The Slow Awakening

by Catherine Cookson (Catherine Marchant)

  Now he was at the foot of the bed. His eyes, no longer grey, were shadowed to black, and his red face ran with a sweat which dropped in rivulets from his grey chin and glistened as they hit the black silken sleeve of his extended arm. She saw that his previous state was mild compared to his present one for he was now mortallious.

  He moved to the side of the bed now, his knees pressed against it for support, while his voice slurred, ‘It’s all right, it’s all right.’ When his two hands fell forward onto the bed and struck her feet she gave a smothered cry, equally from the hurt as from fright. Hand over hand he edged himself up the bed towards her until his face was hanging over hers for the second time that night. As he stared down at her he seemed to sober up just the slightest, for now he turned his body round and sat down with a flop onto the side of the bed facing away from her, his back arched and his hands hanging limply between his knees, which showed bare where they stuck up between the edges of the black gown. So he remained for sometime; and then he began to speak.

  ‘Kir…Kirsten Mac…Greg…gor, from now on…’ He screwed his body round towards her, his hand flapping now within an inch of her face. ‘From now on you…have a…name, Kir…Kirsten MacGregor…not nurse, or girl, nothin’, nothin’, but Kir-sten MacGregor…Know why? Know why?’ His hand now was resting on her neck across the top of her breast bone, the fingers splayed underneath the collar of her nightdress. ‘Only one…only one not afraid to…to speak the truth. Goin’ to the Flynns, you said. I’m goin’ to the Flynns, come hell’n high water…Say what you like, Master Konrad Knutsson, you said, say what you like, I’m…I’m loyal to me friends…Know something else, Kirsten MacGregor? I hate the Flynns, the young one; know why? ’Cos…’cos he’s got children in him. Understan’…understan’…understan’ what I mean? A skit like him, young, bumptious, he’ll breed an’ breed, an’ be damned to him! Do you hear me? Be damned to him! Have your friends, Kir…Kirs-ten MacGregor; but I say be damned to him. He’s a thief; he’s bitten into me land. Me land!’ His voice ended on a bawl; then again he became quiet.

  Now turning to her once more, his hand fell on her face and with his finger he traced her cheek up to her eye where the pupil was deep in the corner, and he bowed his chin almost onto his chest while his eyes remained on hers, his upper lids seeming to disappear into the sockets under his brows.

  ‘You’re fr…frightened; you’re frightened of me at last. Huh!’ His chin came up and his head wobbled and he laughed. ‘You’re fr…frightened of me at last. L…look!’ He was lying across her knees now, supporting himself on one elbow. ‘Look, Kir-sten, not MacGregor, just Kir-sten. Call you Kir-sten, eh? Look; do as I tell you. Put it back; make it straight; go on.’ He placed his finger on her eyelid and pressed it back and forward, and when he stopped and the pupil was still in the corner he pulled himself away from her, his eyes narrowed. Then shaking his head and his voice now low in his throat, he said, ‘You think you’re goin’ to be raped, don’t you? The master’s goin’ to rape you…Aw no, no, don’t think that…I wouldn’t, not you, me son’s-adopted-mother. ’Cos that’s what you are, Kir-sten, me son’s-adopted-mother…Now, his own mother…Well!’ He now spread one hand wide. ‘You’ve seen, haven’t you? You’ve seen, she didn’t want the child, never; but now, now, ’cos his legs, his legs are bandy, she’s horrified at the mention of them. Seen it in her eyes time ’n’ time again, seen it in her eyes, her own flesh ’n’ blood…imagine that? Now you, you, Kir-sten MacGregor. No. No, not MacGregor’—again his head was wagging—‘just Kir-sten, you wouldn’t disown your child, not if he was as mad as a march hare, would you? Tell me, would you, Kirsten?’

  He hitched himself up the bed again and his arm was across her thighs and his face close to hers. ‘You would never disown anythin’ you bore, would you? Not you, not the one who stood up for the Flynns. Kir-sten, I…I need comfort. I’ve come to you for com-fort, Kirsten. Do you know that? I’ve often wanted to come to you for com-fort. When I’ve s-seen you cradle his head I’ve wished it was mine…Yes. Yes, I have. I want comfort, Kir-sten. Mind. Mind’—he was wagging his hand before her face again—‘I could get comfort; it’s offered from all points of the compass in this house, from the laundry to the upper floor. Do you know somethin’?’ Now his nose was almost touching hers. ‘I’ll tell you somethin’, Kir-sten.’ His voice was a mere laughing whisper. ‘Bella…Bella wants me. Yes, Bella’s always wanted me. She would give me comfort; oh yes. Bella would give me comfort. But would I take Bella? Huh!’ He made a sound in his throat like a deep rattling chuckle. ‘Poor Bella, she loves me, Bella, yes, yes she does.’ He was nodding his head emphatically now as if contradicting Kirsten’s denial; and then he stopped his nodding and slowly he laid his head on her breast, and speaking into the stiff aperture between the buttons of her calico nightdress, he begged, ‘Put your arms around me, Kir-sten, comfort me; I—I need comfort…more, more than the child at this moment.’

  When her body remained stiff he lifted up his face and looked at her. Then twisting round, he brought his legs up onto the coverlet and, putting his head once again on her breast, he commanded. ‘Comfort me, I say! Jus’ comfort me.’

  Her mind was full of fear, her body rigid with it, and it wasn’t the result of the thought of what he might do to her—nothing anyone could do to her she imagined could be as horrifying as what she had suffered under the hands of Hop Fuller. Her fear was more at the desecration of something he had stood for. She couldn’t explain it to herself. Yet now with his head lying on her breast, with his body divided from hers only by the bedclothes, he was like all the children put together, Bob, Annie, Florrie, John, Mary, Ada, Millie, Peggy, Cissie, yes and even Nellie; most of all he was like the child back in the room there. Slowly she brought one arm up, and as if touching a sacred relic she placed it about his shoulders, and her other hand came slowly onto his head and she stroked it, and he made noises as a child might have made. Then he was crying not as a drunken man cries with maudlin tears, but like someone in deep pain.

  The moisture from his face soaked her nightdress and reached her skin. Her arms ached, her position was breaking her back, but still she stroked him.

  What time he fell asleep she didn’t know, and what time she fell asleep she didn’t know, she only knew that at some time in the night when she awoke he was under the clothes, and his body was close to hers and she felt lost in the breadth of it; but when she awoke in the dawn he was no longer there. And she knew something else, two things; one that he hadn’t as yet touched her, and the other that she would never leave him as long as he bid her stay. The second thing brought with it a deep sadness and a strong element of fear, and it conjured up the faces of Colum Flynn and Miss Cartwright.

  PART SIX

  THE LAND

  One

  From the night Bella had played what she thought was her trump card she knew she had lost, and lost in such a way that the present state was worse than the former. Personally the situation had become excruciating, for instead of Konrad throwing the creature out of the house he had gone into her room, and there he had stayed for most of the night, all night, in fact until five o’clock the following morning. She knew the time exactly for she had kept watch. She had secreted herself near the curtains in the hall at the end of the east-wing corridor, and watched the candles guttering down to their base until only the middle night candle was left, and this had but an inch to burn when she at last saw the dim figure of him emerge into the passageway. She had not heard a door open or the creak of a board. She saw that he was holding his hand to his head as he stumbled towards the opposite door, and she had sat on for some minutes before rising and going to her room, not to sleep, but to sit and think of this new situation.

  The creature was now established in the house, not through the child any more but through its master. She had sensed his attraction to the unlucky piece right from the first. At times she had surprised him watching her when his eyes were supposedly on the child. She felt herself
being engulfed with a new humiliation. She with her brains and her knowledge and her breeding, for she was of good stock, had never even been considered in his mind, yet he could take to himself a road tramp, a cross-eyed road tramp. She bowed her head deeply as if her thoughts were flaying her body. Why? Why had life to be like this? He had married Florence, who was silly and empty-headed, and what had he got from her? Two dead babies, and nothing in between. Florence did not like ‘the act’ as she termed it, it nauseated her. There had been times of late when in spite of loving her she’d had the desire to take Florence’s slender body in her hands, lift it up and dash it against a wall. What she would not have given for just one ‘act’ by him, one act that would have assuaged her craving body. Until she had met him she had never loved any man, but she would have married any man, whatever his age, had he asked her.

  Since the age of twenty she had known she was destined for a life of servitude to relatives. She was twenty-seven when she took Florence under her protection, not only out of love, but also as a means whereby she could provide herself with subsistence, proper subsistence.

  She remained sitting in the dark until the dawn broke; then she took off her clothes, poured some ice-cold water from the ewer into the basin, and with this she sponged down, from head to foot, her thin, burning, frustrated body.

  Kirsten was fully aware that her status in the house had changed, and she knew it was because the master had come to her room; and she deduced that Mr Harris had told Mrs Poulter, and Mrs Poulter had told the rest of the staff. Not that Mrs Poulter wished to do her any harm; she was sure she had done it solely to set a seal of permanence on her position in the household. Nevertheless, she was wise enough to know, too, that the new politeness covered a deepening resentment.

  Even the housekeeper’s manner towards her was changed; there was a slight deference in it now that had definitely been lacking before. Only Rose’s attitude remained unchanged.

  She rarely saw Miss Cartwright now, and the mistress never, except maybe from a window she might watch her getting into the carriage with Mr Dixon arranging her crinoline and tucking the rugs around her if she were in the open landau. She had not seen the master accompanying the mistress for a long time.

  The master! Since the night he had slept by her side he had never left her mind. Always at the back of it was a picture of him; not as he had lain against her breast, not even as he had held her pressed tight into the wide flesh of his body, but as he had stood before her late the following day, his eyes bleary, his face blotched but sober, when he had called her by her name again. ‘Well, Kirsten,’ he had said, ‘what do you remember of last night?’ and when her head drooped and she made no answer he said, ‘I remember nothing clearly, so one thing I will ask you. Did I do you any harm?’

  Her head moved slowly from side to side but still she didn’t speak, and after a moment he said, ‘That being so, nor shall I. What I do recollect vaguely is that you comforted me, thereby making my rampaging of short duration, and for that I’m grateful…Are we friends?’

  At this she looked up at him. The master asking her if they were friends. Her voice breaking with tears, she muttered, ‘Oh, master, master,’ and he had put out his hand and patted her cheek softly before turning away. His whole attitude was one of kindness, touched with remorse. This being so, how could he have acted as he had done so soon afterwards?

  The following week when she had gone across the river she had found the whole Flynn family disturbed. They’d had a letter from a solicitor in Newcastle saying that Mr Konrad Knutsson was taking the matter of the infringement of his land to law. The solicitor said his client had a very good case for he had found a loophole in the deeds which bore out his previous claim that the land his great-grandfather had bought from Mr Michael Flynn had its boundary down the middle of the river, therefore Mr Flynn had gravely transgressed the law when he had not removed the wall from the land on the north bank of the river. He went on to say that his client would consent to the matter being settled out of court, and Mr Flynn would be well advised to agree to this.

  Kirsten had remained dumb while Colum had raged up and down the kitchen, and apparently not for the first time, for now none of the family joined their protests to his; one and all, they just looked at him, waiting for him to do something.

  It wasn’t until he was setting her down to the river that his bombast dropped from him and he said hopelessly, ‘What can I do? What can anyone do without money? Solicitor men cost money.’

  She knew that their rope trade had been bad for some time and because of this she had at Christmas taken two of her sovereigns and given them to Elizabeth to divide among the children because, she said, she could never get into the town to buy them presents. Elizabeth had protested, and Dorry too, but she knew they had been grateful for the money.

  When she knew that Colum would require money to go to a solicitor her first instinct was to offer her little hoard that had now reached fifteen pounds. Eighteen months ago she would have considered it a fortune, but she had come to realise it was very little money to some people. Nevertheless, it might be enough to enable Colum to get help to fight for his land. But the instinct to help him was checked by the thought that if she did this wouldn’t she be going against the master?

  And now came the question. Why had the master done this? He knew she was friends with the Flynns. He couldn’t be spiteful, could he? A man like the master couldn’t be spiteful.

  For a week her mind was torn in her desire to give Colum her money and the fact that if she did so she’d be going against the master, frustrating him in something he wanted to achieve. Yet on her next visit across the river she took with her the fifteen pounds.

  The Flynns were amazed. They showed it in different ways; Dorry wept until her face was aflood; Elizabeth shook her head while she held Kirsten’s hands; Dan took her into his arms and hugged her; the children stood round her fingering her skirt; only Colum stood aloof, and when they had all finished he said, ‘No.’ And he kept saying ‘No.’ As time went on it got firmer, and he was still saying ‘No’ when they reached the river and he handed her onto the first stepping stones. But his eyes were soft and his touch on her hand was tender; and she paused, one foot on the pebbles, one foot on the stones, and as she did so her eyes travelled to where the yellow shaft was still sticking up above the water, still held in the cleft of rock, and quickly she turned to him and said, ‘It’s because I’ve worked for this over there that you won’t take it, isn’t it? But if I could show you some money that belongs to nobody would you…would you then have it?’

  ‘Money that belongs to nobody!’ His chin jerked up as he laughed. ‘You mean Roman coins that they dig up now and then over the wall?’

  ‘No, not Roman coins. And…and there mightn’t be any money there, it’s just a guess. But I feel nearly sure—’ She put her hand back and pointed across the river towards the yellow shaft, then added slowly. ‘In there, in the end of the shaft.’

  His eyes were screwed up and he was peering at her as he said softly, ‘You mean there’s money in the end of that shaft?’

  ‘I…I think so.’

  He continued to stare at her. ‘Money in…in the cart that…that you came on?’

  She nodded. ‘Hop Fuller, him I told you about, he was always fiddling with the end of the shaft when he thought I wasn’t about. He made money and I never saw any of it, or where he put it. I…I believe it’s in the end of the shaft in a kind of secret hole.’

  He pulled her back from the stepping stones now and onto the shale and he asked quietly, ‘Then why didn’t you take it out, your need was greater than mine…ours?’

  She smiled wryly. ‘I…I came down that day to do just that, an’ I saw Barney carrying it across the steppy stones here.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  Her smile widened. ‘Afore I could say anything you had thrown it in the river. Now, hadn’t you?’

  ‘Good God!’ He walked from her now to the four
th stone and stared over the water at the shaft. The river was high at this point, actually lapping over the top of the stepping stones, and it was running swiftly. He stared for a full minute, then turned and joined her again, saying woefully, ‘I would have to throw it into that one spot, wouldn’t I? It’s the most dangerous part on this stretch. Our dog went down there, I think I told you. Just next to where the shaft is there’s a wide cleft and the waters gather in it an’ the suction’s great. It’s like the spot up at Bywell, below the church where the parson was drowned. His grave’s opposite the very place where he went down.’ He shook his head, then looked towards the middle of the river again. And now he spoke as if to himself, saying, ‘I’d be riskin’ me neck foolishly if I went in now, the river bein’ high; the pull is always harder down below when the river’s high. Later, in a week or so’s time if it goes down—’ he turned his face towards her, his eyes bright, ending, ‘I’ll have a shot. I’ll have a shot then.’

  She said anxiously, ‘Oh no, no. You could be sucked down like the dog…’ Her voice trailed away and he said, ‘I’ll rope meself. You, you could hold me from the bank.’

  ‘But you won’t try unless I’m here, will you?’ she said hastily, her hand on his arm.

  He did not answer but looked at her, right into her eyes. There was no flickering of the pupil today. They stared back into his, their light soft and telling, and he caught her hands and said, ‘Kirsten, Kirsten lass, it’s a funny time to say it, an’ you…you could think it’s ’cos of what you’ve just told me, but you know it isn’t. I’ve kept me mouth shut ’cos I’m in no case to ask you; you earnin’ good money an’ me, us, living from hand to mouth as we are. Not that it will always be like that; we’ve known good times afore, we’ll know them again. But…but I’ve told meself to wait, wait just a wee while longer so’s I could do things right, so’s I could say there’d be a future for us. You know what I’m askin’ you, Kirsten? I’m askin’ you will you have me, will you marry me, one day that is, some time in the future…Will you marry me?’