The Mallen Litter Page 12

  ‘Oh.’ She smiled a half-sad, half-wise smile as she replied, ‘He couldn’t wait a fortnight, sir; he’d skin a louse for its hide would me da. But that’s not the real reason. He wants to be sure I’ve been to Mass.’

  ‘To Mass?’

  ‘Aye. You know when I came, sir, I…I told the mistress that she could dock the time off me leave, but I had to get to Mass on a Sunday.’

  ‘Oh yes, yes, I remember.’ He smiled slowly at her now as he asked, ‘Do you like being made to go to Mass?’

  As slowly, she smiled back at him as she answered, ‘Oh, it isn’t a case of likin’, sir, it’s a case of needs must when the devil drives. An’ as me dad says it’s either that or spend the rest of me life in hell after I’m dead.’

  He said quickly. ‘Goodnight, Ruth.’

  And she said again, ‘Goodnight, sir, an’ thank you.’

  As he went up the stairs he bit hard on his lip. Needs must when the devil drives, it’s either that or spend the rest of me life in hell after I’m dead. Oh, that was wonderful, wonderful. He must tell that one to Barbara, spend the rest of her life in hell after she was dead.

  Before he had reached their bedroom he knew he wouldn’t repeat the gem of Irish Catholic Geordie confusion to Barbara; Barbara hadn’t the mind for such things. He drew in a long breath.

  When he entered the room Barbara was asleep. He walked quietly to the bed and stood looking down on her, and his love for her, which nine years of marriage had been unable to level off into comfortable acceptance, brought his heart beating faster as if he were a young groom awaiting the consummation of love on the first night of marriage.

  He put his hand over his eyes as he turned from the bed and went into the dressing room.

  As he got into his nightshirt he heard a slight creak of the floorboards above his head and he looked upwards. She was going into the nursery to have last look round. She was a good girl, the boys would come to no harm under her, and she’d manage Ben. And she’d be the first one who had been able to do so. Moreover, he had a strange idea that as young as she was, she’d be able to give Ben what he needed, love, motherly love, and the discipline that went with it.

  Two

  Three days later the letter came. It was fortunate that the post did not arrive until after Dan left for the city in the morning—it was his one complaint about living so far out. When they had lived in Bolton Square the mail was put on the table with the breakfast, but now it could be nine o’clock in the morning before it arrived.

  Remembering to put the letters on a salver, Ada Howlett brought them into the breakfast room and placed them at Barbara’s hand where she was sitting lingering over a final cup of tea. She was wondering what she would do with herself this morning; this afternoon she had an appointment to visit Miss Ferguson’s Day School. The school had been recommended to her as an excellent place for five year olds. Both she and Dan were in agreement that it would be much better to send the children out to kindergarten than have a nursery governess in the house. But they agreed for different reasons. Dan because, although he admired Brigie and now realised that her instruction had at the time been outstanding, he felt that he and John had been lucky to escape her influence so early. She was an excellent instructor of little girls, but whether boys would have fared so well under her tuition he doubted; boys to his mind needed a different approach, a stronger, sterner, wider approach.

  Barbara’s reasons were personal. With the children at school she’d have the house to herself, and herself to herself, for the most part of the day. She’d be able to take stock, think; perhaps she’d further some of her accomplishments, such as the piano, or painting, and embroidery. She might make a study of English literature. There were so many things she could do if she had more time.

  She was asking herself the pertinent question, But would she do them when she had the time? when the salver with the letters on it was placed to her hand, and she said, ‘Thank you, Ada. You may clear now’; and, rising from the table, she picked up the letters and went out of the morning room, across the hall and into the drawing room.

  There was a small desk set to the side of the drawing-room window on which she wrote her correspondence and kept her household accounts. Sitting down in the chair, she looked at the top letter. It was from Brigie; no-one wrote in such a copperplate hand as Brigie. She laid the letter aside. The next one was addressed to Dan. The postmark was Manchester; that one she surmised was from John. The following three were also addressed to Dan, Daniel Bensham Esquire. The last one was addressed to her. She did not recognise the writing. She turned it over, then back again and looked at the postmark. It said Newcastle. Taking a paperknife, she opened it and withdrew a single sheet of notepaper and she had got no further than unfolding it when her hand went to her throat and gripped it hard, for the letter began, ‘Barbara, Barbara.’

  She closed her eyes for a second in order to clear the mist from them. When slowly she opened them, they lifted each cramped word from the page and before she had come to the end of the letter she knew she was being born again.

  ‘Barbara, Barbara,

  Please bear with me, I beg you to bear with me. I have been searching for you since the day we met in that narrow passage and I turned from you and fled. But…but believe me—and you must believe me—it was not because I didn’t want to see you, for you have never left my thoughts since that tragic day on the farm. I know now, Barbara, that all that happened was my fault. I acted like a weakling, I should have stood up to them, all of them, and told them what it was, who it was, I really wanted. Now it is all too late, I know that, but all I want you to believe is that in turning from you that day it was in fear of the consequences of standing close to you and looking into your face. I may tell you that no sooner had I rounded the corner than I knew that I was once again running away from reality. And so I came back. But you were gone. Since then I have endeavoured to find your home address, and it was on the very day that I found the name Bensham on a warehouse in the town that I also espied Brigie driving in a coach towards the outskirts.

  Barbara, I have been like a demented man these past few years, and more so since I last saw you. If I could only hear from your own lips that you have forgiven me then I think I can go on. You, I know, have at least three children, I have only a seven-year-old daughter whom I dearly love, and if it wasn’t for her I would have left the farm and emigrated long before this. But she needs me and so I stay.

  Will you allow me to see you, just once? That’s all I ask, just once. You should receive this letter on Wednesday. There is a wood at the end of the lane beyond your house. I shall wait there on Friday; I shall be there about noon and shall not leave until about four in the afternoon. Come and speak to me, Barbara, please, please.

  Michael.’

  As she sat gazing before her she actually imagined herself being born again. She had, as it were, been living in a womb during the past nine years, not consciously aware of what life could mean, loving could mean. The ice that had encased her heart was melting; after all these years her heart was beating again, beating so hard and fast it was choking her.

  She held her two hands to her throat. She was back on the stepping stones, she was slipping, and he was holding her and they were clinging together; his face was above hers and he was laughing down on her. That was another time he had almost kissed her.

  There were passing in procession before her eyes the countless, countless times she had inveigled and bullied Brigie into going over the hills to the farm. Since the time she could recall anything, she saw herself demanding to be taken over the hills to the farm to see Michael.

  She had been born with the passion in her for Michael. At first it had been the demanding passion of a child, and then it had been the painful, tormenting passion of a young girl of fourteen, but at seventeen it had been the passion of a woman, in the mind of a girl, but all the time it had been passion, passion that considered nothing but itself and its consummation.

 
So on that memorable day when she was a woman, the day when truth was spoken by everyone concerned, when he had scorned her, her passion had taken its broken bleeding self into the refuge of silence, and the silence had led her into paralysis of body and mind. Only with the shock of his marriage did she regain her faculties. And now. And now!

  She took her hands from her throat and picked up the letter from the desk as if it were something of great weight and with a swift movement she crushed it between her breasts, only as swiftly to drop it onto the desk again.

  She rose to her feet and walked down the room. When she reached the door she turned and walked swiftly back. Six times she did this before stopping and muttering aloud, ‘No, no, it’s too late, years too late—years and years too late.’ She spoke the last words aloud, then turned sharply toward the door as if she had been overheard. Going back to the desk again she put her hands on the back of the chair and supported herself against it as she looked downwards. He loved his daughter he said, he couldn’t leave his daughter, she needed him. If he could have left his daughter would she have left her sons? And Dan?

  Again she was walking up and down the room. Dan, Dan. She mustn’t hurt Dan. She had sworn never to hurt Dan. Dan had brought her out of the house of bondage into the land of Egypt. Oh, why must she quote Mary’s misquotation of the Bible? Brigie used to laugh at Mary’s misquotations. Brigie, Brigie, Brigie again. If it hadn’t been for Brigie she would be with Michael now. No, no, that wasn’t true; it was Aunt Constance. Oh yes, Aunt Constance. How she had hated her Aunt Constance, and still did if the truth were known, still did. But then she couldn’t put the entire blame on her Aunt Constance; neither Brigie nor her Aunt Constance could have done anything if Michael had cared to defy them. But Michael had loved his mother and wanted to please her. Did he still love her? What would Aunt Constance say now if she knew her beloved son was trying to pick up the threads that he had snapped when they were young, so young? Love was for the young. Love like theirs had been the essence of youth. Yet she was but twenty-six, and beautiful, more beautiful than she had ever been; but if she were to believe her mirror, it was a vacant beauty, a cold unwarmed beauty, with no fire about it. She stopped and held her tightly joined hands to her breast. She mustn’t go on thinking, because thinking would only lead her to the wood, and she must not, she must not obey his whim. Yet the cry in that letter did not spring from a whim, more from a tortured mind. Michael, poor Michael. She could pity him as she had pitied herself over the years, but she could not go to him. She would not go to him. She must destroy this letter.

  She went to the desk now and smoothed the single sheet out and read it once again; then lifting it between her finger and thumb as if it were contaminated, she walked slowly with it towards the fireplace, hesitated for a moment, then thrust it into the flames. The next moment, full of regret, she closed her eyes and bit hard down on her lip. She could have kept it; if she wasn’t going to see him again it would have been something to treasure. She could have hidden it. But where? Where? She hadn’t a room to herself. Dan held the old-fashioned idea that he must share not only her bed but also the amenities of the bedroom. He was forever putting suits into her wardrobe and she was forever taking them out and placing them in his own. When he couldn’t find anything immediately, a handkerchief, a collar or a stud, he rifled her chest of drawers like a dog unearthing a bone. And Jonathan was almost as bad, but in a different way. When he was allowed into the bedroom he made straight for her handkerchief drawer because he said he liked the smell. He seemed to find pleasure playing with her handkerchiefs, sorting them into piles. Where could she have hidden anything? She put her hand to her brow. Her mind was in a whirl. What had she to do this morning? Nothing, nothing. Nothing till this afternoon when she went to the school. Well, she must find something to do. She’d give cook the orders for the day, go up to the nursery and see the children—and that girl. She wasn’t at all happy about Dan’s decision to keep her on but she agreed with him that she was the best yet and, reluctantly, that she had got the better of Benjamin. For this at least she should be grateful to her. Nevertheless she didn’t like the girl, she was a forward young miss, too ready with her tongue, too apt to forget her place. Anyway, she would go up and she would force herself to talk to her and tell her what was required of her today. Then she would go out for a walk, a brisk walk in the fresh air, and when she returned her mind would be more at ease.

  It was an hour later when she left the house. She walked down the drive and turned to the right, and a quarter of a mile along the country road she came to the entrance to the wood.

  It was an open wood. She did not know to whom the ground belonged but there were no barriers separating it from the road. She walked some way along its length until she saw a narrow path leading into it from the road, and she took it and walked through the wood. In parts it was thick with holly and scrub, and she made her way around these clumps and eventually came out at the far side and onto open farmland. Here the land was tilled almost up to the roots of the trees; there was no road across it. She took another zigzag path back towards where she judged should be the road, but on emerging from the wood she found that she was at the far end of it and almost a mile from her home.

  As she walked back towards the house her mind was clear on one point: she knew why she had visited the wood.

  Three

  It had rained incessantly all morning. Ada Howlett said to the cook, it had been coming down whole water before six and she’d got soppin’ coming, but rain before seven dry before eleven. But the rain did not cease before eleven, if anything it increased towards noon.

  Barbara had been in a state of high agitation all morning, and now as she stood looking through the window of one of the guest rooms at the end of the house, from where she could see through the gate onto the road beyond, she told herself that she mustn’t do this thing, she even prayed that something would happen to stop her doing it, yet she knew that she was going to do it, whatever the consequences she must do it, if only this once.

  By one o’clock her eyes were stiff with staring and her legs ached with standing. She could not sit, for then she would be unable to see the road because of the bushes that edged the drive.

  It wasn’t until she heard Ada’s voice coming from the landing saying to Ruth Foggety, ‘Have you seen the missis? She hasn’t gone out has she, an’ her snack on the table?’ did she move from the window and go out of the room.

  ‘Oh, Missis,’ Ada bobbed her knee. ‘I just wanted to tell you your din…your meal’s on the table.’ She never knew what name to give to the tray meal that Barbara ate at midday.

  ‘Thank you. I’ll be down in a moment.’

  As she went towards her own room Ruth Foggety followed her, saying, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, but I’d better tell you, I put Jonathan to bed ’cos he’s got the croup.’

  ‘The croup?’

  ‘Well, he’s coughin’ like, an’ it could turn into the croup. Better be safe than sorry I said to meself, so I put him to bed.’

  ‘You…you did quite right, Ruth. I’ll be up in a moment.’

  She went into her room, stood before the mirror, stared at herself in it, then closed her eyes before turning away and making for the nursery.

  As always, Benjamin was the first to run toward her and to speak, ‘Thinnen’s got the croup, Mama.’

  She paused and looked down at him, saying stiffly, ‘What have I told you, Benjamin? You can say Jonathan’s name if you like…Say Jonathan.’

  His head back on his shoulders, Ben stared up at her. The smile had gone from his face, and he now said, ‘Thinnen.’

  Barbara knew it was no use persisting further, she would lose the battle and the girl was looking on. She said, ‘Jonathan hasn’t the croup, he has a cold.’ She passed him and took hold of Harry’s extended hand and went into the night nursery.

  Jonathan was lying in his small bed and immediately he put on a display of coughing for her.

  ‘Now, now,
you mustn’t do that.’

  ‘I have a cough, Mama. Ruthie says I have the croup.’

  ‘You have not the croup, you just have a cough. Now be a good boy and stay in bed. I shall come up again and see you shortly.’ She tucked the clothes round her son’s chin then felt his brow. It was hot, but not feverish.

  ‘Be a good boy now.’ She turned from the bed and went from the room, followed by Harry.

  In the day nursery Benjamin seemed to be standing exactly where she had left him. He looked at her but didn’t speak. She looked at Ruth, where at a table under the window she was sorting a pile of the children’s freshly laundered clothes. Instead of calling the girl to her she went to her side and in a low tone said, ‘You must try and give things their correct names. We talked of this the other night, remember?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  As Ruth looked up at her, as she had to do because of her height, but without any trace of subservience in her manner, Barbara thought, she’s bold, really bold, and she turned abruptly, passed Benjamin without glancing at him, and went downstairs. She remained in the dining room for ten minutes and she ate hardly anything from the tray.

  She returned to the spare room and stood at the window again. She was greatly agitated now; he could have passed during the time she had been away. It was now almost half past one, what should she do? Why ask? She knew what she must do. Why else had she gone to the wood? But look at the weather, she would be drenched. And was it likely that he would come on a day like this? Yes! Yes! Hail, snow or blizzard wasn’t likely to keep away the man who had written that letter.