd need another miracle to free their son, if he was still alive. 'No, Melody and I have already thought it through. If Acton was still a child, then maybe things would be different. You have a responsibility to a child. But he's a man. A married man, or was. He's taller than me. He's got more years ahead of him—'

'Let's hope that's true,' said Margaret.

'Let's hope it's true, sure. But also let's be sensible. Acton could be anywhere. Your Franklin could be anywhere. They could be two days to the south by now. They could be on a ship already, as far as we know. You think they'd be squandering their chances for us? You think they'd hang around for us?'

'Your son could be fifty paces down the road and looking for his daughter.'

'Don't argue, Andrew, not with her,' said Melody, and then went on to justify herself. Whatever choice they made would be a cause of misery, so maybe it was wiser that they made the choice that took them to a better place. 'That's what Acton would want us to do, if he was here. We've got the girl to think of, haven't we? It's not a selfish thing. It's you that's selfish in my eyes, just thinking of yourself and disregarding us.'

Margaret would not express an opinion yet. She listened to the Boses, but would neither nod nor shake her head. They were not at the coast. They couldn't see the ocean. They couldn't guarantee passage on a ship. They couldn't even guarantee a ship. So it was premature to punish themselves with cruel and difficult decisions. Anything might happen between here and there. She adopted her bullying voice again. 'Come on,' she said. 'There's walking to be done. Let's get on with it.'

So the subject of Acton and Franklin was dropped from their conversation (not to mention the subject of the unfortunate Joeys: the potman's wife was probably at that very moment cracking jugs and water ewers on their behalf with no suspicion that her husband and her son had been picked out of their lives as easily as berries from a bush). Margaret and the Boses simply pushed ahead, keen to discover if there was any truth in the big man's promises that the salt water was only four days distant.

That afternoon they almost reached the market town that he had mentioned. They could see its pall of smoke and what appeared to be a log tower, with a banner flying from it. But the days were rapidly shortening, and so, too early in the afternoon, they had to hunt for shelter. Their quarters for the night — a sheep pen — were cramped, no room for lying down, no room for lovemaking. They had to eat and then sleep with their chins on their knees. Margaret did her best to hold a cheerful conversation. She retold the story that she had been reminded of that day, with her grandpa and the stolen chicken and the sheep with three green bars. But the Boses — how could this be the same couple who had made love so noisily just one night previously? — seemed preoccupied and unamused. They thought the trapper's hospitality had been foolish and unbusinesslike. 'I'd take three sheep for a single hen anytime,' said Andrew. 'Any fool would.' He did not understand why Margaret laughed and why his wife — after a moment's reflection — joined her. Margaret was recovered from her illness now, but she was exhausted and roughened by the journey and by the trauma of losing both Franklin and her family. Was she thinking only of herself and disregarding others, as Melody had claimed? What the Boses had said about taking passage on the first available boat might seem callous, she thought, but they were probably right. Franklin might have been taken in any of a thousand directions. He might have already met any of a thousand fates. If she had a duty now, it was only to herself, and possibly, in the short term, to little Bella. Obtaining goat's milk for the child that day had been immensely pleasing, especially when the girl had settled afterwards and slept so contentedly. Carrying her had been easy.

Tomorrow Margaret would do the same: identity the safest house that had a cow or goat and use her wiles to procure more milk for her charge. She could not imagine parting from the child. She had nothing else, and there was no one to value. Bella was her only friendly flesh. So maybe she was now obliged to bite her tongue and stay on with the Boses, whatever they might decide to do, just to make sure that their granddaughter was given the attention — and the future — she deserved. It was strange, was it not, that a man that she had known for scarcely seven days and a child that she had known for only three should hold her thoughts — and her prospects, possibly — in their grip.

The rain outside the sheepfold was thickening and sleety. Margaret set her back against two corner walls and twisted her body so that Bella could lie across her lap, and they could share the scarf, the blanket and the tarp. It would be the coldest night so far. She offered her little finger to the girl's hard gums. But Bella pushed the hand away. Her lips were chapped and sore from the salty food she'd had and from the cold, so Margaret dug for wax in her own ears and applied the honey-colored secretion as a lubricant. The child licked her lips, stopped crying for some moments when she tasted sweetness, and then cried out for more wax, tugging at Margaret's fingers with her tough and tiny hands.

MARGARET NEEDED TO bully for milk three more times before her fortunes changed. For the better and for the worse. She valued these trips away from Andrew and Melody, and she knew they were glad to be free of her for a while. It was their chance to rest and recover their strength, as well as an opportunity to talk and complain freely behind her back. Having Bella entirely to herself, helping her to stand for a moment, rolling stones for her to crawl after, allowing her to explore her mouth, ears and nose, tickling her — all that mothering was a joy.

Margaret had promised to reward the girl with milk. So over those few days, by trial and error, her begging and beseeching skills improved. She'd tie her scarf, put Bella on her hip and head for anyone with goats or cows. She was ready to exploit the twin forces of a hungry and appealing child and what could be taken by the faint-hearted as a diseased skull to get her way and get her milk and any other food that might be going spare.

The least neglected habitations were the best for begging. Untidy homes, she found, and homes with little to boast of were unlikely to part with anything as prized as milk unless someone was holding a blade at their owners' throats. But tidiness suggested composure and respectability. Tidy people were more easily coerced. They had more to lose. They evidently had more to prove. Why else the public display of house plants or painted fences or trimmed hedges on their land?

Men were easier to browbeat than women, Margaret soon discovered. For men, a child was a mystery. She had only to tell a man, 'Look at my poor girl's dry lips — that's thirst — and look at her skin. Those blotches on her nose, you see? That's hunger rash. My darling's only got a day or two to live, just feel her bones,' and he would rather part with his big toe than stand accused of heartlessness. How Margaret loved her newly invented, inventive self, and how powerful she could be with certain, tidy men. But a woman, and especially one who'd been a mother, would know that just a little redness around the nose was common to all children of that age. Some kids are red around the nose for fifteen years, and never hungry once.

So Margaret chose her victims carefully. Once she'd seen a man on the land, preferably near a well-kept house, with livestock, she would approach, first greeting him in the old American way, then showing him the child (her beauty first, her hunger next, and then the red nose and the dry, chapped lips) and finally — if all of that had failed — dragging off her blue scarf to show the evidence of flux. This last act always had the most effect. Men everywhere fear illness more than women do, she supposed. But it was more complicated than that. She could not know — especially now that Franklin was not around to tell her so — that as the days passed and her hair grew a little longer, she became more strikingly unusual. In the first days after the shaving, she would have seemed ugly to most men. Her color was not good. The illness bleached her. Her lids and brows, though, were red from where each pinch of hair had been plucked out by the women in her family — her mother, her two sisters. But, except for the scabs where her grandpa's shell razor had nicked her skin, her scalp had been oddly white and ailing from never having been exposed to light before.

But now her color was a healthy one. Since Ferrytown she'd had good exercise in open air, if not good food, and she had what country people call 'ripe cheeks, sweet enough to pick'. Even if she did not remove her scarf, anyone could see she was a handsome woman. Her eyebrows were light and thin as yet, but that need not declare her as a recovering invalid and possibly contagious. The black-haired people of America did not expect those rare, unlucky redheads among them to have the forceful facial hair of normal folk. But with her scarf off and her history of contagion clearly on display, her attractiveness was now enhanced instead of betrayed. By the fourth day of her begging her regrown head hair had become tufty enough to hide her scalp entirely under a soft, springy carpeting but not long enough to hide the good shape of her face, the candor of her forehead, the set of her mouth. Her great green eyes, which might not see too well over long distances, looked to any observers — and there would be many — as if they were the largest eyes they'd ever seen. They'd wonder whether they would dare to sleep with her. Was such rare beauty worth the risk? It was.