‘What, after coming all this way? No, I ain’t ducking out now.’
At the firmness of her answer, he felt his shoulders sag.
‘Well then, when I run, keep up as best you can. It’ll most likely be uneven underfoot but if you stumble, don’t shriek or make a noise. And I shan’t be able to stop to help you. So, if you fall, make your way back here and wait for me, understand?’ He saw her give a single nod and did his best to contain a sigh of defeat. ‘Ready then? Right. Come on. Follow me.’
Racing across the ankle-deep grass, damp with dew, his uneven footsteps jarred upwards through his body, forcing his breathing into irregular gulps. Focusing his mind solely upon reaching the shelter of the wall, he willed himself not to check on her progress; if she managed to keep up with him that was fine. If she couldn’t, well, that was down to her but even above the thudding noise of his tread he could hear the swishing of her skirts and knew that she was no more than a pace behind him. Then, from out of the blackness, the solid mass of the farmyard wall loomed up and before he knew it, she was beside him, panting, flattened against the crumbling clay bricks. With each gasp for breath, he could smell the crisp, clean aroma of the new straw and then, feeling her hand on his shoulder, he turned to look at her and sense that despite her breathlessness, she was grinning broadly. He raised his finger to his lips and, still gasping, she nodded her understanding. Carefully, he took a couple of steps back into the field and peered upwards, his eyes picking out the domed mounds beyond the top of the wall. Three ricks. Their scout had been right.
With a fresh sense of purpose, he squatted down and started to pull things from his pockets.
‘What’s in there?’ she whispered, as she crouched beside him at the base of the wall and watched him spreading out the items on the ground in front of him. She was pointing to a shallow rectangular tin.
‘Lucifers,’ he whispered back, prying off the lid and opening out a flat sheath of what looked in the darkness to be thick paper.
‘Matches?’
‘Aye. Look, you can help me here. Find me three small pebbles.’ Without further ado, he saw her start to feel about in the damp grass, finding first one, two, then three, jagged pieces of flint.
‘These any good?’
‘Aye, fine. Now, knot one in the middle of each of these,’ he instructed, seeing her hold them out to him. ‘I’ll do this one.’ Working in silence, they secured the flints into the pieces of cloth and, with the task complete, he caught hold of her wrist and noticed the unwavering look she gave in return. ‘Now, listen to me real careful. These Lucifers throw sparks all over the place, crazed-like, and once I get these rags lit, I got to get them over the top of the wall real quick.’ He saw her nod. ‘Then, no matter what happens next, we got to run. We can’t wait about. We got to be back in them trees afore the flames get a hold enough to fetch folk from their beds. Understand me?’ With her lips pressed tight, she nodded her head rapidly. ‘So the minute I throw the first one, start running. I’ll do the next two directly and then I’ll be right behind you. Don’t wait for me. Don’t look back, and whatever happens, don’t make a sound, nothing at all. Understand me?’
‘Aye,’ she said and he noticed how her voice sounded far less confident now.
‘Move a good bit away then or the sparks could catch your skirts.’
Giving her time to back away, and bracing his body against the wall, he drew the flat splint sharply through the fold of glass-paper, creating a sound like the frantic scratching of a mouse. Then, with an urgent hiss, a shower of sparks turned into a bright flare that threw out a pool of pallid light and engulfed them in the stomach-churning smell of rotten eggs. As the ghostly glow subsided, he saw her shrink back further, her hand over her mouth, and as he stood up with the first rag now aflame in his hand, she shot to her feet.
Launching the burning rag towards the top of the wall, he held his breath, watching as it described a fiery arc before coming to rest atop the rick. A short distance away, he glimpsed her skirts melting into the darkness as he squatted back down to do the same again, and when he stood up to take aim a second time, he could hear the crackle of the fire already taking hold. Praying that she was now well on her way across the field, he launched the second rag over the wall and heard the sound of licking flames on the otherwise still night air. With his heart racing, he ducked down again and reached for another match, but this time when he tugged it through the glass-paper, nothing happened. Cursing his ill luck, he tried again, the action producing its familiar rasp but not a flicker of a flame. With his fingers trembling and his throat knotting, he reached into the wrapper for another, while all the time above him, the sound of the spitting flames was growing more distinct. Any minute now, someone would hear, and if the master had posted a watch, he might not make it back across the field to the cover of the wood. Recognising that such conjecture was only adding to his panic, he drew a deep breath, only to have the smell of burning straw prickle the inside of his nostrils. And then, with unsteady fingers, he grasped another spill, and as he drew it sharply through the coarse paper, it sent out a flurry of sparks and he thrust the phosphorescent glow against the edge of the cloth. In his mounting anxiety it seemed slow to catch, and while he was willing it to flame, he could hear the excited barking of a dog echoing around the enclosed yard.
Knowing that he was running out of time and with the cloth barely alight, he scrabbled to his feet and tossed it in the general direction of the last mound before turning to run, remembering just in time the wrapper of matches still on the ground. In one swoop of his hand, he snatched it up, and still doubled over, lurched away from the wall, the sound of voices now competing with the frantic howling of the dog to raise the alarm.
*
It was the best part of a mile to the far side of the hazel coppice and the cart track that led back to Verneybrook, and in the pitch dark their progress was erratic, but throughout the entire time neither of them spoke, the only sounds being the crunch of crisp leaf-litter and their puffing and panting as they drew breath. Keeping a firm grasp of her hand, he did his best to steer her around and between the low and barely visible stools, placing his feet more by instinct than sight, but despite his best efforts she stumbled frequently, dragging at his hand for support.
Eventually, he was able to discern the dark shape of the hurdle-maker’s hut, and felt the tautness of his body slackening in the knowledge that only a few yards beyond that lay the track. He turned briefly to look at her and she nodded, signalling that she understood the need for caution. The tiny wattle hut stood alone in a small circular clearing, surrounded on all sides by bundles of withies in great stacks, and needing to cross it without making a noise, they slowed their pace and raised themselves onto their toes.
‘Thank the Lord he ain’t got a dog,’ she whispered as they arrived in the relative safety of the lane; but paying no heed to her observation, he grabbed her hand and ran, fast, pulling her along behind him until, in a series of breathless hisses, she pleaded with him to stop.
‘Well?’ he asked, pulling her against his body with a smack, and closing his arms tightly about her, feeling how the moist warmth of her breath against his neck was stirring something inside him. From within his clasp she managed a breathless shake of her head, and as he lifted aside a tress of hair that had escaped from under her shawl, he could see that she was grinning. ‘Your first rick-firing,’ he whispered breathlessly back, all of his exhaustion wiped away in a surge of euphoria.
‘First… of many… I hope.’
Light-headed with relief, he laughed and, unwinding her shawl, lifted it from her hair and let it fall to the ground.
‘Do you feel it?’ he whispered urgently, her great gulps for air heaving her body up and down against his chest.
‘Aye. Makes me feel—’
‘Alive!’
‘Yes!’
‘Roused!’
‘Yes!’
‘And gives me an almighty desire to do this!’ he d
eclared, lifting her face towards him until his mouth felt the smooth coolness of her lips and the generous warmth of her reaction.
‘Aye but it makes me desire for more… than just that,’ he heard her murmuring as she finally pulled away, and he felt how her hands were reaching inside his jacket and her fingers were unfastening his belt.
Chapter 19
Fair Women
‘George, will you take me an’ James to the fair?’ Annie greeted him, as under cover of darkness he stole into the barn one evening.
‘Hmm?’ Slipping his arms under her shawl, he rubbed her back through the thin fabric of her blouse. ‘’Tis a chilly one tonight, for sure.’
‘Aye,’ she agreed absently. ‘So will you then?’
With a groan, he let his hands drop.
‘Why the sudden interest in the fair?’
‘Because James wants to go and it don’t seem fair to deny him just because I can’t go on my own.’
‘I might have to bring Mary.’
‘I doubt she’ll want to come; no woman in their right mind wants to tramp around the fair in the cold – but if she does, well, then she does. At least James will get to go.’
‘Well, if you leave it be for now and get me nicely warmed up, I’ll see what I can do,’ he half-promised, eager for her to drop the matter.
‘Not unreasonable I suppose,’ she said with a shrug of her shoulders and, blowing out the lantern, climbed ahead of him to the hayloft.
*
‘Fancy a trip to the fair this year?’ George asked Mary as they finished supper the following evening.
‘Oh, I don’t think I want to go trailing about in the cold,’ she replied, reaching to set their rinsed bowls back on the shelf. ‘But do the decent thing an’ go with him anyway, will you?’
Instantly, something in his chest turned hard, and with seemingly no control over his reaction, he heard himself blurting, ‘What?’ and then far too quickly for comfort, ‘Who?’
‘Good Lord, don’t tell me you ain’t seen it?’ Watching her place the lamp back in the centre of the table, he tried to think about what she had just said. She knew about James? No; surely if she had found out then she wouldn’t be talking to him in such a calm manner? Surely, she wouldn’t simply drop something as momentous as that into a conversation about a matter as mundane as the fair? Or would she? What if this was a trap to confirm some or other suspicion that had been gnawing away at her? Suddenly fearful of the ease with which an innocent remark uttered at cross purposes could trip him up, he tried to work out what to do. ‘George?’
‘S-seen what?’ he heard his voice asking as if of its own accord.
‘Oh, George, for heaven’s sake! That Robert is still soft on Lottie, of course. I thought even you knew that much.’
He reached for the chair-back, panic rushing out of his body with such force that he was left feeling dizzy.
‘Oh, aye. That.’ One by one, he peeled his fingers away from their grasp on the chair, struck by the clarity of something: that one single moment of carelessness could mean the end for him.
‘Well, the other day Tabitha was saying that she thinks he wants to take Lottie to the fair,’ he became aware of her explaining in her light and chatty manner, ‘but they need someone to chaperone them, which is why I supposed you were suddenly minded to go.’ Both of them, it seemed, were beset by the same sin of presumption. ‘Although I also hear that Annie wants to take James and so, as it happens, she needs someone to go with as well.’
Deciding for the moment not to comment, he watched her scraping crumbs from the table into the palm of her hand and then wiping them into the fire, amazed at how light-headed he felt now that the weight of his guilt was lifting. Not only that – but a perfect excuse had unexpectedly opened up before him.
‘An’ if I do take them, you’re happy to bide here, then?’ he asked, his heart beginning to slow. He saw her nod and smile brightly back at him.
‘Aye, ’tis fine by me. I’d much rather stay here in the warm with Jacob – but tell Annie to bring her Luke up here an’ I’ll see to him for her.’
‘You’d do that?’ Sometimes the women in his life were beyond all fathoming.
‘Course. I mean, it must be hard for her with them two boys. And a second babe won’t make much difference to me for a few hours.’ She dumped a pile of clothes on the cleared table and set about folding them, evidently waiting for him to respond.
‘All right then,’ he said eventually, ‘if you’re certain. I’ll do it for the sake of Robert’s courting prospects and Annie’s young James.’
‘Oh, you’re a good man, George Strong,’ she said, leaning across to kiss his cheek.
‘If you say so,’ was the reply he chose; one that as possible replies went, seemed broadly honest. But, as he stood shaking his head, he wondered – and not for the first time lately – whether the life he had taken to living was worth all of the anguish that went with it.
*
The following morning, with concerns of her own, Mary sat on the bed and peered into her tiny looking glass to examine what little of her face she could see through the coating of pale grey dust on its surface. Exasperated at the mirror’s inadequacy, she turned it face down and drew it across the blanket but although this wiped away wide streaks of dust, any improvement to her reflection was minimal. Less than amused, she pursed her lips and stared back, thinking it altogether possible that the dust had been a kindness, serving to blur the scale of her dishevelment. The words ‘hedge’ and ‘backwards’ came to mind, and with a disgruntled huff, she pulled a thick strand of hair across her face and screwed up her eyes at it. Much as she had been expecting, it looked brittle and unkempt. Tossing the looking glass across the bed, she sighed. Why couldn’t her hair look more like Annie’s? It wasn’t that she considered it important to make an effort for George – after all, he was her husband – but she did have a sudden desire to look nice for Francis, the thought of whom put an idea into her head.
*
‘The thing is,’ she explained, as she followed Martha through to her kitchen later that same morning, ‘I’m ashamed to admit that I seem to have become a bit untidy and I don’t think that’s particular fair on George.’ Lies – white lies, she stressed to herself – seemed to trip readily from her lips these days, a recognition that became unsettling if she stopped too long to dwell on it. ‘An’ I’m also ashamed to admit that the other day in church, I was looking at your hair and admiring how it’s always so neat and shiny. So I was wondering whether maybe there’s summat you can show me to make mine a bit less… well, straw-like,’ she finished with a laugh.
‘Aye, well,’ Martha said with a smile back, ‘some folk are just blessed with better hair than others but even so, I can show you summat to mix up and use. Now, if you were fair-haired like Lottie, I’d say a chamomile rinse, and for red hair like mine you need calendula, but brown hair, well, that’s easiest of all to make shiny.’
‘It is?’
‘Now, watch this. Two egg yolks into a bowl and try not to let in the white,’ she heard Martha instructing as she watched her cracking the eggs. ‘Now, a drop of brandy’s best.’
‘Oh.’
‘But if you can’t get brandy, then the same amount of dark ale will do. See how much I added?’ Martha asked, putting the stopper back in the bottle. She nodded. ‘Now, you need to add enough water to make a paste of it. It’s got to end up thin enough to spread through your hair but still thick enough to stick to it, so it’s best to add it little by little. Cold water, mind, not hot, or you’ll cook the eggs!’
She laughed.
‘I understand.’
‘Now, see how smooth an’ thick it is?’
She peered into the bowl.
‘Aye. Not much of it though, is there?’
‘Believe me, ’tis enough. Now, you wash your hair the same as always, getting it as clean as you can and being sure to rinse away all of the soap, since ’tis the lye that makes your hair britt
le. Then you spread this through with your fingers. Make sure to get it on as much of your hair as possible, but in particular, you want it on the ends.’ As Martha mimed the action of spreading the mixture through her hair, she nodded. ‘Then you leave it for a few minutes but not so long that it dries or you’ll have a fearful job to get rid of it. Then you just rinse it out with cold water, lots and lots of cold water.’
‘Don’t it make your hair smell horrid, though?’ she asked, sniffing the brownish paste and coughing from the fumes of the brandy.
‘Not if you rinse it out proper, no.’
‘Then I’ll give it a try’
‘Take this, then,’ Martha said, handing her the bowl. ‘Mind how I made it?’
‘I do.’
‘And let me know how you get on with it.’
‘Well, ’tis my dearest hope you’ll be able to see that for yourself!’ she replied.
*
On the day of the trip to the fair, as the feeble afternoon sun dropped below the verney copse, a thick, autumnal fog stole up the Wem Valley to where, later that evening, Mary watched her husband, illuminated in the grey murk by a moon high overhead, readying the horse and cart.
‘What a night for it,’ she heard Annie remark as she emerged from the mist and swept down the steps to where she was huddled in the doorway. ‘But this is most kind of you,’ she added, handing Luke into her arms.
‘Pleased to help, I’m sure,’ she replied, looking beyond her to where James was jumping about in the lane and talking excitedly to George. With a quick glance down at baby Luke, she looked back up to see her husband handing Annie up onto the cart. ‘Be careful, all of you,’ she called to them. ‘And make certain to see everything,’ she added, waving a hand to Robert and Lottie in the back.
A Country Marriage Page 38
