Feathers in the Fire

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘No! No!’ Amos now threw himself on the grass and began to gambol about on all fours; then lying down, he rubbed his body backwards and forwards like a dog rolling in excrement, and with much the same delight on his face.

  ‘Here, come on, stop your antrimartins and get into your togs.’

  As he went to pull the boy upright he let out a high cry of pain, for with a lightning movement Amos had plucked a long black hair from his groin. ‘God Almighty! you young devil you. Now why had you to go and do that, eh? For two pins I’d lather you.’

  They stared at each other now intently, so intently that they did not see the small figure, until Davie, catching sight of Biddy out of the corner of his eye, again exclaimed, ‘God Almighty!’ He dropped on to his face and reached out for his shirt and pulled it roughly about him. Knotting the sleeves at the back, he now looked at the little girl who was surveying them both; but before he had time to give her any greeting Amos had risen on to his stumps and was shouting at her, ‘Go away you! Go away. He’s my sailor.’

  ‘I don’t want your sailor; I was just lookin’.’

  ‘You mustn’t look. Go on, go away.’

  ‘I’ll not.’

  The blow from Amos’ flat hand knocked the child on to her back; the next second he himself was swung round and knew what it was like to be really struck for the first time in his life. The blow across his ear was not forceful but it was hard enough to knock him too on to his seat and make him gasp, as much in surprise, as in pain.

  Biddy was crying now and Davie, attempting to maintain the shirt in its precarious position, lifted her to her feet with one hand, saying soothingly. ‘There now, there now, you’re all right. Go on away with you to your ma. Go on now.’ He turned her about and tapped her bottom gently; then he returned to the boy and said sharply, ‘Let that be a lesson to you. By the looks of you you’ve had too much your own way, young man. Get into your clothes, and sharp.’

  ‘Jane helps me.’ The voice was sulky now.

  ‘Well Jane’s not here to help you now, and you’re big enough to dress yourself. If you’re big enough to belt little girls you’re big enough to get into your togs, so the quicker you start the quicker you’ll finish.’

  Davie got dressed and waited patiently for the boy to get into his clothes. He knew as he slyly watched him that he was purposely lengthening the process. By! he was a strange youngster. Loving you one minute, not like a lad might but like a little lass would do, then pulling the hairs out of you wholesale the next. His granda had been right, there was a vicious streak in him, and if it wasn’t curbed somebody was going to suffer, and by what he was learning of this young gentleman it wouldn’t be himself.

  ‘I’m going to tell Jane that you slapped me.’

  Davie jerked his head round and looked sternly into the face looking up into his, and he said, ‘Do that. You do that, and you can tell her that I’ll do it again if I catch you at the same trick. Come on, up with you, get on to your crutches.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to carry me?’

  ‘No. You’re a big fella, at least to yourself, so you walk up those steps. Get goin’.’

  And casting speculative glances at the sailor, Amos got going . . .

  It wasn’t until Jane was putting him to bed that night that he said to her, ‘The sailor struck me.’

  ‘What! you mean Davie?’

  ‘Yes, Davie, the sailor. He boxed my ears like Mr Geary does the boys!’

  ‘He never did!’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘But . . . but why?’

  He blinked at her, then grinned, saying, ‘I slapped Biddy, I knocked her down. She wouldn’t go away when we were bathing. I told her he was my sailor and she had to go away and she wouldn’t, so I slapped her; and he slapped me. But I still like him, he’s still my sailor.’

  Jane ignored this last, she felt highly indignant. How dare Davie Armstrong slap the child, even if he had first of all slapped Biddy; children often slapped each other. She would have a word with him about it, indeed she would. He would have no right to do such a thing even if the boy had been an ordinary boy. Had he no feelings for his handicap? She was surprised at Davie Armstrong, especially as the child had taken to him and had openly shown affection for him.

  She couldn’t really believe it; perhaps the child was romancing. Anyway, she would find out tomorrow, she would ask him outright. And if Amos had been speaking the truth, well then – she paused in her thinking. How did one chastise a man like Davie Armstrong had turned out to be? He had been a headstrong youth before he had left the farm, even Winnie admitted that, but now he was a man who sailed the seas and he had gained a certain position. Whether this had given him his authoritative attitude she didn’t know; what she was aware of was that he wasn’t a person one could chastise. Still, if he had struck the child it was her duty to do something; after all, he was but a labouring man . . . Oh really! Some part of her flounced at her priggishness, but she defended herself by muttering aloud, ‘Well, you just can’t let a thing like that happen and do nothing about it.’

  Before she went to sleep she definitely decided to have a private word with Davie Armstrong in the morning. But before nine o’clock the following morning she was standing in the dining room defending him . . .

  ‘Why,’ said McBain angrily, ‘did you not tell me that Armstrong was back?’

  ‘It . . . it never crossed my mind, Father.’

  ‘It never crossed your mind!’ He brought his closed fist down on the dining-room table. ‘You are no child, so don’t act like one. You’re bound to know that the very sight of that man will make me want to use a gun on him.’

  What she did know at this moment was that five years ago the enraged man before her would not have thought of using such an expression, no matter what his feelings were. She had always been aware that he had despised the more ordinary farmers round about, but now his own manner of living and speaking wasn’t much removed from theirs, and this unfortunately was reflected in the farm.

  There was no real outward sign that the standard of the farm had depreciated, but she was aware that it had. The hand that had once held the reins of the business had been a sober hand, sober, strict and knowledgeable, and this made for good husbandry, but now his knowledge wasn’t used because he woke each morning to a mind fuddled from the excess of the night before.

  The name of Davie Armstrong had never been mentioned from that awful night they had faced each other across the newborn child in the kitchen, but instinctively now she realised that Winnie’s son had been growing like a canker in her father’s breast, because but for Davie’s interference Molly, he felt, would have carried out his orders and there would not have been gambolling round the place like a child he looked upon as a monstrosity.

  She said quietly, ‘You cannot stop him visiting his parents.’

  ‘Can’t I? I can turn the whole damn lot of them out.’

  The muscles of her face tightened, her mouth set against the unreasonable injustice of this threat; and now, her voice rising, she dared to say, ‘You’d be hard put to it to find anyone like Winnie; you don’t appreciate what she does. Have you ever thought what it’s like looking after mother seven days a week?’

  ‘Be quiet, girl!’ His face had a bleached look, even the mottled pattern of blood veins on his cheekbones had paled.

  She remained quiet for a moment while they stared at each other and then in a controlled but stiff voice, she said, ‘He’ll be gone tomorrow and if you’re wise, Father, you’ll say nothing against him to Winnie, for things are not so bad over the countryside that she wouldn’t be snapped up; there’s still Farmer Hetherington, and his wife is still alive. And I must remind you, Father, that I cannot take on any more, my hands are full from morning till night, I’m . . . ’

  Her words faded away as she wa
tched his head droop heavily forward and his shoulders hunch as he lowered himself down into the chair, and with his fists pressed together on the desk he brought out in a voice like a groan, ‘Don’t . . . don’t keep on, Jane.’

  When, after a moment, he raised his head and looked at her she was so swamped with pity she wanted to put her arms about him and press his head to her, for she had never seen such need for comfort in any human being; his need she felt was greater than her mother’s, or the child’s . . . or her own . . . What was her need? She refused to go into it now; this was something that one wrestled with when unable to sleep. And anyway, it was only a part of life, for as the Bible said, the body was not one member but many. The Bible also said, ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have no charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.’

  The thought urged her to carry out her desire and comfort her father, but as she made towards him he turned his head from her as if in shame, then rose from the table and went out of the room. The moment was lost never to return, and she knew this and was saddened to the depths of her . . .

  When she went to collect Amos from the kitchen, where she had left him, Molly turned from the stove and said, ‘It’s no use, Miss; might as well try to tether a streak of lightnin’. He scooted out of the door afore I could stop him.’

  ‘Oh dear! Molly; why didn’t you hold him?’

  ‘Hold him, Miss? I tell you I’d just as soon try to hold on to the bull. But don’t worry’ – she gave a thin smile – ‘he’ll come to no harm, he’s gone down to the Armstrongs.’

  ‘Dear, dear! He’ll make a nuisance of himself.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Miss.’ Molly lifted the black stock pot from the stove and brought it to the table.

  Jane noticed that Molly had made no further reference to the visitor in the Armstrong household, so she herself did not bring his name up. Under the circumstances it would, she felt, have been indelicate.

  Molly now said, ‘Would you like a blackberry pie made, Miss? The bushes at the back are laden.’

  ‘Yes, that would be nice. Could I gather them for you when I get the child?’

  ‘No, no, Miss; you’ll get all messed up and you’ve got your new print on. I like that one.’ She nodded at the mauve print dress that Jane was wearing which had a thin gold stripe running through the material; the skirt was full and the bodice fitted her narrow waist. ‘It suits you; mauvy tones suit you.’

  Jane flushed slightly as she passed her fingers over the front of the skirt; she was feeling a deep embarrassment as if she were being paid a compliment by a man, for it was the first time anyone had ever remarked about her clothes, or her appearance. She thought again that Molly, in spite of everything, was a kind creature.

  Molly watched her young mistress go hurriedly from the kitchen, then she went to the window and watched her progress across the yard. She was running like a young girl should. She watched her pick up her skirts away from the slime as she jumped the drain down the centre of the yard, and aloud she muttered three words, ‘God help her.’ She was as sorry for Miss Jane at times as she was for herself. In a way they were both in the same boat. Miss Jane had as much prospect of getting married as a bitch in a brothel; and then there was herself; she’d had two offers in the past year, not counting Will Curran, who watched her like a chained dog. Both the offers would have given her a better life than she had here, so why hadn’t she taken them, why? In the past she had refused to answer this question; now as she returned to the table she cried at herself, ‘Stop damn well askin’ the road you know.’

  He was along there, a few hundred yards from her, Lord Davie Armstrong . . . God Almighty Armstrong, and he had never opened his mouth to her. She thought she would have dropped down dead when she saw him through the dusk two nights ago, and she had tossed and turned half the night as she lay with the child at her side, knowing that there were only two layers of brick atween them.

  The dawn had come before she closed her eyes, for she had faced up to the fact that she had been a bloody young fool. Yet she wasn’t going to take all the blame, she wasn’t going to pour more guilt on herself than she had already done; she had enough to carry; she looked back on the episode with the master as a sort of summer lunacy. Her Grannie Talbot used to tell her about such happenings when she was a girl, things that happened after the Harvest Supper; things that had made her put her hand across her mouth and giggle and say, ‘Eeh! Grannie, you’re spinnin’ ’em.’ Now she knew her grannie hadn’t been spinning them; the master had taken her and, let her face it, she had enjoyed it. When John Curran had first taken her there had been no joy in that. She hadn’t wanted it, but he had forced her and she had been frightened. But John Curran was a babe in arms, in fact an unborn child compared to the master, and yet what had taken place between them had not frightened her. Looking back on it though, over the distance, the mere thought of it now sickened her; it was as if she had been mesmerised and changed into another being.

  If she had at that time taken any of Mother Reckett’s medicine she would have blamed it on that, for Mother Reckett’s doses had been known to do funny things to people; she had known that the mistress had visited Mother Reckett for she had found the hiding place where she put the bottles. She had never let on to anyone about that, not even to Winnie, and certainly not her ma, though her ma knew all about Mother Reckett. The old woman had got rid of three of them for her ma, although each time it had made her feel bad, and she had never been right since the last do, tired all the time. Anyway she couldn’t blame Mother Reckett for what had happened between herself and the master, she only knew that her whole attitude towards him changed when she had stood on the side of the bog with the child in her arms. She had known then that the master was the kind of man who would sell God to the devil if it suited him; and it was strange that what rankled in her mind most was that she had allowed herself to be flayed by him. She did not think of it as a piece of utter hypocrisy, she just thought that no real decent man would have put her up to it, then done it himself. But the bitterest pill of all she was constantly swallowing was the knowledge that through her madness she had thrown away the chance of getting a decent man. And not only that; she had a feeling for Davie Armstrong, not the same kind of feeling she’d had for the master, it was different, deeper, going right back to the days when she first began to follow him into the fields when he was crow-scaring. He had never pushed her off when she pestered him, and as she grew up she had thought of him as her property. She was fourteen when she had slapped their Lena’s face for saying that she, too, liked him. She had wanted to tell him about John Curran, but she didn’t dare for she felt he would have bashed his face in for him, and she knew it was very important that everybody should get along with everybody on the farm.

  But from the night the master had gripped her thigh she seemed to have lost her senses, gone stark staring mad. Strange, she had thought no less of Davie, but the master’s passion and attention had drugged her almost to death. It was as if she had chewed foxgloves and raw poppies.

  The whole thing now appeared to her like a bad dream, something that could not have happened in reality. But she had only to look at the master, watch his thin legs in the cords and polished gaiters hanging each side of a horse; it was at such times that she knew it wasn’t a nightmare for she had seen those legs, hairy and bare, prancing and dancing like a dervish.

  What madness got into people! She couldn’t understand it. She couldn’t understand why, when Davie Armstrong wouldn’t look the side she was on, when his contempt for her was deep in his eyes, that the feeling inside her for him should grow, and keep her lying alone when her body ached for lack of use.

  She picked up her basket and went out of the kitchen by a side door, through the arch into the paved court, and through a gate into a lane that led to a copse where grew the low blackberry bushes.

&
nbsp; There was a tangle of undergrowth behind the bushes and she hadn’t put out her hand half-a-dozen times to pluck the berries when Davie walked round from behind the bushes.

  Although he had been in her mind up to that very minute, nevertheless the sight of him made her start. Determined not to speak first she went on picking until he said, ‘Why hello, Molly Geary’ – it could have been that they had just met after a long time, except that his tone was weighed with mockery – ‘Fancy running across you. I would have thought you would have been up and gone to the big city years ago.’ And then she turned on him saying, ‘Think you’re funny, don’t you?’

  ‘Me funny? I never thought I was funny in me life . . . me funny?’

  ‘You’re born but you’re not buried yet.’

  ‘Tut! tut!’ He made a clicking sound with his tongue. ‘Where’ve I heard that afore. Aye, me da; it’s a favourite sayin’ of his. And it’s a daft saying when you come to analyse it. Of course we’re born, and some of us get the chance to live . . . ’ He paused and their gaze held before he finished, ‘Long enough to know that they’ll be buried some day.’

  ‘You still don’t believe me, do you?’ Her voice was quiet now, full of pain. ‘You’ll go down to your grave not believin’ me; nothing will ever make you think other than I meant to do it, isn’t that true?’

  ‘Aye, that’s true.’

  ‘Well—’ she gulped in her throat. Then her voice rose. ‘You’re wrong then, you’re blasted well wrong. You think as you do ’cos you wanted to think the worst of me. It gave you something else to pin on me . . . t’other wasn’t enough.’

  It was a few moments before he said, ‘T’other was enough, but you went a long way with the bairn afore you changed your mind, didn’t you?’

  ‘Aye, I did; right to the very brink. But I did change it. I’d changed it afore you came on the scene and played God . . . You’re good at playin’ God, aren’t you?’