The Lord and Mary Ann (The Mary Ann Stories)

by Catherine Cookson

  A door banged, and no more sound came up through the chimney. Mary Ann wriggled back along the beam and sat down. Mr Ratcliffe had got the sack, not her da. The loft became filled with light. It streaked between the bales; it was not due to the sun coming out, but to the turn of events. Mr Lord was going to keep her da on; Mr Ratcliffe was going; they’d get a new manager, and he’d be nice . . . he must be nice.

  Mr Ratcliffe had classed the farm as a smallholding. She wasn’t exactly sure what this was, but it was something only as big as his last pigsties. She got to her feet. The sickness had left her chest and in its place was a bubbling joy. She’d dash down and tell her da, and then her ma. Oh yes, she must fly and tell her ma. And their Michael . . . Michael wouldn’t know till the night. And Lena Ratcliffe would soon be gone and she wouldn’t have to put up with her swanking any more.

  Almost bursting with excitement, she reached the top of the ladder, only to find her escape cut off for the time being, for there was Mr Lord talking to Len, and by the sound of Mr Lord’s voice Len was getting it . . . But she must get down somehow and let her da know.

  A suggestion of a means of escape rising in her mind turned her about, and she looked towards a square of floorboard with a ring in the middle. That was where they dropped the things through. Her da would be just under there, for she could hear him now calling to Jones to start her up. That would be the machine they were cleaning. She’d have to shout to him before they got that going or he’d never hear her.

  Scampering to the trapdoor she pulled at the ring. But her effort made no impression. And then she laughed to herself as she looked down at her feet. How could she open it, she was standing on it? But much to her consternation she found that when she stood outside the trapdoor she couldn’t reach the ring.

  In a flurry now, she knelt down at the opposite side to where it was hinged and, into the gap made by the countless hands that had grabbed its edge, thrust her own hands and pulled. And behold, the door came upwards towards her. But only for a short way, for she hadn’t the strength to give it the final lift that would throw it back. This she decided didn’t really matter, for she knew what she would do. She’d squeeze her head and shoulders in and call to her da . . . ‘Sst! Sst!’ Like that.

  Lying flat, she forced her head into the aperture, and then her shoulders, and from this unusual angle she looked down into the barn. The new aspect of the familiar place stilled her cry – things looked funny. She was looking onto the side of the binder. It was all sharp knives – shiny, sharp knives – and through them she could see her da at the other side of the machine bending down and rubbing something. The open door of the barn looked as if it was stuck to the ceiling; everything was topsy-turvy.

  She said, ‘Sst!’ And when Mike looked about him, not knowing from where the voice was coming, she gurgled inside and let him return to his job before putting her tongue to her teeth again. But the instant she did this, Mike’s voice called, ‘Let her go’, and her ‘Sst!’ was drowned by the terrific noise and whirl of the blades beneath her. She became frozen with terror, and powerless to pull herself into the loft again.

  Suddenly she screamed, a long piercing scream that cut into the din below and brought Mike’s eyes upwards and paralysed his senses for a moment. From where he stood her threshing arms seemed to be waving directly over the machine. With a gabbled cry that re-echoed around the barn he sprang forward. His cry was to Jones and said ‘Shut her off!’ His right hand, emphasising his demand, was thrust towards Jones, and his left, in a blind instinctive movement to save, towards the machine.

  Mary Ann’s eyes, already blinded by her fear, were now only able to take in part of what was happening, but piercing through her terror was the knowledge that her da was hurt. And when the machinery stopped and she heard his deep tearing groans and saw him staggering back against the barn wall clutching something red and running to his chest, her own screams filled her head and her body. Her world became swamped with nothing but her screaming. Even when she felt her legs gripped and she was being lifted into someone’s arms, she still saw the barn and heard the groans. And to her screaming she added her struggles. She fought frantically to free herself, tearing like a wild animal for release.

  ‘Me da! Me da! Me da! Me da!’ It was as if her lungs drew fresh strength with each scream . . . ‘Me da! Me da! Me da! Me da!’

  There were other arms about her, and she was dimly conscious of Mr Lord’s voice commanding her to cease her screaming. But she would not listen to it; she continued to fight and struggle and scream, always aiming to turn towards the barn.

  Later, she knew she was in the kitchen and lying between the warmth of her mother’s breasts and being rocked and rocked, always rocked. When the screams came the rocking would start. And then quite suddenly they both stopped, the rocking and the screams.

  Chapter Nine: Absolution

  Mr Lord stood in the kitchen with his back to the fire and looked from one to the other of the cheap pieces of furniture with which he had become very familiar during the past week. For instance, he knew that there were only eight blue roses bordering the saucers arrayed on the delph rack, whereas there were nine on each of the tea plates. He knew that although there was a felt pad under the tablecloth covering the little dining table, the top was badly marked. He knew also that one of the chairs had a short leg, which irritated him whenever it was his misfortune to sit on it. The furniture displeased him, and was saved from his utter condemnation only because of its scrupulous cleanliness.

  He raised his eyes to the ceiling and moved uneasily. They were a long while up there. As he lowered his gaze again it touched on a farm calendar which said Monday, 14th March: Gregsons for all Farm Machinery . . . Machinery. He turned abruptly towards the fire. It was almost a week to the very minute since all this trouble had started. Never would he want another week like it. And what was to be the outcome of it? A man with only one hand and a child half crazy? Of the two it was the child for whom he was more concerned. Something would be done for Shaughnessy. What he did not as yet know, farm work being now out of the question. But what could be done for the child, the child who had come, despite the persistent denials to himself, to be of an almost overpowering interest in his life? For nearly five days she had been kept asleep, and now, although she was awake and quite conscious, she was as lifeless as a rag doll.

  The kitchen door opened and Lizzie entered, followed by the doctor.

  After waiting a moment, Mr Lord said, ‘Well?’

  The doctor drew on his gloves before replying. ‘If it’s possible, I advise that the father be brought home. I cannot see an improvement in her until he is.’

  ‘But it’s only a week, will they allow him out so soon?’ he asked.

  ‘I can find out. He can attend the outpatients’ ward. If he can come out perhaps you’ll be good enough to pick him up.’

  The doctor’s manner was brusque, and under other circumstances Mr Lord’s hackles would have risen and his own brusqueness would have overshadowed the doctor’s. But on this occasion he said nothing, only followed him outside.

  Lizzie stood at the window and watched them crossing the yard. In their ways they were both like gods. Mr Lord had the power of their material future in his hands, and on the doctor Mary Ann’s mental state seemed to depend. He was right, she knew, to bring Mike back, for only through him could Mary Ann become alive again. But the Mike she had seen yesterday was not the man who could inspire life in a child, or in anyone else. Her husband had always been a virile man. He had, she knew, been proud of his physique, of his tall, thick body, and of his strength, which drink had not yet impaired. Many a time he had picked her up bodily and held her aloft, glorying in his power to do so. But now, like a Samson without his hair, the loss of his hand had seemingly cut the virility out of him – he had appeared to her like a child.

  ‘What am I do to, Liz? What job can I do with one hand, other than nightwatchman? That would kill me, Liz. They won’t give me compen, it was
me own fault.’ He had not said it was Mary Ann’s fault, and she knew he would not say so. And he must not. All blame must be taken from the child. Mary Ann must never be allowed to take to herself the blame for the loss of his hand. It was this guilt, she knew, that was hovering in the drugged layers of the child’s mind, and only Mike, the old hearty Mike, could push it so far down that it would never rise again.

  The door opened and Michael came in. He appeared to have grown older and taller during the past few days. He stood looking at her and stretching his school cap between his hands.

  ‘What does he say?’ he asked.

  ‘That your da must come home,’ she said.

  ‘Ma.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m going to leave school when I’m fifteen.’

  ‘All right,’ said Lizzie dully, ‘there’s plenty of time to talk about that.’

  ‘But I am.’ His tone was emphatic, yet held a tremor. And she looked at him and was touched at the trouble she saw in his face.

  ‘And for as long as we’re here I’m going to get paid for what I do on the farm, nights and weekends.’

  ‘Who says so?’

  ‘Mr Lord . . . Ma.’

  ‘Yes?’

  She saw that he was unable to speak, and he turned from her and hid his face in his arms against the wall.

  Gently she pulled him round to her and pressed his head against her shoulder. She knew he was torturing himself, taking the primary blame because he had sent Mary Ann to listen. He sniffed hard and pulled away from her.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ she said, ‘and your da’ll get well . . . And Michael . . . when he comes home, and he may be home today, be . . . be nice to him, will you?’

  He did not answer, but sat down on the fender and looked into the fire . . .

  Mike came home at three o’clock, and Mr Lord, using an unused but natural tact, found something to busy himself with in the car. And so Mike came in alone. Like that of a man who had undergone a severe illness, his skin was shades lighter than was natural, and his eyes, sunk in his head, looked big and dark . . . and dead. Smiling her greeting, Lizzie put her arms about him, taking care of the arm strapped to his chest. And when only the pressure of his one hand touched her, leaving her body somehow cold, all her resolutions to put on a brave face vanished.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ he muttered gruffly. ‘Stop your bubbling, I’m not dead yet.’

  It sounded so much like the old Mike that she raised her eyes to his face, but it was still the face she had come to know during the past week. She drew away from him, and, trying to adopt a light tone, she said, ‘Come and have a cup of tea.’

  He sat down like a stranger by the side of his own table, and he had drunk half the tea before Mr Lord put in an appearance.

  ‘Can I offer you a cup of tea, sir?’ asked Lizzie.

  ‘Thank you, I’d like one very much.’

  He, too, sat down by the table, and the room became as quiet as though there was no-one in it . . .

  Upstairs Mary Ann lay looking at the elephants on the wall. They were not running after the giraffe and butting him with their trunks as they usually did when she concentrated her gaze upon them; they were standing stock still as paper elephants should do. She turned her head slowly and looked across the room. It seemed very big now that the curtain had been drawn back. The sun was shining through the little window and making a square of colour on the mat. But it was just the sun shining into a poorly furnished bedroom. It was no longer the most wonderful room in the world set in the best cottage in the world. It was drab and colourless, and she was aware of it. And it was this awareness that was partly the cause of the pain that was in her head and in her chest, for her life had been stripped of wonder.

  When she had woken from the funny sleep the screaming was still in her head. If she kept her eyes open it wasn’t so loud; but it was difficult to keep her eyes open. And then gradually it had died away, and in the strange quiet that followed she knew what she had screamed about. Since she had been awake no-one had mentioned her da to her: her ma, or Mr Lord, or the doctor, or their Michael. She knew why; because they were frightened to. She was waiting for someone to say, ‘Your da’s gone away on a long journey and you’ll see him again some day.’ That’s what they said to Mary Fitzgerald when her da died. Mary had told them all in the school yard. But Mary Fitzgerald hadn’t caused her da . . . to go away, whereas she had. Because she had almost fallen through the roof her da had . . . gone away, and she wouldn’t see him again ever, not till she died. But now no suggestion came to her as to how she could bring about her demise; even this faculty was dormant. She looked at the foot of the bed where, on a bamboo table, stood her little altar. Her eyes rested on the figures of Our Lady and the Infant. They brought no solace. If any emotion touched her it was resentment that they had let her do this thing, that their guidance and protection were fallible.

  When her eyes were brought to the doorway by the dark hulk filling it, she looked at Mike for a moment without recognition. Then the scream, entering her head again, brought her hands to her mouth. But it did not escape, for Mike’s voice saying, ‘Hallo, there’, stilled it.

  The ‘Hallo, there’ was so ordinary – it was his usual greeting, and he was saying it. He was walking towards her. He sat on her bed and said it again . . . ‘Hallo, there.’

  Her eyes moved from his face to the arm strapped across his chest, then up to his face again.

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to give me a kiss?’

  She made no move, and Mike said, ‘Here am I, come rushing out of hospital to see you, and all you do is sit there and stare. Aren’t you pleased to see me?’

  Slowly she pulled herself up. But still she did not speak. Then her hand moved to his arm and touched it, just below the elbow. She looked at him again, and he smiled; then her arms were about his neck, pulling him towards her, and whatever pain he suffered by her contact with the raw stump of his wrist he gave no sign of it.

  ‘Da. Oh, Da!’

  ‘Now, what’s all the fuss about?’ He stroked her hair and talked to her as she lay quivering but dry-eyed against his breast. ‘Here you are in bed with a cold when you should have been downstairs helping your ma to get the tea ready for me coming home . . . And you never came to the hospital to see me, and there was me waiting every day. And all I could hear was, “She’s in bed with a cold.” So I said to meself, “Well, if she can’t come to me I’m going to her . . . a bit cut on the hand’s not goin’ to keep me in bed.”’

  It all sounded very brave and airy. It was make-believe such as Mary Ann herself would have used. Yet he felt better for having said it. It was the first time he had actually referred to his hand. He had forbidden his mind to touch on it, and it had obeyed him except during his sleep, when he would dream that his hand was being sliced off his body . . . but slowly; and he would awake, thinking, My God, what a dream, only to realise that the dream was reality. And there would follow a period of retrospection, when he would go over his life and ask why everything he touched had the mark of failure on it. Was it the heritage from the parents he had never known? Or was it due to his ingrained sense of inferiority born of his life in a Cottage Home? Whatever the cause, his efforts seemed doomed. He had come to the farm with the firm intention of making a go of it, and nobody but himself knew what it had cost him those first few months to go without his drink. And then Quinton had to crop up again. Quinton, in himself, might be a decent enough fellow, but his very name had the power to show up his own shortcomings; and the knowledge that Quinton had loved Liz, and that had she married him her life would have been smooth and free from the perpetual worry she now knew, had been enough to raise the tearing demon of his jealousy.

  But his troubles could have been halved, he knew, had he been able to conquer his weakness for the bottle.

  Lying in hospital the future had seemed so dark that he could see not even the smallest ray of light. What lay before him but public assistance, the very
thought of which brought his teeth grating over each other. There would be no compensation for the accident, it had been his own fault. He would not say Mary Ann’s . . . He could not think blame on the child who would sell her soul for him, but he knew that if her head had not come through the trapdoor he would have his hand now. And they all knew it. Especially the old man. The old fellow might be fond of Mary Ann, but he would not fork out a couple of thousand for which she was the cause. And he wouldn’t keep him on the farm. What good would he be on the farm, anyway?

  The thoughts had revolved on each other, creating a fear. And there had been only one person to whom he could voice it . . . Liz. And she had pooh-poohed it.

  ‘That’s nothing,’ she had said, ‘we’ll manage somehow. It’s the bairn we must think of. She knows she’s to blame, and it’s doing something to her.’

  He looked down now on the small white profile. It had done something. There was no spark of the old Mary Ann here. She was not even crying as she was wont to do with joy or sorrow. Talk about your hand, the doctor had said. Make light of it to her. It will help to balance her, and indirectly, yourself, too.

  It was all right for them to ladle out advice. Nobody should give advice unless he had been in the same boat . . . He wetted his lips, cleared his throat, and made an effort:

  ‘You’ve got a stupid bloke for a da, haven’t you?’

  Her head pressed closer to him.

  ‘I was never much good at anything, was I? Wouldn’t listen to anybody, always the big fellow.’ He felt sick at himself for talking this stuff, but as her head moved and her face was lost in his waistcoat he went on, ‘Jonesy warned me. “You’ll get your hand off one of these days,” he said, “cleaning while the machine’s on.” . . . Well’ – he stopped and the sigh he gave was not altogether feigned – ‘Jonesy was right. I wouldn’t listen. Third time’s catchy time, Jonesy said, and it was. It served me right, I suppose. The only thing I’m sorry for is’ – again he paused – ‘that you had to be up in the loft and see it.’