The Whip (The Spaniard's Gift) Page 9

  ‘Oh no, Ma, fair’s fair.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, fair’s fair. It was Luke’s fault; he was at her, trying it on.’

  ‘She egged him on, he’s just told me. That chit’—she thrust out her arm, her finger now almost touching Emma’s face—‘egged him on. That’s her Spanish blood comin’ out. Shameless they are, those women.’

  ‘Ma—’ He had moved so that he was standing in front of Emma now. His voice slow and his words emphatic, he said, ‘You would like to believe that. I’m tellin’ you I saw him. He had her bent double over the bin, in fact she fell into it. He had his hand up her clothes.’

  ‘Shut up you! Get out of here.’

  ‘No, I won’t, Ma. Oh no, I won’t.’

  ‘My God, boy! Do you know who you’re talking to?’

  ‘Yes, Ma, I know; and I’ll do what I told you an’ me da I’d do only a few weeks ago, I’d up and go off to sea if there was any more trouble. That’s what I’ll do.’

  He watched his mother take in one long deep breath; then she spat at him, ‘You’re but a boy.’

  ‘I’m doin’ a man’s job here, Ma, and I could do a man’s job on board ship. Many’ve done the same thing afore me. Aye, many have.’

  At this point Lizzie appeared in the doorway and, taking in the situation at a glance, she said, ‘Come on, lass. Come on, hinny. I’m glad you left your mark on him. I hope you went deep enough for the scar to remain there as a reminder.’

  ‘She’s a dirty little slut and I won’t have her in my house. For the future she’s outside and in the dairy. Do you hear?’

  ‘I hear. And that suits us both. As for being a dirty little slut, one has to be trained in that line, don’t you know, Mrs Yorkless? Both me and me daughter, although she was foolish enough to run away, we were both married without our bellies being full. But that’s something we won’t go into the day.’

  Lizzie’s voice was so tantalisingly calm that the farmer’s wife looked as if she would have a seizure at any moment, but she managed to cry, ‘Mind your tongue, Lizzie Crawshaw, or you’ll be…’

  Lizzie was leading Emma towards the door now but she stopped and, turning about, asked enquiringly, ‘I’ll be what?’ She waited; and when all the answer she received from her mistress was a grinding of the teeth, she said, ‘Oh yes, if it wasn’t for my cottage I know where I’d be, but I have my cottage and you can’t do anything about it, or, by the way, me bit field that goes with it, the bit that your husband has turned into barley, I’m told I could ask for rent on it. We’ll have to go into that.’

  They were out in the yard now and crossing it in silence, which lasted until they entered the cottage. But here Lizzie’s attitude changed: her calmly irritating voice was replaced by agitated tones as she said, ‘In the name of God, child, what happened?’

  When, between gasps, Emma had related exactly what took place, Lizzie said, ‘There’s one thing sure, lass, he was just a young groping lout afore, the need could be seen in his every look an’ action, but from now on you can take if from me he’ll be a groping man and he’ll not rest until he has his own back on you. I know him, I’ve known him from a nipper, he bears malice over the least thing. Now I’m gona say this to you an’ before God I never thought I would ’cos I don’t hold with whips and such, but whenever you go out to the river or for a dander on your own take one of them with you, ’cos you’re gona need protection. And likely not only from him, the way you’re blossoming out. You know what I mean, lass?’

  Lizzie was bending down to Emma who was sitting on the cracket, and Emma, looking up into her face, said honestly, ‘Well no, Granny.’

  ‘Oh God in heaven!’ Emma now watched her granny straighten up and walk over to her bed and back again before bending towards her again and saying, ‘You haven’t got to let anybody touch you, any man. Don’t you understand?’

  ‘Oh yes, Granny, I understand that.’ She didn’t go on to say what she didn’t understand was about this blossoming out.

  Letting out a long almost painful breath, Lizzie sat down on the rocking chair opposite and said, quietly now, ‘Has anybody ever tried to touch you before…in that way I mean?’

  ‘No, Granny. But…but I know what you mean, and I’ll never let anybody touch me, never.’

  ‘Never’s a long time, hinny. But until you’re grown up see to it that nobody does. Now I’ve got to get back or else I’ll have me mistress after me.’ She gave a wry smile and shook her head while still looking down at Emma; then she added, ‘Wash your face, comb your hair and tidy yourself up, and then go down to Mr Bowman’s. You’re well past your time.’

  ‘But…but the hens, the crowdy, he knocked the dish out of me hand and it went over the floor and…’

  ‘Don’t worry about the hens’ crowdy, I’ll see to that the day. Go along now.’

  Ralph Bowman seemed in very high spirits. She had hardly got through the back door than she heard him coming out of the paint room; and then he was in the kitchen, holding out his hand to her saying, ‘Come here; I’ve got something to show you.’ He didn’t seem to notice that there was no smile on her face this morning and that her manner was subdued but, taking her by the hand, he almost ran her through the living room and into the paint room, and there, putting her before the easel, he said, ‘Child with a bucket. Child with a bucket.’

  She was looking at a picture of a girl about her own age kneeling on a stone floor, a big wooden bucket at her side, a scrubbing brush in one hand, her other resting on the stones while she looked up at someone above her.

  Her head poking slowly forward, she screwed up her eyes as she stared at the face. It looked like her, the bit that stared back at her from the cracked mirror above the razor strop in the farm kitchen. Yet it wasn’t her; that girl’s face was bonny.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘’Tisn’t me, is it?’ She was looking sideways up at him.

  ‘Of course, it’s you, you dunderhead. Who else would it be? You sat for it, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I know’—her voice was as brisk as his now—‘but I don’t look like that.’

  ‘Who says you don’t look like that?’

  ‘Well, I don’t…do I?’

  The question at the last was subdued, and now dropping on his hunkers before her, he put his hands on her shoulders as he said, ‘Emma Molinero, that is you…yet not you, because I couldn’t do justice to a face like yours, ever.’

  She liked the sound of her name, it was a long time since she’d heard it. She smiled at him, but not her usual smile, and noting that she was different this morning, he said, ‘What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you well?’

  ‘I’m not bad,’ she answered; ‘but I’ve had an upset.’

  ‘What kind of an upset?’

  She lowered her eyes and turned her head to the side; it was difficult to talk about her upset to a man. And he repeated, ‘What kind of an upset?’

  ‘It was with Luke, I—’ She now turned and looked into his eyes before ending, ‘I had to scratch his face.’

  ‘Oh.’ His mouth formed the roundness of the word and, slowly rising to his feet, he said, ‘That’s how it is? And what happened to Master Luke?’

  ‘His face was bleeding. But…but the mistress blamed me.’

  ‘She would. Of course she would, that’s understood.’ He was nodding at her. ‘But Emma, my dear, you’ve got to expect things like that happening to you.’

  ‘I have?’ Her voice sounded indignant.

  ‘Oh yes, yes; and it’ll happen more often as life goes…’

  ‘It won’t, they won’t.’ She had stretched her neck upwards now. ‘I’m gona use the whip; me granny says I’ve got to take it with me. I’m gona practise it an’ all, the big one.’

  ‘Your granny says you’ve got to practise using the whip?’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘Well, well.’ His face was straight now. ‘It must be serious when your granny says you should practise t
he whip because she’s not for whips, is she?’

  ‘No, she’s not…she wasn’t, but…but she is now…’

  ‘Hello! Anyone there?’

  The painter hurried towards the door, crying, ‘Henry! Come in. Come in.’

  When the parson came into the room he said, ‘Well, well, ’tis Emma,’ as if he hadn’t seen her for weeks and not just last night; or was it this morning? So many things had happened.

  ‘How are you, Emma?’

  Before she could answer, Ralph Bowman said, ‘She’s not very well this morning, Henry, but…but we won’t talk about it yet. Look at this though. What do you think?’

  Henry Grainger stood in front of the portrait. He didn’t speak for some long while, but then he looked down at Emma, then at his friend, and he said very softly, ‘Perfect. It’s the best thing you’ve ever done.’

  ‘I think so too.’ Ralph’s voice was also soft.

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘Nothing; it’s already sold.’

  ‘Sold?’ Henry’s voice was high now.

  ‘I had two visitors yesterday from the Hall.’ He jerked his head towards the wall. ‘Very honoured, indeed.’

  ‘You mean the Fordykes?’

  ‘Yes, James and his lady, as ever was.’

  ‘And they bought it?’

  ‘Yes, she did. Apparently she is very interested in art, brought up with it. She’s the daughter of Peter Rollinson, and it’s going to his house.’

  ‘How marvellous! I hope you charged them a good price for it.’

  ‘Thirty guineas.’

  ‘Huh! thirty guineas. It would have brought a hundred in London.’

  ‘Perhaps. But we’re not in London, and thirty guineas is not to be sneezed at. Yet at the same time I didn’t want to part with it.’ He looked down at Emma now, adding, ‘but we’ve got the model here, and she’ll sit for me anytime, won’t you, Emma?’

  ‘Yes, yes, Mr Bowman.’

  ‘Do you think you could make us a pot of tea, Emma?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Bowman.’ She left them and went through the living room and into the kitchen; and she knew they had followed her for their voices came to her low but distinct and by what she heard she knew that Mr Bowman was telling the parson what had happened to her. But when she took the tea into them Mr Bowman changed the conversation to talk about a book he was reading and the parson said nothing, he just looked at her and his face had a sad look.

  She returned to the kitchen and began to prepare the vegetables for Mr Bowman’s dinner. She could hear them talking again, but so softly that she couldn’t catch what they were saying until, the conversation changing once more, they were discussing the book that the painter had mentioned when she had taken the tea in. The name of the man who had written it sounded very plain, Sydney Smith. There were two Smith families in the village; Peggy Smith came to Sunday school. She heard Mr Bowman say, ‘You put me very much in mind of Sydney.’ And the parson answered laughingly, ‘Oh, that’s funny, it’s the woodman being compared with the king, and to me he is the king of satire and of humour. When I am very down and feeling very much alone and asking the great why, I read one of his pamphlets and I seem to get some kind of an answer. I think there are times when God sends such as him to show a new concept of religion, that the ingredients for the preparation for the after-life do not consist of the fear of hell and of continually keeping the smell of brimstone in one’s nostrils. You know, Ralph, I never wanted to be a minister, the church was the last thing I thought of and I’m surprised to find myself in it…and you know too, I think so are my parishioners.’

  She didn’t fully understand what he was on about but she liked to hear the parson laugh, he had such a nice deep laugh, a happy laugh; and he was saying as he laughed now, ‘But what strikes me as rather unfair is they expect so much from their pastor, he has to give twenty-four hours a day service. Twice last week I was called out of the dead of night to help Mrs Brigham in the passage from this life to the next, but just as she was about to step over she changed her mind…both times. I don’t think she liked what she saw, at least it wasn’t what she had envisaged all her life, and this morning when I called she was sitting up and eating raw eggs.’

  She could hardly hear the rest of the sentence for Mr Bowman’s laughter. His was a different kind of laugh, almost a bellow, and it rose as the parson ended, ‘She sucks them from the shell. It has to be seen to be believed. Of course I don’t think that’s her only sustenance because there was a strong smell of rum when I entered the room this morning.’

  There was more laughter and more conversation that she couldn’t distinguish, until she heard Mr Bowman say, ‘And the plate, is it any heavier these days?’

  ‘No, about the same. They expect services of all kinds but they are dilatory in paying for them. I’m finding difficulty in keeping up that huge old house, and the services of Miss Wilkinson. I don’t know how on earth my predecessor managed to bring up eight children on his stipend.’

  ‘Oh, from what I can gather, Mr Fordyke senior helped out a lot there. But when his son married he left the Hall and now, I understand, he lives out Jesmond way. But he pays frequent visits here, for I’ve seen him now and again stalking the hills. Of course, he was up to his neck in the smuggling business and likely kept old Crabtree and his brood supplemented because of the storage provided by your said predecessor. Which reminds me, have you found out anything more?’

  ‘Not really, except that I’m held as a fool by some of my parishioners but not quite an idiot.’

  He was repeating what she had said to him last night; and as this thought came to her it also revived the name of Christina Leadbeater. She stopped peeling the potatoes and dried her hands on the hessian towel, then stood looking towards the door that led into the living room, asking herself: should she tell him? Or would it do any good if she did?

  As things stood now she mightn’t get the chance to go to Sunday school, the missis might do something to stop her, and then she wouldn’t see the parson. Unless he came up to the farm.

  She stood in the doorway and said, ‘Parson.’

  ‘Yes, Emma?’ He turned quickly towards her.

  ‘I’ve remembered somethin’ about the rum-runners.’

  ‘You have?’ He came quickly towards her, and then drew her towards the middle of the room where Mr Bowman was sitting, and she looked from one to the other now, then back to the parson before she said, ‘It’s to do with a headstone.’

  ‘A headstone?’

  ‘Yes; Billy said to me granny that the headstone was called Christina Leadbeater, or some such name, and it was often lifted from the wall.’

  Henry stared at her for a long moment, then turned and looked at Ralph Bowman, saying quietly, ‘There is a headstone with the name of Christina Leadbeater on it. It dates back to sixteen hundred. It’s quite a large headstone, and it’s lain there so long it’s sunk into a groove. A number of the old headstones are lying against the north transept.’ Then turning and looking down on Emma again, he said, ‘And I’m supposed to be sitting on top of the stuff. That’s it, Emma, isn’t it?’

  She hesitated before saying, ‘Yes, something like that, Parson.’

  She was startled as Mr Bowman, jumping up from the chair, cried, ‘Of course! Henry, that’s it. There’s no crypt there, but there must be a cellar or some kind of place they used as a store room. Oh,Emma! Oh! Emma Molinero!’ She felt herself swiftly lifted off her feet and held up and her face was in front of the painter’s. Then he kissed her and cried, ‘You’re not only a beautiful model, my dear Emma, you’re a God-given solver of liquid mysteries.’

  She was very red in the face when she hurried back to the kitchen. She felt disturbed in a strange way. It had been a most strange disturbing morning. It had been a disturbing time altogether. It had really started last night when she had become a friend of the parson’s. Then she had experienced the awful feeling of Luke putting his hands on her, and the gentleness o
f Barney’s arms. And now Mr Bowman had kissed her; he was the first man to kiss her since her father died: she didn’t count the kisses of the members of the Travers Travelling Show the morning she left.

  This is what her granny must have meant by blossoming out.

  Three

  Emma did indeed blossom out over the next four years. She was now thirteen years old, tall for her age, her figure already developing, her features, set in a mould under the creamy tanned skin, combining to make her face one that was so different from any in the neighbourhood as to set her apart. Mothers of sons saw that she was someone to be slightly wary of; mothers of daughters looked on her with envy; and the daughters, those with whom she attended the Sunday school, with the exception of two, Angela Turnbull the grocer’s daughter and Peg Hall whose father was the blacksmith, took their opinions of her from their mothers.

  On the farm the atmosphere towards her had changed but slightly, except that Dilly Yorkless had been forced to subdue her feelings under the threat from Lizzie that she would send Emma into service. And Emma had become a very good worker: not only could she attend to all the business of the dairy, see to the pigs and chickens, but she could also help with the milking. Without Emma, Mrs Yorkless knew she would have to employ a full-time hand and wouldn’t get half the work out of her. Moreover, she knew the parson had taken an interest in the girl, lending her books and some such, and as much as she would like to stop this she knew she couldn’t, because Jake wanted them to stand well with the parson for the parson stood well with those up at the House: not only was he invited there to dinner once a week when the family were at home, but they also loaned him a horse for the hunting.

  Then there was the painter. When she had first found out that he was painting the little hussy and selling his work she had objected strongly, and she had made it known to him through Lizzie that the girl was paid for work and not sitting. And Lizzie had made it known to her that the painter was interested in moving to another cottage for there was one vacant on the Hudsons’ farm, and Jane Hudson would jump at a tenant like him, paying through the teeth in rent, not forgetting what he had to fork out for household services twice a week.