Feathers in the Fire Read online

  A gasp from the doorway brought his lightning glance to Jane. She was standing with one hand on the side of her face. How long she had been there he didn’t know, but he dared to call to her and say, ‘Come here, Miss Jane, and take your brother, he needs care.’

  There was a wooden mallet lying at the end of the table – Winnie used it for tenderising the meat – and when like a flash McBain’s hand went out to it and gripped the handle, Jane sprang towards him, crying, ‘Father! Father!’

  It was not her puny strength that stopped him but the fact of her presence, and as she hung on to his arm she cried at Davie, ‘Go on, get out! Get away, go on!’ and he went.

  Slowly he walked out of the kitchen and across the farmyard and up the road into the cottage. He had burned his boats.

  In the kitchen his father and granda were sitting by the rekindled fire. ‘What happened?’ asked Ned anxiously, and he told them, ending, ‘He would have brained me, yet if I had lifted me hand he would have had me jailed. There’s somethin’ wrong with the laws of this land when a working man’s life is held so cheaply.’

  Ned looked at him, then said quietly, ‘I’m sorry to say it, lad, but if he had hit you you’d only have got what you asked for. You tried him too far; a man, good or bad, can only stand so much.’

  ‘Whose side are you on, Da?’ Davie’s tone was hurt and harsh.

  ‘I’m on nobody’s side. Only this I’ll say, an’ I don’t want to, and at this time. You’ll be gone in a matter of hours, an’ we’re left here, an’ he’s still our master. You’re young, lad, and have your furrows to sow, but you should give a thought to others.’ And on this he rose and went heavily up the stairs.

  Davie stood looking hangdog for a moment. Some part of him knew his father was right, yet his youth protested against the injustice as he saw it, and he turned to his grandfather and said, ‘Well, what d’you think of that? Nice partin’ gift. There’s something I’m gona tell you, Granda. I’m never going to let any man master me like they have him. As I said, an’ I’ll say again, lives are held too cheap, not worth a farthin’ candle, they’re not.’

  ‘All life is cheap and brief, lad,’ said Sep sadly. ‘We’re blown into it, then we’re nipped out, king and commoner, all the same. But what I say is, God help the little life that was born the night, for his comin’ will bring changes. Aye, it will that. This farm, this happy farm, for it’s been that, say what you will, will never be the same again, nor anybody in it.’

  BOOK TWO

  1884

  One

  It was a week since the snow had disappeared but it was still only March and there would likely be more flurries, if not a deep fall, before spring really settled on the hills, but the bright hard sunshine was giving the impression that it had already come to stay and was agitating the restlessness in all life. It was working strongly in Jane, now bordering on sixteen years of age, but she didn’t recognise it except as a desire to get out and walk; walk the hills, the moors, walk towards Allendale and climb the crags or lie on a high fell and watch the water racing down in froth-tipped leaps over stubborn stones to the river.

  It seemed a simple desire, one so easy of fulfilment, for she was surrounded by the means of bringing her wish to life. But nearer at hand, within two arm-lengths of her, was the reason why she could not just walk out and over the hills. Amos McBain, three years and six months old, was seated in a chair, the seat of which was nine inches from the ground. The boy’s body was sturdy. The arms were rounded and filled the sleeves of his dress. His face had a squarish look; the mouth was wide, the nose thin, but it was the eyes that caught the attention. They were almond-shaped and gave him a curious appearance. His hair, very fair, clustered in unruly curls about his head. Altogether it wasn’t a face, you could say, that typified those bred in the northern dales. The colouring and shape of the head might have suggested Scandinavian blood, but the eyes, dominating the whole face, brought one firmly to the conviction that somewhere along the lines of either the McBains or the Lawsons there had been oriental blood. This conviction would have been entirely misleading, for both families had been firmly entrenched in the north of Britain, the McBains going no further north than Edinburgh, and the Lawsons south to Yorkshire. The overall impression given out by the seated child was one of strange fascination; that was until, thrusting himself forward, he attempted to walk, then embarrassment and a slight revulsion, which could not overwhelm pity, would have been the first reaction of any visitor. But then this contingency never occurred, for there were no strange visitors to the attic in the old part of the house, the only people who had ever entered the room, and who made up Amos McBain’s world, were Winnie, Molly, Parson Hedley and Jane.

  But Winnie and Molly, and even the parson, were as visitors in his life, only Jane was permanent in his narrow world, the world that was like an eggshell about him and out of which he was now aiming to break through and be born.

  ‘I want to, Jan,’ he said; ‘I want to.’

  ‘Not today, dear; some . . . some other time.’

  ‘When? When, Jan?’

  Jane turned from making the low bed set at right angles to the fireplace and looked at him where he was sitting beside the window gazing down on to the farmyard. In her look was love and pity and concern, deep concern. She knew that the child could not be kept here forever, no matter what her father said. He would one day soon be able to fight his way out, and what then? He was extraordinarily strong already for his age, his arms could thrust her off; she was amazed at his strength, as she was by his mind. She herself could not remember being able to read before she was five, and she had been nearly seven before she could recite her ten times tables. She didn’t know at what age she had begun to write but it was certainly not at three and a half years old, and yesterday Amos had written his name. True, the letters were unwieldy and only discernible to herself, but nevertheless he had written Amos, and he could go through the alphabet in the primer.

  It astonished her how quickly he grasped things. He could remember small details of a story she had told him weeks previously. Should the telling of a story divert from its original theme he would quickly call her attention to it. This brightness confused her, and she had to be on the alert against it.

  When she looked into the future she became apprehensive. What lay before him? She had put this question to Parson Hedley and he had, in his own inimitable kind way, reassured her, saying, ‘Don’t worry, his head will carry him through. God has strange ways of dealing out compensation. He will, if I’m not mistaken, have a thirst for knowledge which may lead him to make his mark in the world.’

  Jane wondered what she would have done over the past three and a half years if it hadn’t been for Parson Hedley. He was thirty years old, but he laughed and acted like someone of her own age, and he always succeeded in brightening the dullest day for her. Moreover, he was so kind to everyone, even to her father after he found out what he had tried to do to the child.

  On the morning of that dreadful day when he had come to christen the child – because Davie Armstrong had kept his word and on his way to the sea had called at the vicarage – Molly had had hysterics in the kitchen. She had gone on to her knees before him and begged him to ask God to forgive her, and into his astonished ears she had poured her confession, her intrigue with the master, her being the cause of the mistress’ coming on before her time, and then in her spluttering and crying she had brought out the fact that she had been ordered to drown the child. But she had insisted that she wouldn’t have done it, no matter what Davie Armstrong said.

  He had lifted her up and held her and given her no word of censure, but Jane knew that if Parson Wainwright had been the one to listen to her confession he would have damned her to hell’s flames and branded her over the countryside, more so than she was already.

  And knowing all this, Parson Hedley never failed to visit her father
at least once a week; even her father’s changed ways did not deter him, not even when he cursed God, as he sometimes did now because he had become a slave to drink, strong drink. Scarcely a night went by when he didn’t indulge himself; although in the daytime he still carried out his duties as a farmer, he was no longer the master he had been. Where once he had inspired awe through respect he now inspired hate from some quarters, and disdain and condescending pity from others.

  It was the disdain, Jane guessed, that disturbed him most, for the disdain came from the townspeople. True, they said, he had been dealt a blow by his wife bearing him a bit of a monstrosity, but why hadn’t he taken it like a man? And there were the rumours concerning him: some said he was for cutting the child up and throwing him into the cesspool, others said that, not having the guts to kill the child himself, he had sent out the young trollop, who was really the cause of all the trouble, and told her to bury it alive. Well, whatever the rights or wrongs of it were, it was well known that he had banished the child to a fortress at the top of the house and had never looked upon it from the morning it was born. Nor, it was said, and this in stern condemnation, had he spoken a word to his wife, and she was almost as great a prisoner as the thing she had given birth to, for she was confined to her bed most of the time.

  The townsfolk of Hexham still saw him once a week, but he no longer graced the boardrooms of either the Workhouse Guardians or the Hospital Governors, nor yet was he seen at the Agricultural Show at Stanhope, nor that of Allendale. Either Fred Geary or Will Curran took the cattle to the shows, but they brought back no prizes, not even a third.

  In the gossip in the markets and at the fairs they said Cock Shield Farm was finished; some said, God is not mocked, others said, the sins of the fathers are surely visited on the children; but it was only the women who said pointedly that all this tragedy was the result of him carrying on with the scut under his wife’s nose, the men did not voice this opinion for few had room to speak.

  Jane was fully aware that her father and mother were not the only people whose lives were changed with the coming of the child. She knew she had been prematurely thrust into womanhood the morning she had stood in the doorway and watched her father and Davie Armstrong facing each other across the kitchen table, the bundle between them. It was when she had picked up the child that she had ceased to love her father, and her heart and emotions had become centred on the legless infant. Strangely, too, about this time her brief hate of Molly disappeared. When the child was but four days old and already ensconced in the attic room that was to become its world for years ahead, she had found Molly bending over it, the tears raining down her face. The girl had looked at her and, heartbrokenly, said, ‘Will you believe me, Miss, I would never have done it, an’ that’s the truth. I’m wicked, very wicked, I know I am, but I hope God strikes me down dead this minute if I’m tellin’ a lie; I wouldn’t have done it, I was for turning and coming back when Davie collared me. But you couldn’t make him believe that ’cos he loathes me hide; he’d have me strung up if he had his way. I’m sorry, Miss, I’m sorry for all I’ve done to the mistress; I’d never, never in me life do such a thing again, never, never. An’ I’m not gona marry Will Curran, Miss, I’m not, I’m not. What’s in me’ – she had touched her stomach gently – ‘I’ll care for on me own, work for it, but I’ll not marry Will Curran, not if the master was to beat me black and blue, I’ll not.’

  Jane had been surprised, too, at her own reactions, for she had gone to Molly and put her arms around her and like two young girls they had clung together and both cried.

  Afterwards when she thought about the incident, she knew she shouldn’t have embraced Molly, for by doing so she was condoning her sin, the grave sin Molly had committed with her father. Yet, nevertheless, something in her was glad that she had forgiven Molly.

  In those terrible early days, she had only known that she must look after the child and that for the rest of her life he’d be her care, her responsibility. Winnie could see to her mother, but she must see to the child, for no-one wanted him or would ever want him. But as the years went on she’d had to reconsider this last statement, because there was something appealing about the child; it wasn’t his handicap, it was something in his face, and nature, the way he had of looking at you . . . except, that is, when he was in a rage, and then she had to admit he became fiendish. His spasms were not just bouts of childish temper, but extraordinary rages, when she could not control him, when he twisted his body like an eel in her arms and flayed at her with his hands until she was bruised.

  It was with the dread of such a rage coming upon him now that she went to him and, coiling herself on the floor in front of his chair, took his hand and said, ‘Only be patient, Amos. Soon, soon you’ll be able to go out; I promise you.’

  He stared back into her eyes before asking flatly, ‘When soon?’

  Her lids fluttered, her head moved in small jerks.

  ‘I want to see that little girl.’ He pointed to the far corner of the yard where Molly’s daughter, Biddy, was running towards the road. ‘I want to see her.’

  ‘You will soon, darling.’ She went to pat his hand, but he pulled it away from her.

  ‘Always you say soon. I want to go now. If you don’t take me I’ll ask Molly. Molly is her mother.’ He looked down into the yard again, then asked slowly. ‘Why has she got legs?’

  She hadn’t been waiting for this question, she had wondered why it hadn’t come before and now she was dumb. There was no strength in her hands to stop him when he pulled up his dress, then his calico petticoat and his two flannel ones, and exposed to her gaze and his own two firm stumps of about six inches in length from which protruded a pair of distorted feet.

  ‘Everyone there has legs.’ He nodded his head towards the window now. ‘Why have I not legs?’

  She kept her tears from brimming over, but they were in her voice as she said, ‘Well, you see, darling, you . . . you had an accident.’

  ‘An acc . . . cid . . . ent? Did a giant chop them off, like in the story with the bad man’s head?’

  ‘No, no, Amos. The accident was to your mama.’

  ‘My mama?’ He stared at her. ‘Why does my mama not come and see me?’

  ‘I’ve told you, I’ve told you several times, she is sick in bed.’

  ‘You could take me to see her.’

  ‘She’s . . . she’s too sick to see anyone at present.’

  ‘My papa is not sick. There’s my papa. Isn’t that my papa?’

  Jane looked down into the yard. Her father was going towards the stables. Being Tuesday he’d be riding into Hexham, he’d be gone for at least four hours.

  The idea coming into her mind was interrupted by the child saying again, ‘You said that was my papa?’

  ‘Yes, dear, that is your papa.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t he come up to see me?’

  ‘He is very busy, there is a lot to do on the farm.’

  ‘Parson Hedley comes to see me.’

  ‘Yes, dear, but Parson Hedley hasn’t a big farm to run.’

  ‘I like Parson Hedley.’

  ‘So do I.’

  They stared at each other for a moment, then with one of his impetuous gestures that brought joy to her heart he brought himself forward and flung his arms around her neck, and with a heave of his body landed on her knee. But the way she was sitting forced her to lose her balance and they rolled over together on the floor, and she laughed now with him as if she herself, too, were a child.

  Winnie, coming into the room at this moment, stopped and exclaimed, ‘Well! Did you ever! What are you two up to?’

  Still laughing, Jane got to her feet, and the child, with an expert twist of its body, turned on to its hands and using the stumps as another child would its knees, went towards Winnie at a remarkable speed, then, dragging at her skirts, h
e pulled himself upwards and, standing on his stumps, dropped his head back on his shoulders and said, ‘Jan, she says I am going down soon, I am going down into the yard to the people, I am, I am.’

  As she patted the boy’s head Winnie looked at Jane, and Jane made a slight movement with her shoulders.

  The boy now shook Winnie’s skirt vigorously and cried loudly, ‘I said I am going down.’

  ‘I heard you, I heard you, Master Amos.’ She tapped his cheek, then said, ‘Now leave go of me, leave go of me afore I slap your backside.’ She bent down and playfully tapped him on the buttocks, and at this he let go of her, dropped on to all fours and in a crab-like fashion, his middle body swaying, he scurried to the window.

  Winnie now went to the other side of the bed where Jane was spreading the quilt and once more they exchanged glances, and Winnie murmured under her breath, ‘It’s got to come, Miss Jane. One of these days he’ll be out of that door afore either of us can stop him, and like a dog off a leash he’ll be down the stairs. You should speak to the master.’

  ‘I . . . I can’t, Winnie, not again. You know what happened when I broached the subject before, he didn’t open his mouth to me for weeks.’