A Night in Cold Harbour

by Margaret Kennedy

  ‘We can’t be blamed for the barbarity of our ancestors.’

  ‘Our children may say that about us, a hundred years hence.’

  ‘You think that they will be more humane than we are?’

  ‘Probably, in some respects. In others they might shock us. But they will cling, as we do, to the safeguard of inequality in suffering. Belief in that is essential. Without it, humanity might despair. We are protected from the full impact of human agony by the notion that some law ordains it shall never be ours — that the worst disasters are appointed, by Nature, by Economy, by Divine Providence, for others. Suppose some calamity which might threaten all equally! From which no class, no race, no nation, might hope to be immune. Some comet, let us say, which must inevitably collide with this planet and destroy it? In what frame of mind should we endure that?’

  ‘Wa … Resignation!’

  ‘I doubt it. I believe that many would convince themselves of their own probable immunity. Some favourable position, some superior foresight and ingenuity, might still preserve them. In which case they would find resignation to the fate of the rest mighty easy. No. We shall cling to inequality until the Last Trump shall sound. If we abolish suffering of one sort, we shall replace it by another, harden our hearts to it and declare that it is inevitable.’

  ‘You had better say all this to Newbolt.’

  ‘Too late. He don’t know how to harden his heart — deliberately. He is, in fact, and always has been, as inhumane as the rest of us. But for his own sake, let’s hope he never finds that out. Should he ever begin to blame himself …’

  ‘Why! There he is! That’s the man.’

  ‘What? Newbolt?’

  ‘Down there in the lime walk.’

  Wilder joined his friend at the window.

  A tree-shaded path ran across the turf of the Close to the cathedral. Up and down it trotted the enthusiast, his wig a little awry, his lips moving in noiseless argument. At one point he paused. Some trenchant fact had occurred to him. He demolished his unseen opponent with it, shaking his finger triumphantly.

  ‘I must say,’ murmured Wilder, ‘he looks pretty mad.’

  ‘Poor creature,’ said the Bishop in a shaken voice. ‘Poor old man! God help him!’

  ‘God help us all.’

  The cathedral clock struck four, flinging the quarters on the air like a flock of silver birds. Wilder pulled his friend away from the window, adding gently:

  ‘Come to dinner.’

  5

  NOTHING WOULD CONVINCE Tibbie that she had not been turned out to die by the stony-hearted New-bolts. Nor would she allow that a room over the stables could be described as ‘her own little cottage’. As for Mrs. Hollins as an attendant, that dirty tramp and her children should never come next or nigh her. She would sooner die in a ditch.

  ‘But she will do far more for you,’ pleaded Jenny, ‘than the maids do here. You always complain that they neglect you.’

  ‘So they do. Sluts all.’

  ‘Mrs. Hollins will be in the stables too, next door to you. Whenever you ring this pretty little bell …’

  ‘I’ll ring no bell. She’ll rob me right and left. Your Papa is out of his senses to bring her here, and that’s what all the village says.’

  ‘She has nowhere else to go. Cranton turned them off.

  ‘And for why? Folks don’t get turned off for nothing.’

  ‘You should be sorry for her. You never had so hard a life yourself.’

  ‘I’d have been ashamed, at her age, if I couldn’t keep myself. I got my own bread from the time I was seven years old till the Lord struck me down paralytical. And there she is, eating your Papa out of house and home, likewise her brats, what can’t keep themselves either.’

  ‘They’ll be put to work. Sukey is to weed the garden.’

  ‘She don’t know weeds from seeds. A fine thing it will be when all folks as don’t relish hard work can look for free lodging with the gentry.’

  Jenny shook her head sadly. She had never expected this scheme to answer. The Hollins family might be lodged above the stables, to the scandal of the entire village, but Tibbie would never be persuaded to join them. Compulsion would be cruel, and she had even ventured to tell her father that kindness to Mrs. Hollins did not justify cruelty to Tibbie. He refused to give up a plan which had struck him as solving two problems at one stroke. It provided employment for Mrs. Hollins, and might ensure better care of Tibbie. There seemed to be no other work available for the widow. The servants, already irritated by the introduction of Dickie Cottar, insisted that she would never be fit to work in a gentleman’s house. The farmers wanted no strangers in their fields. Dr. Newbolt had at first placed hopes upon a mangle. He had heard that a widow with a mangle might always keep herself. But it appeared that no mangling was required in Stretton Courtenay.

  For the children Satan had found plenty of employment. Having nothing to do, for the first time in their lives, they could not keep out of mischief. They broke the cucumber frames, let the pigs into the gardens, overate themselves and were noisily sick in church. Sukey had publicly used a term for an apron so obscene that village matrons were obliged to whisper it behind their hands: ‘She called it a — cover!’ Even Dr. Newbolt had left off patting their heads, which Jenny, after a shocked examination, had been obliged to shave.

  ‘It has to be,’ said Jenny at last. ‘My father has ordered it …’

  ‘Then he must carry me out himself. No one else will. They’d be ashamed to do it. There’s not a soul in the village would lift a finger to drag a poor old woman from her dying bed.’

  ‘He said you were to be in the stables, with all your things, by four o’clock.’

  And if she was not, Jenny would be the whipping boy. Her father would blame her; he had begun to believe that she was in a plot to frustrate him. She decided that Dickie and she could at least make a start by taking over Tibbie’s belongings piece by piece, leaving to the last the problems of the great chest, the bed, and Tibbie herself.

  She went downstairs to find Dickie who should have been swabbing the flags in the kitchen yard but was not. Nor was he to be found in the garden. It was too bad of him to play truant again: she had enough to endure without that. Going round by the outhouses she heard his voice raised in emphatic declamation. It seemed to come from an empty pig-sty.

  ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s HOUSE! Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s WIFE! Nor his servant nor his MAID, nor his ox nor his ASS, nor ANYTHING that is his!’

  ‘Dickie!’ she called.

  The recital stopped. He crawled out of the pig-sty followed by the three Hollins children. At the sight of them she gave a little scream. Their bald heads were now concealed under rakish wigs made of cobwebs.

  ‘What have you been doing?’ she gasped.

  ‘A-learning the twelve holy commanders,’ explained Sukey.

  ‘But your heads …’

  ‘I done it,’ said Dickie. ‘Folks poke fingers at them for that they’re bald. Now they look like Parson.’

  ‘Run back to your mother,’ she told them, ‘and wash your heads.’

  They scuttled off and Dickie defended himself.

  ‘You told me to be kind to ’em.’

  ‘But you shouldn’t neglect your work, or you’ll be sent away.’

  ‘Parson won’t let me be sent away.’

  ‘He’s trying to help you and Mrs. Hollins. We must do all we can to …’

  ‘They say he’s moonstruck. They say it was a full moon when they found him in that fit.’

  ‘Don’t interrupt, Dickie. We must help him in every way that we can, for he is trying to be kind. It’s right to be kind.’

  ‘Not much profit in being right, if folks think you moonstruck.’

  ‘Only very ignorant people think so.’

  ‘The gentry think so too. My father don’t come here no more.’

  ‘Dickie! Who … who do you mean?’

  ‘Why … Squire Brandon! Bl
ess you, Miss Jenny, didn’t you know that?’

  ‘You must never say such a thing. Never!’

  ‘Other folks say it. I’ve heard it said so long as I can remember.’

  ‘Listen, Dickie! If you say it you’ll have to go away. You really will.’

  ‘Aw, Miss Jenny. I wouldn’t say it to nobody but you. Any trouble from me and he’ll have me put away. My granny, she’s told me that often enough.’

  Jenny sat down on the pig-sty wall, feeling suddenly that the world was too much for her. A tear rolled down her cheek and she exclaimed:

  ‘Oh dear … what shall I do! Everything is too difficult. I’ve tried to help you, Dickie….’

  Instantly remorseful, he seized her hand and squeezed it.

  ‘Ah now, Miss Jenny! Don’t! Don’t! I’ll do all you say. I’ll do any work I’m put to. I never knew you’d be vexed at me for them wigs. I thought you’d be pleased.’

  A little cheered, she dried her eyes and smiled at him.

  ‘You made them very cleverly. Where did you find so many cobwebs?’

  ‘I got ’em from the rafters in the big barn. But they don’t answer, they dwine away so quick. Thistledown would serve better if I could find some way so it shouldn’t fly off.’

  ‘Tow,’ said Jenny. ‘A tow cord unravelled makes a very good wig: we used to do that for charades. I remember … a … a boy I used to know … made a very …’

  A bellow from the house interrupted this discussion. Dr. Newbolt had discovered that Tibbie was not yet in the stable loft. Jenny trotted off to be rated soundly for this disregard of his orders. He went himself to find the gardener and the groom, who looked sullen but dared not defy him outright. Tibbie’s possessions, including the chest, were carried away. Driven on by her father, Jenny removed the coverings from the bed. Tibbie’s shrivelled form was revealed in a calico bed gown, her feet sticking out of the end of it as gnarled as a couple of walnuts.

  ‘Parson said take her on a hurdle,’ muttered the gardener. ‘We have it at the stair head.’

  ‘Lay a finger on me and ’tis assault,’ snapped Tibbie.

  ‘She’s in the right, I believe,’ said the groom. ‘She could have the law on us.’

  Dr. Newbolt, when this was reported to him, decreed that Tibbie should remain where she was till she came to her senses.

  ‘She’s too old,’ wailed Jenny. ‘She has no senses to come to. She’ll take cold, lying there. It may kill her.’

  ‘One can’t help these people if they won’t do as they’re bid. She can lie there till she chooses to be carried to pleasanter quarters.’

  ‘But, sir …’

  ‘Do as I tell you.’

  Jenny disobeyed him to the point of putting a rug over Tibbie who lay rigid, with closed eyes. Thus she continued for the rest of the day.

  ‘She’s an ungrateful old woman,’ declared Venetia, when she heard of it at dinner. ‘Few families are so kind to an old servant as we are.’

  ‘Jenny,’ he said crossly, ‘seems to think that Tibbie should be allowed to do as she pleases.’

  ‘Jenny would have all poor people do as they please. I believe she thinks that they, not we, should make the laws.’

  ‘A Pantisocracy? Eh? That won’t answer, my girl.’

  ‘They have one in America,’ said Jenny, goaded into reply.

  ‘Together with slavery. Remember that. Tibbie in America would be black. Bought and sold. No rights at all.’

  Venetia took the opportunity to find some fault with Dickie’s work, but beat a swift retreat when she saw that this displeased her father. In all these turmoils she managed to remain aloof. She never protested against the importation of Mrs. Hollins, agreed with all that he said, and managed skilfully to suggest that Jenny might be responsible for failures and obstacles.

  The night turned chilly and a wind was getting up. Before going to bed Jenny looked in once again on Tibbie, to encounter the same mute defiance. She meant to remain awake but fell at once into an exhausted sleep from which she was roused to a racket of thunder and rain. Someone was shaking her.

  ‘Miss Jenny! Miss Jenny!’

  ‘What is it?’ she cried, starting up. ‘Dickie!’

  ‘Miss Jenny … Tibbie’s gone.’

  ‘What? Not … not …’

  ‘Gone out of her bed. Gone out of the house.’

  ‘Impossible!’

  ‘Her bed’s empty. Go up and look.’

  She hurried to put on a dressing gown.

  ‘Wait till I strike a light. But who could have …’

  ‘She went of her own self, I believe.’

  ‘She can’t move. She hasn’t moved for years.’

  While she found the tinder box and lit a candle Dickie explained. He slept in a little cupboard of a room next to the kitchen. The servants’ door, he said, had been left open for Kitty who had gone to dance at the Coach and Horses, which he trusted Parson would never come to hear of. He had heard a strange shuffling noise going along the passage and out into the garden. At first he had been too frightened to investigate. When he nerved himself to do so he found the door not only unlocked but swinging and all the rain coming in. He peeped out. By a flash of lightning he had seen something like a great long old snake wriggling away into the bushes. This, he believed, was Tibbie, pulling herself along by her hands and dragging her paralysed legs after her.

  Jenny, by this time, had run up to the garret with her candle and discovered that Tibbie’s bed was indeed empty.

  ‘The stairs! How could she have got down the stairs?’

  ‘Maybe she just rolled herself down.’

  They ran down themselves and out into the downpour which immediately soaked them to the skin. By the next flash they located Tibbie lying under a lilac bush. She said:

  ‘I’ve bested the lot of you, I believe.’

  ‘Oh, Tibbie! How could you? Run, Dickie, and fetch Mrs. Hollins.’

  Jenny crouched shivering by Tibbie who remarked that when she had rested herself she would get on to the village. Some kind soul would take her in. Not all hearts were as hard as Parson’s.

  ‘You’ll probably get on into your grave,’ snapped Jenny. ‘You’ll have caught your death.’

  ‘Thanks to you if I have.’

  Footsteps and laughter were heard. Kitty came tripping along the path under a very large umbrella held over her by a very large young man. At the sight of Jenny, rising up from the bushes in a long white dressing gown, she gave a squawk and fainted into the arms of her swain.

  ‘Put her down,’ commanded Jenny. ‘Put the umbrella over her. And help us. Nothing will be said about this tomorrow. But we must get Tibbie into shelter. Oh … here are Dickie and Mrs. Hollins.’

  Amongst them they lifted the truant up and carried her to the stables. She was surprisingly heavy. It was all that they could do to get her up to the loft, amidst shrill squeals from the Hollins children, who had run out to join this frolic. All three were stark naked although Jenny had provided them with nightshirts.

  Kitty’s sweetheart was then dismissed with a renewed promise that no trouble should ensure for him or her. Jenny, shivering, her teeth chattering, removed the soaked bedgown from the withered old body, whilst Mrs. Hollins warmed a blanket. They rolled Tibbie up in it and put her by the fire.

  ‘I’ll have her bed sent over as soon as I can tomorrow,’ said Jenny. ‘I wish we had cordials. I had better fetch —’

  ‘Naught better than a drop of gin,’ said Mrs. Hollins, ‘and that I’ve got.’

  ‘Gin? Oh, I don’t think Tibbie would …’

  ‘The poor man’s medicine,’ asserted Mrs. Hollins, producing a bottle. ‘You’d better have a drop yourself, and so had I, after that soaking. Now, Mrs. Lockyear, ma’am.’ She shook Tibbie. ‘Have a sup of this, do! ’Twill keep off the chills.’

  Tibbie took a sizeable sup and grunted approvingly.

  ‘That’s good sense,’ she said. ‘But they’d never give it to you at Parson’s, not if yo
u was perishing for it. Naught there but gruel and pap!’

  The bottle was offered to Jenny, who shook her head, Mrs. Hollins then took a swig, smacked her lips, and announced:

  ‘Old people should ought to have what they fancy. That’s what does them good. Eh, Mrs. Lockyear?’

  ‘You’re in the right, Mrs. Hollins, ma’am.’

  Jenny left them agreeing that gruel and pap never did nobody any good. She went home, rubbed herself dry again, and went to bed. But she could not get warm. All night she lay shivering, as the rain slackened and the storm died away.

  Tibbie turned out to have taken no harm from the night’s escapade. The poor man’s medicine might have preserved her. When her bed was taken over next morning she was still taking doses of it and appeared to be on the best of terms with Mrs. Hollins.

  It was Jenny who had caught her death.

  6

  AFTER A MONTH of amiable neutrality Venetia appealed to Charles, her banker brother, for intervention at Stretton Courtenay. Her account of matters there puzzled him very much.

  ‘I should not have believed a word of it,’ he said to his wife, ‘if it were not for these letters which my father has been writing to the newspapers.’

  ‘Only one, surely?’

  ‘Only one that we saw. I believe that there were others.’

  ‘And only to expose the Slave Trade.’

  ‘My dear Eliza! I sometimes doubt if you can read.’

  ‘I protest it was all about black slaves.’

  ‘Not all of it.’

  Charles went to his desk and found the cutting.

  ‘ “In the cotton fields of America,” ’ he read, ‘ “the little piccaninnies sport and gambol about their mothers’ knees … the overseer who would lift his impious hand to Woman would be an object of universal execration.…” Hmph! I doubt if my father knows much about the cotton fields.’

  ‘No indeed. They flog the poor black wenches with a calabash, while the dandies look on and make brutal jokes.’

  ‘I think you mean in a calaboose. And some of our dandies don’t object to seeing a woman hanged. “In the cotton mills of Britain infants of tender years, torn from their natural protectors, sleep for six hours in twenty-four. Their beds are never cool. As one party is driven back to toil another takes its place … in the iron foundries … splashed by molten metal … nor does any inquest sit on such deaths. In the mines….” You’ll observe that he quotes no authority, no places, no dates. Nay, here’s something of that sort. “Are we to accept the defence for these barbarities offered, six years ago, by the employers of Burley, in a protest against legal protection for infant apprentices: Free labourers cannot be obtained to perform the night work but upon very disadvantageous terms to the manufacturers.” Ha! Ha! Somebody should have told them not to say that; it don’t sound well.’