The Fen Tiger (The House on the Fens)

by Catherine Cookson (Catherine Marchant)

  ‘You’re always useful, Rosie.’ Her father’s words were scarcely above a whisper and they cut her to the heart. She watched him turn to his work again and Jennifer with him, then saying, ‘It’ll be all right, you’ll see,’ she went out of the room.

  Going straight upstairs, she changed her dress, and, standing before the mirror, combed her hair. Then, pulling open the top drawer of the dressing table, she took out some cosmetics and quickly made up her face. When she had finished she stood peering at herself in the mirror, and she jerked her chin at her reflection as she said. ‘You look worse. You look as old as you feel.’ When she gave herself the answer: ‘You couldn’t possibly,’ she did not smile, she couldn’t see the funny side of anything today.

  She pulled open another drawer to take out a handkerchief and, seeing a number of letters stacked neatly one on top of the other, slammed the drawer closed again. In this moment she hated Clifford. Not a solitary word had she heard from him since the air-mail letter. She did not know whether her uncle had been buried in America or if they had brought him home.

  She had written to her aunt, as had her father, at the Buckinghamshire address, but neither had received a reply. This silence too had told on her nerves. The fear was growing in her daily that in some way her aunt would undo any legal claim her father had to the mill.

  There was no sun this morning. It was still very warm but dull and grey, and the weather matched her spirits. She had just lowered herself into the ferry when she saw Michael Bradshaw coming out of the wood.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ she called, before she reached him. ‘Is it Susie?’

  ‘No, No.’ He shook his head vigorously.

  ‘Oh!’ She was standing in front of him, looking up at him. He appeared different somehow. Then, her eyes sweeping over him, she realised why He was dressed in a grey lounge suit and was wearing a white shirt with a dark tie. He looked spruce, smart, townish.

  ‘Were you coming to the house?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ She lowered her eyes from his. ‘I was going to ask you something. It was about the job.’ She stopped. Her throat felt dry. Then, jerking her head up to him and looking him straight in the eye, she demanded: ‘Did you get that girl?’

  ‘The girl? Oh.’ He shook his head. ‘No, the whole prospect frightened her. Me, the fens, the child, the lot.’

  She drew in a deep breath. ‘If it’s still going, can I have it?’ she asked bluntly. When she saw the laughter in his eyes she added brusquely, ‘It isn’t funny.’

  ‘No, it isn’t funny.’

  ‘We are on our beam ends, else I wouldn’t ask. I don’t want paying for looking after the child, but—but—’

  ‘Rosie, Rosie’—he was speaking softly as if trying to penetrate through something—‘of course, the job’s yours…Yours. You understand?’

  It was the first time he had called her by her name, and she had the racing feeling inside again, wanting to run away, and yet…She stared at him. He was entirely different this morning. It wasn’t only that he was dressed for town, there was something quite unusual about him. She said, ‘Do you want me to see to her until you come back?’

  He nodded again. ‘That was part of the idea, but I came over to see you, Rosie. I’ve got news I wanted to tell you. I had a letter this morning. The gods have at last seen fit to be kind to me.’

  He straightened up, and he appeared more like the man to whom she had grown accustomed, as he said, ‘It would seem that we can only benefit, have our desires fulfilled, at the bitter expense of others. And yet’—he gave a little smile now—‘I’m not going to be a hypocrite about this, Rosie. I didn’t know him, I only met him once.’

  The smile became a laugh and he shook his head. ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? Come on.’

  He took her arm almost roughly, turning her about, as he said, ‘I’d nearly forgotten. I’ve only an hour to get to Ely and catch the train. Do you think I’ll manage it?’

  She did not reply; she was slightly bewildered by his whole attitude and in some way apprehensive.

  ‘Look, I’ll give it to you briefly. Maggie will fill in the details, with many additions of her own, no doubt, before I get back. It’s like this. My father had one brother older than himself and they fought like cat and dog—that’s nothing to be surprised about, my father fought with everyone. I sometimes think I’ve inherited some of his qualities.’

  He turned his head and looked at her for confirmation of this, and when she gave it with a twinkle of her eye and a small nod of her head, he burst out laughing. He still had his hand on her arm as they walked along, Rosamund’s amazement growing every minute.

  ‘I only saw my uncle once,’ he went on, ‘and he liked me as little as my father liked me. Quite honestly, I don’t believe I’ve thought of the old fellow half a dozen times over the years. I didn’t even know he had married and had three children, two of them sons. This being so, it’s understandable, I suppose, that he would make no provision against me inheriting. Who would have dreamed, least of all him, that they would all be wiped out together?’

  Rosamund drew to a halt. ‘They were all killed together?’ Her face expressed her horror.

  ‘Yes. He had a yacht apparently. I don’t know the ins and outs of it yet. I only know that the eldest son and the mother were found in the lifeboat and they died shortly after.’

  ‘Oh, how terrible.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ They were walking on again now. ‘When you let yourself think about it, it is terrible, and I should, I suppose, put on an armour of mourning, but I’m not a hypocrite. I’m sorry naturally, but that’s as far as I can go.’

  ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘Five, six weeks ago, I think. In the meantime, they have been trying to trace my aunt’s people, only to discover that she hasn’t any. Apparently she was my uncle’s ward when he married her—I don’t know the facts yet.’

  They had reached the broken gate and he stopped. ‘I’ll have to run now. You go and have a natter with Maggie. You’ll hear all the family history; she knows it better than I do myself. Oh, Rosie—’

  She found her shoulders gripped in his two big hands, and he whispered softly, ‘You’re the sweetest thing this side of paradise, Rosie. Remind me to tell you that again when I get back.’ He touched her on the chin with his finger, a playful, caressing touch, and then he was gone.

  She watched him running with great strides across the fields towards the main road, her heart thumping so loudly that it reverberated through her ears. When she turned to walk up the drive she realised she had the fingers of her two hands pressed tightly across her lips.

  Did he—did he mean…? But there had been nothing, nothing to lead up to it, except gratitude for her being able to handle the child so well. By the time she reached the front door she was telling herself not to be silly, he was excited over coming into this money. In his position, she would have been drunk with excitement. That’s how he was feeling. You couldn’t hold him to anything he said, even if you wanted to. The sweetest thing…the sweetest thing this side of paradise…It was just a saying. Translated, it could mean what had been said to her before, ‘Rosie, you’re the kindest person on earth’; ‘Rosie, you are the most understanding being in the world’; ‘Rosie, you are nice to know’. But did they ever say, ‘Rosie, you are beautiful’; ‘Rosie, I love you’; ‘Rosie, will you marry me?’ No, no, they scuttered off to America and sent a weak apology for their absence. But Michael Bradshaw was no Clifford Monkton, there was no weakness in him. What he said he would mean. And yet…There were so many ‘and yets’. There definitely were weaknesses in Michael Bradshaw and she had proof of them, and under the intoxication of an inheritance could he be held responsible for anything he might say?

  She did not enter the house, but turned and looked across the fen. To the right of her for a space that covered about an acre, the earth was black. It had taken him over a month to clear that part. Suddenly she wished that things need
not change, that he would go on clearing the land, by hand, that there would be no swift alteration. Jennifer’s words came back to her. ‘He’s not the one to stay put, he would travel.’

  Yes, when he had the money he would certainly travel. He hated the fens, he had said so. She was filled now with a strange sadness. She would never, she knew, love any part of the earth as she did the fens. This was her land. She had adopted it with the same tenacity as would a nature-starved woman take a child into her life. He hated the fens and she loved them. He would go and she would stay.

  The child had played quietly, but always in sight of Rosamund until shortly after two o’clock, when she fell asleep, and Rosamund took advantage of this to run back to the mill and tell her father and Jennifer that she would be staying up at the house until Michael Bradshaw returned. She did not pass on anything that he had told her. Her reticence on this occasion centred around Jennifer. If she knew the Fen Tiger was now a man of means it would not increase her liking for him but, under the present circumstances, would likely make her feel that she had been deprived yet once again of something worthwhile. What she did tell them was that she had got the job, and to this neither of them said a word.

  It was shortly before Rosamund was going to put Susie to bed that she heard her scream, and, rushing to the front door, she saw the child standing beyond the broken gate looking towards the wood. Her mouth was wide, and her body rigid.

  ‘Susie! Susie! Stop it! Stop it! Do you hear? Stop it this minute!’ Holding the child by the shoulders, Rosamund saw the beads of perspiration standing on the bony forehead. ‘What is it? What is it, my dear?’ She looked toward the wood, then back to the child again. ‘There’s nothing there.’

  Maggie came running down the path now, crying, ‘Wouldn’t that curdle your blood? That’s the third time she’s done that this week. What is it, child?’ Maggie was bending over her now. ‘What are you seeing? There’s nothing there. Glory be to God, there’s not a thing to be seen for miles except those few trees. What is it at all?’

  The child was now clinging to Rosamund, her arms around her thighs, her head buried in her waist. ‘Something’s frightened her,’ Rosamund said. ‘Perhaps it was an animal. Is she afraid of cattle?’

  ‘Not a bit, not a bit. She would go and lie down with the cows themselves. But I’m tellin’ you, this is the third time she’s done it this week, and it’s a different screaming.’

  ‘When she’s been looking towards the wood?’

  ‘No, no. She was sitting in the kitchen one evening having her supper, just about this time, before she was going up to bed. And she let out such a screech that, I’m tellin’ you here and now, me heart nearly stopped dead in me.’

  ‘There, there, it’s all over.’ Rosamund disengaged the child’s arms from her, then led her up the drive and into the house. It took much longer tonight to get her off to sleep, and the nightjar was calling from the wood and the swallows flying low in the direction of the river when Rosamund came downstairs again. The sun had gone down, and already the hall was dim.

  ‘You’ve had a time of it, then,’ Maggie greeted her when she entered the kitchen, ‘though you can handle her better than anyone I’ve seen, including himself. Which reminds me, it’s black dark it’s going to be afore he gets here and not a torch on him. God protect him, he’ll end up in one of them ditches, the like of such I’ve never seen, and me that’s lived in the bog country. I actually saw a man swallowed up in me youth, and yet the bog didn’t put the fear of God in me like them ditches.’

  ‘I’ve no love for them either, Maggie. Although I like the fens, I wish they didn’t have to have dykes. But, you know, that’s what makes the fens, the dykes. But I shouldn’t worry about Mr Bradshaw.’

  ‘No, no. But, all the same, I wonder what’s keeping him. Do you think he’ll go into the village and see Mr Gerald? For he said this morning it would be a gliff he would be gettin’ when he heard the news. Do you like Mr Gerald?’

  Maggie looked at Rosamund with her head on one side.

  ‘Yes, yes. He’s very nice, very pleasant.’

  ‘Well, it may be news to you or not, but he thinks the same of you, and a bit more from the way he talks. He tells me he went swimming with you one night a while back.’

  ‘No, no.’ Rosamund turned quickly to the old woman. ‘No, he just happened to be passing when I was swimming and I sat talking to him for a while on the bank.’

  ‘Ah, well, I must have got it wrong, but he’s been down there a number of times and I thought he was along with you.’

  ‘No, no, he wasn’t with me, Maggie.’

  Rosamund had met Gerald Gibson a number of times in the past few weeks and they had talked and laughed quite a bit, but for a reason she wouldn’t allow herself to go into she had made sure that when she went swimming in the pond he wasn’t there. At their second meeting she had gathered that Mr Gerald, as Maggie called him, was a bit of a philanderer, that he wanted to flirt, without being taken seriously. She liked him up to a point and that was all.

  Maggie began lighting the lamp and Rosamund said, ‘I don’t suppose Mr Bradshaw will be long now, and as Susie hasn’t wakened up I think I’ll be making my way home.’

  ‘Won’t you wait and let him take you to the river? I wouldn’t for the life of me cross that land in the dark.’

  ‘It isn’t quite dark yet.’

  ‘Well, will you have one last look across the field for me and see if he’s comin’, for I won’t feel at rest until he’s here?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that.’ Rosamund smiled reassuringly at the old woman and went out into the hall.

  She had just let the green-baize door swing to behind her when her hand, flying to her throat, stifled a scream. Across the dimness of the hall, beyond the great bare window, stood a woman’s figure, or—she closed her eyes for a second—had stood, for the figure was no longer there.

  One hand still gripping her throat, the other hand tightly holding the front of her dress, and, righteous anger overcoming her shock, Rosamund made her way to the front door. Why couldn’t Jennifer have rung the bell instead of sneaking about the place like that? She pulled open the door, and when she stepped outside and saw no-one she stood for a moment slightly perplexed.

  ‘Jennifer, Jennifer!’ she called.

  When there was no reply, she walked to the end of the house and in the direction of the back door. As she reached it, Maggie called from the kitchen, ‘Is that you, Miss Rosie?’

  ‘Yes, yes, it’s me, Maggie. I—I was just walking round.’

  ‘Is he not to be seen then?’

  ‘No, not yet. I’ll go and have another look.’ She hurried now, almost at a run, to the front of the house again, then round to the buildings at the back, and here, keeping her voice down, she called again, ‘Jennifer! Jennifer!’

  She had passed the front of the house once more and was halfway down the drive when she stopped. Looking towards the wood, she saw the scurrying, dim shape of Jennifer disappearing into it.

  ‘Well! What on earth was she up to, sneaking around? What did she expect to see?’ Rosamund muttered to herself, her anger was rising still further when it was checked by the thought: But she’s afraid of the dark. She wouldn’t come out on the fens at this time of night…But she had. The face that had looked through the window was Jennifer’s—she knew her sister. All this business of being afraid of the dark, afraid of the fens at night. Just wait till she saw her …

  She made her way quickly to the kitchen again, and, taking her coat from the back of the door, she said, ‘I’ll be away now, Maggie. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘I wish you could stay until he comes. He’ll have such news to tell.’

  ‘I’ll hear it all tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, you will, and let me say it’s glad I am that you’re comin’ to look after the child.’

  ‘Thank you, Maggie. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, me dear. Goodnight and God look after ye across that wild la
nd.’

  ‘You’re stark staring mad. I tell you I’ve never been near the house.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Jennifer. Look. Look at those shoes, they’ve got mud on them. You wouldn’t get that unless you’d been down to the water.’

  ‘Well, I was down at the water, I was looking at the boat.’

  Rosamund’s eyes narrowed as she looked at her sister, and she said slowly, ‘The boat was at the far side, remember? Naturally, when I went across I left it there. A few minutes ago it was on this side, I had to pull it over.’

  ‘All right! All right! I did use the boat. I did cross the river, if you want to know. But I didn’t go to the house. I went—’ Jennifer turned her head away. ‘I took the short cut and went towards Andrew’s.’

  Rosamund blinked for a moment before she asked quietly, ‘Did you see Andrew?’

  ‘No, I didn’t go that far; I only got to the pond and then I turned back.’

  ‘And you came on to the house and had a look round.’

  ‘I didn’t! I didn’t!’ Jennifer had swung round. ‘I tell you I never went near the house.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. I saw you peering in at the window.’

  ‘You’re mad. What would I want, peering in at the window?’

  ‘That’s what I’d like to know. You’ve been curious these past weeks because I’ve never mentioned anything about him, and it’s set you wondering, hasn’t it?’

  The sitting-room door opened at this point and Henry Morley entered. ‘What’s happening now?’ he asked wearily.

  ‘She’s gone stark, staring mad, Father. She’s accusing me of going over to the house and spying on her and that individual over there.’

  ‘I saw her looking through the window, Father.’

  ‘You did nothing of the sort, I’ve never been near the place.’

  ‘You were over the river, Jennifer,’ Henry stated, and Jennifer, lowering her head, said almost desperately, ‘Yes, yes. I was over the river; I’ve just told her why. I went as far as the pond and I came back. I—I intended going to Andrew’s, but I didn’t.’