What happened after she had hit her granny was hazy in her mind. She could remember very little until she found herself in bed and alone with her da. When her ma had left the room he had lifted her from the bed and onto his knee, and pressed her face into his neck, and without him saying a word she knew that everything between them was all right again. At least, that was how she had felt as she went to sleep, her hand in his. But this morning she wasn’t sure, not really sure. He had smiled at her at breakfast time and put his hand on her head. But there was something still wrong, and as the endless morning had worn on she came to know what it was. It was the farm – her da’s job, it was hanging in the balance. She saw it in the way he walked with his shoulders pushed back; she saw it in the way he talked, his voice over-loud and cocksure. In all, she knew he didn’t care any more whom he vexed or pleased.
Before leaving the Holy Family she stared hard up at them for a moment, and without her usual preliminary preamble she stated simply, ‘Please look after me da, will you? An’ don’t let him get vexed.’
In this short plea she had said everything, for she felt that if her da kept his temper he’d keep his job.
She genuflected deeply to the altar, turned about and walked slowly up the church, past the grown-up penitents dotting the pews and out into the porch.
She had especially picked Saturday night to come to confession, for it wasn’t usual for any children to be there, having all been marshalled from school on the Thursday in an unrepentant horde, and so it wouldn’t have been a matter of surprise to her to encounter Mrs Flannagan, but to see Sarah startled her. There they both were on the edge of the pavement, right opposite the church door and, although Mrs Flannagan had her back towards her and Sarah her profile, instinctively she knew they were waiting for her. A concealed tug by Sarah of her mother’s sleeve told Mary Ann’s sinking heart that this was a prepared attack.
‘Oh!’ Mrs Flannagan turned casually round, and with well-simulated surprise confronted Mary Ann squarely. ‘Well!’
Only two words, but they halted Mary Ann as firmly as a weighty hand on her shoulder, and she looked, with almost a plea for leniency in her eyes, up at the tall woman. She was trapped in front of her enemy, Sarah, and her mother’s enemy, Mrs Flannagan, and even if she had wanted to fight she would have been unable to do so, for she dare not cheek a grown-up, even such an awful grown-up as Mrs Flannagan.
‘So you’re back. Well, well! It’s a short career you’ve had, isn’t it? Not sufficiently long enough to turn you into a lady, I would say. You were going to be a lady, weren’t you, Mary Ann?’
Mary Ann said not a word, humiliation was sweeping over her. The loud snigger from Sarah did for a moment stiffen her spine; but only for a moment, for Mrs Flannagan took up the attack again.
‘Well, have you lost your tongue? Aren’t we going to hear your refined accents . . . or wasn’t that wonderful convent used to dealing with sow’s ears?’
No part of Mary Ann moved – except her eyes. For a second they fell away from the gimlet stare, but were brought back again to her tormentor as Mrs Flannagan continued, ‘But, of course, they hadn’t time to curb your craving for sensation. Rome wasn’t built in a day, was it? But I doubt if that will ever be curbed. You went to town this time, didn’t you . . . got on the wireless . . . nationwide search. My, my!’
Another snigger from Sarah.
‘Well, you must always remember, Mary Ann, the higher you climb the farther you fall. But I don’t suppose there’ll be another opportunity for you like that, will there?’ Another pause, during which Sarah changed her balance from one foot to the other, then hung affectionately on to her mother’s arm and looked up at her as she continued, ‘I saw your grandmother last night. She had a nasty mark on her face – it would take more than a convent to change YOU, wouldn’t it?’ In her last words Mrs Flannagan had dropped her bantering tone, and her bitter feeling of enmity was stark as she went on, ‘She was telling me she had a long talk with Mrs Jones on the bus back. You’ve shot all their bolts, haven’t you? Your Fairy Godfather’s got fed up, washed his hands of you, so if your da can’t hold a farm job down by favour he certainly won’t hold it down by experience, for he’s had as much experience of a farm as I’ve had of ballet dancing. And unless you’re well in favour with them that matter nobody’s going to be fool enough to give a handicapped man such a responsible job. It stands to reason, doesn’t it?’
The tears that Mary Ann would not allow to run from her eyes were blocking her throat and seemed to be forcing their way out through her pores, for she had broken into a heavy sweat and she stood helpless as Sarah, her voice filled with laughter, spoke for the first time. ‘She was going to learn French and German an’ all, Ma.’
‘Yes, so I understood,’ said Mrs Flannagan, bestowing a tight smile on her daughter. ‘You can learn French and German in Jarrow, but, of course, it wouldn’t be the same French and German that you would learn in a posh convent, would it?’
Sarah giggled, and Mrs Flannagan, hitching her coat up onto her shoulders preparatory to moving away, fired her last shot. ‘The attics in Mulhattans’ Hall are empty again, tell your ma.’
Even after they had moved off, Sarah joyfully skipping along by her mother, Mary Ann still stood where they had left her, and not until they had disappeared round the corner did she stir, and then it was only to shudder. She stood for some long time staring down into the gutter, while she chewed on her fingers in an effort to suppress a tearing spasm of weeping.
Finally she moved away and to the bus stop, and when the bus came she mounted head down and made for the top end, where, there not being a seat, she stood, supposedly taking an interest in the driver through the glass partition. Not until she had alighted at the crossroads and was almost to the farm did she raise her head and her eyes from the contemplation of the ground and look about her and release some of the pain in her heart, by saying, ‘It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.’ She did not think now, ‘Oh, that Mrs Flannagan! Oh, that Sarah!’ but, ‘Eeh! What have I done?’
For a moment, she had a wild idea of contacting, in some way, the Mother Superior, or Sister Alvis, and telling them she was sorry and wanted to come back. She saw herself leaving here as secretly as she had left the convent and arriving back in the south, and her presence there automatically wiping out the whole disastrous episode. But the picture quickly faded. Even if she could, she wouldn’t want to go back – not all that way. She wanted to go to a nice school again, oh, yes, she wanted that, and with a desire the strength of which surprised her. But she wanted to be home, if not every day, at weekends. Above all, far, far above all that, she wanted things back as they had been on the farm – her da settled and everything lovely. And now it would never be that way again. She felt this to be true, for as Mrs Flannagan had said, she who had made everything lovely for her da and ma had ‘shot their bolts’.
How true this was was proved as she neared the farm gates. The sound of a car coming out made her move off the road, and onto the grass verge, and when Mr Lord, sitting at the wheel of his car, went by she glued her eyes on him, and in a flurry of prayers willed that he would look at her, must look – it wouldn’t matter if he glared. But Mr Lord never took his eyes from the road. It was impossible for him not to see her, but he didn’t see her, he was blind to her.
Depressed beyond measure she went on and into the house, but here no comfort awaited her. Lizzie, with hard pats and thuds was busy cooking, but she was not drugged, as she usually was, into a cheerful calm placidity by the warmth and mixture of smells; instead she was immediately short with Mary Ann, telling her she had a half-hour before bed and no more. Michael was doing his homework on the table near the window, and he did look up at her for a moment, but he didn’t smile as he had done this morning. His face had a familiar, funny look, and it brought fresh anxiety to her . . . something had happened. Had her da and Mr Lord been at it? Oh no! no!
She left the kitchen, trying not to run, and when she
reached the farmyard there was no sight of her da, or anyone else. The look on Michael’s face had told her she must find her da but he wasn’t in the cowshed, nor yet in the big barn, nor in the loft. She shouted up, ‘Da! Da!’ and when no answering call came to her, she ran towards the hill on which Mr Lord’s house stood. Halfway up was a stark gatepost, and if you climbed it and sat on the top you could see a number of fields around. But when she was perilously balancing on its foot-square top, she still could not see her da.
On the ground once more, she stood, her forefinger between her teeth, again seeing the look on Michael’s face. There had been a row . . . her da had gone out to – to Jarrow? No! No! She bit harder on her finger . . . That was why her ma had been tossing about like that, thumping everything. Eeh! no, he wouldn’t do it. After all this long time, he wouldn’t go and get drunk again – anything but that. Suddenly her arms were round the post, and she was holding it tight. Her stomach gave a nervous heave, and she felt sick. Eeh! Where was her da? He had gone out, but where? Perhaps he’d gone to the market about the cows. On a Saturday night? How long had he been out? Was he even now in the Long Bar or the Ben Lomond? She gazed about her in panic. She couldn’t go back to Jarrow and look for him, her ma wouldn’t let her, she’d only have to wait – wait and wait.
Then she saw Tony. He was crossing the yard. She saw him go round the big barn and make for the small one. He might know where her da was. Her da liked Tony, he liked him a lot – he might have told him.
On the thought, her legs carried her at a tearing pace down the hill. It was just when she left the grass and reached a section of the cinder track that she fell. She was used to falling, and she usually recovered herself with a ‘Dash! Hang! Bust!’ but this time she lay for quite some time, sprawled out, the tears flooding from her eyes into the dirt, before she raised herself. The palms of her hands and her knees were scraped and bleeding and covered with black ash, and at the sight of them her crying became very audible. But there was no-one in sight to console her, so between sobs she picked off the largest pieces of the ash, and, spitting on her handkerchief, she dabbed at the blood, first one knee, then the other; then at her hands, exclaiming all the time, ‘Eeh! Oh, it’s bleeding all over. Eeh! Oh, oh, Ma.’
She was telling herself that she would go home to her ma when she again thought of the reason for her running, and so, making a gallant effort, when she reached the yard she turned off and limped in the direction of the little barn. As she neared the corner of the big barn, the blood from one knee began to trickle down her leg and produced a feeling of panic, and the inward cry of, ‘Eeh! I’m bleeding.’
She would bleed to death. To prevent this catastrophe she bent down and pressed her hanky to the spot, and as she did so her eye was caught again by the sight of Tony. He had come to the door of the little barn and was looking out, but from where she was he couldn’t see her, and before she could call him he had disappeared again.
Holding her hanky to her knee, she hobbled slowly towards the barn door, and just as she neared it and came in sight of his back she was stopped from calling out to him by the sight of what he was doing. She even forgot for the moment about her wounds, for Tony was opening one of Mr Lord’s trunks.
There were six trunks in the barn. Four big ones, ends up, which stood higher than herself, with lots of labels on them, and two old black ones with rounded lids and brass bands. It was one of these that Tony had opened, and his hands were now groping amongst the things inside. She watched him lift up and open a little box, and then slowly close it again. The next thing he lifted up was a blouse. She saw it was a bonny one, all lace and stuff, and cream coloured. He looked at it a long time before laying it down. Then she watched him bend farther down, his arm thrusting towards the bottom of the trunk, and when he straightened himself he was holding three small-framed pictures. She saw him spread them out like her da did cards, then select one, and with his eyes still on it, lay the other two down.
It was at this point that she sniffed. It was a very loud sniff, for her nose was full of tears and she seemed to have been holding her breath for a very long time. The sound brought Tony round as if it had been the report of a gun. His hand was thrust behind him, the picture in it; his thin face was pinched tight and no longer looked nice, but dark and frightening. And as her eyes met his, she shivered and would have turned and run, but his voice came to her, belying his looks as he said in relief, ‘Oh, it’s you, Mary Ann.’
‘Yes.’ She didn’t move.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I fell.’
‘Let me have a look.’
It was as if he had not been rummaging through Mr Lord’s boxes. She watched him turn and put the photograph back on top of the other two, and with his back to her, he said, ‘Come here, and let me have a look.’
Slowly she entered the barn, and he turned and came to meet her, then lifted her up onto the top of the other black trunk.
‘My! You have had a toss. How did you do this?’
‘Running down the hill.’ She kept her eyes on him while he wiped the dirt from her knees with his handkerchief. As he dabbed the blood with a clean corner of the handkerchief he said, ‘You’d better go home, they need washing.’
There followed a pause, during which he kept dabbing, even where there was no more blood to dab. Then quietly, without raising his eyes, he said, ‘I wasn’t stealing anything, I was only looking for something.’
Mary Ann said nothing, and now he brought his eyes up to hers. They were nice eyes again, not like they had been a moment ago. ‘Do you believe me?’
She did not say yes or no, and he said, ‘There’s nothing to steal in these old trunks, there’s only clothes and things.’
Mary Ann’s gaze slowly dropped sideways to the photographs, and quietly she murmured, ‘They’re silver frames.’ She knew silver when she saw it because Mr Lord had a lot.
She was surprised when Tony started to laugh, for it wasn’t often he laughed, and more surprised when he sat on the box beside her and dropped his face onto his hand and his shoulders began to shake – she could see nothing to laugh at.
‘Oh, Mary Ann!’ He looked down on her and his eyes were wet. ‘I’m glad you’re back; don’t go away again.’
She did not answer his laughter with her own, for her hands and knees were stinging – something awful. She really felt like crying again, and found it impossible to give to this situation all the attention it deserved, for she sensed something funny was going on. There was something funny about Tony, yet not nasty funny, she told herself, although she had been frightened of the way he looked a few minutes ago. Then him talking like that, jumping from one thing to another, like what she herself did, which made her ma pull her up and say, ‘Stick to the point,’ and her da would laugh and say—
At this point her mind was wrenched from thoughts of her da’s sayings by the actual sound of his voice, which chilled her to the heart, for he was singing. Not loud and yelling as he did sometimes in the house in the morning, but just quietly. It was this quietness, this softness of his voice that made her close her eyes and want to die.
On the first sound of Mike, Tony had risen sharply. Going towards the trunk he hastily smoothed out the things and pulled down the lid. The lace of the blouse caught upon the iron clasp as he did so and he had to raise the lid again in an attempt to extricate it.
With her eyes Mary Ann watched, but her mind did not take in anything he was doing. She did not make any attempt to move off her seat, it was as if the sickness in her heart had taken the life out of her body. Not even when Mike stood in the doorway, his hand on the stanchion, did she move. In boundless pity she gazed at him. He wasn’t right drunk, just a little bit. He’s only a bit sick, she told herself. But it was poor comfort; in fact, no comfort at all. He had promised Mr Lord . . . he had stood in the cottage kitchen and said, ‘I’ll try my best, Sir.’ And he had tried his best, she knew that; but now he was back where he had started, and all throug
h her. No it wasn’t – she refused to take the sole responsibility for this terrible catastrophe – it was Mrs Polinski, it was their Michael writing, it was Sister Catherine.
‘Hallo, hallo, hallo! What have we here, eh? Look at them knees.’ Mike pointed at her, laughing lightly. ‘By! wait until your ma sees you . . . What have you been up to, eh?’
He moved towards her saying as he came, in an aside to Tony, ‘Hallo, lad.’
Tony didn’t answer. His brows were drawn to a deep furrow between his eyes and his gaze was hard on Mike.
Mary Ann looked up at her father and said in a small voice, ‘I fell, Da.’
‘You fell?’ He sat down heavily on the lid beside her; then continued ponderously, ‘You’ll always fall, Mary Ann. Me and you, we’re of the same kidney, we’ll fall and fall. But we’ll get up again, won’t we?’
‘Yes, Da.’
‘And start afresh, eh?’ He bent over her.
‘Yes, Da.’
‘In places where our fame hasn’t gone on afore us, eh?’
‘Yes, Da.’
‘Aye, we will.’ He nodded at her, then looked towards Tony where he stood before the trunk, and again said, ‘Hallo there, lad.’
‘Hallo, Sir.’
Even in her misery Mary Ann could not help but be impressed by Tony’s deference – she had never known anybody else call her da Sir. And to keep on calling him Sir even now, that was something – Tony liked her da, she liked Tony.
‘You think us a funny crowd, lad, don’t you? A lot of things puzzle you, eh? I puzzle you, don’t I?’ Mike did not wait for a reply but went on with a wave of his hand, ‘Oh, yes, I do. You’ve wondered how I could be running a farm when I know damn all; you with your book learning could buy and sell me. An’ you’ve taught me a lot, lad. You’ve helped me to surprise me Lord and Master by glibly repeating some of the things you’ve said. Oh aye, I’ve played the learned boy. Johne’s Disease, I’ve talked about. “That pond in bottom field wants filling in,” I said. “Better be safe than sorry.” And Bloat – I even remembered you called it Tympanites – not that I didn’t know about Bloat and have got rid of it with a twist of the knife in their hunkers afore now. But did I tell the old boy that? No. I spouted it from your book, word for word. “The best method,” I said, “is to insert a trocar and a canula into the ruman. The old methods are dead,” I said. He was impressed – an’ you know something? So was I. I was impressed by all the things you knew out of books . . . not that they’ll be any good to you without the experience.’ Mike paused and looked at Tony with his head on one side, then said slowly, ‘There’s summat, lad, I’ve wanted to ask you, but in me sober senses wouldn’t dream of doing it. But now I’m’ – he paused and glanced derisively down on Mary Ann – ‘a bit sick . . . I’m a bit sick, aren’t I hinny? . . . Well, now I’m a bit sick I’ve the cheek of the devil. Your da always has courage when he’s like this, hasn’t he?’
The Devil and Mary Ann (The Mary Ann Stories) Page 19
