At eleven o’clock the snow began to fall again, and there was a rush to the traps and carts, amid great laughter and shouting of farewells, and by twelve o’clock everyone was gone.
With the combined efforts of the family the barn was cleared of dishes and the remnants of the food, and everything was in its place by one o’clock.
Before the others had dispersed, Mrs Fairbairn said to Annabella, ‘Get yourself upstairs, girl, you look dead beat. It’s all over; you can take it easy for a day or two.’
Dutifully she went upstairs, and to bed, but she got in it fully dressed. She heard Betty come up and get into bed, and tonight strangely enough, she didn’t talk to herself. She heard the clock strike two, then three, and knew it was almost time to go, but at this point sleep overcame her and she fell into a doze.
When, waking with a start, she rose from the bed, she didn’t know what time it was, she only knew what she was going to do. Her boots in her hand, she walked softly out of the room and down the stairs. At the kitchen door she put on her boots but didn’t button them, and they clip-clopped slightly as she went across the frozen snow on the yard.
The night was starry and silent and she could just make out the big door of the grain house when she came to it. Lifting the latch, she pushed half of the door open and went inside. After the snow-laden air it felt warm. She had brought a candle with her, and now she lit it and looked upwards. There, on the half platform at the end of the room, hung the pulley; over its hook lay a slack rope, one length slanting towards the grain sack around which it was tied. The lowering of the grain from the winnowing room was a simple process. One man tied the sack with the rope, then slung the rope over the U-shaped hook and, hanging on to the other end, let it down on to the cart below, if the grain was going to the miller’s.
Holding the candle above her head, she slowly climbed the ladder. Now on the platform, she placed the candle in a niche in the wall that was kept for such purpose; then going to the rope that was hanging over the hook she took the end in her hand and looked at it, and as if she were acting this out in a dream she put it slowly round her neck and tied a knot in it. Then she moved towards the sack of grain that stood balanced on the end of the platform. She looked at it, too, for a time before taking her foot and pushing it off the edge. As the rope tightened round her throat there passed through her head a great scream and then she fell into deep blackness . . .
Willy had been coming from the little byre where a cow had just calved and was passing along by the wall when he saw half of the grain door open, and this brought him to a stop because it had only been a short while ago he had been in there, and he wasn’t such a fool as to leave a door open in this weather; particularly the grain door. It was right odd, for there was no wind. It was as he reached out his arm to grab the latch that he saw her in the candlelight above him. She had a rope about her neck and she was about to kick the sack of grain from the edge of the platform. With a warning scream that lifted him from the ground, he sprang to the cart and on to it and when the sack hit him it almost knocked him to the ground. But after staggering under its weight for a moment he steadied himself, and then he began to yell. ‘Annabella! For God’s sake. Manuel! Somebody! Help! Help! . . . ’
Manuel had just got out of bed and was getting into his trousers when he heard the first cry. It was distant and muffled but the sound brought him to the door for it was unusual to hear anything but the animals at this time in the morning. Then he was racing across the space between the cottage and the stable walls, through the arch and in the direction of the shouting.
When he burst into the grain room and took in the situation he screamed an unintelligible sound and the echo hadn’t faded before he reached the platform. His arms about her, he eased her from her toes on which she was balancing, then he tore the rope from her neck, and at the same moment there came the sound of a thud from below as Willy and the sack of grain fell on to the cart.
‘Annabella. Annabella.’ He was on his knees by her side holding her slack head in his hands. ‘Annabella. For God’s sake! don’t . . . Listen to me . . . Oh, Christ Almighty!’
Willy, stumbling on to the platform now, gasped, ‘Is she?’ and Manuel, not looking at him, laid his head on her breast; then with his body almost doubled in two as if he were going to retch, he muttered, ‘She’s . . . she’s breathing, just.’
‘God above!’ Willy was still gasping. ‘That was the narrowest squeak she’ll ever have. Another second, just another second.’
‘Let’s . . . get her down; she’s . . . she’s cold.’ He had almost said dead cold. ‘Take her legs, will you?’
Willy took her legs, and between them they got her down to the ground floor; then, Manuel carrying her in his arms while Willy supported her dangling head, they brought her into the house, and when they had laid her on the mat in front of the fire Willy went to the door and yelled at the top of his voice, ‘Ma! Ma! Come on here, you’re wanted . . . ’
It was almost half an hour later when Annabella regained her senses. She was still in the dark and she thought she was dead. She imagined for a moment that she was listening to Manuel explaining to God how it had happened, because he was saying, ‘Well, there it is, that’s the true story. That’s her name, Annabella Lagrange, and from being brought up as a lady and with the comforts of such, her world was turned topsy-turvy; she’s been reduced to pig-swilling and even sleeping in a doss-house. She came along with me because there was no-one else to go along with; nobody wanted to know her except the woman she had looked upon as her real mother. And then she went out of her mind with it all. An’ there were times while we were at Skillen’s that I thought she would go out of her mind an’ all. But then we landed here, an’ I’m tellin’ you it was like heaven to us both. And it would have remained so if it hadn’t have been for that one. She was her nursemaid and she got the push just afore I went to the House for calling the child a bastard, and because of that and gettin’ no reference she’s held it against her, not only that, but on her own sayin’, her own bragging, she’s tormented the life out of her, threatening to expose her for being the offspring of a whore mistress.’
‘Well, she was, she was. Nothing more or less.’ Betty, suddenly flaring into self-defence, glared at the faces all staring at her and, the tears running down her cheeks, she cried, ‘What do you know? What does any of you know what it’s like to be put out without a reference? And there was more to it than that, things you don’t know. Blame me, aye, you all blame me, but if you’ – she was nodding directly at Manuel now – ‘if you hadn’t of played up to me, it would never have got this far.’
‘The only reason I played up to you, and God forgive me for me stupidity, was because I wanted to keep your tongue quiet, keep you off her. And when I’m on—’ he now turned and faced Willy directly, saying, ‘I’m going to tell you this. I’ve no more idea than you how I got into that caravan on New Year’s mornin’. And something else I’ll say while I’m on, begging your pardon, Missus.’ He jerked his head. ‘When I’m that far gone in drink I’m no use to anybody, that much I do know, so whatever you think happened atween us, didn’t.’
The men turned their glances away and looked about the room, definitely embarrassed, but Mrs Fairbairn wasn’t embarrassed. She took the situation in hand by saying, ‘Well, we’ll have no more explanations for the moment. And anyway keep your voices down all of you, for I think she’s coming round.’ She looked up from where she was kneeling by Annabella’s head and said, ‘We’d better get her out of this and up into bed.’ Then her eyes turned towards Manuel when he spoke again, directly to her now, saying, ‘If it’s all the same to you, Missus, I’ll take her across to the cottage. We’ve shared a roof afore and no harm’s come of it. I might as well tell you afore somebody else does that all the time at Skillen’s we shared the cottage, and I took the kitchen floor, so now I think I can be trusted to see to her. As
I said, if it’s all the same to you, Missus?’
Mrs Fairbairn got to her feet and looked up into the dark face of this strange young fellow, who in a way was as mysterious as the girl here. And no, she didn’t mind him taking her across to the cottage. At this very moment she was thanking God that things had happened as they had, for should her Willy have taken the girl and her parentage had come out later she would have died a thousand deaths, for education or no education, she had blood in her that was no good. It wasn’t the girl’s fault, poor soul, no, and likely she would lead a clean life, but what about the children to follow and their children. Blood would out. She was a great believer in that saying, blood would out. She looked towards her eldest son. What was he thinking? You never knew what Willy was thinking.
At this moment Willy too was trying to prevent himself thinking along the same lines as his mother. She was a lovely girl, he still had this feeling for her, but later, when he came to look at things coolly, he knew he’d congratulate himself on having had a lucky escape. The woman he took would have to give him children and his mind cringed at the thought that in this case, in order to produce a family, his seed, which had come down through centuries of Fairbairns, all good yeomen, would mingle not only with that of a trollop once removed, but a mother of trollops. He now went quickly to Manuel’s aid, saying, ‘Let me give you a hand.’
‘I can manage, thanks, once she’s up.’
They placed her in his arms and wrapped rugs around her, and Mrs Fairbairn accompanied them herself. She straightened Manuel’s tumbled bed and, ordering him to go back to the house and bring over a hot oven shelf, she undressed Annabella and put her between the sheets. Annabella opening her eyes at last, looked at her mistress and said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and Mrs Fairbairn, with deep tenderness said, ‘Go to sleep, child, go to sleep. You have nothing more to worry about, it will all work out. Go to sleep.’
And she obeyed her and went to sleep.
She woke up a number of times in the next thirty-six hours, and always there was someone sitting by the bedside, Manuel or Mrs Fairbairn, and always they said to her, ‘Drink this.’ And she drank the hot broth. And then they would say, ‘Go to sleep. Go to sleep,’ and she would go to sleep because she continued to feel very, very tired. Once or twice she had tried to speak but found the effort too much. But on the evening of the second day she woke and the tiredness had almost gone. She lifted her heavy lids and looked at the candle in the brass holder on the chest of drawers at the foot of the bed, and then she turned her head on the pillow and looked up at Manuel. She looked at him a long time before she said the same words to him as she had said to Mrs Fairbairn, ‘I’m sorry.’
She watched him close his eyes tightly and grope for her hand, and hold it against his chest. Then, slipping from the wooden chair, he went on his knees by the side of the bed and did what she should have considered a very strange thing. Her hand still grasped against him he laid his face on the pillow beside hers and he didn’t utter a word, but just lay there looking at her. And after a long while when she said, ‘Oh, Manuel!’ he made a little movement with his head telling her not to speak. And so they lay, his eyes wrapping her in their dark, deep gaze for a while before, his head moving still nearer, his lips touched hers. Softly they lay against her mouth, resting there, waiting as it were, and when her response came it racked them both. Her pent-up feeling burst from her in an ever-rising storm of weeping during which he held her and rocked her like a child. And when it was over at last she said to him, ‘You’ll never leave me, Manuel?’ and he answered, ‘Never, as long as there’s a breath in me.’
The following day the snow fell so thickly you couldn’t see the farm buildings from the cottage windows, and Manuel brought the bed from the bedroom and placed it in the kitchen against the far wall and opposite the fire, and when she continued to sleep most of the day Mrs Fairbairn said, ‘Let her be; it’s nature’s cure.’
It was almost a week later when she got up and dressed and began to attend, in a small way, to the chores of the house. She didn’t know what was going to happen. Manuel said leave it to him, and that’s what she was doing.
Only one thing she had made plain, she didn’t want to go back to work in the house because that would mean Betty leaving, and although she would never like Betty, and in fact could still find it in her heart to hate her, she was, in a way, sorry for her.
She sat waiting now by the fire, waiting for Manuel, and when he came she rose quickly from her chair and went into his arms, and he held her tight pressed against him.
When he had taken off his coat and his snow-sodden boots and had held out his frozen feet to the fire while drinking a steaming mug of tea, he was all the while searching for the right words with which to give her his news. He was afraid that the very mention of the caravan might create in her a rigidity, yet sooner or later he’d have to explain to her the incident of the caravan, so far better do it now. Leaning forward to replace his mug on a chair, he said below his breath, ‘Before we go any further, Annabella, I want to explain about, about New Year’s Day, and the . . . ’
Her hand, slipping through his arm, groped for his fingers, her head bowed she said, ‘There’s no need.’
Gathering her swiftly to him, his face hanging over hers, he whispered, ‘There was nothing, nothing; when I get drunk like that, I’m dead to the . . . ’ Her hand came up to his mouth and she whispered, ‘It’s all right, I know. I must have been half awake the other morning.’
‘Oh!’ He stared at her for a moment, then let out a long deep breath and leant heavily against her, muttering, ‘Aw, darlin’. Darlin’.’
Now he was holding her face between his hands and asking, ‘How would you like to live in a house on wheels?’
‘A house on wheels, Manuel?’
‘You don’t want to go on livin’ here.’
Her eyes drooped from his. ‘It . . . it would be very awkward. Every time I see any of them even in the distance I’m aware of what they may be thinking.’
‘That’s nonsense.’
‘No, it isn’t, Manuel. Mrs Fairbairn is a wonderfully kind woman but . . . but she’ll be glad when I’m gone; I’ve become an embarrassment to her. And I know something else . . . Willy came in yesterday to see me, and as I thanked him’ – her head went lower – ‘I, I knew that he was no longer hurt, he was cheerful.’ She lifted her eyes. ‘Relief makes one cheerful, Manuel.’
‘You’re talkin’ nonsense; Willy would give his eye teeth if he could have you.’
‘Not now. Do you know he once asked me to marry him?’
‘Did he now?’ He pulled a slight face and inclined his head towards her, half mockingly. ‘But it’s no surprise to me. It was the day he took you to Hexham, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, it was. And what would he be feeling now if I had said yes? I tell you he’s relieved that things have turned out as they have. I know that no-one would want to marry me if they knew. I . . . I have to face up to this; that is no-one except . . . ’
‘Well, go on.’
Her head drooped again and she said now, ‘I cannot answer a question until I’m asked it.’
There was a long pause before he spoke, no jocularity in his voice now, which came deep from his throat. ‘Will you marry me?’
Her reply was quiet and firm. ‘Yes, Manuel; and I consider it an honour you have done me. But . . . but I want to say something to you.’ Her head did not droop but her eyes flicked sideways towards the fire as she went on, ‘You . . . you needn’t marry me, you needn’t feel compelled to marry me, I . . . I am quite prepared to live with . . . ’
‘Enough!’ He was on his feet, his voice harsh. ‘I’ve asked you a question an’ I want an answer. I want it again. I asked you if you would marry me, and marrying me means takin’ the name that isn’t mine; also it means having people talking behind their hands and sayin�
��, “How did she come to marry him with working man written all over him?” It means that you’re likely to be a labourer’s wife for the rest of your life. It means being turned out of the saloon end of bars. Remember you’ve had a taste of it afore. It’ll likely mean all the things you’ve put up with in the last six months over again, but having to now because you’d be no longer a free agent. It’ll mean working while you’re carrying me bairn inside of you . . . You’d be my wife. Now I say again to you, Will you marry me?’
She got to her feet and her answer came from the woman she had become. She put her hands about him and her mouth to his and held him with all her strength. In return, he held her gently for there were times, as now, when he had to put a curb on his desires, for like his drinking, once given rein they tended to consume him.
Drawing her down to the seat again, he said, ‘We’ll have to find a place where we can live for three weeks and then we’ll put the banns up. It’ll be done right and proper in a church, an’ we’ll frame the marriage certificate and our children will know who they are from the start.’
She said nothing to this, but she laid her head on his shoulder and thought, Oh, my dear, dear, Manuel. Oh, my dearest, dear Manuel. Then she was asking in a faraway voice, ‘But where will we go? Which town will we stay in?’
He brought her head up from his shoulder with a jerk. ‘That’s what I aimed to tell you at the beginning of this rigmarole. We can go to any town we like, we can say gee-up, Dobbie, and go as far as Bishop Auckland, Darlington, even Stockton.’
The Glass Virgin Page 34
