Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm

by Gil North

  The morning released them, but only from the bed.

  Wright wandered like a spirit in purgatory. His feet rang on the concrete of the backyard. He climbed into the croft and the geese retreated, screeching. Frightened he fled to the wash-kitchen and the dairy. The pigs grunted hungrily when he passed the sty. The barn doors creaked as he pulled them open.

  She watched him from the front window. He stood at the top of the steps going down to the lane. His head moved slowly as his eyes searched the hillsides.

  He was hunched by the fire in the living-kitchen. His hairless hands trembled over the flames. His limbs were shaken by involuntary spasms. He was off again, stumbling round the buildings. Doors opened and closed. The animals, catching his unease, pulled nervously at their ties.

  She could settle to nothing herself. Anger boiled in her. Must she always be cursed in her men? She bottled her emotion inside her, compelling herself to silence. If he had anything to be frightened of, she had more. She was jealous, comparing it with her own, of the life Wright had had already.

  They sat at the table. He hardly tasted anything. He dabbled with his fork in the contents of his plate. The anger born in her, fathered by his ineffectiveness, grew. When they needed courage he had none and she must provide courage for them both.

  She was infected by his obsession with Cluff. She dwelt on Cluff more and more. What did Cluff know? Why had Cluff come to the farm? How far back did his knowledge go?

  His fear of Cluff became her fear of Cluff. The country whispered to him with voices his colleagues could not hear. He could feel as well as see. He was a simple man, elemental. He was grim as the country was grim.

  “Where’s Ben?” Wright asked again and again.

  She told him as often, “Ben’s gone to the moor to gather the sheep.”

  “Are you sure? Are you sure?” he demanded.

  He was afraid of Cluff. He was afraid of Ben. Ben said little to him in words. Ben said much with his eyes. Ben grinned at Wright and asked Jinny offhandedly, “Let me have a pound or two. My pockets are empty.” She gave it to him.

  Ben on the moor, but they could not get rid of Ben. Ben doing as he liked, treating the house as his own property. The farm going down, people in the village talking. Ben going off at nights to his cottage. The woman spying on him, he spying on the woman.

  Wright’s voice was a shout. “Why today? Why to the moor today? Did you see him go? Are you certain?”

  She struggled for patience. She said, “The sheep must come down. Who would listen to Ben?”

  “Cluff would listen,” he insisted. “Cluff would listen to anything from anybody.”

  “What time did he go?” Wright wanted to know. “How far is it? Why isn’t he back?”

  “He can’t go in an hour,” she replied, swallowing the words that welled in her.

  Wright gazed at the moor. It rolled away, over the skyline. It rose in peaks and screes. It dropped into hollows and bogs. Perpendicular black crags raised themselves above still black pools of peat-stained water. Jumbled rocks poked from soft, springy earth. The trenches of tiny streams crossed expanses of heather and bilberries. Conifers dotted the slopes in close-planted patches, dead trees strewn round the roots of the survivors.

  On the moor Ben went slowly. He had no flock about him. No dog quartered the wilderness at his command. He did not look as if he was shepherding. His mind would not let him stop.

  He lay in the heather on the crest of the moor, above the next dale. He looked down. A long way below, like a child’s toy, he saw Cluff’s Head. Its buildings were firm amongst rough pastures. A windbreak of trees shielded it from winter gales. Smoke rose peacefully from its chimneys. His conscience pricked. He was old, with sin on his soul.

  A black speck that was a man climbed up from Cluff’s Head. He had a dog with him. He came steadily up to the moor top, with a moorman’s unhurried stride. He passed over the moor some distance from where Ben watched.

  Ben stayed quiet. Cluff’s figure dwindled. Ben got up and followed. He kept to the shelter of the crags. He hugged the hollows beneath the horizon. He bent his body double as he crossed the rises.

  The Sergeant took the easiest tracks. His dog bounded far in front, unrestricted. He came to where he could see Ghyll End, where the moor separating it from Cluff’s Head descended. He looked over the slopes Ben had climbed. He watched Ghyll End as Ben, on the other side, had watched Cluff’s Head.

  Ben crouched in the bracken. The Sergeant sat on a rock. Clive, called to him, lay panting.

  Ben backed. He retreated behind a spur of the moor. He went in a wide circle, through a plantation, and plunged into the ghyll that gave Cricklethwaite’s farm its name. The ghyll was a deep cleft in the ground, dug by a stream in a fault between hard rocks. The stream sank farther each year into its bed. Hawthorn trees and hollies on its steep banks shut it in as with a roof. Ben slipped and slithered in sticky mud, clambering over rocky outcrops that defeated the scouring of the water.

  The high wall of the croft rising above the level of the kitchen window screened off most of the late afternoon light. The room was dark, lit only by the leaping flames of the fire. They sat quietly, wearied of talking, in a silence intensified by the ticking of a clock, eerie in the stillness. The noises of the farm had died away as the day was dying. Time and place and life itself were unreal and shadowy.

  Wright started. His hand went to his mouth. He stared, hypnotized, at the gently opening door. Jinny Cricklethwaite stiffened, her body rigid. The clock ticked louder.

  Ben leaned against the door. His head drooped on his chest. The thinness of his hair revealed his dirty scalp. His legs were unsteady. He fought for breath. His boots were plastered. Fresh mud daubed his stockings and breeches. The sleeve of his jacket was torn. His face was a death’s-head in the firelight, transparent, with the texture of parchment. Saliva dribbled from the corners of his mouth.

  “He’s there,” Ben said.

  Wright uttered a sharp, brief cry. He half-rose and collapsed back into his chair. The woman stared at Ben, saying nothing. Her eyes roved over him from head to feet, taking in every detail of his appearance. She looked at the window. Finally she asked, in a low voice, sibilant: “Did you speak to him?”

  Ben hesitated and shook his head.

  Wright sprang to his feet. He seized Ben and pushed him out into the yard.

  “Where?” Wright screamed. “Where?”

  Ben tottered through the wash-kitchen and through the dairy. He lifted an arm in the lowering dusk and pointed to the edge of the moor.

  “Where? Where?” Wright was still asking, his townsman’s eyes blind.

  “I’ll get the glasses,” the woman said.

  She gave the binoculars to Wright.

  “This way from the far plantation,” she said coldly. “Where the rocks rise against the sky.”

  “It’s not true,” Wright mumbled.

  “It’s true,” she said and smiled.

  “Come back! Come back!” the woman shouted.

  Wright whirled.

  She ran after Ben, who had set off for the lane. She grabbed Ben’s arm. She struggled with Ben. She dragged and pulled him. Her strength was greater than his.

  “Where are you off to?” she asked, in brittle tones. “Where are you going?”

  Ben muttered and Wright could not make sense of his mutterings. Wright looked again at the moor, through the binoculars. He saw Cluff get to his feet. Cluff stood upright, still.

  The binoculars were a part of Wright. They were rooted to his eyes. He looked and looked and looked again. He opened his mouth to speak, and closed it. Not until certainty became more than certainty could he say, “He’s gone.”

  “He’s at Cluff’s Head,” Ben said. “I saw him come up from there.”

  “The more fool him,” Jinny Cricklethwaite murmured. Her
voice made Wright tremble.

  Chapter XVIII

  She came into the kitchen behind them. She turned the key in the lock of the door.

  The edge of the stone sink under the window pressed into her buttock. She was big and hard in the waning firelight.

  Ben sat small in a chair across the hearth. Wright huddled on a chair by the table, opposite the fireplace, his elbows on the table, his face buried in his hands.

  “You fool!” she said. “You fool!”

  Wright lifted his head. He realized only slowly that she was addressing him. The depth of her hatred shattered him with the force of a physical blow. She swelled and grew monstrous.

  “If you hadn’t come here yesterday,” she said, each word spaced from the next, her voice low. “If you’d stayed in Gunnarshaw as I told you to do.”

  Her eyes bored into him.

  “You led him here,” she added. “This is because of you.”

  “What else could I do?” he managed.

  “It was you he wanted,” she said. “Not me. You’ve shown him what he’d never have known. He’d forgotten I existed. Cricklethwaite was nothing to him.”

  “He was watching me,” Wright pleaded. “I had to get away from him.”

  “All you had to do,” she said with infinite contempt, “was to face him, to let time pass. He was powerless.”

  “I couldn’t,” he excused himself. “I couldn’t.”

  She said with deliberation, meaning every syllable, “I could kill you.”

  “All this,” she said, and her arm swung to take in her years at the farm. “All this to be paid for. My plans and my patience and my dreams. I won’t give it all up now. Not for Cluff. Not for you. Not for anyone.”

  Ben moaned.

  “They’ll dig Cricklethwaite up,” Ben said. “They’ll find out. It makes no difference how long they’ve been buried.”

  The scales fell from Wright’s eyes. Knowledge replaced the suspicions he had refused to admit. His voice rose high. He shrieked: “I didn’t do that. I’d no part in it.”

  “You knew,” she mocked him.

  “How did I know?” Wright complained. “When did I ask you about it?”

  “Who’s going to believe you?” she said.

  “No,” said Wright. “No. And the night my wife died. I was here. You’ve said so already. You can’t go back on it. Would I have gone to them if I’d killed her, of my own free will?”

  “I had to drive you to it,” she said.

  She moved from the sink. She towered broad and threatening over Ben Crier. He shrank into himself as she bent over him. Wright leaned forward, terror in his face. Her words struck at Ben like the fangs of a snake.

  “Dig him up?” she said. “And find what’s in him?”

  “I won’t tell,” the old man stammered, pushing at her with weak arms.

  She said, “And you knew it was there. You saw me prepare the food I gave him. You’ve had what I could give. You’ve put your filthy hands on me.”

  “No,” Ben cried. “No! No! No!”

  “What do you want to do?” she asked. “Save your neck at the expense of mine?”

  “I don’t know anything,” Ben begged.

  “Did you tell Cluff?” she screamed. “Did you? Did you?”

  “As I hope for salvation,” the old man sobbed.

  Her fingers clawed Ben’s shoulders.

  She said quietly, “Just now. You were off to the village. To the police. To say, ‘She murdered her husband. I’m an old man. She made me hush it up. I have to tell.’”

  “I won’t tell. I won’t tell,” Ben groaned.

  “An old man,” she said. “Life’s sweet to you, the sweeter because you’ve so little left. The old are selfish.”

  Her eyes were slits, her face contorted.

  “Life’s sweeter to me,” she went on. “And I’m selfish too. So I’ll let you go, with Cluff here today and yesterday, and Cluff coming back tomorrow?”

  She glanced from Ben to Wright.

  “Two of you,” she said. “It’s one too many. I can’t watch you both.”

  “Jinny! Jinny!” Wright said, desperately.

  She scooped up the cloth of Ben’s jacket. She shook Ben like a terrier does a rat.

  “Did Cluff see you coming down the moor?” she demanded. “Did he? Did he?”

  Ben’s head wobbled. His few teeth jarred together. His eyes closed. She could hardly hear him when he stammered, “He didn’t see me. I came down the ghyll.”

  “Jinny,” Wright said again.

  “Wait,” she told Wright. “Keep him there in the chair. Watch him!”

  She flung back at Wright from the door to the front of the house, “You can’t get away. Whatever you do I’ll swear you killed your wife. I’ll make them believe it.”

  She was back.

  She had a double-barrelled shotgun cradled in her arms. The old man and the young man stared at her, deprived of action.

  Ben’s jaw dropped. His mouth fell open.

  Her lips parted. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m not going to shoot you, Ben.”

  She raised the gun by the barrels and brought the stock down on Ben’s head. He made no effort to avoid it. The sound of the blow was loud in the kitchen.

  Ben collapsed sideways in his chair. His trunk folded over the chair arm. His right hand dangled, touching the floor. The fingers twitched.

  She turned to Wright.

  “There,” she said, propping the gun against the wall. “You’d no part in what happened to my husband. You were here the night your wife died. But you’ve a part in this. Deny it if you can.”

  She pulled at Ben’s lapel, overturning him on to the floor. She picked up the cushion on which Ben had been sitting. She advanced with it on Wright, bearing him back against the sink until the sink stopped him from going farther.

  “Take it,” she commanded.

  She thrust the cushion into Wright’s hands.

  He felt the pain of her grip. He heard her say, “Over his face.”

  She was breaking him in two. She was forcing him down, on to his knees. Her hands crept along his arms. Her soft body pressed into his back. His hands were in hers. The cushion came lower, over Ben’s mouth and nostrils. Her weight knocked him flat on top of the cushion. He was buried beneath her and Ben was buried beneath him.

  She was panting. Wright was panting. The fire was very low. They were black and shapeless, entangled in the near dark. Their slightest movement was exaggerated and gigantic on the wall.

  She heaved herself to her feet. She hauled Wright after her. The cushion slipped from Ben’s face. His eyes accused them.

  She threw Wright away. He stumbled and snatched at the table. Her breasts rose and fell as she drank in gulps of air. She fought for self-control.

  “Get the horse harnessed,” she ordered. “Put the chains on him.”

  She stepped closer. He was afraid that she was going to strike him. He staggered through the living-room and out of the front door. She ran after him with a lantern.

  “In the sledge,” she said. “You know where it is.”

  The lantern shone in Wright’s hand. He choked. His heart was numb with pain. He saw the house clearly, and the barn, and all the farm. It was to have been his, and it could never be his. This was what he had abandoned Amy for. This was what he had driven Amy to distraction for. Amy’s master, but the slave of Cricklethwaite’s widow.

  No Cluff. Cluff not there when he was wanted. Cluff everywhere before and Cluff nowhere now. Cricklethwaite in his grave, witness to the manner of his dying. Ben Crier cold on the kitchen floor. More than Amy in Balaclava Street. The truth about Amy’s death no longer relevant. Punishment now for his intent, not for intent transformed into action.

  No hope. None. Except in the wo
man, in the devil she was. No escape without her. None, in the end, with her. Or was there? Could he trust in the power of her evil?

  He dragged his carcass by the hay in the barn, through the door at the upper end into the loose-boxes. The farthest box, opening on to the hillside, was a stable. He heard the horse stamping and moving in it.

  His larger fear conquered the smaller fear he had of horses. The horse was fastened with a rope from its halter, threaded through an iron ring, prevented from slipping out by a toggle. A horse-collar hung on the wall. Long chains, with hooks at their ends, were festooned on pegs.

  The smell of ammonia was strong. The horse’s eyes were red in the lantern light. It sidestepped nervously. Its hooves clattered on the paved floor, through the thin covering of bracken.

  He took the collar down. He stretched out his arm for the horse. The horse tossed its head. It curled its upper lip and did a little dance with its feet. Wright flattened himself against the whitewashed wall, dirtied where the horse had rubbed, splashed with fragments of manure. Sweat poured on Wright’s cheeks. His clothes were clammy. His palms were slippery with moisture.

  She said nothing. She pushed past him.

  She released the horse. She forced the collar on to the horse’s neck. She clipped the hooks on the chains to rings on the collar. She folded the chains loosely over the horse’s back.

  He went after her with the lantern, on to the hill, where a lean-to was built against the side of the barn.

  It was quite dark, moonless, starless, cloud shrouding the night.

  Chapter XIX

  The sledge was square, a big box on iron-shod runners, for use on the moor, not only in winter in the snow, but in autumn to collect the bracken for bedding, over the short grass.

  She completed the harnessing. She led Wright back to the kitchen. They dressed warmly.

  “Help me with him,” she ordered.

  Wordlessly, Wright took Ben’s feet and she Ben’s shoulders.

  They tipped him into the sledge. The horse reared. She snatched its halter and jerked down its head.