‘What business on Saturday?’
‘Nothing. Cast it from your mind.’
‘George!’
‘Oh, all right. There’s to be a protest. Out at Marcombe. A big one this time.’
‘Then I’ll come with you.’
As ever, it struck him that her tone invited no argument. Slowly, though, so as not to upset her, he eased himself away.
‘Don’t be daft, Annie. It ain’t no place for a woman.’
‘Don’t see why not. I can make my voice heard as well as any man.’
‘I don’t doubt that.’ It was a hastily made remark that he regretted instantly and seeing her glare, he tried to adopt a more sympathetic tone, ‘It’s more a case of it not being a fit place for a woman.’
‘Pah! You said that about the rick-burning and that turned out all right.’
‘Aye and what I said back then is still true: things could turn nasty and I wouldn’t want to be worryin’ about you.’
‘Oh, very noble of you, I’m sure.’
‘Truthfully, Annie. That was a rick-burning and just the two of us on our own, whereas if word’s to be believed, then this could be hundreds of folk and all of them angry. Feelings run high at these gatherings and every man’s got to look after hisself. This time there’s a real chance of getting hurt. And after all, you been… ill.’
When she swung away from him, he couldn’t miss her exasperated sigh.
‘Oh don’t go using that for an excuse. An’ anyway, if as you say there’s chance I might get hurt, then it seems to me the same’s true for you.’
‘Always the chance with these things, aye, although I make a point of trying to stay away from trouble.’
‘Tell me summat, George; do you tell Mary what it is you do?’
Although her question caught him by surprise, the panic that contracted his insides was all too familiar.
‘Annie, don’t go trying to make trouble, I beg of you.’
‘I ain’t. Believe me, I’ve no interest in making trouble for you on that score and after what I did for you, it hurts that you even think I might.’ Waving her hand in dismissive fashion, she turned about. ‘Look, I know it’s a mite odd for me to be concerned about your wife but if there’s the chance of real trouble, then don’t you think that you should at least tell her where you’re going?’ He looked back at her, surprised to realise that she had a point. ‘Don’t get me wrong; I’ve no wish to look out for her interests, but – putting meself in her boots a moment – if, God forbid, someone carried your body home to me from some riot while all the time I’d been thinking you were… well, somewhere else, then surely you can see how I’d spend the rest of my days on earth wondering.’
As he stood listening to her he was reminded of how she had been beset by the myriad questions surrounding Tom’s death, and as if that wasn’t enough, on top of that recollection came the striking memory of Mary’s terrified face the night he’d been late home; the night Annie had taken the baby. Yes, she was right; perhaps he should tell Mary something; not so much that she’d try to talk him out of it but enough to at least let her know where he was going.
‘You’re right,’ he said determinedly.
‘I mostly am, ’though fat good it does me.’
‘I’ll go an’ talk to her.’
‘What, now?’
As he started to turn about, he could feel her staring at him.
‘Yes, now.’
‘Well that’ll teach me to keep my thoughts to meself next time, then, won’t it? But don’t you forget what I said about the other.’
‘Eh?’
‘Look George, since you leave me little say in the matter, I’ll go along with your wishes and wait until your precious protest is over and done with but after that, well, I want you back again. Proper.’
Feeling her arms clasping loosely about him, he said nothing, surprised to find himself still thinking of how anguished Mary’s normally gentle face had looked that night she thought he’d had an accident. It seemed enough to make him shudder and so, making a fuss of kissing the top of her head, he risked reaching across to open the door.
‘Fair enough but for heaven’s sake, get yourself back indoors and get warmed up.’
*
‘Can you stop that a minute?’
At the draft of cold air that George brought in with him, Mary looked up and eyed him warily. The least change to his manner these days always put her on alert.
‘Course.’
‘Only, there’s summat I need to tell you.’
Avoiding meeting his eyes, she lifted from her lap the coarse fabric of the garment she had been darning, and with a weary sigh, placed it on the table, laying the bodkin threaded with yarn carefully on top.
‘What is it?’
She watched him reach under the table to pull out the other stool and sit on it before stretching out his hands in front of him and examining the backs of them, her eyes going to his jagged fingernails that bore their usual lining of dirt.
‘Saturday…’
‘Aye?’ All she could think was that he had promised to sort out the ditches for the vegetable garden after work on Saturday.
‘Come dinner time, after I’m done at the estate, I won’t be home directly.’
‘Oh.’ His announcement told her nothing other than that in all likelihood, he had already forgotten her request for help. A feeling of disappointment and irritation started to build, and fighting back the urge to remind him of what he’d promised to do, she watched him turn his hands palms uppermost and found herself looking at them too. His fingers were long, their length divided by the pronounced form of his knuckles, while the lines criss-crossing his pale skin were ingrained with black.
‘Me and some of the other fellows from… well, you know who I mean… a band of us from hereabouts are going over to the Marcombe villages.’
‘Aye?’ Presumably, then, she realised without any real interest, this was what all the recent activity related to.
‘We’re going to Marcombe Cross to meet with other folk; folk like ourselves, a good number or so I’m led to believe coming all the way down the valley from beyond Winchester and all the way up from Wembury Quay.’ When he looked up, she nodded quickly, pretending interest. ‘We’re going to press our case to Squire Chamberlin – a mean excuse for a man if ever there was one – for removal of the threshers from his farms and for the betterment of his labourers’ wages.’
‘Oh.’
‘An’ I’m telling you this, just so that you know what I’m about in case…’
Seeing the way that he looked quickly back down, she found herself finishing his thought, ‘there’s trouble?’
‘Aye. Not that there’ll be any, mind. An’ even if there is, you can rest assured I shan’t get caught up in it.’
‘You certain?’ she asked, hoping then that she hadn’t sounded disrespectful.
‘As much as anyone can be,’ he replied, his tone, she thought, betraying his hesitancy, ‘since all we’re going to do is reason for what’s right an’ proper. We’ve a genuine grievance and a good argument for fairer treatment.’ When he looked across the table at her, she met his eyes. ‘You ever been to Up Marcombe?’ She shook her head. ‘Ain’t no more than a straggle of cottages below the downs, really; mean soil on chalk that turns sticky with the winter rains… Anyway, Squire Chamberlin owns pretty much everything from the ridge of the downs right across to the edge of the heath and his tenants struggle at the best of times. Course, he don’t see any of the hardship, since his own gurt house is down in the comforts of the valley at Marcombe St. James and in any event, he lives off the toil of everyone else. But by all accounts, things are particular bad at Up Marcombe. Already this winter his bailey has turned out a good many folk for not meeting their rents, and from what I hear, those still there won’t be long behind them, ’specially with what he’s done now.’
‘What’s that?’ she asked, surprised to find that she actually wanted to know.
<
br /> ‘Well as if things weren’t bad enough this harvest, he’s gone and brought in threshing machines and their overseers, and so instead of employing teams of day labourers like other years, he needs only four or five men, six at most, and the whole thing’s over and done within a couple of days.’
‘So there’s even less work, then,’ she said, surprised at making the connection.
‘Aye, which means that folk are so desperate for work of any sort that he can pay them as little as he sees fit an’ no one can afford to argue.’
‘That’s terrible,’ she pronounced, astonished to find herself sharing his sense of injustice.
‘Aye – and it needs to be stopped.’
Trying to picture such utter desperation among ordinary people like themselves, she felt guilty for feeling irritated with him about the ditches, and stretching her back upright, asked, ‘It won’t get like that here, though, will it, as bad as that, I mean?’
He shook his head.
‘Unlikely; Squire Phelyps’ only got a couple of farms and they’re more dairy than grain. No, from what I see of it, he spends most of his time in London looking after some sort of interests in the Indies, and seems content to leave his man here to get on with it. And with such a small amount of land under grain, I can’t see how he’d bother to bring in machines for such little reward. An’ to be fair to the man, his wages are the same as they’ve ever been; unlike some, he’s not seen fit to lower them.’
‘Oh. Well,’ she began, feeling a new understanding settling upon her, ‘I know you say there won’t be any trouble but I still wish you wouldn’t go.’
‘Well, that’s a wish in vain since I’m bound to. I’ve given my word; pledged my support.’ With a quick glance up at him, she feared having made him angry and was surprised when he reached for her hand saying, ‘But you’ve no need to werret.’
‘I know you believe that,’ she said tentatively, taken aback by an unexpected surge of feelings. ‘But if anything happened to you—’
‘It won’t. I’ve told you, it’ll be fine. ‘Tis just a petitioning by folk for a fair deal, and come Saturday suppertime, it’ll all be over and done with.’
‘I know, but if anything did happen, what would I do?’
‘Well,’ she heard him answer – and then watched him swallow before saying, ‘in the first place you’d go to the farm. They’d make sure you had food and shelter. You know that, don’t you?’ She nodded, the prospect suddenly seeming too frightening and real to contemplate. ‘And then, I suppose you’d wed again; young girl like you with only the one child, you’d have no problem on that score.’
‘Oh,’ she heard herself saying quietly. If he’d meant that to sound reassuring, he’d failed.
‘But I’ll make sure you don’t have to,’ he added, and in an attempt to make her smile, jiggled her hand.
*
The following day, with George at work, Francis again darted in through the back door of Keeper’s Cottage and, pulling Mary in front of the fire, begged her to warm him up.
‘This is a surprise,’ she said, rubbing her hands briskly up and down his back.
‘You all right?’ he wanted to know, standing rigid with cold.
‘I am.’
‘G-good,’ he tried to say, his reply cut short by a series of shivers. ‘Lord, ’tis mighty cold for so early on.’
Pushing him down into the chair, she sat on his lap.
‘Here, you’ll be warmer like this. I didn’t reckon on seeing you today.’
‘Well, last eve I went round The Stag to see if the Sharpe brothers were about.’
At this discovery, she stopped rubbing his arms to look at him properly.
‘And were they?’
‘Aye, Ezra was there so I got him talking. It ain’t hard; fond of the sound of his own voice, that one.’
‘So what did you find out?’ she asked, smiling at the sight of him still hunched with cold.
‘Not much, as it happens. Truth to tell, Ezra struck me as oddly tight-lipped, although when he was talking to another fellow – someone I ain’t seen about the village before – I did hear mention of Marcombe.’
‘Marcombe…’ Mary repeated. ‘That’s what George told me about last night. Seems there’s to be a big protest there on Saturday about wages and rents and the like.’
‘He told you about it?’
‘He did. It was unusual of him, I’ll warrant, since normally if I ask he just tells me it’s none of my business. But last night, he just came in and said there was summat he wanted to tell me.’
‘So what did he say then?’
‘Well, that a band of them are going over to Marcombe to… I don’t remember what he called it, oh aye, make representations for better wages, an’ he told me all about conditions there an’ how people can’t pay their rents. What I don’t understand, though, is why he’s so private about it, after all, it’s such a worthy thing to do, ain’t it?’ Although she posed her question with a smile, his distant expression suggested that he had a preoccupation of his own. ‘What’s the matter? Ain’t I no good at warming you up today?’ she persisted, cocking her head in the expectation of a cheery response but seeing instead his serious frown.
‘Mary, you do know what it is George does for the Radicals, don’t you?’
‘Course. They try an’ get fairness for all,’ she replied and started to rub his arms again.
‘But do you know how they go about it?’
‘Course I do. He told me a long while back how they go to meetings where they listen to people – learned people, he said – an’ they talk about what can be done to improve the lot of workers like himself, folk with families like us.’
‘Well that part’s true enough; they do hold meetings, aye but there’s a deal more to it than that.’
As he looked across to the fire, his expression unsettled her, and letting her hands fall still again, she asked, ‘This protest business, you mean?’
‘No, that’s another thing altogether, a more recent thing.’
‘So, what else is there, then?’
‘Well, when you said he’d talked to you, I hoped to hear that he’d told you himself, since it ain’t really my place—’
‘Francis, you’re worrying me more than he does now. Tell me, what is it they do then?’ Noticing how he was avoiding her gaze, she felt her pulse quicken and saw him twist his mouth into a shape that suggested misgivings. ‘Francis?’
‘Well, I’ll count you’ve a right to know, so seein’ as you ask, I’ll tell,’ but before continuing, he hesitated and gave a long sigh. ‘In good part, their purpose and the reason they go to these meetings is to agree on the landowners and farmers giving rise to the worst grievances, you know, raising rents or lowering the wages they pay or not offering proper work.’
‘So?’
‘Well, then ʼtis usual for someone to deliver a letter telling the farmer to set his house in order as regards the grievances and threatening trouble if he doesn’t.’
‘I don’t understand. What sort of trouble?’
‘That depends; could be a firing of their ricks or barns or a breakin’ of their machine if they got one—’
‘Aye I remember summat like that happening somewhere hereabouts last year.’
‘That’s right.’
‘But what’s that got to do with George?’
‘Well, that’s how he’s involved.’
Without meaning to, she pulled away from him.
‘You’re tellin’ me George delivers these… these threatening letters? Only I know he don’t write them, since he can’t read nor write, not even to sign his own name—’
‘No, ’tis for certain someone else that writes them but George is one of the volunteers that takes them and nails them to the farmer’s door or whatever.’
Flashing suddenly hot, she reached to steady herself on the arm of the chair.
‘Francis, how do you know this?’
‘Mary, I live next door to The Stag
. I grew up gettin’ into mischief of all sorts with the Sharpe boys. I’m as good as one of ʼem, so it’d be hard not to know what goes on, besides which, where summat like this concerns you, I make it my business to know.’
‘An’ you’re certain it’s true, then? I mean mightn’t it be just… crowing… or gossip?’
‘I swear to you Mary, I know it for the truth.’
‘Well…’ Exhaling a long breath, she tried to recall what George had talked about last night, lost to know what to make of this discovery. ‘You’re right that I didn’t know. He didn’t mention that at all, but I suppose that’s not the worst thing he could be caught up in. I mean, if he just takes the letters about, well then—’
‘But that’s only the half of it, Mary.’
‘What do you mean, only the half of it?’ The uneasiness in her stomach that had started to subside a little was starting to knot harder again now and as Francis reached for her hands she could feel her heart pounding.
‘George is one of the rick-burners, Mary. He sets the fires.’
‘No!’ As the shriek of disbelief left her throat, things around her seemed to lose their form; the edge of the table drew away from her, the flames in the hearth took on a sinister roar and, at the corner of her eye, the tiny kitchen window momentarily went out of shape. ‘No,’ she breathed, feeling how his grip on her fingers was tightening. ‘No.’
‘It’s the truth, I promise you, Mary.’
‘No, he wouldn’t. I don’t believe you! George wouldn’t go about setting fire to ricks… to the property of others. For a start, it’s mighty dangerous.’ Shaking her head, she tried to pull her fingers from his grasp.
‘It is.’
‘No! I don’t believe you,’ she repeated, struggling to grasp how this could possibly be true. ‘I mean, why would you even say such a thing? Why? I don’t understand it.’ Bewildered, she had the urge to get away from him but the more she wrestled, the firmer he seemed to be holding on to her.
‘Mary, please—’
‘But why say it? You’ve no need to stir up trouble; I shan’t like you any the more for it… or him any the less!’
‘Mary, I knew this would be hard for you,’ he said softly, grasping at her flailing arms, ‘and believe me, I thought long and hard about whether or not to tell you—’
A Country Marriage Page 43
