Miss Martha Mary Crawford

by Catherine Cookson (Catherine Marchant)

  ‘I’d be very grateful, doctor.’

  ‘I’ll do that then, I’ll do that.’ He turned abruptly from her now and ran down the steps to where Dan Holland was standing ruffling Fred’s ears. He mounted the trap, nodded at Dan, saying, ‘Thanks Dan,’ then, turning, he looked to where Martha was still standing at the top of the steps and he touched his hat with his whip by way of salute, then drove smartly down the drive.

  Martha went slowly back into the house. She crossed the hall, went down the passage and entered the study; then she stood with her back to the door, and now she did something she hadn’t done since she was a child, she pushed three of her fingers into her mouth and bit hard on them.

  Six

  Martha met Roland at the station and his first words to her were, ‘What’s all this about? Couldn’t it have waited another two days, you knew I was coming?’

  Her reply to this, and tartly, was, ‘It couldn’t have waited another day, it’s waited a fortnight too long already. It may be too late now, you might have been able to stop it if you had come home earlier, or if you had left me an address to write to, but I had to telegraph to the school and ask them to forward it.’

  ‘Stop what? What are you talking about?’

  She turned from him. ‘Let us get away from here; the trap is outside.’

  As she mounted the trap and went to take the reins, he said, ‘Move over; give them to me.’

  Silently she did as she was bid, thinking it would never do for the son of her father to be seen to be driven through the town by a woman, it might lessen his maleness in the eyes of the ladies. She did not chastise herself for this way of thinking, but sat looking straight ahead as Roland applied his attention to getting the horse through the streets.

  It wasn’t until they were leaving the town that he slackened the reins and said, ‘Well now, what is the great tragedy that requires my presence at home? That’s what the message said, “Urgently request your presence at home”.’

  She still kept her gaze ahead as she replied slowly, ‘Nancy is going to be married.’

  He drew the trap to a standstill, crying, ‘Whoa there!’ then screwed round on the seat and stared at her and, his tone voicing his incredulity, said, ‘And you brought me post-haste to tell me that Nancy is going to be married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘God above! Have you taken leave of your senses?’

  ‘Not quite.’ She still looked ahead as she added now, ‘She’s marrying a drover.’

  Almost thirty seconds elapsed before he repeated, ‘A drover?’

  ‘Yes, a cattle drover, one Robbie Robson. You may know of him, you have ridden about the country much more than I have. He lives in Hill Cottage. It lies, I understand, back from the Prudhoe Road. He can neither read nor write but he has in his favour a presentable appearance and an intelligence above the average—for his class.’

  ‘A drover! Has she gone out of her mind? She cannot do it—she cannot do it, not at this time.’

  She was looking hard at him now. ‘Why not at this time? I should have thought you would have said at any time.’

  ‘There is a strong reason why I say not at this time. My God! What were you up to to let her get to know this fellow?’

  ‘I am not a gaoler. I cannot control her actions. Apparently I never have, for I may tell you now that she has taken this step because of a disappointment, a love disappointment. She has, which may seem incredible to you as it did to me, been meeting William Brockdean for some years past, and she imagined—no, she was led to believe, I am sure of this—she was led to believe that his intentions were otherwise than what they turned out to be. When you were last at home you remarked on the change in her, but you were not interested enough to ask the reason for it.’

  ‘Well—’ he grabbed up the reins again and swung the whip across the horse’s flanks as he cried, ‘I’ll put a stop to it.’

  ‘I hope you succeed. But you may find it difficult; he is no ordinary individual, and she is in a state of defiance. The doctor thinks that if she is frustrated in this present madness she’ll take a more dangerous course still.’

  ‘By damn! She won’t, not if I know it.’

  Martha glanced at him. He was playing the man. But he was still a youth, a pimply-faced youth; yet there was the appeal of her father all about him, but it didn’t touch her, not in any way, for she saw through it right to what lay beneath, and as Dilly would have said it was mush.

  Her father had been mush. Inside he had been all mush.

  ‘Where is she now?’ He lashed at the horse again.

  ‘She went into Newcastle this morning early. He was driving her there. She said she was going for a new gown. She didn’t ask me for any money, and I know she had none of her own.’

  Again he was about to check the horse but jerked his head in anger towards her, saying, ‘In the name of God! Why didn’t you stop her?’

  ‘I have never yet attempted to take up fisticuffs against a man. He called for her with a horse and trap, and the turnout was much smarter than this one. It may have been hired, I don’t know. If you had been there perhaps you would have come to grips with him…perhaps.’

  ‘Why do you say it like that?’

  ‘Because you’ve never met him. He is, I imagine, a man one would be wary of before directing a blow towards him.’

  ‘Blow? I’d knock him down.’

  ‘I wouldn’t promise yourself so much success; it’s diplomacy that is needed in this matter, and perhaps law.’

  ‘Law? Law…that’s it. Talk about law, create a scandal. Look, I told you I was bringing a guest. It’s very important to me. Oh my God!’ He jerked the reins in his hand. ‘I came home with news, in fact my idea was to bring the news with me but Eva couldn’t get away until Friday.’

  She was looking at his profile now, squinting at it, her mouth was agape and her eyes screwed up to pinpoints. She put her hand up suddenly to her bonnet as a gust of wind lifted the front brim upwards and she pulled it back onto her head before she repeated, ‘Eva? Your companion, your guest is…is a woman?’

  ‘No, not a woman, she’s a girl, a very dear girl.’

  ‘It’s the same thing.’ It was as if she were listening to someone else’s voice because most of her, she felt sure, had become frozen; yet the wind itself was warm.

  She asked now, very quietly, ‘She’s your friend’s sister?’

  ‘What do you say?’ He leant his head towards her.

  ‘I said is she your friend’s sister?’ Her bawling startled him.

  He turned his head to the front again and made a number of small motions with it before he replied, ‘No, no, she isn’t.’

  ‘Who is she then?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when we get home.’

  He almost toppled over the side of the trap as she grabbed the reins from his hands and pulled the horse to a standstill, and she was leaning partly across him as she demanded, ‘You’ll tell me now…now!’

  ‘Now look here Martha Mary.’

  ‘Never mind, look here Martha Mary. What is it you’ve got to tell me about…this Eva, whoever she may be?’

  He now thrust her from him, straightened his cravat, stretched his neck upwards first one way, then the other, and said, ‘She’s the girl I’m going to marry, we’re engaged. I…I was bringing her home to meet you.’

  She flopped back against the wooden bar that acted as a back to the seat. She didn’t believe it, no, she didn’t believe it, this couldn’t be happening. She wasn’t sitting in the trap on the highway and being told that her brother was going to marry, that her nineteen-year-old brother was going to bring a woman into the house. Strange, but she had never really thought about him ever getting married; that was stupid of her, but he had always seemed so young, even at nineteen he didn’t appear his age, more like a youth of sixteen or seventeen. Yet here he was telling her he was a man and going to be married.

  That same feared rage she had experienced for the first time on the
morning she met her father’s mistress was rising in her again, but with more strength and power than it had asserted at its birth. She turned her head slowly and looked at him. Her face dark with passion and in a voice like no other she had ever used, she said two words, ‘Drive on!’ and after looking at her for a long moment he drew in a breath, bit tightly on his lower lip, took up the reins and drove on …

  Immediately the trap stopped on the drive she jumped down from it, missing the bottom step, and actually ran at a pace up the steps and into the house. Once in the hall, she dragged off her bonnet and flung it towards a chair, throwing her grey faded dustcoat after it, and when it missed the chair and fell to the floor she left it lying there.

  Peg, having come from the kitchen to give Master Roland a word of welcome, had stopped dead just beyond the kitchen door and gazed in amazement at Miss Martha Mary who, as she expressed it to herself, looked as mad as any March hare, and when she saw Master Roland enter the hall and follow Miss Martha Mary across to the drawing room she uttered no word of greeting. There was something up.

  She snatched a duster from the pocket of her apron and busied herself in the hall in order to find out what it was. But she could have stayed in the kitchen and heard equally as well because Miss Martha Mary was now shouting, ‘You have the effrontery to come back from school—school I say—and tell me that you are going to be married! May I ask how you propose to support your wife?’

  They stood facing each other before the empty fireplace, their faces blotched with their anger, and Roland’s voice was now as loud as hers. ‘Yes, I’ll tell you how I’ll manage to support a wife. There’s the shop. Much more could be made out of it. And what is more we have ideas, plans for turning this place—’ he now jerked his forearm in an arc in front of his face—‘into a school.’

  She wanted to sit down, she wanted to grip something for support. No, no, not for support, she had the most terrifying feeling of stretching out her hands and gripping his neck and choking him. Her little brother, as she had thought of him until recently, had with his announcement blown her world into pieces. It lay about her in fragments. She, who had toiled and slaved, yes, slaved after them all for years, but more so of late when she had been called upon to do the most menial of household tasks, and all without payment or thought of payment, was now to be relegated…to what? To what position would she be relegated in this household under Roland’s wife? Still a maid-of-all-work but without the dignity of being recognised as the mistress.

  That was the rod that was flaying her at this moment. The one compensation she asked, indeed the only compensation she asked in exchange for all her labour and love was to be recognised as the mistress of The Habitation.

  She had told herself often of late that she was stupid about many things, ignorant through prudery, and bigoted about matters she didn’t understand, but now she also saw that she had been purposely blind. Hadn’t she realised that Roland was the son of his father and that women would be a necessity to him from early in life? But she had never imagined so early. He was but a boy…No! No! Why did she keep harping on about him being a boy? Why should William Brockdean be considered a man and entitled to marry, or Robbie Robson for that matter, and not Roland Crawford? It was she who had been at fault, at least as regards her blindness, for this was self-inflicted.

  Yet she saw it now as a blindness that had shafts of light penetrating it, selfish shafts of light. Why had she been so keen for Roland to maintain his scholastic studies? Why had she offered him the small fortune that Dilly had left her? Why? As a means of keeping him out of the way for another two or three years so that she could continue to act as mistress of this house, that’s why.

  Well, that being so it would seem that she was being paid out for her duplicity, wouldn’t it?

  But no! Her whole being reared in denial against the accusation. Whatever her ulterior motive had been she didn’t deserve to be treated thus. Turn the house into a school indeed! And who would be the schoolmistress? Mrs Eva Crawford of course. And who would be the school matron? And the housekeeper? And the doer of all the mean chores? Poor Miss Martha Mary Crawford, the spinster sister of the owner.

  No. No. Never.

  When she banged her fist on the occasional table and the knick-knacks skidded here and there she brought a startled look of fear to Roland’s face and he cried at her, ‘Stop it, Martha Mary! Take hold of yourself. Don’t go mad.’

  ‘Don’t go mad, you say. Huh! Don’t go mad. You come home and barefacedly tell me you are going to be married and you expect me to accept it calmly after all that’s been done for you.’

  ‘What d’you mean, all that’s been done for me? Father kept me at school…’

  ‘Father didn’t keep you at school, I kept you at school,’ she cried, digging her fingers into her chest, ‘through scraping and saving over the household, and on clothes for us all, and denying myself and the others the small comforts of life; if I hadn’t, Father wouldn’t have had enough money to spend on his mistresses and his whoring…’ My God! What was she saying, using a word like that aloud? But she had said it, she had brought this foul thing into the open, this thing that in her distress she had written to him about the night she had sat by Aunt Sophie’s bed. But never once in his letters had he referred to it, and she could see now the reason for his silence on the matter; he had thought little of it, and it was more likely he was at the same game himself.

  Oh dear, dear! Why were her thoughts so raw? She was thinking as Dilly might, and she had been talking as Dilly might. And why not! It was a pity there weren’t more people in the world like Dilly. She now thrust her face towards his red flaming countenance and cried, ‘Whoring I said, and whoring I mean. You ignored the implication of this in the letter I sent you after he died. But now I’m giving it a name, its right name, and because of it there were times when we almost starved here. Yes, starved, and that’s no exaggeration, in order that you and he should live your lives as prescribed for a gentleman, so called, and his son…’

  They were glaring at each other in open hate, yet his hatred was but a weak shadow of the emotion that was tearing her to pieces; and this was proved when, his head suddenly drooping, he turned from her and sank into a chair. But she wasn’t finished with him, for now she cried, ‘There’s one thing I accomplished which pleases me mightily at this moment; I don’t know how I had the sense to do it, I must in some way have been forewarned, but I opened a banking account of my own, and put Dilly’s money into it. I remember thinking it would be nice if only for a short time to imagine it was mine. But it is mine, two hundred and eight pounds, and now it will stand me in good stead while I am choosing a career for myself.’

  He turned his head and looked at her. The flush of anger had gone from his face leaving it almost deathly white except where the spots stood out. He was gaping at her open-mouthed and his voice had a tremor to it now as he said, ‘Martha Mary, you wouldn’t, you couldn’t, you couldn’t leave me in the lurch.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Now her voice was low, but weighed with disdain. ‘Leave you in the lurch? Leave you in the lurch, you say? What exactly do you mean? Tell me. Tell me.’

  ‘Well, there’s the house…I…I told Eva that you were so good at managing everything, and you are, you’re wonderful, Martha Mary, I’ve always said it, and…and Eva would be quite willing to let you run things as they are now. She wouldn’t interfere. She would just see to the educational side. She’s…she’s rather brilliant that way; she speaks three foreign languages fluently. And she…well, she wouldn’t—’ he hung his head for a moment before ending, ‘She wouldn’t be cut out for… for…’

  ‘Well, go on. Tell me what she wouldn’t be cut out for. I suppose you mean she wouldn’t be cut out for household chores.’

  When he raised his eyes to hers but remained quiet, she said on a bitter laugh, ‘Well, that’s a great pity, Roland, because she’ll have to learn, won’t she? As you know, Peg cannot do half the work that she used to, and
the hall floor is so very large, and it always seems larger when you’re on your knees scrubbing it; it’s much worse than the kitchen, but I’ll be quite pleased to show your future wife the best way to prevent calloused knees. I made special pads for myself; of course, Peg has always had her own…’

  ‘Shut up! I forbid you to go on. Shut up!’

  His face now looked ugly and she stared back into it, her own expression grim and her voice equally so as she said, ‘You cannot forbid me to do anything, I am not in your employ, Roland.’ She paused; then again came the bitter laugh as she went on, ‘I am just trying to be helpful. If I don’t meet your future wife to give her some practical advice as regards how this particular household is run then I must give it to you to pass on to her…. And, oh, we mustn’t forget there’s Aunt Sophie; she’ll have to be told how to deal with Aunt Sophie.’

  As if he had suddenly remembered there was an Aunt Sophie he gripped his chin in his hand and murmured something under his breath, and Martha repeated it aloud. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is a case of Oh my God! But I shouldn’t worry unduly, she may find Aunt Sophie amusing, and no doubt her fits will be an experience. Of course, some people are afraid of those who have fits, but you must tell her that Aunt Sophie is utterly harmless.’

  ‘You won’t do this, Martha Mary. You can’t do this.’ His voice sounded like that of a pleading child until he ended, ‘I forbid it.’

  ‘Huh! Don’t make me laugh, Roland, You forbidding me! You forbidding anybody! In fact you, Roland, are a weakling. Do you know that? You are a weakling. You are like our father, you are a good-looking weakling. But take a word of warning, don’t let your fiancée see you as such or she’ll despise you…Now, dear brother, if you will excuse me I shall go to my room and get my things together because I don’t intend to be here when your future wife arrives.’