Her granny was a heavy sleeper and was in the habit of snoring so she never made her escape until the snores were deep. And she also pushed some straw into a hump under the blanket because she knew that once or twice her granny had come up the indoor ladder and poked her head through the trapdoor, but had not as yet ventured further, for this would have meant crawling on her hands and knees across the floor to where the pallet was.
When first the urge came on her to walk in the moonlight, she hadn’t thought of taking the whip with her, until one night, having wandered the length of the farm, she had come to the wood that separated the farm boundary from the Fordyke land. It was called Openwood. Her granny had explained that the land yon side of the wood had once been common land, open to the people of Fellburn village and thereabouts to graze their cattle on, and when Mr Fordyke claimed it as his, he had railed it in. But he hadn’t railed the wood, perhaps because it was a dirty wood, being full of scrub, yet it held some good big trees and the villagers gathered kindling from the twigs and there would have been a hullabaloo had he gone the whole hog and railed it in an’ all.
It was just as she crossed the border of the wood, for she was really fearful of entering it and so hadn’t as yet plucked up the courage to do so until this night, that she had, as she put it, almost jumped clean out of her skin when she saw shadowy forms passing before her. She was too terrified to scream and had become immobile; and this likely had saved her from being noticed, for with her dark head and black cloak she had merged into the scrub against which she stood.
However, so great was the fright she got this particular night that it put a stop to her wanderings for some weeks. But the next time the moonlight became irresistible she took with her the small whip for which she had painstakingly made a new handle. What she hoped to achieve with it were she surrounded by a group of men didn’t enter her mind, she only knew she felt safer carrying the whip.
Her second pleasure was a daylight one and it was her discovery of the river. She had been six months at the farm before she really saw the river, and it only two miles away. It was Billy Proctor who took her down one Sunday afternoon, and as she stood on the bank and looked at the different kinds of ships, forming a panorama that stretched away along both banks and made up of scullers, keel boats, barges, small sailing vessels, and large ones that looked gigantic to her eyes, she had been speechless. Even when Billy had said to her, ‘Don’t you think that’s a bonny sight?’ she hadn’t replied until he came back with, ‘You don’t like the river then?’
Then she had cried, ‘Oh yes! Yes, it’s beautiful, lovely. I’ve never seen so many ships.’
‘Oh, this is nowt,’ Billy had said; ‘it’s dead on a Sunday. But from the morrow morning at five o’clock when it comes alive, you’ve never seen owt like it.’ Then he had ended somewhat sadly, ‘I wanted to go to sea as a lad, but they wouldn’t let me. They were gettin’ old and had to be kept, an’ when they both went I was too old for change, too old to run up a riggin’.’
Emma realised he was talking about his parents and was sad because he hadn’t been able to go to sea. She liked Billy; she wished she could make him happy in some way.
On that particular Sunday, Billy had walked her back through Openwood, and she had become excited, running here and there, trying to recognise the paths she followed in the moonlight. It didn’t look so nice in the daytime, and not all that big; in fact, when the trees were bare you could see through it from one end to the other and into the field beyond. One thing in the wood appeared new to her, and that was the big oak. She couldn’t remember seeing a tree as big as that before. Yet some of the trees she did recognise and they looked smaller in the daylight.
As she stood looking at the trunk of the oak tree there came into her mind a picture of her dada throwing knives at such a tree. He had marked a head and body on it that was almost a replica of her mama’s and his aim was accurate, each dagger striking the tree two inches outside the chalk line. It came to her that she would like to practise with her dada’s knives. She knew she could throw straight but she also knew there was a great difference between throwing a ball or a stone straight with a flick of the wrist and the strength of the wrist needed to throw the knives. But it was just a thought, and it slipped out of her mind as quickly as it had come in.
But from that day, whenever she could, with or without Billy, she went and looked at the river and the boats, and so used did she become to the short cuts across the fields and through the wood that she told herself she could find her way there blindfold.
For the past six months she had taken over her granny’s duties for the painter. Two mornings a week she went to the cottage and cleaned it, all except the paint room; she peeled vegetables to make his broth, and she cooked him pancakes, but as yet she didn’t bake his bread. The missis sent him down two loaves a week for which she charged him tenpence, and ninepence a dozen for his eggs, some of them only pullets’, which her granny said was downright robbery because you could get them anywhere else for fourpence a dozen or sixpence at the most.
There were times when the painter took a day off and strolled to the fish quay on the river and he would bring back a dozen or more fresh herring. She would get them, bone them and, after rubbing them with sage leaves and salt, would roll them up and put them in a dish in the oven. She liked these days for he would say to her, ‘Tuck in, Emma,’ and she tucked in because she loved herrings; moreover, she always felt hungry.
This morning she was on her hands and knees, a bucket by her side, scrubbing the stone floor of the living room, and when the painter stepped over the clean part to stand on the step of the cottage she paused a moment in her scrubbing to look at him because he was speaking.
‘It’s a beautiful morning, Emma,’ he said. ‘Too nice a day to be buried, and Henry’s burying his grandfather today.’
Henry, she knew, was the name of the parson and she had heard that his grandfather had died and he had gone back to his home to take the burial service.
‘Nice fellow, Henry. He should never have been a minister.’ He turned and looked down at her. ‘Last person in the world I would have thought would have taken the cloth. A rip when he was a lad, up to every kind of mischief and trick you could imagine. He was up to us older ones. Me, I could give him six years but I always looked upon him as an equal.’ He smiled down at her, then looked out again as he went on, as if talking to himself, ‘Life’s queer and yet it has a pattern. There we were, brought up within a few miles of each other in that picturesque village and we went our different ways. I, of course, went mine long before he went his and now here we are, come together like two immigrants in a foreign country, because you know, Emma’—he was glancing down sideways at her now—‘this is a foreign country, a rough alien foreign country, where the folks appear kind on the surface but are devious beneath. Oh yes, Emma’—he was nodding at her—‘devious, that is the word. Your mistress up above’—he thumbed in the direction of the farm—‘and her man, they are good examples. And the farm worker, all the farm workers, whether they be quiet or loquacious, they’re all devious. They look at you and they can tell you weren’t born here, so you are somebody strange, somebody to be taken down in one way or the other, someone to drag a penny out of. But there again, that streak doesn’t run through only one class. Oh…oh no. Your Fordykes are another example, only they go one better, they don’t wait to do the foreigner, they take it out of the skin of their servants and all those under them. Yet they are not as bad as the mine owners. Oh, no, no, Emma. You know something? If I want to draw a leech or a tyrant I think of a coal owner getting his pennies out of children’s sweat…Have you ever been down a mine, Emma?’
‘No, Mr Bowman.’
‘Then you’re fortunate. Do you know that? You’re fortunate to be scrubbing that floor. And yet at times when I see you scrubbing that floor I want to drag you up from it. But then I say to myself, well if she doesn’t scrub the floor Lizzie will come down and scrub the floor. And
do I want Lizzie to come and scrub the floor? No; I would rather have Emma.’ He was grinning at her now. Then turning about, he ended, ‘Life’s very complicated, Emma, very complicated.’ And with this he stepped again over the clean part of her floor and was making for his studio when a giggle turned him round and he stared at her, his eyebrows raised, his mouth pulled down at the corners in an expression of enquiry.
‘You’re laughing at me, Emma?’
‘I like to hear you talk, Mr Bowman.’
‘And you find what I say funny?’
‘No.’ Her face became serious as she thought of an answer. ‘Not what you say but somethin’ in your voice,’ she said.
She hadn’t known what he would say to this but what she didn’t expect him to say and in a loud voice was, ‘Hold it. Keep like that.’
She found it difficult to obey his command because one hand was on the scrubbing brush on the floor, the other was splayed over the stone slab and her head was up and to the side. What was more, a beam of sunlight coming through one of the small glass panes in the window was shining right into her eyes. And now he was saying in a loud voice, ‘Remember just how you’re kneeling, and what you’re doing, can you?’
There was a long pause before she said, ‘I’ll try, Mr Bowman.’
‘Then get up; bring that bucket and your brush and come in here.’
She had never before been in the paint room; she had caught glimpses of it as he opened the door to go in, but all she had seen was the bare floor. Now he was propelling her into the room.
She put down the wooden bucket and quickly looked about her. It was a much larger room than the living room which she now realised was really the original kitchen. To the side of the window was a large easel with a canvas on it and round the walls, four and five deep, similar canvasses were stacked. There were rafters in this room, as in the kitchen, and across them lay boards and on them what looked like rolls of brown material. There was a fireplace but no fire in it, and the only furniture in the room was a long wooden table, half of it covered with trays of paint. The other half held a slanted drawing-board with a stool on the floor in front of it.
‘Get on your hands and knees again, Emma. Now remember how you looked next door.’
She did as he bade her. Then he was squatting in front of her pushing her hand here, turning her head this way and that, scraping the wooden bucket to different positions on the floor. And then he said, ‘Don’t smile.’
She didn’t feel like smiling, she felt cramped.
‘Look at me. Can you think of something sad?’
‘Oh yes.’ She could think of something sad, she could still recall quite clearly the last time her dada spoke to her.
He made her start when he cried, ‘That’s it. That’s it. Now just stay like that, Emma. Just stay. Just…stay…like…that.’
He had rushed to the table and taken up a large pad; now he was squatting in front of her and he began to draw quickly.
She still tried to keep her thoughts on her dada and what he had said to her on that last occasion they were together. But other things began to intrude, such as what would her granny think when she knew she had been in the paint room? And she hoped the sun wasn’t shining where the Parson was burying his grandfather, because it would be better to be buried if the sun wasn’t shining.
‘Just a minute more, that’s it. Don’t move your head.’
The minute seemed to stretch into an hour before she heard the painter cry, ‘That’s it. Enough to start on…Child with a bucket, that’s what I’ll call you. Child with a bucket.’
She sat back on her heels now, asking, ‘Can I finish me floor?’
‘Yes, finish your floor, Emma.’ There was laughter in his voice. ‘And do all the work you’ve got to do in the house today because on Thursday I want you to sit for me. Oh’—he laughed out loud as he saw the expression on her face—‘not on your knees again, you can sit on a cracket.’ He pointed down to the floor. ‘And I just want to get your face as I saw it today.’
She smiled at him now; then she asked a question.
‘Can I tell me granny?’
His mouth formed a large pout now and he brought his chin into the soft collar of his shirt as he said, ‘No, Emma. No, don’t tell your granny. This is just a secret between you and me. Eh?…Right?’
She smiled at him before she repeated the last word, ‘Right.’ She didn’t add ‘Mr Bowman’, and the thought entered her mind it was a good job her granny wasn’t here, else she’d get a shaking for not minding her manners. Yet her granny didn’t mind her manners when she was with the painter, she talked back at him, like the mistress did the master up at the farm. This would only happen of course when she herself was out of the way, but she had good ears and she kept them open. There was some deep connection between her granny and Mr Bowman that she couldn’t quite explain to herself; in fact, she didn’t want to explain it to herself, because she knew that once she found the explanation she wouldn’t like it for it had to do with her granny kissing the painter. And she wanted to keep on liking her granny. Her granny was kind to her at times. She had given her a penny to spend on fair day down in the village. She had debated whether to buy a hair ribbon with it or some cinder taffy, and the cinder taffy had won. But she hadn’t enjoyed the fair day because it reminded her of the company, and the people at the fair didn’t seem nice like the members of the company. She hoped that the company would sometime come this way. But Mr Travers had always worked the circuit into Yorkshire and beyond. It appeared that people expected them at certain times and saved up for their coming …
Her work finished, she knocked on the paint-room door and when after a moment Mr Bowman’s voice called, ‘Yes?’ she said, ‘I’m off, Mr Bowman.’ And to this he answered, ‘Go on then. Go on then.’ His voice sounded short, full of impatience. Her granny had told her never to disturb him when he was in the paint room.
On her way back she had reached the second field when she saw Barney. He was mending a fence. Barney was now fourteen years old, he was growing not only tall but broad with it. Emma thought he looked nice. But Luke who had the same colouring and similar features with the exception of his mouth, which was thin and straight, didn’t look nice to her. She thought his face looked mean, like his character.
Barney had stopped hammering the post in some time before her approach and when she came up to him he was standing, his arms by his sides, the hammer gently swinging backwards and forwards from one hand.
‘Finished?’ he asked.
She nodded at him before saying, ‘Yes.’
‘Do you like workin’ down there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Better than up here?’
What could she say to that? If it had been any of the others she might have lied, but to Barney she could say, ‘Yes, it’s cleaner.’
‘You shouldn’t have to see to the pigs. It’s Dan’s job, and he would do it, I know he would…only…’ He wagged his head in some embarrassment. And she put in quickly, ‘Oh, I don’t mind, I like Fanny an’ she knows me; even with the litter she never goes for me.’
‘No, she doesn’t.’ Barney said this with some surprise in his voice as if the knowledge had just come to him, which it must have done because he went on, ‘When you come to think of it, she doesn’t, and she’s a bitch is Fanny. She’s lifted Pete clean over the railings afore the day, an’ she can’t stand the sight of me da. You going to the river on Sunday?’ He was looking down at the swinging hammer now, and she answered, ‘Perhaps, if Billy’s goin’.’
Her granny had made it an unwritten law that she didn’t go anywhere by herself, especially to the river, for as her granny had once prophesied she could wake up on one of them boats out in the ocean and not know how she got there. Funny things happened on the river bank between Newcastle and Shields. What her granny would say…or do if she knew that she had got within sight of the river on a moonlight night only last week didn’t bear thinking about. She still sometimes fel
t afraid on her midnight jaunts, but not so much now when she carried the whip with her.
‘I might be going down to the river on Sunday meself. They say there’s a great sailing ship in, one of the biggest yet. Masts almost touching the sky.’
‘Really?’
He nodded at her. ‘Aye, that’s what they say. Tony Hudson was telling me. His da and granda had not only seen it, they’d been on it. They know the first mate.’
‘It must be wonderful to be on a boat, a big boat with sails.’
‘Aye.’ He nodded at her, then said thoughtfully, ‘Sometimes I wish I could go on a boat.’
‘You do? You don’t like being on the farm?’
‘Oh’—he wagged his head now—‘sometimes; but sometimes I’d like to get away, be on me own you know. But…but there, I never will.’
‘Why not? People go away; they run away to boats.’
‘Aye, so I’ve heard.’ He was laughing at her now. ‘But I don’t think I’m the runaway kind, haven’t the gumption.’
‘Oh’—she was strong in his defence now—‘yes you have the gumption. Yes you have, Barney. You’re the best of the bunch.’
He looked at her for fully a minute before he said, ‘I’m glad you think that, Emma. Aye I am. Eeh well, better get on.’ He turned abruptly now and, lifting up the hammer, banged it down on top of the post, and she went on her way up to the house.
Barney was nice. There were a lot of nice people in the world to sort of make up for the other kind.
Two
It had been stifling hot all day, but the wind had risen in the evening and had cooled things down, except under the roof. Emma knelt on the straw pallet and opened the worm-eaten hatch below the roof and let the wind waft round her. Her calico nightgown was sticking to her skin. She would like to go out, but it was a very dark night and the moon wouldn’t be up till later.
The Whip (The Spaniard's Gift) Page 7
