The Maltese Angel Read online

  ‘Well, that’s about the only thing in life, if you ask me, he isn’t afraid of.’

  It was nearly half an hour later. Billy had washed the boy’s face and hands, and Ward himself had cleaned the boy’s back as much as he could without causing him more pain than he was apparently already suffering, before applying an ointment that his mother had used on both humans and beasts for bruises and boils and every known skin ailment. Afterwards, they had watched the waif gulp at food like a ravenous animal, and when he had drunk a half-pint of milk almost at one swallow, they had exchanged glances. But it wasn’t until the lad was seated on the low cracket before the fire, a blanket about him, that the stiffness seemed to go out of his body and his tongue became loose for the first time.

  When Ward again asked his name, he said, ‘Carl Bennett.’

  The name seemed ordinary enough to them both; but the tone of the voice was not one they would have termed local, nor would it have been recognisable for miles around.

  When Ward asked how old he was, the boy at first said, ‘Eight;’ but then his head jerked and he had added, ‘No; nine.’

  Where had he come from? At this he had bowed his head before muttering, ‘Farm.’

  ‘Whose farm?’ asked Ward. ‘Which farm?’

  The look the boy gave Ward was furtive before he muttered, ‘A long way off, beyond Durham.’

  ‘Beyond Durham?’

  The old man and Ward seemed to repeat the words together.

  ‘When did you leave?’

  ‘Yesterday. No…’ The tousled dark head shook again. ‘The day before. Not sure.’

  ‘Why?’

  There was no answer to this, only the look in the boy’s eyes seemed to say, ‘Need you ask?’

  ‘What was the name of the farm…or the farmer?’

  The boy now looked down to the wide hearth and seemed to focus his gaze on the huge black iron dog that supported the set of equally huge fire-irons; and he didn’t raise his head again until Ward said, ‘Well, don’t worry; you’re not going back. My man, here’—he nodded towards Billy—‘was saying only last week he could do with some help; that he’s not getting any younger and was looking for a youngster to do the odds and ends. Weren’t you?’

  ‘Oh aye. Oh, yes. Aye, I was that, master. I was that. Definitely I was lookin’ out for a youngster.’

  The boy stared from one to the other and his voice held a note of natural eagerness when he said, ‘I can work…work hard.’

  ‘How long were you on the farm?’

  ‘Two years.’

  ‘Where did you live before that?’

  The head made a movement as if about to droop again, but the thin bony chin jerked slightly as the words came: ‘The workhouse.’

  ‘Had you been there long?’

  ‘Since being four…I mean, since I was four.’

  Again they both noted the boy’s strange way of speaking.

  ‘How did you get there?’

  ‘I am told that my parents were set upon on their journey. My mother had the sickness; she died, and my father, too.’

  ‘What was the sickness?’

  ‘Her chest. But I don’t know how my father died. Joe said he knew, but he wouldn’t tell me.’

  ‘Who was Joe?’

  ‘He was a boy in the workhouse, but he was taken to a farm before I was. He was older.’

  ‘Is he still on the farm?’

  ‘No, he ran away twice. He didn’t come back the second time.’

  ‘Is this the first time you’ve run away?’

  Again the boy’s head drooped and the voice was low as he replied, ‘No; three times.’

  ‘And you were whipped when you got back, and tied up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you go back to the workhouse and tell them of the treatment?’

  Both the boy and Billy stared at Ward now, and it was to Billy that Ward made the sharp retort: ‘Well, there’s laws, you know. They send inspectors to the farms; at least, they’re supposed to do. Arthur Meyer has a workhouse boy. I think he’s got two and the Masons have one. And as far as I understand they’ve got to be signed for and reports given as to progress.’

  ‘Aye, well’—Billy’s head wagged—‘there are workhouses an’ workhouses, an’ some folks would cut your throat for a backhander. Anyway, master, where is he gona sleep the night?’

  After a moment’s thought Ward said, ‘Put him in the boiler-house; it’s nice and warm there; and we’ll see about rigging up a room for him above the stables tomorrow.’ He turned now to the boy and smiled at him, saying, ‘How does that suit you?’

  The boy did not immediately answer; when he did, his voice came as a thin mutter: ‘You are not just speaking like this, sir, then tomorrow you will change?’

  ‘No, son; I am not just speaking like this. And you will find that I don’t say one thing at night and another in the morning. Go with Billy now, and he’ll bed you down, and tomorrow we will talk. But I think, for the time being and for your own safety, you must not be seen abroad too much because, as the law stands, you could be sent back. You understand?’

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, I understand, sir. And…and thank you.’

  He stood up now. He was not more than four feet tall, and apparently he was a child of eight or nine—he had seemed uncertain of his own age—yet from the set look on his face and the expression in his eyes at this moment he could be taken for an adult; and this disturbed both men.

  It was Billy who now said briskly, ‘Well, come along, young man. If you’re goin’ to be any use to me you must get your sleep. Aye, you must that.’ And with this he hitched up the blanket around the boy, put his hand on his shoulder and pressed him towards the door. But there he stopped and, turning towards Ward, he said, ‘By the way, master, did you see to Betty?’

  ‘No; but I’m going to do that now. Anyway’—Ward smiled—‘she’s likely stuffed herself full of oats by now and taken her own harness off. I’m sure she’s quite capable of it. So get yourself away to bed; the morning will soon be here.’

  ‘’Twill that, master. ’Twill that. That’s one of the things you can be sure of: whether we’re here or not, the mornin’ will be.’

  Ward did not immediately follow his man out and see to the horse, but he sat down with a heavy plop on one of the high-backed, wooden kitchen chairs; and now he did place his elbows on the table, but he did not droop his head into his hands. What he said to himself was, Funny, but this little business has knocked it clean out of my head. It’s there though, and I’ve got to do something about it.

  But what? Tomorrow is Sunday. I can do nothing till Monday night, when I can sit there again and face her. And how many nights after that am I going to be there without having a word with her? She knows I’m there; I’m sure of that. She looked at me tonight, and she smiled…she smiled at me, not the rest of them, she didn’t lift her eyes over the stalls or raise them to the gallery. I’m not imagining it. No, no; I’m not. One thing, she isn’t married. The doorman said she wasn’t. His thoughts now took him back to the doorman, and he gritted his teeth as he said to himself, By, it’s a wonder I didn’t let go at him when he said, ‘What d’you want to know for? And if she was, it wouldn’t be to a yokel from the country.’ A yokel from the country! And he was in his good suit, made of the best homespun cloth. Of course, he’d had it these five years, and the neck was high. But surely that wouldn’t have stamped him as being from the country. He was lucky, that chap, that he left him still standing on his feet.

  He went to rise from the chair; then he stopped himself, saying half aloud, ‘What about tomorrow?’ He had promised Parson Tracey that he would turn up for the choir…at least he had made the promise through Frank Noble, the curate, when he had called here only two days ago, and Frank, in his ‘Hail fellow, well met’ voice had exclaimed loudly how they all missed him; that the choir wasn’t the same without him: all tenors and tremors, not a bass among them. ‘You’re being missed, you know, Ward,
’ he had added. ‘You’re being missed by everybody…everybody.’ What he had meant by the second everybody was that he was being missed by one in particular.

  Well, what had he to be afraid of? Daisy understood all right, by now, how things stood. She had been a pal since schooldays; she had been more of a pal to him than had either of her brothers, Sep or Pete. That was all she had been, a pal.

  His rising from the chair was in the form of a jerk and as he made hastily for the door an inner voice checked his step. ‘Stop kidding yourself, man,’ it said. ‘Face up to it. You know what she’s always been after. Remember what Dad said to you the day before he died: “She’d make a good wife and she’d give you a family. Aye, a big one. But what else you’ll get from her, you alone know. Just remember, lad: there’s more in marriage than the bed, which you’ve got to get out of most times at five in the morning. And days are long, especially in the winter.”’

  His dad had been a wise man, a quiet, thinking, wise man; and he had picked right for himself. Which was why he had been unable to go on living without his partner, because she had given him more than was called upon as her duty.

  Well, tomorrow morning he would go and sing in the choir, and leave the rest to God and common sense.

  Two

  Part of St Stephen’s Church dated from the early sixteenth century; surprisingly, not the chancel and sanctuary section, but the part of the nave containing the font.

  Eight rows of pews were contained in this old part, the rest, ten rows, were within the newer walls built earlier in the century.

  And, again surprisingly, a gallery was built to overhang the font, and it was here the organ was housed and the choir sang.

  A huge wrought-iron screen stretched across the front of the chancel, thereby cutting off the view of the altar and sanctuary from the congregation, apart from those favoured with the direct view allowed through the necessary central opening in the screen.

  However, the pulpit to the right side of the screen was in view of all the congregation.

  The screen had been given by a member of the Ramsmore family in honour of his father, a general who had died in battle.

  Its immediate effect on the villagers had been one of muted protest, muted because, for most of them, a man’s daily bread depended either directly upon the Ramsmores or on their patronage. In those days, most of the village and the surrounding countryside was owned by them.

  However, nowadays, things were changed in all ways up at the Hall. At one time, as many as sixty people would have been employed in the house or on the estate, but, now, the fingers of two hands would have numbered them. Three farms had gone, as well as most of the immediate estate. Yet, they were still generally looked upon as Lords of the Manor, for the Colonel was a class man, and his second wife, Lady Lydia, was a lady in her own right, and she had given him a new son two years ago. Moreover, she was a woman who received respect without it being demanded, for she spoke her mind. It had even been whispered here and there that if she’d had anything to do with it, the screen would have come down, and without delay, and this might have encouraged a more open objection to it by the villagers, except that anyone daring to suggest such a thing would have had to face the wrath of Parson Tracey, and Parson Tracey was a power in the village. In fact, it was laughingly said he thought he had created the village, the church, and God.

  From where he sat in the gallery, Ward gazed fixedly at the minister in the pulpit, and he asked himself for the hundredth time how much longer the man was going to keep yammering on about Job and his wrongs: poor Job had been stung by everything but a horsefly, but apparently God was now rewarding him in abundance with thousands of sheep, she-asses, and camels. My! My! He had heard it all before. How many times over the years? From when he was a boy he had pictured the sheep being chased by the she-asses, and the lot of them being chased by the camels. He had even made it his business to look out a picture of a camel. They were big and he had early come to the conclusion that thousands of them would soon have put paid to the sheep and the she-asses.

  Parson Tracey had no imagination. He had six sermons, which he would vary from time to time. Even when they were boys, Ward would lay a bet with Fred Newberry, who was sitting next to him now, that he could repeat at least two of the sermons. The bet had always been his wind-up engine against Fred’s pinching two meat and onion pies from his dad’s bakery. The engine was still lying amongst the oddments up in the attic.

  Fred dug him gently in the ribs now, and a whisper came from the corner of his mouth, saying, ‘Bet you a tanner Old Smythe goes to assist Miss Alice from the pew, eh?’

  Ward made an almost audible sound that could have been Huh! as he thought, Fred gets dafter. Of course the verger would go and offer Miss Alice his hand to assist her out of the pew as if she were an old woman instead of an eighteen-year-old buxom miss. The verger was a dirty-minded old swine. Perhaps he ogled the young ones because he had no children of his own.

  Ah! There, it was over, the end being signalled, first by the scraping of feet as the four men on the choir bench and the three boys seated in front of them rose to their feet, and by the rising, almost as one, of those in the bare wooden pews just slightly before the more favoured ones in the three pews where the seats were padded, and the rustling of gowns seeming to accentuate further the difference of favour.

  Sometimes as many as six gentry families would attend at the main service, but this morning the pews were occupied by only three: the Ramsmores, the Hopkinses from Border Manor, and the Bentfords, who lived in the old Wearside Grange. They were a nice family, the Bentfords, so Ward thought; but they were under suspicion in the village as their daughter had married one of the Franklins who owned The Mill, and they were Methodists.

  Ward drew in a deep breath, and looked towards the organ, which was now beginning to get under way as two young boys put all their strength into pumping its wooden handle. Then he glanced back along the row to where Ben Oldman, the shoemaker, who was honoured by the title of choirmaster, was now bending forward with his hand at shoulder height and seeming to pat the air.

  They were away: Fred’s voice in full flood, and Jimmy Conroy, the butcher’s son, mouthing the words while thinking, so Ward was sure, not of his soul but of Susan Beaker down there at the end of the sixth row, her straw hat bobbing with the tune, and then, there at the end of the row Charlie Dempsey the blacksmith, as usual a note higher and a note in front of everyone else. But Charlie was a nice fellow, as were his sons John and Harry an’ all. But they shunned church, the pair of them, as he himself had been doing for some time.

  Jesu, Lover of my soul,

  Let me to Thy bosom fly…

  Now why should he be looking at Daisy down there, because there was one thing sure, especially now, he didn’t want to fly to her bosom. But had he ever wanted to fly to her bosom? No; no, definitely not. Not like that.

  While the nearer waters roll,

  While the tempest still is high;

  Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,

  Till the storm of life is past:

  Safe into the haven guide,

  O, receive my soul at last.

  The hymn finished on the Amen being dragged out, the congregation sat back and with impatient patience, the outcome of practice, waited while the Reverend Bertram Tracey slowly made his way, followed by his two servers, from the altar, down the two steps, through the arch in the screen, and after turning right, disappeared into the vestry.

  Ward did not hurry from the gallery; nor did Fred; and once they were alone, Fred said, ‘Like to drop in home for a minute or so?’ And leaning towards Ward, exclaimed, ‘Home brew going. As good as what you’ll get in The Running Hare or The Crown Head. I can vouch for it, ’cos this mornin’ I had a head on me as big as the bell tower, with the bell in it goin’ hell for leather.’ He spluttered, adding, ‘Eeh! Let’s get out of this.’

  At the foot of the spiral staircase he nudged Ward, saying, ‘Bet yer Daisy’ll be at the gate
…What d’you say?’

  Ward made no answer: from experience he knew that Fred didn’t require answers.

  Outside, it was evident that they must be among the last to leave, for there was the Reverend making his way across the graveyard towards his extra large Sunday dinner and the following nap that could go on till four in the afternoon, or at least until his wife returned from taking the Sunday school.

  Everything in the village had a pattern; and there was part of it standing outside the lych-gate. The Mason family had mounted the trap, the father John, and Gladys his wife and Pete and Sep, their manly sons.

  The occupants of the trap waved and called to him as they moved off, and Fred, too, bade him a jovial farewell, saying, ‘You’re not comin’ then? Well, if I don’t see you at the Harvest Festival, I’ll see you on the Christmas tree,’ and as if he hadn’t been aware of her before, he now added, ‘Hello there, Daisy. You get bigger and bonnier every week.’

  ‘You’re a fool, Fred Newberry. Always were and always will be.’

  ‘Very likely you’re right, Daisy. Very likely you’re right. Ta-ra. Ta-ra, Ward. Happy days.’

  ‘He talks the same as he did at school.’ She was looking at Ward now, and he answered, ‘Yes, I suppose so; but he’s harmless, and I’ve never known him to come out with anything that would hurt another.’

  ‘Huh! You got religion all of a sudden?’

  He gave her no answer, but as she made to walk on and towards the village street, he stopped and said, ‘I’ve got to get back; there’s a lot to do.’