She was unaware that she herself was standing in the water up to her knees. When, out of the churning mass of timber and debris, she saw the big head bobbing, she yelled and pointed. But the Flynns seemed unaware of her. They were all standing on the bank now, Dan, Dorry, Barney and Sharon, looking to where Colum was being carried swiftly down the river even as he swam.
Staggering out of the deeper water, she now ran along the bank trying to keep pace with him, until she tripped over a jutting rock and went sprawling face forward. Everything blotted out for a moment; she lay spent.
When she raised herself to her hands and knees the whole river bank was empty…on both sides. She felt for a moment that she had dreamt the whole thing until she realised that they must all have run round the bend, because that’s where the river would have taken them, the master and Colum, and perhaps the mistress.
Running now like somebody drunk she came to the beginning of the bend, but could go no farther because the water had reached the trees, but in the distance she could see what was happening, Colum had come up against the high rock on the far side, the very rock he had clung to the day that he recovered the cart shaft. Now he was hanging on to it with one arm while with the other he was supporting a body, and, stretched from the bank, hand joined to hand, were Dan, Dorry, Barney and Sharon, forming a live rope.
How long she stood there watching she did not know. It looked as if the rope itself would be washed away because it wasn’t long enough; then like a miracle, as if in answer to a prayer, she saw Kathie and young Michael appear on the bank and it seemed to be their added small strength that dragged Colum from the rock, and he in turn brought with him a heavy limp figure.
She closed her eyes and when she next opened them she found she was half sitting, half kneeling on the sodden ground and on the far river bank Colum and the master were lying side by side.
How much later it was when she saw Elizabeth coming from the direction of the stepping stones with Barney by her side carrying a canvas sling, she didn’t know. A short while later still a cavalcade passed her on the opposite side of the river. Each holding one end of the pole that went through the front of the sling were Elizabeth and Dan, and at one side of the back pole were Barney and Sharon while holding the other side was Colum. Kathie and Michael followed behind and no-one looked across the river. It was as if she had never existed, or if she had it was in time past and she was but a ghost looking onto a scene long since enacted.
She rose slowly from the ground, then walked back along the bank until she reached the meadow again, and as she looked towards the fallen elm she knew that she was to blame for everything that had happened. She had brought a curse to the place; she had killed the master and mistress. It was, as they said, she was unlucky, for if she had never been washed up against that tree, never been taken up into that barn, nothing of this would have come about. When the master had come home and found he had a stillborn son he would have got over it. People did get over things like that; but there were other things that people could never get over, like thinking you had fathered a son, then finding you had been made a fool of.
He had wanted a son and she had been the means of giving him a son, and through that she had been the means of killing him. Oh, master! Master. She moaned and rocked her body as she walked. Oh, master! Master. And what would happen to the child now? There would be no more need for lying, there would be no more need for Miss Cartwright to get her out of the way, in fact she would let her take the child now…Or would she? She liked him. But like him or not, she wouldn’t get him. Oh no! On this she would be adamant, the child was hers and would go where she went. But where was she going? Into a dark stinking hovel of a sewing house where he would sit on the floor while she stitched her life away? No; she’d take them both into the river before that. And better the river than Miss Cartwright have him. That woman!
She went into a stumbling run now, muttering as she went. Where was everybody? All those servants. If they had been there they could have formed a chain.
She came up from the lower lawn onto the drive to see Slater talking to Bainbridge and Art Dixon, and the significance of seeing Slater on the drive didn’t penetrate her mind. She didn’t come to herself until her arm was grabbed and she was swung round to face Mrs Poulter, a dishevelled, stained Mrs Poulter, who demanded, ‘Where have you been, girl?’
Her head bobbing, her breath catching, she gabbled, ‘The river. The master ’n’ mistress.’
Mrs Poulter now shook her, cutting off her words, saying, ‘Minding other folks’ business instead of your own! If it hadn’t been for Miss Cartwright you would have something to answer for this night, girl, for he would have been drowned in the cess drain if not in the pool. Girl! Girl! I’m shocked at you.’
‘Cess drain? Cesspool?’ Her mouth remained open.
‘That’s what I said. Leaving him to wander off by himself. If Miss Cartwright hadn’t caught sight of him from the gallery window…Oh, get out of my sight, girl! I’ll deal with you later.’ She went to thrust Kirsten out of her way, but instead grabbed at her arm and pushed her towards the courtyard, saying, ‘Go to my room, they are bathing him there, and if she eats you alive I won’t stop her.’ Then she turned and called towards the men, ‘The master won’t thank you for interfering, not in a matter like this he won’t. You take my word for it.’
Rocking on her feet, Kirsten went past the staring men, around the corner of the house, through the side door, down the dim passage, and knocked on the housekeeper’s door, and when she heard an abrupt ‘Yes?’ she entered the room.
There was a zinc bath on the floor and the child was sitting in it and kneeling one at each side were Miss Cartwright and the cook. They both stopped rubbing the child and stared at her, and she at them. The child was crying with slow shuddering sobs as he was wont to do at the end of a bout of temper or fright. Miss Cartwright looked entirely dishevelled and dirty; the front of her dress was covered with the same dark brown smelling filth that made the child’s clothes, lying in a heap on the floor, unrecognisable; there were even smears of it on her cheeks. When she rose to her feet and came towards her, Kirsten backed a step, then leant against the door.
‘Where have you been?’
The voice sounded deep, hollow, like that of some god speaking from the clouds; the Miss Cartwright who, a short while before, had beseeched her denial of the truth with joined hands and fear-filled eyes was gone.
‘Do you know it’s just by chance he is alive? Do you know where he’s been?…Another few minutes and he would have been suffocated!’
The voice was blasting her ears, she couldn’t bear it. The child was safe—he was there in the bath—but the master was dead, they had carried him away. But Miss Cartwright wasn’t bothered about the master, only the child. She loved the child, she must love him to carry him like that from the cess drain. The cess drain was deep and filthy; it took the overflow from the pool. Nobody went near there except the two workhouse boys from the farm whose job it was to keep the flow running to the river. The mistress was in the river; she was in the river for good.
‘The…the mistress.’
‘What about the mistress, girl?’
‘In the river. And…an’ the master.’
‘What! Speak up, girl! Speak up!’
‘Dead, drowned, in the river, the mistress and the master; and Colum…Colum took him out…dead.’
As she slid slowly down the door into thick black the cook’s voice went with her, crying, ‘Unlucky! Unlucky! She’s been an ill-omen since she set foot in the house. An’ now look, if you can believe the trollop, death on us! Oh my God! The poor master and mistress.’
Four
‘Life is strange,’ said Dorry as she scraped out the marrow from a shin bone. ‘It doesn’t seem real at times, if you know what I mean, ’Lizabeth.’ She looked along the white scrubbed table to where Elizabeth was straining the stock from boiled chicken bones onto some finely diced vegetables, and Elizabeth nodded a
s she said briefly, ‘I know what you mean.’ And Dorry went on, ‘It’s more like a book, you know, one of Dan’s stories. Even stranger still, fantastic, like the rhymes Colum spouts, airy-fairy, not real, for I ask you now, ’Lizabeth, if I’d said to you a few weeks gone that the master of the Priory would be lying in one of your beds an’ that a lord and his son would ride up to the door gone midnight, you would have had me head poulticed while you stood me feet in cold water to keep down the fever. Now wouldn’t you? An’ you wouldn’t have put me death down to the extremes of your treatment but to the madness of me mind. Am I right? Yet it’s come about.’
‘Yes, it’s come about, Dorry.’
‘You know, I’ve hated that man all me life. Well, not all me life, but since I came into this house. But more so have I hated him since Colum grew up, because he hated him. Oh, right an’ all he hated him, an’ what Colum hates, I hate.’ She gave a little chuckle here; then after a moment’s silence, silence that is of speech, for the sharp point of her knife was making a teeth-clenching sound as she scraped it around the inside of the bone, her voice again quiet yet high as if in surprise, she went on, ‘The funny part of it is, ’Lizabeth, he’s likable, don’t you think so? He’s likable.’
‘Yes, you’re right, Dorry, he’s likable.’
‘Of course, we may just be looking at it from a woman’s angle, you know what I mean, for there he was for all his bulk as helpless as a child for three days, an’ you would gather an affection for a wild pig if he was half insensible an’ you had to wash him down, wouldn’t you now?’
‘Oh, Dorry!’ Elizabeth stopped her work, looked along the table and laughed gently. Here was a woman who at times was the heart scald of her life. Because of her possessiveness towards the children she had, in a way, unwittingly supplanted her, yet she was so good at heart, and always the means of a laugh.
‘Well, I’m right. You know I’m right. But the men now, how do you think they’re lookin’ at him?’
‘Oh—’ Wiping her hands on a piece of coarse towelling, Elizabeth replied thoughtfully, ‘Dan says very little but I think he’s changing his tune. As for Colum, well’—she shook her head—‘he’s hated him too long to see him in any other way than black.’
‘Then why did he pull him out of the river? He could have let him drown. God! I’ll swear I’ll never forget the feelin’ in me when I saw him bein’ swept down like a bit of brushwood. It was a miracle that he ever came out alive, let alone catch hold of the other one, an’ a second miracle that he held on to him.’
‘He knows the river,’ said Elizabeth calmly.
‘Aye, you can know the river; you can know a bull, an’ brag it’s as playful as a kitten, until someone gives it a jab in the backside with a spoked stick. And that’s the river when it rises, a mad bull, that’s the river.’ She sighed now and ended sadly, ‘No, we can’t expect any more miracles, we’ve had our share. Colum’s always had reason to hate every inch of him an’ more so of late; it must be like salt in a raw wound to him to know the man’s in the house.’
Elizabeth turned to the fire saying briskly now, ‘Well, he’s still in the house, Dorry, and as long as he’s here he must be treated fair, and with deep civility.’
‘Oh now, ’Lizabeth’—Dorry pushed back her shoulders and wagged her head—‘I’m not soft-soapin’ him or goin’ on me hands and knees to him…’
‘No,’ said Elizabeth on a short laugh, as she bent over the kail pot hanging from the hook over the fire, ‘You’ve no need to go on your knees to him when you can sit by the bed half the night wiping the sweat from him and talkin’ to him as a two-year-old.’ She turned her head to look over her shoulder, and they exchanged glances and tight-lipped smiles; then Dorry, on a note of laughter that had about it the touch of the clown’s sadness, said, ‘Well, you know me by now, ’Lizabeth; if I could find nothing else I’d mother a pig with a runny nose.’
‘Oh, Dorry!’
‘Aye, oh, Dorry.’ Again they exchanged a tight smile.
Elizabeth now ladled some broth from a pot into a basin and, putting it on a carved wooden tray on which was a tatting doily, she pushed it towards Dorry, saying, ‘There, that’ll be about the last time I should think.’
‘Aye.’ Dorry picked up the tray, went from the kitchen and through the storeroom where Kirsten had lain and into another and larger room where, by the side of a rough oak-hewn bed, Konrad was sitting. The room was close and stuffy, for a fire was burning in the grate. It was the first time it had been used for this purpose since this room had ceased to be a living room of a separate cottage a hundred years before.
Konrad turned his face, which now seemed to have shrunk, for his cheeks lay in hollows above the jawline, and he smiled faintly at Dorry but did not speak, not until she placed the tray on a small table to his elbow, saying, ‘There now, the drop broth, it’ll warm you for your journey. They should be here afore long.’
‘Sit down. Please sit down.’ He pointed to the end of the bed, and Dorry, after a moment’s pause, said, ‘Oh aye. Well, I might as well take the weight off me shanks.’ And she sat down, her knees coming within a few inches of his, and they looked at each other.
For days now this woman had acted like a mother towards him. She had talked like a mother. But how did a mother talk? He didn’t really know for he had seen little of his own; only at stated times of the week when he had been taken to the drawing room; but he imagined this woman acted as a mother should. He knew that she had washed him, and fed him, and murmured over him; and he also knew that she had talked at him, not to him, or with him, but at him. At such times her subject matter was concerning one person, who to her was the finest lad in the world but who was stubborn, pig-headed, bigoted, and resentful at times, yet overall good and brave. She had pointed out, without reticence, that he himself was lying where he was thanks to that bravery, and now shouldn’t he do something in return and put it right about the girl, for the poor child had sworn her innocence?
And so it had gone on. Every now and again; sometimes in the middle of the night when he lay sleepless; sometimes when he lay with his eyes closed and apparently asleep she would still talk at him. She was like a witch in a way, but a kind, lovable witch, with whom he felt completely at ease. It was utterly strange but he couldn’t recall feeling like this with anyone in his life before. He felt a deepening loneliness in him as he looked at her; she seemed to have so much that he himself lacked; in fact all of them in this house seemed to have so much. Compared with his way of life they existed in a state of abject poverty, yet the food they had given him, although rough, was wholesome. The bed they had given him, although rough, he found comfortable. But it was the atmosphere of the house that affected him most, the atmosphere of cheerfulness…and goodness. Yes, that was the word, goodness. And this woman had herself once been a street woman in Shields, so gossip said.
And there was another thing that surprised him; they weren’t the ignorant pigs he had dubbed them; they could all read, even to the youngest boy. Although he had heard their voices, he had seen little of the children, but the young one, Michael, he had crept in and offered him his book to read. Yet of them all, it was this woman he would remember.
Without any lead up, he said to her now, ‘Would he see me?’
‘He might.’ Dorry moved her head.
‘Would you arrange it? The carriage will be here shortly.’
‘I’ll have a try.’ Dorry slipped her fat bulk from the edge of the bed and stood up, and when her broken-nailed fingers were caught between his broad hands she put her other hand on top of his and patted them; and when he said to her, ‘Life is strange,’ she put her head back and laughed and said, ‘Now would you believe that! Not a minute since I was saying the self-same words to ’Lizabeth. “Isn’t life strange?” I said. “A gentleman in your bed!”’ Her laugh went higher now and she brought her head down to his. ‘In one of her beds anyway, you know what I mean, an’ lords and ladies comin’ to the Abode. But as I said t�
�other day, it would have been better if they could have brought the carriages to the very door. We’ll have to make the gap in the wall wider in case they should come again, knock few bricks out.’ She laughed at him, and he smiled at her; then they looked at each other quietly before she turned from him and walked slowly and sedately from the room. She kept her steady pace until she reached the storeroom, but once there she bounded out of the door and into the rough yard with surprising mobility, calling. ‘You Barney! You Sharon! You Michael!’ Then catching sight of Kathie she yelled at her, ‘Here! Here!’ and when the child came up to her she demanded under her breath, ‘Colum. Where is he?’
‘Down at the flax field.’
‘Go and get him! Scamper now as quick as your legs will carry you. Tell him he’s wanted up here this instant.’
It was five minutes later when Colum came hurrying into the kitchen, exclaiming as he came through the door, ‘What is it now?’
Elizabeth, who was at the dresser, glanced at him and was about to speak, then changed her mind as Dorry walked to him and, putting her hands up to his shoulders shook him as he said grimly, ‘Now you listen to me. Unbend that stiff neck of yours and go into that room. He’s askin’ to see you.’ But before she finished he had pulled himself away from her, growling, ‘I’ll do no such thing. An’ if it’s for that you want me you’re wasting your time.’
‘Look, you pig-headed, stupid… !’
The Slow Awakening Page 29
