Mr Lord was a lot better, but he was still very weak. She had tried to make him laugh, but she hadn’t succeeded. Each day, as he had commanded her, she gave him an account of the doings of Tony, and she saw that all she said was to Tony’s merit. But even this didn’t make him ask to see Tony. She had never said to him, ‘Why don’t you let him come in?’ for, after his visit, her da had taken her aside and warned her to keep off the subject of Tony when with Mr Lord. ‘Least said, soonest mended,’ he had said. ‘The old man will make his decisions in his own time. So mind, be careful what you say and don’t mention his name.’ She hadn’t told him that Tony was the only thing they talked about, and the only thing Mr Lord wanted her to talk about; but even so she had been wise enough to refrain from saying, ‘Why don’t you let him in?’ But now things had come a cropper. Tony was saying he was going away. He had said it only that morning. She had heard her da arguing with him in the scullery, and saying, ‘Now, hold your horses. I’m telling you I know what I’m talking about.’ But Tony had said, ‘It’s no use, Mike, I’m going before he gets on his feet and starts playing cat and mouse with me. I couldn’t stand that. If he wanted to see me, he would have made a move before now.’
This news had put a blight on Mary Ann’s day. She knew that Mr Lord would find it nearly impossible to send for Tony, but she also knew that he would be very sorry if Tony went away. Moreover, she was only too well aware that Tony would on no account present himself to the old man without being asked. She liked Tony. Last night she had put a question to her mother, as she tucked her up in bed. She had said, ‘Ma. How old must I be before I can have a lad?’ Her ma had burst out laughing then playfully smacked her bottom and said, ‘A good many years yet, me girl. Sixteen you’ll have to be.’
‘Sixteen!’ She had sat up in bed, all her shyness over asking the question gone, as she explained, ‘But Sarah Flannagan’s got one…two!’ Her mother had made a long face, then exclaimed, ‘Oh, has she, indeed! So that’s what’s put it into your head.’ She had been strong in her denials, saying that she didn’t mind Sarah Flannagan having a lad, but anyway she couldn’t understand what any lad could see in Sarah Flannagan. Yet on the other hand, if Sarah Flannagan had a lad, why couldn’t she? Her mother had smacked her bottom again and said, ‘Sarah Flannagan’s a good deal older than you.
‘Sixteen,’ she had said from the door, nodding her head; then added, with a laugh, ‘Fifteen, if you grow up quickly.’
Fifteen, and she was just turned nine!…How old was Tony? Nineteen. He was a man, yet her da always talked of him as if he was a lad. And she thought of him as a lad. But when she was nineteen Tony would be twenty-nine. Would she know Tony when she was nineteen? Her quick mind told her she wouldn’t if he once left the farm. Once gone, Tony would go out of her life, and out of Mr Lord’s life, and as much as she didn’t want him to go out of her life it was much more necessary, she knew, that he should not go out of Mr Lord’s life. Mr Lord needed him.
She reached the back door, passed through the kitchen, saying ‘Hallo,’ to Mrs Quigley, who was now helping out, then on through the hall and into the drawing room. She loved the drawing room. It was so beautiful, it almost took her breath away. Mr Lord was by the window, but not wrapped up so much this morning. He was pushing at Ben’s wavering hands, and crying, ‘Give over, man! You’re like an old hen. You and she are a good pair.’
Mary Ann knew he was referring to the nurse, and when she said, ‘Hallo,’ both Ben and he answered her. ‘Hallo,’ they said. Then Mr Lord, turning on the faithful Ben as if he hated the sight of him, cried, ‘Go on, get out and leave me alone.’
Quite unruffled, Ben finished his patting and straightening before leaving his master, and Mary Ann, taking her usual seat on a padded footstool, remarked, ‘It’s a lovely morning.’
‘I don’t want to hear about the morning. I can see it.’
He was in a bad temper. Her da said it was a good sign when he was in a bad temper; it showed he was getting better. ‘Well, what have you got to say?’
‘Nothing.’ Mary Ann looked up at him. His fierce gaze did not disturb her. Her mind was working rapidly, telling her something had to be done. She would likely, she knew, catch it from her da and ma if she carried out the hazy plan in her mind. Moreover, if Mr Lord started to yell and got excited and brought on another heart attack she would get all the blame. But as her da said, the worse his temper the better he was. So, looking at him now, she deduced that he must be feeling pretty well this morning.
‘What do you mean—nothing!’
She faced him squarely and moved her head from side to side just a little bit cheekily, as she said, ‘Well, you want to hear about Tony and there’s nothing more to tell you, because he’s going away.’ She saw the hand resting on the arm of the chair suddenly contract, until the knuckles became shiny.
‘When?’
She did not really know when—it could be the end of the week or next week—but she felt that the greater the urgency she could give to this matter the greater its success, so she said, flatly, ‘The day.’
‘Today?’
She watched his face twitch, then his hands, then his feet. She watched them kick off the rug that Ben had placed around him, and with an effort and the aid of his stick, draw himself to his feet, then with faltering steps walk towards the open window.
He stood there for so long and so quietly that she was forced to cough to remind him that she was still there. The cough apparently did the trick, for he returned to his seat, but much to her surprise did not question her further. She wanted to say to him, ‘Will I fetch him?’ but she knew what his answer would be. It would be a bark of ‘No!’
Some time elapsed before he spoke, and then it was not to her but to himself that he said, ‘Let him go.’
Mary Ann rose and stood looking at him. Then she said softly, ‘I’m going. Bye-bye.’
He brought his eyes to her, opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head at himself and said briefly, ‘Goodbye.’
She went out quietly and closed the door. In the hall she stood biting her thumbnail. He would never ask anybody to bring Tony here, and if Tony did not leave the farm and Mr Lord met him when he got about they would surely fight like cat and dog, and then Tony would go off in a huff. It seemed as broad as it was long. Somehow, she felt that Tony had to come into this house—he had to meet Mr Lord when he was bad, but not too bad that he would collapse, yet not too strong that he would say, ‘Go!’ and mean it.
Suddenly she gave a little skip that was soundless on the thick carpet. She knew what she would do. She would likely get wrong off everybody, but she was always getting wrong, so once more wouldn’t make any difference, would it? Two things only were in her mind now. One was that Mr Lord was very unhappy and she wanted above all things to make him happy; the other was, she didn’t want Tony to leave the farm. Outside the house she began to run, but cautioned herself when she reached the cinder track. She’d had enough of running on that to last her a lifetime, her hands and knees still had scars on them. In the farmyard she met Len leading the bull with a pole and made hastily for cover in one of the byres, from where she shouted, ‘Len, where’s Tony?’
‘Top field,’ replied Len, with a backward movement of his head.
When the bull was well past she ran across the yard, through a gate and over a field, and from there, in the far distance, she saw Tony. Long before reaching him she drew his attention with her voice and waving arms, and he came towards the field gate to meet her.
Her running stood her in good stead, for her gasping was the real thing as she brought out, ‘You’re to come…You’re to come, he wants you.’
She saw his face lose its colour, and he asked, ‘Who?’
She knew well enough that he knew to whom she was referring—he knew she wouldn’t have run like that if her da had wanted him.
‘Mr Lord, of course.’
She rested her hands on the bar of the gate and let her small chest heave
like a miniature sea as she looked up at him. She could not see how the name actually affected him, for his lids covered his eyes as if he had dropped asleep while standing, and so she put her head through the bars of the gate and demanded, ‘What’s up with you, didn’t you hear me?’
‘What did he say?’
For a moment she was stuck and looked across the half-mown field to where the corn stood as high as herself; and then she remarked, ‘He just said, “Go and fetch him”.’ The lie slipped convincingly from her lips, so much so that when his eyes looked down on her through narrowed slits she did not flinch but asked, ‘Are you coming?’
She saw him turn away, hiding his face from her knowing gaze, and she was aware of the conflict that was raging inside him. Also, she was not unaware of his feeling of fear which she, herself, had felt in the past when about to confront the Lord.
When he came through the gate and held out his hand to her she took it, but as he made to go down the lane and through the farm she altered his course by saying, ‘You could cut across by the bull’s field.’ Then added, ‘The bull isn’t there, Len’s got him.’ He said nothing to this, but turned right, lifted her over some barbed wire, pressed the wire down as he flung each leg over, then taking her hand again skirted the field, and then another that led them to the back of the house.
Not until they reached the courtyard did any feeling of apprehension touch her, and then with something like panic she thought: ‘Eeh! What if he dies? What if he has a fit and dies?’ Cold feet almost forced her to give her scheme away by telling Tony the truth, but he himself prevented this by stopping. He stood staring across the yard towards the back door, his teeth pressing tightly down into his lip. The sight of him standing there dispelled her own fear, and very much as Mike would have done, she said to herself, ‘Well, get on with it, it’s now or never.’ So tugging at his hand she pulled him forward.
When Ben opened the door both his astonishment and resentment were evident to Mary Ann. She had not questioned whether Ben knew about Tony, but now from his looks she knew that anything there was to know Ben was already aware of.
‘What do you want?’
It was Mary Ann who said, ‘He’s got to come in. He wants to see him.’ She left Ben to sort out the ‘he’s’, and with another tug on his hand drew Tony over the threshold and without hesitation, and now ignoring the snorts from Ben, passed out of the kitchen, across the hall and to the drawing-room door. Here she paused and glanced up at Tony’s stiff, white face, and her mind cried at her: ‘Eeh! What’ve you done now? Eeh, you’ll get into trouble! Eeh, there’ll be a row…!’ Mr Lord would be mad. They would both be mad. And she’d not half get it from her da. Eeh! But before the last ‘Eeh!’ had slithered over the surface of her mind, she had opened the door.
Mr Lord was sitting staring straight ahead out of the window, and it was some seconds before he turned to find out who had entered the room. From the slow movement of his head his neck suddenly jerked to take in the pair of them standing silently just within the door. Colour like a blood-red sunset enveloped his entire face. The fit that she had feared seemed imminent. She saw his bony Adam’s apple jerk up and down his scraggy neck like a piston in an engine. When it stopped for a moment he gulped and swallowed as if it was choking him. Then, as she watched, the colour faded from his face and he leaned his shoulder against the chair as if for support.
Mr Lord had not taken his eyes from Tony for a second, and she knew Tony was all—‘het up’, for he was hurting her hand, crushing the fingers so much that she wanted to cry out.
Then the pain was forgotten as she received the greatest surprise of her nine years.
‘Get out!’
She pulled her hand from Tony’s and slowly pointing her forefinger at her breast said in astonishment, ‘Me?’
Mr Lord was not looking any longer at Tony, he was looking at her, and there was not really any necessity to confirm his order, but he did.
‘Get out of here, before I take my stick to you!’ he cried.
Swiftly she glanced up at Tony, then back to Mr Lord again.
It was evident that Tony was not included in the dismissal. Well, that was all right, but why should he turn on her—she wanted to know what was going to happen, if they were going to be kind. Anyway, hadn’t she arranged all this?
A movement from the chair and an unintelligible gabble of words, followed by a bellow, flung her round out of the door, and there she was, standing in the hall, staring at the flat, shiny surface of the drawing-room door.
It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t. He was a nasty, bad-tempered old thing, he was. But there was one consolation left to her: if he wouldn’t let her see, he couldn’t stop her from hearing.
She took a step towards the door and leant her head down to the keyhole, which unfortunately had a flap over it. No sound came to her from the room, but as she waited she heard the soft pad of footsteps on the carpet and she knew that Tony was moving forward. And then she could hardly believe her ears as Mr Lord’s voice came to her, shaky but nice, even kind, as it said, ‘Sit down. No, not there, sit where I can see you.’
So strange was this that she felt she must see what was going on and was on the point of kneeling down before moving the keyhole flap, when for the second time in a matter of minutes she received another shock. She had no warning, heard no sound of footsteps, felt no presence, until a hand grabbed her collar and she was swung up and onto her toes and pushed across the hall and into the kitchen. She was too startled for the moment to make protest. Still held at arm’s length and unable to turn her head to see which one was doing this to her, her surprise was increased a thousandfold to behold Ben and Mrs Quigley in the kitchen. She was shot past their gaping mouths, and not until she was in the yard and pulled round did she realise that the evictor was her da.
When in her transit through the kitchen she had been given proof that she was in the hands of neither Ben nor Mrs Quigley, her old adversary, the Devil, had suggested himself as being the only other person who could do this to her. Now as she stared up at her da she saw that he had taken on the guise of Mike and she became afraid.
‘What’ve you been up to?’
‘Nothing,’ she whimpered. Then qualified this by adding, ‘I didn’t mean anything.’
She saw Mike stretch himself upwards and inhale deeply, then bring his lips tightly together before saying, ‘My God! Child, if any harm comes of this…’ He seemed unable to go on and shook his head. Then demanded, ‘The old man didn’t send for Tony, did he?’
‘No.’
They stared at each other. Then Mike, thrusting out his hand, pushed her roughly and said, ‘Go on, get home.’
She turned and ran from him, her tears spurting from her eyes and when she reached the kitchen door so great had been Mike’s strides that he was close behind her.
Lizzie turned a startled face from the dresser, saying, ‘What is it?’
Mary Ann made straight for the armchair and throwing herself into it she buried her face in the corner and gave way to her crying. There was no restraint in her weeping now, for she bellowed loudly, while Lizzie, gazing at Mike, cried, ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
‘She’s taken Tony in to the old man, and he never sent for him.’
‘Dear God!’ Lizzie’s hand went to her mouth. ‘What if it should—’ She stopped. ‘Mary Ann!’ Her voice was angry, and Mary Ann did not lift her head but bellowed more loudly. Then once again she was whirled up and about, and she found herself across the room and standing at her mother’s knee.
‘You’ve gone too far this time, me lady. Do you know what might happen? What if Mr Lord dies?’
For a moment Mary Ann’s bellowing increased, then of a sudden it stopped, and, looking with streaming eyes at her mother, she said, ‘He won’t.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘’Cos—’cos—’ a number of sniffs—‘he bellowed at me.’
There was a quick exchange of glances between Mi
ke and Lizzie, then Lizzie said, ‘What if they row, and he has another heart attack? Did you think of that?’
‘He won’t…they won’t.’
Again the swift exchange of glances, then Mike’s voice demanded, ‘Why are you so sure of that?’
After her rough treatment Mary Ann felt disinclined to enlighten them. They deserved to be kept in the dark. She would have liked to have flounced round and sat in the chair and sulked and kept her mouth shut, but the latter being an impossibility she found herself saying, ‘Mr Lord was nice to him, he asked him to sit down, where he could look at him. He was nice and kind.’
After a long, thoughtful moment Mike gave a great sigh, wiped the sweat from his forehead, walked to the fire, put his forearm on the high mantelpiece and, resting his head against it, muttered, ‘Is there any tea going—strong?’
Lizzie rose and went out into the scullery, and Mary Ann returned to her chair, miserable and misunderstood. She hated everybody. Yes, everybody, right down from her da and ma through Mr Lord, and Father Owen, right down to Sarah Flannagan, not forgetting their Michael, Ben and Mrs Quigley. She watched her da drink his tea—he never even offered her a sup. She was only allowed to drink tea at breakfast and teatime, but sometimes her da gave her a drop in his saucer, but not today. He had three big cupfuls, one after the other, with piles of sugar, yet after he had drained the last cup he did not go out, but remained in the kitchen by the table, rubbing his hand over it every now and again. Her mother, too, remained in the kitchen. She busied herself at nothing, and when this had gone on for what appeared to Mary Ann a lifetime, but which was merely half an hour, she felt she could stand it no longer, and made a move to rise, only to sit back with a plop as her da barked at her, ‘You stay put. Don’t move out of here till I tell you.’
The Devil and Mary Ann Page 23
