Feathers in the Fire

by Catherine Cookson

When Davie didn’t answer him, the boy repeated, ‘He’s askin’ for you now, the master.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ His voice was tight and thick. ‘I’ll be along.’ They nodded at each other; then Davie turned and looked at his people, all standing now.

  His mother said tentatively, ‘I’d put a clean smock on.’

  At this he tore off his soiled smock, threw it on the floor, then swung round from them and went out, banging the door behind him.

  As he walked down the dusty road in the direction of the farmyard his angry gaze lifted towards the house. He had always liked the farmhouse, the shape of it, the mellowness of it; it was the best of its kind for fifty miles in any direction you went. The old part of it dated back to 1699 and had three storeys. The lower floor was now the dining room; it was a very large room. Above it the same space was divided into a bedroom and two small rooms, one used as the master’s dressing room and one as a night water closet. Above these there had been two attics, but the dividing wall had been pulled down to form a large storeroom for all the odds and ends of the house.

  The new part of the farmhouse, which was built in 1794, had only two storeys, and the bedrooms were on a lower level than that of the old part. Four steps led down from the old house into the new and on to a fine big landing, as big as a room, with six bedrooms going off it. The house had been built for a family, and at one time these rooms had held seven sons and three daughters. This was because they had been lucky enough to be born and reared between the bad plagues. On the ground floor there was a fine sitting room, and at the end of a passage leading from the hall a room that had once been the breakfast room – the house had been styled on those of its betters – but now was the master’s office. The end of the passage gave access to the kitchen, and this room, like the old dining room at the opposite end, was stone-flagged, and held everything that a kitchen should hold, from a pepper mill to a row of twelve graded pewter pots hanging above the long mantelshelf, seeming to form a bridge between the great copper pans that gleamed, also in rotation of size, where they hung on wooden pegs down each side of the fireplace.

  If Davie had ever had a wild dream it hadn’t, up till now, been of sailing the seas and discovering new lands, as did the people he had read about, but of owning a house such as this with a kitchen where he could enter without scraping his feet, taking off his cap, or touching his forelock.

  He now scraped the dust off his feet on the scraper and then on the roped mat outside the kitchen door.

  He paused inside the door and there, at the long wooden trough sink, stood Molly Geary washing dishes. She turned her head quickly towards him, her hazel eyes narrowed, a faint smile on her face. ‘Hello, Davie,’ she said softly.

  He glared at her, then walking slowly to the edge of the sink he bent his shoulders slightly forward and said in a low voice, ‘You go to hell’s flames, Molly Geary, and as far beyont; and you can take that’ – he stabbed his finger down at her stomach – ‘along with you.’

  Her eyes stretching now, her mouth fell open and she turned her head quickly and looked towards the far door that led into the passage, as if she would run to it; but Davie was walking towards it. Before he went through he turned and looked at her again and, his voice still low and his words spaced, he said, ‘The – master – wants – me,’ and he laid strong emphasis on each word.

  Her face showed him that she was in no doubt as to how much he knew of the truth of the situation. He went into the passage and towards the office door, and there he had to force himself to knock.

  ‘Come in.’

  Slowly he opened the door and entered the room, then stood with his hand on the door looking at the man seated behind the desk.

  Angus McBain glanced upwards as he pushed a ledger to one side and rearranged some papers on the desk; then he said, ‘Come in and close the door, Davie.’

  Davie did as he was bidden, and slowly walked up the narrow room until he was standing in front of the desk looking down into the face of his master. The face looked all thin, nose, lips, eyebrows, yet the hair on his head was black and thick. It lay like a silk sheath and was as yet untouched with grey. Until this moment Davie hadn’t realised how thin the master was in all ways. His body was tall and thin, his face was long and thin, even the grey of his eyes was a thin colour; and his voice was thin, clear, sharp and thin.

  ‘Do you know why I’ve sent for you, Davie?’

  Should he say ‘Yes, Master’, or ‘No, Master’? He stared down into the flickering half-veiled gaze. The drooping lids suggested that they could close at any moment, and he said, ‘I’ve got a good idea’ – he paused a second before he added – ‘Master.’

  Angus McBain brought his attention once again to the papers on the desk and his Adam’s apple made a rapid movement in his neck, stretching the skin in its passage. ‘You have been courting Molly for some time . . . ’

  ‘I’ve never courted Molly, Master.’

  Again they were looking at each other, and now McBain’s eyes were wide and his voice stiff as he said, ‘I have seen you myself walking the fields.’

  ‘You can walk the fields, Master, without courtin’.’

  Again there was a pause before McBain said, and thickly now, ‘The girl is with child and she won’t name the man.’

  ‘Won’t she, Master?’

  McBain made no reply to this. At another time the young fellow’s tone would have brought his tongue lashing at him for he allowed no servant, man or woman, young or old, to approach him as an equal. His forebears had always run the farm as gentlemen farmers, not like the ordinary trish-trash who worked neighbouring farms and allowed their people to pig in with them at a central table in the kitchen. Those he employed knew their place and gave him his. He was a good master to them and acted as their counsellor. He demanded respect and subservience as his right.

  But there was neither respect nor subservience in young Armstrong’s manner. Of course he was piqued at discovering Molly had fallen and he’d had no hand in it, it was natural he supposed, and, therefore, he must make allowances. Well, the thing to do was to get it over and quickly. He picked up a sheet of paper from the table, scrutinised it for a moment, then laying it down but his eyes still on it, he said, ‘You will marry Molly.’

  ‘ . . . I’ll not you know . . . Master.’ Again there was the pause before ‘Master’.

  ‘What!’ The thin face was thrust upwards now. ‘Did I hear you aright?’

  ‘Aye, you heard me aright.’

  ‘You would defy my order, and, and leave her with an unnamed child?’

  ‘Aye, both, Master.’

  McBain’s eyes were wide now. There was more in the young fellow’s attitude than frustrated virility; he felt a sense of uneasiness. Had Geary, because he had been thwarted in his attempt at blackmail, hinted something to the fellow? Surely the man would have more sense. Had he not a family to support? And did he not realise that the roads were crawling with farm workers begging for work? Nine shillings a week he was paying Geary and three shillings between his sons; that was a tidy sum, not counting the two shillings a week from Molly. Then there was his cottage, milk, potatoes, and two cords of wood a year, surely the man wouldn’t jeopardise all that? No, for he was a cunning individual, was Geary. What he wanted for his knowledge was a rise in pay, a house, more perquisites . . . he would not jeopardise that. But why then young Davie’s attitude?

  The muscles of his face tightened as he looked into the brown eyes, almost black now with what he recognised as suppressed rage. He leant back in his chair and surveyed the young fellow as from a distance and it was as the master of destinies that he slowly spoke. ‘If you disobey my wishes you know what it could mean?’ He held up a finger as Davie was about to speak, and continued, ‘Now think, think hard. I’m not a man to use empty threats. Those who do me service are repaid, well a
nd truly repaid, as you and your family know. You have a good job; ask yourself, where in this county would you get seven shillings a week? What is more, there is a great deal of money going into your house from my pocket . . . ’

  ‘Aye, and you’re gettin’ a great deal of work for it, Master. Me ma and me both do two people’s jobs each; me granda did the same for years till he was worn out.’ He did not mention his father.

  McBain was sitting upright now, stiff as a ramrod. His voice had a steel thread to it as he said, ‘You are forgetting yourself entirely. Be careful, Armstrong, be careful.’

  ‘No, Master, I’m not forgettin’ meself. You sent for me, didn’t you, to tell me I had to marry Molly? Well, I’m tellin’ you I’m not goin’ to, ’tis a free country.’

  ‘You are a bonded man.’

  ‘Bonded, or no bonded, I’ve only got a few months to go. I could leave at the end of the year and you could do nothing about it.’

  McBain slowly drew himself up from the chair, stretching himself until he appeared to stand head and shoulders above Davie, although in fact with his six feet he could give him only two inches, and his words had an ominous ring. ‘Yes. Yes,’ he said, ‘you could leave at the end of the year and I could do nothing about it. But I could do something about the cottage and your father . . . don’t you want time to think, boy?’

  ‘All I can think, Master, is you’ll go a long way afore you’ll get anybody to work for you like me ma does, an’ me da an’ all, they both do a twelve-hour day, more, never no less. And you won’t find me da droppin’ asleep on the job either. An’ me, my hours never end, you see to that . . . an’ you’ve no need to tell me the roads are crawling with families looking for situations, I know it, but what I also know is that Farmer Hetherington from over Hunstanworth would jump at me ma like a shot. His wife’s been on her back for years an’ he can’t get anybody right for the house; he’s asked me ma twice . . . that’s news for you, Master . . . ’

  ‘Stop! Stop your insolence this minute!’ As McBain came round the desk Davie did not retreat, and when his master stood within an arm’s length of him he faced him unblinking. It was strange for him to realise that he had no fear of this man now, even in his wrath, for he had always stood slightly in awe of him, not only as a master, but as a man. Because he appeared a way above the ordinary mortal, his example was something to follow. But for three years now he had questioned the churchgoing and psalm singing; strangely it had been the books Parson Hedley himself had recommended that had brought the vague questioning doubts to the forefront of his mind; without his reading he doubted if he would ever have troubled to think about it.

  God was in His heaven,

  The cattle were in the field,

  Man ploughed and sowed

  And lived off the yield.

  That was the pattern he could, like his folks, have lived and died by. Yet, his reasoning told him, even in this moment of stress, that it was this man, this enraged master towering before him, who had allowed him to go to Parson Hedley’s Sunday School. However, he questioned this man’s progressiveness in the face of the prevailing parsimoniousness of thought and asked himself would he have been allowed such a privilege if the master hadn’t been a friend of old Parson Wainwright, and Parson Wainwright hadn’t been full cousin to Lord Powlett, and Lord Powlett’s niece hadn’t married Sir Alfred Tuppin, who lived in The Manor. The master had a taste for high company; it was known around the county he didn’t live like any ordinary farmer, so the sending of him and the rest of the young ’uns on the farm to Sunday School he saw now as a means of impressing Sir Alfred and the rest of the gentry with his progressiveness.

  He had a mental picture of his master reading the lesson; that was when his awe of him had first begun, for he did not seem like a farmer, or his master, but a man full of God . . . A man full of God! The words ran through his mind like an audible sneer. In this moment he had the desire to spit them into the face before him.

  The master was speaking. His voice low and very thin now, he was saying, ‘You have your choice, you’ll marry Molly or you’ll go.’

  ‘You’ve had me answer, Master, and I’ll add something to it.’ His own voice was low and thick. ‘I’d rather be crucified than give me name to her an’ – there was a long pause before he ended – ‘your fly-blow.’

  He watched the colour drain away from the thin face, leaving the skin grey and muddy looking, except for two white spots on the cheeks where the bones showed through. He could not continue to look at the fall of a God as it were, so he moved to one side, then went towards the door, only to be checked by McBain saying, ‘Wait!’

  Again they were looking at each other, but Davie saw that the master had recovered quickly, and the tone of his voice bore this out as he said, ‘I could horsewhip you, or take you to the justice for defiling my . . . my character. Do you know what you have said, accused me of?’

  ‘Aye, Master.’

  ‘Well, it’s a lie, bred of your jealousy. This is final, you’ll go, and if you spread this lie around I’ll have you transpor . . . ’ He had been about to say ‘transported’, but realised he was more than sixteen years too late for that; but Davie took it up.

  ‘And Miss Jane along of me, Master?’ he said.

  There was a short silence before McBain muttered, ‘What?’

  ‘I said Miss Jane along of me, Master?’ His voice was quiet. ‘She was in the malt house s’afternoon, as I was meself. I was bringing the cows in and I saw her fall. She was running towards the malt house. When I got to her she was up in the straw, you know’ – he inclined his head forward – ‘the straw that’s in the gallery. She had cut her knee and was cryin’. She wasn’t cryin’ ’cos of her hurt, not that kind of hurt anyway, she was crying for . . . now who do you think she was crying for, Master? She was crying for Molly ’cos you had flayed her. And then she sees you, Master; we both see you comin’ in and waiting. I don’t need to tell you any more, do I? It isn’t me you’ve got to worry about, Master, not me, it’s Miss Jane.’

  He walked from his master’s presence without being given leave and he didn’t bang the door.

  Angus McBain put his hand behind him and gripped the edge of the desk, then took a step back and rested his buttocks against it. God above! What was this? His mind leapt back to what he had said to Molly in the malt house . . . and what he had done to her, kissing her flesh, fondling her . . . ah, dear Lord!

  It was characteristic of him that he wasn’t concerned so much over the impression his infidelity might have made on his daughter as by the fact that a member of his immediate family should be aware of his intrigue. That his employees should have knowledge of what was going on was, after all, of no great import; they would never dare voice, or even hint of any such thing to their mistress. They could, and would, talk among themselves, but what did that matter? He had after all only done what was commonplace all over the countryside, taken his pleasure with a serving maid . . . This might even add to the respect granted him in some quarters, and arouse it in others where it had been lacking – their knowledge of his peccadillo would have made him appear much more a man of the world. What was shaking him now with fear and foreboding was the possibility that through his daughter the facts might come to his wife’s ears. But again his particular worry did not concern the effect it might have on her but on what she was carrying. She had carried for nearly seven months, the first time since Jane was born, and he had willed it to be a son, willed, and willed, and willed it to be a son, until, deep within him there was the sure knowledge it would be a son. A few more weeks and he would never claim it.

  Molly! Even the name coming into his mind made him feel weak. He had never had a desire for anyone like he had for her. Ignorant, untutored, it did not matter, her body was a delight to him. He liked young things, soft, rounded things. His first wife had been like Molly, all flesh. Sh
e had died and taken their first child with her, and that had been a son. Why then, with his inclination running to tender soft young things, had he picked on Delia to bear his children? Delia had been twenty and thin; pretty, yes, but thin, almost as thin as himself. She was still thin; she had got thinner with every miscarriage. Seven of his children she had dropped; he had grown weary of trying to bring permanent life out of her bony frame. Now for the first time in thirteen years she was holding his seed and nothing must cause her to drop it before it was due . . . Where was Jane? He must find her, explain to her; she was twelve years old, old enough to understand.

  He seemed to be catapulted from the desk, out through the door along the passage and into the kitchen, only to find it empty. He went into the passage again, then on into the drawing room, calling ‘Delia! Delia!’ and when his wife didn’t answer, he went into the hallway and out through the front of the house. The garden was deserted. Delia, he saw, had been on the lounge chair, for her work bag was lying on the grass. He went through the house again and out into the side yard, and there called to young Mickey Geary, ‘Have you seen your mistress, boy?’

  ‘Aye, Master. Her and Molly are lookin’ for Miss Jane; she didn’t come home to no supper.’

  He bit tight down on his lip before asking, ‘Which way did they go?’

  ‘I don’t know, Master; they just went round ’n’ round the place callin’.’

  Swiftly he made his way out of the yard and into the road. Then he crossed the fields almost at a run, leapt over a low stone wall, and made for The Ridge. He slipped as he scrambled up the steep path and when he reached the top he was gasping.

  The evening sun was in his eyes and he put his hand to his brow and peered around him. Then he saw them, two small figures a good distance apart, his wife on the cow track above the malt house field, and further away the unmistakable figure of Molly running down towards the brook; he could not see his daughter. He left the top of the hill and took the curving path at a run, which he kept up across the fields. He could not remember running like this since he was a boy of fourteen.