‘He’s not bad,’ she said. ‘Mr Ben’ – this was the title she had bestowed on him since Christmas – ‘Mr Ben, is the Lord with somebody?’
Ben nodded. ‘He is. He’s interviewing a young fellow who’s after the farm manager’s job. And there’s another one due any minute. I wouldn’t trouble him this morning . . . he’s very busy.’
‘Oh!’ The bottom dropped out of her world. Her bright shining scheme became like a much-used comic . . . dull. Even the abrupt opening of a door to a room she had never entered and the appearance of Mr Lord himself did little to lighten it. But immediately the owner of the blue car appeared in the doorway the scheme took on a glow again, faint, but nevertheless a glow. The young man wore knee breeches, polished gaiters, a lovely tweed coat, and he carried a short stick. Anything so unlike Lord’s farm could not be imagined. Mary Ann’s innate sense of fitness told her that he looked . . . too swanky. And soon, also, she sensed the Lord’s reactions, for his leave-taking of the man was peremptory, while the owner of the blue car was all but condescending.
Mary Ann’s presence at that time of the morning caused Mr Lord some surprise. He came back from the hall door before the owner of the old and battered but still impressive Jaguar had gone on his way.
‘Hallo, what are you after, eh?’ His tone was kindly, as if she was still sick.
‘I want to talk to you.’
There was an exchange of glances between the old servant and his master as they remembered that these were the very same words she had spoken early one morning in this hall some months ago. Mr Lord peered down on her. This was not the cheeky imp who had demanded audience with him that morning. This was an older Mary Ann, if a frailer one. He felt a strange longing for the battling, intrepid fighter, the loyal liar; and his tone was kind as he voiced his refusal. ‘I’m busy this morning, I’ve got someone coming.’
‘It won’t take a minute . . . well, not long.’ Sincerely she prayed that it wouldn’t take long.
Mr Lord cleared his throat. ‘Why aren’t you at school?’
‘I told you, I wanted to talk to you.’
There was only one thing that she would want to talk about, and he was in no mood to hear talk of Shaughnessy this morning. ‘Later perhaps,’ he muttered, and was visibly startled at the keenness of her perception when she said, ‘It isn’t only about me da.’
‘No, then?’ he asked. ‘What is it?’
‘Well . . . ’ She hesitated. Ben was still standing there, and as her eyes involuntarily slid to him, he grunted and departed. Mr Lord, glancing at his watch, said, ‘Only a few minutes, mind.’
She trotted after him into the room he used as an office, and the lumber of books and papers that met her eye took her interest for a moment from the vital matter in hand. She stood looking round as Mr Lord seated himself at his desk, and when he said, ‘Well, what is this you have to tell me?’ she turned to him and said, ‘You want cleaning up.’
‘What?’
She waved her hand round the room. ‘It’s mucky. Me ma would soon do it for you, she’s a . . . ’
‘Yes, yes. Leave the room alone. What is this you want to say to me?’
She walked to his desk, and, standing at the side, lifted up a sheet of paper from the top of a pile of letters.
‘Put that down!’ His hand snatched the letter from her. ‘Now, what is it you want?’
He was in a bad temper. If he got in a stew just because she touched his papers what would he do when she asked him about the farm job?
‘Well?’
She looked up into the pale-blue eyes. They were the colour of the glass vase on the cottage mantelpiece, the one you couldn’t see through. ‘Do you still want me to go to that school?’
Mr Lord made no immediate answer, but the swivel chair moved slowly round and brought him to face her.
‘I’ll go if you want me.’
There was not the slightest change in his expression. ‘Since when have you wanted to go?’
‘Since last night, in bed.’
‘Why?’
‘’Cos I want to go . . . if . . . ’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, if I do something for you, will . . . ?’
‘Will I do something for you?’ he ended tersely.
‘Yes.’
Mr Lord drew in his breath and his head moved slightly. ‘You don’t think I’d be doing something for you by sending you to this school?’
‘No – I mean – not what I want.’
‘Then you don’t really want to go to this school?’
‘Yes . . . yes, I do.’
‘Why are you willing to go?’
‘Because you want me to.’
He leant a little towards her. ‘You would go to please me?’
‘Yes . . . if—’
He sighed again. ‘If I did something for you?’
She could not find words to placate his tone, so she remained silent.
‘What is it you want?’ His voice was dull.
She stared at him. It had sounded quite an easy thing when in bed to say ‘I’ll go to this school on condition that you make me da manager,’ but now the enormity of the request assumed its rightful proportions and she knew that the bargain was quite unequal; in fact, she didn’t think she could bring herself to ask it.
‘Well – come on.’
Her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth, and there it would have remained for some time no doubt had not the jangling sound of the front doorbell released it. That ring she knew was the . . . other fellow, so, gulping, she began, ‘Me da must have a job. He wouldn’t be happy anywhere else but on a farm, for he’s grand with animals as you know. But now he can’t use his hands . . . only the one. Mr Ratcliffe didn’t use his hands either; he never dirtied his hands. Me da said he was a book farmer and a hard day’s work would have killed him. Me da’s cleverer than Mr Ratcliffe. He writes a good hand an’ all, and he said last night he was going to . . . to . . . ’ She stopped. Where was it Father Owen said some farmers went? School? No, college.
Mr Lord hadn’t moved, but his expression had changed for the worse and Mary Ann’s voice had a distinct tremble as she continued: ‘To college or some such, where they learn to be managers.’ Her voice was small now. ‘There, that’s it.’
Mr Lord’s colour had deepened and his brows were aiming to reach his pursed lips as he growled, ‘What are you asking? That I should make your father manager of my farm?’
The ‘my’ carried a weight all its own, and Mary Ann’s voice reached a croak as she said, ‘He’d be a fine manager, and it’s only a little farm – bigger than a smallholding though – but me da would work hard for you and I’d go to school for you and everything’d be all right.’
‘Who put this idea into your head – your father?’
‘No – he knows nothing about being a manager.’ She stopped; she was getting into deep waters, her father was supposed to be going to college.
‘Father Owen?’
‘Father Owen?’ she repeated, as if for the first time in her life she had heard the name. ‘Father Owen? No. I went to church and I prayed . . . ’
‘All right’ – he held up his hand abruptly in protest – ‘that’s enough. Now’ – he pushed back his thin shoulders – ‘go along and forget all this business that you’ve hatched up. School and farm included. It’s out of the question.’
‘But—’ she moved nearer to him.
‘That’s enough.’ As they stared at each other a tap came on the door.
‘What is it?’ He looked towards Ben.
‘Mr Dukes, sir.’
‘Show him in . . . Now, off you go.’ His manner of dismissal was neither of his usual ones. There was no flaring temper nor was his voice barking, it was quiet, but not kindly quiet. It left no vestige of hope that might guide her back to a point from where she could resume her attack; there was a dead finality about it.
As she went out, Mr Dukes came in, and had she been possessed of hop
e it would have fled on the sight of the sturdy workaday-looking man. She could see this one on the farm, and coping.
The hallway was empty and she stood amidst its dim dustiness and gnawed at her thumbnail, and as she gnawed the tears came. Slow, painful tears; tears for her ma when she had to leave the cottage; tears for their Michael, unsettled once again and morose; but most of all there were tears for her da and the sadness piled up within him. She heard the creak of footsteps on the landing above and she moved back and stood in the dark corner by the panelling that flanked the broad stairs. Ben came downstairs and went into the kitchen, but she did not move towards the hall door. Whether by accident or design she was standing right opposite the office door and she could hear the voices in the room rising and falling. But from where she stood it was impossible to hear what they were saying, so she cautiously moved nearer, taking the precaution to hold her nose so that she wouldn’t sniff. Her head bent to the keyhole, the voices came as clear as if she were in the room, yet what they were saying was like a foreign language to her, and not really connected with the job for a farm manager. And most distressing of all, the voices were friendly. First the man’s, talking about pigs at twenty-eight shillings a score. She knew what a score was – it was twenty, so that meant you could get twenty pigs for twenty-eight shillings. And twenty hundredweights of protein, the man said.
They were talking like sums at school, and then Mr Lord’s voice. ‘Seven shillings a week on wages,’ he was saying, ‘and it won’t stop there.’ ‘Land Race. They were the ones,’ the man said. Then, ‘Wheat at twenty-two and eightpence, with a good fertiliser . . . And a sprayer attachment.’ Mr Lord’s voice, quiet now, saying it wasn’t paying its way. Then no more from Mr Lord, and the man going on and on. Potash, nitro-chalk, winter feed. Then the miracle. He kept on about the miracle. Mary Ann never knew that miracles were needed to get milk from cows, but apparently they were, and they were attached to a bucket milker.
The voices droned on, mostly the man’s, but both were still friendly. They even laughed together. The sound of the laughter must have dulled her senses for she was unaware that the voices had ceased, and the next thing she knew was that the support of the door left her and she was on her knees with a pair of feet on either side of her. Her startled glance darted from one set of boots to the other. Then an exclamation from the man drowned by a roar from Mr Lord shot her to her feet, and without raising an eye to either of them she was off and out of the door and down the drive. As she ran, panting, towards the gate, the bus passed, then stopped, and when she reached the road the bus conductor called, ‘Come on, divvn’t hang aboot.’
She got on, assisted by his hand on her collar, and not till she was seated did she realise that she was bound Jarrow-wards. And she didn’t want to go to Jarrow, someone might see her and ask her why she wasn’t at school. But it was done now. She could, she decided after some thought, go to Mrs McBride’s till dinner time, and perhaps she would get a bite of dinner there as she would miss her school dinner. This settled, she left the bus, not at her usual stop, but near Burton Street, to where she slowly made her way.
It was unfortunate that outside Mackintosh’s shop at the corner she should come across a number of under-fives playing the game of mothers and fathers. It was a different version altogether from her own in that they had a live set of twins to give authenticity to the game. These were being forced, at the hands of a distracted four-year-old mother with a running nose, to sit on the cold pavement, but, as the twins were the ripe and obstinate age of two years and one had a large rent in her knickers which made contact with the pavement still less desirable, a howling match was in progress.
Mary Ann, with time on her hands and unable, even at this stage of mental unrest, to pass anyone who so obviously stood in need of advice, stopped to add the wisdom of her years to the slight knowledge of the new mother. And she was doing it quite effectively when her arm was caught in an extremely tight grip and she was swung about to face, of all people at this time of the morning, Sarah Flannagan.
‘What you doing here?’ Sarah glared at Mary Ann, and any feeling of sympathy that the general attitude had forced her to show towards Mary Ann was swept away by the sight of her enemy, apparently herself again, playing happily in the street in school hours, and, what was more, in their street!
‘Mind your own business,’ said Mary Ann quietly.
This polite reply, it must be admitted, was mainly due to surprise, for of all the people she would wish to avoid this morning, Sarah Flannagan came first.
‘Pretending you’re bad,’ said Sarah, ‘and playing in the street.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You are.’
‘Well, what you doing?’ said Mary Ann, still quietly. ‘If you weren’t out playing you wouldn’t see me.’
‘I’m not out playing, so there, clever cuts. I’ve been about me teeth, to have a wire on. See?’
Sarah let Mary Ann see. She bared her teeth and pushed her face down to Mary Ann’s level, and Mary Ann, after gazing wide-eyed at the row of large uneven teeth banded by wire, turned away and gave a vivid and audible imitation of vomiting, whereupon Sarah advanced upon her, crying, ‘You! Get back to where you belong; the pigsties. Me ma says you won’t be long there either, you’re all going to get the push.’
‘What!’ Mary Ann rounded on her, her old self flashing into life now that her family once more were being attacked. Her body stretched, her chin jutted, and she cried, ‘You! You and your ma! You know nothing. I wouldn’t be found dead in the same back lane. You’re jealous because of our fine house; and me da, fine and respected . . . ’
‘Oh my good garden cabbage!’ This was Sarah’s equivalent of ‘God in Heaven!’ or ‘God Almighty!’ exclamations which were strictly forbidden by Mrs Flannagan. But Sarah put so much into the words that they took on the strength of blasphemy and enraged Mary Ann still further. She flew at Sarah, knocking the temporary mother of the twins onto her bottom in her rush, and standing so close to Sarah as almost to touch her, she barked up into her face, ‘You’ll get the shock of your life, you will, you’ll see! Me da’s going to be a gentleman – a real one – a manager, and run a farm, and carry a stick and wear shiny leggings. And I’m going to be a lady, I am, a real lady, and talk nice. So stick that up your neb and blow your nose!’
Mr Lord need not have mourned the loss of the battling intrepid fighter; she apparently had been merely sleeping. Mary Ann suddenly felt better, much better. Joined now to her yelling was the yelling of the twins, the shouts of the pretending mother and the four other accessories to the family tree. The noise having gone beyond the usual limit, the shop door was pulled open and two women appeared, one being the mother of the twins, the other Mrs McBride.
‘In the name of God,’ cried Fanny, ‘is it another war? Hallo, Mary Ann,’ she said in surprise, ‘what you up to?’
‘It’s her,’ Mary Ann’s voice was drowned by the cries of the real mother and her offspring, but her finger, pointing to Sarah’s now retreating figure, made everything clear to Fanny, who exclaimed, ‘Aye, it would be.’
The mother of the twins being totally blind to her children’s smell, dirt and general ugliness, was now embracing them and bestowing on them such adjectives as beautiful and lovely. And as she trailed them away on one side of the street, Mary Ann and Fanny walked down the other, and as they went, Mary Ann, docile now, told Fanny she was playing truant.
‘And why?’ asked Fanny, definitely puzzled.
‘I can’t tell you outside,’ said Mary Ann.
Once inside Mrs McBride’s odourful kitchen, Mary Ann proceeded to tell why she was off school. The telling of it was a little mixed, but this much was clear to Fanny, the child had the nerve of the devil. She may have had a shock over Mike’s business, but it had deprived her of nothing, least of all her nerve, that she could see.
‘You asked him to make your da manager?’ she said. ‘Begod! you’ve got big ideas. No wonder he sent you packin
g. What made you think your da could do such a job? It takes Mike all the time to manage hissel’.’
‘It doesn’t. He could . . . he could do it fine; anything fine.’
Now her head was jerking and Fanny, her great hand making conciliatory motions in the air, said, ‘All right, all right. Don’t shout. I’m not saying a word against your da. You know I wouldn’t. I’m the best friend he’s got, for that matter, but there’s limits to all things. It was a miracle he got the job and you know it was, and now you’re expecting not only a miracle but a visitation. Begod, child, don’t you realise that old Lord’s no fool, no yard owner is, and if he’s taken a farm it’s to make money. And although I know nothing of farms, even if me granny did keep a pig and ten ducks in the backyard until some delicate-nosed neighbour kicked up a stink, I know this much: the way they run farms these days takes a headpiece. You’ve only got to look at the milk bottles with their “pasteurised” and their “TTs” to know that behind the cow there’s brains.’
‘Me da’s got brains.’
‘He has, he has an’ all, and I’d be the first to admit it, but there are brains and brains, and you need a special kind of brains on a farm. And what about this being a lady? Are you going to that school?’
‘No, not now.’
‘Well, it’s just as well as I see it. I can’t see you settling in a place like that. You’re not cut out for it, hinny,’ she patted Mary Ann’s lowered head. ‘You’re too like God made you, and I wouldn’t like to see you spoilt. No, hinny, stay as you are; don’t let them put any artificial manure on you, an’ all.’
‘Mrs McBride.’
‘Aye?’
The Lord and Mary Ann (The Mary Ann Stories) Page 16
