The Maltese Angel

by Catherine Cookson

  There were grunts and murmurs, but no-one made any rational reply as Ward stumbled away, the boy hugged to him.

  The men dispersed, some making their way along the bridle path towards the village; while those from the Hollow moved away in the opposite direction.

  As Patsy’s father held her by the hand, he did not ask why she had come to be there with the boy, the one she would often speak about as being the stuck-up skit from Gibson’s farm. He loved his daughter and he knew why she talked about that particular lad; it was because she was wise enough to know that from where she was placed now she could never hope to link up with someone like him…even the farmer’s boy that he was.

  You could have said that the field had looked almost pretty in the moonlight, with a flame here and there spitting through the haze of smoke. Everything last night had looked pink or silver grey, only the men had looked black. But as Ward gazed on the devastation of his land in the early morning light, the dirty blackened sight of the charred stooks that yesterday had been golden pyramids fanned the rage that was still boiling in him.

  When he first saw the licking flames the name that had sprung immediately to mind was the Masons; and while battering the ground with a sack between grabbing the buckets of water and drenching the hedge, his mind had dwelt on the name. And it did so until Fred, who came back later, happened to say, ‘I don’t know who did it, Ward, but you can count the Mason lads out,’ at which Ward had swung round, growling, ‘Why count them out?’

  ‘Because from six o’clock onwards, they were in The Crown Head. I saw them go in meself. And when I dropped in later, they were still there. And they were playing dominoes when I left. And it was only ten minutes later when I came out of the bakery and saw the weird light in the sky from over here. At first, I didn’t take it for a fire, but me dad did. He was just coming out of the house an’ we both took to our heels…And as for Daisy. Well, she went into Fellburn this afternoon to stay with her cousin. Now you’ll ask how I know that. Well, she dropped into the shop. She wanted half a dozen rice dollies, because she said her cousin liked them. She was chatting to me mam for a time. So you’ve got to look elsewhere, Ward. And in a way I’m glad of that, ’cos you know, there’s not a nicer couple than John and Gladys Mason, and they wouldn’t let their lads do anything like that. He would die of shame, would John Mason, if people thought that way.’

  It was then that Rob Newberry, who had also come back after cleaning up, put in, ‘You’ll likely get your best lead from the lad later, because by the looks of him he must have come across whoever it was actually doing it, and they battered him. The poor lad’s face is in a state, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if his head’s been hurt an’ all. You’ve said yourself he’s asleep again.’

  Well, if it wasn’t the Masons, who was it? The family had many friends in the village. But would friends feel a bitterness as members of the family would feel; and if they did, enough to do a thing like this? Kids might start a fire, but no kid had started this fire. This one had been paraffin fed. The quart can lying against the wall proved that. Whoever was carrying out the work must have retreated in a hurry.

  And now there was the worry of Fanny. When Annie had gone back into the house it was to find her sitting slumped on a chair near the landing window from where she could see, if not the actual field, the smoke and the flames at their height. And she had hardly stopped crying since, blaming herself that this had happened. And in a way it had. Yes, in a way it had. But he wouldn’t change things, not for one minute. That didn’t mean, though, that when he found the culprit he wouldn’t throttle him with his own hands. Last night he had been stupid enough to say those very words to her, and it had made her worse.

  He turned about and hurried quickly back towards the house. That boy must start talking.

  They had had to call the doctor to Carl, for he had been unable to keep awake. Doctor Patten was a young man who was now noted for looking at and listening to patients, but had little to say himself, which made the villagers wonder if he actually knew anything about medicine, for he was altogether different from Doctor Wheatley. After examining Carl he had said simply that he was badly concussed and needed rest.

  But Ward could not wait until the boy was fully rested, because he meant to go and put the matter in the hands of the justices; and besides the evidence of the fire itself, he wanted to know from the boy what he had seen before he had been attacked.

  Carl was now lying in the storeroom beyond the kitchen, because Annie had stated flatly she wasn’t going to climb that ladder in order to see to him. And so his pallet bed had been brought down and a space found for it. And it was to there that Ward now made his way.

  The pallet bed was headed by an old chest, against which was placed a sack full of some commodity, and two pillows; and Ward had to drop onto his hunkers in order to come face to face with the boy. As he looked at him he gritted his teeth, for the lad could not possibly see out of his eyes. The flesh around them was purple and his nose was swollen. He did not say to him, ‘How are you feeling?’ but, ‘You feeling bad?’ and at this Carl muttered, ‘Sore.’

  ‘Oh aye, yes, you would be sore. Now listen, Carl. Try to tell me what happened.’

  Try to tell the master what happened? Between sleeping and waking he could still see the flames licking at the stubble, and then the great black thing springing on him. But the master wanted to know what happened. He said slowly, ‘He was a big man…very big. Cap on.’ He lifted a hand to his brow to indicate the peak; then muttered, ‘Big cap…He had a big cap I…I think.’

  ‘Didn’t you see his face?’

  ‘No. No; ’twas dark. ’Twas dark…well, nearly.’

  ‘And you think it was a big man?’

  ‘Oh yes. Yes…strong. He lifted me by…’ He now patted his shoulder before saying, ‘Up, and crashed me against the tree.’

  ‘He didn’t hit you with his fists then?’

  ‘No. No…just the tree…I’m tired, master.’

  ‘All right. All right, Carl.’ Ward now put his hand upon the boy’s head where the thick hair was standing up in tufts; then he straightened his back. He did not, however, immediately leave the room but stood looking down on the boy’s face. He had said ‘a big man’; and it would need a big strong man to lift that boy up by the shoulders and bang his head against the tree, because the boy, although thin, was no lightweight, and, too, the bole of the tree was only visible above the wall. Of course, there was that low branch, but that came over at an angle. A big man. A big man. Who were the big men in the village? The blacksmith, or his lads John and Henry? No, they were more broad than tall. But they were his friends; as were the Newberrys. Hannah Beaton wasn’t; but then she had no man behind her. The verger? Aye, there was a big man. But pot-bellied and bloated, and he doubted that he had lifted anything heavier than the Bible in his life.

  He went through others in the village. They were all men of medium height, from the shoemaker up to Parson Tracey. But there were some big men in the Hollow. Some of those Irish Paddys could lift a horse; but all of them had, at some time or other during the year, done jobs for him, and they all seemed to like working for him—they had told him so, more than once—for when times were hard he had taken one or other of them on when he could easily have done without them. No; it had not been anyone from the Hollow.

  Then who? His mind swung back to the Masons. As Fred had vouched, the brothers had been in the inn; and Daisy was away from the place. That left only Mr Mason.

  Well, he would just as easily blame God for setting light to his fields as he would have John Mason.

  But he wasn’t going to let this matter rest, for likely the same one who had caused the fire had set the trap for the cattle; and once having started, God knew what he would do next. So he was going to the justice.

  In the kitchen he said as much to Annie; and she agreed with him, saying, ‘Aye, well somebody wants bringin’ to boot. Apart from the field, there’s that lad’s face. To my
mind, somebody got a big gliff when they were doing their handiwork, and thought to finish him off. And they could have, an’ all. By the way, I’ve had to burn his clothes; and the bit of hair he’s got left was running with them.’

  ‘Running with what?’

  ‘Dickies, of course. He had lain in that hovel of the Rileys, hadn’t he? Well, you only need to put your nose in the door of one of those shanties and the dickies, lice and bugs come out to meet you. You’ll have to buy him a new rig-out, at least coat and pants. But when you’re at it, you could throw in a couple of shirts, ’cos as he stood he had only one on his back and one off it.’

  ‘Anything else you can think of?’

  ‘No, not at the minute, but you owe him that.’

  ‘Huh!’

  He walked from her, out of the kitchen and up to the bedroom.

  Fanny had the child at her breast; and he pulled a chair to the side of the bed and watched his daughter feed; and he didn’t speak until Fanny, laying the child to her side, said, ‘What do you intend to do?’

  ‘I told you. I’m going to the polis. Let them deal with it, because I’ve racked my brains and I can’t think of anyone I can lay it on, not round about, anyway.’

  ‘Have you thought of the boy?’

  ‘Yes; yes, I have; and that’s why I’m doing it.’

  ‘When you mention his name they will likely question him.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What if it should reach the papers, Ward, and that man from whom he ran sees it? The local papers probably get as far as Durham, and it was from some farm near there that he ran away.’

  ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘You could change his name, and instil into him why you’re doing it. It’s for his good. And yet he once said to me that that was all he had, his name.’

  ‘Well, what shall I say it is?’

  ‘You could give him mine…McQueen. Anyway, from what I understand, Annie tells me that some people think we are related, because we came on the scene at the same time.’ She did not smile when making this statement; and he, taking her hand, patted it as he said, ‘I’ll say it’s Carl McQueen. Sounds a good name, one he shouldn’t object to.’

  When her eyes moistened, he said quickly, ‘Now stop it. You are not to cry any more. Think of her’—he pointed to the child lying on the patchwork quilt—‘and remember, the more you worry the longer you will have to stay in bed.’

  She now brought the hand that covered hers up to her breast and, pressing it tight, she said, almost in a whimper, ‘I’m afraid, not for myself, but for you. What will they do next?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing, my dear. Once they know it’s in the hands of the polis, that will scare them. You know, in a way they are sort of proud of the village and its good name, and so they don’t like intruders, and for them the polis are intruders. Probably we all have something to hide.’

  There was a pause before she said, ‘No; no, they certainly don’t like intruders, not of any sort.’

  He could give no answer to this, but he bent forward and kissed her; then he went hastily from the room, thinking, Yes, she is right. They don’t like intruders of any sort. Someone was determined to make him pay for the one he had brought in.

  Two days later there was a report in the Newcastle Journal. It was headed: Outrage on farmer. And the journalist went on to prove his powers of imagination in describing the blazing cornfield and the intruder who must have been intent on killing Farmer Gibson’s young farmhand, Carl McQueen, who was now suffering from severe concussion and with his face utterly distorted, having been banged repeatedly against a tree trunk. And this wasn’t the first time that Farmer Gibson had been the recipient of village spite: not so long ago his cattle had been nobbled. There must have been a reason for these actions, the journalist went on; but as yet he had not been able to fathom it, as the villagers themselves were all tight-lipped.

  The villagers were not tight-lipped in the inns, nor in the grocery shop, the butcher’s, the cobbler’s, nor the baker’s. Even Fred said it was a mistake to call in the polis; in the end they would have found out who it was. As for neighbouring gentry, Colonel Ramsmore had suggested it was the outcome of a lad tampering with matches and tobacco, having a sly smoke behind the wall. When the state of the boy’s face had been pointed out to him, he had blithely come back with, Oh, that could be explained by the young fellow’s climbing the tree; then slipping and falling onto the top of the stone wall. Those copings were pretty sharp. Perhaps it was indeed Gibson’s own boy who was the arsonist.

  When this version was spoken by the man who was in all senses Lord of the Manor, well, said the villagers here and there, there could be something in it. And wasn’t Ward Gibson’s wife called McQueen before he married her? Now that was funny, wasn’t it?

  However, the overall version was, let them wait and see what the polis did. But those friendly towards Ward Gibson hoped that the polis would get the fellow before Ward did, for if they didn’t, then the village would definitely be in the papers; and not only the local ones, because they remembered what Ward had said on the night of the fire.

  As it happened, nothing emerged from the enquiries, and Ward soon found he had other problems to deal with.

  Four

  Fanny was slow in regaining her physical strength, and so it was two months later when the baby was christened Jessie Flora Gibson: Jessie, after Ward’s mother, and Flora, after Mrs Killjoy. Frank Noble had taken the service in the little chapel in the Hollow; and the children of the Hollow had waited outside to receive the christening piece. The contents of the christening piece, so named, held whatever the family could afford, be it sweetmeats, a piece of silver, or even just a copper. It should happen that Patsy Riley had placed herself determinedly at the head of the queue and so received the bag from Ward. And, as primed, she said, ‘Health an’ wealth an’ all things good fortune bring to it.’

  Present at the christening tea were, except for the actors and Mrs Borman, those who had sat round the table at the wedding feast. Mr and Mrs Killjoy were present, and of course their family who, on this occasion, had been relegated to the barn under the care of Carl, and following the tea, they weren’t brought back into the house to show off their tricks. There were two reasons for this: first, Mr Killjoy was not at all well; and secondly, an unusual altercation took place at the end of the tea between Charlie Dempster and the Reverend Frank Noble. It came about when Jane Noble happened to remark that she was glad to see Patsy Riley get the christening piece, and Charlie came back promptly with, ‘Well, here’s one that wasn’t glad to see her get it, missis, for she’s a scamp, that one, leading the others rampaging around, picking up things they oughtn’t to. Been round my backway. If I’d caught her I’d have wrung her neck. She should be where her dad is at this minute, doing time,’ which caused Frank to come back at him with: ‘Now, now, Charlie, be fair. Riley got into a fight, and, after all, he was just defending his own.’

  ‘Got into a fight, you say, parson? Are you for them? Those Feenians comin’ over here blastin’ an’ bombin’ an’ murderin’ the gentry; all under orders from that man Parnell. Scum he is, lowest of the low. Riot-rousers.’

  ‘Now, now! Charlie; you’ve got your facts wrong.’ He didn’t add, ‘again’, but went on, ‘Parnell, let me tell you, is of the gentry, born and bred; all he is doing is fighting for the Irish poor, and if he was an Englishman fighting for the English poor, such as the factory workers, the miners and such, he’d be praised as a hero.’ Frank was tactful at this point not to mention farm labourers.

  ‘You’re damn well on his side; and on theirs an’ all, that lot in the Hollow. Of course, you live next to ’em, that’s why, likely.’

  ‘It isn’t because I live next to them,’ said Frank quietly now; ‘it’s simply because I read history: I see two sides of this question. Have you asked yourself why so many Irish come over to this country? It’s because they’re starving; and they were brought low through the rents and
taxes of the English landlords over in their country. And I would add this,’ said Frank, getting a little heated now, ‘if this was just a matter of politics it would soon be settled, but the main trouble is religion and bigotry. Yes, bigotry, believing that, there being only one God, He is for you, and you alone. Bigotry, I say again. And you needn’t go any further than your own village, which is rife with bigotry.’

  Seeing the look on Fanny’s face, Ward put in quickly and on a false laugh, ‘I’ll always remember this day, and we’ll talk about it to Jessie when she’s grown up, won’t we?’ He reached out and took hold of Fanny’s hand. ‘We’ll tell her that our two friends, the parson and the blacksmith, almost came to blows, and it was a good job the argument didn’t take place in the forge, else you, Frank, would have been a gonner.’

  This caused general laughter around the table, and Frank, looking now at Charlie, said, ‘I’m sorry, Charlie. I lost my head. And as Ward’s just said, I could, couldn’t I, literally have lost my head had I been in the forge.’

  But Charlie wasn’t to be placated so easily and, his big head wagging from side to side, he said, ‘I still don’t know, parson, how you can be on their side after Mike Riley busting that fellow’s jaw.’

  ‘Well,’ said Frank, with a broad smile on his face now, ‘what would you do if someone called you a pig-nose Paddy? and to that added, “Do you push the pigs out of your bed to let your wife in?” I can tell you what, Charlie, I’d have had a go meself if that had been said to me.’

  ‘Sticks and stones may break me bones, but words won’t hurt me.’

  At this childish retort, Fred and his father and other men at the table laughingly shouted him down.