A few days later she didn’t know why she opened the trunk where he kept his clothes, because he had always seen to his clothes himself, folding them and laying them away, but when she did she saw it was almost empty.
Then came the morning when she woke up to an unusual silence about the place. There was no mooing from the shippon, not any sound from Bonny in his stall at the other side of the wall. After lying still for a few minutes, she got out of bed and into her clothes. The kitchen fire was bright, the kettle was on the hob, the sun was coming up, it was a fine morning. She went straight out and into the shippon; the cow wasn’t there. She went into the stable, and the horse wasn’t there. The chickens were still scratching for an early morning meal, but there were no sheep in the fold. She looked about her, over the wide landscape, down into the valley, up to the further hills. Then she went back into the cottage and, looking at the mantelpiece, she saw the letter. The envelope wasn’t sealed or even addressed. She took out the two sheets of paper and read:
‘Dear Emily,
I have given you the chance to go time and again but you wouldn’t take it. You would have had to know sooner or later about Lizzie and me. I would have married her in the first place if it hadn’t been for her father, but now he’s gone…well, I’m going to the farm. As I said, I won’t leave you stranded. I’ve left five pounds in the jar on the mantelpiece, and you can stay in the cottage as long as you like. But as I’ve already told you, if you go and want to set up for yourself you can take the furniture, with the exception of the clock, the French table and the bureau. I have taken the animals as I didn’t feel I could go over there with nothing. However, I won’t see you short of milk; I’ll leave a can every other day at the old turnpike gate for you and a bit of butter and cheese to keep you going.
I’m sorry things have happened this way, but as I indicated the other night you’ll not be alone long, you’ll soon be picked up. Good luck, and thanks for all your kindness.
Yours,
Larry.’
She sat down and put the letter on her knee and, looking straight in front of her, she said aloud, ‘You’ll soon be picked up. Whores are picked up, dock women are picked up.’
‘You’ll soon be picked up!’
And he’d leave her a can of milk over by the tollgate. Would he now! That was kind of him to leave her a can of milk. Up till she had taken to her bed it was she who had tended the animals; milked the cow and mucked her out and saw to the horse, even groomed him.
And he had kindly left her five pounds. How long could she live up here on five pounds? To his knowledge she hadn’t a penny of her own.
And the furniture. She could take it except the clock, the French table, and the bureau. They were the three best pieces, the only pieces of any real value. It was she who had brought them from the drawing room; with the help of Mrs Riley she had dragged the bureau into the hall and also the French table with its thin legs and gallery top. She had chosen that because it was pretty; and also the clock. The clock, she knew, was of value; he had told her that; also that the colonel had brought it from abroad. For the rest of the furniture, there was the chest of drawers with the little china cabinet on top of it, the settle, the table and chairs, and, of course, the two big trunks that had held his clothes and which now held only a few old shirts and small clothes.
You will soon be picked up!
You can have the furniture except …
I have taken the animals because I couldn’t go over there with nothing.
No, he couldn’t go over there with nothing, but he had left her here with nothing. Five pounds, a few sticks of furniture, and free milk if she walked a mile each way to get it.
What did he take her for?
She had bounced up so quickly from the chair that it fell backwards. She walked into the bedroom and gazed about her. She went from there to the scullery and came back to the kitchen. It seemed in this moment that she had spent her entire life in this cottage. All she’d had to give out she had given out here; she had worked from dawn till dusk six days in every week all the year round; even on the day she went into the town she had risen never later than five o’clock in the morning in order to get her chores done. She had sat through sullen silences night after night, she had loved him, pitied him, cared for him, suffered him and his moods, while all the time he was paying his visits to Anderson’s barn. And while doing that he had dared to threaten what would happen if she spoke to Mr Stuart! He wasn’t going to be made a fool of a second time. Yet as soon as the way was clear for him to step into a dead man’s shoes and become master again of a farm he had been willing, aye, that was the humiliating part about this whole affair, he had been willing that she should go down the hill to Mr Stuart.
She knew now for a certainty that all this time together he had still looked upon her as a servant, at best a kept woman, one that could be turfed out or passed on. This is what the gentlemen did with their mistresses. But gentlemen left them provided for. They didn’t say, ‘I’ve taken the cow and the horse and the sheep, and I want the clock, and the bureau, and the French table.’ No, a gentleman would have said, ‘You can have all these things and more, Emily. And here’s the deeds of the cottage and a sum that will keep you for the rest of your life.’
It paid to be a prostitute; it paid to be a mistress. But love, compassion, tenderness, and grinding daily work didn’t pay.
She ran outside now and down to the gate and, gripping its top, she moved her head slowly, taking in the expanse of land. When she faced in the direction of the river her head became still. She had a desire to run towards it; but not to drown herself; no, but to rake off all her clothes and lie in it and let it wash over her, wash away the dirt of her body, wash away the fact that his hands had ever touched her; wash away the memory of the agony that she had gone through in giving birth to his child.
Once she had been a girl who felt glad inside, whose password had been never say die, whose one aim in life seemed to be to cheer people up; but that had been at the beginning of her life, when she was a young girl of fifteen and sixteen; yes, and even seventeen. But over the last two years she had spanned a whole lifetime; she had grown from a girl into a young woman. And now she was a woman fully grown, old inside herself, aged as only tens of years can age. Yet in this moment it seemed but a flash in time since she was a small child sitting with her bare bottom on the warm flags outside their front door in Creador Street. Again she thought of the line in the little book: Existence is the time it takes for the shingle to be wet. Aye, but don’t let them forget the countless pebbles in the shingle and that each one represented a pain of some sort or other.
Her life was over, finished, in that she would never care or feel for anyone again; nor trust anybody again. No, by God, that she wouldn’t, ever again!
She turned from the gate and looked towards the cottage. What was she going to do? Pack up her few things and go down the hill to her Aunt Mary’s?
There was the watch. Aye, there was the watch. She hadn’t forgotten about the watch. The watch would be her lifeline. Sep had thrown her that line in the first place but she had lost it. Then Mr Stuart had put it into her hand again, and in this moment she thanked him for it; from the bottom of her heart she thanked him for it. And she would cling to it and haul herself up onto a place high and dry by it.
Before she did that, however, there was something else she was going to do; but she would have to wait until the day ended for it to have the proper effect. Yes, she nodded down at the cat, which was rubbing against her legs. It wouldn’t take effect until it was dark.
She walked slowly up to the cottage and brewed herself a pot of tea. Then, taking her time, she carried the wood, piece by piece, from the gable end towards the gate where the ground rose slightly, and, laying it carefully, she made a platform of most of it. It was heavy work and it took her almost till dinner time to complete.
Now she went into the cottage again and she cut herself two shives of bread and placed some
cheese on them; then sitting by the table and her actions still slow, she ate, and after she had finished she brewed herself another pot of tea. Later, she went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed and rested, for as she had often experienced of late, a weakness had overtaken her.
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when she started removing the furniture from the cottage. First, she took her belongings and laid them to one side; then she dragged piece after piece down to the platform, and those pieces that she couldn’t place on top of it she set around the sides. The kitchen table and the china cabinet posed problems, until she chopped the legs from the table and unscrewed the glass doors from the china cabinet.
The trunks posed another problem, but this she got over by using the hatchet on them …
By seven o’clock in the evening there was only the bedding left, and this she flung, one bit after another, up onto the top of the pile where some caught on the edges of the furniture, spreading out in the light wind like banners. She didn’t even feel any emotion when she saw the huckaback hand towels flying. She had been proud of the huckaback towels. She had been introduced to them down in the house, and she had brought half a dozen with her. She felt somehow they were good class, they had a quality about them.
She was feeling very tired now, exhausted in fact, yet in an odd way triumphant. She looked up at the gigantic heap. The legs of the French table were sticking out from the side like four golden rods and the pendulum of the clock was hanging out like a tongue begging water.
She turned and looked in the direction of the sun. It would be some time yet before it would be right down, but she could wait. She had all the time in the world. It would be black dark, perhaps midnight, when she would go down the hill, because she would stay here until the embers died down. Oh yes, she would stay until the embers died down because not until the fire went down would she feel clean again. It was an odd feeling, this wanting to be cleansed in some way. And on the way down she’d pick up her watch, she could find the place in the dark. And then she would walk, she’d walk all the way to Fellburn, then on to her Aunt Mary’s. And there she would rest for a time.
It was nine o’clock when she brought a can of paraffin from the shed and sprinkled it over the base of the pile. She set light to it, and the initial flame licked in and out of the wood like a live snake, refusing at first to take hold of the base but fastening on to the pieces of furniture that were dry with age; then it shot up to where the bedding was, and now it was away.
The pile was fully ablaze before the long twilight fell into night. She stood against the wall of the cottage with her old coat and hat on—the coat that Larry had bought her was on the pile—and she watched it burn. It was a bonny sight. The sparks were flying up into the darkening sky like sprays from fireworks. Yes, that’s what it looked like, a firework display. She had seen a firework display once, when they were celebrating something in Shields. She had forgotten what.
She felt a quiet sense of satisfaction as she watched the payment for two, no three years of her life go up in smoke, and when a tiny thread of guilt touched her thinking and she said to herself, ‘I shouldn’t have burned his pieces I should have kept them aside,’ she brought herself from the support of the wall and answered the thought aloud crying at herself, ‘Don’t be so bloody soft, Emily Kennedy! You’ll regret nothing. No, by God, you’ll regret nothing of this night!’
She was still standing straight when she heard the voices calling from the valley bottom. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but when she saw dim figures approaching the wall she knew she had been expecting them. They were the villagers come to see the upstart’s cottage burning. And now she looked towards them as they formed a lengthening row against the wall, and she said to herself, ‘Well, they’ve turned out in force.’
And now there were voices coming from behind the cottage. These would be the miners from the colliers’ rows outside the village; they had likely rushed over the hills to come and give a hand.
The miners didn’t stop by the back wall, they leapt it and came towards her. She could see their faces clearly in the firelight. There were some women amongst them, and they all looked at her open-mouthed, and one called, ‘What’s up, lass? What’s up? You celebratin’?’
It was a moment before she called back, ‘Yes. Yes, you could say I’m celebratin’.’
‘What you celebratin’, missis?’ Another man came towards her.
‘Oh’—she looked at him now where he was standing within an arm’s length of her—‘just a piece of me life that’s over.’
‘You all right, lass?’ He came even closer, and his quickened breath came on her face; he was still panting from his running.
‘Yes, I’m all right, thank you.’
The man turned now and looked towards the fire. ‘Where did you get all that lot, I mean to make that pile? You can see it for miles.’
‘It’s me furniture.’
‘Your what?’
‘Me furniture.’
She looked now at the gathering faces about her. The villagers too had come over the wall, not so close as the pitmen but close enough to hear what she had to say, and it was to them she spoke. ‘The furniture was in payment for three years of me life. I had no use for it, so I burned it.’
No-one spoke, but they were all looking at her, and so she said, ‘It’s a pity, I didn’t give you warnin’ of it, you could have brought the bairns. Bairns like bonfires. You could have made a night of it.’
Still no-one spoke, but they continued to gape at her. Suddenly a section of the pile fell inwards and the sparks sprayed into the night, weirdly illuminating the whole scene and showing up a running figure that didn’t stop when it came to the edge of the crowd, but thrust its way forward. Then she was staring at him, giving him her full attention. Funny, but she knew now that this was what she had really been waiting for, hoping for, unknowingly praying for, willing that he should come and face her.
‘What’s happened?’ He looked from her to the blazing pile; then without further words he ran to the cottage door and peered in. And now the crowd watched him walk slowly back to her where she stood with her bundles at her feet, and although his voice was a low growl they heard distinctly what he said, ‘You gone clean mad?’
‘No; I’ve never felt more sane, in fact I think I’ve just come to meself; ’cos I realised the day I’d lost me wits when I came up this hill with you.’
‘What had you to do that for?’ He thrust his arm back towards the flaming pile.
‘I can do what I like with me own; that’s what you gave me. You said I could take the furniture, except of course the best bits which were the French table, the bureau, and the clock. Well, I didn’t like the stuff to be parted, it had rubbed shoulders for so long with the rubbishy pieces; the rubbishy pieces that were so necessary, like meself, you know.’ She bounced her head at him. ‘And by the way, when you took the livestock you forgot to take the hens with you. An’ thank you very much for offering to leave me a can of milk every other day down by the turnpike. It would have been a nice walk in the depth of winter with snow up to me chin.’
‘Shut up!’ His voice came in a low growl from between his tightened lips and his eyes flicked from her to each side where the crowd had now thickened; then, like them, he started as she screamed at him, ‘Don’t you tell me to shut up, not again, you two-faced, double-dealing hypocrite! An’ you can have that back.’ She now flung at him the bag with the five sovereigns in it, and as it hit his chest he grabbed it and she cried, ‘That’s it, it’ll help towards the dowry you’re takin’ to her. You couldn’t go to her empty-handed, you said, well, tell her that five pounds is from me. And one last thing I’ll say to you. I’ve only seen her but twice in me life, but I got her measure, and if I’m any judge she’ll give you as much hell as your supposed wife gave you. And when that time comes, remember me.’
A shower of sparks sprayed the sky again, the flames lighting up all their faces. Every e
ye was on them; no-one spoke. She now stooped and picked up the bundles at her feet and, her shoulders straight and her head up, she turned her back on his livid countenance and walked towards the throng. They parted for her, and she took the path past the bonfire to the gate, where George and Jenny were standing. They turned and, one on each side, they walked with her down the hill.
It was as they crossed the valley floor that they heard the jeering and loud catcalls, and at this she paused in her walk and looked back, and there came into her mind the words, I’ll never be sorry for the day I picked you up in Fellburn Market Square. When she moved forward again her head was down. They reached the road and she said brokenly, ‘Thanks, George. Thanks, Jenny,’ and George said, ‘Where do you think you’re goin’ the night?’
‘I’m goin’ to walk to me Aunt Mary’s.’
‘Not the night you’re not.’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Jenny, gently taking her arm.
‘Oh no! No!’ She stiffened. ‘I’m not going back to the house. Oh no!’
‘Nobody’s askin’ you to go back to the house.’ George spoke sharply now. ‘Anyway, Mr Stuart’s away. He went on holiday the day afore yesterday, gone to France he has, for a bit of life I think. And who’s to blame him. Anyway, you’re comin’ back with us, an’ the morrow morning I’ll drive you in to wherever you want to go.’
She stood, her head deep on her chest now. What should she do? One thing she couldn’t do was to dig up the watch the night, not with all those folk on the hills.
She went with them, docilely now, along the road; but before they entered the gate she stopped and said, ‘What about old Abbie?’
‘Oh, he’s gone. The boss pensioned him off some weeks ago. We’ve got a new lad now.’
The Tide of Life Page 42
