The Whip (The Spaniard's Gift) Page 20

  On this she turned to him, bringing his face stretching with something akin to amazement when she added, ‘I mightn’t want to bide me time. I’m free, I can up and go, and that’s what I’m thinking of doin’ an’ all, the way I’ve been treated here. Dogs have a better life and I don’t have to put up with it any more. I’m going to talk it over with the parson and see what he says.’

  Barney’s mouth opened and shut twice before he said, ‘What’s come over you? I…I thought you wanted it as much as me. And…and there’s a chance you could…yes you could’—he was nodding vigorously at her—‘you could be mistress over there one day. And if you want to know anything, I’ve already spoken to the parson, yesterday.’

  It was her turn to stretch her mouth, and she barked at him, ‘Well, you shouldn’t! You shouldn’t!’

  ‘Why? We’ve been promised, haven’t we?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head from side to side now. ‘I was but a bairn, well just a young lass. I’m no longer a young lass, I’m coming up sixteen and I’m not going to be tret like a black slave any more. I read that all the slaves aren’t treated the same, some have kind masters. Well, it hasn’t been my lot, has it? So I’ll make up me mind later and let you know.’ And she surprised him still further by swinging round and throwing the empty milk bucket against the byre wall, then marching out across the yard to the cottage.

  There she sat down at the table and, joining her hands on it, she beat them up and down on the bare wood as she asked herself, could she go to the parson and ask his advice? Slowly she shook her head. No, not about getting married to Barney, she couldn’t. But she could go to Mr Bowman. Yes, that’s what she would do, she would go to Mr Bowman. She would get cleaned up proper, not to do his work, because he had likely been managing these past weeks himself, but to ask if she could talk to him, because as she saw it now he was the nearest thing to her granny she had left.

  It was half an hour later when she went across the fields and dropped down on to the bridle path. She had seen no-one, not even a farm cart rumbling along the coach road; the mail coach she knew had passed some time before. But as she approached the cottage she saw that someone had arrived before her, as the parson’s trap was outside in the lane.

  Quietly now, she let herself in the back door and as quietly she closed it behind her. The door leading into the living room was open and the voices came as clear to her as if she were facing the men who were speaking. It was Mr Bowman’s voice that was saying, ‘Don’t think it hasn’t entered my head, Henry. Oh, yes, yes. And you may not believe it, but I have my own standard of morals and every time I have looked at her with desire in my heart I’ve had Lizzie before my eyes. You’re under the idea that God gives us life, Henry. Well, for my part I think if that is so He’s a creature with a wry sense of humour: He turns our hearts to things that are good to look upon, but when the years touch those things and the skin wrinkles and the temper frays it is not our hearts that are touched but the dark depths within us and we want rid of the things that we once loved, or thought we loved. You see, Henry, Lizzie was very good to me when I first came here. I didn’t expect to last long, but here was this woman, a pretty woman in her early thirties, not old enough to be my mother but old enough to act like one to a twenty-one year old sick lad, and I’ve got to admit she created in me a desire to live and to take up the painting again. And, as you guessed, from the beginning she became my spare-time wife. At what stage I became tired of the situation I don’t know, perhaps it was as I said when age began to gallop on her. Man is a mean thing, Henry, no real gratitude in him. Emma came as a blessing in disguise, at least I thought so, for she would curtail Lizzie’s visits. But then Lizzie found a way. I was cruel to Lizzie, Henry, more so I think when I saw her granddaughter growing into a thing of beauty. So Henry, unless you want Emma to become another Lizzie under this roof, don’t press me to take her on as my little housekeeper and nurse, for the inevitable would happen. Oh yes it would. Your faith in me is misplaced, my dear fellow, very misplaced…But now, there’s you. What about you?’

  ‘It’s impossible, I’ve told you.’

  The parson’s voice came to Emma like a thin whisper on the air, and she screwed up her eyes against it. But her ears were wide to his next words: ‘Apart from the villagers not accepting her, my stipend barely keeps me alive.’

  ‘You could get rid of Miss Wilkinson.’

  ‘No, no, Ralph, I couldn’t. It is expected that one has a housekeeper or a maid of some kind in the parsonage; the parson’s wife has a number of duties that would keep her occupied. Then…then there might be a family, and I’ve had experience of how these are brought up in some parishes, the farm-worker’s children are better fed than many of them.’

  ‘Can’t you ask the bishop to supplement your stipend? It’s known that he lives like a rajah up in Auckland there. Or what about applying for another parish? There’s some rich ones kicking around the North. Doesn’t the Hall pig in?’

  ‘Mr Joseph did a little, but I doubt our present Mr Fordyke is inclined that way; from what I can gather his interests lie in other directions.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I’ve gathered that too. But look, Henry, nothing could be worse for her than the life she leads up there. And it’s not going to be much better if, as you say, she marries young Barney, although he appears to be the best of the bunch.’

  ‘It’s out of the question, Ralph. And what’s more, she’s so young, and here am I thirty-two, almost seventeen years her senior.’

  ‘Oh! God almighty.’ The painter’s voice faded away from Emma and she knew he must be walking up the length of the room. Then, his voice becoming clear again, she knew he was approaching the kitchen door and so, swiftly, she let herself out.

  Standing with her back to the cottage wall she looked up into the sky. The clouds were high with puffs of white down resting on patches of pure blue and she wished from the bottom of her heart that she was up there, alongside her granny. There they were back in the room discussing her as if she was something that could be weighed, and then sold…And then there were those up at the farm waiting for her to be cleared of the plague so that she could be taken into the house and work fourteen hours a day after the four of them, and be expected to be thankful. Six men, three of them supposedly loving her, one of them hating her as deeply as the three loved her and the fifth one indifferent, because Pete seemed too dim of mind to show emotion one way or the other. And then the mister. She could not put a name to his feelings for her, but at times he frightened her almost as much as Luke did.

  What was she to do? The painter couldn’t have her, the parson wouldn’t have her. That hurt her most, it was like one of her dada’s knives grinding beneath her ribs. But like a salve in the hurt was the indignation she felt: she wasn’t a thing to be pitied, she was her dada’s daughter, and she wasn’t bad to look upon. Moreover, she could read and write and she had gathered a little knowledge from the books she had read. No, she wasn’t a creature to be pitied and bargained over like something in the market at the shoe fair. The feeling of indignation brought her from the wall. She’d be mucked about no longer. There was one channel open to her and that was to marry Barney, and if the mister didn’t marry again she would, as Barney had said, one day be mistress of the house. She would aim for that, yes she would, and once inside that house she would see to it that they got somebody else to look to the pigs and the animals.

  With this thought she checked herself: she was never happy encased in the house, she preferred to be outside amongst the animals. Well then, her mind came back at her, you can’t get everything you want in this world, as her granny so often had said; you plumped for whatever was at hand, you sorted out the grain from the chaff, and the grain in this situation was Barney.

  She turned about and with a great to-do she thrust open the kitchen door, quickly passed through the little room, then faced the two men who, surprised at her entry, stood staring at her.

  Looking straight at th
e parson, she said in as formal a tone as she could muster, ‘I’ll be sixteen on the first of February, Parson, and I aim to marry Barney. I gave him me word two years gone, so would you kindly put up the banns from that day please?’ And looking at the painter, she said, ‘I hope I find you well, Mr Bowman? Now I must get back. Good day to you.’ And she jerked her head first to one, then to the other before turning about and hurrying from the room.

  When they heard the back door close, Henry Grainger, looked at Ralph Bowman and, his hand gripping his chin, he said, ‘She must have overheard us. In…in some way she must have overheard us. Oh, my God!’

  Four

  ‘I cannot take the service, Ralph.’

  ‘But you’ve got to. It’s your church, your parish.’

  ‘Well, I can’t do it. I’ll have to make some excuse. My father hasn’t been well lately. I…I can ask the Reverend Blackett from Gateshead Fell to officiate.’

  Ralph surveyed the man before him. He was thirty-three years old, a tall good-looking, virile man, but a man who looked more capable of working with his hands than he did preaching from a pulpit. He said quietly, ‘Is it as bad as that?’

  ‘Yes, it’s as bad as that. But once she is married, things will be different.’

  ‘You hope.’

  ‘Oh yes, they will.’ Henry nodded emphatically now. ‘Once the marriage is consummated I will know it is done and that’ll be that.’

  ‘You know, Henry, what I think? I think you’re much too clever to be a parson and too much of a fool to be a man.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps you are right. But tack the latter to the former and there’ll be more truth in it. I was a fool ever to enter the church, because in it black is black and white is white, there’s no allowance for grey, and life is made up of grey.’

  There was silence between them for a moment; then on a laugh Henry said, ‘You know something? This’ll surprise you more than anything that has gone before, I think. Last week I drank a glass of spirits, the first in my life.’

  Ralph put his head back and let out his usual bellow, which hadn’t been heard in the cottage for some time now, and he said, ‘Well, well! the man’s beaten the parson. What about trying it again?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind, although were it to become known it would ruin my reputation, and the only good quality I have in the eyes of my parishioners is that of being a staunch teetotaller. They tell me that I’m the only parson in Northumberland and Durham that doesn’t resort to the bottle.’

  ‘Well, your secret’s safe with me.’

  ‘But not with Miss Wilkinson; she watches me like a hawk.

  ‘I bought a small flask of spirits when I was in Newcastle and, believe me, I had a job to know where to hide it. I have locked it in a drawer with my sermons.’

  Again Ralph laughed loudly as he cried, ‘That should put some spirit into them.’

  ‘Oh, Ralph, I think you could do better than that. Still, it’s adequate because I’m afraid there’s very little spirit in what I have to say these days from the pulpit. I see that crowd of faces looking up at me; I know things about every one of them; I know the majority of them come only out of habit, and that the things they are praying to God to forgive them for, they will continue to do as soon as they leave the church, such as slander, spite, not forgetting fornication. If I were a real man of God, I would forgive them all these things, but looking down on them I am thinking as I talk to them, you are a band of hypocrites and you are not alone, as I am your leader. And at times I think of all that liquor reposing in the vault…’

  ‘Yes, yes, I do too. Somebody’s going to get a haul someday. Now there’s an idea, instead of buying the stuff why don’t you go in and…’

  ‘Never! I’m bad enough as it is…oh no!’

  ‘Oh, laddie. Here! drink that. You’re too hard on yourself. As you said, you shouldn’t have entered the church. No you shouldn’t, you should have gone into a monastery, the strictest order.’

  Henry was sipping on the raw spirit and he spluttered now and choked before he was able to say, ‘What! and frizzle up inside with the thoughts that consume me?’ Then looking tenderly towards the painter, he said, ‘I’ll tell you something, Ralph, and please don’t sneer, but each night I thank God for your friendship. Without it, I don’t know what I would have done in this place. You, to me, have been my father confessor. Not the bishop. Oh no, not the bishop. I’m very wary what I tell the bishop.’

  Ralph did not answer, he put his hand out and gripped the shoulder of the younger, tormented man in front of him, saying as he did so, ‘Well, for my part I’ll tell you, I may not pray at night, but every time I see you, Henry, I welcome you in my heart, for I too don’t know what I would have done over these years without your friendship, and the openness that is between us, no sham, no pretence, just plain speaking. Well, here’s to however long it lasts.’

  Gently they touched their glasses and in an embarrassed silence they finished their drink. Then Henry, picking up his hat to take his leave, said, ‘If you should see her just before the day wish her well for me, will you? Tell her that I’ve been unexpectedly called away.’

  ‘I’ll do that, Henry. But I must say this, Emma’s no fool and if she hadn’t guessed before, she’ll know now the reason why you won’t perform the ceremony.’

  ‘It won’t come as any surprise to her, Ralph, she’s known since the time of the cholera.’ On this he made a small motion with his head, then turned about and walked out. And Ralph, watching him from the doorway, muttered, ‘The fool. The fool.’

  Emma was so changed that in some ways she didn’t recognise herself. She still knew fear, mostly of Luke and not without cause. She still knew apprehension, apprehension concerned with her coming marriage. But as far as respect went and bowing her knee, even metaphorically speaking, to the four men on the farm, this was now a thing of the past, and she wondered why she hadn’t stood up for herself before.

  That the men were aware of the change in her was shown in their individual attitudes towards her. She remained the same only to Billy Proctor. Billy had told her that she had given him more laughs of late than he’d had in his whole life on this farm, and he wished at her age he’d only half the spunk that she had now.

  She didn’t look upon her attitude as spunkish, she only knew inside herself that she wasn’t going to be messed about any more. Yet at times, as her wedding day drew near, she lay in the dess bed, the bed in which her mother had been born and in which her granny had died, and she cried, often well into the night.

  For weeks now she had only glimpsed the parson at a distance. She hadn’t been to Sunday school nor church since the cholera, and her absence was put down by the villagers to resentment that no-one had gone near the farm because of the plague.

  A fortnight after her granny was buried, Barney had come to her and said, ‘Me da wants you indoors, Emma.’ He spoke the words as if he had achieved a victory for her, but he was soon disillusioned by her saying, ‘If mister wants me to go into the house then he must come and ask me himself, and arrange me pay.’

  ‘Now, look here, Emma.’ He had taken a manly stand before her. ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth; the very fact that he’s sent word for you to come over is a battle half won.’

  Again she surprised him by looking him straight in the face and saying, ‘To add to your knowledge, Barney, the battle hasn’t even begun. Now you can tell that to your da in any way you like. And remember, I’m free, and I can walk out of here this minute if I want to. And I can get work; they’ll have me up at the House, or anywhere.’

  This last she knew was just wishful thinking, because the House was the last place she would go for work, remembering who was the real master there now, and she knew that however kind his wife was, she could expect no favours from him.

  What Barney said to her then and slowly was, ‘Have you gone out of your mind, Emma?’ And she answered him, ‘Yes, I have. And I’ve come to me senses, and not afore time. Me granny put up w
ith this life because she had to, but I’m not me granny and as yet I have no ties.’

  Barney had stared at this new being. The old Emma was no more. The girl who’d had to defend herself with a whip could do it more effectively with her tongue now. He didn’t like it, and he wanted to tell her so, but he held his tongue because their wedding day was nearing and he was athirst for her. Always he was athirst for her. She had, in a way, got beneath his skin and he couldn’t think of anything else but her. Even in his sleep he now dreamt of her, and he hadn’t been given to dreams …

  So Jake Yorkless came to the cottage late in the evening and knocked on her door; and mockingly, when she opened it, he doffed his cap deeply to her, saying, ‘You sent for me, ma’am?’

  But the grim smile left his face and there issued a bawl from his mouth when she said, ‘You needn’t come funny with me, mister.’

  ‘Begod,no! I’m not comin’ funny with you, Emma Crawshaw, I’ve come to tell you, you come to the house the morrow mornin’ at half past five and get going, or else you go.’

  ‘Well, I can do that an’ all, and if I go Barney goes with me. I suppose you know that? And what’s more you’ll get nobody from the village, because it’ll be some long, long time afore any woman puts her foot in your door, because the smell of the plague is now joined by the dirt of the lot of you.’

  She knew she had gone too far and a wave of fear swept over her when his hands came out like claws towards her, but she cried at him, ‘You touch me, mister, and I’ll flay you.’ She sprung back into the room and picked up from the table one of the whips that were lying there. She had only a few minutes earlier brought them down from the roof, wondering what she would do with them because she couldn’t see her being allowed to take them into the house, and if she left them here, one or the other would surely come in and destroy them, even perhaps keep one to use on her. She wouldn’t put it past Luke. Oh no.