World From Rough Stones

by Malcolm Macdonald

"Well!" Stevenson called. "Yorkshire beaten ye, has it? Goin to put the fear on Lancashire!"

  "Arra! Lord John!" called an older man with blackened teeth and a ringworm the size of a skullcap. "When'll ye bomb Calley off the line, Lord John, an' squeeze us on yer payroster!"

  A great gale of laughter went up, and, though she did not understand the joke or its reference, she joined in. Stevenson turned around and looked at her strangely then, as if her laughter—but not theirs—had wounded him.

  He faced them again. "When the kings come down from Tara," he said. "And Swimmer Dandy takes the form of Finn McCool!"

  They loved that. It was the greatest joke of the day.

  "Anygate," he went on, "why should I take such a drunken, dissolute lot o' randy rebels on my payroll?"

  This, too, raised a storm of laughter and some applause. She heard cries of "He's the lad!" and "That's the man himself!" The older, ringwormy one, who was taller than most, looked around and called: "Swimmer Dandy! Show him Swimmer Dandy now. Fetch the man!"

  The cry was taken up and passed to the tail end. There an object was hoisted up above their heads and carried from hand to hand toward the front. It was almost level with them before she realized it was not an unconscious man but a corpse, already quite stiff. "Don't let them drop it!" she said involuntarily.

  As he had died in the depths of alcoholic poisoning, death had laid him out in caricature of every drunken Irish yokel that never lived. The skin of his face stretched in a ghastly grimace, baring great splayed teeth below a potato nose that sprouted between unblinking eyes that stared every which way, one down, one up. When he was brought level they struggled to hold him upright; but even in death the feat eluded him and he swayed above them, like a candle with a broken stem.

  "There sorr," said the tall one. "Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph but wasn't he the little darlin'!"

  Stevenson looked at it with distaste. "Eay!" he said. "If I pulled it out on a fishook, I'd cast it back for pity."

  That brought renewed laughter.

  "Where are ye bound for, lads?" he asked.

  "Sure they've no liquor in Todmorden. We're away to Littleborough for a daycent Christian wake to bid farewell to puir old Swimmer here."

  "That's a long way," Stevenson said, and there was a note of promise in his voice that many of them were quick to catch.

  "Ah it is sorr!" The tall one smiled. "It is. It is indade. A long and thirsty way! Indade!"

  "Aye!" Stevenson surveyed the sky. "It'd be champion if a man could stop halfway like an wet 'is whistle!"

  "That's the truth! The God's own truth that is."

  He looked at them and, smiling broadly, said: "Now that I think on it—I might ave seen some casks of ale in the cuttin beyond Deanroyd Bridge. Aye…" He rubbed his chin speculatively. "'Appen there might o' been a drop o' brandy there an' all."

  They gave out one bloodcurdling whoop that brought sudden shivers to her spine and then poured southward, like river ice in a thaw. By chance they passed Swimmer Dandy back to his "sedan chair"—in reality a simple litter of branches and rope—at just about the same rate as they streamed forward, with the result that he pitched and yawed and rolled, now prone, now supine, before them, as a log, trapped at some point on a river bed by a submerged branch, might dance on broken water. And his wild eyes and grinning mask made it seem that this lunatic seesawing and spinning conveyed more true sense to him than anything else in that whole, terminal, stupefying week.

  "You're the Christian, sorr!" they shouted as they trotted and stumbled past. As he watched them go, he rubbed his hands in a glee that was itself a kind of intoxication.

  When they had gone, the air, now burdened only with the faint aroma of vitriol and—more pungently—with stray coal gas and the decaying water of the canal, smelled sweet indeed. The passage of so many feet had obliterated the snow, giving the Todmorden turnpike the character of a mid-city street.

  "I suppose there's little real harm in them," she said as they resumed their walk. "Certainly not when one can handle them as you did."

  "Aye," he replied. "It's easy to detest the Irish if ye merely hear of their doings. They're not like other Englishmen at all. But when ye meet them…" He shook his head. "There's no denyin' they've a way about them."

  "Even that corpse they were carrying," she said. "I don't know…it had a sort of romance. It seemed to be enjoying the fun, if that doesn't sound stupid."

  "I know exactly what you mean," he said.

  They passed a small group of cottages, new ones, built for the mill at Walsden. A woman, hearing them pass, came hesitantly out of her door and stood on her step, looking nervously up and down. "Are they gone?" she asked.

  "Aye," he told her. "They'll not come back today."

  She lifted her apron and fanned her face with it. "Eee!" she said. "I were that ruined wi' worry!"

  "You? Why?"

  She lowered her voice. "I've a licence to brew ale," she said. "There's sixty gallons in 'ere. I thowt they'd smash't place to bits."

  He stopped when he heard that and introduced himself. "'Appen I s'll need sixty gallons, toneet," he said. "Bring us a cup. I'll see the taste of it."

  The taste was to his satisfaction and he offered sevenpence a gallon. She couldn't let it go under a shilling. He'd have to join the Anti-Corn-Law League if he wanted prices down. In the end, they settled at ninepence, and him to collect and return. She didn't know anyone who had killed a bullock or any other kine recently.

  "I do," Arabella said proudly when they were moving again.

  "You?"

  "Yes. The clerk stands by the churchyard gate and announces all the slaughterings after Matins each Sunday. I used to get our meat from Roberts the butcher. But now I go round the farms where they're slaughtering. And I do much better for us that way."

  "And who is it today?"

  "I'll only tell you if I may have the rump, one of the kidneys, and a pound of the liver."

  "Done," he said.

  "I've forgotten the name but I've had the farm pointed out to me. It's over at Swineshead Clough."

  That was only a stonesthrow from the turnpike, about two furlongs ahead, at Gawks Holm. The stretch between there and Walsden village, which they were just leaving, was—as yet—the least built-upon part of the valley.

  "I was watching you," he said, "among that mob. I thought their drunkenness would appall you more than it seemed to."

  "Yes," she said distantly. "I thought so, too."

  "They need someone to work among them. A…a sort of missionary. An example. Men are no good. We've had ministers here from time to time. It's useless. It needs the gentler persuasion and more spiritual example of a woman."

  She was so surprised that, involuntarily, she reined in her horse. Then she laughed in sheer embarrassment and shook her head. "Oh no!" she said. "You are not thinking of me! Certainly not me!"

  "Don't," he implored and pulled a punch on her knee to make her look up and stop this silliness.

  It did that all right! She sat up, eyes wide, nostrils flaring.

  "How dare you!" she cried.

  "Don't," he said again, quietly and deliberately.

  Curiosity got the better of her. "Don't what?" she asked fretfully, as if reserving the right to return to her anger.

  "Don't underesteem yourself! You may find this laughable—but I tell you, I've watched you since you've come up here. There is a power in you, a moral power, that will one day astonish you. When it finds a worthy object on which to bend its force, it will sweep you along with it. There will be none to match you—if you set your mind to it."

  She laughed in the same embarrassment as before but did not this time hide her eyes. "Gee up!" she spurred her horse.

  "I don't know why you think it of me," she said when they were walking again. "I'm no abstainer."

  "No!" he said fervently. "Abstentionists are no good. They replace one kind of licentiousness by another."

  "I don't follow."

  "Ab
stention…any of these enthusiasms…they're all a kind of superabundant indulgence of the moral spirit. As bad for the soul as an excess of liquor for the body."

  She was shocked. "One cannot have too much morality," she said.

  He laughed, cheerfully and a little patronizingly. "One must be very young to think that. The young bricklayers' leader back there has an excess of moral zeal—about class and wealth. He drank his fill of it yesterday; he's drunk on it today; tomorn he'll have a thick head from it—three months thick. Avoid these fanatics and enthusiasts. Temperance—not abstinence. Temperance in all things. Cut the cloth to the pocket and the sail to the wind."

  A devil in him, amused at the intensity of her anger when he had punched her kneecap, now moved him to reach a hand up there and gently squeeze it.

  But now no anger flowed. She looked steadily at the sky and then lowered her eyes to him with weary asperity. "Please, Mr. Stevenson…" Her voice was flat, the way one might talk to a child too old to be spoken to as a child. "Do not always be so…infantile. Kindly remove your hand."

  He sighed in disappointment. "At least," he said, "you do not shriek to the heavens and slap my face this time."

  "Nor did I last time!" She almost shouted in her astonishment.

  "Ha haa!" He turned. "You said you had forgotten! Now you smile…yes, you should smile more often. Tight lips do not become you."

  She obeyed resignedly, implying that he was incorrigible but harmless. "When I was sixteen," she told him, "I used to go around the parish with my mother, taking broth and scraps to the sick and the poor. There was one old man I remember who was crippled while felling trees—on Mr. Thornton's uncle's estate, in fact—and he was then completely destitute. Well, whenever my mother's back was turned he used to reach out—just like you, then—and squeeze my situpon. I tolerated it, I think, because I realized there was not an ounce of harm in the poor old fellow."

  Stevenson inclined his head, ruefully accepting defeat. "I must take care not to earn your pity in future."

  "Yes. You must take great care."

  They rode on a short way in silence, with only a hundred yards or so remaining before they reached the turning to the farm. The man-made landscape at this point might have been especially prepared as an illustration for some popular treatise on communications. The river, following the contours, swung sharply left and then more slowly right in a great arc before swinging left again to resume its northward course. The old road followed the same pattern though, being higher up the hill to their right, its twists were less extreme. The canal, built by more confident engineers, followed even straighter lines that carried it clear over the river at two points. Then the new turnpike, less careful of gradient, arched over the canal and cut straight through a shoulder of the hill, making a small cliff between itself and the old road, higher up. And finally, on its long viaduct of flying arches, soaring majestically over river, canal, and road, cutting the straightest swath of all, ran the new railroad, now almost complete. When they reached the junction where the Bacup road runs west from the turnpike, they could see all four levels at once—railroad over road over canal over river.

  "Look," Stevenson said. "I doubt there's much we do would impress the ancient Romans. But I fancy that would."

  She looked at it and nodded. "My husband tells me you're quite the classical scholar, Mr. Stevenson."

  He shook his head and led her horse forward again. "Slip o' the tongue, ma'am, no more." He spoke in a way that did not invite further pursuit of the subject, so she returned to a point she had meant to raise earlier and had forgotten.

  "You talk of temperance and suppressing drunkenness among your men," she said. "Yet what of you? You're a fine one!"

  "Oh?"

  "Yes. Who told those Irish navvies about the liquor at Deanroyd?"

  He stared at her, wide-eyed in his innocence. "What liquor?"

  "The beer, and the brandy…" She paused. "You mean there is none?"

  "Nary a drop!"

  "But…goodness! Will that not simply provoke them?"

  "Greatly, I hope. Clubs will be trumps then all right!" He laughed and pulled out his watch. "It is…ten minutes past midday. At any moment, the Rochdale constabulary will arrive to suppress a strike. I am hoping they find a riot."

  She was shocked. And she could tell that, despite his truculence, he was not as happy as he tried to make himself seem. "What have you done?" she asked.

  "I have put an Irish cat among some Lancashire pigeons." He spoke with no humour now, and they continued in silence.

  Just before they reached the turn to Swineshead Clough she asked: "Mr. Stevenson, when did you first conceive the idea of putting this 'Irish cat' among your 'Lancashire pigeons'?"

  "First?" He had to think. "Of course, I knew I must crush the strike the minute I heard of it. Then…I knew I might somehow use the turmoil of Calley's payout. But it was no more than an idea at the back of my head until you brought the news they were headed south."

  She was too scandalized at his use of her to speak. And he felt her silence as keenly as any accusation, for he then added: "The constabulary was sent for much earlier— before you came." She did not respond. "I gave them every chance," he continued. "Until just before you came, I was offering every man his old place back."

  She bitterly regretted now that she had opened the subject. These were things she did not understand; but everything she heard merely strengthened her feeling that a wrong had been done—which his succession of excuses only confirmed. "Please," she said unhappily. "Don't think yourself accountable to me."

  "But I am," he said flatly. "We are all accountable to those whose friendship we value and whose opinions we therefore esteem."

  "Well…" She looked unhappily around. There was more life stirring here, now that the Irish had gone well past; the bruised and fearful town was returning anxiously to its usual ways. "I think I would rather go to the farm alone," she said. "I shall tell him you will call later today." He nodded. "I'll wish you good day," she concluded.

  She had turned before he replied. "The best thing I may wish you, ma'am, is a life so comfortable you need never make a choice such as I have faced today."

  This appeal struck her as so unworthy that she could not hold her anger as she turned back to face him. "You may think to ask yourself—you who so detest extremism as you claim—who has been the extremist today? Who has sacrificed all to one particular end? The defeat of these men was already ensured. The constabulary was already sent for. What do you gain by blackening them as violent? What gain was worth that devious sacrifice of your honour? And as for wishing me comfort—I seek no comfort. I tell you frankly: I would sooner a bed of nails than your feather-mattress of a conscience."

  She realized that the longer she spoke the angrier she was growing. So, making short of her farewell, she turned for the last time and spurred her horse away up the hill.

  He smiled as he watched her out of sight. What if that fervour could find a worthy cause!

  Chapter 26

  You fookin' pig! When I fookin' catch it, I s'll fookin' kill it!" Eph Ackroyd said.

  He spoke—for want of a better hearer—to Emily Ann, who had been put out into the porch at Stone House to sun herself. She turned her pretty, idiot face toward his voice and laughed and nodded, laughed and nodded—just as, minutes earlier, she had laughed and nodded at the squealing pig as it rushed by and made for the bridge—and just as, minutes before that, she had turned her head toward the turnpike and laughed and nodded at the Rochdale constabulary, hurrying past. Emily Ann's was an affirmative world of golden laughter, although she spent most of her time in it lashed hand and foot to the rocking chair in which she now was seated. At night, she was manacled to her bedroom wall; at mealtimes, her padlocked leather waistband was chained through the back of her chair to a ring in the floor. For whenever she escaped these fetters—as happened several times a year—Emily Ann would streak up the valley like a cat that's sat in pepper. And word wou
ld ripple among the menfolk that Emily Ann was loose. And Emily Ann would be passed from shed to woodland to coalhouse to loft to storeroom to cellar. And men would stand in surreptitious, sniggering lines and wait their turn at Emily Ann. Always the women would find her in the end and take her, exhausted and bleeding, back to Stone House.

  Sometimes, a few months later, she would drop a small, cold, formless thing like a wreckling piglet; more often there was no issue. The men said she laughed the way she did in memory of her past escapes; to the women it seemed more likely to be in heartless anticipation of her next.

  Eph paused and looked closely at the knots which bound her, as he always did when he came this way and she was put out to sun. Once he had been the first to find her—or to be found by her—when she had broken loose; and for ten delirious minutes, longer than he had ever spent in congress with his wife or any other woman, he had moaned with her among the reeds by the canal bank.