As she looked into his eyes she felt her pupil flicker.
Slowly he dropped down onto his hunkers until his face was on a level with hers and from there he said, ‘There’s times and places for politeness, but when you’re one with the other, close-linked, there’s no room for it, you understand me?’
She didn’t quite. She had always tried to be polite. And then, politeness was a duty demanded at the house.
He lifted his hands now and cupped her face, saying gently, ‘You’ve got to forget you were ever in servitude. I’ll make you forget. Even when I take you to Bywell, and St. Andrew’s, you won’t be signing your name to servitude. I’ll see that you’re different from all the women around; there won’t be a freer woman atween Prudhoe and Hexham, I promise you that. And the day that you bawl me out I’ll laugh at you. And aye, aye’—he nodded his head at her, his grin wide—‘I’ll thank you, I will that, it’ll be me that’ll thank you. “Thank you, Mrs Flynn,” I’ll say, for on that day I’ll know you’ll have been freed from fear.’ He dropped one hand from her face and with the other he drew his fingers gently round her mouth and, his eyes on it, he said, ‘You’re timid aren’t you, like a mouse. No, no, not like a mouse’—he shook his head in mock disdain—‘like a wee fairy, a skeinsmate fairy!’
‘Oh, Colum!’ She smiled at him and moved her head on the pillow as she asked, ‘An’ what’s a skeinsmate fairy?’
‘Why’—he jerked his head—‘it’s a nice little body, chummy, friendly.’ His head came nearer to hers and he said on a whisper now, ‘It’s kindly, with a heart bigger than its body.’ His lips touched hers, then moved to her cheek and her nose, while his voice whispered, ‘One of these days we’ll go for a walk an’ I’ll show you one. We’ll tramp the fells and we’ll follow the river. And another day we’ll take the cart and go right to the sea, right to Shields, or cross over one of the fine bridges in Newcastle and go as far afield as Cullercoats. I’ve been to Cullercoats…Do you know’—his chin moved upwards now in pride—‘they use some of me ropes in Cullercoats, on their boats. They do that.’
She smiled up at him warmly as she said, with a little quirk to her lips, ‘They know a fine thing when they see it.’
‘Aw!’ He turned his head into his shoulder while keeping his eyes on her. ‘Praisin’ me, are you?’
She was about to answer when the sound of flying feet turned both their heads towards the door, and it was pushed open and there was Barney, his hands gripping each stanchion, his body bent forward, his breath coming in gasps, saying, ‘Art, he’s comin’ up.’
It sounded joyous news, imparted as it was by Barney to whom any visitor was a pleasant surprise, but Colum didn’t show the same pleasure. He straightened up, looked at his young brother and said, ‘Oh aye. Well, I’ll come along…where’s our da?’
‘Down at the flax field with Michael and the lasses.’
Colum nodded, and when he turned to Kirsten his face was straight and he said quietly, ‘You could write that letter you were sayin’; it’ll be a good opportunity, he could take it down.’
‘Yes…Yes, I’ll do that.’ She moved her head once, then watched him go out and heard him call, ‘Ma!’ Then to Barney, ‘Go and tell Dorry; she’s in the barn feather stuffin’.’
She heard his footsteps cross the cobbles and fade away, and she lay still and tense for a moment. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. Mr Dixon would not be on his leave, he had come up for a purpose. She guessed the purpose. She sat slowly up in bed and reached out to the little table at the side whereon lay some books, pen and ink, and two sheets of cheap writing paper. Colum had bought the paper from the market yesterday, when she had tentatively asked him if he would buy her some as she wanted to write a letter. She had not said to whom she intended to write, but they both knew. And now Mr Dixon had come and she would give him the letter to take to the master.
Painstakingly, and in a full copperplate hand she began to write. ‘Dear Master’. She got no further than, ‘I am penning these few words with regret to tell you’ when she heard Colum and Mr Dixon enter the storeroom. It was Colum’s voice that brought her chin jerking upwards and her eyes stretching wide, for he was asking a question, ‘What did you say, Art?’ was what he said, but it was not the words, it was the way he said them that startled her.
And she was not the only one that was startled by the tone of Colum’s voice, for it brought Art’s mouth into a questioning gape. The faint suspicion that he had thrust aside was confronting him now in the form of certainty from the round, brown eyes of the young fellow whom he had known from a child, and whose character he had watched grow from a sturdy independence, even as a very young lad, to a young man of such radical outlook it surprised him that his ideas had not landed him along the line and into gaol. Art knew that the master himself could have had him locked up on two occasions. He was a lucky young fellow was Colum Flynn, and in more ways than one, for he knew from quite a while back that there were two bonny lasses just waiting for a curl of his finger—Mary Page over at Ponteland. She’d bring a bit with her, would Mary, in the way of linen, because her mother was thrifty, and odds and ends of furniture also, as her father was a fine carpenter. And Milly Brent from over Throckley. Well, Milly hadn’t much to bring except herself, but there was plenty of her. By yes, she was a bonny piece was Milly Brent. It was said she had turned down one after the other just waiting for Colum’s crooked finger. So when he himself had seen Colum helping the girl across the stones his thoughts had been, well, what of it, the lad had saved her from drowning hadn’t he? It was what any decent fellow would do, set a lone lass down the hill and across the stones. And why shouldn’t he, when the whole family had apparently taken to the girl, pity being likely at the bottom of it, her with her eye an’ all. But now, here was Colum looking at him as if he were about to throttle him and he was saying again, ‘What did you say, Art?’ and in the way a man would when he was challenging you to knock his hat off.
Art wetted his lips, hitched up his trousers with pressure from the front of his wrist, blew a little air through his grizzly moustache, then said, ‘Now Colum, you heard what I said.’
‘Aye, I thought I did; I thought I heard you say, “She’s not only the bairn’s nurse, if you understand what I mean. That’s why he wants her back.” That’s what you said, wasn’t it?’
‘Aye, that’s what I said.’
They were staring at each other in silence when into it burst Dorry with Elizabeth behind her, but they both came to a standstill in the framework of the kitchen door. The same thing happened to Dan on the flagstones outside the storeroom door, with Michael and the two girls behind him. It was Dan’s voice muttering, ‘Ssh!’ to the children that split the silence. Then Art was speaking again, ‘Look, Colum, I’m only a servant and doin’ what I’m bid. “Go up,” he said, “an’ tell her that we are needing her back. And give this to Mrs Flynn for her trouble.”‘ Art now held out an envelope and looked towards Elizabeth as he did so; but the next minute it went flying into the air from his hand and when it struck the low ceiling there came to them all the dull clink of coins before it fell and was lost behind a pile of rope lying against the wall.
Art’s face was trembling, his fists were clenched. He said quietly, ‘If I was younger, Colum, you wouldn’t do that to me and be still standin’, an’ you know it.’
‘Aw, Art man, Art.’ Dan had hold of Art’s sleeve now, shaking it and his own head at the same time as he cried, ‘It’s not against you, Art, you know that, not against you, man.’
‘Shut up! And get out, the lot of you. Get out!’ Colum glared from Elizabeth and Dorry to his father, and when Dan came back with, ‘Now look here, lad,’ Colum muttered thickly, ‘I ask you to get away, all of yous.’ The last words lost in the huskiness in his throat seemed to dissolve them. Elizabeth and Dorry slipped back into the kitchen and closed the door behind them; Dan and the children retreated along the cobbles, quickly, as if from a death.
As they
stared at each other Colum’s mouth worked as if from thirst, then he asked softly and gutturally, ‘How long?’ and Art, his head down, muttered as low in reply, ‘Oh, a year or more, since they had the big doctor from London to the bairn. From then on the nursery was set up in the east wing where his workroom is—he chips at stone and things—an’…an’ he settled along there an’ all. But…but, lad. I…I thought you would know; things like that rise up from the valley like mist an’ spread. If… if I’d had an inklin’ I would have refused to carry his message. I would that, sack or no sack. But mind, I’m not blamin’ her; what chance has a young lass like that? But it’s the truth I’m tellin’ you, you can take me word for it. I wouldn’t hurt you…’
His words were cut off by Kirsten’s voice from the doorway, where she was standing wrapped in a blanket, her right eye flickering rapidly. Her voice thin and high, she protested, ‘’Tisn’t true, ’tisn’t true, Mr Dixon. ’Tisn’t true, Colum. Colum, ’tisn’t true.’
They stood looking at her, at the pitifulness of her; but this they viewed in different ways. Colum saw it as part of her seeming innocence, the innocence that had hooked him. He knew that Art was speaking the truth, he knew that she had been hiding something all along, right from the day he had kissed her on the river bank. She had acted guilty like that day. But not since; no, since then she had treated him as a dolt.
He glared at Art, willing him to go.
Art was standing with his chin on his chest, brought there by pity, and he muttered, ‘I’m to deliver you a message, girl. The master says you are missed down below an’ they are waitin’ for you.’ He kept his head bowed for some time, then raised it slightly and looked at her before turning slowly about and going out.
Her body shaking from head to foot, Kirsten looked at Colum pleadingly; but he returned her look with one of open loathing, and when she whimpered, ‘It isn’t true, Colum, it isn’t. I swear to you,’ he asked a simple question.
‘Has he been in your bed?’
The eye seemed to hit the top of her brow before dropping to the corner nearest her nose. She stood staring wide-eyed at him, her mouth slightly agape. She did not know what Mr Dixon had said so she told him the truth. Hesitant, stammering, she began, ‘On…on…one night. He was drunk, ve…ry drunk. He had quarrelled with the mistress, broken the door down; he was roaring, singin’, singin’ all over the place. I…I was asleep. He came in. He…’ She stopped and wetted her lips. Her eye bounced and fell into the corner again. ‘He lay on, on the bed but…but Colum, atween me and God, I swear he never touched me. He…he didn’t want to; all he wanted, as he…as he said, was comfort, he wanted a little comfort…’
‘Oh God Almighty!’ Colum slowly turned his back on her, and his head made one deep, low sweep as if he were throwing something off; and from this position he said, ‘Who do you think you’re talkin’ to?’ And now his body snapped round and, arching it towards her, his head thrust out, he growled, ‘Funny, isn’t it, the tinker! You were supposed to be dragged along by the tinker, yet you knew where he stacked his money, you knew all about it. You could have run away, couldn’t you? But no, no, you didn’t. And then the master, the great master; he only wanted comfort. He came into your bed. Huh! And he only wanted comfort!’ There was a smile on his face now, a frightening smile. ‘You stand there and tell me with your own lips that he lay with you, he was in bed with you under the blankets, warm and snug under the blankets, and you being what you are he only asked you for comfort?…But you don’t say what kind of comfort, eh? Well now’—he thrust out his arm and flicked his fingers with such force that she heard the knuckles crack—‘get down to him, he’s waitin’, and give him his comfort…Go on. Go on!’
He stared at her for a moment longer, not at the whole of her face but concentrated his gaze on her right eye, and, his lips curling, he muttered, ‘I must have been mad.’ Then he turned from her, only to thrust his head over his shoulder and say, ‘Wait! Wait a minute.’
On this he pushed open the kitchen door and she heard Elizabeth’s voice muted and Dorry’s guttural demand, but no answer from him. Then he was back facing her again, holding out a little leather bag, which he didn’t put into her hand but threw at her feet as he said, ‘Take that an’ put it back in the shaft, an’ if I have to sell me soul I’ll give you back what I’ve spent.’ Then he went out of the main door and she was alone.
For a moment she thought she was going to fall to the ground and she leant against the stanchion of the door, staring down at the bag at her feet. She didn’t know how long she stood like this, but she became aware that Dorry had taken her by the shoulders and was turning her towards the bed and her voice was saying, ‘There, there, lass. There, there.’
No-one came to the door to see them off. Dorry had hold of her arm leading her gently across the sunlit yard. The day was so bright and fine it was hard to believe the last of the snow had disappeared but three days ago. The air was still nippy but bracing, and Dorry remarked on it in quite a casual way as if there were nothing else to talk about. ‘There now,’ she said, ‘it’s a fine day, it is that.’
Kirsten did not look up at the day, she had her head lowered. No-one had wished her goodbye, not even Elizabeth. Yet she knew in her heart it was not because they were glad she was going. Her instinct told her they were all for her: Dan, Elizabeth, the children and Dorry. Oh yes, Dorry was for her. There was only one against her.
They were halfway down the hill before Dorry spoke again. Without any lead up and with unusual bitterness, she remarked as if voicing her thoughts aloud, ‘He’s the bloodiest, stubbornest creature God ever let breathe, he is that. But at bottom, all men are the same; they see only what they want to see. I was to be married once. He was from Prudhoe. He was a shoemaker, and his people were religious like, chapel. Well me, well all of my own family were Catholics but wooden ones.’ She smiled weakly. ‘So it was like oil and water from the beginning. But I cared for him. Oh aye, I cared for him; and him for me; and so we were promised. In spite of his folks we got promised. I was seventeen comin’ up eighteen, and to help things on a bit I went away to service, for there was nothing round here for me, not that I could make a bit of money at and save. And I didn’t want to wait seven to ten years as some of them did.’
Dorry now put her forearms under her shawl and heaved her heavy breasts upwards. ‘The place was in Shields. It was a pub, and I started at five in the morning and finished at twelve at night, and the food was terrible, some of it rotten. The boss used to get the leftovers from the ships. You’d think in a pub there’d be plenty to eat, wouldn’t you?’
She looked at Kirsten, and Kirsten looked back at her, utter sadness showing in one eye, the other settled deep in its corner.
‘Well,’ Dorry went on, ‘the top and bottom of it was I came out in spots, boils all over, all over me body. I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t lie…and now I couldn’t eat. I paid two shillings to go to a doctor, and he gave me some salve, but it did no good, and when the skin started to peel off me hands the landlady said I’d caught something and turned me out. Well, I came home here and they were all shocked at the sight of me ’cos by then I was just skin and bone, not like I am now.’ She gave a small laugh and smacked at her stomach. ‘And when Arthur saw me—that was his name—he looked shocked an’ all, but in a different sort of way, for by now the spots were on me face. Me body had been covered for some long time, but of course he hadn’t seen that. Well, Arthur paid a visit to South Shields, at his folk’s bidding, and the landlady told him I’d caught something. And when he didn’t come to see me I went to see him, and his people nearly did for me, chapel that they were an’ all. They said I was a bad woman and had been with sailors off the ships, and if it rested with them they’d have me transported. So, lass, they blackened me name so much it nearly drove me mad, an’ I was bad for two years or more an’ almost lost me senses completely.
‘Dan brought a doctor to see me all the way from Newcastle, and he said it was me blood
had gone wrong through little food, and that rotten, and he told Dan and Elizabeth that I was still a virgin. But if he had gone and stood on the highest fell in the county and bawled it out there’s not a soul would have believed him, except those two, for folks wouldn’t have wanted to believe him ’cos you can’t get laughs out of a virgin in a pub like you can a fallen woman.
‘Well, lass, once I got on me feet I started to eat. The only comfort I seemed to get was in eating. And look at me now, a fat old hulk at just over forty. But I’m not unhappy, not really, ’cos I consider I’m lucky I’ve got them all up there, and I look upon them as mine. At times it annoys ’Lizabeth a bit because I act as if I’m their mother, especially with Colum. Oh aye, especially with him, because I see him as the son I would have had. If I’d have married I would’ve had a bairn every nine months; I would have dropped every time he looked at me.’ She now let out a high shaky laugh that trembled away as she bit hard on her lip; then ended, ‘So I know what it’s like to be misjudged, lass. And if it’s any comfort to you, we believe you, Elizabeth an’ Dan an’ all.’
They had reached the river and gently Dorry helped Kirsten over the pebbly ground towards the stepping stones; but there she stopped, saying, ‘If you don’t mind, lass. I’ll not cross them. I’m no good on the stones; like as not I’d be in the water afore I knew where I was. Do you think you can manage on your own?’
Kirsten nodded her head twice; then gulping in her throat, she said huskily, ‘Oh Dorry, I feel so bad.’
To this Dorry nodded slowly for she knew Kirsten wasn’t referring to her physical condition and she, too, gulped in her throat and tears ran from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
Both crying now, they held on to each other while Kirsten muttered, ‘I’ll…I’ll never see you again.’
‘Never is a long time, lass. God’s good at bottom. He sorts things out in His own way. There now. There now, lass. Go on, for neither of us can stand much more.’ And on this she pressed Kirsten towards the first stepping stone and the guide rope, then stood watching her lifting her feet tentatively from stone to stone. At one point she put her hand up to her mouth for Kirsten had stopped right in the middle of the river and was looking at the water. It was the place where the shaft had been stuck. Then she drew in a long deep breath as she saw her move on again, and when she reached the far side and turned and lifted her hand no higher than her shoulder in farewell she raised her own in response. She remained thus, watching her until she had crossed the meadow and disappeared from view…
The Slow Awakening Page 25
