Slowly she raised her head and blinked rapidly as she stared at the fireplace framed in its gleaming copper pans and brass, and she said to herself, ‘But . . . but they haven’t started yet, the parson’s been buried but a week. Don’t meet trouble halfway, wait till they start, wait till it’s in the open. And then there’ll be nothing you or anybody else can do about it.
On this last thought she suddenly exclaimed aloud, ‘Oh my God!’ There was one who’d do something about it if she knew anything. They said everything went in threes. Well, Davie Armstrong was no fool, so if anything would deter him from letting his ideas run wild with regards to Miss Jane, the knowledge that he could be Master Amos’ third choice should do it. She was a fool, but she’d sit tight and wait.
Four
It was almost a year to the day before it came into the open. Molly had watched it gradually grow. She had watched them both fighting it, and in the process she had become sorry for them, and many a time she had wished to God they would get it over with and put her out of her misery.
Davie, too, wished it would come to a head, while at the same time fearing to speak. Not just because any alliance between the daughter of Angus McBain and himself would be derided from all quarters; for he was well aware that The Manor would, for a convenient time, forget that Cock Shield was not the place it once had been and that Jane was no longer the daughter of a gentleman farmer, they would consider only that, in stooping to him, she had broken a social code. The main deterrent was the fear of what Amos would do. What would be the outcome if he were to go to him and say, ‘I want to marry your sister; and, what is more to the point, she wants to marry me?’ Hadn’t he already accounted for two people who had stood in his way? He could understand him doing for his father, but not the man who had been kind to him from birth, who had tutored him and been his friend, his only friend, other than Jane; if he could kill the parson in cold blood what value would the madman put on himself?
What Jane’s thoughts were concerning Amos’ reaction on this particular subject he did not know; he was sure of one thing, he had only to speak and she would be his.
Besides everything else his days were heavy with work and worry concerning the farm; also that his grandfather was slowly letting go of his vital grip on life. For the past few nights he had sat by the old man’s bedside and each time that sleep had overcome him he had awakened to the thought, he’s gone. But no, there he lay looking into the candlelight, his breathing scarcely audible. Yet sometimes the old man would speak in a strong clear voice as if twenty years had slipped from him. ‘Are you there, lad?’
‘Aye, Granda.’
‘Now why can’t you get yourself away to bed, you’ve got work facin’ you in the mornin’?’
‘I’m all right, Granda.’
‘All right be damned! Look, lad, when my time’s near I’ll know, an’ I’ll tell you. An’ don’t you worry your head. Now I’m tellin’ you, don’t worry your head, ’cos we’ve all got to go. Feathers in the fire; that’s all we are, lad, feathers in the fire.’
Feathers in the fire! Aye, that’s all they were, feathers in the fire. Life slipped by. It was galloping by him, and what was he doing with it? What had he done with it? Nothing. He should have a wife and a family now, be a settled man, and here he was, neither flesh, fish, nor fowl.
Last night he’d had a full night’s rest for the old man seemed so much better. It was as if he’d had a new lease of life. And now today, for his dinner he had drunk every drop of broth Molly had brought him up.
Davie took the basin from his hand, saying, ‘Well, you made a clean sweep of that, old ’un?’
‘Aye; never tasted better, lad. She’s a good cook, is Molly.’
‘Aye, she’s a good cook, Granda.’
‘And a good lass an’ all.’ The old man’s pale blue eyes looked up at Davie, and he repeated, ‘She’s a good lass an’ all, Davie.’
He was on his way to the door as he said, ‘Yes, she’s a good lass, Granda.’ Then turning about he added, ‘Now don’t forget I’ll be gone for a few hours; there’s hardly a mouthful of hay for the animals. But whether Morton’ll give us any more tick remains to be seen.’
‘You say he’s been gone since yesterday, lad?’
‘Aye, Granda, our lord an’ master has gone on his monthly spree. He must have got the money for the land some time last week. Well, it’s to be hoped he cleared up Morton and Rymill; if not, it won’t be only the horses that’ll go without their feed.’
‘He’s a bad ’un that one, a real bad ’un. Lookin’ back on things it’s a pity Molly didn’t do what she set out to do in the first place, that’s what I say.’
‘I’m with you there, old ’un.’ And strangely, he was; the time was long past when he had stopped condemning Molly for attempting to drown the child, now he blamed himself for having interfered. That’s what you got for doing the right thing. Playing God, as Molly had said.
‘God help Miss Jane, that’s all I say.’
Davie could have added, ‘And I’m with you there an’ all,’ but instead he said, ‘Now mind, behave yourself. I’ll be back as quick as I can; Molly will keep lookin’ in. Ta-rah.’
‘Ta-rah, lad. Don’t hurry yourself; take it easy for once.’
He went across the narrow square of landing and into his room, and there he changed into his town clothes, which were the trousers of his seafaring days and a worsted coat of a lighter shade. He put on a clean blue striped shirt and a neckerchief; then he picked up his hard bowler and went downstairs.
He had already harnessed the horse to the wagon and when he reached the yard he was surprised to see Jane standing beside it. She, too, was dressed for the town, and she said to him, ‘Will you drive me in, Davie, I have business in Hexham?’
‘On the wagon . . . Miss?’
‘Yes, Davie, I . . . I don’t mind the wagon.’
‘But look’ - he jerked his head up towards the sky – ‘there’s a storm brewin’. We might be caught in it, and there’s no shelter unless you get under the tarpaulin.’
‘I’ll . . . I’ll risk that, Davie. But . . . but I must get into town.’
‘Very well, Miss.’
As he held out his hand and assisted her up on to the high wooden seat Molly came to the kitchen door, and he was aware of her eyes tight on him as he walked around the horse’s head to the other side of the wagon and pulled himself up. Before giving a command to the horse he paused and, looking across the yard at her, he asked quietly, ‘Will you give an eye to him?’ For answer she inclined her head but didn’t speak. ‘Gee-up! there,’ he said. ‘Gee-up!’ And the cart rumbled out of the yard.
They had gone some distance in silence when Jane said, ‘You don’t mind taking me in, Davie?’
‘Mind?’ He turned his head quickly towards her. ‘Why should I mind?’ He could have said, ‘That’s a daft question, Jane; I’m in no position to mind, now am I?’
She dropped her gaze from his and looked down at her hands, then said softly, ‘I’m . . . I’m going to the jewellers, I’m going to sell some trinkets.’
There was a pause before he asked, ‘Didn’t he give you anything out of the sale?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a bloody shame. Excuse me . . . Miss.’
‘It’s all right, Davie. I . . . I can endorse what you say; I, too, feel like saying, it’s a . . . bloody shame.’
They glanced at each other. It was a moment when they should have smiled, laughed. She had sworn. Once she had repeated after him, ‘God Almighty!’ and that had tickled him, but now she had sworn, even if politely, but they didn’t smile.
They were looking ahead again when she said, ‘I don’t know whether they’re saleable or not, but Mr Pearson is a very fair man, he would not cheat me. There isn’t much, two signet rings, a gold lever watch an
d chain, and a gold and ivory cameo of my grandmother. They all belonged to my grandfather, and I came across them in a separate drawer. If . . . if he had seen them first I wouldn’t have them now, for he claimed all he could lay his hands on at the time. But . . . but I felt justified in keeping these.’
‘You were that. Aw’ – he moved his head slowly – ‘words fail me. They do.’
There followed another silence before he asked quietly, ‘Where’s it all going to end?’
‘I wish I knew, Davie.’
‘You can’t go on like this forever you know.’
She made no answer but after a while she asked, ‘Do you think you’ll get the hay?’
‘If he’s paid something off to Morton I will; if not I can see me coming back the way I’m goin’.’
They had jogged on for almost a mile before he spoke again, and then he remarked, lightly, ‘Well, it looks as if we might miss the storm.’
‘Yes, yes, it does.’ She turned her eyes towards the sky, and now, her voice little more than a whisper and as if talking to herself, she said, ‘I used to think there was no place in the world like this. I know I haven’t travelled but I have read a lot about other places and I always found them wanting in comparison. Now I want to run from it, lose myself in a town, a city, where everything is flat; I never want to see a hill again.’
He passed no comment, but his hands gripped the reins tightly and the horse shook its head, impatient at the pull on its bit; it knew its pace along this stretch of the road and it was going to go no faster or no slower than was usual.
After a moment she said, ‘You have seen most of the world, Davie, how do you compare it with this?’
‘Oh, well like you, I found every place wantin’, but like you I’ve changed. You can’t blame the place, can you? It’s people who want to make you stay or go, after all’s said an’ done.’
‘When old Sep dies there’ll be nothing to keep you?’ Her face
was turned towards him, and he didn’t look at her for as long as it took the horse to do twenty paces; and then, his eyes slowly turning to meet hers, he said quietly, ‘That depends.’
‘On what, Davie?’
He saw that her lips were trembling and that her hands were locked tightly over her beaded handbag.
If he said ‘You’ he could be signing his death warrant. Yet that didn’t really worry him, for forewarned was forearmed; he could let that young maniac know that he was aware of his two exploits and had taken his knowledge a step further than Molly had. He could tell him that he had sent a letter to a solicitor in Newcastle which was to be opened if anything happened to him – he had read about that trick in a book when he was at sea, but he could apply it here all right, and it would put a stop to his gallop. So what was he hanging back for?
The answer he gave her was, ‘Oh, a number of things,’ and when he saw her turn her head slowly away he wanted to draw the horse up and pull her into his arms and say, ‘Jane, Jane, let’s stop playing games, let’s go ahead with what we both want, and be damned to it.’
They spoke no more until they reached Hexham, and as he helped her down from the cart it began to rain.
‘How long are you going to be?’ she asked.
‘Half an hour if I get the hay; if I don’t, well then, just the time it’ll take me to get to Morton’s and back.’
She looked along the street now and said, ‘The tearooms; I’ll go and have a cup of tea after I have finished the business at the jeweller’s. I will see you from the window. But in any case I’ll be here in this street.’
‘Good enough.’ He nodded at her, then added, ‘Don’t let him beat you down.’
‘I won’t.’
He watched her walk up the street towards the jeweller’s shop. From behind she looked like a young girl, and she walked like one, quick and sprightly. But that was from the back. From the front she looked like a lost woman, a lost and lonely woman, a woman who had missed life. Even Molly didn’t carry the look on her face that she did. But then, Molly hadn’t missed life, had she? She’d had it to the full: ‘No matter whose name I take, Master, there’ll only ever be you. Always remember that, there’ll only ever be you.’ He had lived with those words for years. But lately he had scarcely recalled them, and so he didn’t know why he was doing it now. Oh yes he did; it was a sort of comparison. The figure going along there hadn’t been handled by any man; she was as a man expected a woman to be when he took her to his wife, whereas Mistress Molly had given her virginity away, first in a hay rick, then, while still a very young lass, had let an old man take her, slaver over her. Aw! to the devil! He should be worryin’ about the hay; it was the animals’ needs he must think about at the present moment, his own must wait . . .
To his surprise Mr Morton met his order without comment, which meant that Amos had settled the bill, or at least had paid something off it.
Within a few minutes of his drawing the cart up outside the tea shop Jane made her appearance at the door, and, without speaking, he helped her up into the seat. As they drove off it began to rain, and before they had left the town they were sitting under a downpour.
Urging the horse into a trot he said, ‘I think we’re in for it. Look over there.’
She turned her head and peered through the rain over the gooseberry fields and orchards and remarked briefly, ‘Yes, it’s black.’ Then looking ahead again, she added, ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You could sit under the cover at the back, that would save you some.’
‘No, no, Davie; don’t worry, I’ll be all right. It won’t be the first time I’ve been wet through.’ She gave a little laugh.
‘But this is going to be a bad ’un by the looks of it.’
By the time they came to the crossroads and were still four miles from home, the lightning was flashing and the thunder was rolling like an army of drums above their heads, and he shouted to her, ‘I’ll take the main road; it’ll be longer but it won’t be so bogged.’
She didn’t answer for she had scarcely heard him, she had her head down and her shoulders hunched against the onslaught of the wind and rain.
When a terrific clap of thunder burst above them the horse stopped, tossed its head, then attempted to rear, and it took Davie all his time to hold it. Pushing the reins into her hand and shouting, ‘Hold hard!’ he jumped from the cart and went to the horse’s head and led him further up the road to where a gap in the stone wall opened into a field. Tying the reins firmly to an iron spike that had once supported a gate he then reached up and almost pulled her down from the seat, and ran with her to the back of the cart. There he pushed her unceremoniously underneath the tarpaulin cover and in between the bales of hay; then he drew himself up and in beside her.
It was black dark under the cover. Their heads were touching it and the rain was beating on it and into their brains like so many hammers; they were half sitting, half reclining and close together. There was no lead up to the beginning. He put his arms about her and held her quietly for a moment to gauge her reaction, and when her face fell to the side of his and her lips moved over his ear he pressed her thin body into him. His hand made no fumbling movement as it went among her wet clothes, and she did not utter a word; no words at all passed between them. When she moaned it was more like the muffled lilt of a song . . .
Half an hour later he lifted her down from under the cover, and she stepped into another world. The storm had passed, the last rays of the setting sun were jewelling the whole world, her whole world; as far as she could see everything was sparkling. She brought her gaze to his face and she muttered on a cracked note, ‘Oh, Davie . . . Davie.’
‘Jane!’ His arms went round her again, but gently now. ‘Are you all right? You . . . you won’t regret it?’
‘I’m all right, Davie. And no, never. Whatever happens, never, never will
I regret it.’ There was no break in her voice now, her words were clear and strong, and she added, ‘It’s been a long time.’
‘Too long. Aye, too long. Ten years too long.’
Her face widened into a smile, and she asked now, ‘Did you care for me then?’
He blinked, trying to recall how he felt ten years ago, and he threaded his imagination with kindness as he said, ‘I must have; anyway, I knew you should be married. And . . . and now I think the same, but what about it, how do we stand?’
‘Oh! Davie, I’d marry you tomorrow, or now, now.’
‘How’s he going to take that?’ He stared down into her face. ‘We’ve got to be prepared for him trying to get rid of me.’
‘Oh, no! he wouldn’t.’ Her voice was filled with horror. ‘Not that; he’d never go that far. Besides, he . . . he likes you.’
‘He liked the parson at one time. If he only killed where he hated like he did with your fath—’ He stopped. She was leaning back from him, still within his hold but with her mouth dropping open. ‘No . . . o!’ She brought the word out slowly.
Feathers in the Fire Page 27
