Black Sheep

by Susan Hill

  From the first morning she loved everything about the shop, loved the smells, the way the shelves were crammed with dozens of different items and yet always orderly, loved weighing out and filling up, loved the swish of the sugar into the cone of blue paper and the soft billows of flour, loved the meal sacks and the rattle of the coarse feed into the metal scoop, loved the cotton threads arranged in their colours on a rack and the smell of the balls of string and the shine on the boiled sweets. She felt as if the place behind the counter had been waiting for her to fill it. She had found more than work. People remarked that she looked well, her eyes were bright, her colour up, that she had ‘something about her’ and after a short time they forgot that Rose continued to be childless and, like Evie, they envied her.

  Charlie Minns had moods when a livid humour weighed him down and to be rid of it he flailed about him, and in flailing, caught Rose on the side of her face. At the end of her first week in the shop he was early home because he had trapped his hand in a pulley, and although not broken, it was deeply bruised, and painful.

  ‘I don’t care for this,’ he said. He was sitting at the table looking straight at Rose as she walked in. ‘I like to come in to my food not an empty space and I would have done if you hadn’t started as a shopworker.’

  ‘I came out dead on half past five. Oh, Charlie, what have you done to your hand?’

  He pulled it close to him as if he was afraid she would touch it. Rose felt guilt flood through her.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’d have come home straight away. I’ll set the kettle on first. Have you to be off sick?’

  ‘I’m put in the office only, till it’s healed.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good, that’s a relief then.’

  ‘Why? It isn’t your hand.’

  ‘No. I’m sorry.’

  Rose had never said that she was sorry as many times in the whole of her past life as she had once she was married to Charlie. She could not get everything right, and some days got nothing at all. He had been spoilt, he had moods, rages and then bouts of hunched-up silence, when he would not look at her or speak. At other times he would be funny, affectionate and kind. She never knew which Charlie to expect.

  She had no child simply because none came and neither of them was troubled about it, Charlie because he knew a child would shift him from the centre of her attention, Rose because she had seen her mother worn out with all of them, together with John and Reuben, so the absence of one was not hurtful but the nods and behind-hand remarks were. She had trained herself to hold her head up and close her ears to them.

  Now, as Charlie’s moods became more melancholy and dispirited, and his behaviour towards her often angry and occasionally violent, she did not know whether to be happy that there was no child to suffer with her or sad because she faced him alone. No one knew what he was like, she spoke to no one and showed nothing on her face or in her responses. But the few days she had spent in the shop had given her a freedom which she knew that she would dread to lose. It did not strike her, in the way it might have done others, as a pathetically small or mean thing, this pleasure in working behind the counter, liking to guess whose face would come round the door as it opened and the bell rang, what they might buy today and what have to leave behind when the total added up to more than the contents of their purse. She only knew she felt happier than she had since early childhood, or on the few occasions when she and Mary had escaped to gossip and share secrets and a cigarette in the back field.

  And now Charlie told her she had to give up the shop.

  ‘I want you here when I come in.’

  ‘Maybe I could try to change my hours, come home sooner. Yes, I’ll ask for that.’

  ‘I don’t like my wife being a shop woman. Give in your notice tomorrow, Rose.’

  She stood over him as he sat, mutinous and angry. He was small, his teeth were broken and rotting. His hair clumped greasily to his scalp. Rose shuddered with a realisation that she was bound to him for life, unless she was prepared to go slinking home in disgrace. She caught hold of a scrap of courage and clung to it as to a life belt. She said, ‘I won’t do that, Charlie. I don’t see the reason why I should.’

  ‘Reason is, I’m your husband and I’m telling you.’

  But Rose’s eyes were wide open now and she saw him for the small, ugly, bullying creature he was. She knew why she had married him. He was a manager’s son and she had been flattered, and thought it the way to take a step up, as Mary had thought before her. She had wanted the married status they all naturally wanted, for what else was there? She had felt singled out and even important, though she had known so many were scoffing at her choice of man. She had been neither happy nor sorry and she had been spurred on by the thought of her own house and family. When the family did not come, she had still ducked away from facing her real future. Now, it was clear in front of her and she flinched from it.

  She prepared their food and they ate it in silence, but now and then Charlie glanced at her sideways, his head low to his plate. It would be Christmas in five weeks and of course they were to go to his family, though Rose longed to be in Lower Terrace again, no matter if the room would be crammed full and Reuben would mumble his way through the Manger and the Shepherds and the Flight into Egypt over and over again. The Christmas and Easter stories were the only ones with the power to draw him away from the smiting and vengeance of the Old Testament.

  Rose set down her knife and fork. ‘I want to go home for Christmas,’ she said.

  ‘This is your home.’

  ‘You know what I’m saying.’

  But he did not reply, only scraped his plate round with the last lump of bread.

  Rose cleared the table and took the pots out without saying any more.

  9

  ON A SUNDAY night in the hardest winter for twenty years, Ted came out of a mesh of blinding whiteness over dark and could feel neither his hands nor feet and with his face numb. When he tried to breathe, the air in his lungs crackled.

  Slowly, he linked one thought to the next, one sensation to another, until he had a chain that made a pattern and knew where he was – in the farthest, topmost field, at the highest point, against a stony outcrop. It was dark, but the snow was vivid. There was a moon. The frost was like acid and he had his arms round a sheep, whose fleece was knotted into ropelets by the ice. His ears were ringing, the inside of his mouth tasted metallic. He lay still for several minutes with his eyes closed but when he felt himself falling down into icy sleep again he forced himself to look and saw the stars glittering above his head and a ring round the moon. No one was near. The sheep were clumped together in corners, half buried in snowdrifts. He had come out with William Barnes several hours ago, carrying hay, and plunged at once up to their waists in snow. After that, they had struggled against it to try and reach the flock who were farthest away and most deeply buried. The moisture on the bales froze as they moved.

  Ted looked round but there was no sign of the farmer nor any other human shape in the shining expanse of snow. He managed to free his hands from the frozen sheep fleece and the animal fell forward into the drift, a dead weight. How many others were dead he had no way of knowing – those clinging to the scribble of hawthorn hedge on the far side might be frozen solid.

  He must not let himself close his eyes again, or slip down into the warm hollow his body had formed in the snowdrift. If he did, he would freeze too.

  The voices rang across the clear cold air, and then the figures came on, making a slowly moving pencil line across the snow, William Barnes, Joel Barnes, Aseph and Tom, neighbours from over the hill. They reached Ted and shouldered him, wrapping him in horse blankets and sacking, and struggled back through the dells they themselves had made on their way. Ted felt like a child being carried to bed, swaying as the men moved, the air dusting his face with powdery snow thrown up by their movement. By the time they got him into the farm kitchen and beside the fire, he was barely aware of his own body.

  The next morning
, he was left to sleep, and at ten o’clock in the snow-bright day, Gerda Barnes came up with a tray of tea and bacon. Ted lay in the white glare coming through the small window of the attic, and his limbs felt heavy and sore, his head oddly light. But he was alive and he would be up later.

  ‘You stop in the house today, there’s pots you can wash and potatoes to peel up and after that you’ll be fit for nothing save more sleeping. Sheep,’ she said with scorn on her way out, ‘dang things are more trouble than they’re worth and they’re not worth a man’s life.’

  The winter petered out with little more snow and by February they were lambing. Ted was happy, loving the place, the wildness, the sheep, the work, content to be on his own or with William and Joel. He grew a couple of inches and his shoulders were broader. He changed from being a small, pale child to a young man strong as wire, and every day he woke wanting to be out on the hill, or to the barn with the ewes that had to lamb inside. The weather was kind after that last bout of bitter cold and snow, and the spring grass came fresh and early. He had no time to walk to Mount of Zeal, and no message came up for him, but when the main batch of lambs had arrived, he took a late afternoon off and went home. He heard the blower for the end of the shift as he walked along Paradise. A woman looked out of her door for the men coming up the slope, stared at him and ducked back inside. By the time he reached Lower the file was making its way up the track from the pithead. He saw his father and Clive, then Leonard the neighbour, walking together, and lifted his arm to them. They did not break stride. Ted stopped, troubled that his leaving could chill them towards him. He felt the fold of notes in his pocket.

  Evie dished up the moment the men had their boots off and set behind the door. She was not surprised that they said nothing because food and tea came first, second and third, but when the pots were cleared, fresh tea made and John had settled in his chair, still not a word had been said. From the corner, Reuben’s faint hoarse whisper read the story of the Tower of Babel. She looked from one man to the other, and not one of them met her eye and then she knew it was something to do with Ted, whose name John had ruled should never be mentioned in the house again. The bitterness hurt her so much that sometimes when she thought of it she could not catch her breath. She did not have words for how she missed her youngest child, the quiet, gentle boy who had spent so many of his days at the window looking out, but the space he had left was a hollow which she tiptoed round and kept warm for him.

  And then, without the sound of a footstep or a hesitant tap on the door, Ted was in the room, shocking them into silent effigies of themselves, and even stopping the words that breathed from the black Bible and Reuben’s mouth.

  Something about his still presence and strength prevented his father from saying any of the things he had planned to say if ever he saw his son again, and had Clive look up at him and then away uneasily, in something like awe. He was Ted, the youngest, but another Ted, and they were hesitant before him.

  Evie broke the atmosphere into shards by lifting the teapot and, because she trembled, chinking it against the cup until Clive reached out to hold it still, and after a minute, Reuben’s voice squeaked into life again like a reedy instrument tuning up.

  ‘Sit down,’ John Howker said.

  The fire drew badly, and Ted remade it. The kettle handle was bent and he took it off, straightened it, hammered it back. Clive went out, sullen of step. Reuben slept, the black Bible slipping from his lap to the floor as it did every night.

  ‘You’re a stranger to us,’ John said.

  Ted pulled the fold of notes out of his pocket and set it on the table. No one moved to pick it up.

  ‘It’s about more than money.’

  ‘All the same . . .’

  ‘All the same,’ Evie said, and swept the notes deftly into her hand and from there to her apron pocket. ‘You’ve found a way of life you care for more than this one, that’s clear. But don’t look down at the ones who have to live beneath you because that’s in the lie of the land only.’

  ‘I know that. You’d be welcome to come.’

  They looked at one another and looked away, and he knew that they would not.

  Later, Evie set a fresh fruit cake on the table, with the usual slab of cheese, but after they had eaten, Ted got up, knowing that the early shift came round before you’d shut your eyes. He put out his hand to his father, who hesitated before he shook it, and touched Reuben’s bald skull gently. Reuben did not stir. On the doorstep, he put his arm round Evie’s shoulders but she only let it lie there for a second before turning.

  In the house, putting the fruit cake back in the tin so old that its picture of Windsor Castle had rubbed almost away and only she knew what had been there with its tower and its flag, she thought but said nothing, only started to get Reuben ready for the night. But lying beside John Howker in the cold bedroom, under three blankets and the feather quilts, she said, ‘He came back though. We know where he went and he came back and he’ll come back again. Which Arthur has never done.’

  John said nothing but the image of Arthur was between them in the darkness and they sensed all over again the hopelessness of it.

  10

  SOMETIMES WHEN SHE was alone in the house Rose would switch on the wireless and find dance music, and be happy tapping and twirling about as best she could, in the spaces between the furniture. The chairs and sideboard and table had come from Charlie’s grandmother’s house and were old and ungainly, dark and ill-fitting in the small rooms.

  She was dancing in this way, to a swing band, with the door open onto the street to let in some of the fresh spring air, when someone said, ‘You shouldn’t be dancing alone.’

  He had his feet definitely on the path but his large body leaned inwards, so that Rose could hardly tell whether he was in the house or out of it and certainly he blocked out half the light.

  She took a few steps back so that the table was between her and the leaning man.

  ‘No, no, I didn’t mean to upset you. I was going by. Heard the music.’

  ‘Oh.’ But she did not move from the protection of the table.

  ‘I’ve moved to lodgings at the top.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘They call it Paradise.’ He had large even teeth in his broad face, eyes like the coals.

  ‘Where did you come from?’

  ‘Stannett Valley. I like this better. You can see out.’

  They both looked up towards Paradise and then the sky, though it was capped with thick oaten cloud now.

  He laughed.

  ‘You’re at the pit,’ Rose said.

  He nodded, tipped his cap back, showing a doormat of hair.

  She wanted to ask his name but dared not, and then his bulk shifted and the light came back into the room.

  She thought nothing of it until later, when Charlie had taken himself to bed with a pouring cold, and she was setting the pots out for the morning, and then the man’s frame in the doorway and the way he had stood there and spoken as if he had known her all her life came to her and she stopped as she took a cup from the rack, and held it in mid-air. Nothing unplanned or unexpected happened in Mount of Zeal, unless it was a sudden death. New faces were few, passers-by unknown.

  She had decided to defy Charlie and stay at the shop, so in the end that door too opened on the man she had learned was called Lem Roker. He joined the shuffling queue of those coming off the late shift, buying tobacco and a newspaper, shaving soap and matches, and when he stood in front of her she did not know whether to look at him or away.

  ‘You could dance in here,’ he said, ‘when it’s quiet.’

  Rose looked away.

  That Friday, Charlie’s mother was taken ill suddenly and into hospital twenty miles away. Charlie went with his father, telling Rose in one breath that it was nothing, in the next that she might die that same night, terrified and panicking. She put up a small bag for him, was worried and at the same time full of scorn that he was still his mother’s boy, and his distress wa
s about himself, about her leaving him, and did not arise out of deep concern for her.

  He left the house without a word and Rose had to run after him with the bag, which he grabbed as if his leaving it were her fault. She went back, cleared up and sat for a while, her hands together, knowing that she did not care, because her mother-in-law had never made a secret of her scorn, never welcomed or accepted her, never failed to criticise something she said or did or wore or cooked, every time they met. Why should she be troubled about her illness, which would surely turn out to be trivial?

  And then she heard footsteps going past the door, and after a moment, more footsteps, and voices, and as she heard them she jumped up, knowing that she was going where they were going, and would not listen to any whispers from her conscience. She got ready quickly, knowing that excitement and daring made her flush prettily, knowing that she had the courage to defy them all.

  The hall was crowded by the time she walked in, the chatter and the music from the band and the tap of heels on the wooden floor jerking it to life. But when Rose was seen the gradual quiet that came over them, and the stillness, so that only the music went on, was shocking. People turned, looked, turned away and to one another. She edged round the room and their eyes followed her. She tried to catch this or that person’s attention but though they were all looking none of them saw her. She went to the hatch from which the drinks were served and asked for a lemonade. Roy Parris, who was serving, pulled off the cap, slid it over the counter and waited for the money, all in complete silence, but as Rose fidgeted in her purse, a hand came down on the wooden ledge with the correct coins, picked up the bottle and gave it to her. Then he took her elbow, led her to a seat in the far corner, and after that, still standing, looked round the entire hall, at every face, slowly.