Lizzie said nothing, but continued to stare into the fire. And as Mike pulled savagely on his laces, he went on, speaking as if to himself, ‘Jonesy heard the old man leave orders for me to see to her this morning; but Ratcliffe wasn’t letting the old boy give him any orders, so Len was detailed. But now that his lady wife has informed him I am drunk he sees his chance. Well’ – Mike knotted the laces and gritted his teeth – ‘I’ll show him. Drunk or sober, I’ll show him I could buy and sell him where a cow’s concerned. Where’s me coat?’
‘Here, Da.’
Mary Ann, the coat already on her arm, handed it to him. Thrusting his arms into it, Mike noticed Michael for the first time. He stared at the boy, then pulling his cap from his pocket he pressed it onto his head, saying fiercely, ‘And don’t look at me like that or I’ll wring your blasted ear for you.’
The door banged behind him, and Mary Ann, moving slowly to the window, watched him cross the yard, his step still uncertain.
Chapter Eight: The Loft
Mike leaned against the stanchion of the sickbay and wiped the running sweat from his face with his forearm. There was no sound, not even a secretive night sound to bring comfort. There was only the heavy, sweet warm smell pressing down on him, and the dead cow and calf lying at his feet. He gazed pityingly down on the animals. Clara had been so human, she had fought to the last. After seeming to hold the calf for an unnecessarily long time, she had struggled valiantly to bring it, but to no purpose. It was just after twelve when she turned her head and looked at him and made a sound, a quite uncowlike sound. Remembering it now, he thought, she knew she couldn’t bring it off.
He looked at his watch. It was a quarter past three. He felt as tired as though he had done a double shift in the shipyard. He moved out of the bay and sat down on a low box and leant his head against the byre. He’d have to go and tell Ratcliffe, and there’d be hell to pay. Without a doubt, he’d push the blame on to him. In the back of his now sober but sleep-hazy mind, he vaguely sensed Ratcliffe’s plan . . . A man couldn’t be sacked for being drunk off the job, but he could be sacked for what he did, or didn’t do, when drunk on the job. Ratcliffe had been in three times during the evening, the last time just before twelve o’clock. However fuddled he may have appeared earlier on, Ratcliffe could certainly not deny that he was sober then, for they had spoken together quite ordinarily; and Ratcliffe had suggested that Clara would hang on for at least another twelve hours.
Well, Clara was dead, and besides Ratcliffe’s reactions, the old man would go sky high. She had been his best cow. He had paid a great deal of money for her, hoping to start a stock.
Mike rasped his chin with his hand, then pressed his eyeballs. He was dead beat, and he would no sooner get into bed than he would have to get up again. His mind swung to Lizzie, and he moved restlessly. He had her to face, too, and explain yet once again why he had been a blasted weak fool. Other fellows could get knocks and stand up to them, but he always had to seek consolation. But when the knock hadn’t been a knock at all, only the result of the fermentation in his mind, the explanation was going to be harder than ever before.
Well, that was one scene that could be put off. He would sleep here, and then he’d be in better shape to face her in the morning. He’d go now and get this business over with Ratcliffe before turning in on the straw.
The arrangement settled in his mind, he sat on, and the warm quietness settled upon him like a blanket.
Mike was brought sharply from the far depths of sleep by a blow in the middle of his back. There is no mistaking a heavy-booted foot, and the fact that he had been kicked brought him out of the straw and to his feet as if he had been suddenly stung into life. He looked a ferocious and forbidding sight, his hair with the straw in it standing up on end and his arm drawn back ready to strike.
‘What the hell d’you think you’re doin’?’ he yelled.
Ratcliffe, his face grim and his voice cutting in its meaning, said, ‘And what the hell do you think you’re doing? Look at that!’ He swung round and pointed to the dead animals. ‘Gone; both of them, while you lie snoring your head off.’
Mike’s arm had dropped, but his voice was still menacing: ‘Don’t be a blasted fool . . . !’
‘What!’ Ratcliffe roared. ‘You remember who you’re talking to.’
‘I know who I’m talking to all right. I did me utmost, but I could save neither of them. The calf was strangled afore it came, you can see that.’
‘Why didn’t you come for me?’
‘How could I, I couldn’t leave her? If you had done the right thing you would have left the lad with me.’
‘Don’t you tell me what I should do. But if I had let the lad see to her I’d have had a live cow and calf this morning. They wouldn’t have died time he was sleeping his drink off.’
The two men glared at each other. The dislike, born at their first meeting and fostered on Ratcliffe’s part by his wife, now flared into open hatred. His brows drawn down and his lips thrust out, Mike growled, ‘So that’s your game. I knew it. I got drunk yesterday and gave you the chance you’ve been waiting for. Clara being sick just fitted in, didn’t it? When I was sober you wouldn’t let me near her, although you had your orders from the old man. Aye, I know all about that, an’ all.’
‘I’m in charge of this farm and I’ll put my men where I like.’
‘Well, here’s one you won’t put where you like.’
‘Won’t I? We’ll see . . . you’re fired!’
‘Da! Da!’ The cry cut through their shouting and caused them both to swing round to where Mary Ann stood hugging a coat about her. Her face was chalk coloured and her brown eyes looked like great black sloes, and, as such, incapable of blinking. Her gaze was not fixed on Mike but on Mr Ratcliffe, as if, instead of his flesh and blood, she saw him embodied in the fiery tissues of the devil himself.
Even when Mike rapped out, ‘What you doin’ here? Get yourself back home,’ she still did not lift her gaze from Ratcliffe, who, finding the intensity of her eyes more unnerving than any expression of Mike’s, swung round, saying over his shoulder as he marched away, ‘Come to the office at nine tomorrow morning.’
‘Be damned to you!’ cried Mike, stepping forward.
‘Da, oh Da, don’t!’ Mary Ann was now tugging at Mike’s hand. ‘Be quiet, Da . . . Oh, Da!’
‘You be quiet and get yourself home to bed.’ Mike made to thrust her away, then stopped. The sight of her face, so pinched with fear, and her eyes so weighed with sadness, checked his harshness, for he saw in her expression all the unhappiness that was about to descend on them again, and as usual through him. Yet the blame was not entirely his. Ratcliffe had meant to get rid of him; it had to come sooner or later.
‘Oh, Da . . . Da.’
‘It’s all right. Be quiet now,’ he said roughly.
His anger was seeping from him and he put his hand gently on her head. ‘Why did you come out at this time of the morning, and it still dark? What if your mother finds you gone?’
‘I couldn’t sleep, Da, and I went to the landing window to see if the light was still on here. And it was. And I had to come . . . Will you come to bed now, Da?’
‘No. No, I can’t. Anyway it’s near time to get up, and I’ve got some work to do.’
Although his eyes did not turn towards the byre, Mary Ann’s gaze slid fearfully round. Before he could move in front of her to block her view she had seen Clara and the calf.
Even to her child’s eyes the animals did not look merely asleep, their relaxation was too complete. She took several shuddering breaths, then, turning swiftly to Mike, she buried her face in his thigh and bit on his trousers to still her crying.
‘There now, there now.’ He lifted her into his arms. ‘They’re all right, they’re just fast asleep. They’ve gone to . . . ’ He found it difficult to use the jargon that was as natural to her as breathing, but finally he brought out . . . ‘heaven.’ But it brought no comfort; her crying mounted. So pu
lling his coat off a peg, he put it round his shoulders and about her, and made his way in the bleak dawn towards the cottage. As he went, strangely enough, it wasn’t the coming meeting with Lizzie he thought of, or yet that with Ratcliffe or the old man, but the thought of Mrs McMullen and how she would gloat over this latest development, which would prove conclusively that he wasn’t any good. And in his own mind, for the first time, drunk or sober, he was agreeing with her.
At twenty past nine on the same Sunday morning Mary Ann was waiting for the bus to take her into Jarrow and to Mass. She had refused to be persuaded to go to Mass in Felling with Michael, although Felling was much nearer to the farm. Now she was wondering whether, if she attended the grown-up Mass at eleven o’clock, Miss Thompson would consider it the same as her going to the Children’s Mass. Miss Thompson might not even miss her presence at the ten o’clock Mass; but Sarah Flannagan would, and she would find some way to suggest to the teacher that she hadn’t been to Mass at all. With a slight movement of her head, she dismissed the consequences of her premeditated action, for this worry was infinitesimal compared with the grief now loading her mind. Sarah Flannagan and Miss Thompson were irritants that, given time, she could deal with, but there was no time to deal with this other thing. In the freshly budding flecked green of the hawthorn hedge flanking the opposite side of the road she saw her mother’s face as it had looked a few minutes earlier when she left the house. It bore the old look of Mulhattans’ Hall again. And yet her ma and da hadn’t fought. Her mother’s attitude had been disturbing. The quiet way she had taken Mike’s report of the scene with Ratcliffe; the sadness and pity in her face as she had looked at him created an odd effect in Mary Ann. It had increased instead of diminished her fear of the future, for although her ma had said, ‘Well, there are other jobs,’ there had been a hopelessness about her. Like the return of a dread disease, once imagined gone forever, it seemed now useless to fight against the sentence it imposed, even though her mother herself had seemed to grasp at hope when she said, ‘Why don’t you go to Mr Lord and tell him everything?’
‘Go to him? Not likely,’ Mike had said. ‘I’m crawling to no man. And what would be the good anyway; won’t Ratcliffe phone him as soon as he’s out of bed?’
What time did Mr Lord get out of bed? It was Sunday morning and likely he’d be having a lie in. Mary Ann prayed fervently that this would be so. This morning of all mornings she prayed that sleep would lie heavily on the old man, that the bed would drag and that if Ben came to call him he would growl at him and turn over.
She sent up these urgent requests while she gazed steadfastly down on her prayer book held tightly between her two hands, as if her prayer, being filtered through this passport to heaven, would reach the celestial quarters so coated with piety that a refusal on the part of the Holy Family to grant her desires would be practically impossible. Already she had a plan of campaign mapped out . . . roughly sketched would be more accurate. She would go to Mr Lord and get the first one in. If she could get her say in before Mr Ratcliffe, all would – she imagined – be well. Not about Clara. No, that was something beyond her province. In any case, although sorrow for Clara’s fate was still touching her, it bore no comparison with the sorrow for the fate that awaited her da should Mr Lord hear he had been drunk yesterday. It was this and this alone she must work on; she must in some way convince him that her da had been solid and sober when he went to the cowshed . . . But how?
The how did not unduly worry her either. It was a long way in the bus to Mr Lord’s . . . two miles. By then she would have thought of something.
As always when Mary Ann left her subconscious to deal with her difficulties it never failed her. She was sitting in the bus looking disconsolately out of the window when her eyes saw a poster depicting a number of startling scenes from The Robe . . . There she had the solution. She would tell him her da had taken her to see that picture. She had studied this poster before, for there was one on her way to school, and she had been fascinated by the physique of the two men and the beauty of the lady, but mostly she had been touched by the three crosses on the hill and . . . the poor Lord, hanging there.
But not until she had left the bus and was halfway up the drive was her enthusiasm for her plan dampened and her courage halved, for she remembered, literally with a start that brought her to a stop, that the feeling between Mr Lord and herself was not as it had once been. The Lord she was going to now was as formidable as the man into whose house she had gatecrashed a few months previously. Now her steps were slow and she approached the door with the same trepidation she had experienced on that first visit.
Ben answered her ring, and she looked up into his wizened face and said ‘Hallo’ with unusual humility. To her surprise he didn’t growl at her and say, ‘What d’you want?’ but stood aside to let her in. And she was forced for the moment to take her mind off Mr Lord and look at his servant, for he was not scowling at her. It was a very strange and surprising thing to see, but in his eyes there was a look of kindness. He almost looked as if he were glad to see her, which placed him immediately in the category of an ally. Her glance moved away across the large dim hall towards the dining room, then back again. And she strained up to him and whispered, ‘Is he all right?’
Ben moved his head slowly from side to side, and Mary Ann’s mouth formed a soundless ‘Oh’, while she watched with widening eyes Ben’s creaking length being bent towards her. And when his parchment-skin face was on a level with her own, she was so taken aback by his cordiality that she could scarcely take in the dread import of what he was saying.
‘Mr Ratcliffe’s phoned about the cow, and the master is’ – Ben paused before adding – ‘very annoyed’, as if he found the expression inadequate to describe his master’s reaction.
Mary Ann dragged her gaze from the interesting spectacle of Ben’s face at close quarters and looked down at her thumb, then conveyed it to her mouth and nibbled at the nail. That Mr Ratcliffe was a nasty rotten beast, he was. She wished he would drop down dead, she did. Yet hope, never utterly dead in her, prompted the thought that although Mr Ratcliffe had phoned about Clara he may not have mentioned her da and yesterday. There was a possibility that she had still time to prove to Mr Lord that her da couldn’t have been sick yesterday.
After a pathetic glance in Ben’s direction she went slowly towards the dining-room door, tapped once, and, without waiting for an answer, opened it and went in.
It was at once evident to her that Mr Lord was not surprised to see her. He was sitting by the fire filling his pipe. She saw from the table that he had just finished his breakfast. His head moved a little and his eyes slid towards her, but without resting on her or seeming to take in her presence. Then they returned to his pipe, and he went on filling it, pushing the tobacco into the bowl with gentle pressures that misled Mary Ann and made her think: He’s not really mad or else he’d be poking it in.
‘Hallo,’ she said.
There was no return greeting to this, but she moved closer – she was used to him being grumpy. ‘I’m going to Mass. I was on me way and I thought . . . ’ She paused. This was too much like real lying. She had been about to add, ‘I thought I’d look in and see you.’ She knew that only the present emergency had brought her here, yet there was something she was unable to explain to herself, for she was glad to be here, glad to see him. She was experiencing a similar feeling to that which she had when she played houses and wrapped her doll up against the cold and nursed it on her knee by the fire. Bertha roused her pity by the coldness of its china body; this old man by his loneliness, visible to her even through the layers of his severity. She wanted to put her hand on his and say something funny – daft funny, to make him laugh.
‘Well what do you want; you want something, don’t you?’
This direct attack nonplussed her for the moment, and she said, ‘Yes . . . no . . . yes. I mean—’ She stopped. She could see now that he was in a bad temper . . . he was in a flaming temper. And like her da
he was worse when he was quiet, and more unmanageable. If he would bawl at her she would know what to do.
Mr Lord stopped pushing at his pipe, and he looked at her with a look that sent hope fleeing from her. Then he said, ‘You have come to tell me that the cow isn’t dead, nor her calf. The calf is alive and kicking, isn’t it? And you have come to tell me’ – his neck moved out of his collar, and his head with small jerks emphasised each word – ‘that your father was not drunk yesterday.’
She stared back at him. Tragedy filled the space between them, the tragedy of her da getting the sack, of her ma packing up their things.
‘He was drunk yesterday, wasn’t he?’ Mr Lord seemed to derive some satisfaction in repeating this statement, for it was accompanied by a sneer, which reminded her of Sarah Flannagan when she said, ‘Aw, you! You see, I told you so.’ Mostly from habit, the denial slipped from her lips: ‘He wasn’t.’
‘What!’
The force of the word, which owed nothing to loudness but everything to its intensity, sent her back from him. He heaved himself out of the chair. ‘Why do I listen to you? Get yourself away!’
He spoke to her, not as to a child, but as to an adult, an equal, for that was how he thought of her. Had she appeared to him merely as a child, he would have lost interest in her after their first encounter. But from the first he had recognised in her an adult quality, a similar quality to one which he himself possessed and which centred around his tenacity. No-one of his experience had fought for what he wanted against heavy odds as he had done, and as she was continually doing. Yet this knowledge at the same time irked him, for with this very trait she would grow up defending that waster. All her efforts and thoughts would be centred around him, and she would emerge into womanhood like millions of other women, ordinary, except for the doubtful quality of a father fixation. Whereas, had she received the proper schooling to train her nimble mind there was, he imagined, no limit to the height she could eventually reach . . . away from Mike’s influence, and himself behind her. He turned to the window. He would not allow himself to follow up this thought, or look at her while she spoke.
The Lord and Mary Ann (The Mary Ann Stories) Page 12
