Feathers in the Fire

by Catherine Cookson

  It was half an hour later that she went out of the door and turned the key in the lock and was immediately startled by a loud hammering on the door from the inside and the child screaming, ‘No! No! Jan. Don’t lock it. No! No! Don’t lock me in. I can walk, Jan. I can walk.’

  When she quickly unlocked the door and thrust it open she pushed him on to his back, and he lay there looking up at her with a crutch in one hand.

  ‘Oh, Amos, Amos.’ She brought him upright. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, are you hurt? But I’ve got to lock the door, I must.’

  ‘No!’ He shook his head slowly, ‘No, Jan, not any more. Please, please, Jan, I’ll be good. But if you lock it I’ll scream, I will, and batter, yes, with the crutch, I will all the time.’

  She lowered her head on to her hand and closed her eyes; and after a moment she looked at him and said softly, ‘Well now, listen. If . . . if I don’t lock the door will you promise not to leave the room until I come back?’

  He stared into her eyes for a moment, then drooped his head, and she passed her hand over his curls and murmured, ‘That’s a good boy. Now I won’t be more than five minutes. Play with your toys, and when I come back we’ll go out. We’ll go and see Sep and Ned and you’ll thank them for their present, eh?’

  He nodded his head but did not look at her, and so she backed from him, then turned slowly and went out and closed the door. On the landing she stood looking at it, at the lock, and only resisted the temptation to turn it by hurrying away and running down the stairs.

  At the bottom of the stairs she paused and glanced across the landing towards her mother’s door. It was time for her morning visit but she must go to her own room first, there to attend to her personal needs which she had never been able to perform in front of the child.

  Delia heard her daughter come down the stairs, she heard her hesitate before going to the lower landing and to her room. There was no movement that her daughter or the child made that she did not hear. Sometimes she might only be dimly aware of the activities in the room above her, especially after she had taken the strong medicine that Doctor Cargill prescribed from time to time, yet some part of her mind was always conscious of the activity in the attic room. She knew when they went to bed, and when they awoke in the morning. She heard the child cry, and scream, and laugh, and at times she heard her daughter laugh with him. This, strangely, hurt her most of all.

  In the past eighteen months she had been only twice out of the room. Prior to that, except during the first six months after the child’s birth when she was prostrate and often not in her right mind, she had periodically made an effort to get back into life. It might be once in two months, or three. She would dress and go downstairs into the sitting room, but she never went outside, her legs didn’t seem strong enough to come in contact with the hard earth, nor her face the sharp air. But for the past nine months she had not even moved out of the bed.

  No-one spoke to her of the child, his name was never mentioned. But then she saw so few people. Only four in fact: Winnie, the doctor, Parson Hedley, and, of course Jane.

  She wondered time and again why she was not dead. She had no strength in her body, and seemingly very little left in her mind; what she had she used in the wish to die. She knew she was dying, but the process was slow, a fading away.

  From early this morning she had listened to the strange sounds above her. They were not the usual sounds and they had gone on for hours, a hard clip-clop, clip-clopping all over the ceiling.

  Years ago she had wanted to leave this room, fly from it and never see it again, but were she to move to the other landing she’d be near her husband, and that situation would be more unbearable than this, because never one word had they exchanged from the night he had stood over her and cursed her for bringing a monstrosity into the world. When she had come to herself the thing she had given birth to was gone; but he was there, and there had been murder in his eyes, and he had said things to her that could never be forgotten.

  Sometimes she had seen him from her window striding about the farm. Only twice had she encountered him. Even then they had not looked at each other; she had passed on into the sitting room and he across the hall as if both were blind ghosts. Yet even if he didn’t look at her, or speak to her, from time to time she heard his voice; although his office was not below her room, the one below being the dining room, its chimney flue connected with the same main flue as her bedroom’s, and through this funnel she heard his distant gruntings when he was in drink.

  The fact that he had taken to drink was, even in her dim and half-aware state, surprising. Only when there were visitors at dinner had he indulged in wine, and then in moderation; he would pour it out generously for Parson Hedley or Parson Wainwright, oh very generously for Parson Wainwright, but he himself drank very little. But now, not infrequently of an evening, and more towards midnight when the house had settled, she would hear his mutterings, and although unintelligible she gauged the ferocity of his mood by the inflexion of his voice as it was sucked up the funnels of the chimneys.

  Beneath the laudanum-dulled layers of her mind there was an activity, a threshing process that winnowed all the sounds in the house and brought the residue near enough to the opiate to bring her some awareness.

  The stamping on the floor above had stopped, just before Jane had come down the stairs; but now it had started again, only the rhythm was different. There was a longer time between each clip-clop, and each thud seemed to be lighter, such as the difference between walking and tip-toeing. The sound turned into a tap-tap. It was now no longer above her head but on the landing. Then there came a soft bump, bump, bump, followed by a succession of bangs. The child was coming down the stairs, and seemed to be dragging something with him. But how?

  She knew when he had reached the bottom. She made an effort and pulled herself up further on to her pillows. She could see over the rail of the bed now, and to the door opposite. The sound had returned to what it was when above her head, a clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clopping sound.

  She felt she was drawing her last breath as she watched the door handle slowly turn and with a sharp thrust the door was pushed back wide, and there came into the room, and towards the bed, her son. The nearer he came towards her the less she saw of him, until he reached the side of the bed and two movements of his crutches brought him within a yard of her pillow.

  She was unable to breathe, the constriction in her throat was choking her. She stared at the curly head, into the face with the almond-shaped eyes.

  ‘Are you my mama?’

  The voice was as surprising as the rest of him. It brought her face stretching and her breath fighting for escape from her throat.

  ‘Can’t you talk?’

  No, she couldn’t talk, she could not utter one word to this son of hers.

  ‘Are you sick?’

  She wanted to make a motion with her head, but it refused to obey her. What was more, she wanted to do something else, every fibre in her wasted body urged her to lift up her arms and stretch them outwards and grasp this child, this child who spoke so clearly, who looked so bright and intelligent. It might have only half a body but he was a child, not a monstrosity.

  What had she done lying here for five years listening, while up above was this child, her child, someone who could have brought her comfort? An agony filled her body as she realised she had rejected comfort, and that was what she needed most, comfort.

  She lifted her hand and slowly moved it towards him, and as slowly he moved back from it, and what he said to her was, ‘I don’t like you,’ and on this he swung his body round and stumped out of the room. But he had no sooner passed out of the door when he was grabbed and lifted bodily upwards, and when the crutches fell to the ground, these, too, were lifted, and Molly’s voice hissed in his ear, ‘Oh, you bad lad you, you bad lad!’

  ‘I’m not. I’m not.’ />
  ‘Ssh! Be quiet! Wait till Miss Jane finds out.’

  ‘Put me down, I can walk.’ He was beating at her with his fists, and she hissed at him, ‘Give over, Master Amos, ’cos I’m not puttin’ you down; you’re goin’ back upstairs.’

  She had to make a detour round the main landing to reach the back stairs again because she couldn’t pass the mistress’s open door, for she knew the mistress couldn’t stand the sight of her, she was a thorn in her flesh.

  As she turned on to the main landing the boy struggled so much that she was forced to put him to the ground, and as she did so she exclaimed under her breath, ‘Oh, you are an imp, you are that! Here.’ She pushed the crutches at him. ‘No, not that way, back up the stairs.’

  ‘I won’t! I won’t!’

  Neither of them was aware of the door opening until McBain’s shadow fell over them, and then they both looked up. Molly’s was just a fleeting glance before her eyes dropped away from the master’s face; but not so the child’s. His face now red with anger and indignation at Molly’s rough handling, he glared up at the man, the man who passed him at a distance without turning his head in his direction, the man who was his papa but who would not speak to him. His next words linked up with those he had said in the bedroom as if he were just finishing a sentence. ‘And I hate you, too, I do,’ he said.

  In no way intimidated by the rage-filled countenance high above him, he continued to stare up into McBain’s face for some seconds before he turned his back on him and stumped away, not upstairs towards the prison that had been his since birth, with only rare escapes to the yard below, mostly on a Tuesday, but down the main staircase, stumbling once and nearly going headlong to the bottom, through the hall and across the farmyard, passing gaping faces, and in the direction of the Armstrongs’ cottage.

  One thing had been made clear to Jane, the child could no longer be kept a prisoner in the attic; and this fact had got through to every occupant on the farm, including its master.

  After the encounter on the landing McBain went back into his room and there he paced the floor trying to face the fact that this half-being could no longer be concealed.

  He still looked upon the child as a monstrosity; even the fact that it might be intelligent did not veer his thoughts from the ignominy of having produced such an object. He thought of the child as ‘it’. He spoke of it, when he spoke of it at all, by that term. To him the boy was an object, a threefold curse, emphasising first his lack of judgement in taking a wife such as Delia; second, forcing the question that his own ancestry might be at fault; thirdly, and most important of all, he looked upon the boy as an act of God, a punishment to expiate his lust, the lust that had eaten him up for years, the lust that could only be satisfied by the very young. And now this same lust had turned sour on him; Molly who had excited him as no other had, at least at the time he was most in need of her, had repulsed him, not once, but twice, and yet a third time. He was a proud man, he would not beg, so on a Tuesday he went into Hexham, and sometimes as far away as Newcastle, and when his business was done he paid for the release of his passions. But it was never the same as of yore.

  Nothing was the same as of yore. He did not command the respect as he had, at one time, in the town. He sometimes wondered whether, if he had accepted his tribulation, taking it into the open, and drawing pity to himself for it, life would have been better, easier.

  At one time, on his own land he had been looked up to as a god. He had felt as a god. Now he was as a fallen angel. And the only succour he received was from the brain-dulling effect of whisky.

  Concerning the present situation he asked himself what was to be done. He could not have ‘it’ running about the place where he would encounter it at any time of the day. He could send it away, put it in a home, or a school – there were places for such as he . . . But, there was a question here. Were he to do that, what would be the effect on Jane? He could not risk alienating her. Jane, the child, had loved him at one time; he doubted if Jane, the young woman, still loved him. But, strangely, he loved her. She was the only thing left in his life that he could love, and he knew that whatever he did to the child in an adverse way would affect their relationship. They might not have much to say to each other now, but she was the only human being in the house to whom he could talk. What was more, her understanding was deep. She could accept his ignoring of the child, but he knew that she would never forgive him were he to dispose of his son in some institution.

  There seemed nothing for it but that he must face this situation as best he could. But one thing he would never allow, he would not allow ‘it’ to eat at his table, ever.

  As if this decision had in some way made his position bearable he straightened his shoulders, stretched his neck with a chin-wagging movement up out of his loose cravat, then marched from the room.

  When Molly informed Jane of what had happened she ran and almost dragged Amos from old Sep and back to the house, and all the way he had protested as he had never done before; not crying like a child of five might do, but arguing and questioning with a reasoning that startled her. Why must he stay up in his room if he could walk? Why wasn’t he allowed to go round the farm on his own? Had his papa said he must not go round the farm? Was it because he had no legs?

  It was after the three o’clock dinner that Molly, coming upstairs to clear the dishes, said in an aside, ‘It’s done this, the ice is broken, so why don’t you let him go out by himself? Or better still, the day being fine, take him up on the Tor; by! that would be an eye-opener for him.’

  Jane looked at Molly, and as if Molly read her thoughts she said, ‘I can look out the landin’ window and see whether he’s about . . . the master. An’ you can slip out the back way. ’Bout time you did get out an’ about, ’cos you’re still peaked lookin’.’

  Yes, she knew she was peaked looking. White, thin, and shapeless, that’s how she saw herself, whereas Molly, who worked fourteen hours a day and saw to her child as well, remained plump and rosy-faced and bonny.

  Molly was a woman of nearly twenty-two. She was almost, Jane considered, past marrying age yet she seemed to grow prettier every year. But she was no longer flighty; her manner in fact was inclined to staidness, much more so than her own; but this, Jane considered, befitted her years. She wondered sometimes about Molly, she wondered why she didn’t marry. Was she still attached to her father? She doubted this. Perhaps she was waiting for Davie Armstrong to come back. But she doubted very much whether Davie Armstrong would ever come back, for there had been only two letters from him in five years, one from London, and one all the way from Barcelona, and this second one had come some eighteen months ago. She had read them both to Winnie, and Winnie had told the men what they contained. They were quite interesting letters, but the spelling wasn’t good and the writing left a lot to be desired. No, she thought that Molly would have a long wait if she waited for Davie Armstrong coming back.

  Again and again Jane had asked herself over the years how it was she had turned completely about face in her attitude towards Molly, because at first she had held Molly responsible for the ill fate that had come upon her mother . . . But on reflection, she owned up to the fact that her mother would have given birth to Amos as he was even if she had carried him for the full time.

  Perhaps, she thought, she liked Molly because she was the only person near her own age on the farm, or for miles around for that matter; no-one visited them now except the parsons and the doctor, and they, in turn, visited no-one. Sometimes she was filled with envy when, on her rare walks to the top of the Tor, she saw in the distance the Reed girls cutting across the bottom field with the hunt. You could always tell the Reed girls. The three of them had red hair and they dressed flamboyantly. Their names were bandied about quite a lot. Even the youngest, Agnes, who was just on sixteen and almost two years younger than herself, was allowed to go to balls. She understood that the s
isters were the belles of every ball they went to, and it was said that men came to fisticuffs over them. There was no possibility of men coming to fisticuffs over herself. Well, it didn’t matter, as long as she had Amos to look after and he was happy; that was all she cared about.

  Although she no longer went to church, she felt that God had given her an allotted task in life: He had put Amos into her care. But Amos, more often than not, disclaimed any connection with his heavenly Father, and did not live up to his name at all, the name that Parson Hedley had given him on the first day of his life. As no- one had been forthcoming with a name, Parson Hedley had said, ‘Well, we’ll call him Amos, for Amos was a farmer who eventually did great deeds and was good in God’s sight, as this child will be.’ And she knew he would be, for Parson Hedley was always right.

  She said to Molly, ‘I’ll do that, it’s a lovely day.’

  ‘There’s heather in plenty on the Tor, you could gather some on your way back. He’d like that.’

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, I’m sure he would.’

  They both turned and looked at the boy. He was staring at them. He had heard all their conversation and he said bluntly, ‘Shall we go now?’ and Jane and Molly looked at each other and suppressed their laughter with tight-pressed lips, and Jane said, ‘Yes, we’ll go now . . . ’

  The sky was endless, seemingly without horizons. The bracken on the right of the Tor was shoulder high, some already tinged yellow, forerunner of the reds and purple that would turn the fells and hills into a warm flame. At the foot of the Tor were clusters of bilberry bushes, their fruit standing out like black and purple stains, and she pointed this out to the boy. But he didn’t seem interested, for his gaze was directed upwards.

  The easiest way was through the bracken, but the child would be enveloped in it and the fronds would impede him and they could so easily cut, so she led the way along the narrow road that skirted the foot of the Tor on the north side and where it was mostly shale, giving place to rough rock. Starting from the road was a path, cut diagonally and slowly mounting its way to the summit, and she took this. Picking Amos up in her arms with the order for him to hang on to his crutches and not to get excited in case he overbalanced them both, she began the ascent. The end of the path was out of sight of the east side of the Tor and away from the road, and when she finally reached it she dropped the boy to the ground, then sat down on a rock and, panting and laughing, said, ‘Well, here we are.’