The Travelling Man

by Marie Joseph

  Annie was at the crest of a hill now. Over a ridge of trees she saw the familiar outline of chimneys. Sure that she was not being followed, she slowed down a little; as she saw the cottage in the distance, she began to run.

  Adam was watching for her by the window. She could see him standing there, and the way he moved quickly away when he saw her coming. He had lit the lamp, tended the fire and the kettle was set to boil on the hob.

  Gasping for breath, shaking with fear and disgust – how could they have thought she was up there on the hill watching them – Annie lifted the sneck on the cottage door and half fell inside.

  Adam was there, kindly sturdy Adam, a father holding out loving arms to his child. In that moment he was the kind of father she had never had, one who would pat her troubles away and wipe the tears from her face.

  Adam let her cry, knowing that whatever had distressed her so was best released in the bout of frenzied weeping. He stroked her hair, lifted it away from her neck. He tightened an arm about her, feeling her softness against him. Her hair was all mussed where he had touched it. She was damp and sweet-smelling and he could bear it no more.

  ‘Annie … oh, Annie …’

  He had meant to kiss her gently as he raised her face to his, but her eyes were tender with tears, she was looking at him with such feeling, the touch of her lips flamed his desire.

  For Annie, it was as if the whole of her face was being swallowed up in a prickly thicket of hair, tobacco-smelling hair. His teeth were hard against her lips as he strained her to him, holding her with a strength that took the breath from her body. It came to her in that moment that no man had ever touched her gently, with tenderness, and without this greedy wanting.

  She pushed him away from her so roughly, her strength matching his own, that he stumbled against a chair which gave against his weight and skitted across the floor. Somehow he kept his balance and would have reached for her again, but the expression in her eyes rooted him to the spot.

  ‘Stay away from me!’

  To his horror she picked up the lamp from the table and held it high above her head. He held out both hands, shaking his head from side to side.

  ‘Annie! Annie, love, I don’t want to hurt you. I would never hurt you.’ He moved forward, only to step back as she swung the lamp high in an arc above her head.

  ‘I mean it, Adam. Touch me again like that and I’ll let fly. I will! I’m not pretending.’

  Groping behind him for the armrests, Adam slowly lowered himself into his chair. ‘Do I disgust you as much as all that, lass?’There were tears in his eyes. ‘As much as all that?’

  Annie lowered the lamp to the table. He wasn’t to know that it was the humiliation, the terror of what might have happened if Kit Dailey had caught up with her that had wakened the violence in her. It was seeing them, it was them thinking that she … it was Adam comforting her … she shuddered. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

  Because she rushed over to the slopstone and had her back turned to him she saw nothing of the heartbreak creeping across the gardener’s weather-beaten face.

  ‘I won’t bother you again, lass,’ she heard him whisper.

  When she turned round he was gone.

  It took Harry Gray and his willing band of searchers four days to find him.

  Adam, who knew the fells as well as his own back garden, had fallen down a long gully, broken both his legs and died there, face down on the dry and dusty bed.

  They brought him back to the cottage, and two days later he was buried beside his wife in the old churchyard.

  The weather had changed, and as the mourners walked back across the fields a sudden crack of thunder sent hailstones bouncing, while a gale from the west flattened the unseasonable daffodils in the flower beds that had been Adam’s pride and joy.

  14

  ‘WELL, THEN. IT looks as if everything is settled, Annie.’ Margot Gray nodded her head and smiled at her husband. ‘That’s right, isn’t it, Harry? Annie can stay at the cottage till the new man and his wife work out their notice at their old place, then she moves in here on a permanent basis.’

  Annie sat quietly, looking from one to the other, listening half-heartedly. Mrs Gray was being so kind, so generous, appearing not to notice that her husband was edging towards the door, eager to be outside with his dogs and his horses.

  ‘You agree with that, dear.’

  It was a statement, not a question, and it was Annie’s turn to pretend not to be noticing when the big man in his checked jacket glanced over at her and closed an eye in a broad wink.

  ‘Anything you say, my dear.’ Harry felt behind him for the door handle. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me …’ With a slam of the door he was gone. Annie heard the clump of his boots down the tiled hall and his bark of a voice calling out to someone to fetch his gun.

  Margot smiled. She knew exactly what plans she had for this small flame-haired girl sitting on the edge of her chair, both hands clasped together in her lap. But as ever, she wanted Harry to think that the plans had been his idea. She had sensed a long time ago that the yelling, bullying manner hid an ego as fragile as an egg-shell. So, all the decisions were his – at least he believed so. The half of Margot that was French knew how to make a man happy, and still get her own way. Arguments, pouts, petulance, sulks were for other women, not her. She turned her full attention on Annie, one plump hand tapping on the arm of her chair as if to hurry her words along.

  ‘Mr Gray’s lawyer friend has everything in hand, Annie. With Adam’s clear instructions in the letter he left behind, the money should come through in no time.’

  ‘I don’t want it, Mrs Gray.’

  Margot ignored that. ‘These things take time, and the most important thing was to take the money from its hiding-place and deposit it in the bank. You were right and very honest to tell me about it. Adam took a great risk in leaving it there. People talk, rumours grow and though he was a good and decent man, he did have a reputation as a miser.’

  ‘I won’t take it, Mrs Gray.’

  ‘That’s silly talk, Annie.’

  ‘He ought never to have left it to me. He hadn’t known me for long enough. I bet if you advertise in the paper for his relatives someone will come and claim it.’

  ‘Undoubtedly.’ Margot put up a hand. ‘Did you ever hear him mention a relative? Or even a friend?’

  Annie shook her head. ‘He struck me as being a man who kept himself to himself. Like a hermit.’

  ‘Exactly! Adam wanted you to have it, Annie. You made his life bearable after his wife died.’

  ‘He asked me to marry him not long after.’

  ‘He did?’ Margot’s eyes snapped their satisfaction. ‘Well, there you are then. He looked upon you as his next of kin. For heaven’s sake, child, don’t disappoint me by going all pious and saying you refuse on principle to touch a single penny. Principles … pouff!’ She snapped her fingers. ‘It isn’t exactly a fortune, when all’s said and done, and don’t go telling me that with your background it is because my grandmère once had to stay in the house for two years because her sabots were worn out and there was barely enough money for food.’ She gave her trill of a laugh. ‘You’re a pretty girl and there’s enough to buy clothes and a bonnet or two, then maybe bank the rest of your dowry. Money talks, Annie! This little legacy is saying that you are now a woman of substance who will never have to go to her bridegroom empty-handed.’

  ‘I can’t take Adam’s money, Mrs Gray.’

  ‘Why not?’ Margot’s patience, always on a short rein, was beginning to give out. ‘I know the world hasn’t treated you fairly up to now, but this is the turning point. Can’t you see that? One day you will marry and go over the hills and far away, then all this sadness and self-recrimination will be forgotten. Adam will be just a kindly memory of a man whose dearest wish was to make you happy. You brought joy into his life, Annie. Joy, where before there had been nothing but sadness and depression. Even cured of her illness his wife would still have f
aced each day expecting the worst – yes, and more often than not getting it. Because that was the way she was.’

  Somewhere inside herself Annie was crying bitterly, sobbing tears of remorse. ‘I sent Adam to his death,’ she said suddenly, drooping her head into her hands.

  Margot’s heart contracted with pity. She sat quietly for a while, letting Annie have her cry out.

  ‘You mean you quarrelled with him?’ she ventured at last.

  Annie raised tear-filled eyes. ‘He … he kissed me in a certain way. I was unkind, no I was cruel to him, and he walked out. To his death,’ she finished on a wail of despair.

  ‘Nonsense! Absolute nonsense. Adam didn’t commit suicide. He had tried many times to climb out of the place where he fell. The evidence was there for the search party to find. My husband told me about it. He was with them, remember? Adam certainly wasn’t trying to die. He was struggling for hours to get out! They found proof that he had managed to lever himself up to the top using the powerful muscles of his arms before falling back on to his head.’

  She stood up and began to walk about, swishing her long skirts. ‘Adam Page wasn’t the kind of man to kill himself, Annie. There wasn’t the depth in him, the sensitivity. He got angry, he sulked. But you must know that.’ Annie opened her mouth to speak, but Margot raised an imperious finger. ‘So! You can stop wallowing in that silly trough of guilt, this minute. You brought Adam happiness; you put a smile on his face.’

  ‘He kissed me and I vomited,’ Annie said clearly.

  The statement shot Margot’s finely pencilled brows up almost to her hair-line. She walked across the room to the window, lifted a corner of the curtain and stared out across the lawns and down the tree-lined drive.

  ‘But he didn’t know that what had made me sick had really nothing to do with him.’

  ‘What had it to do with?’ Margot dropped the lace curtain back into place.

  ‘Something that had upset me before.’

  ‘Can you tell me?’

  Annie shook her head and Margot, with uncharacteristic patience, went back to her chair and waited for Annie to compose herself. She knew exactly why this beautiful young girl interested her so much. Why her usually ordered thinking became diverted down strange pathways. Here in all her fresh loveliness was the daughter she would never have, the Lord in His wisdom having made her barren. And there, drowning in sorrow, was a girl who the same Lord should have seen fit to make happy. Somehow, somewhere the patterns had gone wrong. Birth, circumstances, fate had left the one with a searching need for affection, and the other, with the means and the will to give that affection, frustrated and unfulfilled.

  ‘Of course you couldn’t marry Adam,’ she said at last, her voice brisk. ‘But he would come back and haunt you if you refused the money.’ She stood up to indicate the interview was at an end. She knew what had upset Annie before. Hadn’t she seen Seth Armstrong ride away down the drive after her? Her hand went to the bell-rope by the side of the massive fireplace.

  ‘I’m relying on you finishing the girls’ dresses for the Mayday celebrations.’ She gave the bell-rope a pull. ‘Let’s hope the weather keeps fine.’ She smiled. ‘One year we seemed to have overdone the liquid refreshments and Adam had to be carried back to the cottage on a plank. His wife never forgave him.’

  With a bob of a knee and a ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Annie left the room.

  ‘That poor child …’ Margot stood still, a hand to her heart. ‘And poor, poor Adam Page.’ Could a man who knew the fells like the back of his hand have fallen to his death like that? Had he really tried unsuccessfully to climb out, or had he lain there, heartbroken at Annie’s cruel rejection, just waiting to die?

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’

  The maid Johnson stood, hands clasped together, in the doorway.

  She had seen Annie Clancy going back upstairs to the sewing-room. Their glances had locked, but neither had spoken. Since that episode down by the stream she had completely ignored Annie, and told Kit to do the same. ‘Look at her, but don’t speak to her,’ she’d advised. ‘That way she won’t know what to think.’

  ‘But she’ll think she’s got away with it! The dirty little …’

  Johnson had shushed him up. ‘We know she hasn’t got away with it, don’t we? We know we’re just biding our time. Don’t we?’

  That night Annie sat alone in the gardener’s cottage putting the finishing touches to a blouse.

  She was not afraid of being alone. Over and over again she impressed the truth of this on herself. What if the stairs creaked in the middle of the night, or a door swung open on rusty hinges? Adam had told her that the cottage was built just before the Great Plague down in London. It was said that a wealthy merchant had brought his wife and baby all the miles north, desperate to save them from the terrible ravages of the disease, only to have them both die of the cholera not three months later. So if she thought she heard the thin wail of a sick baby before cockcrow, she was imagining it all. Adam had often teased her about letting her imagination run away with her.

  Had Mrs Gray been right when she’d sworn that Adam had tried to climb up out of the gully? Was it all in her imagination that he had gone out and deliberately walked to his death? If he had, would he come back and haunt her with ghostly reproaches? Was that his whiskery face peering in at the window, that pale blurred wavering outline up against the glass?

  Now, with the lamp lit and the fire glowing brightly, the little room was filled with peace. There was no need for her to keep on glancing over her shoulder as if she sensed a shadowy figure standing there. No need at all.

  Bending her head over her sewing she put the finishing stitches in the button trim down the front of the white blouse, her stitches as fine as spiders’ legs. The blouse was pretty with its lace-edged frill round the neck. Pretty, not smart like the blue gown she swore she would never wear again. She bit off a thread. Now it lay pushed down into the big chest in her bedroom where it could stay for ever.

  A red-hot cinder fell into the hearth with a faint enough click, but Annie flinched and looked nervously behind her.

  When she heard footsteps on the path outside the back door she held her breath. When she saw the latch slowly rise the sewing dropped from her fingers into her lap. She could actually feel the blood draining from her face and her scalp tightening of its own accord.

  ‘Who is it?’ She heard her voice, an alien voice, high and tinny, mechanical, like the squeak of a clockwork toy. ‘Is anyone there?’

  Her legs were trembling but if she was sharp enough about it there might be time to hurry across the room and bolt the door. She started forward then backed away as the door was suddenly banged open to reveal Kit Dailey dressed for the road, a cap pulled low over his forehead, with Johnson in a long coat buttoned to her throat right behind him.

  ‘You should have bolted the door, Annie Clancy.’ Kit’s voice was whisper-soft. ‘We told you we’d get you one day – remember?’ His dark eyes looked almost black. ‘We haven’t forgot you watching us, have we, Ruby?’

  Johnson looked like a black crow in her floor-length coat, with her heavy boots showing beneath the folds. A black straw hat covered her hair and was tied beneath her chin with a trailing scarf. She looked as if she was ready for a long, long journey.

  ‘We’re not likely to forget a thing like that, are we, Annie?’

  Her face was filled with hate; it smouldered in her narrowed eyes, and the twist of her thin lips. Annie forced herself to speak as calmly as she could.

  ‘Just tell me what you want … then I can get on with my sewing.’

  The white blouse had fallen to the floor as she stood up. It lay there, in a heap of white ruffles, delicate and pretty. Deliberately Johnson reached for it with a foot, dragged it towards her, picked it up and held it at arm’s length, head on one side.

  ‘I like this.’ She nodded. ‘I think I would suit a blouse like this.’ She tossed it over to Kit. ‘Do you think I would suit it?’

&nb
sp; ‘Mebbe.’ Before Annie could stretch out a hand to stop him, the blouse was on the back of the fire, smouldering briefly before bursting into flame. ‘We’ll never know now, will we?’ His swarthy face darkened with an anger so fierce it almost stopped Annie’s heart from beating.

  ‘We’ve been given our marching orders, Annie Clancy! By her ladyship. The high and mighty Madame Gray.’ He spread both arms wide. ‘And for what? For being found together in her room.’ He jerked his chin at Johnson. ‘Along with a few bottles of their precious wine.’ He raised his fist. ‘So who told on us, then? Who else but you, Clancy! You’ve been telling on us all the time. You told her about seeing us down by the pool, and she’s been having us watched ever since. By you! Things were all right till the day you came up to the house toffed up like the bloody fairy queen. Kow-towing to your betters, sneaking your way into the drawing-room, making trouble for us.’

  Annie stepped forward. ‘I never told …’ She whispered the truth. ‘I never told a living soul. I wasn’t following you. I was out walking, that was all. I walked too far and lost my bearings. Why should I want to get either of you into trouble? What would I have had to gain by that?’

  ‘But we’ve got something to gain, Annie.’ Kit thumped the flat of his hand down on the table, scattering a paper of pins in all directions. ‘And you are going to give it to us.’ He swiped two bobbins of cotton to the floor. ‘The money, Clancy! The gold old Adam had stored away somewhere in this cottage. Mebbe even in this very room.’ His eyes were everywhere as he shouted, flaying his arms about wildly, spinning round suddenly on his heels to point a finger. ‘Oh, aye. He dropped hints often enough about being worth a bonny penny, an’ don’t tell us you don’t know where he hid it, because we won’t believe you!’

  ‘Just biding your time, are you, till you can take the money and do a bunk?’ Johnson shot out a hand to grasp Annie’s wrist. ‘Mebbe he didn’t tell you where it was and that’s why you’re hanging on here on your own. Mebbe you hunt for it in the dead of night by the light of a candle. Searching, searching …’