The lodgekeeper said, ‘Ta-ra, lass,’ and she said, ‘Ta-ra, Mr Turner.’
‘You needn’t hurry,’ he said, ‘you’ve got plenty of time,’ and she said, ‘Thank you,’ and walked into the road and the sharp bright sunshine.
When she came to the turnpike there was no-one waiting for the cart, and she was glad of this for she did not want to listen to anyone talking. After standing for ten minutes, her legs became weak. In fact she felt weak all over, and she put it down to her not having eaten any breakfast, so she placed the bag on the grass verge and sat on it until she saw the cart coming along the road.
When the cart stopped the driver shouted, ‘Hello there!’ and she answered, ‘Hello.’
‘Newcastle again?’ She nodded and he added, ‘Get up then. No time to waste. Get up.’ And she got up and sat at the back, between a young woman, who had a basket on her knees which was secured by a leather strap tied round her waist, thus avoiding an extra ha’penny for package space, and a farmhand whose clothes smelled strongly of the byres, and whose face was round and ruddy, his smile wide and toothless.
There was a conversation going on towards the front of the cart, but the three sitting at the back did not speak, except when the wheels dug deep into a hollow. Then the young woman would repeat the same phrase with added variations, ‘God Almighty! I was nearly out. God Almighty! I’ll be on me arse in a minute. God Almighty! Me stomach’s up me nose.’
These exclamations made the farmhand guffaw every now and again. For the rest, the journey continued uneventfully until they had crossed the bridge and were almost in sight of Prudhoe, where the carter always stopped.
But when the cart came to a standstill in a narrow roadway before the official stopping place she showed no interest as to why it had stopped, she sat with her head down, her chin almost resting on top of the valise that she held on her knees, keeping it in place with one hand, while with the other she gripped the rope that was stretched in front of the three of them across the back of the cart, and which afforded only a precarious support, for had they not been careful they could have slipped underneath it.
Unlike the others, she took no notice of the man walking down the narrow verge by the side of the cart, not even when he came to a standstill at the back of it. It wasn’t until his arms came swiftly up under her armpits and she was sliding under the rope that she gasped out in surprise. Her valise had fallen to the ground and he picked it up while he still kept hold of her.
The carter was shouting from the front, ‘Well, you’ll have to pay half,’ and she was too stunned for the moment to take his words in. By the time her hand went to her pocket underneath her skirt the carter had been paid.
She now stood as one dazed watching the cart rumble away, the girl on the back silent and staring, while the farm worker grinned more widely.
When the cart turned the bend and disappeared from view she brought her gaze to Colum, where he was standing with his hands chaffing each other as if he were winnowing corn.
‘I…I thought I’d missed you.’ His smile was tentative, apologetic.
She did not return it, or speak.
‘I…I was here for the seven o’clock but…but you weren’t on it, so I set up a fire. Would…would you like a drop tea?’ He walked past her keeping the distance of feet between them, and he went sideways along the grass verge towards a gap in the hedge, one hand partly outstretched as a butler might walk when announcing some personage into a drawing room.
When she went through the gap, there in the field stood his cart and horse, and there was the fire built within a small mound of bricks, and from a rough tripod was hanging a black can.
She watched him drop on his hunkers before the fire, lift off the can and pour some of the liquid into a tin mug.
When he handed it to her, he said, ‘It…it’s fresh. It’s the second lot I’ve brewed.’
When she did not take the mug from him he stared at her, then said quietly, ‘Come and sit down.’ He took her by the elbow now and led her to a flat stone, around which were the remains of dying anemones and the fresh uncurling heads of bluebells.
As she sat on the stone there passed through her body a great shudder. This was another avalanche and she knew that this time it would not pass over her. She felt as if her whole body was swelling and the pain in her throat became unbearable. She knew that her face was stretching in all directions, her mouth, her nostrils, her eyes. As she threw herself from the stone and onto the grass a great moaning cry escaped her, and her body was rent with it. She heard herself, as if listening to someone else, sobbing, and yelling, and as if to relieve the agony, repeating over and over again, ‘Oh dear me! Oh dear me! Oh dear me!’
The water that rained from her eyes, her nostrils and her mouth assumed the waters of a torrent that was carrying her along with it. She was in the river again, she was seeing Hop Fuller’s head split open and the blood spouting forth; she was fighting for breath, gasping, struggling, and then there were arms about her pulling her upwards and a voice saying, ‘Don’t. Don’t. Aw Kirsten, don’t. Give over, lass. Aw, for God’s sake, don’t! I’m sorry. I tell you I’m sorry. To the very heart’s core of me I’m sorry. I believed you. Listen. Stop it, stop it. Listen; I believed you. That day I believed you but I was too jealous, too pig-headed to tell you. After I calmed down I knew I was a fool. I didn’t need them to tell me. I knew it. Listen, lass, listen; give over. Aw for God’s sake, don’t take on like that. Look, I love you. I love you so much. That’s why I took it so badly, for I knew that if I didn’t have you then I wouldn’t have anybody. Listen to me. Kirsten, listen. I was coming down the day, honest I was. I was coming to the very house, and then I got his letter. It was on midnight when they brought it. I’ve never slept. I’ve been down here since five.
‘There now, there now.’ He was holding her, enfolding her gently like a child. He drew her upwards and across his knees and rocked her, talking all the while, pouring out his own misery in an effort to lessen hers. ‘It’s been hell, and every one of them, from Da to Michael have never let up on me, which has made it worse. Dorry most of all. Oh aye, Dorry. I used to be Dorry’s pet lamb, you know I was.’ He turned her streaming face toward him. ‘Do you know she hates the sight of me now?’ He waited for some protest in his defence, some movement of her lips that would indicate a smile, but all she did was to shudder and gasp.
‘I’m a big-headed numskull of a nowt. That was her latest summing-up, and only yesterday forenoon…oh, Kirsten! Kirsten, say you forgive me. Say it. I’ll make it up to you; all me life I’ll make it up to you. I’ll build another couple of rooms on the end and make new furniture. And I’ll get me da at it; he’ll do it for you, he’ll do anything for you.’ He stopped and shook his head slowly as he looked down at her, then said brokenly, ‘I’ve been a fool, a blasted fool, a cruel fool, but from this minute on I’m goin’ to repay me debt. You know where we’re going from here?’ He put his face closer to hers. ‘We’re going into Bywell to see the parson.’ He waited, but still she didn’t speak. ‘We’re puttin’ the banns up, doing it proper, an’ we’ll have a weddin’ such as hasn’t been in the Abode for years. Things are looking up. I got three orders in last week, three good orders, and I’m going to buy a cow…aye, a cow. And would you believe it, they’ve’—he jerked his head in the direction of where the Abode lay a way off—‘they’ve started preparing already. At dawn this morning Dorry was up talking of pig’s head brawn, suckin’ pig and baked goose, to me ma that is, for she still wouldn’t speak to me. Not until you enter the house, she says.’
He stopped his talking and stared at her, and she at him, and now he asked softly, ‘Do you still love me, Kirsten?’
Did she still love him? What was love? That strange, bewildering, ecstatic feeling she’d had last night when life had moved from its ordinary level onto some hitherto undreamed-of plane whereon the master had become all things to her, her father, her lover, her god? Had the master said to her then, ‘Come
away with me,’ she would have gone. She would have again broken her word, broken her promise to Miss Cartwright, and once again she would have risked death at her hands, for this time she knew that Miss Cartwright would not only be fighting for the master but for the child also, the child that had come to mean so much to her. On that day when everything happened and she had seen her washing the child she knew that that plain woman, that unscrupulous woman, loved the child more than she herself had ever done. Yet in spite of this knowledge, at a sign from the master she would have stripped her of life. But he hadn’t given her the sign, not the sign from a lover at least. She had come out of the experience as a daughter might. Yet he loved her; she knew that he loved her, and that she loved him.
And now Colum was talking to her of love, asking did she still love him? And the answer she supposed she would give him was, yes. But the question came with it: How could she love him and feel as she had done last night? She could not reason it out; she only knew that there was some part of her made for Colum, but she faced the fact now as she had faced it before, the fact that her love for him was bound up with those about him, his family. It was with them she desired to live for the rest of her life; and only through Colum could she achieve this. And in payment she would give to him all she could give, all except the secret that must never be divulged; no feeling of security, no feeling of trust, or deepening love, must open that door behind which lay the link that would forever hold the master and her together, her son…and his, not begotten through his seed, but bred through his love.
‘Do you, Kirsten?’
When, on a fluttering sob, she made a small movement with her head, he drew her up to him and kissed her, his lips firm and hard, yet tender; then as he dried her face, he said softly, ‘Come on now and have a sup tea, and we’ll get on our way to the parson, and then back up above, ’cos they’re itching for me to get you home.’
And now she spoke for the first time. ‘Would,’ she said hesitantly, ‘would you mind if I didn’t go to…if we didn’t go to Bywell the day? I’—she pushed the hair back from her still wet face—‘I don’t feel presentable; I…I’d rather go straight home.’
Kneeling before her now, he held her hands tightly to his breast as he murmured, ‘Have it your own way, lass. I’ll take you straight home, if that’s what you want, and gladly. Aye, I’ll take you straight home.’
The End
The Slow Awakening Page 32