by Norah Lofts
‘Peg-Leg,’ I said, ‘somebody ought to thank Martin for all this and you’re the one. If it’s left to Peter Priest it’ll be all long words and no heart to it, and Pert Tom’ll be stuttering drunk before the time comes. You’re the one.’
‘Aye,’ he said, ‘I reckon I could stand up and say thanks for us all.’
‘And best wishes. I tell you what, Peg-Leg, say that while you’re about it you’ll wish that next year there’ll be another baby at the table. That’ll draw everybody’s attention to yours.’
‘And thass a good wish, too,’ he said.
So all I had to do was to wait till Peg-Leg stood up and clapped his hands for silence and started to speak. Then I went and got as near Martin as I could, a little behind, so my mouth was close to his ear, and when Peg-Leg said about the baby I muttered to myself as any old woman of my age is entitled to do.
‘And so there would be if she didn’t keep swilling down that cough mixture!’
He heard, I saw him jump. He said,
‘What was that?’ pretty sharp.
‘What was what?’
‘What did you say?’
‘Did I speak? I reckon I was talking to myself,’ I said and wandered off.
I really did think to myself that that hint was dropped as well as ever a hint was. And it was noticed. It wasn’t long after Christmas, the real cold weather was just beginning, when Dummy’s Mary came along with some tale about the Master coming into the kitchen just as the Mistress was brewing her medicine and taking it and pouring it out at the back door.
‘Thass all froze now, as hard and smooth as glass,’ she ended.
‘Take a shovelful of ashes and put over it then, for Holy Mary’s sake,’ I said. ‘We don’t want anybody breaking a leg.’
After that I just sat back and waited. The cold weather ended, the days pulled out, morning and evening, a few birds began to sing and even fly about with bits of straw in their bills, and it was spring again.
I stood one morning, where I usually did, and watched Martin mount and ride off somewhere. I remembered thinking that badly as Mary managed in one way, she kept him fed and tidy-looking. He did look just as usual. I stood there for a bit, enjoying the air, and along came Pert Tom to give Owd Muscovy his breakfast.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you left on account of her, you can move back. Reckon I was right after all. She’s up and quit!’
I had another of those turns when I couldn’t breathe or see; I had to lean against the wall to keep myself from falling. He was saying something, but the ringing in my ears was so loud I couldn’t hear what it was. I did my careful breathing, in, hold it, out, for a time or two and at last I could speak.
‘What do you mean, up and quit? When, why?’
‘I was telling you. You gone deaf? She took off yesterday morning and ain’t been seen since. I reckon I miscalculated. That must be a year, not a month they can’t stay in one place.’
‘Oh, stop that jabber! What about Martin? How’s he taking it? Was he off just now, looking for her?’
‘Not him. He’s off to Lavenham. Know what he said, last night, when he come in and found her gone? He said, “Well, you can’t keep a lark in a cage, leave alone make a broody hen of it!” Then he set down and et his supper. If you ask me he’ve had a bellyful of her and is as glad to see her gone as I am. You’ll come back now, eh, Agnes, and cook us some decent grub?’
My mind was elsewhere but my tongue answered him.
‘You always used to grumble about my cooking.’
‘That was afore I tried Mary’s!’
‘I’ll see. Most like she’ll come back. She’s like you, born to the road; this first spell of fine weather set her foot itching.’
Maybe that was the way Martin looked at it. Maybe that was why he had eaten his supper and been so unconcerned.
But that wasn’t true. He must have known she had gone for good, for that evening Mary came along, her eyes popping, to tell me that the Master, the minute he was home from Lavenham had told her to take everything that belonged to the Mistress and put it on the fire in the Forge.
‘There was that lovely dress she had for the wedding, and the tawny woollen she had for the cold weather, and her shoes and everything, even the pins for her hair. And there was Tom, standing by with the bellows and the flames shooting up, you never see such flames, Agnes.’
Oddly enough, I didn’t picture the flames; I just saw her, going off in the old red bodice and striped skirt, carrying her tambourine, and her hair hanging. ‘There is no because. To dance I am born, so I dance.’ I thought of that. And I thought of Martin’s remark about the lark and the cage. That showed understanding, and was a comfort to me, because a blow that you can understand never hurts so much as one which puzzles you. I also thought of Peg-Leg’s words about women overrating themselves; this very morning Martin had gone off about his business in Lavenham. He’d survived a worse knock, he’d survive this. Some decent food and a clean bright kitchen, if they didn’t help, wouldn’t hurt.
I said, ‘So now there’s no mistress in the house. It was bad enough when there was. I shall come along tomorrow morning, Mary, my girl, and put you through your paces.’
She looked pleased.
So there we were, in well under a year, back just where we were. My only regret was that there was no baby. Nor would be now. Martin grown even more silent, never thought about anything but work and business.
The big fine room across the passage was never used. I went in now and again to let in the air and watch Mary wipe away the dust. It was a sad room. I’d go in and think what a waste, his building this just for her to dance in; and I’d end by thinking I could see her dancing.
Amongst us her name was never mentioned and for all the mark she had left on the place she might never have come at all.
IV
That was the summer when Martin began to speak of buying a ship of his own to carry his wool overseas. It wasn’t until well on into November, however, that he heard of a likely vessel for sale and rode off down to Bywater to view it. It was bad travelling weather, and hardly light all day long, so the trip would take four days at least, and his last words to me were not to worry if he was away longer.
I took the opportunity to make brawn, and on the third night turned one out of its mould to see what it was like. We had it for supper, and very good it was. When Mary went to set what was left away for next day, I said,
‘Look, you were a good girl and worked hard on that brawn, you can take that piece along to your mother and show her what a clever girl you are.’
Pert Tom and I drew up to the fire. He was a bit mopish just then because Dummy’s Joan had taken up with one of the young smiths in the Forge and he hadn’t yet found himself another hussy. Looking at him, across the hearth, I thought he wouldn’t find it so easy this time, and the next harder still until in the end he’d just be that figure of fun – an old lecher.
We spoke about this and that, and mentioned Martin and the ship, wondering if he’d struck the deal.
‘If he don’t this time, he will the next. He’ll get whatever he’s set his mind on. And arter the ship he’ll be hankering for a sheep run, so that from hoof to loom ain’t nobody making a penny ‘cept him.’
‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’
‘Did I say owt was wrong? You take me up so sharp. I shall go to my bed.’
He went off, peevishly, and I shut my eyes and dropped into a little cat-nap, the way old folks do. It was the door opening and a rush of cold air coming in that woke me. Waking that way neither your eyes nor your wits work well for a minute, and when I looked towards the door and saw a bent over woman’s figure with a bit of grey woollen over the head and upper part of it, I saw Mary, and I spoke to her, pretty gruff,
‘Don’t stand there, letting in the cold.’ I was glad to see that though she’d run off just as she was, she’d had the sense to borrow a bit of wrapping to come home with.
Then, before my ey
es, the hunched over figure straightened out and it wasn’t Mary, it was Magda. It was Martin’s wife, come back. She straightened herself and at the same moment reached out her arm and pulled the door shut. The bit of grey stuff fell back off her head and showed the short stiff spikes of her clipped hair, and the thin face, always hollowed, now like a skull covered with skin, and the queer-shaped eyes sunk back in dark circles.
She stood there, leaning back against the door-post, just as she had leaned that sunny morning and laughed and slapped her flat belly and said that to eat more than once a day was to get into a bad habit. She looked, now, as though she hadn’t eaten once a week.
I had no scrap of pity. Only anger that she should have gone off on a spring morning and dared to come back, with the belly-cramp of hunger on her, as soon as winter set in. I was so glad that he wasn’t there, with that soft heart of his, under the hard shell, and I was thinking of things to say, harsh enough, scornful enough to drive her away, when she said,
‘Martin. He is not here?’
That brought the words into my mouth.
‘No, he isn’t. But if he was he’d say what I do. Be off. You went away of your own accord and hurt him sore. He’s done with you. You aren’t wanted here. Be off. Back where you came from.’
She laughed; at least her lips curled back from the teeth that now seemed to be too many in her mouth, and a sound, like laughter, but with pain in it, came out of her.
‘You mistake. I am not come to beg. I come to bring something.’
‘Your love and loyalty in return for a full belly! He saved you from drowning and what thanks did he get? He’s away. He’ll be away for a week. Nobody here cares about you. Go on, get out.’
It was November and in November nobody has food to give away. I knew the signs. In twenty-four hours, without food and shelter she would be dead. It was cold outside and she was starving. I wondered whether, breathless and clumsy as I was I had the strength to throw her out. As I was wondering she bent over again, put her hand on her knees and braced herself, with a shudder, and the grey woollen, very slowly, slid down, down to the floor.
Then I saw; then I knew.
There is something almost uncanny about having plied a craft for many years; there can come a time when the plying of that craft can become all that matters. You are nothing, you cease to be, except as the tool with which the job is done. You don’t even think. I didn’t think then – this is Martin’s child, that he wanted and I wanted. I didn’t think – this is the woman whose touch, for me, would have made a bit of bread uneatable.
There was no thinking. There was a woman, in labour, pretty far gone in labour, two good strong pains in four minutes, and there was Agnes, the midwife who could ply her craft drunk or sober.
I wasn’t even the swollen legged old shuffler that lately I had been. I was across the kitchen and I had her by the arm and on to my own bed in the blink of an eye.
‘When did you start?’ I asked, as I’d asked a hundred times before.
‘This morning. Early. In Sudbury. I think this baby will be born in a ditch. Like me.’
‘Twenty miles. You walked twenty miles? Like this.’
‘Is good to walk, I understand. Good eh? How bad then is bad? Aagh.’
I remembered, without the least distaste, that lean sinewy body. And I said, with far more truth than I had ever said the words before,
‘You’ll have no bother.’ Then I remembered that hollow, starving look. I turned aside and pulled the pot of broth into the heat. It was part of the liquid in which the trotters and cheek bones for the brawn had boiled, good and strengthening. It was warm already and it began to bubble. I poured some into a cup and gave it to her.
As she sipped, I, Agnes the midwife, did what she always did, talked, tried to keep their minds off, tried to make out that this that was happening wasn’t the end of the world.
‘What happened to your hair?’
‘Is sold. My tambourine also. Like this I cannot dance.’
‘Another pain gripped her and the cup wobbled in her hand. I steadied it.
‘Why did you leave it so late?’
‘To come? Oh, many reasons. Is all a disaster. I go from here to find the wise woman. She is in York, and when I am come to York she is in Chester. And so it goes on. Then too late, or she is not wise enough.’
I swear that it was Agnes the midwife, not Agnes, Martin’s friend, who asked the next question.
‘You tried to get rid of the baby?’ It mattered, it meant upside down, feet first, sideways on.
‘But of course. To a dancer a baby is ruin. Always I am hearing from my mother how good she is, until I come to ruin her. Aagh!’
She writhed and bit her lip. I took the cup from her; turned away, laid out my scissors and twine. You never made any show of them, but they had to be handy.
‘So you’ve come from Chester?’
‘From Chester. And not easy. My hair is sold, and my tambourine. I am to beg and to beg is slow. Too many people will say, “You wish to eat you shall work.” So here I wash clothes and here I beat flax and here I cut nettles and so goes the time. But I am coming. Then, one day I steal. Bread. And I am not quick.’ Something that started out to be a smile turned into a grimace. She waited, drew breath, and went on. ‘Are most kind, these people. For stealing bread is whipping or to stand in the pillory, but these are not suited to my condition. So I am locked in prison forty days. But still they are kind and they say poor baby to be born in such place and I am let to go.’ She turned her head from side to side on my pillow and I saw the sweat spring out on lip and brow. Not long now. I took a cloth and wiped her face, as gently as I ever wiped any woman’s. At the next twinge she muttered some words in a language I did not know.
‘We’re nearly there,’ I said, ‘it’ll all be over in a minute or two.’
At that moment Mary came in and stood goggling. I told her to get out fresh candles, ‘and the pepperpot’ I added in a lower voice. I didn’t expect any trouble, but it was as well to be prepared. I then sent her to her bed. I’d always hated to be watched at work.
A little time – more than I’d thought – went by Magda was plucky; she bit her lip; she muttered the strange words; she moaned. Once she screamed.
‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘don’t bottle it up. Scream all you want to.’
I had forgotten Pert Tom, who, the next minute, opened his door a cautious crack and asked,
‘What’s going on?’ He held his door ready to slam it to at once. (In the morning he said he thought maybe thieves had broken in and were clouting me; and I said, ‘If so you were ready with another brave rescue, weren’t you?’)
‘Nothing for you to worry with,’ I told him. ‘Go back in and shut the door.’
The next pang was weaker, and the next weaker still. She was young and sinewy, but she hadn’t been looked after well and had come to the job exhausted and weak with hunger. Dallying at this point could be fatal. So I took the pepperpot, shook some into my palm and held it under her nose. She gave a mighty sneeze and it was done.
The moment I had Martin’s son by the heels, Agnes the midwife, spry, knowledgeable, intent only on the job, cleared off and left me.
First I had a good look at the baby. If Magda’s own brew or the wise woman’s muck had marked or marred him, I knew what to do; I wasn’t having Martin saddled with something crippled or wrong in the head. So far as I could see, though, he was perfect, thin but healthy and his first cry was real lusty. Then I paid particular attention to his face. There is a moment – and any midwife will bear me out on this – just one moment, when all the newly born bear the stamp of the man who made them. They may lose it and never have it again, but they all, boy and girl alike, come into the world looking like their father will look when he is an old man. Magda’s baby was Martin at sixty, bald and wrinkled. Happiness flowed into my heart. Here it was, the boy he wanted, the boy I had wanted for him.
I knew that what I should do was to call M
ary down, hand the child to her and busy myself with the mother. I thought about it, knowing exactly what Agnes the midwife would do. I knew I couldn’t do it. That old, shuddering loathing was back on me now: her precious load delivered, she had become once more the woman from whose lightest touch I had shrunk. But that was not all. I had no need to touch her. I could have called Mary and told her what to do.
The truth was, I wanted her to die. I thought how happy we could be now. What life was left to me I could devote to bringing up the baby. But not if she stayed. And she would. She spoke of a baby being ruin to a dancer. Besides, any woman, however wild, is settled by motherhood. Martin would be so pleased with the child that there’d be no question of forgiving her wandering off, it would just be forgotten; she’d be reinstated, more than ever mistress of the house, and I should be back with Peg-Leg.
Oh, I know that women do die in childbed, every day, every night, but not without a fight, not until every measure has been tried. Agnes the midwife had had many a hand to hand fight with death, and knew all the tricks.
I, I did nothing. I sat down with the child on my lap and saw to him, while behind me on the bed the Romany blood, the witch’s blood, the woman’s life blood soaked away.
Interval
Of Martin’s ventures the Baildon people had said, ‘Ah, the bigger you blow a bladder, the louder the bang’, and‘The higher a kite flies the farther it has to come down’. As year followed year they waited for him to overreach himself, for the bladder to burst, the kite to fall. Nobody but Martin himself knew how often their ghoulish hopes had come near to being fulfilled. And he himself could not have said what it was that drove him, time and again, to take another risk, exchanging a certain, comfortable security for a touch-and-go chance. He just knew he must go on and on.
Most of his ventures had an element of makeshift about them.
He went into the yard one morning, beckoned to Peg-Leg who was in the stables and asked brusquely,