The Mallen Litter

by Catherine Cookson

  Now he was running down the side street again and along the main street and to the narrow passage; but there was no sign of her or the children. He raced to the end of it and came into Lovaine Place again. It was empty. He looked at his watch. If he intended to get home tonight, he must get to the station right away. But he didn’t move.

  A man and a woman were coming into the square from the opposite side. He waited until they approached, then said, ‘Excuse me, but…but did you see a lady with three children as you were coming in, I mean outside of here?’ He flapped his hand widely, indicating the square. The man and woman looked at each other, then at him, and it was the man who spoke. His voice had a distinct haughtiness to it as he said, ‘No, no; we have seen no lady with three children.’ When they immediately passed on he felt foolish.

  Her name was Mrs Bensham. He could start knocking on the doors in this square and ask if the Benshams lived there. Then what? Should Dan Bensham be in the house, what would he say? I have come to have a look at your wife?

  Get yourself home.

  As if obeying a command he turned about and hurried through the town and caught his train with only two minutes to spare.

  It was not until he got into the trap to begin the last part of his journey home that he remembered he had not bought the monkey on a stick or the seashells for Hannah.

  THE IDIOT

  One

  Compared with High Banks Hall Burndale Manor was a small house, but it was a companionable house, warm, welcoming. The Manor had been in the Ferrier family for three hundred years. Even the present house was built on the foundations of the previous Ferrier home, which had been burned down one Christmas time, when a tired maid dropped her head onto the kitchen table at four o’clock in the morning and went to sleep. The guests revelling in the house and the staff in the barn had all been too drunk to fight the fire caused by a toppled candle burning into the wood of the grease-sodden table. No-one knew how long the previous Manor had stood, some said three, some said four hundred years; what was known was that the timbers had been so dry and worm-riddled that by daylight there was nothing left of the place.

  Although the manor house was comparatively small, the acreage was large, extending to seven hundred acres, and not all being of barren hillsides, but of gardens, fertile fields and woods.

  Katie was a bride of five weeks when she first saw her new home, and from the moment she entered its doors she knew she would love it and all therein, from the butler, McNeil, who was so old he tottered—but as Pat said, would be allowed to totter until he died—to Mary Dixon, the meanest of the staff, being but a kitchen maid; she took them all to her heart. How could it be otherwise, for she was experiencing such happiness that the world and all in it appeared good and glorious. Pat Ferrier, during his short courtship of her, had been gallant, charming and amusing, but as a husband he had been a revelation. She did not mind that his expertise in this direction was due to his experience as a lover of many women, for she knew that in his eyes she was someone unique, someone who translated joy for him. His loving was tender and exciting, and brought out in her qualities she never knew she possessed. Moreover, as the weeks grew into months and she became happier still in the knowledge that she was to bear his child, she acquired a poise that all Miss Brigmore’s teachings could never have implanted in her, because it was the outcome of the fact that she was loved and honoured, and she was about to become a mother. And this, she determined, would be the first of many pregnancies, for she would give Pat, not just one son or daughter, but a family of sons and daughters.

  Not least of her pleasures were the dinners she graced, some companionable affairs of half a dozen, others larger assemblies when twenty or thirty guests would be present. She preferred the smaller dinner parties, for at these the conversation became general, and she was surprised and pleased at Pat’s knowledge of everyday affairs, particularly politics.

  She had considered her own mind very wide when she was struggling with the social problems of Manchester, but listening at these special gatherings she recognised how colossal her ignorance of world affairs was. When she confessed this to Pat he kissed her and laughed as he said, ‘Well, my darling, the more knowledge you gain of your ignorance the more you will learn.’

  The depth and wisdom of his answer did not explain itself fully until she had pondered on it.

  It was a humbling thought, that all the while she had been concerned with the trivialities of her good works great things were taking place beyond her horizon; jealousies were working like yeast in countries which Pat said would eventually make them rise to war.

  It was at the dinner table that she learned that Germany was jealous of England, it was jealous of her colonies and the positions these afforded to the young bloods of the country. Although Germany had the biggest army in the world, and had, apparently, no need to envy England, nevertheless it did, because England, the little island, the powerful dynamic little island, was preventing the German army from ruling Europe. Moreover, England had prevented Germany from marching through Belgium in 1870, and had refused to let it attack France in 1875: France was crippled at the time; never kick a man when he’s down was the Englishman’s motto.

  So she learnt that the Germans, from admiring the British, had grown to hate them. What apparently annoyed them was that the English found them amusing. The working-class Englishman thought of the Germans as pork butchers, for every good pork butcher’s shop was found to be owned by a German. The Englishman also considered the Germans a pompous people, for didn’t they come to England and march about the country playing in bands? And they all had big bellies through drinking beer.

  As Katie listened she laughed. Yet there were times when she despised herself for not putting over her point of view, particularly when the topic of conversation turned on the children of the working class and the wisdom of educating them. But then ladies didn’t, not at the dinner table and in front of guests.

  Her days during the first months at the Manor were joyously full with entertaining and being entertained. But one day a week she insisted on being kept free, and on this day she would drive over to her old home, accompanied most times by Pat, and there they were welcomed with open arms.

  Christmas had been particularly happy for Katie that year because her father and Brigie both came and spent it at the manor house, and their stay had been prolonged by a snowfall that continued for three days.

  It was during this time that she first experienced a bout of morning sickness which gave final confirmation to a hope which she had not up till then mentioned to her husband, and when she quietly and without coyness, but with a twinkle in her eye, told him the news he had taken her in his arms and held her tightly pressed against him, not kissing her, not even speaking, because his feelings in that moment could find no relief in outward expression.

  During the months that followed he petted and pampered her and amused her and, as she laughingly admitted, extended her education beyond the point where Brigie had stopped. In fact Brigie’s teaching now appeared to be of a very elementary quality.

  The child was due in July. The layette was one that would have met the needs of royalty. Excitement pervaded the house from the wine cellars up to the set of four rooms on the second floor on which the workmen had spent three months, turning it into a nursery, complete with day nursery and night nursery with a nurse’s bedroom and sitting room attached.

  She started her labour pains on the Sunday afternoon when the sky was black with an impending storm. The storm itself did not break until late evening and it raged all night and did not die away until the first light, and it was with the first light that she gave a great cry that brought Pat from the adjoining room, and he saw his son born.

  When, an hour later, he looked down on the child lying in the cot to the side of the bed he laughed and said, ‘He’s an ugly brute, he’s going to be like me,’ and she gazed up at him and whispered, ‘All babies look ugly when they’re born, but if he grows like you
he’ll be the most handsome man alive.’

  ‘Katie, darling Katie, how can I ever repay you for what you have given me? How? How?’ He took her face tenderly between his hands and as tenderly he laid his lips on hers, and she closed her eyes and went to sleep.

  The nurse said she had never known such a quiet baby. The wet nurse said it must be her milk for the child seemed filled with happiness. He rarely cried, and there was a perpetual smile on his face which, as the days passed, lost its look of crumpled ugliness and took on a soft, wide-eyed surprised stare.

  Katie could not remember exactly when she first began to worry about the child. Was it when he made no movement to pull her finger into his mouth and suck it, but just held it limply while staring up at her? Or was it when she noticed that the contours of his face did not drop in as a baby’s should?

  He was three months old when the nurse said, ‘He’s lazy. You get them like this; they want a smacked backside now and again to rouse them.’ And when she went to apply the remedy, even gently, Katie almost sprang on her and, grasping the child from her knee where he lay on a towel being dried, she glared at the woman and cried, ‘Don’t you ever raise your hand to him, ever!’

  In one flashing moment the nurse, who had been thinking that this particular mother was easy, the child being her first, and her knowing nothing about babies, discovered that she was being confronted with a parental passion such as ladies never showed; you expected and got this reaction from the lower classes, but never from those in manor houses and the like. She was huffed, and she showed it.

  When the child was four months old Katie changed his nurse. The new one was a widow from the village. She had been a mother six times, but four of her children had died, the remaining two being now married. She was a kindly soul and wise, so from the beginning she never proffered an opinion on the child, and since her mistress never put questions to her regarding it she kept her opinion of her new charge to herself.

  When the child was a year old it had not yet said either mum-mum or da-da, nor had it made any attempt to pull itself to its feet or even to crawl. Katie would sit him on a rug and hold out her arms and say, ‘Come. Come, darling,’ and the child would look at her and smile, a wider smile than the one which usually turned up the corners of its straight lips, and after what seemed to be a great effort would turn onto its hands and knees with a flopping movement, and with its head up and gazing at her it would crawl slowly towards her. And she would lift it into her arms and press it to her breast, and control once more the great tide of fear that over the past months had been rising towards her brain and threatening to overwhelm her.

  But her emotions did find vent before they reached the stage that would have caused her to have a mental breakdown. It happened one night as she stood by the cot and looked down on the sleeping child. Thinking she was alone she pressed her face so tightly between her hands that she inflicted pain on herself; and it was as she shook her head in a despairing movement that she was startled by Pat’s arms pulling her around roughly and his voice saying, ‘Let us talk. Let us talk, Katie. We must face this. Come.’ And he led her downstairs to their bedroom.

  Her crying had been audible, verging on hysteria; she had cried and wailed for a solid hour. Only when he said, ‘I’ll call the doctor,’ did she calm down; then choking and spluttering she gasped, ‘What have I given you, Pat? He is not right, far from right. I’ve…I’ve known it for a long time. He…he could be an imbecile. Oh, Pat, Pat. Oh I’m sorry. Oh, my dear, my dear.’

  When he held her closely pressed he did not contradict what she had said, for she had voiced what was not just his fear but his certainty that his son was abnormal.

  As Katie half feared, the child did not alienate Pat’s feeling for her; rather he became more attentive, if that were possible. The only time he left her to travel alone was, first, when he went to London to see a doctor who had been recommended to him and the second time, when for a period of two weeks he returned to France, there to visit a specialist.

  After his visit to London he had brought back with him Doctor Cass. The doctor was an old man, blunt and seemingly unfeeling. He spoke in short sharp sentences saying that he had seen hundreds of babies such as this, but this one was fortunate, if you could call it so, for he wouldn’t be smothered on the quiet, or chained up in some cell, or at best relegated to a garret in the top of the house. On the last words he had turned and looked from Pat to Katie as much as to say, Well, the last is up to you.

  It was evident, he went on to say, that the child had just missed being a mongol; and they could hope that he would not grow up an idiot, merely an imbecile. There was nothing much one could do, he informed them, until the child was a few years older, five or six. It might turn out then that he would show a certain amount of intelligence, which could be developed with training, constant specialised training. He emphasised the latter. He had, he said, known cases where a child like this had in later years even been able to earn its living at a craft, a simple craft, a handicraft; but that was all they could hope for.

  Of course, he had ended, his was only one opinion, there were others they could consult. And he showed that he wasn’t really unconcerned when he suggested that Pat might find it worthwhile to go to France, for there a psychologist by the name of Binet was doing interesting work with the mentally retarded.

  Who knew, he said finally, while he shook their hands and thanked them with softened courtesy for their hospitality, who knew but that Binet could help them? New methods were being discovered every day. It all had to do with the metabolism; when acids couldn’t be metabolised they passed out in the urine and deficiency occurred, mental deficiency.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He was still talking as he got into the carriage. ‘It’s all to do with the metabolism. If you decide to see Binet tell him what I have said, and I’ll send him a note if you so wish. He might say I’m quite wrong in my diagnosis and the child will grow up simply to be a moron. And there are a lot of them about, by God, yes! Half the country is composed of morons. Well, goodbye. Goodbye. And let me say this. If you feel I can help in any way just drop me a line and I’ll be up.’ He had put his head out of the carriage window and looked up at the sky and around the drive and exclaimed in his abrupt fashion, ‘Lovely country. Lovely country,’ and then he was gone, leaving them both devastated. Patrick went to France and saw Monsieur Alfred Binet, and Monsieur Binet said he could do very little but pass an abstract opinion on the child, not having seen it. But it seemed that Doctor Cass had been right in his diagnosis, except in one aspect; Monsieur Binet could hold out no hope from the description that had been given him of the child’s behaviour that he was as light a case as a moron. But one never knew. If, as Doctor Cass had said, his features were not completely mongoloid but just tended that way, and his reactions were not completely static, then there was a possibility that he would grow to be merely a mongoloid imbecile, not an idiot; and if this were the case he could turn out to be quite intelligent, in fact, of even a higher intelligence than a moron. He had known such cases, there was hope.

  Such dubious hope had a devastating effect on both of them, yet they made the child the focal point of their lives, which changed the pattern to almost a sombre ritual. The gay dinner parties came to an end; only those who were close friends or relatives were invited to the house; and the staff, after being lectured by McNeil in the servants’ hall, became like a loyal clan in that they did not chatter to anyone outside the estate, and they allowed no-one to enter the house except those known to be close friends or relatives.

  But even the visits of the close friends and relatives upset Katie for she insisted that the child should not be hidden away in the nursery; she would not be guilty of Doctor Cass’ assumption. Yet when she saw the pity in the eyes of those who looked on her son her whole being was rent with pain. And no-one had caused her more pain than her father, for he reacted from the first as if she herself were to blame. She had the suspicion that he imagined her child would not
have been as he was had she married Willy. And she was right, for this, Harry thought, was what came of high breeding—the Ferriers went so far back that their line had been weakened.

  Two

  Lawrence Patrick Charles Ferrier was three years old on the fifth of July, 1889, and hadn’t yet walked, not even with stumbling step, but could say ‘Pop-a’ and ‘Mar-a’. He could say ‘fow’ for flower, and ‘de’ which meant drink, and ‘Bri-Bri’, which stood for Brigie.

  This progress had come about within the last six months and the effect on Katie had been as if she had discovered that her son was showing signs of genius. If he had sat at the piano and composed a sonatina she could not have been more delighted, and it wasn’t only that he was attempting to speak, and walk, but that he was also showing a preference for people and things. He liked cakes but didn’t like meat; he liked milk but wouldn’t drink soup.

  Only yesterday when he had taken his hand and swiped from the table a bowl of soup his nurse had placed before him Katie had laughed, and she had gone running to Pat and told him. And he had come up to the nursery to view the evidence of his son’s independence.

  Putting his arm around Katie’s shoulders, Pat had pressed her to him and they had looked at each other and the smile they exchanged was winged on hope.

  But the child showed his greatest advancement in his preference for certain people. When some of the maids spoke to him he would make no response whatsoever, just stare at them out of his wide blue eyes; but others he would touch, or even extend his arms towards them. This latter he always did with Brigie, and Brigie would take him to her heart and hold him close and call him ‘My lamb’. And Katie loved her for it while at the same time almost hating her father for the fact that he never touched the child, did not even extend a finger to him.