Feathers in the Fire

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Sailor! Sailor!’

  They both turned sharply and looked down the road, where Amos was hobbling towards them on his crutches, followed by Biddy. Both children were panting when they came up to them and Amos cried, ‘I’ve been looking all over for you. Do you know I’ve been looking all over for you? Where have you been?’

  ‘Up to London to see the Queen.’

  Amos didn’t follow this, but Biddy did. On a high clear laugh she looked up at Davie and chanted, ‘Pussy cat, pussy cat what did you there?’ And laughing, Davie finished with her, ‘I – chased – a – big – mouse – from – under – her – chair.’

  ‘Good, good!’ As Davie looked kindly down on the child, the while ignoring her mother, Amos put in sulkily, ‘I don’t like that.’

  ‘You don’t?’ Davie turned to him. ‘Then you don’t know a good rhyme.’

  ‘I know ’nother one, Mister.’ Biddy was smiling up at him, and without more ado she repeated:

  What’s your name?

  Mary Jane.

  Where do you live?

  Up the lane.

  What do you keep?

  A little shop.

  What do you sell?

  Gingerpop.

  Amos was supporting himself now on one crutch, the other was lifted breast high, the point end thrust towards Biddy, when Davie cried, ‘A-ah! you do young fellow, you do. Remember yesterday?’

  Their eyes held, the boy’s and the man’s; the crutch was lowered and tucked under his arm, and then he said, ‘She shouldn’t say lines to you.’

  ‘And why not, boy?’

  ‘Because I don’t want her to.’

  ‘Oh! Well, let me tell you somethin’, young man.’ Davie went down on his hunkers before them both. ‘What you want, and what you’re going to get out of life, are two different things, and the quicker you learn this the better. Now off you both go on to the green there and play.’

  ‘I want you to come.’

  ‘I’ll come in a minute; go on with you.’ He gave the boy a push that almost overbalanced him, then stood watching him hobbling off, sulking, following Biddy this time. When he turned towards Molly she was staring at him, and he returned her glance for a full minute before saying, ‘There’s not much resemblance atween them, is there? None at all I should say. But it should show somewhere, don’t you think?’

  Her lips were quivering, and the muscles of her face worked before she said from deep in her throat, ‘You’re a cruel bugger, Davie Armstrong! That’s what you are, a cruel bugger . . . ’

  Jane did not have her private word with Davie until about an hour before his departure the following day. Her determination to reprimand him with regard to his treatment of Amos had faded, but even if it hadn’t she doubted if she would have been able to carry it through.

  Thinking of what to say to Davie Armstrong when out of his presence was a simple matter, to say it in his presence was a different matter altogether. Although his manner was pleasant, even jocular, he had an air of authority about him which she had noticed from the beginning. Nevertheless, they talked of Amos, and in the boy’s presence.

  Davie stood at one side of the hearth in his mother’s kitchen with Amos clinging to his leg while Jane stood at the other side. She watched him put his hand on the boy’s head and ruffle his curls, curls that had taken her quite some time to comb into place; and he looked down on the child while he addressed himself to her, saying, ‘He wants a firm hand; as I said yesterday, the bit wants tightenin’.’ And when he added with a glance at her, ‘Though it’s none of my business, Miss Jane,’ she prevented herself from answering, ‘You’re right, it isn’t.’

  She remained silent looking into his face, while she thought, I’m glad he’s going away, he’d be a disturbing influence here. And then he brought the colour flooding to her face with his next words, ‘I went over to the vicarage last night,’ he said. ‘I had a long talk with Parson Hedley. Fine man, Parson Hedley. An’ he thinks highly of you, Miss. Talked at length about you, he did. Lonely life for a man stuck in the big barrack along o’ that old hypocrite. Real old face-both-ways is Parson Wainwright. I said to Parson Hedley he should get himself married ’cos he looked more lonely than a sailor in a dead calm. You should be thinking along those lines yourself, Miss Jane. Coming up to eighteen, aren’t you?’

  The heat rushed down her body to her very feet. He was talking to her as if she were a child, or a girl of the farm. She managed to say with some dignity, ‘Really!’ And then her colour went a tone deeper when he burst out laughing. ‘Aw now, Miss Jane; don’t come the fine lady, you’re too nice for that. An’ I meant no impitence, I was just thinkin’ about your future, ’cos somehow I don’t think you’ll bother much about it yourself. You won’t get much chance will you, not with this?’ He again ruffled Amos’ curls while the child stared up at him, his mouth slightly apart as if he was sucking in every word.

  Her lips tight, her expression prim, like that of a maiden lady of twenty-seven not a girl of seventeen, she lowered her eyes from his, then held out her hand towards Amos, saying, ‘Come along.’ But Amos answered her quickly with, ‘No! Not yet. I’m going to see old Sep; he’s in bed bad.’

  Jane turned her head to the side with impatience, not only at his disobeying her, but at the term ‘he’s in bed bad’. She’d have this to contend with too. The more the child went about the farm the more of the jargon, the bad grammar, was he likely to pick up. She covered her annoyance by asking, ‘Is old Sep really ill?’

  ‘No.’ Davie’s left eyelid drooped. ‘But he thinks that if he puts on his rheumatics it’ll keep me here another day or so. He won’t believe that cargoes, like the time and tide, wait for no man. To hear him talkin’ you’d think I was second-in-command to the admiral.’

  ‘I want to see Sep. Carry me to see Sep.’

  ‘Aw well, come on then; there’ll be no peace till you get your way.’ He hoisted the boy up into his arms. ‘Young devil you are . . . Isn’t he?’ He addressed the question to Jane as he passed her, and his left eyelid flickered again.

  She watched him mounting the stairs, talking all the while to the boy who had his arms clasped tightly around his neck. He had winked at her twice within the last few minutes. Davie Armstrong had winked at her. She did not have to remind herself that this Davie Armstrong was not the Davie Armstrong that she remembered. Really! She was glad he was leaving, otherwise the situation would become most embarrassing. He didn’t seem to realise that she was Miss Jane in charge of the household, which she ran very efficiently. And what was more important, she was in charge of the child. She realised that her position with regards to Amos would become untenable were he to remain here, for he treated her as little more than a girl, a very young girl at best . . . Yet he had suggested that she was old enough to marry, and had even put a name to the man, Parson Hedley. Really! He was outrageous. Parson Hedley was almost thirty years old.

  Davie stood on the top of the Tor on the same spot on which he had stood three days before.

  The sailor’s bag rested against his leg. It was much lighter than it had been on his arrival, but it had in it something more valuable than baccy, whisky, and trinkets, for it held three large crusty loaves of bread, the like of which he wouldn’t taste again not for many a year.

  There was in him a new sadness; he knew that he was unlikely to see his grandfather again. Moreover, over the past three days the sea had fallen away from him and the soil had seeped back into his being. But he was already empty with the loss of it, even while it weighed him down; these hills, these mountains, the fells and the valleys, how could a man tear his roots from them? They said the mandrake cried when it was pulled from the earth; he was crying at this minute, his body was sweating his tears, only his eyes were dry.

  He looked towards the farm for the last time and when he saw
the dim outline of a figure come out of the gate and walk along the road towards the cottages he thought, but for her I’d be down there still. A cruel bugger, she had called him, and she had been on the point of crying as she said it. He was glad he could hurt her. He stooped down and swung the bag on to his shoulder and, turning abruptly, he walked over the Tor to where it sloped into a bracken-covered hillside, and he went through this until he dropped on to the fells and then on to the main road.

  He had been walking on the road for only a matter of fifteen minutes when he heard the familiar sound of a trotting horse. It was approaching round the bend from which he had just come. He walked on to the grass verge, turning every now and again to watch its approach. It could be a carter or some friendly soul who would give him a lift into Hexham, from where he would take the train to Newcastle.

  When the trap came into view and he recognised its driver he turned abruptly and walked smartly forward, his gaze directed ahead. The trotting came nearer, and it was just behind him when McBain’s voice cried, ‘Get up there!’ There was the crack of a whip, then the trap was abreast of him. When the whip cracked for the second time and the tip of it came over his kitbag, whipped his hat off his head and struck its thong against his left temple, he staggered and almost fell into the ditch. Recovering his balance, he threw down his kitbag and, running into the middle of the road, he bawled, ‘You bloody cowardly swine you! That’s all you are, a bloody cowardly swine!’

  He stood staring after the racing trap; then he put his hand up to his face and looked at his fingers. There was no blood on them, but he could feel the swelling rising from his cheekbone to his temple. He picked up his cap and thrust it on his head and hoisted his bag once more on to his shoulder.

  He walked slowly, hesitantly, along the road for he had the desire to go back and set the whole farm on fire, do something to get even with that smarmy hypocrite.

  He had congratulated himself that he had kept out of the man’s way during the past three days, and then this to happen at the last minute. Well, it was five years since he had been here, it had better be ten before he came back again. It would take that long for his temper to cool. But five, ten, or fifteen, one day he’d get even with that swine, by God he would!

  BOOK THREE

  1896

  One

  Up ’til a few years ago Cock Shield Farm had been pointed out as an example of how a farm should be run. The example extended back to McBain’s great-grandfather and the pattern appeared so set it seemed impossible of alteration either for the better or the worse. But for some time now McBain’s neighbours, both immediate and those not so, had taken great satisfaction in watching the example disintegrate.

  McBain, it was said, was rarely sober now. He was no longer in command of his own business. There was slackness on the farm, and it was not only hearsay, you had just to pass the gate and there you saw evidence of it; more evidence still in the cattle he sent into market; and his milk yield had gone down, so much so that he had stopped the supply of milk to the hospitals.

  Not that some of the more kindly neighbours didn’t pity him, for his son, ‘McBain’s bit’ as he was cruelly nicknamed, was a handful. He might be without legs but he caused more uproar than a human centipede. Not quite sixteen yet and throwing his weight about like any man; but then he had looked like a man for years. To see him sitting in the trap you’d swear you were looking at a man in his twenties. And his trap was something too, made up from an old one and mostly by himself they said, with a set of portable steps at the back up which he could hop; a seat for himself on one side higher than that for the passengers at the other, so that generally his head would be above theirs; except when he drove young Biddy Geary into Hexham, and she topped him.

  That was a nice state of affairs, the people of Hexham said, when at the age of fourteen he had first driven her into the town.

  It was noted that from the time the boy drove into Hexham McBain ceased to attend the market. Fred Geary went in his place; and everyone knew that Geary was as bottle conscious as his master. And it was Geary who, when well oiled, gave the avid listeners details of the happenings at Cock Shield. He never tired of repeating the fact that father and son had uttered not one word to each other; except that is but once when the youngster had hobbled into the dining room and seated himself at the table. He was ten years old at the time and McBain had cried at him, ‘Out! Out!’ and when the boy hadn’t moved he had picked up a carving knife. What might have happened if Miss Jane had not thrown herself between them was anybody’s guess, so Fred Geary said. But mind, Geary always added, not that he would want Master Amos sitting across the board from himself, for did you ever see such eyes as he had in his head, long and narrow but so sharp looking they could pick winkles. And that fair hair of his that grew thicker than wool on a sheep’s back, it made his head look twice its size. Even then it didn’t do anything to diminish his shoulders. Did you ever see such shoulders and arms on an ordinary man? Mind, he would say this, given a pair of legs he’d have been a remarkable specimen, six foot at least when fully grown he guessed, and as broad as a bull with it. But having no legs didn’t stop him prankin’. The things that lad got up to, even from when he was a mite, was something nobody’d believe. Teased the life out of the lads he did, and the cattle an’ all. He wasn’t seven when he lashed one of the cats to Rover’s tail, then hung a kitten around his neck. Old Rover was as quiet as a lamb, but that day, God, he nearly tore the place apart, they thought they’d have to put him down after.

  Bossy, he was an’ all. Everything had to be his. He sort of claimed people; Miss Jane, well, she hadn’t a life of her own. As far as he could see she’d never marry Parson Hedley although there’d been an understanding ’twixt them for years. She had her hands right full had Miss Jane. He was dead sorry for her. What with bringing that young ’un up and then the master, and the mistress. Never put a foot out of bed had the mistress from the day the young rip bashed her across the ankles with his crutch, and that was some years ago. It was the very day after Davie Armstrong had gone back to sea. He remembered it as if it was yesterday . . . and so on and so on . . .

  It was in the late autumn of ’94 that something disastrous happened at Cock Shield, but Fred Geary was unable to relate it. Typhoid struck the farm, and not only the farm but most of the county. The epidemic brought forth indignation as well as horror, indignation because it was thought that typhoid had been overcome. Hadn’t all the corporations been ordered to see to their drainage, to pull down slums where congestion led to filth, and filth to disease? Parts of Shields, Jarrow and Newcastle had been breeding spots, but much had been done to eliminate them. Hexham had done her part too. The huge rubbish dumps lying on the banks of Skinner’s Burn had disappeared and everything had been done that was possible to eradicate the fever, so how had it reached this part?

  It had reached the farm through a carrier, a man named Peter Hanratty. He had brought Jane some packages from Newcastle that she had ordered by letter, and for Winnie he had brought two pieces of leather for soling and heeling the boots. There was a stall from where he picked up pieces cheap, so cheap that he could afford to add coppers to their price and still leave the leather at half the price Winnie would have paid for it in the shop.

  Strangely Winnie didn’t get the fever, nor yet did Jane. The first one to go down with it was Delia. She died within four days. Ned was next, he went quickly like the snuff of a candle. The following week Fred and Cassy Geary died within a few hours of each other. One by one the other occupants of the farm waited for death.

  With the exception of the doctor and Parson Hedley, no-one came to the farm and no-one left it, they weren’t allowed to.

  And no outsiders came to the funeral of any of the four who died. The farm itself seemed near its final end. Even the cattle made sounds like echoes of the death throes.

  Yet when the epidemic finally passed and they c
ould throw off the fear of catching the fever, each individual acted as if he had been given a new lease of life. First, Johnnie Geary went to the master and told him he wanted to be married, and could he have the malt house, he’d do up the big room and make it habitable.

  McBain’s prompt answer to this was no; he couldn’t have the malt house. He had other uses for the malt house. If he wished to marry he could bring his wife to the cottage that he shared with his sister. It was big enough, hadn’t his mother and father reared seven in it?

  Johnnie Geary had to be content with this.

  Mickey, too, went to the master. But he posed a very odd question. Who was his master? he asked. Who had he to take orders from, himself, or Master Amos? Mickey pointed out that he just wanted to know where he stood.

  McBain’s answer to this was to say grimly, ‘Where you’ve always stood. You know that without asking.’

  It was after Mickey’s visit to him that McBain, too, seemed to change. He reverted back to a shadow of his former self. It was noticed that there was no smell of liquor from him in the morning now; he moved more briskly around and he gave orders so that all could hear. Moreover he brought in two day labourers to help out the three men who were left. Two further surprising things. First, he began riding again, and then, six months after Delia died and, for no apparent reason, he engaged builders to renovate the malt house . . .

  The first indication Jane had of her father’s intention with regards to the malt house was when she was walking along the cow path. Looking down over the scree-studded field she saw men at work on the roof and others unloading a wagon full of bricks. She did not go down to investigate but returned quickly to the house in search of her father.