Yet more than friendship must have seeped upwards into her eyes for the next moment she found herself for the very first time crushed within the circle of his arms. The thumping of his heart reached through her clothes and penetrated her skin, and when his lips fell on hers and covered her mouth she neither succumbed nor resisted. She was only aware that at one point she had the desire to put her arms about him but told herself that his back was sore – she hadn’t said to herself, ‘You mustn’t do this.’
After he released her lips he still held her tightly, his breath seeming to come from deep within his lungs, and it was some time before he said, ‘I’m . . . I’m not going to apologise, Tilly, I’ve done it. It’ll likely be all I’ll ever have of you, but it’s something to remember.’
When his arms finally released her, she staggered and he had to clutch at her again. Then he was sitting her in the chair near the fire once more. He did not sit opposite her but remained standing, looking down at her; and now he said, ‘Say something, Tilly.’
When she didn’t speak he said, ‘I’m going to tell you something. Deny it if you like, but I know it’s true. You in your own way are as lonely as I am. And another thing I’ll tell you. You’ve changed your opinion of me of late. Once you saw me as a sop of a lad, at least soppy over you. I pestered you. If I’d had more sense I might have made better weather of it. And yet, no; you have to work out your own destiny. But now you’re back, not where you started, true, yet on the same ground. But at the top of it. Master John, though, and all his kin, no matter how good they are, they’re not your type, Tilly, not your people. You look like a lady now, you talk like a lady, you act like one, but underneath I still see you as Tilly, Tilly Trotter. Will you tell me something truthfully? Look at me, Tilly.’
Slowly she raised her head to him, to this Steve McGrath who looked every inch a virile man, and the beat of her heart quickened, and what he was saying now was, ‘Imagine you had come back, but not in a high position, and I was as I am today and you were seeing me differently, would there have been a chance for me?’
She closed her eyes tightly now and her head was bowed again as she said, ‘Oh Steve! Steve! Don’t ask me such a question, because I cannot answer it. I . . . I can only tell you I’d be happy to have you as a friend.’
‘Aye well’ – he gave a short laugh and sighed deeply – ‘that’s something. But that’ll only be until you marry again.’
Her head jerked up quickly now and, her face straight, her voice sharp, she said, ‘I’ll never marry again, Steve.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
It was odd but that is what Luke had said, don’t be silly; and now Steve went on almost to repeat Luke’s statement: ‘You won’t be able to help yourself. Anyway, men won’t let you,’ he too said, adding, ‘I’d like to take a bet on it that within two years’ time there’ll be a man in the manor sitting at the head of your table.’
‘You’d lose your bet, Steve, definitely you’d lose your bet.’
He bowed his head towards her and his eyes narrowed now as he said, ‘You seem very sure of that, Tilly.’
‘I am, Steve.’
‘Why? There must be a reason.’
‘There is.’
‘Can you tell me?’
Could she tell him? Twice in a week could she divulge the promise she had made to Matthew? Yes, she could. She would have to, if only to stop him hoping. Looking up at him, she said, ‘I promised Matthew on his deathbed that I’d never marry again.’
‘You what!’
It was odd, men’s reactions seemed to be alike. Even his features had taken on the expression which had been on Luke’s face.
‘You mean to say your husband asked you not to marry again?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well’ – he shook his head slowly from side to side – ‘all that I can say now is that you must be slightly crazy if you stick to it.’
‘A promise to the dying is a promise, Steve.’
‘Aw, to hell with that!’ He swung round from her, then back again, pointing at her now and saying, ‘Look, Tilly. It nearly broke me up when you married him. I hated his guts then; that was nothing though to what I feel about him at this minute. But I’m going to say this, rather than live your life alone I would come to your wedding the morrow. What kind of a man was he anyway to make you promise such a thing? A selfish bugger at best. That’s swearing to it, but that doesn’t describe his mentality. To my mind it’s just as well he died because he would have had you caged.’
It was really uncanny how alike his reactions were to Luke’s. She rose to her feet now, saying wearily, ‘I’m tired, Steve, very tired,’ and the sound of her voice and the look on her face made him immediately contrite and he said, ‘I’m sorry, too, Tilly. I’ve forgotten what you’ve been through an’ all the night. You’re the one who should have been taken home and washed and seen to. I’m sorry, I really am.’
‘Don’t be, Steve. I’m glad it’s in the open, and you’re right when you say I’m lonely. I’d be happy and proud to have you as a friend, Steve, always, but at the same time I don’t want you to waste any more years on me. There are so many women who would jump at the chance of you.’
‘Aye well, you’d better get them lined up and I’ll sort them over.’ He smiled a twisted smile; then holding out his hand, he said, ‘I say again, Tilly, a happy New Year.’
As she put hers into it she replied, ‘And to you, Steve, and to you, and many of them.’
PART TWO
BELOW THE SKIN
One
Lucy Bentwood straightened up and looked down at the broad expanse of her husband’s naked back and she said, ‘For goodness sake, Simon, stop whingeing like a bairn without a bottle!’
‘Don’t you dare use that tone to me—!’ The next word, ‘woman!’, was stifled by a sharp cry as he tried to turn from his face to confront his wife. Resting on his elbow, his body now half turned towards her, he gasped, ‘You think you’ve got me where you want me, don’t you, half paralysed? You wouldn’t have taken that tone a few . . . ’
The flat of her hand on his shoulders thrust him downwards, and with laughter in her voice now, she said, ‘I’ve always taken that tone with you, and you know it. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to suffer you.’
When he made no comment on this statement, the smile slid from her face and, reaching out for a bottle of liniment, she poured some onto the palm of her hand, then applied it to his spine, and as she rubbed her hand rhythmically up and down his back she thought with a sadness that she never showed to him of how true her words had been, for if she hadn’t laughed at him she would, many a time, have cried because her patient and happy nature had been sorely tried by him in so many ways; not alone by the scrapings of his love that he gave her but which she felt was compensated for by the son and daughter she had reared, but with the knowledge that his mind was filled with the want of the woman who had beguiled him from her very childhood and whose memory until a few years ago had driven him again and again to bouts of drinking.
The night he fell off his horse in a drunken stupor and lay in the cold ditch for hours she took to be a blessing, for from that time his back had been affected, so much so that he was in constant pain, there were times when he couldn’t move for days on end. Even when he was mobile he found it agony to walk the farm. No longer could he ride a horse, and the jolting of the pony trap was agony to him, so his visits to the village and the inn were few and far between. But what she was more thankful for was that he could not now keep an eye on his daughter.
He had always been possessive of Noreen, but from the day her young brother inadvertently told his father that they had met up and talked with Mrs Sopwith’s pair, life had hardly been worth living. Noreen was only fourteen at the time and her brother not yet twelve; they were mere children, but his reaction was such that, had he heard they had been behaving indecently with the young couple from the Manor, his wrath couldn’t have been worse. What her daughte
r’s life would have been like if her father hadn’t happened the accident, Lucy didn’t dare to think because Noreen had inherited some of his own independent spirit and from the beginning had baulked at the bit he had put in her mouth.
But now she was riding free – Lucy turned her head and looked towards the bedroom window as her thoughts followed her daughter – she hoped not too free. She knew where she was at this minute and she dreaded with a great dread that the knowledge of what her daughter was about would ever reach the ears of her father. Yet if she knew Noreen, the time would come when she and her father would stand face to face and the truth would be out. And then God help them all.
Noreen Bentwood was of medium height; her hair was a deep rich brown and thick with a natural wave to it; her eyes were hazel and set in sloping sockets in her oval-shaped face; her skin did not look delicate but slightly weathered; her cheeks were red, as was her large well-shaped mouth. She carried herself straight and placed her feet firmly, her walk always suggesting she was off to some place. And on this particular Sunday afternoon she was certainly off to some place for she was going to the burn, to what she termed the little island. It should happen that the little island was the same spot hidden by the half-circle of scrub where Steve McGrath had fished as a boy, and where one day he had sat watching a salmon, protecting it as it were.
Every Sunday for the last two years, except when the snow lay so thick that it was impossible to get to the bank, she had made this journey, and on each occasion she had met and talked with Willy Sopwith, sometimes for minutes only, other times as long as an hour.
Nearly always, on her journey, she would recall the first time she had come upon him. She was then almost fourteen, and it was on a Sunday too. She and Eddie had been walking by the river bank. They had rounded the curve by the bushes and there saw this young man sitting fishing. She remembered how he lifted his head upwards at their approach; then rising from the bank, he had stood peering at them with his head to one side. And she knew this was the son of their landlady, the woman who had made a name for herself, the woman whom her father hated because he had once loved her and she had turned him down. This information she had managed to get out of her mother only recently, when she asked the question, ‘Why does Dad hate Mrs Sopwith?’ and her mother, who was always honest with her, told her why.
The information lowered her opinion of her father yet another peg because she considered her mother to be a wonderful woman and her father a fool for still entertaining thoughts of a notorious lady while possessing a wife such as he had.
Noreen had always felt that she was older than her years and when on that Sunday the tall fair-haired young man said, ‘Hello, little girl,’ she forgot, or chose to ignore, the attitude a tenant farmer’s daughter should pay to the gentry who owned their land and answered, ‘Little girl yourself! I’m coming fourteen, and there’s nothing I can’t do on the farm, and I intend to learn blacksmithing.’
She had expected him to laugh at her but what he said was, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you were such an age, or so talented, but I wouldn’t go in for blacksmithing if I were you . . . well, not if I had your voice.’
At this she had ignored her brother’s tugging at her arm and replied, ‘What’s wrong with my voice?’
‘Nothing, nothing at all; it sounds a lovely voice, I’m sure you must be able to sing.’
She had paused while staring at him, then had said in a modified tone, ‘Well, yes, yes I can sing. I sing in the choir and I’ve sung solos.’
‘I wasn’t wrong then?’
She had found nothing to say to this and she had been about to walk towards him to see what he had caught when around from the far end of the bushed riverbank there came ‘the other one from the house’. She had seen her before from a distance, in fact she had seen them both from a distance but never close enough, as now, to speak to. She transferred her stare to the slight figure approaching them, and noted with amazement that the girl, who was about her own size, which was then five feet, appeared much smaller because she was so thin. Everything about her was thin, her body, her face, her hands, her feet, she looked like a large chocolate-coloured doll, a beautiful chocolate-coloured doll. When she spoke it was not to her but to her adopted brother, so-called, her father said, and her words, clear and high sounding, were, ‘What have we here? Did you catch them, Willy?’ Then she laughed, and her laughter, like her voice, was something that Noreen had never heard before, they were both strange, musical, she couldn’t put an exact name to the sounds except that they recalled some of the notes Mr Byers struck on his harp. But what she did know instinctively was that she didn’t like the dark individual. She guessed she’d be snooty, high-handed, and this urged her to shout, ‘No, he didn’t fish us up, miss, but he could have you, by the looks of you.’ And on this, she grabbed her brother’s hand and, turning about, walked quickly back round the bend and along the bank, her step causing Eddie to run and to protest, ‘Aw, give over, our Norah, you’re pullin’ me arm out.’
It was this incident that Eddie had related innocently in his father’s hearing which evoked such wrath as they hadn’t before witnessed in him . . .
It was a full year later when Noreen next met Willy Sopwith. She was with the dogs at the far end of the land. A sheep had become caught up in the wire fencing and she was trying to extricate him. The wild barking of the dogs had drawn the attention of a rider on the top road. Glancing up, she saw him and she knew by the way he turned his head that it was young Sopwith.
He dismounted and came down the bank towards her, but she went on with what she was doing, and Willy said, ‘Can I give you a hand?’ and to this she answered briefly, ‘You’ll have to get over the fence and push him from yon side.’
And this he did; and after the sheep was free and racing down the field bleating with relief, they stood looking at each other. She had grown considerably during the past year and he remarked on this, smiling as he said, ‘I had better not make the same mistake I did at our last meeting,’ and she, finding herself smiling back at him, said, ‘No, you’d better not.’ Then peering towards the wire, he said, ‘Couldn’t one of your men have come and done this?’
‘They’re at the market, and Father has hurt his back.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
It was on the point of her tongue to say, ‘I’m not,’ and she knew she would have been speaking the truth because over the past year her father had hardly let her out of his sight. He had always wanted her alongside him, much more so than he ever wanted Eddie, which seemed strange to her. But of late she hadn’t even been allowed to go to church on her own. Although he himself never entered the place he took her there and waited for her coming out again. As she had remarked to her mother, he had become like a jailer. But this last week she had known freedom and had revelled in it, as she was doing at this moment.
Looking up into Willy Sopwith’s face she saw that he was beautiful and a great pity arose in her for his condition. She knew the cause of it had been them McGraths from the village, yet some of the older folk said it would never have happened if his mother hadn’t been a witch. She had seen his mother out riding but to her the odd things about her were her hair which was very white and that she sat a horse like a man and wore breeches. Otherwise, like her son, she had a beautiful face.
He had asked, ‘What is your name?’ and she had answered, ‘Noreen. But I don’t care much for it, I prefer Norah.’
When he said, ‘I’m Willy Sopwith,’ she answered, ‘Yes, I know.’ And then he had laughed. He had put his head back and laughed, and while one part of her felt annoyed, another was amazed that with his handicap he could be so cheerful. He seemed a happy individual. She didn’t know many men who were happy, in fact she didn’t know any men who were happy.
When she had demanded, ‘What’s funny?’ he had stopped, then after a moment said, ‘You know, really I couldn’t say, it was just . . . well, how you took the wind out of my polite introduction.’
/> There had followed a pause, and then he had said, ‘Do you go to the games?’
‘Yes, sometimes.’
‘I might see you there then?’
‘Are you showing something?’ she had asked.
‘No, no.’ He shook his head; then added, ‘I like to watch the wrestling.’
‘Wrestling?’ A memory was stirring in her. She had heard that the almost blind fellow from the house boxed, or fought, or did something like that with one of the hands.
‘You sound surprised.’
‘Yes, well, I am a bit. I . . . I thought it was only the rough ’uns who went to see wrestling and things like that.’
‘Well, perhaps I’m a rough ’un.’
‘You don’t look it, you don’t look . . . well . . . ’
‘Well what?’
‘Well, the type that would be interested in wrestling.’
‘Oh! Now let me tell you, miss’ – he had assumed a pompous air – ‘it is said that I am quite good at the game, myself, depending upon my sparring partner.’
‘Indeed! Indeed!’ She, too, had now assumed an attitude and when she added, ‘My! My! the things you hear when your ears are clear,’ he laughed again and she with him.
And that’s how it began.
During the following year they might not meet up for weeks, and then it would be only in passing, but she learned a lot about him during that time. She learned, to her further amazement, that he did a stint at the mine, some three days a week, and that he also went into Newcastle to study engineering. But how he managed this with his one good eye, which didn’t seem to be all that good the way he had to peer through it, amazed her. But what surprised her most was his cheerfulness. With a handicap such as his she wouldn’t have been surprised if he had been morose and had shunned people; but he seemed to like company, and he was never at a loss for an answer, or to ask a question.
Tilly Trotter Widowed (The Tilly Trotter Trilogy) Page 17
