His head turned sharply towards the door now, and there she stood; and it came to him that the devil must have had a kick out of marring a face like that…And she hadn’t been touched. His thick tongue came out and moved over his lips as he watched the girl’s reaction to Ma Bradley saying, ‘You there, you’ve been saved from the workhouse, I’ll have you know. It’s more than you deserve. Have me put out of me house onto the road you would, an’ the youngsters with me. Hop…Mr Fuller here, he’s goin’ to take you with him as help; he’ll larn you to make pegs an’ baskets an’ things. But you’ll keep yourself out of the way inside the cart if you don’t want to bring trouble on him. He’s leavin’ at early light; make yourself ready.’
The face was turned full on Hop Fuller now, the right eye as far in the left corner as it could drop, the mouth agape, the lips trembling, the big left eye stretched wide, looking into the small ones under the beetling brows.
‘No! No!’
‘What!’
‘I’ll…I’ll go to the House.’
Hop Fuller’s chair scraped on the stone floor as he got to his feet, and he took three slow lopsided steps towards her; then he put out his hand and gripped her shoulder, and he stared into her face for a moment before he said, ‘You can’t go to the House. I’ve bought you. It’s all signed and sealed. I’ve set me name to it, haven’t I?’ He looked at Ma Bradley over his shoulder, and she, after a slight hesitation, exclaimed loudly, ‘Aye, that’s right, signed and sealed, all legal. You’re his. An’ now you’ll have to mind your p’s and q’s. No more ease for you, me lady.’
Hop Fuller was still holding her shoulder, and he shook her slowly and his grin showed all his teeth as he said, ‘And don’t try an’ do a bunk ’cos I’ll find you. An’ the constable’ll help me ’cos, as I said, it’s all signed and sealed legal like.’ He patted his coat pocket as he stared at her and he couldn’t understand himself at this moment why it seemed so important that he should have her, for there were plenty of maidenheads he could break at a bob a time; he only knew that now he wanted to buy her, own her.
When he let go of her he thought for a moment she was going to slide down the stanchion of the door and so he put out his hand again towards her, but she shrank back from him, then turned and bolted through the scullery and out into the yard, and there she stood looking up into the star-filled sky.
Her one desire was to run, somewhere, anywhere; but he said he would bring her back, he said he would tell the constable. She was frightened of the constable. There was no place where she could go except up into the sky where her mother and father were—she always thought of them as mother and father, not as ma and da—but before she could join them she’d have to die, and somehow she didn’t want to die, she was afraid of that too.
Two
It had rained for days, she had lost count of the number. All the roads were bogs; the horse slipped into potholes up to its knees and had to be thrashed and pulled out. Time and again the hubs of the cart’s wheels disappeared under puddled mud. She could no longer press on the crowbar while Hop Fuller screamed at her and beat at the horse. Time to her now was a heavy eternity, no beginning, no end. Pain from cold or wet or the whip had ceased to sear the tenderness within her; nothing that could happen to her from now on could, she felt when she thought at all, bring a startled flicker of response from her.
It was eight months and two weeks since she had left Ma Bradley’s. In the warm dawn she had mounted the cart. Nellie and Cissie had come and touched her hand and looked up at her, themselves dumb with the misery that was reflected in her eyes.
She had sat rigidly under the cover of the cart until the sun was well up, and then Hop Fuller had stopped and ordered her down. After she had done his bidding and gathered wood to make a fire he had boiled a kettle of water, cut up some fat streaky bacon and fried it in a small black pan; then handing her a slice on a shive of bread he had said, ‘You’ll do this from now on. An’ keep a stewpot goin’, understand?’ She had not answered, merely gulped and stared fixedly at him.
They had stopped four times that day during the sixteen-mile journey, and she had watched him carry a large wicker basket full of bobbins, laces, ribbons, bead bangles and tin charms on one arm and a string of kettles, pans and cans on the other, and walk past dogs as if they were playful kittens, for none of them barked at him, towards the kitchen doors of farmhouses, and there, doffing his battered, green-sheened high hat, ply the farm wife and her maids with his wares. That he was known to them was evident, and that he was welcome also seemed evident, for each time she heard high laughter, and twice he came away rubbing his hand across the back of his mouth as if he had drunk deep. Because he had warned her to keep out of sight and lie down in the cart until he returned, she had seen his going and coming only from the corner where the canvas was laced to meet the sloping side of the cart.
The place where they finally stopped was well off the road, well off any beaten track. He had led the horse away from the field track, over rutted ground and between hillocks until he came to a stretch of woodland bordered by a stream.
When she had clambered stiffly down from the cart she had looked across the stream into the endless distance. There was no sight of a habitation, only rough fell lands and thicket rising to high hills pink-tinted in the evening glow. The woodland to the right of her showed up like a black wall and behind her was the rutted hillocky land that they had just crossed. The fear had risen in her from where it had been banked down since the previous night when he said he had bought her; without actually being given any cause as yet, only the mere presence of him, she had the inclination to scream.
She had gathered wood and lit the fire, and he had brought from under the cart a rabbit which he skinned and dissected in a matter of minutes, breaking the limbs with his dirty hands and throwing the pieces into a black pot which he had half filled with water from the stream. From underneath the cart too he brought some potatoes and, throwing them at her feet, said, ‘Get them scrubbed and put in.’ When she had done this and the pot was on the boil he brought from a box attached to the bottom of the cart between the swinging pans a cloth bag, out of which he took some small pellets and dropped them, too, into the stew; and there arose to her nostrils a strong smell of cloves, and the smell had never left her since.
From then on she watched his every movement. He took the horse from the shafts and led it away among the hillocks; but his figure did not move out of her sight, and when he returned he passed her without looking at her, and went to the stream, where, kneeling down, he bent over and sluiced the front of his face with water. She would have liked to do the same but she seemed rooted to the spot where she was kneeling by the fire feeding it with sticks.
One minute she had taken her eyes from him in order to reach for more fuel and when she looked up again he was standing beside her. Her eyes this time got no higher than his legs; the big foot and the twisted foot were both pointing towards her. His hand came down and gripped her shoulder and she lifted up her face to his. Her right eye was hanging like a weight against her nose, there was a scream racing round inside her head. As he pulled her to her feet and pushed her backwards away from the fire she opened her mouth wide, but no sound came; not until he flung her onto the earth did her terror escape in one high wild screech, which startled him so much that his head jerked from side to side as if her voice had beckoned a regiment to her. And then he was on top of her, his hand clasped over her mouth, his own spewing oaths on her; but long before he had finished with her she was quiet…
She did not scream any more after that night, it was over and done. This was the dreaded thing, the knowledge of which had been growing in her, all the while foreseen yet sensed only, no tangible proof of it until the vileness had actually eaten into her. She had known, long before the light next morning showed her his huddled limbs lying under the dirty blanket beside her, what she was going to do that day. Constable or no constable, she was going to run away. The first time he stoppe
d at a village or a farm that was near a crossroads she would make her escape.
Two miles from Carlisle he had drawn the cart to a stop on a road beside a huddle of cottages, and before he had descended the cart two old women, an old man and a young woman, her stomach billowing out under her coarse apron proclaiming her time was almost on her, came towards him.
One of the older women was saying, ‘Hello there, Hop. You’re early this time of year,’ when the man caught sight of the figure in the back of the cart. He moved nearer, and Kirsten, forgetful for the moment, looked at him and he at her; then crossing himself swiftly and muttering in a high squeak of a voice, ‘God come atween me an’ the evil eye,’ he shouted to the women. ‘A cockeyed one! An’ on a Friday.’
The women then came to the back of the cart and gaped at the bowed head, and the young one exclaimed under her breath, ‘Name of God, an’ me time on me!’
‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’ Hop Fuller put his hand on the young woman’s shoulder and said cheerily, ‘She can work it, she can put a curse on or take one off. Aye, she can. Don’t worry.’
They turned from Kirsten and stared at him, and the oldest woman muttered thickly, ‘She’s female. It always means evil on a female body. Jim Dowell, away over in Greenhead, his wife gave birth to one two years gone and he’s out of a job now; herdsman he was and the farmer went broke; living rough they’ve been this last six months. I tell you there’s no luck where there’s a cockeyed woman. Now on a man, it makes no matter.’
‘She’s different.’ His smile was broad. ‘She can put the good or bad eye on you. There was a woman over in Maryport. She had a bairn with twisted legs, the rickets you know, and she put her hands on the lad, no more than two he was, and she said to the mother—An’ mind—’ He now put out his palm and wagged it up and down as if weighing something on it. ‘That woman was scared to let her near the child at first, but she’d seen so many bow-legged brats an’ she didn’t want hers to grow up the same; so she crossed herself, an’ as I said, that one there, she touched the child, and she said to the mother, “Feed him on liver; hen’s liver, duck’s liver, liver from anything that walks on two legs, no beast’s or sheep’s, but give him the milk of such, goat’s or cow’s and he’ll gradually straighten up.” An’ begod, as true as I’m standin’ here, the boy’s on his pins now an’ they’re almost as straight as yours.’ He pointed to the old woman’s. ‘An’ that’s only two years gone.’
The smaller of the older women, who hadn’t yet spoken and possessed a small shrivelled face out of which peered round bright eyes, slanted them towards Hop Fuller, saying as she did so, ‘Two years since? You hadn’t her along o’ you two years since; it’s not a year gone since you were by this way.’
‘I know I hadn’t.’ He laughed now a short laugh. ‘She’s me sister’s child who went and died an’ so I took her on. I couldn’t do else, now could I?’
‘No, no.’ They were all nodding their heads now. ‘An’ it’s good of you.’ It was the elder woman speaking again. ‘Aye, it’s good of you, Hop, for even if she has the power in her nobody’s goin’ to believe it; she’d be hounded from dog to devil around these parts with a look on her like that, an’ if she was to meet up with a sailor, you could bet your life that’d be the finish of him. They tell me there’s not a cross-eyed woman in any of the ports.’
‘They tell you true, they tell you true.’ Hop Fuller nodded from one to the other. And now he put out his long arm and, gripping Kirsten’s chin, jerked it upwards, and he turned the left side of her face towards them, saying, ‘There now, isn’t that a picture? Where would you find a bonnier than that? Look, she’s blinkin’ on you. That means good luck. There you are. Away now, me poppet.’ He slapped Kirsten playfully and pushed her gently backwards into the dim regions of the cart. Then picking up his basket of trinkets, he said, ‘Come now, and look what I’ve brought you; there’s luck on you all the day.’
So she did not try to make her escape after all; the conversation had told her what to expect if she ventured out on her own.
When they reached Carlisle he bought her a cheap shawl which he told her to drape over her head so that it would cover her right eye.
It was the following week, as they were leaving Carlisle, he told himself that later on when she fattened a bit he would make a patch that she could wear for, looking as she did, he’d have no trouble in letting her out. And not have to wait for fair days either; there were farmers along the way who would pay good money for a try on her.
It wasn’t until August that she realised she was going to have a child. She had been sick morning after morning and felt ill, but she did not associate it with being pregnant, although she did associate it with the fact of how Hop Fuller used her. Nellie, Cissie and Peggy had whispered together about such things, about women and men, but they had never included her in their tattle. When the fairs came Nellie didn’t come in until late, and Ma Bradley never went for her; her forbearance seemed always to be connected with the clink of coppers on the kitchen table. Nellie had never spoken of her escapades, at least not to her, but she had guessed that the whispering concerned her late jaunts. Now she knew what the whispering had been about.
Hop Fuller must have known for some time of her condition and with devilish insight he detected the very moment when the reason for the cessation of her monthlies dawned on her. He had looked at her, holding her eyes; then a paroxysm of laughter had gripped him and he had leaned over the yellow shaft, his arm round the thick end of it where it joined the cart. But it was in this moment, too, that there was revealed to her his secret, although she wasn’t fully aware of it at the time; which was perhaps just as well, for although he would not have killed her for carrying a child, in fact he was amused by this happening, he would have done away with her without the slightest compunction if he had suspected her for a moment of knowing what was hidden in the thick ends of the two cart shafts.
It was as he bent over the shaft and gripped the upper end that she heard the faintest click and fancied, just fancied, that a piece of wood on the bottom of the shaft moved. She would have taken it as a trick of the light but for his body becoming still and the inside of his elbow sliding down towards the front of the shaft while he turned his head slowly and looked at her. It was a protective instinct that made her turn away just before his eyes fell on her…
They had passed through Haltwhistle and Haydon Bridge and come to Hexham before she connected the sliding wood under the thick end of the shaft with his long absences at night.
It was his rule to set up camp outside a town or a village and there to stay for two or three weeks; and it was nearly always towards the end of the long camps that he would go out in the night. Sometimes he would say he was going rabbiting and tell her to get herself to bed. The next morning there might be a rabbit or two, but more often there wasn’t. She always knew when he returned for he would come and stand over her, and if she was asleep his very presence would waken her, but she would remain motionless, feigning sleep. If she was sleeping outside he would stand by her for a long while; if she was inside the cart she would feel him scarcely seeming to breathe, waiting, she knew, for her to move. She, in her turn, became wily, turning over and moaning. Very often after she had simulated restlessness he would go around the cart and to the shaft. She had just sensed this for she never heard him move, he was utterly soundless in his movements. Yet during the day when he walked his feet clip-clopped, and she had noticed that his lame step was exaggerated when there were people about.
December and January were cruel months. At the beginning of December they had returned to Hexham, gone through it and over Black Hill and down to the moor, then upwards into the hills and to a cave, where evidently he had been many times before. She liked the cave, if it was in her to like anything. It was cold even with the fire on, but it had not the death chill of the open fells.
He did not take her with him on his journeys to Hexham now. He had no fear of her running off; wh
ere would she run to?
She liked the cave, too, because it gave shelter to the horse; and that was the only softness she saw in Hop Fuller, his affection for the horse. He might flay it out of a bog hole, might lash it through the driving rain, but when he took it out of the shafts he would find it some shelter and give it a good feed. But, of course, without explaining it to herself she knew that his kindness sprang from self-interest, for where would he be without his horse?
When the snow half blocked the entrance to the cave they sat one on each side of the fire huddled in old blankets and sacks; and the hours would pass and they wouldn’t speak, at least she wouldn’t speak. If all the words she had spoken since she had been with him on the road had been set against time, they would not have amounted to five minutes, and they were mostly monosyllables.
Around Christmas time he had got in a store of liquor, raw stuff from a home-made still, and one night, warm inside and talkative, he had asked her what she remembered of her people, and she had answered, ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing? But you were six.’ he said.
Yes, she was six and she did remember her people. Strangely, they had come very alive in her mind of late, but she couldn’t talk of them to him.
‘Ma said your da was a doctor…that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well then, where did you live, where did you come from?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Ma said you weren’t boss-eyed until they pegged out, that right?’
She had stared at him without answering, and he had repeated, ‘Well, is it?’
Still she didn’t answer, and at this he had laughed and said, ‘Funny how things turn out; ’cos your eye drops I get a wife. Here’—he had thrust out the bottle towards her—‘have a swill.’
The Slow Awakening Page 3
