No chance of that now, the lamp was going. Beattie had been his temptation; she had taken him from God’s service. He should ask for forgiveness…forgiveness for loving Beattie? He wasn’t going to do that…he’d do it all again; aye, a thousand times. But he had hurt his mother.
The buzzing in his ears grew louder and he let it blot out the last thought. Slowly his head drooped until it lay on David’s chest.
Chapter Seventeen: The Child
Beattie looked upon the gurgling laughing face of the child, and yet again pondered that anything emanating so much peace and contentment could have been born of her. Surely the months during which it lay in her turbulent womb, fed by her blood, that in itself must have borne the poison of her mind, poison she manufactured daily with thoughts of bitterness and recrimination mostly levelled against herself, surely they should have contaminated it. But no. A second virgin could not have brought forth anything so peaceful.
During the six weeks of its life it had hardly cried, apart from the first shout at its release; it greeted voices and hands only with an infectious gurgle.
Up to its birth she had given to it no thought that held a touch of tenderness. How could she?—she didn’t want it. She had never wanted children; she had been brought up with too many. And hadn’t it been conceived out of madness, and hadn’t she, in allowing its creation, brought trouble on people who had done her no wrong? Even in the momentary contentment when its burden had left her body and she gazed upon it for the first time, not even then did the natural instinct awaken. The spark did not alight until she saw Tom look down on it; and then she knew that any love it was to have must come from her, for no matter how he might try to overcome it his jealousy would erect a barrier between him and the child.
From that moment her love for her son grew. At first she did not recognise it; she only knew she was sorry that Tom wasn’t going to…take to it, for her aim in life now was to please him. She felt that in some miraculous way she had been given a second chance—he was back in her life, the only man who had shown her any real respect, the man she began to love years ago and now loved with an intensity that amazed her. For the first time in her life she was sorry for the things she had done; her misdeeds had been magnified out of all proportion by others, but their condemnation was now far transcended by her own. Tom had given her all the proof a man could of his love, and she was determined to make him glad that he loved her. She would live for him, and only him…And then her son had lain his fingers on her heart, and she found that her being was big enough to hold two loves. Yet before the child was four days old she almost cursed it.
She was lying in the little room under the sloping roof. The child was in its cot by the side of the bed—and she had been thinking how, when she should get up, she would rearrange this room. She still could not get used to the idea that this three-roomed cottage was hers; it was as if, during her pregnancy, she had paid for her sins and that now fate was bestowing gifts on her in a surprising way; for who would have imagined that the lonely old woman with whom she had come to lodge, mainly to keep clear of the town and its curious eyes, would have taken such a liking to her as to leave her the cottage. When she heard the contents of the will, her first reaction was to think: And I did nothing for her; I didn’t even make her laugh.
Mrs Pringle had been a reticent woman; the only thing Beattie knew of her was that she had no family and that her relatives were dead. She herself had told Mrs Pringle little of her own life, yet the old woman must have thought about her a lot, for the will read: I leave you my cottage for a home for you and the child.
And now her cottage was to be a home, not only for her and her child, but for Tom. It would be…theirs, something that they owned. She had never before known the difference between renting and owning; and now, besides all the other things in her life, there was this proud feeling of ownership.
It was while she lay thinking of these things that the girl Peggy had come running into the cottage, pounding up the stairs, stopping only at the foot of the bed to lean over the rail and gasp: ‘Oh, Beattie! Oh, Beattie!’
She had not asked, ‘What’s the matter?’ A sudden terrible foreboding told her.
She had pulled herself up in the bed, and Peggy, nodding her head as if to throw it off her body, said, ‘There’s been an accident.’
Beattie’s eyes bade her go on.
‘Five they say…some people say seven. I heard as I came out of work, and me an’ Sally went to the pithead. I heard someone say, “That’s Mrs Rowan, her lad’s down,” and I said, “Tom Rowan?” and they said, “Yes. And his brother-in-law’s down too…They were all coming out and there was another fall.” They brought one up, but he’s nearly had it—he was one of the first lot.’
Beattie steadied herself by pressing the back of her head against the rail of the bed. ‘What time was this?’
‘Not half an hour ago. I came straight away.’
‘Peggy.’
‘Aye?’
‘Get me things and help me up.’
‘Eeh, Beattie, no!’ Peggy hastily tucked the bedclothes under the mattress as if this would ensure that Beattie stayed where she was. ‘You’ll kill yersel’…not four days yet. Look, stay where you are.’ She forced Beattie back on to her pillows. ‘Oh my! Beattie, give over and stay put, will you!’
The door opening at this moment brought a great audible sigh of relief from Peggy, and she greeted the small fat woman with, ‘Oh, Mrs Bailey, she’s trying to get up because I told her about the accident.’
‘You would!’ The woman hastened forward. ‘Now don’t be daft. Settle yourself down.’ Expertly she arranged the bedclothes. ‘You can do nothing, only pray. And remember you’ve got the bairn to feed, and if you upset yourself and get milk fever, you’ll know about it, me lady.’
She lay back, wild-eyed, watching Mrs Bailey tending to the child. If she hadn’t had him she’d be able to go to the pit. Tom down there…trapped! Her eyes moved towards the floor as if he were just below it. Oh God, don’t let anything happen to him. Let him out. Tom, don’t leave me. Oh, don’t leave me!…What could she do, tied here to the bed…and the bairn?
Tom…oh, Tom. Oh God, keep him safe, and don’t pay me out like this…Tom…Oh, be safe…be safe.
‘Now stop worrying, it’ll get you nowhere.’ Mrs Bailey glanced sympathetically towards her. ‘I don’t think it’s a big fall, at least, by what I heard. Anyway, they can hear them.’
God hear me. Keep him safe, will You? Don’t let anything happen to him. Why did You bring him back if You were going to let something happen now?
Without looking at Mrs Bailey, she asked, ‘When did it happen?’
‘Round about three, I think.’
Nearly four hours trapped in the blackness, perhaps hurt…perhaps already dead. God…Look…She turned her face into the pillow. She must pray. But what should she say? She hardly knew any proper prayers, only a bit of the Our Father…Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name; Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth…Give us this day our daily bread…Oh, what was the good talking stuff like that! God, hear me…She sat up in bed. She had the room to herself again, for Mrs Bailey and Peggy had gone downstairs; so she appealed aloud, her eyes roving over the ceiling: ‘Tell me what to say. Show me what to do…I’ll be a good woman. You already know that, but if You want him to go back to the preaching I’ll egg him on to it, I promise I will. We’ll move away and he can start afresh some place else. Only keep him safe, that’s all I ask, and I’ll pay in some way…any way.’
‘Here! What are you up to?’ Mrs Bailey came panting into the room again. ‘Lie yerself down, there. Now listen. I’ve told our Stanley to come straight here the minute he knows they’re up. I sent him to the pithead afore I left. Now the only thing you can do is to wait quietly and keep your soul in patience.’
Keep her soul in patience! If Tom died it wouldn’t matter what happened to her soul…or her body. Happiness never lasted; there was al
ways a catch in everything; life worked along the lines of giving you with one hand and taking away with the other.
At this point, the child, who scarcely ever cried, burst into a loud wail, and the sound filled her with foreboding.
An hour later the boy brought the news: the men had got through and found two just alive and two dead, but he didn’t know which two were dead. It was Peggy, enjoying herself immensely, who followed with the details.
‘He’s all right,’ she blurted out. ‘His leg’s broken, or summat. They just got him out in time. He was near suffocated. And he was lying alongside’—she hesitated; but she couldn’t prevent herself from imparting what was to her the romantic part—‘Mr Taggart…Davie Taggart. They were holding hands and Mr Taggart’s legs were caught; and they could do nothing, and the doctor went in and had to take them off…’
It was some time later when Beattie came to herself, and it was nearly three weeks later before she was allowed out of bed; and during this time she never saw Tom. The break of the ankle had not been clean—the bone had penetrated the flesh, and what should have been a simple business of setting became a fight to save a foot.
When, at last, he came to the cottage, his foot bound in plaster, limping on a steel heel, they greeted each other shyly; then silently they clung together; and the added wonder was that he lifted the child and held him. Later, slowly and hesitantly, his eyes cast down, he spoke of David. And she listened in silence, knowing that he must speak. And the relief that there was no bitterness left in him eased the pain of her humiliation. He talked of David’s last hours—seventy-two of them after they had got him up, during which time Ann had hardly left him. He spoke of Ann, too, of how she was changed. Everybody had expected her to snap again, but she hadn’t…The one person he didn’t speak of was his mother.
Beattie often thought of his mother; but for her, Tom would not go away each night. She had taken ill months ago, and Tom had said he could not tell her anything until she was better. Yet she could get out of her bed to go and stand at the pithead during the accident. If the bronchial trouble was so bad, getting out of bed and going to the pithead should have finished her. Yet, from what she could gather, Nellie hadn’t even returned to bed, but visited Tom daily in hospital…She had long doubted the seriousness of this illness.
How long would it go on? Well, no matter how long it went on, it was something she must put up with…and silently.
It was strange how mothers could hate the women who took their sons, under the protest that they weren’t good enough for them. Even if they were good enough something was always found to be wrong with them. Of one thing Beattie was certain: she knew that Nellie hated her with a deep, unrelenting hate; and this hate would never lessen. Yet the woman who should hate her, whose husband she had taken in thoughtless pleasure, and by so doing had driven her, if not into the asylum, into some place not far removed, this woman did not hate her…The situation was too strange to be fathomed.
Last Saturday when Tom came to her she knew he was disturbed, and her immediate thought was: His mother’s at it again. But after a lot of humming and ha’ing he had blurted out, ‘Would you let Ann see the bairn?’
She had just stared at him. Could a wife want to see a child her husband had given to another woman?
‘She’s hinted at it two or three times. And now today she was waiting for me at the end of the road.’ He motioned his head backwards towards the door.
‘This road?’
‘Yes.’
‘But what about me? She wouldn’t want to see me. You’d better take him to her.’
‘Couldn’t she come in?’
‘Yes…All right, I’ll stay out the back.’
‘Oh no, you’ll do no such thing.’ The tone was the one she had come to know which brooked of no arguing. ‘Either you stay or she doesn’t see it.’
So Ann had come in; and Beattie knew remorse, such as she had not experienced before. Just the appearance of this slight, girlish little figure in black, heaped coals of fire on her head. The great sad eyes that had looked at her sent no message of hate. What they said she could find no means within herself to interpret; she only knew she could not bear to look into them; and she had turned away and gone into the kitchen with the excuse of making tea.
When she returned Ann was standing by the cot and Tom was gazing down into the fire. She nudged him and pointed to the tea tray; and he went to Ann and said, ‘Come and have a cup of tea.’
But Ann had turned and looked at Beattie and asked softly of her, ‘Can I pick him up?’
‘Aye…yes.’
Beattie’s bewilderment at this woman’s reactions made the answer sound curt, and she added more gently, ‘Bring him to the fire.’
She watched Ann stoop and pick the child up, and she poured out the tea and placed the cup on the table for her. But she found it impossible to stay in the room—the sight of those eyes in the little white face gazing down on the child was too much for her, so she went into the scullery again and closed the door. And it was while standing there, her hands rubbing her throat to try to ease its pressure, that the payment she could make for Tom came to her, and immediately she rejected it, almost crying aloud, ‘No! No! I won’t do that! I can’t…not now. If it had been at first…But not now.’
Tom had come in from the kitchen, and, placing his arms around her, held her close, not speaking, and she moved her face against him, murmuring brokenly, ‘What have I done? It’s hell, feeling like this.’
On that occasion Ann had not stayed long; nor, apart from asking if she could hold the child, had she spoken again until she was about to leave. Then, standing like a lost child herself in front of Beattie, she had asked, ‘Will you let me see him now and again?’
Beattie, not trusting herself to answer, jerked her head once…
And Ann was coming again today.
During the six days since her last visit Beattie had faced the greatest struggle of her life, and in her unreasoning, impetuous way she had cried out and fought against it, but no matter how often she said, ‘No-one would expect me to do it!’ back would come the reminder, ‘You asked to be shown what to do, and this is it; and not only will it be a payment for Tom, it will be reparation for all the trouble you’ve caused that woman and the whole family. Perhaps even his mother’s dislike of you may lessen.’
‘But he’s so canny. And I’ve got to love him.’ She talked to someone within herself whose logical and ready answers startled her: ‘It would be no sacrifice if you didn’t love him; you only wanted Tom. Well, you have him. This woman lost her husband before he died. You were to blame for that. Apparently she can’t have bairns. It’s ten to one you can have as many as you can carry. You could have one by this time next year…and it would be Tom’s!’
‘I can’t do it.’
‘Well, if you don’t you’ll never know a minute’s peace, you’ll never get rid of that face. Every time you pick the bairn up you’ll see her eyes looking at him. Just look how it’s been this week.’
‘I’ll get over that.’
She bent over the child now and gathered him up into her arms, and he gurgled at her, and she began to walk about the room with him, his face tucked into the hollow of her neck; and in her pacing she looked out of the window and saw Ann coming in at the gate.
She pressed the child closer to her, and when the small knock came on the door she did not immediately go to open it. When she did, Ann smiled at her warily, saying, ‘Am I too early? I hope you don’t mind.’
‘No. Come in.’ She did not offer her the child but kept her arms about him; and Ann said, ‘I’ve brought him this…it’s only a little woolly dog.’ She put the package on the table and stood looking at Beattie in a puzzled sort of way…She had not been asked to sit down; nor had she been offered the child…
An awkward silence fell on the room, and she murmured, ‘Perhaps you’re busy. If it’s not convenient…’
The fear that it wasn’t convenient was eviden
t both in her eyes and voice; and Beattie burst out, ‘Tom’ll likely be here at any moment…I want to talk to you.’
‘Yes?’ The fear was still there.
‘Would you like him?’
‘Like him?’ Ann’s voice was without expression, it merely repeated the statement.
‘To have him, I mean.’ Beattie placed her hands on the back of the child’s head and pressed his cheek to hers; and the only sound in the room was his gurgling.
‘You mean…him?’ Ann nodded towards the child.
‘Yes. Who else?’ Beattie’s voice was rough.
And Ann, after staring at her, groped at the back of a chair and, turning it round, she sat down.
‘You can’t mean you’d…’
‘Well, what’ve I been talking about?’
‘But…don’t you…want him?’
‘Look. We won’t go into that. I asked you would you like him?’
‘Oh.’
Watching Ann’s already pale face whiten, Beattie thought: She’s going to pass out. And seeing her body sag against the chair and her head droop on her neck, she took a step towards her, saying, ‘Look. I’ve startled you. That’s like me…I can never do anything easily and quietly…always like a bull at a gap. But I thought you might like him. Anyway, he’s more yours than mine.’
Ann lifted her head, and Beattie found it impossible to endure the look in those eyes. She swung about, still holding the child to her, and began to rearrange the cot with one hand, flinging the clothes right and left over the rails as if in a furious temper.
At this moment Tom came in; and seeing Beattie’s actions and Ann with the tears running down her face watching her, his heart sank at the thought that there had been a row.
‘What’s the trouble?’ he asked quietly of Beattie.
‘Trouble? Who said there was trouble?’
His brow gathered into a perplexed frown, and he asked, ‘What’s the matter then?’
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