The Wilding

by McCann, Maria

  Being an enemy to superstition, I stayed where I was and merely asked why that tree above all others.

  ‘It’s Joan’s wilding. She told me it sprang up when she was with child.’

  There was something touching in this sorry little tale. Joan must once have looked forward to a home where her man would plant an apple tree for each child, as others did; she had wanted to be like other women.

  ‘Will you be sad to leave it?’ I asked.

  ‘She will.’

  ‘But not you?’

  ‘I’d be sadder if it was in fruit.’

  There, in a few words, lay the difference between Joan, who had fallen upon hard times, and Tamar, who was born into them. Not even her own tree was dear to her.

  She said, ‘When will you tell Mr Mathew I’m with child?’

  ‘I already have.’

  ‘What did he say?’ she demanded with the first real curiosity I had seen in her since we had arrived.

  ‘I’m not supposed to talk about it,’ I said, embarrassed now and even a little irritated with Father, for sending me out with d merely and thus making it hard to keep to my word.

  ‘He won’t know,’ she said impatiently. ‘All right then, tell me this: what’s he want with my mother?’

  ‘To ask her things, I suppose. You’re to be looked after, Tamar – have money for the lying-in, and all that; but it’s in return for my breaking off with you.’

  Her tawny eyes widened in surprise. ‘Breaking off? What is there to break off?’

  At this I felt a pang. I could not, and would not have liked to, marry her, but to be dismissed so easily! ‘You’re carrying my child,’ I said. ‘I take it we’ll never be quite strangers to one another.’

  Tamar put her head on one side. ‘You’re not to see me. What’s that but strangers?’

  ‘Unless I agree, Father won’t maintain you and my son.’ I softened my voice and touched her on the arm. ‘But I shall often think of you, Tamar – often.’

  She ignored the last part of my speech and said as if to the trees, ‘Men always think it’s a son.’

  ‘Boy or girl,’ I returned, ‘the child will be cared for. My father does everything fair and square, and that’s how I would wish it to be.’ If I could have learnt my lesson, I would have kept quiet on the subject of my thoughts and feelings, since they were evidently less than nothing as far as Tamar was concerned.

  ‘What about Joan?’ she enquired. ‘Is she to be …?’

  ‘He won’t leave her to starve.’

  She looked pleased. ‘She’ll maybe get through the winter, then.’

  ‘You could at least thank me, Tamar,’ I said, mulishly determined to exact some expression of gratitude, of regret, anything that would show I was more to her than the men of the village.

  ‘I thought your father was paying?’

  ‘Not all. I’m giving enough to put back my wedding.’

  ‘You’re marrying?’ Her frank grin had no jealousy in it. ‘Who?’

  ‘Never you mind.’

  Tamar began to giggle. ‘Jonathan Dymond, married! Well, at least you’ll know what to do with her. Such a job as I had, getting it in!’

  ‘And now you can’t get me out,’ I said. ‘So laugh at that.’

  She stopped laughing and walked away along the ditch as if to hide a hurt. At once I regretted my spiteful words, but before I could go after her my father came out of the cave.

  ‘She’s too exhausted,’ he said. ‘I can’t make myself understood. You must give her some cordial, then some bread and butter and meat.’

  ‘I’ll do it directly,’ Tamar promised.

  ‘What I wished her to understand is that you must move from here. Wait until you hear from me; I’ll deal for you.’

  She made an awkward curtsey. ‘God bless you, Mr Mathew. Will it be soon?’

  ‘As soon as I can arrange. Say your goodbyes, the two of you.’

  I put out my hand. ‘Farewell, Tamar. Forgive me.’

  ‘Farewell,’ Tamar said, her voice flat, arms by her sides. She had not looked me in the face since she walked away. After my jibe about ‘getting me out’ she must have thought my apology a kind of feigned virtue for my father’s benefit. I cannot blame her; but had she known how much courage it took, and how little my father would approve of his son asking a whore’s pardon, she would have judged me more kindly.

  ‘Come,’ I urged, ‘I wish you well. Let’s part friends.’

  Since Father was watching, she put a limp hand into mine and said ‘Thank you, Sir,’ still without turning her eyes on me. I felt such disappointment that for an instant her figure blurred as my own eyes welled up, but I had had enough of weeping and I mastered that.

  ‘Young woman, you won’t be seeing my son again,’ said Father. ‘Is there anything you wish to say to him in my presence?’

  ‘No, Sir.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure, Sir.’

  ‘Then let us go, Jon, we have business to attend to.’ He touched my arm to recall me to myself and I went after him, leaving her there. After a few steps, I could not resist looking round. Tamar had disappeared into the cave.

  * * *

  My father has the trick of setting things right and people at their ease with his quiet, unassuming air. So when my aunt stared as we were shown into the room, and did not get up, he took no notice but simply went forward and kissed her, saying he hoped he found her well. As for me, I am easily thrown by such rudeness as hers (I mean I am moved to anger, and cannot always conceal it), so I hung back, letting him smooth the way.

  At Father’s greeting Aunt Harriet could not but return his good wishes and ask us to sit, but she continued to stare at us in a perplexed manner, until my father asked, ‘Is it possible you weren’t expecting us, Harriet?’

  My aunt’s face cleared a little. ‘Jon I certainly expected. My apples are waiting for him.’ Here she gave me an exasperated look, but went on immediately to say, ‘And of course ia pleasure to see you, brother-in-law.’

  ‘And for me to see you,’ Father said, so smoothly that I was quite struck by his talents as a liar. ‘Forgive Jon for wandering off; he’ll stay now until the work is finished, won’t you, Jon?’

  ‘Yes,’ I murmured.

  ‘There. I’m aware, Harriet, that a woman in your position has a great many affairs to attend to, so I won’t keep you longer than need be. I’ve come here with Jon in order to make a request.’

  My aunt rang the bell beside the fire. Rose entered, looking flushed and nervous, as if she had been listening at the door and thought herself detected.

  ‘Cake and wine,’ my aunt murmured.

  Unlike my father, I was in a position to know that Aunt Harriet invariably offered these to people with whom she hoped to conduct business, and that she must therefore anticipate some profit in granting his request. Rose, with whom I had enjoyed so much gossip in the past, now scuttled away without daring to acknowledge me by more than a curtsey. No sooner had she closed the door than my aunt proved me a prophet by asking, ‘Are you talking about a loan, Mathew?’

  ‘Oh, nothing like that! I was wondering, in fact, if you could have a word with Dr Green.’

  My aunt drew herself up so tightly that her chair creaked. ‘If you seek to interest him in some concern of yours, Mathew, I can only advise you –’

  ‘You mistake me. I’ve no personal interest in the matter. The thing is –’

  Rose entered and served us with our refreshments. When she had gone, and we had praised my aunt’s hospitality, my father began again.

  ‘I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Harriet, but there’s a vagrant living in the wood behind your house.’

  ‘There are always vagrants in there,’ said my aunt. ‘Behind the house, you say? Are we in danger?’

  ‘Oh, no! This is a poor old trot, destitute, derelict. She fancies herself a wise woman – you know the sort of thing. Now, I hear Dr Green has taken men to inspect this so-called
witch, and I wondered if you could persuade him to let her be.’

  ‘Persuade him?’ Aunt Harriet frowned. ‘Surely you don’t imagine I instruct Dr Green in his duties?’

  ‘I mean only that you’re well respected in the parish. The creature is incapable; she doesn’t know what she’s saying. I’m sure Dr Green is sincere in his –’

  ‘You seem very well informed, Mathew. Who told you all this – Jon?’

  Father inclined his head and my aunt went on, ‘You never mentioned this woman to me, Jon. When you went home, I thought you intended to askbout my sister Joan.’

  Her hawk’s eyes looked right through me.

  ‘Answer, Jon,’ my father said mildly.

  ‘I did ask, Aunt, and my father gave me back your own words, almost.’ The almost was to square my conscience.

  Aunt Harriet nodded her head. ‘So let us be clear now. This idiot woman in the wood is the mother of my thieving servant, is she not?’

  I was sweating. ‘I did meet her through keeping company with your servant, yes. That was folly, Aunt, I know it now, and I’ll never see them again.’

  ‘He’s made a clean breast of it,’ Father put in, rescuing me. ‘The thing is, through the girl he met this pitiful old creature. Harriet, I would’ve thought Dr Green would know better. Had she magical powers, she would scarcely be starving in a wood.’

  ‘You forget,’ said my aunt, ‘that in their fancy witches go gorgeously attired. Satan deludes his servants with false shows of wealth.’

  ‘All wealth is a false show,’ Father remarked, perhaps none too tactfully in that house. ‘Christ’s teachings make that plain.’

  ‘The Bible also tells us, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Dr Green is within his rights to remove her.’

  From that moment I think we both saw we should get nowhere, but Father battled on.

  ‘I would never argue with scripture, Harriet. My point is, this is no witch.’

  ‘You’ve met with her, then?’

  ‘Once.’

  I wondered: was this another deliberate lie of Father’s? Possibly at that moment he considered Old Joan and Young Joan as two different people.

  My aunt said, ‘Dr Green has spoken with her on several occasions; he always proceeds with care. My dear Mathew, surely you don’t think this is the first time he’s dealt with such women?’

  ‘You yourself seem very well informed, Harriet,’ Father said, with a touch of sarcasm.

  ‘It’s my duty to help root out evil from the parish.’

  I shuddered at the sight of her, so respectable and righteous and … what was the word? I could only think of ‘malevolent’, and that is scarcely a word one cares to use within one’s own family.

  ‘Harriet,’ my father said, and his voice sounded like pleading, ‘this woman is close to death. Might you not –’

  ‘As for the young one,’ Aunt glanced at me, ‘pray consider what you are defending. Because of her, men are infecting their innent wives! What pastor would permit that, if he could once put a stop to it?’

  At this I felt a rush of indignation and I opened my mouth to say that Tamar was not poxed. My aunt was watching me with a tiny cold smile, no more than just a curl of the lip, as if to say, ‘Come, will you put your head in this noose?’

  There was a pause. Then my father very quietly said, ‘And does she drag these virtuous husbands to the woods?’

  ‘That they go to her only proves the force of the temptation.’

  To me it was plain as day that Aunt Harriet knew who it was that lay in the cave, and I was almost leaping with impatience until I could communicate this to my father. There was an air of suppressed triumph about my aunt that he could not have failed to notice, but I did not think he had worked it all out as I had. The link between past and present was – I saw now – Dr Green. He had known Joan as a young woman, and later when she returned as a vagrant. He had spoken to her face to face, most recently when he had refused charity to her and Tamar. He had visited the ‘witch’. At some point he must have recognised her, and told my aunt of his discovery. When that had been, what they had said on that occasion, I would never know, but it had happened recently; I would take my Bible oath that when I first went to Aunt Harriet’s house, she regarded Joan as no more than an old beggar who persisted in peering through windows.

  As I sat studying Aunt Harriet’s pursed, triumphant face, I no longer had the slightest trouble believing that she had made a sacrifice of her erring sister. It struck me that my aunt, who had featured for so long as a dim, ageing figure in the background to my young life, was nothing less than a Cromwell in petticoats. That is perhaps a comical expression, but there is nothing comical about such people. Aunt Harriet would have signed the death warrant of the King of England, had he got in her way.

  * * *

  Before supper, Father helped me lay out everything in readiness for the morning; after that time it was too dark to do much, even with lanterns. The three of us were to eat together, after which Aunt Harriet could hardly refuse to lodge Father overnight. She suggested that he share my bed, saying that in this way we would be more likely both to wake early, he to travel back to Spadboro and I to begin my work on the cider. This seemed a poor, thin reason in a house where there were servants to wake us, and I believe her real object, grudging as she was, was to avoid dirtying any more of her fine linen.

  Father said this arrangement would suit us very well, and that we would retire, with her permission, shortly after supper.

  That meal passed off peacefully enough; the fire was burnt out of our conversation, leaving us polite and dull. My aunt asked after ‘Barbara’ and brought Rose out of the kitchen to supply the recipe for a conserve said to be a particular favourite of the Bishop of Bath and Wells; how Rose had come by this, or what connection she might have with the Bishop I am sure I cannot say.

  We said goodnight and left my aunt sitting at table. Vexed by a persistent flea, she had taken off her cap, and as I looked back from the doorway on leaving I saw her hair glisten in the dull beams of the candles. Seen in that soft light, and om a distance, she appeared a frail and lonely woman, presiding over emptiness where children should have been.

  As we climbed the stairs to my chamber I was wondering why Robin had produced no legitimate issue. If Tamar was indeed his child, the weakness must lie in my aunt. Yet what strength she had, in other ways: strength to bear the evenings alone and in silence, on and on until her death and in plain view of that approaching end. I have never felt myself so alone as she appeared to me at that moment. Though I am of the stronger sex, I am not sure I could have borne it.

  *

  We undressed by candlelight and got into what I now thought of as Joan’s bed. It was a good size for two people and had the additional advantage that we were able to confer together in whispers. Father told me that although he had already settled upon helping the women in the wood, while talking with my aunt he had come to a further decision, namely that he should return with all haste and fetch them away to a better place before Dr Green could terrify Joan into a confession.

  ‘But Father, what if they catch you?’

  ‘Then I have discovered my sister-in-law living in destitution and wish to take her to my home. I have the right – she hasn’t been arrested.’

  ‘Will you take her to Spadboro?’

  ‘If I’m forced to.’

  ‘And if not? Where will you go?’

  ‘You should know nothing.’

  He was right. Should Dr Green question me, I could answer him in all innocence. On the other hand, it also meant I could never again find out Tamar, unless Father relented. But then, I had only to remember her face as she said, ‘What is there to break off?’ to realise how little she wished to be found.

  ‘Very well,’ I said.

  ‘Good lad. Now: when I’m gone, no hints, no smirks, nothing of that sort. Obey your aunt.’

  ‘I promise.’

  He blew out the candle and began settli
ng himself for sleep. After a while I heard him snore. Sleep came less easily to me but when it came it was black nothingness, empty of both joy and fear.

  * * *

  The following morning Father left while it was still dark; I waved him off and when the light permitted, went back to my aunt’s cider. I will spare you the details: let me say only that the familiar labour I had loved so long brought me no comfort and I was in no mood to prolong it. But it went slowly enough by itself, since I had all the apples to gather and sort without the help of little Billy, who was gone on some errand in the village, and by the time the second cheese was in place it was nearly dark outside.

  Already a day had passed since Father had gone with me to ave. I stood in the doorway looking out at the sky – clear and starry, the women would feel the cold in their bones – and wishing I could sleep in the stable rather than go back inside End House.

  *

  Father had done well to warn me against triumphing over Aunt Harriet. I was sorely tempted, for his departure was the signal for mocks and gibes. As Rose put some stewed fruit on the table my aunt remarked that the charms of the young woman in the wood seemed to have swayed my father, and that it was curious how all the men of the Dymond family shared this tendency to be drawn by crude and impudent attractions.

  ‘You must allow one exception,’ I said. My aunt’s eye lit up; she was so used to slavish flattery from those around her that I believe she expected it even from me. Her look changed, however, when I added, ‘Nobody ever considered my mother either crude or impudent.’

  My aunt said only, ‘You’ll finish tomorrow – eh?’ but it was too late; I had seen the insult go home. However, this was not the way to keep my promise to Father, so I said more humbly, ‘I’ll do my best, Aunt. Where was Billy this morning?’

  ‘He’s gone to Dr Green’s house, with the constable,’ my aunt said, ‘telling them about some thefts that took place here. Firewood and straw.’

  I felt myself grow pale, but she could hardly have perceived that in the dim room, and my voice was firm as I asked, ‘Has the thief been detected?’