Black Sheep

by Susan Hill

  Fear widened Alice’s eyes and she clutched at Evie.

  ‘I must send for the doctor, Alice. He’ll see what needs to be done.’

  ‘I’m not going away.’

  ‘They’d know how to make you comfortable. They know what’s needed. I don’t.’

  ‘I’m not going into the infirmary. I’d never come out.’

  ‘The doctor can get the nurse to come to you. They’re very good.’

  Alice turned her head away.

  Reuben would not consider the doctor coming if Alice didn’t agree. He hated strangers in the house, but most of all, he would not accept that his wife was ill in any serious way. ‘She’ll be about any day now. She’s never been ill in all our years.’

  ‘That isn’t true and how do you have the face to say it?’ Alice had been ill with every one of her children, ill before, ill during, at death’s door twice after. She had been told by the doctor and the midwife, after her second, that she was risking her life, but she had gone on to five, two of which babies had died. She had been ill with pleurisy, migraine headaches, phlebitis, inflammation of the kidneys. She had struggled with everyday life for so long it had become a matter of habit for the family to help her out, though in the end it had all been left to Evie, to whom it had always been plain that Reuben had vied with his wife for attention and to be put off from work sick. It had not taken him long, and then he had assumed his seat in the front room with the black Bible, for good.

  ‘If he comes up here he’ll be sent away.’

  ‘Have you looked at her breast, Reuben?’

  ‘I have not.’

  ‘Then you do. You look. It’s an open suppurating sore and it’ll be the death of her. It’s eating her flesh away, and it won’t be long before it eats to the bone, if she doesn’t die first.’

  Ted looked across at his mother, shocked at what he had heard, imagining something eating his grandmother ‘to the bone’. He did not understand the nature of it, wondered if it was a worm that burrowed or an insect with mandibles that had somehow gained entrance to her body. On the way down the hill, he asked.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to know.’

  ‘I do want to know. Ma?’

  ‘Cancer, the crab,’ Evie said between tight lips.

  In the coal- and chalk-dust-smelling classroom the following day, he asked again.

  ‘That’s a funny question Ted Howker.’ The teacher was good at drawing and in a moment, there was a crab, pincers and shell, on the blackboard.

  ‘Who has ever seen one of these? Which lucky one of you has been to the seaside?’

  A hand went up. ‘But I never saw that.’

  ‘Do you know any other sea creatures with shells? Which one of you has heard of a lobster?’

  Ted sat silent in the third row back, not able to ask again, still left empty of answers as to why his grandmother’s illness had set off a board full of odd chalk drawings. He turned it over in his mind all day, all the way home, half the night, over and over, as the sea turns a pebble, but got no nearer to knowing.

  ‘Take this up to Paradise, and keep it in the basket, it’s hot.’ Evie wrapped a loaf and a teacake into a clean dishcloth. It was Friday afternoon. The terraces were sprinkled about with boys he knew, leaning against walls. There was a game of fives he could have joined but he had to ask his question and the basket was heavy.

  Reuben was in his permanent place. ‘Behold and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which is done unto me.’

  Ted put the basket on the table and would have asked his question then, but there was a sound on the stairs.

  He did not know the woman in the blue coat and hat who came in. Reuben fetched up a sigh that Ted thought could have come from the belly of the whale.

  ‘Better send the boy out. I need to tell you things.’

  ‘Go up and see your grandmother,’ Reuben said.

  Ted hesitated. The woman nodded her head to the stairs. ‘But she’s not very well, don’t you give her any grief.’

  He never forgot the sight of walking quietly into the front bedroom and seeing his grandmother in the high brass bed, flat under the sheets and with her head seeming to be smaller, shrunken like an apple left out in the bowl too long, and with the tears running down her cheeks.

  He stood still and looked at her, but at first she did not see him, just went on crying silently, unmoving. The voices of the woman and Reuben came murmuring from below.

  ‘Should I get you something?’

  She turned her head on the pillow and looked at him as if she did not know where she was, or who he was, but then her eyes cleared of the confusion and she sighed. ‘What are you doing, our Ted?’

  ‘They sent me up. To see you. I could go away.’

  ‘No, no. Come here.’ Alice opened her hand and held it palm upwards towards him. Ted went nearer and put his own hand on hers.

  ‘Is Evie there? Is John?’

  He shook his head. ‘I brought bread and a teacake. Should I get you a slice?’

  ‘No. I’m not hungry. I’ve lost my appetite.’

  ‘They’re still warm.’

  ‘It won’t come back now.’

  ‘What won’t?’

  ‘My appetite. Your grandfather will eat them.’

  ‘You’ll get hungry again when you’re well.’

  ‘I’m not going to be well.’

  ‘Do you mean not ever?’ He could barely believe her.

  ‘Never.’

  ‘I know what’s wrong with you. Does it not get better?’

  ‘What have you been told?’

  But he did not dare say the word aloud in the room. Alice closed her eyes but did not let his hand go. The room had a thick, sour smell. He looked at her arm, at the scaly skin dotted here and there with pale brown patches. He looked at her face, and her thin hair. He looked for a crab shape but could not find it.

  On Sunday, he went back up the hill. Alice was sleeping, but sometimes she woke and cried out with pain, or was restless, turning over and back in the bed to try and ease herself. Ted knelt on the floor in front of the window and looked out over Mount of Zeal, seeing the smoke rise from the chimneys on Lower to mingle with those above, but all going straight up cleanly into the stillness. There were few clouds.

  For once, Reuben was not downstairs thundering out the lines from Job, which he was reading through aloud for the hundredth time. He had gone out, to walk heavily along the terraces to the end and the old metal bench which someone had placed there in memory of a relative, years ago. It needed painting and the metal slats were broken in a couple of places but the family had died out and no one else saw fit to mend it. Reuben sat there on Sundays while those who went to church went to church, for if he knew his scriptures inside out and by heart, he did not care to hear them read in a voice other than his own, nor be preached at by any man.

  Ted could not see him from the window but he could see the thin file of dark clothed figures leaving chapel and boys he knew playing marbles in the dust bowls. When the nurse in blue arrived now she ignored him, knowing he would not come closer to the bed and stare. He sensed that his grandmother liked him to be there, though no word was ever said about it between them, he simply arrived the minute he had eaten his tea, and left when it was dark. Evie had mentioned it only once and then left him to do as he pleased. Once, his father had come up with him, huge and awkward in the room, reaching to touch his mother then drawing his hand back in case it was the wrong thing.

  ‘I can send the others, if you’d like it.’

  But Alice moved her head restlessly on the pillows. ‘Ted’s my company. I’m beyond the rest.’

  John stayed another couple of minutes. He had no words but a murmur flowed deep beneath his silence. He bent over to kiss her and left, glancing at Ted, hesitating, but in the end saying nothing to the boy.

  Evie came every day and the nurse in blue. Alice cried with pain, slept, lay without moving or turned about, hot and restless. The boy stayed with her a
ll day that last weekend, and would not leave at night, so that it was he who went to her when she called once, and touched her when she let out a rasping few breaths, shuddered and went still.

  Something seemed to happen in the room. The air lightened. He had been holding his breath tightly as if to keep it in his chest and now he let it go and it floated away from him like a feather. He had never known such silence.

  5

  REUBEN CAME DOWN to live with them less than a month later. There was no room for him, and Evie had been happy to continue taking his washing up and down the slopes, and hot food under a cloth. But he had wept, for the first and only time in his life, when she had said he would be perfectly well off staying in the Paradise house on his own, and so she had had little choice. She was aware that his tears were false and selfish, and that his repeated reading aloud that a ‘precious woman was worth more than rubies’ was moral blackmail. But she gave in to the blackmail, Clive and Jimmy fetched down his things, the old furniture was sold for next to nothing, and Reuben moved to Lower Terrace. He came with just his clothes, his own armchair and the black Bible, but his arrival still made the walls of the already crowded house bulge outwards.

  For Evie, the worst was his constant presence looming in the room. She was used to having men about, but they were men with a purpose, men who got up, went to the pit, came back, ate, drank, went to bed, slept, got up again, and at other times made themselves scarce. She felt spied upon. If she took ten minutes out to stand at the door or talk to a neighbour, Reuben saw her and she felt judged. He said nothing, but he looked on. The other men barely noticed him. They simply shifted a bit to make room and carried on as before.

  For Ted, the arrival of his grandfather was the beginning of a refrain in his life which through all his years of growing up never ceased to be singing in the background. His days were shaped by the sound of his grandfather’s voice speaking the Bible. He knew the cadences of the verses, the rise and fall and occasional flash and spark, the monotonous, even rumble of the lists of kings and prophets, the thunder of the voice of God. His days and the time before he slept ran in tune with the verses, and though he rarely understood most of what he heard, he absorbed the spirit and sometimes the sense, and it left its mark upon him.

  6

  ‘CLIVE, AW, COME on, come with me.’

  ‘Stop your wheedling, girl,’ John Howker said amiably, but without lifting his face above the top of the paper or taking his Saturday-night pipe from his mouth.

  ‘I said, now get off.’

  ‘Clive . . .’

  ‘Ask Arthur.’

  ‘I want you.’

  Arthur shuffled his feet under the table, where he was repairing a lamp. The small parts were laid out on brown paper in careful order.

  ‘Stop mithering your brother, Rose. Clive, you can walk her to the Legion.’ Evie was turning a hem.

  ‘What girl gets her brother to walk her?’

  Rose gave up. She put on the green floral frock that had been Evie’s but which Evie had altered to fit her and dressed up a little with a frill round the neck and sleeves. She damped the ends of her hair so they would curl round the comb handle. It was a cold night for summer. The window was slightly open and she shut it, to keep the smell of soot out. But the smell of soot had long ago seeped into the walls and fresh air would never shift it. You tasted it in your mouth night and day until your food was seasoned with it and would have seemed strange without.

  ‘Not later than ten,’ John Howker said as she went to the door. ‘Sharp.’

  ‘I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage.’

  ‘Yes, Grandad, thank you.’

  Arthur had almost completed the reassembly of the lamp. Ted was lying on his stomach on the floor, reading an old book he had found in a barrow parked by someone’s gate, with damp, yellowed pages that stuck together and a red cover whose colour had come off onto his fingers. Adventures with the Mounties.

  Rose slipped smooth as silk out of the door. She was nervous, walking quickly along the terrace and down the slope that led to the Institute, keeping well in to the side, away from the pairs and small groups of others who were going the same way. She did not think ahead to what it would be like, only hoped that she might meet Mary, hoped she would not look foolish and make girls laugh at her behind their hands, boys turn their backs. There was a queue to go in, people funnelling through the doors and spreading out onto the path at the bottom of the steps. And then she saw Mary with Charlie just three ahead of her, and pushed her way through, to grab her by the arm. Mary shook her off without looking round.

  ‘Mary?’

  ‘Oh.’ Mary half glanced. ‘Yes. Hello, Rose.’ But then she turned away and leaned in to Charlie, whispering.

  Rose felt herself flush and for a halfpenny would have got out of the queue and run for home, hot with the anger and hurt of rejection and chilled by the shame of being alone. But the queue moved forward and she with it and she had no escape. She paid her money and was inside the hall, where shoes squeaked and bumped on the wooden floor and there was a stage with lights covered in red crêpe paper and a man with an accordion, another with an instrument Rose did not recognise. The room was filling. There was chatter. All the girls clustered together near the stage, with bunches of boys just inside the doors, where the bar was. Rose crept towards the girls, not looking at anyone. Mary and Charlie and another couple had moved towards the middle of the hall and were dancing, aware of being watched. Charlie was small and rat-like, Rose decided. His shiny black hair was smarmed down across his head, showing up the spots on his neck. She shuffled further in to the circle of girls.

  ‘Rose Howker! Didn’t think you were allowed down here.’

  ‘She’ll have come with Clive. Is Clive here then?’

  Heads turned to the end of the room and the boys.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not on your own, Rose, you’d never.’

  ‘Why not? It was Mary who invited me, anyway.’

  Hands flew to mouths to hold back giggles.

  ‘That one. There they are, you seen them?’ A little shriek this time.

  ‘Charlie Minns! What’s she up to then?’

  ‘What do you mean, anyway, “it was Mary who invited you”? Don’t need anyone to invite you – unless it’s another sort of invitation.’

  The laughter exploding like that out of the group had the whole room looking round.

  ‘She said, would I come.’

  One by one, they looked or moved away or edged past her and floated off elsewhere about the room, until Rose was alone again. She would know better next time. She felt defiant.

  ‘Rose, will you come with me? I want to go home. Please come with me, please, you’re my friend and you’re not enjoying it, are you, I can tell, and I can’t leave on my own.’

  Mary was at her side and pulling on Rose’s arm, her face white, eyelids puffy. Rose looked round but no one was watching, they were eyeing each other, one end of the room slowly merging with the other, the girls sucking on drinks with straws, looking with big eyes over the tops of tumblers, the boys hanging on to beer glasses even when they had drained them.

  ‘Please . . .’

  ‘But what about –’

  ‘Don’t ask, don’t say it.’

  Outside there was no one, as soon as they had got themselves past the boys who were standing together on the step, smoking. There was a half-moon with skeins of cloud pulled across it like frayed wool. Mary held Rose’s arm tightly but stumbled on the paving in high-heeled shoes that had belonged to an aunt with smaller feet. From the open Institute windows they heard the sound of the accordion.

  When they were beside their old tree, in the darkness, Mary took out a packet of cigarettes, lit two. Rose saw her face in the match flare, troubled and fearful.

  ‘Mary . . .’

  ‘It was what he said. He said he liked me but he would have to shape me, he would have to ma
ke sure I didn’t let him down in any way at all. He said otherwise it was going to be hard to show me to his family. And he pawed me and when I said I didn’t like that he said I’d get used to it quick enough, because I had such a chance with him. He said what other such chance would I have for a step up in life?’

  ‘Oh, Mary.’

  ‘And he’s right, isn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t see that you should be ashamed of your family.’

  The cigarette burned strongly for a moment as Mary drew on it. Rose saw her face in the red glow, taut and anxious.

  ‘Do you like him, Mary? I mean, really?’

  Mary shrugged.

  ‘You don’t then, and you can’t marry someone you don’t like a lot. You have to love them.’

  ‘What do you know about it?’

  There was no need to reply.

  ‘He puts his hands where they shouldn’t be.’

  Rose could not ask. She had an idea where that was.

  ‘I don’t want to go back in there tonight.’

  ‘Or any night.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ll go next week. You can’t just stop at home, can you? Come on now.’

  They went arm in arm across the dark grass and stumbled at the gap in the fence separating the field from the lane, almost pulling one another over and laughing then, as if they were still eight years old and coming home from school.

  Rose went through the door smiling to herself and into panic thick as smoke filling the house. John Howker had been taken ill, falling heavily as he got up from his chair and lying with his eyes rolling back into his head, his limbs twitching then going horribly still. The boys had tried to haul him up and in the end they had managed it but he sprawled loosely, so that they had to prop him against the table leg. He made no sound other than a faint snoring in his nose and mouth, and his eyes did not focus even when they rolled back to their normal position. Reuben started to read a Psalm loudly, until Evie shouted at him, then his voice fell, though he still read on. Ted pressed himself against the wall.

  That night was terrible. Ted and Rose were banished to bed, Evie sat holding John’s hand but every so often she got up and went to the door to look out, as if some help would come from the sky up behind Paradise. At dawn, John was very still, his hands and face cold in spite of two blankets, and Clive was made to run the six miles to a doctor, Reuben having dug out the money from a tobacco tin slipped under his chair cushion.