Feathers in the Fire Read online

  She pushed her head back on to her shoulders and her mouth widened; then she swallowed deeply before gabbling, ‘No! no! Master, not Will Curran I couldn’t, not him; him with his runny’ – she had almost said ‘snotty’ – ‘him with his runny nose. And he’s old, old . . . aw, Master, not him. Not Will Curran.’

  He looked at her for a moment in pity while at the same time feeling gratified that she did not consider him to be old. ‘The child must have a name, Molly,’ he said quietly.

  ‘But Master!’ She was now leaning across the desk, her face only a foot from his. ‘I don’t mind, I don’t mind havin’ the bairn and him claimin’ no name. I don’t, I don’t.’ She moved her head slowly now and, her face full of pleading, she gazed at him. And he could have been softened by the look of her if it weren’t for the fact that if she were to roam loose about the place she would be a thorn in Delia’s flesh, an agitation; and he could not risk that agitation. He said firmly, ‘You must be married, Molly. I want to hear no more.’ He rose to his feet.

  ‘Master!’ She rushed round the desk now and caught at his hand. ‘I’ll plead with Davie, I’ll beg him to take me. I can make him do it; just give me time.’

  ‘Your time will be wasted; he was up in the gallery of the malt house when we met yesterday.’

  She put her hand tightly over the lower part of her face, and he nodded slowly at her. ‘He had seen Miss Jane in distress and had gone to fetch her.’

  Slowly she took her hand from her mouth and her head drooped, and like this she whispered, ‘Will I be able to see you again, Master, if, if I marry Will Curran?’

  Tenderly now, he put his hand under her chin and raised her face upwards, and, his voice as low as hers, he answered, ‘You’ll see me again, Molly, when the time is ripe, never fear. Go now and do as you’re bid and I’ll always see that you are well looked after.’

  She stared up into his eyes. She had been loved by this man, and she had known pride because of it; and power an’ all, aye, power. She had defied her da because of the secret power her master’s patronage had given her. But now she no longer felt she possessed any power. In spite of the master’s promise he was different. She couldn’t understand it. Why? She had imagined she had him in the hollow of her hand. Her head on her chest she walked out of the room.

  McBain turned to his desk and seating himself he placed his hands palm downwards on the ordered pile of papers in front of him and stared ahead for a moment. This part of the business might not turn out so bad after all. If she had married young Davie there would not have been much hope of their continued intimacy, no matter how much she manoeuvred, for Davie was no fool. But with Curran, she could handle Curran, and things would go on as before, for now that he had been deprived of his wife’s bed until the child should be born and for some time afterwards he must find release in whatever quarter was available. And he knew of none sweeter than Molly; neither of his wives had satisfied him as she had . . .

  Until eleven o’clock in the morning he saw to the business of the farm, visiting the dairy, the byres, inspecting the animals; his eyes ranged knowledgeably around the harness room, and the coach house where Davie was getting the gig ready. He passed him without a word. But when, in the grain store, he gave a good morning to old Sep, who was setting the terrier on to a rat’s nest, and received no verbal reply, only a curt motion of the head, he walked briskly out and across the yard and into the fields. He was annoyed. There had been disdain in the old man’s look, and the movement of his head had been no answer to his morning greeting, rather it had been one of censure.

  He walked right to the top of Shale Tor from where he could see his sheep, well outside the precincts of the farm, away up on the distant hills. And nearer, his herd of eight cows were grazing in the morning meadows. They were the best herd he had reared and he was proud of them. He was going into Hexham this morning to meet Parson Wainwright and the Hospital Board with a view to passing on to the hospital any milk which was surplus to that which he sold to the town. He was a member of the Hospital Board, also of the Board of Guardians. Parson Hedley had proposed that he should allocate the milk to the workhouse, but he was not for this at all, not good, full cream milk – he already made an allowance of skimmed milk to that establishment; he did not believe in pampering the poor and feckless – and Parson Wainwright seconded him strongly in this.

  By eleven o’clock he had returned to the farm and was ready for his journey to town. Going into the kitchen, he said to Winnie, ‘Where is the mistress?’

  ‘In the sewin’ room, Master, along o’ Miss Jane. The seamstress has come from Allenheads.’

  He noticed that Winnie had not stopped her work when he spoke to her, nor had she looked at him once today. He felt angry that she dare show her displeasure at the turn of events. Who were they, these Armstrongs? What were they? Chattels, depending entirely on him for their livelihood. They lived well; he was a good master to them; his private life was no concern of theirs and should have brought no response from them. He said curtly, ‘Tell your mistress I shall be back in time for dinner,’ and on this he went out.

  Winnie looked towards the door that had banged closed, and she muttered under her breath, ‘Aye, I’ll tell her, but not that she’ll care much what time you’ll be back, not from the looks of her this mornin’.’

  In this moment she loathed the master. She had always looked upon him as a good master, not too easy to get on with, but fair and honest in his dealings. But now that she knew him for what he was, she realised that she had never liked him, and she hated him now for being the cause of her losing her son, and she was going to lose Davie for he was bent on leaving. Any day now he would just walk out and tramp to Newcastle, that was what he was going to do, and there find a ship, a ship that would take him round the world so that he could see places. That’s what he said. He was glad, he said, things had happened as they had done, or otherwise he would have been stuck here for life and never known what he was missing.

  She stopped kneading the dough in the big brown earthenware dish and looked down at her hands half lost in the elastic mounds of paste. Her life would be empty without her lad. She had never imagined them parted. He would marry of course, oh aye, and have children, but she had imagined her life would start over again with his children. And now she was to be left with her father and her husband; her father, galloping rapidly towards the grave, and her husband a creaking door that might go on forever, yet so eaten up with rheumatics that he had forgotten, even now, how to live. The prospect of life ahead was dull and empty because the days would pass and the weeks would pass, aye, and the years would pass, and she might never see her lad again.

  McBain returned at a quarter to three in the afternoon. He was wet to the skin, for the weather, which had been unusually fine for the past two weeks, had suddenly changed and he had driven through heavy rain. He was highly irritated and not a little troubled. The meeting with the Hospital Governors should have been pleasant. Usually, the manner of individual members towards him conveying their respect which he had come to look upon as his right, pleased him; but there had been something lacking in their attitude today. One, a farmer from as far away as Haydon Bridge, had slyly prodded him with the words, ‘Hear you had to do a little chastisin’ of a female yesterday gone.’

  He had stared at the man fixedly for a moment; he was a person for whom he had no feeling, a type of farmer who smelt strongly of the byres even in his best clothes. He had answered him, ‘News travels fast,’ and the man had come back with, ‘As fast as the crow flies.’

  The crow would have had to fly all of fifteen miles to get to this man’s farm, and he gauged that if he knew about the incident then so did the others present.

  During the remainder of his short stay in the Assembly Rooms he had searched one face after another, looking for some reaction to the news that he had flayed a maidservant, for, to a man
, he would have expected them to say, ‘Those days are gone, the time is past when you can flay a servant.’ All except one, that is, old Parson Hetherington, the parson was for subjugation of the flesh.

  When he entered the yard no-one ran to take the horse’s head, and he glared about him before he got down from the trap. Where was everyone, skulking away because of the wet?

  It was his practice whenever embarking on or returning from a journey, however short, always to leave and enter the house by the front way, but as he crossed the yard he saw Winnie coming from the direction of the kitchen door. She had a ripped sugar bag over her head, the corner not standing straight up but weighed down with water, and the expression on her face and her wet condition brought from him, ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

  ‘The Mistress, Master, she left the house shortly after you was gone; to take a walk, she said, but now it’s past four o’clock an’ has been stormin’ hard this two hours or more.’

  ‘Where did she go?’ As he spoke he glanced around as if about to dart off, and she said, ‘It’s no knowin’, Master; I’ve sent them out in all directions. I was anxious afore it started to rain an’ sent Mickey lookin’. And Miss Jane was along the road waiting for her long afore that. But there wasn’t a sight of her, and so I took the liberty of tellin’ my Davie to take Prince and ride over towards Harper Town.’

  ‘Harper Town? She would never get as far as Harper Town.’

  ‘The Mistress is a good walker, Master, and she had a hankerin’ after that part, to look at the castle over Featherstone, an’ the river. On the other hand, she might have skirted it and gone straight over to Plenmeller Common.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, woman.’ He turned on her angrily now. The very thought of Delia walking as far as Plenmeller Common, let alone being on it in a storm such as this, filled him with anxiety for the mist coming down unheralded, as it was apt to do in these parts, could in a matter of seconds turn a warm atmosphere into an icy blast and blind one to direction; unless you knew the ground with the knowledge of a shepherd you could wander for hours.

  ‘You have no idea of the direction she took?’

  ‘None, Master.’ Winnie’s tone was stiff.

  ‘Well then,’ he cried at her, his voice still angry as if she alone was responsible for the situation, ‘she could have gone over there . . . over there . . . or over there!’ He pointed rapidly in three different directions, ‘to Whitfield Moor, or Slaggyford, or she could even have reached Glen Dhu and gone over the waterfall, or to Nine Banks and taken up residence in the Peel.’

  Winnie stared at him. He was being sarky, but that showed he was very troubled, and right he had to be troubled an’ all.

  He was stalking away from her when he turned and shouted, ‘Why had you to give him Prince?’ and forgetting for a moment that she was talking to her betters she bawled back at the top of her voice as she would have at one of her own men, ‘’Cos he was the fastest thing on the place if you want to know.’

  Her manner checked him for a moment; but only for a moment, there would be time to deal with her later.

  There was no-one in the stables, no-one in the harness room. He grabbed up a saddle and hurried with it to the stable, passing the gig and the patient standing horse. He could have gone searching in that, but only on the main roads, and then they too would soon be quagmires. Anyway, of one thing he was sure, wherever Delia had gone it wouldn’t be for a walk along the main roads. She had done this to spite him. If anything happened to his child, if this brought her on before her time he would . . . he paused, checking the thought that he would kill her with his own hands.

  As he galloped out of the gate little Mickey Geary came plodding along the road towards him, and he pulled the horse up and shouted down at him, ‘Well?’

  ‘No sign of Mistress, Master. Bin up on Peel and as far away as the start of Whitfield.’

  He urged the horse on and into a gallop and in the direction of Beltingham; this way he could take in Plenmeller Common from the east side.

  The rain increased and when a distant roll of thunder came to his ears he gritted his teeth. God help her if she succeeded in thwarting him.

  Two hours later, soaked to the skin, outwardly cold yet burning inside with a mixture of righteous indignation and fear, he entered the farmyard to hear sounds coming from the cow byres which told him the animals were in and had been milked. He barked at a figure crossing the yard half hidden by a sack. ‘Here! take him,’ and Fred Geary turned and came towards him.

  Dismounting stiffly he said to the man, ‘Your mistress, has she returned?’

  ‘Aye, she’s returned, Master.’ Geary’s tone gave him no information, it was just a statement.

  He drew in a deep breath and hurried from him and into the house. Winnie was coming down the stairs. She paused halfway, then came on towards him.

  ‘How is she? Where had she been? How long has she been in?’

  She answered the three questions in their order. ‘She’s in some distress, Master. She lost her way on the Common in the rain. She’s been back this half-hour.’ Then she added, ‘Miss Jane found her.’ She prevented herself from going further and saying, ‘The child was in as bad a state as her mother,’ for she knew he wasn’t concerned with his daughter’s welfare, nor yet for that matter with his wife’s – his main thought centred round what she was carrying. He was a single-minded man was the master, always had been, except for diversions now and again. Since yesterday she had called to mind a diversion he’d had some years ago. That had been with a girl hardly out of childhood an’ all. A strange man was the master. She went on into the kitchen, he up the stairs, and without ceremony he entered the bedroom.

  Delia was undressed and in bed. Her face looked colourless; her breathing was deep and inclined to gasping. He stood over her and stared at her, but she did not return his look. Her eyes were hooded, their gaze directed over the mound of her stomach towards her feet.

  ‘What madness have you been up to?’

  She remained silent while she imagined, as she had often before, that there was no measurement she knew of which could take the depth or width of his voice when he was angry or merely displeased, the tone was so thin it flattened the words until they had no substance, yet held and maintained some element that pierced like the point of a knife.

  ‘You did this on purpose, didn’t you? In retaliation.’ He waited for some response before going on, ‘All right, retaliate against me, but save it until the child is born. You can spend the coming weeks working out ways and means to make me suffer for my lapse, but I warn you’ – now his body was bent over hers, drips of water from the front of his hair actually dropping on to the breast of her nightgown – ‘if you purposely harm that child, if you have harmed it by your escapade today, you will live to regret it. You know me, Delia. When I speak as now, I don’t make idle threats.’ Slowly he straightened his body, and again he waited, but still she made no response.

  Not until he had left the room did she raise her eyes. Then she looked towards the door, and when she heard him shouting from the top of the stairs: ‘Winnie! See that I have hot water for bathing in the closet room immediately,’ she knew how far she had tested him, for he never shouted his orders around the house; always on his guard, always giving the good example; his tone might be icy, but he kept it controlled. Now, like any ordinary common farmer, he was bawling at his servants.

  She lay staring up at the ceiling. She felt exhausted, slightly ill. She’d had no intention of hurting the child. What had happened today had come about purely by accident. She was on the Common and about to turn for home when the storm had overtaken her. At one period she had become frightened, at another resigned, and had thought, if I lie down and this rain continues all night I could be well on the way to death in the morning, and it with me. But she had not lain down, she had tried to find h
er way home. She had not known that she was only a short distance from the road until she heard Jane’s voice crying, ‘Mother! Mother! Are you there, Mother?’ But for her daughter’s timely coming she might have had to lie down through sheer exhaustion. That being the case he would have said it was deliberate, as he did now. But what matter? What matter anything? She was very tired and no longer cold, her body was burning, her heart was burning, scalded.

  Three

  ‘Don’t talk of the morrow, lad.’ Winnie, her shoulders stooped with weariness, gazed sadly at her son. ‘Wait until I have time to get me breath an’ talk to you, quiet like, and know what you’re going to do. As it is I’m run off me legs over there and I’m droppin’ for want of sleep. He says I’ve got to sit by her the night again. I wonder what he thinks I am, a machine that doesn’t need rest? . . . So lad’ – she put out her hand and touched Davie’s shoulder – ‘let it rest for a day or two. He hasn’t actually told you to go, now has he? If you’re determined to go, well you can pick your own time, but wait until the mistress is on her feet again?’

  ‘But when will that be, Ma?’

  ‘Soon as the fever goes down, a couple of days at the most I should say.’

  ‘Is she goin’ to lose it?’ Sep leant forward in his chair. ‘A fever such as this could bring it on.’

  Winnie bit on her lip and turned her head to the side as she said, ‘I hope to God she doesn’t, there’ll be hell to pay, he’ll go mad. Yet I could bet ten to one she’s havin’ her pains though she doesn’t say.’

  ‘How could she keep quiet havin’ pains?’ Ned cast a disdainful glance at his wife.

  ‘She could.’ Her voice was harsh. ‘She’s got an inner stubbornness. It doesn’t show, but it’s there. I’ve ’tected it more than once. Still I hope to God I’m wrong; she’s had enough to put up with in her life without this final blow. An’ if he were to lose his son . . . ’