Never Look Back

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘It ain’t fair,’ Sidney sobbed. ‘John loved his trees, he wanted to plant as many new ones as he cut down. If all the men hadn’t gone rushing off to California there might have been a way we could have got them off him quicker. But it took too long.’

  Matilda broke down then too, clinging to Sidney in anguish. It was so unjust that a man who worked as hard as John should die in such an awful way. She could hardly bear to ask how Cissie was. She just knew her friend would think her own life had ended too.

  ‘We took him home on the cart and buried him a coupla days after,’ Sidney said at length. ‘It were terrible, Matty, you not there an’ all. It’s even worse now, Cissie’s just all in pieces, she can’t do nuthin’ for herself no more. Peter keeps asking where John is, I can’t make him understand.’

  ‘What about Tabby and Amelia?’ Matilda asked, a sudden fear clutching at her heart.

  ‘They’s fine,’ Sidney said in a flat tone. ‘Tabby’s been real good with ‘Melia and Susanna, but she wants you so bad ‘cos she’s scared about Cissie being the way she is. I’ve been telling them all everything would be all right once you got back, so when I heard yesterday that a boat was on its way, I just corned down here, hoping you’d be on it.’

  Matilda felt as if all her blood was being slowly drained from her body She’d spent the entire two-week voyage home thinking of little else but John’s glee when he saw her order book. John was a man who should have lived to be ninety, he was fit and strong, and so full of life. Cissie and Sidney had depended on him completely for he was the one with an education, a craft, foresight and wisdom. Even she had come to lean on him.

  ‘I miss him so much,’ Sidney whispered, his eyes brimming with fresh tears. ‘He was like a pa to me, and I don’t know what to do without him.’

  Matilda hugged him tightly for a moment. There was nothing she could say which would take away his hurt. To say he had to be a man now and take John’s place wasn’t appropriate, even though she guessed that was what he’d been trying to do.

  ‘You’ve got me,’ she whispered back. ‘Now let’s go home.’

  Cissie was just sitting by the stove staring into space when they got back to the cabin. She looked at Matilda as if she was seeing a stranger, and even when Matilda rushed to embrace her, she didn’t respond. Sidney said she’d hardly moved from that spot since she buried John, and when she made rare utterances, it seemed she was talking to him.

  She was as grubby and untidy as the cabin, her hair like a bird’s nest, the buttons on her dress all askew. Her once plump cheeks were sunken, there was no light in her green eyes and her skin was grey.

  Tabitha had rushed down the lane as soon as she heard the cart coming and had thrown herself into Matilda’s arms, sobbing out her view of everything that had happened. She had composed herself now, sitting on her bed holding the wriggling Amelia on her lap and restraining Susanna from rushing across the cabin to climb on Matilda while she was embracing Cissie. ‘Why is she like that, Matty?’ she said, her tone rather cold and stilted.

  ‘It’s just shock,’ Matilda said, suddenly aware that she must try to hide her own feelings for the sake of the children. ‘She’s sort of gone somewhere else in her mind for a short while. But now I’m back to look after you all, she’ll soon get better.’

  But even as Matilda made that seemingly confident statement, she wasn’t so sure her presence would effect an immediate recovery. John hadn’t just been Cissie’s beloved husband. He’d banished her memories of her tainted childhood, lifted her into respectability, and given her the sort of life she would never have been able even to imagine back in her time in Five Points. Every single item in the cabin he’d built for them was a reminder of him – the furniture carved by his loving hands, the fruit trees outside tenderly planted by him. Even the bed they shared still held an indentation of his body. Each time Susanna tried to climb on her knee, Cissie would see John’s blue eyes looking back at her. And the dreams they had woven together for their future hung in the air to taunt her.

  Matilda suspected Cissie’s mind had slipped back to that cold, damp cellar in New York. For in her grieving and confused state, John’s death must signal that everything good had ended, and she would sink back to where she came from.

  ‘I tried to do everything Aunt Cissie used to do,’ Tabitha said, her voice quivering. ‘But I couldn’t manage all of it.’

  Matilda took one look at the little girl’s haunted face, saw the dark circles beneath her eyes and her red and swollen hands, and her heart went out to her. With the best will in the world, a nine-year-old couldn’t cope with a baby, a toddler and a six-year-old, as well as trying to make meals, feed animals and do the washing and cleaning.

  ‘You did very well, Tabby. I’m proud of you,’ she said. ‘Now let me take Amelia from you. Did you really say she can crawl now?’

  After being away for so long her whole being longed to be alone with her baby, to cuddle her and examine her closely. But she couldn’t single her out for special attention when Susanna, Peter and Tabitha needed her so much more. She could see Amelia had grown, she had more hair, and two more teeth. As she put her down on the cabin floor, the sight of her wriggling fat little bottom, the cheeky face turned around to make sure her mother was watching, made her want to laugh, yet she couldn’t laugh at a time like this, not even at her own baby.

  ‘I’m scared of Aunt Cissie now,’ Tabitha confided later that evening as Matilda took all the children down to the brook to wash them. They needed a real bath, but it was a warm evening and with so many pressing things needing to be done, Matilda had decided a quick dip in the brook would do for now.

  ‘Scared of Cissie!’ she exclaimed, thinking it was better to make light of it than try to explain. ‘You’ll be telling me you’re scared of me next.’

  ‘Well, she should remember she’s a mama,’ Tabitha said, pursing her mouth in a way that reminded Matilda sharply of Lily ‘She doesn’t even hold Susanna any more.’

  ‘Even mamas can get sick sometimes,’ Matilda replied, wondering if Tabitha was remembering her own mother acting strangely. She tucked up the skirt of her dress, peeled off Susanna’s clothes, then waded in to wash her. Susanna squealed with laughter because the water was cold, and after all the misery it sounded like music to Matilda’s ears.

  She looked back at the other children. Tabitha was undressing Amelia on her lap, Peter sitting beside her, taking off his boots. She just wished she could make them laugh too. ‘But this mama doesn’t get sick, and after you’re all clean I’m going to make you pancakes for supper. I might even read a story too.’

  But however reassuring Matilda was trying to sound, she was frightened as well. Susanna might be only two and a half but she was only too aware something was badly wrong. She had grown out of babyhood into a little girl in Matilda’s absence, but disturbed by the sudden change of atmosphere in her home she had reverted back to wetting herself, and Sidney said she often sat on the porch just sadly rocking herself.

  Peter wasn’t eating, Sidney reported he’d been crying in his sleep, and several times he had found him just waiting in the lane, pitifully hoping his father would return. It didn’t matter too much that all of them were dirty, or even that they’d only eaten the scantiest of meals in the last nine days, but to be suddenly deprived of love and affection was very serious.

  Sidney’s grief was almost too painful to consider. This family was everything to him, he saw the little ones as his brothers and sisters, John had been father, teacher and his idol. At his side he’d begun to learn a craft, to be a man. But at only fourteen he was still only a boy, he needed reassurance that this was still his home, that the love he’d been shown by this family would never be withdrawn.

  Even faithful, affectionate Treacle seemed cowed and scared. He had slunk around Matilda’s skirts when she got out of the cart with Sidney, but his tail barely wagged and his ears were laid back. He had always shadowed Tabitha wherever she went, but now he was keepin
g his distance from everyone, lying up on the porch looking mournfully at them.

  Yet overall it was Tabitha who concerned Matilda most. She had been through so much before they got to Oregon. She had become so settled and happy here in the cabin, but now, once again, death had thrown her back to a state of uncertainty.

  In the days that followed Matilda’s anxiety grew. On that first night she had believed that once she got the cabin straight, the children to bed, Cissie bathed and her hair washed, Cissie would sense she was safe again, and begin to respond again to her family.

  But there was no improvement. Each morning when Matilda got up, Cissie would be awake already, silently staring at the ceiling, and it was clear she’d slept very little. She would get up and get dressed when Matilda told her to, but immediately slumped down into the chair where she would stay all day, only moving when she needed to go to the privy, or if Matilda ordered her out on to the porch.

  She had all of Matilda’s sympathy, for she knew what it was to have her heart torn apart. She remembered only too well all those long, long nights after Giles was killed, wondering why she had to be singled out for such cruelty. She knew too that feeling of hopelessness, the desire just to lie down and die herself. But she had rallied herself to take care of Tabitha, and she couldn’t understand why someone as strong as Cissie could shut out her children.

  She tried everything to make her respond, coaxed, cajoled and sometimes even snapped at her, but it seemed her friend was deaf to everything. Nothing affected her, not Susanna screaming, Amelia trying to haul herself up by pulling at her skirts, or Peter demanding something. Matilda began to think if fire broke out in the cabin she would do nothing.

  Her skin grew greyer, there was no shine on her curly hair, the impertinent grin which was once so much part of her character never showed itself. She answered questions with a nod or a shake of her head, rarely uttering a word, and she would take just a few spoonfuls of food before pushing it away.

  As time went on Matilda found herself exhausted with trying to do all the household chores, looking after the children and tending the crops, milking the cow and feeding the animals. She kept telling herself that Cissie had managed while she’d been away, but Sidney and John had always seen to the animals, chopped wood and shot or trapped meat for their meals, and now she had to do that too. Sidney tried to do all he could to help, but he had to go down to the sawmill every day, just to make certain that nothing was stolen and to try to sell the timber in stock, so mostly she had to struggle through it alone.

  The children wanted Cissie’s attention, and when they couldn’t get it, they played Matilda up. Tabitha did her best to help, but she grew angry when things went wrong. One day when Amelia crawled right out of the cabin and into a puddle of water, she picked her up and smacked her out of pure frustration as she’d only just dressed her in a clean dress. Another time she tried to chop wood for the stove, and unable to do it, she hurled the axe down, narrowly missing Peter’s foot. Matilda shouted at her on both occasions, and Tabitha ran off into the woods crying. Matilda felt like doing the same herself, but she couldn’t, someone had to stay and do the mountain of work, and care for the little ones.

  The future worried her even more than the present. John had invested everything he had in his sawmill, and if Cissie didn’t recover soon and decide what should be done with it, the trade John had built up would be lost and the mill would become worthless. They wouldn’t starve, she and Sidney could shoot rabbits and deer, and there were enough vegetables to live on, but it was going to be grim when winter came without money to buy oil for the lamps, foodstuffs for the animals and provisions like flour, sugar and rice.

  Each time she looked at those timber orders she became even more frustrated. If they could be filled and shipped down to San Francisco the profit would solve all the immediate problems. Sidney did have a surprising amount of knowledge about timber, but he couldn’t do it alone, and while Cissie was locked in grief, Matilda couldn’t find out how much money John had left, find men to help, or safely leave the children to go into town to get some advice.

  Two long weeks passed with it growing hotter each day. Although the endless sunshine made washing and drying clothes so much easier, Amelia and Susanna grew tetchy, and it meant the crops and fruit trees had to be watered too. Often Matilda had to leave this chore until dark when the children were asleep, and one night she stumbled over a stone and fell headlong into the brook.

  She was surprised rather than hurt, but as she hauled herself out in the dark, dripping wet, and caught her foot in her dress, ripping it, she was suddenly very angry, as that meant yet another chore for her to tackle. As she stamped back up to the cabin and saw Cissie sitting out on the porch, the usual faraway look in her eyes, her anger and frustration rose up and spilled over.

  ‘That’s right, you just sit there like you’re waiting for the parson to call. Don’t worry yourself that I’m doing all the work, wearing myself out and nearly drowned in that fucking brook,’ she burst out. ‘You just carry on feeling sorry for yourself. Stupid bloody Matilda will sort everything out for you.’

  She had never ever used that terrible swear word before, it was a remnant of Finders Court she’d buried, but perhaps by using it she had inadvertently called up the violence of that place too. Some primitive reflex action made her leap up and strike Cissie hard across the face.

  ‘Get up off your arse and do something,’ she yelled at her. ‘I’d care for you if you was sick, but I’m buggered if I’ll wait on a bloody ghost. ‘Cos that’s what you are, Cissie my girl, a fucking ghost, with no guts, no heart and no soul no longer.’

  Cissie looked up at her in utter surprise, her hand moving tentatively towards her burning cheek. ‘I didn’t know you knew such bad words,’ she said.

  To hear Cissie speak a whole sentence was such a shock that Matilda reeled back, suddenly aware that in her anger she’d reverted right back to what she once was, a guttersnipe from Finders Court. Yet she couldn’t apologize, she was seething with rage.

  ‘I know far worse than that,’ she growled at the girl. ‘And if you don’t come out of that bloody trance you’ve been in, you’ll hear them.’

  ‘No one hits me and gets away with it,’ Cissie replied, leaping out of her seat and springing at Matilda, fingers poised to scratch her.

  Matilda nimbly side-stepped her, and Cissie fell forward off the step of the porch on to the hard ground beneath it, landing flat on her face.

  All at once Matilda came to her senses, horrified by what she’d said and done. She jumped down and bent over to pick Cissie up. But to her surprise Cissie rolled over, caught hold of her by the knees and pulled her down to the ground, pummelling her with her fists and screaming out abuse. Treacle came haring out from the bushes, barking furiously and pulling at both the women’s clothes, not knowing who to attack or defend.

  It was Sidney who stopped it, he came running out, wearing only his pants, jumped down and pulled them apart.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he exclaimed. ‘Have you both gone off your heads?’

  Matilda was lying on the ground, flat on her back, her wet torn dress sticking to her. Cissie was standing by Sidney, panting as furiously as Treacle who looked from one to the other in bewilderment. Above her was Sidney, his bare chest very white, and his red hair shining like a torch with the light of the porch lantern behind it. But it was his shocked expression which made her see the funny side of what had just occurred. His eyes were like mill-stones, his mouth hanging open.

  Her laugh was just a tinkle at first, but it gradually grew into a loud guffaw which she couldn’t stop. She rolled on the ground, holding her sides, and laughed until she began to cry.

  ‘She’s gone off her head. She swore at me, and hit me,’ she heard Cissie exclaim. ‘What’s up with her, Sid?’

  ‘I dunno,’ he replied. ‘But at least she’s got you speaking again, Cis. I reckon we’d better get her inside.’

  Matilda veered between la
ughter and tears constantly as the pair of them took her in, sat her down and kept peering anxiously at her face. It was some time before she was able to voice what she was thinking.

  ‘I shouldn’t have sworn at you, Cissie,’ she said eventually. ‘And it was terrible that I hit you. I’m sorry for that. But at least I seem to have stuck an arrow up your backside. It’s the first time you’ve shown the old Cissie is still at home.’

  It was Sidney who laughed then, long and hard, as he made a pot of coffee.

  Cissie looked round at the sleeping children and put a finger to her lips. ‘You’ll wake them, Sid. Stop laughing and tell me what’s so funny.’

  That night Matilda was too exhausted to believe Cissie had really snapped out of it. When she woke the next morning to the sound of the stove being raked, and opened one eye to see it was Cissie in her night-gown, with a shawl around her shoulders, she could hardly believe her eyes.

  She crept out of bed, for she didn’t want to wake the children yet, and slid her arm around Cissie. ‘How do you feel today?’ she asked.

  ‘Confused,’ Cissie said with a sigh, and laid her head on Matilda’s shoulder. ‘I know John is dead and buried. But I don’t understand how we came to be fighting. What was it about?’

  ‘Me losing patience,’ Matilda said. ‘Sit down and I’ll explain.’

  Cissie smiled weakly as Matilda told her what had sparked off their fight. But as she went on to speak of the frustration she had felt, Cissie looked bewildered. ‘You mean I’ve been crazy? Not even looking after the children?’

  Matilda made light of it. ‘You were shocked, you couldn’t help it, Cissie. Lily was like it for a time after she lost her baby. I was just as cruel to her too.’

  ‘It’s all kind of blank,’ Cissie whispered. ‘I remember Sidney and Bill Wilder coming back with John on the cart. I washed him and laid him out myself. I remember the minister coming out here too, and the funeral service at the church. But I can’t remember coming home afterwards, or anything else. When did you come back, then?’