And yet, along with the agony, as she drew his hand away from her back and placed it over their unborn child, there was a fierce exultation too. His baby, moving in her! His own body, renewed in hers! And he lowered his frantic, exultant face until he was lying against her breast, while his arms enfolded her, tenderly, asking forgiveness for her suffering yet guilty, even now, of desiring her.
‘It’s all right,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t tremble so.’
‘I shouldn’t have done this to you,’ he said.
‘Don’t be silly. It’s the nature of things.’ And then, with a smile in her voice, she said: ‘The trouble is, I’m a bit old to be having a baby, I suppose.’
‘At thirty-six? Get away!’ he said.
But her words struck new fear into his heart and afterwards, in the weeks that followed, whenever he saw that she was in pain, the fear rose up again, choking him. He watched over her constantly; went home early from work every night; and did his utmost to make her rest.
The autumn was passing rapidly. Soon there came a nip in the air and a whiteness on the distant hills. Robert was impatient to buy his skates and on Saturday mornings, at first light, he was in the yard at Brooky Farm, working the old-fashioned chaff-cutter or pulping swedes to feed the stock.
One Saturday morning when he was there, Hedley Sharp’s housekeeper, Mrs James, came out of the house and called to the stockman, Bert Johnson, to fetch a cockerel and kill it for her. Bert brought the cockerel into the yard and carried it to the chopping-block, where the wood-axe lay handy, its blade in the block.
Robert turned to the barrowload of swedes and began loading them into the pulper. He did not want to see the cockerel killed. He tried to close his ears to its squawks and the dull thud of the axe descending. But the cockerel, beheaded, still writhed and kicked, and such was the strength in its vibrant nerves that it kicked itself out of Bert’s hands and flopped to the ground. Robert saw it; it was close by his feet; its wings still flapping furiously, its bloody neckbone protruding and wriggling, out of the collar of severed flesh.
‘Would you believe it?’ Bert exclaimed. He gave a startled, disgusted laugh and lunged towards the flapping bird. ‘Die, you beggar, die!’ he said.
Robert felt sick and turned blindly away. He felt he had to escape from the yard. And because he scarcely knew what he was doing, he failed to see the heavy lorry swinging in at the farmyard gate. There was a loud screeching of brakes and a man’s voice shouting at him. He threw up his arms to protect himself.
The lorry, before it lurched to a stop, caught him a glancing blow with its mudguard and somehow he was flung on his back, jarring his spine on the rough cobbles. The white-flashing pain of it made him cry out and yet no sound escaped his lips: the shrieking was in his spine and his brain. The dark silent world seemed to topple about him, lit by flashes of splitting white light, but after a while he could see again, and by then he was closely surrounded by people: Bert Johnson and Hedley Sharp; the lorry driver and Mrs James.
‘You all right, boy? Can you get up?’
‘What the hell’s going on?’
‘He stepped right in my way. I was just turning in ‒’
‘Poor little boy! He’s as white as a sheet!’
‘Here, young fellow, let me give you a hand.’
Bert and the driver helped him up. He stood, still in dimness, supported by them, on legs that seemed nailed to the base of his spine. But slowly, gradually, the pain grew less sharp. The dimness dispersed and he stared at his feet. ‘You all right, boy? You ent badly hurt?’
Robert nodded. He couldn’t yet speak.
‘You’ve just about knocked yourself for six. What did you think you was doing, my lad, walking slap in the path of a lorry like that? You sure you’re all right? Can you stand by yourself?’
‘Yes,’ Robert said, ‘I think I can.’
‘Well,’ said Bert, ‘you’d better be sure!’
The two men let go and he stood by himself, staring helplessly at his feet. He walked a few steps and the pain was like fire, but he tried not to let it show in his face. Hedley Sharp stood over him.
‘Seems to me you’d better go home.’
‘I’m all right. Honestly.’
‘How much have you earnt this morning so far?’
‘I don’t know.’ He tried to think. ‘I got here at seven or thereabouts ‒’
‘Well, never mind. I’ll give you three bob.’ Sharp pressed the coins into his hand and folded his fingers over them. ‘Now get off home and don’t come back. It’s nothing but a nuisance, employing you boys. There’s always some bother comes of it.’
‘Oughtn’t he to come in and sit down?’ Mrs James asked indignantly. ‘Just look at him! He looks like death!’
‘Why, if he wants to, he can,’ Sharp said.
But Robert had no wish to linger there, if he wasn’t to be allowed to work. His only idea was to get away and hide himself somewhere, away from all eyes, while he fought off the sickness and the pain.
On his way home he went into the woods and stretched himself out on a grassy bank. He lay there so still, among the dead leaves, that a rabbit, emerging from a nearby burrow, began cropping the grass near his feet. He could see the sunlight through its pink ears, and could hear the noise of its busy teeth as it nibbled a single sappy stalk, held between its two front paws.
Watching the rabbit, he came back to life. The feeling of sickness passed away and with it the worst of the bonesplitting pain. When the rabbit had gone away he rose gingerly to his feet. It was only half a mile’s walk to his home and by the time he arrived there, he was quite himself again, except for some stiffness in his limbs and a sort of cramp at the base of his spine.
His mother was out when he got in. She was with Mrs Ransome, across the road. When she returned at ten o’clock she asked him to fetch some coal for her and, seeing the pallor in his face as he carried the heavy scuttle in, she looked at him in sudden concern.
‘Have you been overworking again, down at Brooky Farm?’ she asked.
‘I had a bit of a fall,’ he said. He gave her a reassuring grin. ‘I’m a bit stiff, but it’s nothing much.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t go to that place. That Mr Sharp takes advantage of you.’
‘No, well, as a matter of fact, I shan’t be going there again.’
‘Oh, and why’s that?’
‘I’ve got enough money for my skates now.’
That afternoon, Charlie went with him into town, and the skates were bought. Robert carried them home in their box and took them out for his mother to see: splendid silver-shining things with upturned blades, each engraved with the word, Mercury.
‘There!’ Linn said. ‘So you’ve got them at last! Now perhaps we shall have some peace!’
Robert sat down in a chair by the fire. The walk back from town had tired him. He sat and examined the skates in his lap.
‘Why does it say Mercury on them?’
‘It’s the name for quicksilver,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s also the name of a Roman god ‒ the one who had little wings on his heels ‒ and that’s how you’ll feel when you’re out on the ice, speeding along on those skates of yours. You’ll be like a god, with wings on your heels, quick as quicksilver and twice as bright!’
Robert looked at him with a smile. The thought of it made him impatient to start. He rose and went to look out at the pond, where the willow trees were turning yellow and the leaves were fluttering into the water.
‘All I need now is the ice!’ he said.
He turned to walk to the table again, to lay the skates in their brown cardboard box. His mother watched him with a frown.
‘Why are you walking like that?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I’m a bit stiff, that’s all. Got a bone in my leg, as granddad would say.’
‘Didn’t you tell me you had a fall?’
‘Yes, that’s right, so I did.’ Carefully he avoided her eye. ‘I fell in the yard at Brooky this morning but it’s no
thing to worry about,’ he said.
That was October the thirty-first. On the following Monday morning, playing football at school, Robert collapsed on the playing-field and was unable to get up. He was taken to hospital in Overbridge and Linn and Charlie were sent for at once. The fall in the yard at Brooky Farm had damaged his spine. Both his legs were paralysed. There was a strong possibility that he might never walk again.
So, by the time winter came and the three ponds were covered in ice, Robert sat in a wheelchair and the ice-skates, so splendid and silver-bright, lay in their box at the bottom of the cupboard in his bedroom.
Chapter Four
Robert remained in hospital for three months, encased in plaster, unable to move. The X-rays had shown that he had a fracture in his spine and the surgeon, Mr Tate, breaking the news to Linn and Charlie, had said it would take three months to heal.
‘If only he’d told us straight away!’ Linn kept saying, again and again. ‘Instead of making so light of it, as though it was just an ordinary fall!’
For many nights she was unable to sleep. She was haunted by the sight of Robert’s face, white and fine-drawn with suffering, as he lay so still in his hospital bed. She reproached herself for her carelessness.
‘I should have seen for myself,’ she said. ‘When he said he’d fallen at Brooky, I should have taken more notice, instead of letting it pass like that. For God’s sake, what sort of mother am I? I should’ve known there was something wrong!’
‘How could you know?’ Charlie said. ‘He hid it from all of us, not only you.’
‘If only he’d been less foolishly brave ‒’
‘According to what the surgeon said, it wouldn’t have made much difference, even if we had known sooner.’
‘I can’t believe that!’ Linn said. ‘If he’d gone to hospital straight away he wouldn’t be in such agony now. And who knows what he’s done to himself, struggling on for two days and then taking part in a football match?’
She sat in her chair beside the hearth. Charlie and Jack sat opposite. She looked at them with stricken eyes.
‘We don’t even know if he’ll walk again!’
‘Why torture yourself with thinking that?’
‘You’re forgetting I’ve been a nurse. D’you think I don’t know the danger he’s in?’
‘They say the fracture will heal in time.’
‘He could still be paralysed even then.’
‘The surgeon didn’t tell us that.’
‘They never tell anyone anything! Not until they can’t help themselves. But I know what spinal damage can do. I saw it often during the war.’
Charlie and Jack looked at each other. They were both helpless and sick at heart There was nothing they could do to allay her fears.
‘Well,’ Charlie said, with an effort, at last. ‘Whatever we might fear for him, we must keep it to ourselves. If Rob himself should fear such a thing ‒’
‘Do you think I’d tell him?’
‘No, I know you wouldn’t do that, but you’re not very good at hiding things and I’m scared he’ll see it in your face.’
‘I know! I know! I shall have to take care!’
Sometimes she came close to breaking down. That such a thing should happen to Robert, a boy who had so much good in him! Was there no end to the cruel tricks that fate could deal out so casually? She knew she would need all her courage and strength to get through the months of uncertainty and give him the hope and faith he would need.
‘Robert won’t see anything, except what I mean him to see,’ she said, and that was a promise made in her heart.
But her visits to the hospital were an ordeal for her and she was always glad when Charlie or Jack accompanied her. They could always find plenty to say. Her father would talk of his work on the farm; how this or that field had come under the plough; how the threshing-machine had broken down and how they had found a dead rat in the works. And Charlie, with his quiet jokes, could even bring a smile to the boy’s worn face.
‘What’re the nurses like in here? Do they look after you properly?’
‘They’re all right,’ Robert said. ‘Nurse O’Brien especially. She’s the one with the dark hair.’
Charlie, discreetly turning his head, eyed the nurse at the end of the ward.
‘I like the look of her myself. If it weren’t for your mother sitting there, I’d be making up to your Nurse O’Brien.’ And then, after a pause, he said: ‘What do you do with yourself all day?’
‘Mostly I watch what’s going on.’
‘Do the other kids come and talk to you?’
‘Only for a few minutes, that’s all. The nurses are very strict about that. I have to keep still all the time, you see.’ Linn reached out and touched his arm.
‘Well, you were always good at that. Even as a little boy you could always keep as still as a mouse …’
Robert made a wry face.
‘I reckon I’ve had enough of it now. When I get this plaster off ‒’
‘Ah,’ said Charlie, with a little laugh, ‘we shan’t see you for dust, then, eh?’
‘It won’t be for ages and ages yet.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Charlie said. ‘You’ve had three weeks of it, haven’t you? Another three weeks and then three more ‒’
‘Then another three after that ‒’
‘There!’ Charlie said. He slapped his knee. ‘We’ve soon made the time go, haven’t we, eh?’
‘I wish it would go as fast as that.’
‘So do we,’ Charlie said. ‘The house is not the same without you and as for those ducks of yours, out on the ponds, I’m sure they miss you watching them.’
‘You’ll feed them, won’t you, if the weather turns bad?’
‘You’ll be home to feed them yourself by then.’
Autumn that year was beautiful. The berries were thick on the hedgerow trees and the leaves, changing colour, were like sullen fire. But Robert, in hospital, saw none of this. The earth and its marvels were hidden from him. All he could see was a patch of pale sky framed by the window close to his bed.
‘Is there ice on the ponds yet?’
‘No, the weather’s as mild as mild.’
‘I wouldn’t have been able to try my skates, then, even if I wasn’t laid up like this?’
‘No, that’s right, but it’s early days yet. We could still get a cold snap before we’re through.’
Linn, on the other side of the bed, looked at Charlie with a frown.
‘There’ll be no skating for Robert yet. Not this winter at any rate.’
‘Well, we shall see,’ Charlie said. ‘When he comes out of that plaster-cast ‒’
‘Ah, when!’ Robert said. He pulled a wry face and patted the cast. ‘Duddy old thing! I could smash it to bits!’
At regular intervals, during this time, the surgeon came to check Robert’s legs, to see if there was any sign that sensation might be returning to them.
‘Has Mr Tate been to see you today?’
‘Yes, he was round this morning at ten.’
‘What about those legs of yours?’
‘They’re just the same,’ Robert said. ‘I’ve still got no faith in either one.’ His eyes were very dark and deep, looking out from his thin, tired face. ‘I’ve got to have patience, I suppose.’
‘You’ve always had plenty of that,’ Linn said. ‘A more patient boy couldn’t be found if we searched from here to the end of the world.’
During these visits she was cheerful and bright; she knew she had to be, for his sake; but between times she came close to despair.
‘If Robert is not going to walk again …’
‘You mustn’t think like that,’ Charlie said. ‘Whatever happens, you’ve got to have faith.’
‘Faith!’ she repeated bitterly. ‘It’s easy enough to talk about faith but I know how slim his chances are!’
In her condition, heavy with child, she found the hospital visits a strain, and as she drew closer to her time,
Charlie begged her to stay at home.
‘Robert won’t mind. He’ll understand. He’s a sensible chap and he knows how it is, with the baby due at the end of the month.’
Linn, however, would not be persuaded.
‘I’m his mother and he needs me!’ she said. ‘I’m certainly not going to let him down! He bears it all so patiently … Surely I can bear it too?’
Her own sufferings were nothing, she felt, compared with what Robert had to bear. The worse of it was the uncertainty. She feared for the future and what it held.
‘I could bear almost anything if only I knew he was going to get well.’
The baby was due at the end of November and Linn continued to visit the hospital every day right up to the last. Charlie, to spare her as much as he could, always took her in Clew’s van, but he still felt the strain was too much for her, and on November the twenty-sixth he tried yet again to dissuade her from going.
‘I’m not taking you in today, I think it’s nothing but madness,’ he said.
‘If you don’t take me I’ll go by bus. Dad’ll go with me, won’t you, Dad?’
‘You take notice of Charlie,’ Jack said. ‘You’d be better stopping at home.’
But Linn set her face against them both.
‘If you won’t go with me I shall go by myself.’
‘Think of the baby,’ Charlie said. ‘I won’t have you taking risks like this. You know what Dr Graham said ‒’
‘I don’t care about the baby! I only care about my son!’
‘You don’t mean that,’ Charlie said. ‘Why, you’ve wanted this baby with all your heart, just as much as I want it myself.’
‘Not any more I don’t!’ she cried. The truth of what she felt broke out. She could not keep it secret any more. The thought of the baby was hateful to her: coming now, just at this time, when her son lay helpless in hospital and she could not think of anything else. ‘I wish it had never been conceived! I wish it was dead!’ she said with a sob.
Seedtime and Harvest (The Apple Tree Saga Book 5) Page 6
