The Tide of Life

by Catherine Cookson

  She lifted her head now sharply and looked at him; but he did not meet her gaze as he went on, ‘The meat stuff won’t last long, the foxes’ll have a field day.’

  ‘I’ll go down and get it.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing. I’ll bring it up.’

  She stared at him as she said, ‘It’s too much to ask.’

  ‘What is?’ He gave a small laugh. ‘To take a dander in the dark? Anyway—’ His chin drooped forward as he ended, ‘It’s good to see you again, Emily; we miss you down there.’

  She looked at the lamp again. ‘How are things going?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, as usual. Old Abbie trying to rule the roost. But the new one, I think, will put a spoke in his wheel.’

  She jerked her head round towards him. ‘He’s come then!’

  ‘Oh aye, about a fortnight ago, a fortnight the morrow to be exact. A Mr Davies came from the solicitors and told us to expect him…Mr Tooton’s not there any more. He left, you know, and went down to somewhere in the West Country so I was told.’

  ‘What’s he like?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Hard to say as yet; quiet but misses nothing. When old Abbie gets yapping he just looks at him, then turns away without saying a word, leaving the old fellow up in the air. His name’s Stuart, Nicholas Stuart. It’s a Scottish name but he’s no Scot, not from the looks of him, he’s got a foreign appearance somehow.’

  ‘Have…have you taken to him?’

  George nodded slowly as he said, ‘Aye, in an odd sort of way; aye, I have, Emily, I’ve taken to him. He’s no fool. He’s not throwin’ his weight about either, he’s biding his time and weighing things up. But…but somehow I feel he’s going to have a very lonely life of it unless he gets himself married. But who is there to take him on around here, he’s got the prison stamp on him? Why, they tell me when he went into The Running Fox it was as if they had all been struck dumb, they just sat looking at him, and when he finished his pint they say he looked back at them, one after the other he looked at them, and then went out without a word. And he hasn’t been back since. Ma Riley says he’s easy to please about his food; she hasn’t had any complaints so far.’ Now George grinned as he ended, ‘And that’s sayin’ something for she wouldn’t get a prize for her cookin’. I think Jenny would make a better hand at it if she’d let her have a try. She’s the new lass,’ he explained; ‘she’s quite nice, pleasant. I’ve often thought you would have got on well with her; I could have seen you laughing together…You happy, Emily?’

  She now looked fully at him, and it was a moment before she answered, ‘I would be, George, if he was.’

  ‘That’s askin’ something.’

  ‘Aye, yes, it is.’

  ‘What sent him on the day’s benders?’

  ‘He went to collect the money she left him. I had to make him go—I wish I hadn’t now.’

  ‘He was a fool; he should have stood and fought it. There’s even those in the village now who say he’s had a rotten deal.’

  ‘I wish they would tell him to his face then, it might bring him some comfort. But he believes everybody’s against him, from the top, middle and bottom, everybody. Even his so-called friends haven’t shown their faces…the Rowans.’

  ‘Ah well!’ George now hung his head, then looked to the side, and she waited for an explanation of the implication that had been in the two words, but without venturing one he turned away towards the door, saying, ‘Well, if I’m to beat the foxes I’d better get down there, Emily,’ and she answered, ‘Thanks, George. It’s good of you, so very good of you.’

  She stood looking at the closed door for a moment before turning towards the bedroom. There was a reason why the Rowans hadn’t shown their faces. George knew it, likely everybody knew it but herself. Was she closing her eyes to something? No. No. Give him his due, he wasn’t a man like that. What had been between him and Miss Lizzie Rowan was in the past long before she herself had come on the scene. She mustn’t get things like that into her mind. No, she mustn’t; she had enough to put up with.

  But it wasn’t long before she found out the reason why the Rowans’ hand of friendship hadn’t been extended in Larry’s hour of need.

  George had made two journeys back to the house. On the first he deposited the pork, the duck and a parcel which held a thick lined winter coat for her, together with other small packages of fruit and chocolates, two tins of toffee, and a decorated cake which was all broken up.

  The second journey George made was to carry up the two small crates, one holding six bottles of whisky, the other the same number of quart bottles of beer.

  When Emily bid him goodbye she took his hand and shook it slowly as she said, ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you, George,’ and to make light of it he replied, ‘Much worse with me, Emily.’ And she let him go at that.

  She was utterly weary and sick of heart when at last she took her place in the bed, lying pressed close against the wall because at the moment she couldn’t bear contact with him. It was some time before she fell into a deep sleep. At some time in it she dreamt that she was back in the house and it was another New Year’s Eve and they were in the library again having a bit of jollification. She heard Larry singing, his face was bright with happiness, his head was back and he was singing that old touching song, Oft, In The Stilly Night. She heard every word:

  ‘Oft, in the stilly night,

  Ere Slumber’s chain has bound me,

  Fond Memory brings the light

  Of other days around me;

  The smiles, the tears,

  Of boyhood’s years.

  The words of love then spoken,

  The eyes that shone

  Now dimmed and gone,

  The cheerful hearts now broken!’

  That song always had the power to make her cry.

  When she listened to the chorus being sung again she blinked her eyes and realised that she wasn’t dreaming. She put out her hand. His side of the bed was empty. She sat up but didn’t get out of bed. Drawing up her knees, she put her arms around them and drooped her head onto them. She shouldn’t have left that crate there. How long had he been drinking? It was a repeat performance of a few months ago.

  He had stopped singing now and was talking. She raised her head slightly as his voice came in a growl, saying, ‘You’re a mean bugger, Dave Rowan, a mean-minded bastard! Oh aye; all was forgiven when I was to come into the house and farm. You would have let her come to me then, wouldn’t you, you rotten swine you? You were willing to forget the times when you were goin’ to kick me arse over head if I came within smelling distance of your gate, and her. Then you almost had a seizure when I got a place of me own, a farm of me own, a place that made yours look like a dungheap. You couldn’t forgive me, could you? It ate you up. The envy ate you up. But then it all changed, Dave, didn’t it, it all changed, when Rona died. You didn’t mind Liz coming to show her condolences then, oh no, it was all cut and dried, an’ I like a bloody fool was willing to let bygones be bygones, for who better than Liz to run the house and be a farmer’s wife…an’ be a farmer’s wife, eh? And such a house. And such a farm. But me world blew up, didn’t it, blew sky high? An’ where am I now?’

  There was the sound of a bottle crashing against the stone hearth, and as it splintered he yelled, ‘I’m back where I started from! But you won’t down me, not you, Dave Rowan. I mightn’t beat the rest of them, but begod I’ll beat you. I was like a bad smell in your nose you once said, but afore I’m finished, I’ll choke you with that smell. An’ I’ve got a way of doin’ it an’ all. Oh aye, I have that.’

  His voice faded away. The only sound now was his grunts and his snorts. He’d be asleep with his head on the table.

  So that was it. That was it. My God! He would have married that Lizzie Rowan. Yes, he would. What had he said about her? She could run a farm as good as any man. He had married the first one for what she could give him, and he had been prepared to marry the second one an’ all for
the same reason, so as she could come and help him run the farm. Likely that is why he’d gone after her all those years ago in order to get his foot in a farm, any farm that would take him away from here.

  She had been barmy, daft, romantic, like some of those lasses she had read about in the Ladies’ Weekly; how from them being servants they had married their masters, lords and such, and had been trained to be ladies. Eeh! She had been blind, and gullible. Well, it was finished. Once he sobered up she’d let him have it, and then she’d get away from this frozen hilltop, away from this back-breaking, heartbreaking piece of land and this little stone box of a house.

  It was some long time later when she rose from the bed and got into her clothes.

  The clock on the kitchen mantelpiece said fifteen minutes past six. He was lying half sprawled over the table. She had to step warily as she went towards the hearth for broken glass was everywhere. She put some wood onto the pale embers of the fire, put the kettle on the top of them, then set about sweeping up the glass from the hearth and picking it out of the carpet. When this was done she went to the table and stood looking down at him.

  Near his outstretched fingers was a bottle three-quarters full of whisky. There were still four left in the crate, which meant that he had swilled more than a bottle of the stuff from the time he had got up, and that on top of what he had already taken would, she surmised, keep him in a state of stupor for a few hours more. The new coat was lying across the wooden settle. She didn’t even glance at it. What she did now was to light a lantern and place it on the doorstep; then taking the bottle with the remaining whisky from the table, she put it into the crate with the other four, carried them outside down the path and to the garden wall, and there one after the other she smashed them on top of the stones.

  She did not do the same with the beer. Beer, she considered, never had the same effect as spirits on people; and, anyway, he’d need something to get over his sore head when he came round.

  As she returned up the path towards the door the first large flakes of snow began to fall and she thought, Let it come thick and fast, ’cos I won’t be here to clear it away …

  He came to quicker than she had expected. It was about nine o’clock when with groans and grunts he raised his head painfully upwards and glared through blinking lids around him; then his hand went groping for the bottle.

  She had just come in from milking the cow. The snow was coming down so thickly now it blotted out everything within a yard or so. She stood within the closed door and watched his hand groping round the table. She watched him stagger to his feet, turn and face her, then splutter, ‘The bottle…where’s the bottle?’

  She didn’t answer but went back to the door, flung it wide open, pointed and said, ‘It’s with the other four.’

  He screwed up his eyes at her trying to understand.

  ‘You’ll have a job picking the broken glass up, it’s splayed over the patch you dug a while back.’

  ‘You! You!’ He choked on the second word and his dry tongue came out searching for moisture round his lips; and now he roared at her, ‘You! You smashed them?’

  ‘Yes, every one of them.’

  ‘You young bitch, you!’

  Before she knew what was happening his fist had come out and she was knocked backwards onto the crate of beer. There was a searing pain going through her eye and coming out of the back of her head, and a smaller pain attacking her hip; both were unbearable. She let herself sink away through the dark layers that were enfolding her; she thought she was going into death and she made no fight against it …

  When she came round she was on the bed and he was kneeling by her side. The pain was still with her but mostly in her head. She saw him through a haze. He looked sober and he sounded sober and she heard him say, ‘Oh my God! Emily; I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Oh, I…I thought you were gone. Oh Emily! Emily, I didn’t mean it; I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t…Oh Emily! Emily.’ When his head drooped onto her breast she did not put her arms about him as she lay thinking, I wouldn’t hurt you for the world; no, but I’d go and marry me old sweetheart after I’d led you on to believe that I had a feeling for you. He was crying again, he always cried in a crisis.

  ‘Forgive me, Emily. Say you’ll forgive me. God! I wouldn’t have done that to you if I’d been meself, not to you. Say you forgive me. Oh Emily! Emily.’

  She didn’t say it; but when she patted his shoulder it conveyed her unspoken words and she knew that she’d still be here to clear the snow away after the big fall.

  PART FIVE

  THE SECOND YEAR

  One

  She couldn’t believe she had been living in the cottage for only a year; nor could she believe that she was but eighteen years old, because she felt a woman, a fully grown woman, one who was used to shouldering responsibility, one who was used to…carrying a man. From the day he had struck her and she had succumbed to his genuine sorrow she knew that the pattern of her life was set inasmuch as it would be she who must lead, but covertly, for she must never let him imagine that even on his own small plot he had failed.

  They had harvested their crop of potatoes and vegetables in season. They still had a good supply of milk, butter, cheese and eggs, and they did an exchange with Mr Waite for fodder and oddments, and the sheep had doubled to six. He had considered doing away with the horse for it didn’t earn its keep, but she had been against this for she had grown fond of the animal. But meat, oil and candles had still to be bought, and as yet there was no return in cash for their labours.

  They were seriously thinking of taking up pigs; but then so many people kept pigs, almost every cottage round about had its sty. What was evident to her, however, was that they must take up the keeping of some livestock that would bring in a steady, if small, return, and quickly. A pig could issue ten to a litter whereas a sheep gave one, or two if you were lucky. And anyway, before you could make money on sheep you wanted a good-sized herd, and a wide range to run them on; they had neither the herd nor the range.

  These thoughts were very much to the fore in Emily’s mind as she sat on the carrier cart, not on the tail now but up front with Alf Morgan. She was a regular customer of his and so he afforded her the courtesy of the front seat. And he didn’t hide the fact that he considered her a handsome lass, and a pleasure to look at for she had a skin on her face like a peach. More than once he had thought it was a bit of a shame that her hands were as rough-looking as a navvy’s; but then she needed them to be hard and strong, for by all accounts she had a tough life of it up on Bailey’s Rise.

  After stopping the cart he swung her bags from under the seat and down to her, saying, ‘See you next week then, lass,’ and she replied, ‘Yes, Mr Morgan, see you next week.’ And that was another thing he liked about her; she didn’t take liberties, she always gave a man his title. There was a divided opinion about her on the road. Some said she was a loose piece living up there with a man who had once been her master; others that she was only a bit of a lass who had been led astray by a fellow who was no more than a nowt. He placed himself among the last group for from what he remembered of that fellow Birch his head had been too big for his hat.

  There was a light breeze blowing, but the sun was bright and still warm although it was the middle of October.

  She swung up the hessian bag, which she had made into the shape of a long knapsack, for ease in carrying it up the hills, and after putting her arms through the straps she hitched it onto her shoulders; then picking up the two smaller bags, one in each hand, she started along the road towards the stile.

  She’d had her head slightly bent so she wasn’t aware until she lifted her foot onto the first step of the stile that a man was approaching from the other side. As he came nearer and she stared at him her throat went dry. She had seen him a number of times before; even if she hadn’t realised who he was she would have recognised the trap which he was driving when it had passed the carrier cart on the coach road. But on these occ
asions when she merely glanced at him she’d had no idea of what manner of man he was except that she endorsed George’s description of him looking like a foreigner.

  But now she was seeing him close up, face to face. They stood, one on each side of the stile, and they both knew who the other was. She saw that he wasn’t very tall and he was thin with it, but it was a hard thinness. She couldn’t describe it to herself except to think that he appeared like some of the men in the steelworks in Jarrow who’d had all their flesh melted off them with the intensive heat. His face, too, was thin, but it held no resemblance to that of any steelworker, for the skin was brown, a sort of pale brown, like a tan. But it was his eyes that were different; they were dark, all dark, seemingly no whites to them, and their shape was not like that of any Englishman she knew. Was he Chinese? No, he didn’t look like a Chinaman, and she’d seen numbers of Chinamen in Shields, Arabs an’ all, and he certainly didn’t look like an Arab, yet he didn’t look English.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  When he held out his hand towards her she lifted her foot quickly back from the stile step and shook her head.

  ‘Then let me lift your parcels over.’

  Again she shook her head while all the time feeling stupid. Her thoughts were racing madly back and forwards in her head. Why had he come over to this side of the road? Surely he knew who lived on this side. Was he looking for trouble? But his voice didn’t sound like that of a man who was out for trouble. It had a lazy sound, slow, quiet; nice, she thought, if it had belonged to anyone but him.