The Slow Awakening

by Catherine Cookson (Catherine Marchant)

  Elizabeth Flynn sat at the bottom of the table. Even for such a brief, casual snack such as this, she took her place at the bottom of the table. Elizabeth was forty-four years old. She was tall and plain, and, unlike the rest of her family, there was no merriment in her eyes, but her face had a calmness about it, a settled, resigned look that gave off neither happiness, nor yet sadness. She had one outstanding quality, her voice. Whatever she said had a lilting musical note to it that set her apart. She said now to Colum, ‘Are things bad over there?’ and he turned his head slightly to the side as he looked at her and asked, ‘You mean at The Priory?’

  ‘Yes, at The Priory.’

  ‘It’ll soon be floatin’, an’ I would say let it reach the roof except that the mistress is near her time. Come on sudden Art says. An’ she’s not the only one. I took a lass from the river; she was on her time an’ all.’

  ‘You took a lass from the river!’ Both Elizabeth and Dorry spoke together now. ‘Do you know her?’ added Dorry.

  ‘No, never clapped eyes on her afore…There I’m wrong. I think it was she I saw yesterday, or the day afore, across the water goin’ towards the bog, an’ I shouted to her to watch out. She’s a road woman, or girl, young she is.’

  ‘God help her.’ It was Dorry speaking again. ‘How young?’

  ‘Oh.’ Colum shook his head. ‘Hard to say. She looked hardly older than Kathie there; but then she was dead out and she must be of an age for as I said her time looked almost on her. Sixteen I should say. Yes, sixteen.’ He nodded confirmation to himself.

  ‘Where did you put her?’ Elizabeth was leaning slightly towards him now.

  ‘In the loft. It was Art who saw her first. He hailed me over the water, then pointed her out. She was in among the debris that was piled high against the old elm…That’s fallen at last.’ He nodded at Elizabeth. ‘It’s weathered many a storm, that one. Anyway, I waded out a little, and then I saw what he was getting at. But I couldn’t get across at that point; so I went on back to the steppy stones, an’ even there the guide rope was only just above the water.’

  ‘You could have been drowned.’ It was his father speaking now. ‘Daft thing to do, that; those stones are like glass at any time.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t.’ Colum grinned back at his father. ‘I’ve lived to tell the tale, an’ I’ll have another slab.’ He reached over and picked up a piece of the flat bread, and ate it all before he looked around him at the wide eyes and open mouths; and laughing inside, he bided his time before going on, for he liked to stretch out a story, if only to tease the girls. ‘Well, it was like this.’ He leant his elbow on the table. ‘When I got down the other side Art was astraddle the tree; the old fool could have been drowned himself, it took me all me time to reach the creature. It was as well she was wedged in among the animals, an’ she was clinging like grim death to what looked like the shaft of a cart as if she never meant to let go…’

  ‘Did she say anything?’

  Colum looked at his mother and shook his head, then said, ‘No, she was still out cold when I left her; Art was goin’ to get one of the maids to see to her. I didn’t linger, I didn’t want to come up with any of them.’

  ‘No. No.’ Dan said it, Elizabeth said it, and Dorry said it, all agreeing that it was better that he shouldn’t come up with anyone from the Priory, other than old Art of course.

  Barney said now. ‘Did you say a shaft of a cart, Colum?’ and when Colum replied, ‘I did,’ the boy, leaving his place at the table and coming and standing beside his brother, looked up at him and said, ‘We could do with a pair of shafts, Colum. You know you said a while back that when you got time you’d make some shafts and a sleigh, and then we could pile the flax on it from the bottom drain and Prince could pull it up the hill.’

  ‘That’s an idea, lad. That’s an idea.’ Dan was grinning broadly now. ‘A good pair of shafts takes some making, and when at times the flax has got to be humped up here to dry it’s no joke. It’s a wonder you haven’t got down to it afore.’ He nodded at Colum.

  Colum looked at his father without answering. He was no longer laughing inside but telling himself yet again that for twenty-one hours of the day he liked his da, for one hour he loved him, for another hour he despised him, and for the last hour he hated him. The last hour usually happened in the middle of the night when he lay thinking about his life and what was in it for him. He wanted a wife, and there were two just waiting for the cock of his finger; Mary Page, up at Ponteland, and Milly Brent, over at Throckley, but to ask either of them into the house, into his bed, would mean not only another one to feed, another one to be responsible for, but a new head added every year, for he wanted a family, a family of his own, a large family to make sure that there would be at least one of them who would love the Abode and the land about it as he did. He glanced at his brother. Barney never would, for already at ten he was too much like their da; and Michael, well you couldn’t tell as yet. Michael being but six. But you couldn’t blame the children. It was their da who was at fault, and if things were left to him there’d be nothing remaining to pass on to anybody, for he was bone lazy.

  This was what angered him about his father, his laziness, and brought out a hate of him; and what he could never understand was that he could think of selling his land. For his own part, he would rather eat the grass from it than live by the bread bought by the money from its sale.

  Then there was the business. It was painted on the side of their cart: Dan Flynn, Roper. But since he was twelve years old he had known that it was himself, Colum Flynn, who was the roper, it was he who kept the business going; and as the years went by his da had sidled the whole responsibility onto his shoulders. All his da liked to do was to lie on his back and read.

  Sometimes he thought that reading was a mixed blessing, for it took up so much time. True, only his da’s time, for when they were making the mats or the baskets of a night his da would read to them, and it was very pleasant, very pleasant indeed, except there was one pair of hands, a skilled pair, less on the work that brought them in their bread. Yet he knew, and admitted to himself, he was proud of the fact that he himself could read and write; it gave him a standing when he visited the farms or the big houses and stood in their kitchens with a slate and pencil in his hand reckoning up their costs. ‘By, Colum!’ they would say; ‘it’s a teacher you should be, not a roper. Learned you are. Say us a piece of poetry, Colum. Go on. Go on.’ And sometimes, if he favoured the family, he would stand up, throw his head back, and in a voice different from that he used every day he would recite perhaps a piece of Wordsworth. One of his favourites was ‘The Happy Warrior’.

  Who is the happy warrior? Who is he

  That every man in arms should wish to be?

  – It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought

  Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought

  Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:

  Whose high endeavours are an inward light

  That makes the path before him always bright:

  On and on he would go and when he came to the words:

  Who comprehends his trust, and to the same

  Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;

  And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait

  For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state;

  he would end in a flourish:

  Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall,

  Like showers of manna, if they come at all …

  Many, he knew, could not follow the gist of what he said, but he also knew that they liked his voice and his bit of play-acting, and he left them happy, and was happy in himself.

  But there was a time and place for reading, a time and place for everything. This pair of shafts now, his da could have set to and had them made time and time over instead of slipping away when the days were bright and lying in the heather above the river with a jar of home-brew and his book. Aw, but still, you were as God made you, and God had made his da and the
m all to separate patterns, he supposed. Especially had he made his ma to a different pattern.

  He looked to where she was sitting at the bottom end of the table and he had no need to divide up the hours of the day in which to set his emotions for her, for he loved her the full twenty-four hours, and each minute of the hour he honoured her. Elizabeth Flynn, wife of his father. In the night he thought of her a lot; and he thought of Dorry too, Dorry who had known no man but who needed a man so. It was ever there in her eyes, in her high forced laughter, and in the love that she lavished on the family. How strange life seemed when one had time to dwell on it. Strange indeed.

  He rose from the table, saying, ‘Well, this will get neither shafts made, pigs fed, cart loaded, nor the bairn a new bonnet.’

  The latter part of the saying was an old one, its origin unknown, but it was the saying that got them up from the table, got them out of bed in the morning, got them to bed at night; ‘Come on; this won’t get the bairn a new bonnet.’

  He went into the storeroom and continued with his packing for the morrow, and the saying lingered in his mind, ‘the bairn a new bonnet’. He wondered if that lass had given birth yet and what she would have, a girl or a boy; but of one thing he was sure, whatever it was, it would have no new bonnets, ever.

  PART THREE

  THE SQUARE HEAD

  One

  The four-poster bed hangings were pulled right back, the bedclothes were tumbled into a heap at the foot of the bed; some, like the embroidered silk cover, had slipped wholly to the floor and lay like a pool of silver water on the crimson carpet. The atmosphere of the room was heavy, almost overpowering from the heat of the blazing fire, where against the burning logs were pressed two spluttering copper kettles, their hissing forming a background to the groans, moans and gasps coming from the bed.

  The figure on the bed was naked up to the breasts, around which was gathered a silk nightdress. The feet were planted deep in the fine lawn sheet covering the feather tick, and the thin knees were pointing upwards; the arms were spreadeagled, the hands gripping as much of the bed tick as they could grasp within a foot of the edge of the bed. The small face on the pillow was pinched and running with sweat, and the sweat had matted the fine, fair hair into clots as if it had been newly washed.

  ‘Bel-la!’ The name came out in a strangled gasp as the woman at the foot of the bed pulled out of the contorted figure an infant, looked at it, snipped at the cord attaching it to its mother, knotted it, then held the infant up by the legs while she slapped at its buttocks.

  When the voice from the bed called again ‘Bel-la! Bel-la!’ the woman turned towards the bed and, her voice hard and like that of neither a midwife nor servant, said, ‘Wait! Wait! Can’t you see it’s not breathing.’ Then she started slapping again.

  ‘What! Not-breath-ing?’

  Florence Knutsson slowly pushed her legs down and turned herself on to her elbow. ‘It must, Bella. Bella! It must. Get it…’

  ‘I’m doing my best.’ The words were low, deep, and not without panic.

  ‘Oh God! Oh God! Make it breathe.’ The request was not made of the Deity, but rather of the woman shaking the child that looked like nothing more than a skinned hare. ‘Get the doctor. Get the doctor, Bella.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Bella Cartwright turned and looked down on her second cousin, whom she thought of almost as a daughter, for she had acted as a mother to her for the past ten years. ‘Haven’t you taken it in? The flood is on us, the bridges are down, there isn’t a road passable.’

  ‘Bella.’ Florence Knutsson now extended one hand towards the tall, thin woman and she pleaded, ‘Make it live, Bella. You’ve got to make it live. He’ll be mad, mad. He’ll…he’ll blame my riding, and…and the last journey to town. You know what he’s like. Bella, you’ve got to…’

  Bella made no reply to this but, hurrying across the room, she laid the child on the deep white bearskin rug before the fire and began to rub its limbs. And now there was no sound in the room but that of her own deep breathing and the spluttering of the kettles. After some minutes she stopped her rubbing and looked down at the pity-evoking form, and she turned her face towards the bed and met the eyes of the mother, who was not a mother.

  As Bella Cartwright rose to her feet, Florence let out a high cry that spiralled to a wail and then a screech, and when Bella reached her she was thrashing the mattress with her fists.

  ‘Stop it; stop it!’ Bella held her tight as she hissed at her. ‘Give over. You’ll do yourself an injury. Let me get you cleaned up; the afterbirth is coming.’

  Florence, despair enveloping her body, lay still and let Bella attend to her, but all the while she moaned, and after a time she whimpered, ‘I’m frightened, Bella.’

  ‘You should have thought of that before. I warned you in the first place about your riding. And now you’ve lost his son, and that’s all he wanted. That’s all he wanted from the other two. Whether you believe it or not, that’s all he wanted, a son. Now, there he is, forty-five, three wives, and no son. There’s a curse on him. He said so himself when you dropped the first one. And he’ll have every right to go clean mad at you, for he told you not to ride. But you wanted to show off to Gerald, didn’t you?…Now stop it. Stop it!’ She put her hand out and stroked the wet hair from the forehead and there was tenderness in the action that had been absent from her words, and even her voice now lost its harshness as she ended, ‘Well, it’s got to be faced, but God knows there’ll be consequences; he’ll drink himself silly, and you know what that means.’

  ‘Oh, Bella. Bella.’ Florence was clinging to her, her small face buried in the hard shoulder, when they were both startled by a knock on the door.

  Springing from the side of the bed, Bella pushed Florence back, drew the covers over her, then as she was about to tell the visitor to enter she changed her mind and, going to the door, opened it and her eyes widened as she saw standing there, not one of the maids, but Dixon, the first coachman. She was surprised to see the man in this part of the house but relieved that it wasn’t one of the indoor staff who would, if they knew the child had been born dead, carry the news all over the estate, and beyond, before she had time to talk to Mrs Poulter and warn her to warn them that no tittle-tattle was to get to the master before she herself met him.

  She was not and had never been afraid of Konrad Knutsson—she knew that she was about the only one in this house who wasn’t—and she prided herself now that she’d be able to lessen some of his fury before it descended on his wife. She asked abruptly of Art Dixon, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got the wrong door, miss. I thought I heard voices. It is Mistress Poulter I was looking for.’

  ‘What do you want her for, and at this time of night?’

  ‘The water is rising, miss; it’s up another foot. The kitchens are well under and it’ll soon reach the hall.’

  ‘Aren’t you aware that the maids have scampered away like rats, and the men are down at the farm helping to salvage what they can?’

  ‘I’m aware that the staff is in the North Lodge, miss.’ Art’s voice was stiff; he wasn’t of the indoor staff and this one had no control over him.

  ‘Then where do you think Mrs Poulter is?’

  ‘I, I thought she’d be up here at the call of the mistress, for I saw her not long ago when she helped to deliver the young lass in the loft.’

  ‘Deliver who?’

  ‘A young lass, miss; washed down on the flood; must have been a road traveller by the cut of her clothes. In a poor way she is.’

  Bella Selton Cartwright stared at the coachman perhaps for as long as five seconds without speaking, but even during that time her mind was grasping at possibilities, possibilities that her thoughts hadn’t clarified, possibilities seen through a flashing picture of a road woman from God knows where, belonging to God knows whom; a road woman who would sell her soul for silver—all road people would sell their souls for silver. She said through thin lips, ‘What
is the child?’

  ‘A boy, miss. A fine healthy one at that, but the poor creature’s in a state. She’ll not look at it, doesn’t want it, doesn’t know what to do, for she’s nothing more than a child herself. An’ she’s not long for the top it strikes me.’

  Bella glanced back into the room, then towards Art Dixon again before she said, ‘Mrs Poulter has likely returned to the North Lodge.’ Yet as she spoke, she felt puzzled about the housekeeper’s whereabouts. If she had left the lodge for any purpose whatever she should have put in an appearance, for she knew that her mistress was in labour and that she herself would need help. She continued, ‘Make your way to the lodge, and see if everything is all right there. The mistress is anxious.’ She made a motion with her chin towards her shoulder, then ended, ‘And tell Mrs Poulter I’d be obliged if she’d return at once.’

  Art stared at her for a moment, at the long face that seemed to twist and turn in the fluttering light from the candelabra on the table to the side of the doorway, and he wondered, as most of the staff had wondered during the past two years, who was really mistress of the Priory, the little doll-like creature or the tall witch-like individual. But one thing was sure; next to the master himself, she carried the most power, and that power was dominant when the master was away. He moved his head now and said, ‘It’ll take me some time, miss,’ to which she answered, ‘I understand,’ and her tone now suggested forbearance.