It was two years before Anne came back to The Feathers. Still beautiful, still with her restless vivacity, but there was a shadow of weariness in her laugh, and her eyes were not so warm. She did not bring William with her, and when Jane asked about him, she replied briefly, ‘He’s a darling child ‒ and too precious to be jolted about in a carriage just yet.’ Jane, diffidently, asked if she might come to London to take care of him. Anne gave a little smile and the warmth returned fleetingly to her face. ‘You’re too young to take care of William ‒ but soon you shall come to London to pay us both a visit.’
Jane lived through the next years in memory of that promise. She applied herself with greater zest to the lessons that Anne paid for her to have with old Simon Garfield, the retired schoolmaster. Books and learning bored Jane somewhat; she could read and write with fair ease, and add up the accounts at The Feathers. Beyond this she had no accomplishments ‒ but she paid rapt attention to Simon because it had suddenly become vitally necessary that she should be able to speak with the refined accents of the ladies who stopped at the inn. Anne should not have cause to be ashamed of her when the summons came to go to London. Simon, who disliked children, particularly girls, tolerated her, and taught her with a certain efficiency, even trying to give her a smattering of Latin, because he was well paid to do it. The lessons stopped when Jane was fourteen, because by that time Simon was owed so much money he refused to open a book again with Jane until settlement came from her mother. Jane had almost stopped hoping that Anne would send for her.
About the same time one of the real delights of Jane’s life vanished also. Years before, generous in a flush of prosperity, Anne had sent a pony, Jasper, to The Feathers. Anne herself was passionately fond of horses, and rode superbly. It was the only accomplishment of her mother’s Jane copied with ease. She was without fear of horses, and sometimes in the early morning she rode, in borrowed breeches, astride Jasper on the Heath. When the money from Anne began to dwindle, Tim Cooper good-naturedly paid the feed bills rather than curb Jane’s pleasure; Jane attended herself to Jasper’s grooming. But in the end even Tim’s patience ran out, and Jasper had to be sold. For Jane there was nothing now but the stolen joy of mounting, for only a few minutes, some of the horses stabled for the night at The Feathers.
The money grew less and less, and finally stopped. Anne wrote that she had been ill, and that the doctor’s fees were enormous. So as the months went on, Jane fell gradually into the role of a serving-girl at The Feathers. She had learned from Sally how to cook, to sew, how to churn butter; now she learned how to sell and serve a good wine to a discriminating traveller, and to substitute an inferior one when she knew it didn’t matter. She already knew how to groom and harness a horse, and from years of listening to it, she also had a fine command of stable language, which she was careful to keep hidden from Sally. She became, in a sense, a fourth daughter to Sally and Tim ‒ sharing the hard-working routine of The Feathers, sharing the bed of the eldest girl, Mary, and sharing, also, the undemonstrative affection they each had for the other.
Anne wrote only rarely, always complaining of lack of money. Vaguely Jane still cherished the notion that some day she would be asked to come to London. Anne still lived in the house Hindsley had given her ‒ there must be some way, Jane reasoned, in which she could be of help to Anne, even if it were to take the place of a servant. She read and reread the few books that were the relics of the days with Simon Garfield; she tried desperately not to let her voice slip into the broad accents of Sally and her daughters. She grew weary of the waiting, conscious of her developing body, conscious of the stares and the talk of the men she served at The Feathers, forever conscious of the time passing. She was always at hand to witness, with longing, the departure of the coaches for London.
The day after her eighteenth birthday she lay in the hay and thought that there must be something more for her than to marry and live and die without stirring outside this one village. There must be something more than Harry Black ‒ but she didn’t know what it was to be, or how it would come.
II
Motionless, Harry Black watched the door of the storeroom. His broad, heavy shoulders rested against the stable wall. His attitude suggested that it would have been an effort of will to straighten himself and move, but his mind was busy as it seldom was, flooding with images which brought a flush to his fair skin, and made him swallow jerkily.
He had glimpsed Jane as she entered the storeroom. Without thinking he had started to follow her ‒ and then retreated, cursing his own hesitancy. He wiped his clammy hands against his breeches, and swallowed again. Every instinct urged him to go to her, to take advantage of her being alone to press the claims he had been making for these six months and more; he told himself that if he went now he might be permitted to touch her, hold her body close to him, might kiss her, might even wring from her a promise to marry him. He thought of all this, and still he stood rooted to the spot. He felt himself tremble, and wondered dully what had happened to the strength which made him feared and respected by every man and boy in the village. His determination and his strength both seemed turned to water before this slight girl, whose glance held only contempt for him.
Harry clenched his fists, and his wanting her was a slow pain which burned through him. His mind never encompassed tenderness or love; he knew nothing of his feeling towards Jane except that he wanted to possess her. He had no knowledge of her as a person, for they had never talked together with any intimacy. All he knew was the evidence of his senses. He knew the sensuous, provocative lines of her body, the faint fragrance of her skin; for many hours, as he had sat in the kitchen of The Feathers, his eyes had followed her movements, rested on her shining red hair, her soft young curves.
There were times he hated Jane. She was making a fool of him ‒ he was Harry Black, the only son of a man who could have bought up most of the village; he was strong, and he knew that women called him handsome, and came easily to him. There were plenty of girls in the village who were comely and were willing to walk on the Heath at night with him ‒ he was proud of the fine son he had fathered a year ago by a girl over at Thornton. There were even girls who could have brought him a little money in marriage, and who were fitting matches for Tom Black’s son. There were many possibilities open but like a fool he must turn his eyes on a serving girl who had no possessions, who had not even the dignity of being the innkeeper’s daughter. Not a penny to her name, the child of a high-class whore. But her lips were red and sweet, and she walked like a queen. He knew she was conscious of no honour in having his offer of marriage made to her. Her rebuffs filled him with rage, and still she attracted him beyond his power to understand.
Voices in the stable close by reached him, and he jerked his head round. He did not want the two young stable-hands to come out and find him. They would know why he was there; they laughed at him behind their hands for letting a serving-girl play him as if she were a great lady. They knew his long hours of silent waiting in the kitchen ‒ and they knew that Jane didn’t walk on the Heath with him. It was almost as bad as the taunts his own father gave him.
He straightened suddenly, and walked to the door of the storeroom.
Inside, the afternoon light was soft, and there was no movement to tell him of Jane’s presence. He shut the door with what was, for him, unusual gentleness.
‘Jane! … Jane!’ His voice was hoarse as he called.
He hadn’t expected an answer from her. His eyes flickered over the accumulation of junk littering the floor, then he went quickly to the ladder that reached to the hay loft. When he was half-way up, her head appeared suddenly over the edge. She was lying close to the opening; her greenish eyes stared at him hostilely.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Damn you! I can come if I want to.’ He had forgotten that he meant to be gentle with her. He climbed the last rungs, and knelt there, for the moment speechless with anger and emotion.
‘Why can’t you leave me in
peace!’ she said irritably. ‘My head aches, and my legs ache, and in two minutes I’ll have to be in the kitchen to help start the supper …’
He looked at her, and his rage made him want to slap that scornful little face. He made a vague, ineffectual gesture towards her; she behaved as if she didn’t see it. Those strange green eyes of hers under dark upward-slanting brows, were fixed on him unmovingly. She was a beauty ‒ they said she looked just like her mother, who had captivated one of the richest men in the country … like mother, like daughter. He wondered again, as he had often done, how she would be in bed. It was an image that stirred perpetually and pleasurably in his mind, and to see her now propped up in the hay evoked it strongly. It was always said that the red-headed ones were fierce. He hoped it was so.
Jane watched him carefully, watched his tongue flick over his lips. His blond, good-looking face was flushed; she could even see the pulse at the base of his heavy throat leaping. She had seen his gesture, and now he shook his head quickly from side to side, as if to thrust away her words.
‘Jane …’
She hated the harsh sound of his breathing. She put her hands on the floor and pushed herself back a foot or two.
‘Jane, they told me it was your birthday yesterday. I’ve brought you …’ He thrust his hand into his pocket ‘Look what I’ve brought you!’
In spite of herself she craned a little, but he kept his fist closed. He saw her action at once, and some of the tension left him. This sign of interest from her put him in the position of superiority he should properly have held over her. He closed his fist more tightly.
‘Do you want to see it, Jane ‒ do you? Come here and I’ll show you.’
She was immediately wary, and the look of indifference closed down on her face again. ‘I don’t care,’ she said shortly. ‘It’s nothing to me.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Suddenly he opened his hand. In it lay a tiny locket of blue stone that Jane imagined must be turquoise. He began to swing it on its fine gold chain.
‘Pretty ‒ isn’t it pretty? Would you like it, Jane?’
She said nothing; her fascinated gaze rested enviously on the locket. Her small wardrobe held nothing in the way of adornment, and this was the first time in her life any had been offered to her. She pictured herself wearing it, and treasuring it. With all her heart she wanted to stretch out her hand and take it. Then she glanced from it to Harry’s face, and recognised his air of confidence.
‘No ‒ I wouldn’t like it.’ She drew her knees up under her chin, and turned her head away with a gesture of finality.
The action was a last goad to Harry; he flung the locket into the hay. He felt that he hated her more than he had ever hated any thing or person in his whole life ‒ because she scorned him, because she looked untouched, and yet her body was a passionate, living thing, and her hands and lips were strong and exciting. He wanted to force himself on her, and then be finished with her; he wanted to tear down, violate, use, even destroy.
‘Slut … little bitch.’ Very deliberately he pronounced a string of obscenities.
She looked back at him, her head darting round in a swift movement. For the first time she felt fear. Her lips puckered in an attempt at a smile; it was a grimace which showed her teeth.
‘Harry … don’t take on so!’ She attempted to placate him. ‘You shouldn’t have bought the locket ‒ your father will be angry …’ Her voice trailed off. He didn’t even hear her words. She watched him begin to crawl towards her ‒ slowly as if he didn’t care how long it would take to reach her, because he was no longer uncertain.
She looked around her, and there was no escape, because already she was too close to the edge of the loft, and Harry was between herself and the ladder. The looming bulk of his body was full of menace; she knew she had made the mistake of treating him once too often as a fool who could be laughed away. He came on towards her with a kind of quiet purposefulness. At the last he moved swiftly. He threw her back on the hay as if she were a featherweight ‒ angrily and cruelly.
The world seemed to slide towards darkness as she felt his great weight press upon her ‒ her whole vision was filled by him, the sunlight blotted out, the sweet scent of the hay no longer in her nostrils. She could smell the male smell of him; her lips tasted of his. Then there was another taste; there was fresh blood in her mouth from the wound his teeth inflicted. A helpless rage swept over her, rage that she had so misjudged him, rage that all her foolish, impractical dreams had ended like this, and that she would be Harry’s wife, married with haste and resentment because of the fear of having his child ‒ or even if there were to be no child, Harry would only need to tell Tim Cooper what he had done to her and Tim would see her wed as soon as was decent. She tried to cry out, but only a harsh croak came past her lips; his weight made it nearly impossible to breathe. She poked at his eyes, tugged savagely at his hair, but he didn’t seem even to notice it. Clumsily he grasped at the bodice of her gown, tearing it swiftly to expose her left breast; she felt his lips urgently against it; his thigh moved and pushed harder into hers. She fought to keep his hands from her skirts, but he shook her away, all the time plucking at her petticoats and stockings. Then she felt his fingernails against her bare flesh, and there was pain. Her breast also hurt, and she wondered if his teeth had cut her. She closed her eyes, and imagined a whole life-time of this ‒ pictured herself gradually learning to respond because there was no satisfaction elsewhere, and because the future held nothing different.
His weight pressed on her unbearably. She opened her eyes, again and gave a last, desperate heave sideways. Her movement was unexpected, and he rolled with it. For the space of a second or two his bulky frame seemed to be poised. Then he started to grab at her frantically; he lifted his arms, and grasped at her shoulders for support. She sensed what was happening, and flung herself swiftly backwards from the edge of the loft. His hands slipped off her. He thrashed wildly in the hay, but he had no agility to maintain balance, and he was already more than half-way over. A flurry of hay rose in the air as he disappeared, and she heard his body strike the ground below.
For a moment she lay where she was, drawing in great mouthfuls of air, feeling the sudden coolness of clammy sweat breaking all over her. Then she rolled over and peered down.
Harry was directly beneath her. The fall seemed to have stunned him; he had lifted his head a few inches from the ground, and was moving it slowly from side to side. His eyes were open, but there was no comprehension in them. He gazed about him stupidly; his glance rested on Jane above him, but he gave no sign of recognising her. She dropped back in the hay and revelled in the wonderful relief of knowing that he was moving, and alive. Then she heard him moan.
By the time she climbed down the ladder, he had managed to raise himself on to one elbow. He still looked dazed, but now his face wore the tightness of pain.
‘Harry ‒ are you hurt? ‒ are you?’
She squatted beside him, but he didn’t take any notice of her. With cautious fingers he was feeling the upper part of his right leg. Jane drew in her breath when his fingers touched his knee: then the agony was quite plain on his face. She was nearly sick when she heard the grating sound as he gingerly prodded his shin bone. In sudden panic he tried to move, and the fractured bone broke through the skin. They both stared at the blood which started rapidly to stain his stocking.
The sight of the blood seemed to unnerve him; he had not uttered a sound except for that single moan. Now he struggled and tried to pull himself to a kneeling position on his uninjured leg. His face blanched with the effort, and he collapsed again, the sweat standing out on his face and neck.
Jane put her hands on his shoulders to press him down.
‘Be still, Harry! ‒ be still! I’ll go and bring someone …’ He turned his head, and seemed to be aware of her for the first time. His tight lips stretched back over his teeth.
‘You!’ He grabbed her arm savagely. ‘You did this!’
She tried to pull aw
ay. ‘I didn’t!’
‘Look at it!’ His tone rose almost to a shout. ‘Look at my leg! I’ll be a cripple … I’ll be on crutches ‒ me!’
‘No, Harry. No!’ She was panic stricken, struggling to tear his fingers from her arm. ‘You won’t be a cripple! Doctor Crosby’ll mend it ‒ he’ll bind it up with two sticks, and it’ll be straight.’
‘No one ever walked rightly again on a leg snapped in two ‒ I’ll be worse than the greatest weakling in the village. And it’s your fault ‒ you bitch!’
Suddenly he swung out with the back of his hand. She ducked, and the blow caught her fully across the left eye. Blinded, she stumbled back out of reach.
She squinted down at him ‘I didn’t do it ‒ I didn’t harm you, Harry!’ Her voice rose in a wail of despair.
‘You did, you bitch … and it’ll be a long day before you forget it. There’s more ways’n one to skin a cat, and even if I can’t give you what you deserve, you’ll see what my father will do.’
Jane didn’t miss his meaning. Everyone knew that Harry’s father had the ear of the local magistrate, Sir George Osgood. Suddenly she realised it was not Harry’s rage alone that threatened her. He was only a young and dull-witted man; but his father yielded power ‒ and she was a serving-girl at The Feathers, with only the doubtful protection of Tim Cooper, whom she suspected owed money to Tom Black, behind her. She looked fearfully at Harry’s shattered knee, and the unnatural angle at which his leg lay. She had heard that the law could put you in gaol or even transport you for breaking another person’s nose ‒ what was the punishment for crippling a man? In his furious threats she suddenly felt the menace of prison-ships, and Botany Bay.
Harry was turning again, looking around him as if he was about to shout for help. Urgently she bent towards him.
‘It wasn’t my fault ‒ I swear it wasn’t! I didn’t know we were so close to the edge. I swear to God I didn’t!’
Blake's Reach Page 2
