The Whip (The Spaniard's Gift) Page 13

  She thought a moment, then shook her head, saying, ‘No; only his hair.’

  ‘His hair?’

  ‘Aye, it was very thick. Well, I mean it seemed to stand up from his head a long way and looked light, not white, not old hair, just light.’

  ‘Huh! That’s a very good description, Emma.’

  As she went into the kitchen she heard the painter say, ‘Not old, light and thick, describes our neighbour Hudson’s head. What do you say, Henry?’

  And she heard the parson’s voice answering jovially, ‘I would say you have an artist’s eye, Ralph. Thick and fair and standing straight up…I bet it was standing straight up. What do you think?’

  Again there was laughter, rollicking and deep now; and then she heard the parson say a strange thing: ‘I shouldn’t be in the church, Ralph, not with my mind. I shouldn’t be in the church.’

  No laughter followed this, but the painter said, ‘That’s another thing I endorse, Henry, and wholeheartedly.’

  As she made the tea she wondered if the parson hadn’t been a parson, what he would have been. She couldn’t put a trade to him. But still, if he hadn’t been a parson she would never have met him, and if she had never met him that would have been a great miss in her life, even if he was going to be married.

  Four

  Routine is subject to the weather, it is lengthened or shortened by it. Now at the beginning of December the cock didn’t crow so early, the hens didn’t lay so early, pigs grunted later, the horses didn’t neigh for their first drink of water before the light showed; only the cows seemed to be indifferent to the seasons, and at times their bags were painfully full to overflowing before they were relieved.

  The farm didn’t waken till six o’clock during late autumn and early winter. Even with this respite the pallet dragged at Emma. She would descend the ladder in the bleak flesh-shrinking mornings and have to grope towards the table for the candle and the matches because her granny wouldn’t allow her a candle up in the roof, it would be too dangerous. Often she would find her granny curled up like a ball under the blanket and the sheepskin mat and it would take a great deal to waken her. Sometimes she let her lie until she had the fire going and a cup of hot milk ready. They didn’t often have tea; it was only at Mr Bowman’s that tea seemed to flow like water in the burn, always there when you needed it.

  But this morning Lizzie was up and dressed and had the fire going. They didn’t usually exchange more than a sentence or two in the early morning, but this morning, Lizzie, pointing to a tin dish which was set before the stool in front of the fire, said, ‘Put your foot in that; it’s a bit hot, but the hotter the better.’

  ‘But it’s all right, Granny, it’s healed over.’

  ‘You were limping last night.’

  ‘Well, it’s just a bit sore on the scab.’

  ‘It was a rusty spike, wasn’t it?’—her granny’s voice was harsh now—‘and near the big toe, and anything near a big toe or a thumb can cause lockjaw. Put your foot in there and do what you’re told.’

  Although the hole pierced in the sole of her foot by the nail which had also pierced her boot had healed over, it was, as she said, still sore. And so she was warmed by her granny’s concern. She was also warmed right through by the hot water covering her foot and to add to it she put her other foot in the dish, as she did so looking up at her granny through the candlelight and saying, ‘No use wastin’ good hot water.’

  Lizzie made no reply to this light jest but, going to the fire, she took off the black iron pan full of porridge and ladled half a dozen dollops into a bowl, and after pouring some milk onto it she handed it, together with a wooden spoon, to Emma, saying, ‘You sitting for a picture for him these days?’

  ‘No; he hasn’t done any painting for weeks, not since his cough got bad again. He sits over the fire most of the time.’ She stopped abruptly because she knew that her granny knew he sat over the fire most of the time, because she sometimes slipped up there at nights. But apparently he didn’t tell her what he did during the day, and she hadn’t had the extra shilling for some time now.

  Emma’s mind went to the niche in the rafters where the little bag of sovereigns lay, and she felt guilty and somewhat mean. What could she do with the money? She couldn’t even buy a ribbon, and oh, at times how she longed for a new hair ribbon! Her desire didn’t range as far as a bonnet or a coat, new clothes were something that were bestowed on the children of the gentry; or on Mary Haswell, or on Miss Kathleen Hudson, Farmer Hudson’s granddaughter, they seemed to be dressed in different clothes twice a year.

  ‘’Tisn’t going to be an all-day job.’ Her granny brought her thoughts back to the present and so she hurriedly wiped her feet, then reached out to the fender where she had laid her stockings and boots to warm. She put them on before she started on her breakfast.

  Ten minutes later she began her day’s work, and the only comfort during the following four hours of grind before she made her way to Mr Bowman’s was the warmth in the cow byres and in the chicken run.

  She was limping quite a bit when she arrived at the back door of the cottage, and she was surprised when she entered the kitchen to hear voices coming from the living room. The other one she recognised immediately as that of the parson, and the absence of his gig outside pointed to him having walked. Twice recently she had seen him walking, but at a distance.

  She couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying until she unwound the woollen scarf that covered the hood of her cape, when his voice sounded clear in her ears as he said, ‘I know it’s for the best yet I feel guilty. Part of me though is relieved; but the greater part of me feels disappointment, rejection and not a little foolish.’

  ‘Best thing that could have happened.’ It was Mr Bowman’s voice, thick and husky as he went on, ‘I told you at the beginning, and it would have been a catastrophe if it had gone through. You’re well out of it, and she was wise to realise this…Man, she stuck out like a sore thumb. If you were so badly in need of a wife far better you had taken Miss Wilkinson because she’s been apprenticed to the job for years, she would have fitted your situation like a glove and…’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Ralph. To me Miss Wilkinson is a spinster lady of uncertain years. She’s almost forty if a day.’

  ‘Well, what’s ten or eleven years between friends?’ The painter began to cough now, and the parson said, ‘You should get away from here, Ralph, the air’s too harsh.’

  ‘Yes, I should…Yes I should.’ The words were said between gasps. ‘And if pigs and paupers could fly, I’d be away tomorrow.’

  ‘I wish I could help.’

  ‘You do, you do, more than you know. Oh yes, more than you know, Henry. Anyway, I’m not worried, I’ve got over worse spells than this. And I don’t intend to die, not for a long time.’

  ‘Have you had the doctor recently?’

  ‘Yes, Henry, I’ve had the doctor recently, and he assures me it’s not the consumption; bronchial tubes and other bits of odds and ends stopped up, that’s all. Once we get the winter over they’ll all empty. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘Nothing’s simple.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you’re right, except perhaps the truth when one is honest enough to face up to it. And I can tell you this, Henry: you face up to the truth in yourself and you’ll find you’re damned glad to have escaped.’

  She had by now put on a clean apron, smoothed the front of her hair from her forehead, taken off her muddy boots and put on her rope sandals, and all done quietly. But now she clattered the pan in the bottom of the dish that was standing on the little table, and the painter’s voice came from the other room saying, ‘That you, Emma?’

  The next minute the parson was looking at her through the kitchen door. He did not speak immediately; when he did his voice sounded ordinary as he said, ‘Nasty morning, Emma.’

  ‘Yes, Parson; where the ice has thawed on the road it’s very muddy.’

  ‘I found it so.’

  She smile
d at him. It was a smile of greeting, it was as if he had returned from being away for a long time: she was seeing him now as she had seen him before the threat of marriage hung over him, or over her. She couldn’t work it out; she only knew she was glad that young woman wasn’t coming into the parish, and into his life. She must have given him the push. Well, whichever one had done it, she was glad.

  She walked towards him now and he moved aside to allow her to enter the room. Going straight up to Ralph Bowman, she stood in front of him, saying, ‘How are you today, Mr Bowman?’

  ‘As you see me, Emma. As you see me.’

  ‘I’ve a message for you from Billy.’

  ‘A message for me from Mr William Proctor? Well! well! Let me hear it.’

  ‘Well’—she nodded her head towards him—‘he says you could be rid of your cough within a week or so if you rubbed your chest every night with goose fat and sucked some houghhound, or put it in some hot water and drank it.’

  ‘Well now. Well now. Is that a fact?’

  ‘That’s what Billy says. And it’s worth tryin’, houghhound’s cheap enough, and I could get you the goose fat.’

  ‘What do you think of that, Henry?’ The painter was looking up at the parson, and Henry said, ‘Sounds a very sensible cure to me, especially the houghhound, for I think you’ve already tried the goose fat.’

  ‘Not for a long time—couldn’t be bothered—but this combination sounds very good. Henry, the next time you’re in Gateshead Fell, for I don’t suppose the village shop would stock it, you could get me some houghhound. Houghhound ginger, that’s the term, isn’t it, houghhound ginger?’ He appealed to Emma.

  ‘Yes’—she was nodding at him now—‘houghhound ginger, or houghhound candy, it’s the same thing.’

  ‘Talking of cures, Emma, how’s your foot?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nearly better, Mr Bowman, thanks.’

  ‘Emma trod on a rusty nail. It went through the sole of her boot.’ Ralph Bowman was again looking at Henry, and he, all concern, turned to Emma, saying, ‘I thought you were limping. Have you had it seen to?’

  ‘Oh aye. Yes. It’s all healed. It’s just when I step on it at the side like…Shall I make some tea?’ She had spoken to Ralph Bowman again and he said, ‘Yes, Emma, make some tea.’

  While she busied herself filling the kettle and preparing the tray for the tea her ears were alert to the conversation in the next room, but it didn’t bring her to a stop until she heard the parson’s voice low and angry-sounding saying, ‘Utter scandal, the way they have her working on that farm, and she but a child.’

  And now Mr Bowman’s voice answering, ‘I agree with you in part, but you know, Henry, what’s escaping you and has escaped me till recently is that our Emma is no longer a child; at times she is even no longer a little girl. The last picture I did of her, which is all of seven months ago now, even then I saw the young woman emerging. In a couple of years’ time she could be married.’

  ‘Oh no! No!’ The words sounded vehement.

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. There’s three hefty fellows on that farm and you can’t tell me that they’ve closed their eyes to her. Henry, you go around with your head in the clouds and your eyes on the stars, you don’t see what’s below your nose.’

  ‘That isn’t right, and you know it. I’m no stargazer, Ralph, and I know what goes on under my nose, only too well, and that has made me uneasy, so uneasy that I am every day questioning my position. I’ve told you before I feel I’m in the wrong job so to speak. But as for Emma being fit for marriage in two years…No!’

  ‘Oh, Henry.’ There was a long pause now before the painter went on, ‘You’ve always seen Emma through coloured glass. She’s a woman in the making and, let me tell you, she’s going to be a very disturbing woman. As for not being ready for marriage, what about the latest stir in the village with your little Nell Highpen, fourteen years old and about to give birth, and they don’t know whether it’s her father or her brother or one of the customers from the Tuns from whom she was seen begging pennies…’

  ‘There’s a difference between that poor child and Emma. Emma has intelligence, she can read and write, better I should imagine than any of the children of the gentry, better I do know than John and Peter Fordyke. I’ve seen their hand with the pen, and their mother’s too, and she a lady in her own right. That kind of thing will not happen to Emma, except…except…’

  ‘Yes, Henry?’

  ‘Well, you know what I mean, unless it is forced on her.’

  ‘And that could be. Yes, it well could be. She thinks she’s only got to carry that whip in her waistband and she’s protected from the devil himself. But you let some determined big lout get…’

  ‘Be quiet, Ralph.’

  ‘All right. I’ll be quiet. The only thing I’ll say is, the quicker she’s married the better for all concerned, Henry…for all concerned.’

  A deep silence followed this statement during which Emma stood still near the table, her ears strained towards the next room from which there came no sound of movement, and she imagined that the two men might be standing looking at each other.

  For herself, she was looking out through the little window into the bleak day and she was feeling slightly indignant that these two friends of hers, and she did class them as friends although one was her employer and the other a parson, should, in a way, be arranging her life and that the only escape they saw for her was through marriage and that as soon as possible. Well, she wasn’t going to get married just to escape…But what about Barney? She was promised to Barney. But that wouldn’t happen for a long time, well, not until she was eighteen, or nineteen, or perhaps twenty years old…Would Barney wait that long? Barney had said he’d be quite willing to wait until she was ready, and she would have to be very ready before she married, ’cos it was a frightening thing. She knew that already, yes a very frightening thing, for Miss Wilkinson let her read some of the Bible stories to the Sunday School class now, and last week she read about the Marriage at Cana. And afterwards, Kate McGill collared her outside and started telling her about what happened when their Mary got married. They all worked on Mr Crosby’s farm and they’d had a big tea and dance and great do’s in the barn; then when they were all rowdy they had carried both Mary and her Tommy half a mile down the road to the cottage and pulled their clothes off them and stuck them in bed together. But it didn’t matter because Tommy had been too drunk to do anything to their Mary.

  That was marriage.

  She wanted none of it, not even with Barney.

  She took the tray of tea into the room. They were talking to each other now about the Houses of Parliament up in London town and a Mr Peel doing something about corn.

  She returned to the kitchen and went about her work, and decided it wasn’t a nice morning at all, and her foot was hurting her worse than ever.

  It was just turned twelve when she left the cottage. The weather had worsened, the wind was blowing now and there were specks in it. Her hands were freezing. Her granny, she knew, was knitting her some mittens for Christmas; she wished she had them now.

  She had left the bridle path and was beginning to cross the second field when she saw the riders in the distance. There were two of them. The hunt often crossed this way, but there was no hunt on today that she knew of; they were just two men, she supposed, out for a gallop, and they were galloping in her direction. She kept on walking, hurrying now to where there was some low scrub and an outcrop of rock, thinking that they wouldn’t come near that. The only reason she wanted to be out of their way was that the horses kicked up so much earth she would be spattered with it.

  When she reached the rocks she paused and looked to the side. The riders seemed to have changed their course and to be riding away from her; then of a sudden they wheeled the horses about and came galloping straight towards her, and she gasped and was on the point of yelling when they brought their horses to a skidding stop close to the outcrop and almost to her side.

  Looking up
at the riders, she saw that they were Masters John and Peter Fordyke from the House; she had seen them in the hunt, and also the time when they had accompanied their father to the farm. But that was a good two years ago, and then they had appeared like two young lads but now they looked like young men. The elder must be all of seventeen, if not more, and it was he who spoke to her, shouting at her, ‘You’re the girl from the farm, aren’t you, Yorkless’?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I hear tell you’re out of a circus?’

  She made no answer to this.

  ‘Have you lost your tongue?’

  ‘No sir, I haven’t lost my tongue.’

  ‘Oh, she’s alive.’ The elder turned his head and looked at the younger rider who now spoke, saying, ‘They said when you were little you used to do fancy tricks with the whip. Can you still do them?’

  ‘Yes, if need be.’

  They both stared at her now while their horses pawed the ground and tossed their heads.

  What happened next was so sudden that she was taken off her guard, for the older boy, flicking his riding crop towards her, shouted, ‘Catch that!’

  The short lash flicked across her eyes and her hand coming up swiftly grabbed at it, and as the rider jerked at the other end of it the leather seared the skin of her palm. But at the same time it also revived in her the old flashing rage and with the sudden twist of her wrist she caught hold of the lash and the next minute the stock had been wrenched from the young man’s hand, and almost in one movement she swung it round and towards his leather-booted leg. But such were her feelings and the unbalanced stance she was placed in because of her sore foot that she missed her aim and the crop stung the animal’s flank and the next minute it was rearing on its hind legs, only to plunge downwards, bringing its rider toppling over its head.

  There was a sickening thud, and her eyes became fixed on the inert figure now lying between the rocks. The younger man had dismounted and was shouting unintelligible words; he had already caught his brother’s horse and tied it to a stump of a tree. When he knelt down on the ground beside his brother, Emma was still standing staring: her life seemed to have stopped; she felt no beat in her heart; a great dread had frozen her body and fixed it to the ground; the only thing that was left alive within her was her mind. She had unseated the son of the House and he looked dead.