But however hard he tried, it would not come: there was not the old unity between hand and eye; there was not the mastery over the chisel; and often his judgment played him false.
The work he was doing was for Mr Talbot of Crayle Court. A fire had occurred there in December and some old oak furniture had been badly damaged. Tom’s task now was to make two replica doors for a cupboard, each one carved with a Talbot hound, surrounded by oak-apples, leaves, and acorns, the initials E.B.T. among them. One of the old burnt doors lay before him and he was copying it, using oak Great-grumpa had given him, taken from an old oak pew.
One day, while carving the second door, peering closely to follow the delicate pencil-lines, he had trouble in keeping to the tiny detail. His gouge seemed too big, the tracing too small, and the whole design seemed to swim hazily before his eyes. He stood up straight and looked out of the window. The workshop yard was covered in frost; the cobnut bushes were white-fuzzed; a blackbird quivered on a slim stem. When he looked back again at his work, the tracery seemed smaller than ever, and he suddenly threw down his gouge and hammer.
‘I can’t do it,’ he said to Jesse. ‘George Hopson’ll have to do it.’
And, pulling his jacket on as he went, he walked out of the workshop door.
‘What’s up with him?’ asked Great-grumpa Tewke, coming to Jesse.
‘I don’t rightly know,’ Jesse said, frowning. ‘I reckon maybe he feels it, you know, your telling him he’d lost his touch. It ent like Tom to leave a piece of work unfinished. I must speak to him about that in the morning.’
But Tom was not at work the next morning, nor the morning after, so early on Saturday afternoon, Jesse took the pony and trap and drove to the Pikehouse. His knock brought no answer. The door, amazingly, was locked, and when he peeped in at the window, he could see no sign of life whatever. He returned to Cobbs puzzled and worried and spoke to his wife and daughter about it.
‘Nobody at all?’ Beth said. ‘Not even Tilly?’
‘Neither hide nor hair of either of ’em.’
‘If Tom’s there alone and in one of his moods,’ Betony said, ‘he may have been lying low when you called, just to avoid talking to you.’
‘Why should he do that? To me of all people? Ent I as good as a father to him?’
‘I was thinking of him as a little boy and how he always ran off to the woods whenever we called on Grannie Izzard.’
‘But he ent a little boy now,’ Jesse said. ‘He’s a grown man. I should like to know what it is that’s upset him.’
‘So should I,’ Betony said, ‘and I mean to find out.’ She went that very afternoon, going on foot to give no warning, and arriving just as dusk was falling. The house was in darkness, silent as the grave, lonely beside the old turnpike road, with only a handful of Scoate House sheep grazing on the surrounding wasteland. She opened and closed the gate with care, walked on tiptoe along the path, and stood for a moment in the porch. The door, when she tried it, opened before her and she stepped straight into the unlit kitchen.
‘Tom?’ she said. ‘It’s me. Betony. Are you there?’
‘Yes, I’m here,’ Tom said, and got up from the rocking-chair. ‘How did you come? I never heard no sound of the trap.’
He struck a match and lit the oil-lamp on the table. The room came to life and Betony closed the door behind her.
‘What’s wrong with you? Why haven’t you been to work? Why didn’t you answer when Dad called earlier today?’
‘I’m taking a bit of a holiday.’
‘Just look at the mess in this kitchen! It can’t have been cleaned in a month of Sundays. Whatever does Tilly think she’s doing?’
‘Tilly ent here, she’s gone,’ he said.
‘Gone where, for God’s sake?’
‘I dunno where. She didn’t say.’
‘Has she gone back to her father in Huntlip? No, surely not, or we should have heard.’
‘I reckon she’s gone with another chap.’
‘Don’t you know what’s happened to her?’
‘I came home from work one day and there was a note to say she’d gone. I dunno no more’n that.’
‘What makes you think there’s another man?’
‘I seen him,’ he said. ‘A traveller-chap, selling brushes. Once he was here when I got home. I saw them laughing and talking together. Then he went off in a little car.’
‘Well, that’s a fine thing, I must say, after only a few weeks of marriage! Don’t you care where she’s gone? Aren’t you going to try and find her?’
‘No. Why should I? It’s no odds to me.’
‘It’s cold in here,’ Betony said, shivering. ‘Don’t you think you should light the fire? There’s plenty of sticks and logs there and I don’t like freezing even if you do.’
‘All right,’ he said, and began at once pushing the wood-ashes back in the hearth. ‘Maybe it is time I boiled a kettle.’
‘What about the baby?’ Betony asked.
‘There wasn’t no baby after all. Just a mistake, Tilly said.’
‘You mean she led you up the path?’
‘That’s about it, I suppose, yes.’
When the fire was burning, piled high, and the kettle hung above the flames, Tom rose from his haunches and crossed the room to hang up his jacket. On the way he stumbled, sending the little footstool flying, and almost sweeping the lamp from the table. Betony gave an exclamation and set the lamp in its rightful place.
‘You can’t be drunk at this time of day! What’s wrong with you for heaven’s sake?’
Tom stood quite still, his hands in his pockets. He was looking past her, into the fire.
‘Seems I’m going blind,’ he said.
After a while, when the kettle boiled, Betony made a pot of tea. There was no milk to be found anywhere; nor any sugar; only a jar of her mother’s honey; so she stirred a spoonful into the mug of milkless tea and sat opposite, watching him drink it.
‘How long is it since your sight began failing?’
‘I dunno. It’s hard to say. It comes and goes, like, and sometimes it seems better than others.’
‘Have you seen a doctor?’
‘Not since leaving the hospital at Sawsford.’
‘Then you must!’ she said. ‘Where’s the point in losing time?’
‘Will they be able to do something for me?’
‘We won’t know that till we get there,’ she said. ‘But it’s no use burying yourself away out here, without a word to anyone. What did you hope to achieve by it?’
‘I wanted time to sort things out.’
‘How did you think you were going to live, stuck out here and not working?’
‘I hadn’t got as far as that. I just wanted to be by myself and make the most of what sight is left me.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘I dunno. I hadn’t decided. End it, maybe, somehow or other.’
‘Do away with yourself, you mean, the same as your father did before you?’
‘I’d just as soon die, as go through life in the dark,’ he said.
‘What rubbish you’re talking!’ she said, with scorn. ‘This is something you’ve got to fight! You fought over there for nearly three years. You didn’t give in so easily then and you certainly mustn’t give in now. You must fight back like a proper soldier.’
Tom sipped at his hot tea, and the steam rose, moistening his face. His dark skin was smooth and shining, but still white-flecked in many places, where the shell-blast had scarred him. His deep dark eyes were bright, steady, contemplative, and looked at her with childlike hope. It was hard to believe those eyes could fail him.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tell me what I ought to do.’
Her family, when she broke the news, could scarcely believe what she was saying. Tom’s injury was four months old. They had thought his sufferings were over.
‘Ah, no, not our Tom!’ Jesse said. ‘After all this time? And what he’s been through?’
‘Did
Tilly know he was going blind when she left him?’ Beth asked.
‘No, Mother. He told no one until today.’
‘He shouldn’t have married her,’ Dicky said. ‘I said all along she was nothing worth it.’
‘Damnable war!’ Great-grumpa said. ‘Is there no end to its consequences, even now?’
‘No, there’s no end,’ Betony said. ‘I see its evil every day when I visit the men at Chepsworth Park.’
‘I’ll go out and see him,’ Jesse said. ‘I’ll knock this time till he lets me in.’
‘No, don’t go yet,’ Betony said. ‘I think he’s better left alone.’
On Monday, early, she travelled with Tom by train to Sawsford. The military hospital stood on a hill and had a fine view out over the town. To Betony it seemed very busy but to Tom it was quiet compared with when he had been there last. He was seen by three doctors and spent half an hour with each in turn. They were strangers to him but had his medical details before them and asked him a great many questions. He was then given X-rays and told he would have to wait some time before they could tell him the results.
‘I suggest you have lunch,’ the surgeon, Major Kerrison, said, speaking to Tom and Betony together. ‘The Fleece round the corner is good. Tell the waiter I sent you.’
After lunch at The Fleece and an hour spent walking over the hill, they returned to the hospital and sat waiting. The day was a mild one, with a premature hint of spring, and in the gardens outside the window, heliotrope flowered, pink and mauve.
A nurse came into the waiting-room, and Tom stood up. He was white to the lips and a pulse was throbbing in his cheek.
‘The doctor would like to see Mrs Maddox.’
‘I’m not Mrs Maddox,’ Betony said. ‘I’m his foster-sister. My name is Miss Izzard.’
‘Oh. Well. Come this way, Miss Izzard, please.’
So Tom had to wait again, sitting on the bench with his back against the wall, while nurses in white and patients in blue passed to and fro along the corridor. When Betony came back at last, he knew from her face that she brought bad news.
‘What’d they say? You may as well tell me straight out.’
‘They say there’s nothing they can do.’
‘No operation nor treatment nor nothing?’
‘The optic nerves are too badly damaged. There’s nothing they can do about it. They say it’s only a question of time.’
‘Total blindness?’ Tom asked.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘How long?’
‘They don’t know.’
‘Six months? A year? They must have some notion, I’d have thought.’
‘No. They’re uncertain. It could happen soon … or it could be as much as two years.’
‘I knew it was going to be bad,’ he said, ‘when they asked for you.’
‘The doctor wants to see you too. He has some advice he wants to give you and a letter for Dr Dundas at home. He says you’re eligible for a pension.’
‘A pension!’ he said, hollowly, and went away down the corridor.
Betony sat with her hands on her handbag. She had not told him everything, even now, because she and the doctor had decided against it, and she closed her eyes for a brief moment, seeking in herself some untapped spring of strength and courage. By the time Tom returned, she thought she had found it. She rose and went to him with a calm face.
When they reached Chepsworth and were on their way to The Old Plough, where they had left the pony and trap, Tom stopped suddenly and said he would prefer to walk back home across the fields.
‘It’s a nice afternoon. You don’t mind, do you, Bet?’
‘Promise you won’t do anything silly.’
‘It’s all right,’ he said, and a rare smile just touched his lips. ‘I’m taking it like a proper soldier.’
‘You may never lose your sight at all,’ she said briskly. ‘Doctors have been known to be wrong sometimes.’
She drove home without him, and as she turned into the fold, Michael came out of the house to meet her.
‘You’re very late, Betony. We’re due at my uncle’s by half past five but I doubt if we’ll get there much before six.’
‘I’m sorry, Michael, I’m not coming. There’s something important I have to do.’
‘More important than keeping an engagement?’
‘I hope you’ll make my excuses to your uncle and explain that it just couldn’t be avoided.’
‘I suppose it’s something to do with Tom? Your mother said you’d both been down to Sawsford today.’
‘Yes, I went with him to the hospital there.’
‘How much longer, may I ask, are you going to play nursemaid to that young man?’
‘Tom’s going blind!’ she said bluntly. ‘I suppose you’d admit he needs help?’
‘Betony, I’m sorry, I’d no idea. Your mother and father should have said. But still, even so, I don’t see why you should take the responsibility. Not now that he has a wife.’
‘Tilly’s left him,’ Betony said.
‘Good God! What a mess it all is!’
‘The longer you wait here, the later you’ll be getting to Ilton.’
‘Yes, yes, I’m going,’ he said, but continued to stand there, watching her as she fed the pony. ‘You don’t seem able to get away from Tom, do you? He haunts you like some guilty dream. You’re always trying to pay off a debt for something you did or did not do to him in childhood.’
‘Yes, well, perhaps I am.’
‘In my opinion, it can’t be done. I feel you’re only wasting your time.’
‘It isn’t only my debt. Tom was hurt while fighting in France. I think we all owe a debt to men like him.’
‘That can’t ever be paid either.’
‘No, I don’t think it can,’ Betony said. ‘But I think we should try all the same.’
An hour later she drove to Blagg and called on the Mercybrights at Lilac Cottage. Jack was sitting reading his paper. He put it aside as Linn showed Betony into the kitchen, but he made no attempt to stand up, and she saw that one leg lay resting across a stool.
‘I wanted to talk to you both about Tom.’
‘You’d better sit down. I’m willing to hear what you got to say, and so is Linn, though I doubt if his business can interest us much.’
‘Tom’s wife has left him. He’s all alone. It wasn’t true she was having a baby. She led him up the garden path.’
‘I ent too surprised,’ Jack said. ‘She struck me as a sly piece. But it don’t alter the fact that he’d been monkeying with her in the first place.’
‘One fall from grace,’ Betony said, ‘and you’d hold it against him all his life?’
She turned from him to look at Linn, who sat on the edge of an upright chair, her hands still nursing a cup and a tea-cloth. The girl was beautiful, Betony thought: delicate features, neatly made; colouring vivid and unusual; dark brown eyes full of thought and feeling. There was a gentle warmth about her, yet plainly she had a resolute will.
‘Would you hold it against him for ever?’
‘I’m not his judge,’ Linn said.
‘I’m hoping you might be his salvation.’
‘Look here,’ Jack said. ‘That young man made my daughter unhappy. He hurt her, Miss Izzard, and she done right to send him away.’
‘He must have meant something to you, then,’ Betony said, still looking at Linn, ‘if he had the power to make you unhappy.’
‘He chose someone else. It’s not my fault if it didn’t work out.’
‘He never cared tuppence for Tilly Preston.’
‘He told me that, but I didn’t believe him.’
‘You ought to have done. Tom doesn’t tell lies.’
‘Why have you come to us, Miss Izzard?’
‘I’ve come because Tom is going blind.’
‘No,’ Linn said, and turned her face away, hiding her pain. ‘No! Oh, no!’
‘Can’t something be done for him?’ Jack asked.
‘No, nothing,’ Betony said. ‘He saw the doctors this afternoon. Now he’s out at the Pikehouse, alone, facing up to it the best way he can. But there’s something else ‒ something Tom himself doesn’t know ‒ that nobody knows except myself ‒ and I hope to God I do right to tell you.’
Betony paused. She was trying to read the girl’s face. ‘He’s only got a short time to live,’ she said. ‘Twelve months at the most, and that only if he takes things quietly. If he had an illness of any kind, or too much strain, death could come sooner, the doctor said.’
Linn sat perfectly still. It was some time before she spoke.
‘I remember... at the hospital in Rouen … they were afraid of brain-damage … but then it seemed as if everything was all right after all.’ She was perfectly calm, though white as ashes, and she drew a deep, controlled breath. ‘I wish I could have known … when I first came home and met him again …’
‘Linn, do you love him?’ her father asked, and when she turned to look at him, giving her answer silently, he said, ‘In that case, I reckon you’d better go to him, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think so too.’
‘I’ll take you there,’ Betony said. ‘I’ll wait outside while you get ready. Don’t be too long. I’ve already kept the pony standing and the evening is getting a lot colder.’
She went out to the trap and sat waiting, and after a while Linn joined her, carrying a small canvas bag. It was dusk by the time they reached the Pikehouse, and a small rain was sprinkling down, out of a sky the colour of charcoal. The house was in darkness, and Betony sat waiting again while Linn found her way to the door. A few minutes passed, then the lamp was lit and shone through the window. Betony turned in the narrow roadway and drove home through the drizzling rain.
Chapter Nine
It was a Sunday, and the family at Cobbs were about to sit down to their midday dinner when the back door burst open and Emery Preston walked in, followed by his eldest son, Matthew.
‘What’s all this?’ Granna demanded, bringing a pile of plates to the table, and Great-grumpa Tewke, carving-knife poised against the steel, said, ‘This ent The Rose and Crown, by God, and I’ll thank you to knock before lifting the sneck of decent folks’ doors.’
The Sorrowing Wind (The Apple Tree Saga Book 3) Page 15
