‘Shut your mouth, Da!’
Barney had risen to his feet and was now looking down at his father. ‘Now get this, an’ you’re not so drunk as you don’t understand what I’m sayin’, she’s me wife and as such she’s due for respect. And what’s more’—his voice was low now, but more telling than when he had shouted—‘let anyone lay a hand on her, and I’ll do for them. Do you hear? Kith or kin, I’ll do for them.’
‘What the hell’s up with you? Who’s touching her?…Who wants to touch her? Not me, or any other bugger on this farm, except yourself. Your brother who’s close blood of your blood can’t bear the sight of her. An’ when you’re on about respect, let me tell you this. I’m still master here, but she’s not mistress, and it won’t be past me to take another to me bed, an’ not afore long. And then she’s back where she was.’
‘Never! Get that into your head, Da, never. You marry again and I go out. I’ve said it afore and I repeat it, the world’s wide and I’ve got a pair of good hands on me, and she’s proved she can work as good and as long as two women. By God, she has!’
‘Huh!’ Jake Yorkless lay back in his chair and thrust his thumbs into his trouser pockets and glared up at his son as he said, ‘You know somethin’, Barney boy? You’ve gone soft an’ you’ll regret it. ’Twill come a day when you’ll regret it. You’ve taken on a dark horse and once you straddle her she’ll ride you to hell. Remember that, she’ll ride you to hell.’
Barney glared at the man who had sired him but for whom he had never had much liking, and now that little was no more. Turning about, he walked to where Emma was standing in the shadows and, taking her arm firmly but gently, he turned about and walked her out of the kitchen, across the small hall and up the stairs into their bedroom. There he lit the candle; then taking her by the shoulders and pressing her gently down onto the side of the bed, he sat beside her, saying softly now, ‘Take no notice. They’re ignorant, they’ve seen nothin’ but the land, they know nothin’. I don’t know much more, only this, I love you, Emma, and always have done, and in a way it’s cleansed me an’ softened me and learned me that there was something more to this living than mucking out animals. Although I’ve learned an’ all that animals are cleaner than men in many cases. And I promise you this, Emma, I’ll always be good to you, and I’ll wait for the day until you can look me in the face and say, “I love you, Barney.” Because you’ve never said it, have you Emma, you’ve never said, I love you?’
An emotion was oozing itself through her pores. She could give no name to it because it wasn’t a feeling, like she had for the parson, it wasn’t like any feeling she had ever had before. She couldn’t put the name compassion to it, she only knew that all fear of this night had gone from her, and she remained still and pliable under his hands as he loosened her clothing. And when she eventually laid down beside him his flesh brought her comfort.
PART FOUR
THE MOTHER
One
‘Well, you’ll just have to get on with it, won’t you?’
‘Yes, I suppose I will, Mrs Yorkless.’ Ralph Bowman laughed at her; then added, ‘But she gets on my nerves, she never stops chattering.’
‘Well she brings you all the village news, doesn’t she, and that from up above?’ Emma jerked her head backwards.
‘Yes, you’re right there, she does. But if she tells me once she tells me the same thing six times over with hardly any variation. The woman hasn’t the smallest amount of imagination.’
‘Then you’ll know what she’s telling you is true.’
‘Clever. Clever.’ Ralph Bowman now put his head on one side and said, ‘How long do you think it’ll be?’
‘What are you asking me, how long is it afore it’s born or how long is it going to be before I’m comin’ back here?’
‘Both.’
‘Well, I give meself three days at the most to when it’s due; as for when I’ll be back, it all depends how I feel. If I’m able I won’t leave it long, a couple of weeks or so.’
Ralph Bowman looked at the young woman standing before him. The only part of her still recognisable from the girl he remembered before her marriage was her hair and eyes, for her face was puffed and her stomach was a miniature mountain suspended from her waist, while her ankles were swollen over the top of her shoes. And that was the outside of her. Inside too there had been a change. But of course he knew this was a natural thing. In the ordinary way, marriage changed a woman, or a girl, or a child as he had thought of her—it seemed only a short while since she sprang through the kitchen door and said she was going to marry Barney. He wondered if she knew how many lives she had affected on that day. Materially she had affected his because after her marriage she came down to him only once a week, when she cooked for him and sometimes did a sitting. He had done a picture of her with her stomach high. In a way she didn’t look unlike Van Eyck’s ‘The Marriage of Giovanni’ in which the maiden looked already pregnant. But all told, he was grateful that he saw her at least once a week; more often if he was sick, for she was tender to him in sickness, and he was always worse in the winter. He had continually been amazed after spring would arrive and he was still here to see it. He should have been dead years ago. What kept him going he didn’t really know. Here he was, stuck in this isolated part of the world, isolated in spite of all its industry. But the whole country seemed isolated, and nobody of his acquaintance seemed to bother about the world outside. Beyond this island the world was raging with revolutions, crowned heads were being torn from their thrones, men were dying in their hundreds and thousands. Yet life strolled on here, the classes keeping strictly apart, the owners defending their place in society and seeing that the lower classes kept within the boundaries they were told God had destined they should live…and be content.
In his early days in London and Paris he had raged with those of like mind against the conditions of the workers, especially of the young children, and had longed to join up with the pioneers.
‘You’re miles away.’
‘What, Emma? Oh.’ He laughed. ‘Well, you set me off. Anyway what are you hoping for, a boy?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘What does Barney want?’
‘He says it doesn’t matter.’
‘Do you even wonder, Emma, what he or she is going to grow to be in this strange world of ours?’
‘Yes, I have wondered; but as long as they’re healthy, and as happy as life affords, then I’ll be satisfied.’
‘As happy as life affords. There’s a bit of cynicism there, Emma. You know what I mean?’
‘Yes’—she poked her head towards him—‘if you’re asking what cynicism means, I do. And I didn’t mean my words to be like that. I was only thinking whatever job he or she has to do they’ll be happy in it.’
‘And I hope so too. And being your child, Emma, she’ll, or he’ll be happy. I have no doubts on that. Anyway you’ll let me know, send some word down?’
‘Yes, Mr Bowman.’
‘Emma, how long have we been friends?’
She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Well, I suppose since shortly after I came here, when my granny brought me down. Ten years, I should say.’
‘Yes, ’tis ten years. And don’t you think it’s about time that you used my christian name and called me Ralph?’
‘No I don’t.’ Her voice was loud. ‘How could I? I think of you as Mr Bowman or’—she laughed now—‘the painter.’
He was laughing too as he said, ‘You do? You think of me as the painter? Well, call me Painter.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘You sound like a wife, Emma.’ He was smiling, but she wasn’t as she turned to him now and said, ‘And that’s what I am.’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’ His face was solemn, and he repeated, ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Then on a lighter note he added, ‘Well, let me know how things go. Send the big mouthpiece down.’
‘I’ll do that. And take care of yourself. Don’t go outside w
ithout a shawl around you, the wind is keen.’
He was about to say, ‘You still sound like a wife,’ but checked himself, and quietly watched her put on her cape and pull the hood over her head and smile at him before going out of the door.
Going to the window, he kept his eyes on her until she disappeared around the bend in the road, and all the while he cursed himself for the fact that he couldn’t call her wife. Why hadn’t he taken the risk last year? She would have understood the business between him and her granny, the main ingredient of which had been over and done with years ago. He was thirty-nine years old and, even with his chest trouble, there was still life in him. She would have renewed that life. True, she hadn’t been in love with him no more than she had been with Barney. What her feelings were towards Henry he couldn’t really gauge, only Henry’s for her, and they were a torment to the man, while his own were but a longing ache and a void. Still, he could look at her from time to time and he could even touch her as he arranged for a sitting. And then there was her face staring at him from the canvasses he was supposed to have sold. He had sold the first half-dozen but the rest were carefully wrapped in oil sheeting and lying across the rafters in the roof. At times he would bring them down and look at them, and each picture of her face told him he had loved her as a child, and then as a girl, and now, but they could not convey the strength with which he now loved her as a wife and a mother to be. Had she any idea of the effect she had on a man? He doubted it. She was so un-self conscious about herself. He even doubted if she realised how beautiful she was.
After the heavy frost the road was slippery, and a late February sun had not yet melted the thin layer of ice that lay on the puddles in the road. There had been no snow for more than a fortnight now, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t more to come. However, those lambs that had been born and had survived the last heavy downfall should be inured to what was to come. They had lost eight sheep and ten lambs in the drifts, and Dobbin had slipped and broken his leg and had to be shot. She had been so upset about that. When she suggested putting the leg into splints, the mister, as she still thought of her father-in-law, had bawled at her, ‘Don’t be a bloody fool!’ And for the first time in her life she had used a swear word and yelled back at him, ‘Don’t you bloody well bawl at me.’ That night in bed Barney had hugged her with no intention of leading up to loving her, he had just hugged her and with his head on her breast he had laughed until the springs of the wooden bed had almost given way. He said it was the funniest and most surprising thing he had heard in many a day, and that the look on his father’s face was a picture, because his mother, although rough-tongued with everyone else, had never dared to swear at her husband.
Barney had been kind to her and her feeling for him had grown deeper. Into what, she couldn’t actually say. She sometimes asked herself if this was real love and that the feelings she had for that other person just the outcome of a young girl’s romantic fancy. Whatever it was, it was a growing comfort to her.
She was also aware that if it wasn’t for the presence of Luke in the house there would be a sort of family happiness here. Pete in his way had taken to her, and the mister, although he never gave her a word of thanks, seemed to appreciate her cooking and the different order she had brought into the house. She had opened up the front room and on a Saturday night and Sunday night she lit the fire there. Her first suggestion that they should make use of this room in the only spare time they had in the week brought derision from Jake Yorkless; then after a time he had taken his place by the fireside in the horsehair armchair.
The only one who didn’t make use of the room was Luke. In a way, she was glad of this for she herself couldn’t have sat at peace for, wherever he was, his eyes would dwell on her; sometimes it was as if he were looking right through her without seeing her. At other times, across the kitchen table at a meal when he raised his head, his eyes would pierce her, and at such times she knew he was seeing her all right and that the resentment he bore towards her was corroding in him.
She had spoken to Barney about Luke and he had said, ‘Take no notice, he’ll come round, he’s bound to, he can’t keep this attitude up forever. It was the same when he was a lad. He would go into the sulks for weeks on end, then one day he would greet you bright and smiling as if nothing had happened. You’ll see,’ he said. ‘Just wait, he’ll come round.’
She didn’t know if she wanted Luke to come round; as he was now she knew where she stood with him and she was on her guard against him.
She turned the bend in the road and there, only a few yards from her and also on foot, was the parson. She knew that at the sight of him the colour had swept over her face; it was burning as if the frost had seared her cheeks.
‘Hello, Emma.’
‘Hello, Parson.’
‘How are you, Emma?’
She paused before answering, then said, ‘As you see, Parson.’ Then dared to refer to her condition, saying, ‘Nearing my time.’ It was an indelicate thing to say and she was surprised at herself, yet she had found that when she was in his presence there came a tartness in her tongue.
She had not come face to face with him for over three months now. He did not visit the farm and she no longer attended church. He had grown much thinner, yet his face looked prettier…That was a silly word to apply to a man, particularly this one: handsomer it should be. Yet there was a ruggedness about his features that denied that description.
With some dismay she noticed that there were slight hollows in his cheeks. In her chatter Mary had said that he lived on hard tack in the vicarage and that Miss Wilkinson was neither one of two things, a good housekeeper or a good cook, but she had to work hard as she had no help to run that big place, and that she only stayed on in the hope of hooking him. It was known in the village that she had her sails fully set for him, and her almost eight years older. But as it was said in The Tuns, she had as much chance of becoming the parson’s wife as Granny Frinton had and she was eighty-two. Mary had added it was a pity old Sir Peter had died because the parson hadn’t been invited back there since, and his weekly visits to the House had assured him of one square meal at least.
The sparseness of him caused her to say, ‘Are you well?’
‘Yes, yes. I am well, Emma. What makes you imagine that I am not?’
She cast a glance to the side before she said, ‘You have got thinner of late.’
‘Yes, yes, perhaps I have; but then I walk a lot these days. I got rid of the trap you know, the old horse was past it.’
She hadn’t known that, and she remembered the horse wasn’t all that old. It was money again, he hadn’t been able to afford to keep it. And it must mean too that the verger was out of a part-time job, and that wouldn’t please him, because part of his work was to see to the horse and trap.
As she looked at him there returned to her the old feeling, so different from that which she had for Barney, and it turned into an ache that was sharpening itself into a stabbing pain which caught at her breath.
When she put her hand to the collar of her coat and gripped it, Henry moved a step towards her and, his voice full of concern, said, ‘What is it, Emma? Are you…? Are you…?’
For answer she gulped, drooped her head as any young woman of her age and condition should do before a parson, and muttered, ‘I…I must get back.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Will you be all right? Or would that I come with you?’
‘No, no’—she shook her head—‘I’ll be all right. ’Tisn’t far now.’
He was holding out his hand to her, not with any expectation of her taking it, but in a way that indicated a plea, which came over in his voice as he said softly, ‘If…if you should need me, you’ll send for me, won’t you, Emma? I mean—’ He did not go on to explain what he meant, but now added, ‘I’ll be thinking of you every moment, I’ll be thinking of you till your time is over.’
She found it was impossible to give him any sort of answer, even to say briefly, ‘Thank you, Parso
n,’ and she had to close her eyes for a moment so she wouldn’t look into his face; then abruptly she turned from him and hurried away up the mud-ridged road, not taking care now to step over the ice puddles.
Barney was leading a horse across the farmyard and he left the animal and came hurriedly towards her. Taking her arm and lowering his head so he could see into her face, he said ‘’Tis about?’
‘No, no; I’m just cold.’
‘Oh, we’ll soon put that right.’ He now called across the yard, ‘You Billy!’ And when Billy Proctor poked his head out of the corn store Barney thumbed towards the horse, saying, ‘See to him.’ Then he followed Emma into the kitchen, and there he called to Mary Petty as if she too was at the other end of the farmyard, ‘Put that gruel pan on again, and look slippy.’ Then going to where Emma was taking off her cloak, he took the garment from her and, flinging it over the back of the settle, he said, ‘Sit yourself down. The gruel should be ready in a minute and a good dollop of rum in it will put you right.’ Now he bent down until his face was level with hers, and his voice lower, he added, ‘And skite the devil out of you whatever it be, one or t’other.’
A few minutes later, sipping the laced gruel, she looked to where Barney was now sitting by her side and she said, ‘I’m all right. Go on…I’m all right.’
‘I can spare a minute.’ He smiled at her, a soft warm smile, and she was overcome with a feeling of guilt and betrayal and for a moment she felt that her only release would be to droop her head forward and let the tears flow.
But Mary Petty saved her with her tart remark: ‘My, my! some folks is lucky, pampered like ladies. Now there was me’—she nodded towards them both—‘I nearly dropped me first in tatie field. ’Tis true.’ She jerked her chin upwards. ‘’Tis true as I’m standing here. I’d been in the field since five pickin’. ’Twas on nine and we were going to sit down for a break—five minutes we got for skimmed milk and a shive—and then bang! I was doubled up. ’Twas just as well the cart was ready to take the sacks back to the farm, for I got a lift and only got into the room just in time. ’Twas all over in an hour. Himself knew nothin’ about it, he was away droving. And you know what he said when he came back three days later? I should have waited and hung on. Aye.’ Her head was bobbing up and down, a wide grin on her face now, seeing that she had got them smiling. ‘And you know something else? And I bet you won’t believe this. That very night he sat down and reckoned up in his head, because he could neither read nor write, no more than meself, but he was sharp up here.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘He worked it out if I had one a year for the next ten years, not counting twins or triplets, how soon they’d be in work, for the quicker they were in work the quicker his idea of having a place of his own could come about. I said to him, “Would you like to exchange me for a stud mare?” an’ he said…’
The Whip (The Spaniard's Gift) Page 22
