The Whip (The Spaniard's Gift) Read online

  And some of them, after she had taken their coat tugged at it in her hand in an endeavour to extract a flat flask or half bottle from the inside pocket, before proceeding into the front room where the missis was sitting all in black on one of the horsehair chairs awaiting their condolences. In all, the mourners numbered twenty-two.

  From what she had heard, a funeral tea always started like this but ended like a wedding. That’s what the bottles were for, she supposed.

  The front door closed, she was going into the kitchen when she met Lizzie bearing a tray full of food, and Lizzie said, ‘Go and see to the animals, they’ll be burstin’.’

  And at this she whispered back, ‘But I’ve got me good frock on.’

  ‘Then change it. It’s his orders.’

  She had a great inclination to disobey the order as she stood looking down at her good frock over which was tied a clean white apron. She didn’t want to get into her stiff smelly working clothes again; what was more, she had washed herself down from head to foot before the fire the night before last. This, of course, was after her granny had tucked herself in bed and was almost asleep before her head touched the pillow. She had felt wonderfully clean, her body glowing warmly in the firelight, and she had paused a while to compare the skin of her hands with that of her rising breasts. Her hands looked ugly, red and chapped, with the nails broken down to the quick. Her nose had wrinkled at the comparison and she determined from then on to rub goose grease into them every night, if not, some pig fat …

  But here she was now in her everyday clothes again with the routine as usual.

  She collected the buckets from the dairy and went into the cow byres. One good thing about it, it was warm in here. Two of the cows were bellowing: there was a shuffling and snuffling and rattling of their tethers, and as she passed them she said, ‘All right, all right, I’m here.’

  Her thoughts were still rebellious as she settled down to the milking and she was halfway through it when she heard the byre door open. She turned a startled eye towards it, for this she imagined was just the time Luke would put in an appearance while everybody else was busy in the house. But it wasn’t Luke, it was Barney, and she stopped her milking and rose to her feet. It was very seldom they had a minute alone together.

  When he stood in front of her she saw that his face looked sad, and he sounded sad as he said, ‘I’m going to miss Dan.’

  To this she answered simply, ‘You liked him?’

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘Best of the bunch really. Oh, Emma!’ Of a sudden his arms had come out and he was holding her close to him. Their breaths were wafting across each other’s eyes dimming their vision, and when he said, ‘Oh, how I wish I could put a couple of years on you this minute,’ she made no reply for of a sudden she didn’t want the years on her for that would mean…Well, what would it mean? It would mean being held like this tightly, but in a way that brought no comfort, only a kind of fright. This was only the second time she had been in his arms. She had liked it the first time, now she wasn’t sure. Yet she liked him. Oh yes, she was quite sure of that, she liked Barney. But not the way he was looking now. Her body seemed like a reed pressed into the middle of his; one of his hands was on the lower part of her back and the other between her shoulder blades. When he closed his eyes and the colour seemed to leave his red cheeks she forced herself away from him, muttering, ‘Eeh! Barney, what if they come in.’

  He was standing with his head down now, his eyes closed. ‘You still like me?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yes, Barney. Yes, I still like you.’

  He raised his head and, the colour seeping back into his cheeks and his eyes looking straight into hers, he said, ‘Remember I’m gona go on waiting for you, till you’re ready.’

  She nodded her head once, swallowed deeply, then said, ‘I…I know Barney.’

  Smiling quietly at her now, he said, ‘That’s all right then. I…I’d better be gettin’ back.’

  He made a move to go, then turned, saying quietly, ‘We’ll have to try to arrange to meet on the quiet somewhere, eh?’

  She made no answer but again nodded her head once.

  Sitting down on a milk stool again, she did not begin milking straight away but leant her head against the cow’s flank and pondered why she was feeling like this, frightened of the years that were coming on her and what was in them for her. She wished she could talk to somebody about them: she should be able to talk to her granny about such things but she couldn’t. This only left the parson and Mr Bowman, and she would as soon think of jumping in the river as talk of feelings like this to them.

  She felt miserable. It was a long time since she had felt as miserable as she did at this minute; but it wasn’t miserable enough to wish she was dead. No, she wanted to live, but…but…how could she put it?…have a say in her own life. Yes, that’s what she wanted, to have a say in her own life. But Barney was waiting for her and, in his words, she would be ready for him in a couple of years.

  At one time years seemed to have been made up of endless time. You didn’t think about them as years, just seasons, and between one season and another there were months, weeks and days. And the days were endless; twelve to fourteen hours of endlessness, distinguished only by your body sweating or freezing. But over the past year time had changed; it was moving faster. And next year, it would move faster still. And the next …

  What was the matter with her anyway? She didn’t know which end of her was up at the moment. Marriage. Marriage. Gettin’ married…Would the parson marry her? What was she saying? She had meant, would the parson marry her to Barney?

  She stared at the flank of the cow, and then her hands shot out and gripped the teats so tightly that the animal kicked, and at this she said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

  Really, as she had just said to herself, she certainly didn’t know which end of her was up when she could think a thing like that.

  PART THREE

  THE WEDDING

  One

  Now fifteen and a half years old, Emma appeared like a fully grown young woman. She carried her five foot four inches very straight, her hair had lengthened considerably and had darkened to a shining black, the process making her skin appear like warm cream. In contrast, her eyes, which at times appeared too big for her face, were a deep brown and heavily lashed; her eyebrows were almost straight and did not follow the curve of the eye sockets. Her lips were red but not over full, and her teeth looked strong and evenly spaced. And she was, as she had heard the parson remark to Mr Bowman, well above average intelligence for her class.

  When she first heard him express this opinion she had experienced a feeling that, to say the least, spoke of annoyance. He was her friend, yet obviously to him she was still of an inferior class, even though she could read the same books as he read. Of course, she couldn’t speak in a foreign tongue nor could she understand any of the Latin phrases that sometimes appeared in a book. Perhaps you had to know such things before you could rise from your class. She pondered these thoughts at such times when she couldn’t sleep at nights, and this was often of late, for she knew the time was almost upon her when she would be ready for Barney. Besides the other troublesome feelings she had on the subject, the thought of the effect his declaration would have on his mother caused her at times to close her eyes tightly. The woman would go mad, as would his father.

  Tempers were short enough on the farm. There had been torrential rainstorms which had flattened the fields of barley, and the place had been a quagmire for weeks. Farming all round was in a bad way: the average price of wheat was eighteen shillings for five pecks, and last year flour had gone up to three shillings and sixpence per stone, and all other grains and meals in proportion. Then potatoes were selling at one shilling and sixpence per stone, and beef and mutton reached eightpence a pound. Moreover, to make matters worse there were frequent although small outbreaks of the cholera. There had been one in Gateshead and the missis hadn’t taken anything into the market for a month, and the miste
r had gone for her saying it was merely diarrhoea, and anyway, towards the end of the year people’s bowels always became slack.

  Emma had heard the painter reading from the newspaper that the guardians of the poor in Gateshead Fell had been appointed to distribute bread and soup tickets in order to allay further disease caused by malnutrition among the poor. But the parson had come back at him saying they might as well take a bucket and try to scoop the River Tyne dry, for the damage was already done, people were living in filth and squalor, their only relief being beer and raw spirit, and they didn’t mind what manner of means they used to provide the money to acquire it.

  Emma liked to hear them talking; it sounded like arguing at times, but they still nearly always ended up laughing. Besides discussing the daily news, they talked of all kinds of things. She could now picture what the parliament in London must be like. First, she had imagined it peopled with courtly gentlemen, but from what she could gather and the way the gentlemen shouted at each other it seemed more like The Tuns on a market day.

  But today was fine, the sun was shining and shining hotly, so much so that the earth was steaming. It was half past ten in the morning. She was in the big barn breaking a bale of straw with which to replenish the nest boxes in the hen cree when Barney came round the partition and put his arms around her.

  There were two partitions in the barn where once the horses had been stalled, and now he pulled her down behind the end one until she was on her hunkers, and he whispered to her, ‘Come out tonight, Emma.’ And to this she whispered back, ‘I can’t. I…I’d better not.’

  ‘It’ll be dark, the moon won’t be up.’

  ‘I’m…I’m afraid.’

  ‘What of? You…you’ve done it afore.’

  Her head went down, and then she muttered, ‘All right.’

  He pulled her face towards him and his mouth fell hard on hers, and for a moment she was lost in his kiss; and he too, or he would have heard the footsteps even on the straw that was strewn on the floor. The next minute an almost unearthly cry overbalanced them and Barney found himself yanked back by the collar; then his mother was screaming, ‘I knew it! I knew it! I knew there was something on with that bitch…You!’

  As the tall woman sprang towards where Emma lay, Barney regained his feet and gripped hold of her from the back; then swinging her round, he stood between her and Emma, bawling now, ‘Leave her be, Ma. Leave her be. She’s mine. You might as well know, she’s mine.’

  ‘Never! Never as long as I breathe.’

  Barney pushed his mother from him now and still yelling, he cried, ‘You can’t keep me here. The world’s wide; I’ll go and she along of me.’

  ‘You won’t get a penny, nor a rag…’

  ‘I will though.’ He was now yelling as high as she. ‘There’s what’s owing me, years of labour.’

  ‘Not a penny. And you’ll rue the day you ever took her. She’s bad meat, that ’un, bad meat. Things have never been the same here since she entered the gates. But you, you sneakin’ young swine you!’ Her rage brought her hand, fist doubled, up above her head, but she held it there. Then they both turned and looked towards the door where Pete was hissing at them, ‘’Tis a groom from the House, he’s in the yard, and you screamin’.’

  Dilly Yorkless brought her clenched fist slowly down from above her head; then after glaring at her son she turned her eyes on Emma, who was leaning against the partition, her hands tight pressed against it, and she spat at her, ‘I curse you! Do you hear? And your offspring. You’ll live to regret this day, you foreign bastard you!’ And on this she went out.

  Barney now turned towards Emma. Her face was drained of colour and her head was hanging, but still her hands were pressed tight against the wood of the partition, and he said, ‘If I go, you’ll come along of me.’ It wasn’t a request but more of a command and she lifted her head and looked at him, saying, ‘There’s me granny.’

  He now shook his head at her, saying, ‘She’s got to let you go sometime.’

  ‘I’m…I’m not yet sixteen.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’ His voice had begun on a bawl but suddenly dropped, and he repeated, ‘Susan Croft down in the village, she had a bairn last year and she but fifteen then an’ married.’

  ‘She had to get so.’ Emma had taken her hands from the wood now, but had them pressed tightly together in front of her chest, and she said, ‘It wouldn’t be that way with me.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ His voice had a soothing note to it; but then almost bitterly he went on, ‘Don’t I know! I…I want you, Emma, I need you. Here I am, a man twenty years old and never yet have I taken anybody. I’m as clean as you because’—he gulped deep in his throat—‘I…I love you, Emma. Have done, always. You seem to have been in me life from I can remember, not from when you just came…Oh, Emma.’ As he put his hand towards her, and repeated again, ‘Oh, Emma,’ Lizzie’s voice came on them also saying her name: ‘Emma!’ But it had a harsh sound and Emma sprang from behind the partition and looked down to where her granny was standing in the barn doorway.

  Seeing them, Lizzie looked from one to the other; then the rising of her shoulders indicated her great intake of breath before she said, ‘You’ve been called up to the House.’

  Emma’s eyes stretched wide and her lips moved into the words, ‘The House?’ but made no sound.

  After her visit to await sentence on that memorable day she had waited to be called again, but as time passed and no bidding came from the House she knew it had been a thing that happened but once. She had gone on though practising for a time with the whips and the knives whenever the opportunity allowed, until some months ago when, realising the futility of it, she had stopped after asking herself what use it was anyway, she had learned all the tricks she could with the whip and she’d never really be expert, not like her dada, with the knives. You had to have the strong wrist and accurate eye of a man to be able to cut string with the point of a dagger, and that’s what her dada had been able to do.

  Barney followed her up the barn and when they both came close to Lizzie, she looked from one to the other as she said, ‘You’ve let hell loose, the pair of you, haven’t you? And where’s it gona end?’

  ‘It’ll end, Lizzie, where I always knew it would end, she’ll be me wife. She’s known for a long time she’s gona be me wife.’

  Lizzie had turned but, looking back at him now, she said, ‘And I’ve known for a long time what the game was atween you, and I’ve just been waitin’ for this day. Now it has come and I can’t see the end of it. But go, you’—she had turned to Emma—‘and tidy yourself. An’ change. And you’ll have to go alone as I can’t go with you, I’m…I’m needed here.’

  Emma walked on past her granny saying nothing, but minutes later, having washed herself and about to put on her other dress, she felt in a way as if God had stepped in and saved her from some catastrophe.

  As she went to put on a clean cap she suddenly stopped and looked at it in her hand; then with a gesture almost as fierce as that which had been shown by her mistress a few minutes earlier she flung it aside and, tearing off the apron that she had just tied to her waist, it followed the cap. Then she took the bone comb from the mantelpiece and pulled it through each side of her hair. Following this, she sat down and almost ripped off her big mud-covered black boots and, reaching out to the side of the fender, she picked up her rope sandals and put them on. Then her defiance carrying her forward, she made her way through the farmyard in view of her master and mistress and her granny who were in loud conclave outside the farm kitchen door.

  Her passing brought them to silence, and then Dilly Yorkless screamed, ‘Where does she think she’s going like that!’

  ‘The House, I would think.’ It was her granny speaking.

  ‘Come you back here and dress decently, you slut!’

  ‘Leave her be: I wouldn’t attempt to stop her if I was you. She won’t be long here anyway. You can’t keep her, she’s not bonded, and nei
ther is your son.’

  Dilly Yorkless’ reply came as a jumble of enraged words to Emma as she walked into the road, but she hadn’t got far along it when her defiance flowed from her as if a lock-gate inside her had been lifted, and her body slumped and she began to tremble through fear not of her mistress so much as of what her granny’s words had implied: ‘She won’t be long here anyway, she’s not bonded, and neither is your son.’

  She wanted to go away, to get away from the farm, but not with Barney. The truth was, she didn’t want to marry Barney.

  She became sick with the knowledge that she had dared to give voice, if only to herself, to her true feelings …

  When she reached the lodge gates she was very hot and she took her one and only handkerchief from the cuff of her dress and dabbed her face with it.

  The lodgeman had closed the gates behind her before he said, ‘You’ve got to go to the front lawn, the old master is out there.’

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘Take that side path’—he pointed—‘it’ll bring you through the shrubbery and the rose garden, and then there’s the lawn. You can’t miss it.’ He smiled at her.

  It took her all of four minutes to reach the lawn. She came onto it from a tree-shaded walk, and there at the head of it, just below the steps leading from the second terrace that edged the wide drive approach, sat a muffled figure in a wheelchair. He was sitting in the shade of an awning and there was a table to his side with jugs and glasses on it. At the other side of him sat his daughter and standing some distance behind the awning were two liveried servants. Hesitantly, she walked across the lawn, but stopped when she was about five yards from them, and she remained still until the lady beckoned her forward with the lift of her hand. Then she was standing once again looking at the old man and he at her.