The Tide of Life

by Catherine Cookson

  When the old man’s head went back she jumped to her feet and screamed at him, ‘Get out! And I hope a flat cart goes over you, an’ not a small one. Go on!’ She advanced on him, and such was her attitude that he backed from her, but slowly, his face grim now, and when he was standing in the open doorway he jerked his head sharply towards her, saying, ‘And you…you want to mind your place, ’cos I’m in charge now, don’t forget, until the rightful owner comes. I can put you out on the road.’

  ‘You won’t put me out on any road; I wouldn’t stay here and work under you, not for a pound a day I wouldn’t, you wicked old swine you.’ When she banged the door in his face she heard him stumble back and gasp, and the last words he yelled at her were a mouthful of obscenities.

  She now leant against the back door and stared down the kitchen. It wasn’t possible; she couldn’t have been that bad. ‘I’ll have the last laugh on you.’ She could hear her voice. How many times had she heard her say that to him, I’ll have the last laugh on you? And now she could actually hear her laughing. She put her hands over her ears and ran towards the fire and sat down on the settle. What would he do? What would become of him? It was enough to drive him mad.

  When the kitchen door opened she jerked her head around. It was the clerk again. He came down the room towards her, saying, ‘We’re leaving now but…but we’ll be back tomorrow.’ His voice was low, his words slow as if he were talking to someone just bereaved.

  She looked up at him and said, ‘It can’t be true…Is it?’

  ‘The old man told you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m…I’m afraid it is.’

  ‘And…and he can’t claim anything?’

  ‘Nothing; only what was left to him in the will. His wife, or the deceased, said he’ll be allowed to take as much as he could get onto a dray to furnish his home…Has he another house?’

  ‘A little two-roomed cottage up in the hills.’

  ‘Dear, dear. It’s a most strange case. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a stranger.’

  ‘How…how’s he taken it?’

  ‘He’s very distraught. That’s what I came to say to you. I think someone should be with him until he recovers.’

  ‘Yes’—she pulled herself to her feet—‘Yes, I understand. Hasn’t…hasn’t she left him any money at all?’

  ‘A small wage that she would have paid a farm boy. The rest, everything goes to her legal husband.’

  ‘Could…could he protest, I mean take it to court?’

  ‘He could, but it would take time and cost a great deal of money should he lose the case, and if he hasn’t any money—’ He spread out his hands and his coat sleeves slid up his arms, and she saw that his white cuffs were false and attached to a blue striped shirt like a working man’s and the front of his shirt was covered by a white dicky. ‘It’s very sad,’ he finished. ‘And I’m sorry for him.’

  ‘When…when will the other man be coming?’

  ‘We’re not quite sure, we have to go into it.’ He smiled weakly at her. ‘If the man has been of good conduct he may have been allowed out before he has served his full term of imprisonment. There’s a lot to go into.’

  She nodded mutely at him and he said kindly, ‘Good day to you,’ and she answered, ‘Good day.’

  He had turned and was walking up the kitchen again when he stopped and said, ‘I was on my way to tell the groom we’re ready,’ and at this she pointed to the back door, saying slowly, ‘Straight through the arch.’

  She didn’t move from the kitchen until she heard the wheels of the carriage going across the gravel drive, and then in actual fear of what she would find she went out of the kitchen, across the hall and towards the drawing room.

  After tapping gently on the door and receiving no answer, she pushed it slowly open. He was sitting in the chair hunched forward, his joined hands extended towards the fire; he didn’t move, even when she was standing by his side.

  She became as still as him in the silence that pervaded the room. So motionless were they, they could both have been frozen in death. But they weren’t dead, they were alive, and she knew she would scream if she didn’t break this awe-filled quiet.

  Her mouth was opening to speak when he turned to her and there was only one word to describe his look and that was ferocious, and it was intensified when he spoke because his words were growled out through clenched teeth. ‘Don’t smile,’ he said; ‘don’t say you’re sorry; and don’t…don’t for Christ’s sake come out with any of your pet wisdoms such as never say die.’ He now tore his locked hands apart and his fists, doubled up until the knuckles showed like bare bones through the skin, banged down violently onto the arms of the chair.

  She was staggered by his attitude which was in the nature of an attack. When she entered the room she had seen herself putting her arms about him and drawing his head to her breast and telling him that he wasn’t alone, that she would stay with him, go wherever he went, look after him, help him, and that if he put a brave face on things he would come out on top. In short, she would have said the words that he had dared her to repeat.

  In actual fear now, she stared into his face. It was unrecognisable. She had seen him in all kinds of moods. She had seen him come raging down the stairs from the room above the kitchen; she had seen him surly; she had seen him brought low with weeping; and as excited as a schoolboy; but never had she seen him look like this. He looked mad. And she was now made to think he had gone clean mad for, suddenly springing up from the chair, he dashed around the room kicking at one piece of furniture after the other, chairs, settee, little tables. When he reached the end of the room he picked up a porcelain vase that was standing on top of a narrow china cabinet placed between the two tall windows and, lifting it above his head, he turned and hurled it against the wall. As the pieces splayed across the room she cried out, ‘Don’t! Don’t do that! That won’t get you anywhere. If you start breaking things up they might even make you pay for them.’

  She stood, her mouth agape, fearing again what his reaction might be. She watched him become still, then turn slowly and look at her and now say grimly, ‘Yes, they might even do that an’ all, they might make me pay for it out of me wages. Do you know what she left me for wages, eh? What she would have paid a boy, six shillings a week. Why, before I married her she paid me fifteen shillings a week…Married, did I say?’ He kicked the base of the broken vase towards the fireplace, yelling as he did so, ‘She committed suicide. She planned it. She did it on purpose just to bring me down. I hope she rots in hell forever and a day. The bitch! The dirty, stinking bitch!’

  ‘Don’t say that ’cos curses come home to roost.’ Her voice was merely a protesting whisper, but it seemed to infuriate him further.

  ‘What do you know about it? In fact, what do you know about anything?’ He came at her now as if he were about to strike her, but she didn’t back from him. For some reason, perhaps because of his last denigrating words, the fear had gone from her; in fact she was feeling defiant, even aggressive. Although she realised he had experienced a great shock, his reaction to it had diminished her pity. What she couldn’t explain to herself was the fact that her own reactions were caused mainly by witnessing his reverting to type, for at this moment she was seeing him as a farm labourer, a drover, not the man who had acted as master of this place for eight years.

  She glared back into his face as she cried at him, ‘What you goin’ on about anyway? It isn’t the end of the world; you’ve still got a pair of hands on you. You can use them; others have had to…’

  His face looked aflame, even his eyes appeared red, and the saliva ran out of the side of his mouth as he cried, ‘Who do you think you’re talking to? Get out! Get out!’ He thrust his finger towards the door. ‘By God! it hasn’t taken you long to sum things up. Jack’s as good as his master now, is he? And look here, me lady, if you think I’ll marry you because I’m finished, you’ve got another think coming. I’ll never marry you or anyone else as long as
I live. So get out afore I say something I shouldn’t.’

  ‘You’ve already done that.’ Bitterly she held his glance for a moment longer, then turned from him and marched from the room. She didn’t run, nor did she make for the kitchen now, but she went upstairs, across the landing and up into the attic room. Nor did she fling herself onto the bed and burst into tears; she was too angry, tears were for later.

  She stood at the small window, her arms folded tightly under her breasts. The night was spreading over the land, and in the far distance she could still see the spire of the village church. She pictured the village street tomorrow morning, or even tonight if Abbie should get that far; they’d all be dancing jigs in The Running Fox. And when she came to think of it, could she blame them? They knew him for what he was, an upstart who had married the mistress of this house for her possessions; and when he had been lifted from the gutter as it were to the level of the gentry he must have played the great ‘I am’ for them to hate him as they did. And now she herself hated him.

  Shivering, she turned from the window and went to the cupboard, took down her coat and put it on, then went and sat on the edge of the bed. What was she going to do? She could walk out, she wasn’t penniless, she had more than twenty pounds altogether saved up. She could, if she liked, go all the way down to the place where Lucy was and look for a position there. Yes, she could do that; and she would, and before Abbie got the chance to give her her marching orders.

  Five

  For two days and two nights he had drunk himself silly and now he was lying in a stupor on the couch in the library.

  She had seen her father drunk, but he was a different kind of drinker. He would get blind drunk at night and sleep it off the next day, but him, as in her mind she now thought of Larry, had kept at it hour after hour, dozing off, waking up, and starting all over again. That was, until dinner time today, when he had fallen into a deep sleep. Twice she had approached close to him because she thought he had stopped breathing. Mr Tooton told her not to worry, he knew men who drank like that. After a long sleep they would wake up and then not touch it again for some weeks. But he had no need to say that to her, she told him, because she wasn’t worrying.

  Mr Tooton had been in the house since yesterday. Mr Sutton had brought him back and explained the situation to her, for Mr Birch was past understanding. He said Mr Tooton would be in charge until Mr Birch left the premises, and afterwards would act as a sort of temporary bailiff until the rightful owner took over. He did not know how long this would be but he guessed from the papers available that it would be only a matter of a few months.

  She had meant to be away by now; in fact she didn’t know why she was still here. Last night she had cried herself to sleep, telling herself she had grown up more during the last two days than she had in the past two years, and never again would she have any girlish fancies about marrying the master of any house, gentleman or otherwise. Anyway, she must have been stupid, daft even to dream of it. Well, her head was firmly on her shoulders now, and by the end of the week her feet would be planted in the direction of that place called St Leonards. She had already written to Lucy to tell her what had happened and what the future might hold.

  She liked Mr Tooton; she found him a pleasant man and, although he must be of considerable education to be a clerk to a solicitor, he was easy to talk to. She was surprised to learn that he was married and had six children; from the looks of him she had at first imagined he’d be a man who lived alone. She also observed that his clothes weren’t very good; his overcoat was almost threadbare and the bottoms of his trousers were frayed.

  She learned that he didn’t live in Fellburn but in Newcastle, and she gleaned from his conversation that he wasn’t missing his family life but was very pleased with his present situation. He enjoyed his food, always taking a second helping when she offered it; and he wasn’t uppish about the company at the table for he sat side by side with Mrs Riley, and they talked together as if they’d known each other for years.

  Mrs Riley’s verdict about the clerk was that he was a canny man, not like some of them that worked in offices who had no tails to their shirts because they had been used for patching; these were the ones who walked over your wet floor and called you woman. Snots they were. Oh, she knew them, for there was a time when she had cleaned their offices.

  Mr Tooton and Mrs Riley had finished their evening meal but over their cups of tea were still carrying on a conversation about the glaring headlines in the paper which George had brought in only an hour ago.

  ‘Nine days’ wonder.’ Mrs Riley inclined her head towards Mr Tooton. ‘That’s what they say. An’ that’s what it’ll be. It’ll float away on the wind an’ like all other nine days’ wonders it’ll be forgotten.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right, Mrs Riley. Perhaps you’re right. But coming on top of the extraordinary circumstances of his…the lady’s death, I don’t know, I really don’t know.’

  Emily, carrying into the pantry a dish with the remains of a leg of lamb on it, repeated to herself ‘Float away on the wind’. Aye, but the wind would blow this nine-day wonder no farther than the village and Fellburn, and it would swirl around there for years, especially if he went back to the cottage…Where else would he go?…to Rowan’s Farm? Yes, yes, he could go there, she supposed. Anyway, she didn’t much mind where he went, for as soon as he sobered up she’d tell him she was going and she wouldn’t have to say, ‘Thank you very much for all you’ve done for me,’ or even for what he’d done for Lucy in getting her into that hospital and paying her train fare down, for she had worked morning, noon and night in this house for the past year, and for what? She had been cook, housekeeper, maid of all work…and nurse. Oh aye, she had done the work of a nurse; the stench of it was still in her nose. No, she had nothing to thank him for. But she’d wait until he came out of his deep sleep and get at him before he started on the bottle again. It was odd but she hadn’t known he was given to drink until Chrissey mentioned it; and then she could hardly believe it because he was very sober in his drinking, if she could put it that way. But during the past two days he had given proof that Chrissey was right.

  She was placing the meat dish on the marble slab when she heard the kitchen door open and then the chair legs scraping on the stone floor.

  Within seconds she was back in the room and looking to where the figure came stumbling down the room towards the table, his hand shielding his eyes.

  She watched him grope for the edge of the table, steady himself, then reach out and grip the back of the chair that Mr Tooton had vacated, and with the clerk’s help lower himself down, then sit silently staring at his hands lying flat and limp on his knees.

  ‘Make some coffee, strong, black,’ Mr Tooton was whispering to her. But she didn’t move for she couldn’t drag her eyes away from the dejected figure of the man who had once strutted like a peacock around this house and farm. No matter what his mood, he had strutted. Nine days ago she had seen him change from the sombre, worried, always part-angry master, to an individual so gay as to be unrecognisable with his former self. Then two days ago his personality had been swamped under anger so blinding as to touch almost on madness. But the man she was looking at now was a complete stranger. It wasn’t that he was dishevelled, unshaven, and looked overall as if he had just awakened in a hayloft, but that he looked utterly pathetic. She sensed that he was fully awake inside himself, fully aware that he had lost everything, and there was no strength left in him. This man was incapable of fighting.

  Not a word was spoken by anyone until, the coffee made, she took it to the table and silently handed it to him. She had almost to push it into his face before he raised his head, but he kept his eyes cast down as he took the cup from her.

  She watched him drink the coffee, in fact they all watched him drink the coffee, and when he silently handed her back the cup she went and refilled it. He again drained it, but he didn’t utter a word.

  He did not hand her the cup back this time bu
t pushed it along the table and sat looking at it. It wasn’t until Mr Tooton said in a small voice, ‘Well, I’ll be away to my bed,’ that he showed any sign of interest. And now he turned his head slowly and looked at the man; and Mr Tooton looked gently back at him and explained in the same small voice, ‘I’m staying for the present on behalf of my employers…Goodnight, sir.’

  When he turned away and walked up the length of the kitchen, Larry’s eyes followed him until the door closed behind him, then he turned his head towards the table again, but now looked at Mrs Riley who was silently gesticulating towards Emily that she, too, was on her way to bed, and what was unusual for Mrs Riley she took her departure out of the back door in silence.

  Alone with him now, Emily found she couldn’t bear to look at him for the sight of his dejection was so painful that it was bringing the tears to her eyes. His anger she could stand up to, his silences she had learned over the past year to ignore, but this surrender, this giving in, was as if she were witnessing him dying rapidly from a distance, for life, real life seemed to have gone from him.

  She busied herself about the kitchen. She washed up the odd crockery, she laid one corner of the table for the breakfast; and in between the clatter of the dishes the clock’s ticking grew louder and louder.

  She was ready for bed, the fire was banked down, the kettle was pulled to the side of the hob. She had taken the tea towels from the brass rod and folded them neatly up. She had done everything she had to do, but she could not walk out of the kitchen and leave him like this.