He was always calmer after that. He had managed, just once, to make himself understood, and Betony, becoming attuned, was able to teach him to speak more clearly.
Tom stood at the bend in Stoney Lane, looking at the small neat redbrick cottage. The door was open, held back by an iron dog, and a few bits of matting lay out on the path. Blue smoke rose from the chimney.
A cloud of dust appeared at the doorway, followed by a man with a long-handled broom. He looked a lot older than Tom had expected and his face was half covered by a crinkly grey beard. He swept the dust out to the garden and stood leaning on his broom, staring at Tom who stood, hands in pockets, outside the gate.
‘I seen you before. What’re you up to, hanging about round my cottage?’
‘I was looking for Linn,’ Tom said. ‘I wondered if she was home yet.’
‘If Linn was home,’ Jack Mercybright said, ‘I wouldn’t be doing my own sweeping.’
He came out onto the path and picked up the mats. Tom saw that one leg was lame at the knee.
‘How come you know my daughter?’
‘I was in France. In the hospital at Rouen. I live in Huntlip and Linn said to call and say how-do.’
‘Then why hang about instead of coming straight to the door? Did you think I’d eat you?’
‘No,’ Tom said, ‘I didn’t think that.’
‘Well, if you’ve come to tell me how she is, you ent making a lot of headway.’
‘She’s all right. She said to tell you not to worry.’
‘No message besides?’
‘I don’t remember nothing else.’
‘Well, it’s soon delivered, I’ll say that!’
Mercybright was turning indoors. He seemed about to shut Tom out. But he paused briefly and spoke again.
‘I had a letter from her this morning. Seems she’ll likely be home tomorrow. Who shall I say was asking for her?’
‘Tom Maddox.’
‘Well, you call again,’ Mercybright said. ‘In a day or two, when she’s got settled. I’ll tell her you’re coming.’ He went inside and closed the door.
Three days later, when Tom was again loitering in the lane, Linn saw him from the cottage window and ran out to meet him. She wore a dress of dark green, with a collar standing up at the neck, and above it her hair was bright red-gold, neatly twisted into a coil, but with finespun strands curling down over her nape. Her dark eyes were shining. She laughed at him in the way he remembered.
‘Why don’t you come to the door and knock? You surely don’t think you aren’t welcome?’
She took him by the arm and led him into the cottage kitchen. Her father sat beside the hearth, smoking an old-fashioned clay pipe, the bowl of which was shaped like an acorn. He motioned Tom towards the settle, and Linn sat there, too, perched sideways, watching Tom’s face.
‘How’re your eyes since you’ve been home?’
‘Pretty good, considering.’
‘Not giving you any pain?’
‘I wouldn’t say pain. Not exactly. My head beats a bit now and then, but nothing special.’
‘And your foot?’ she asked. ‘How’s that?’
‘Pretty good, considering.’
‘Seems to me,’ her father said, ‘you must’ve been through the mill, young fella.’
‘I came out alive, though, that’s something.’
‘Only just, by the look of you.’
‘Take no notice of Dad,’ Linn said. ‘I never do. It’s bad for him.’
‘Ent there some beer we can give this boy?’
‘How should I know?’ she asked, laughing. ‘I’ve only been home five minutes.’
But she went out to the back kitchen and returned with two mugs full of frothing beer.
‘That’s what I like!’ her father said. ‘Being waited on and mollied after. I missed that a lot while you was away, girl, and I reckon I bore it pretty well.’
He took a deep drink and wiped the froth from moustache and beard. He looked at Tom with keen eyes.
‘That’ll come hard on me,’ he said, ‘when my daughter leaves me to get married.’
When Tom had gone, and Linn was left alone with her father, she sat with her hands folded in her lap, laughing at him. He looked back at her, straight-faced.
‘I been making enquiries about Tom Maddox.’
‘There, now!’ she said. ‘Fancy that!’
‘Seems his parents warnt never married.’
‘You surely don’t hold that against him?’
‘No. Surely not. But it’s always better to know these things. And there was worser stories than that.’
‘What stories?’
‘His father was a drunkard and killed his mother in a fit of temper. Then he hanged hisself in a tree. Your Tom was a babe about twelve months old.’
‘Poor boy,’ Linn said.
‘There was good things told me as well as bad. They say the lad’s a clever craftsman. Does carving and such, at Tewke and Izzard’s, as well as first-rate carpentry.’ Jack leant forward to light a paper spill at the fire. ‘So it’s just as well his sight warnt ruined by that shell.’
‘D’you like him, Dad?’
‘It’s early days to answer that. He ent got a lot to say for hisself, has he?’
‘Not as much as some I could mention.’
‘You ent growed less cheeky, since being out in foreign parts.’
‘Puff, puff, puff,’ she said, watching him as he lit his pipe. ‘Old tobacco-face! Always smoking!’
‘The real question is, whether you like him.’
‘I think I do.’
‘But you ent sure?’
‘He’s a strange boy. He reminds me, somehow, of a wild animal. Oh, I don’t mean wild in a fierce way, but awkward and shy, like a deer in the forest.’
‘I bet they wasn’t all shy, them soldiers you nursed over there.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘far from it.’
‘It makes me boil!’ Jack exclaimed, striking his chair with the palm of his hand. ‘It makes me boil that a young girl like you should’ve had to nurse a lot of rough soldiers the way you been doing these past two years. I’m a man and I know what they’re like. They don’t deserve to be mollied for by nice young girls of your sort.’
‘Father, be quiet, you don’t know what you’re saying!’ she said, and her eyes were suddenly full of tears. ‘You’ve no idea what these men had to go through.’
‘I was a soldier once, remember, for a short while back in the eighties ‒’
‘You still don’t know what these men went through in this war. Nobody knows, except those who’ve seen for themselves, and it’s wrong to say they’re undeserving. It’s wrong, very wrong, and I won’t have it! You know nothing at all about the matter.’
‘H’mm. It’s a fine thing, I must say, when a man is told he knows nothing by his chit of a daughter who knows it all!’
‘I saw so much courage … so much unselfishness … and so much love, among these men. The work I did was nothing at all, and I won’t have you grudge it to them, Father.’
She leant across and touched his knee. She had thrown off her sadness and was laughing again, teasing him, the tears still glistening on her cheeks.
‘Own up,’ she said. ‘You were only cross ’cos I went and left you to fend for yourself. Now isn’t that so?’
‘Things ent much improved now you’re home, neither. ‒ My mug’s been empty this past half hour.’
Often when Tom was at Lilac Cottage, he would fall into a kind of dream, watching Linn as she ironed clothes at the kitchen table or sat by the fire with her knitting or mending. Sometimes his gaze was so intense that she felt herself growing uncomfortable.
‘How you do stare!’ she said to him once. ‘You really oughtn’t to stare at people so hard, Tom, especially saying nothing for hours on end.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, and looked away, frowning at the fire in the stove.
But at sight of the colour rising in his face, and the
fraught expression in his eyes, Linn regretted her little outburst, humbling him in front of her father, and wanted to put the matter right.
‘You can stare if you want to. You can stare at me as much as you like! I know what it is. It’s my red hair. It’s enough to make anyone stare, I’m sure.’
Tom smiled. His glance rested briefly on her face, then flickered away again. He tried to think of something to say.
‘Won’t be long now. Christmas, I mean. I reckon it’s just about eighteen days.’
‘You’ll have to do better’n that,’ Jack said. ‘We thrashed that one out an hour ago. Not to mention the chances of snow.’
‘Father, please,’ Linn said.
‘I know I don’t talk much,’ Tom said. ‘The chaps used to say so in the Army. Betony always says so too.’
‘I met Betony at Chepsworth Park. I told her I knew you and she said, “So that’s where Tom’s been spending all his evenings lately.” ’
‘Ah. Well. Now she knows.’
‘Is it such a secret, Tom, that you come out here to see us?’
‘Not a secret exactly. I wouldn’t say that.’
‘You haven’t told anybody?’
‘No. Maybe not.’
‘Then it must be a secret, mustn’t it, unless Betony’s told other people?’
‘She wouldn’t do that,’ Tom said.
‘That’s all right, then. ‒ The secret is kept.’
‘I reckon you’re teasing me again.’
‘Good gracious!’ she said. ‘As though I would!’
Later that evening, when Tom had gone, Jack spoke to Linn in a serious manner.
‘What’s your feeling for that boy?’
‘I don’t rightly know. It’s hard to say. I haven’t known him very long … yet I feel I’ve known him all my life.’
‘Do you care for him?’ Jack asked.
‘Oh, dear! What a catechism! Must I make up my mind tonight?’
She was looking at him with her head on one side, laughing into his bearded face, making fun of his fierce eyebrows. But Jack was not to be deflected.
‘It’s as well for you to know your mind, ’cos he cares for you a mighty lot, just as sure as God’s in Gloucester.’
‘Yes,’ she said, becoming serious. ‘Perhaps he does.’
‘You must mind and not lead him on for nothing.’
‘D’you think I’d do that?’
‘No, I don’t, but I reckon you ought to consider the matter and sort out your feelings as they are so far.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘perhaps I should.’
Every evening now, immediately after supper at Cobbs, Tom made himself tidy and left the house. And today, Saturday, he hurried off after midday lunch.
‘Where’s he get to?’ Jesse asked. ‘Is he courting, Dicky, do you suppose?’
‘I dunno, Dad. He don’t say nothing to me about it.’
‘It’s none of our business, anyway,’ Betony said.
‘Ent it?’ said Dicky, and rose, grinning, from the table, a piece of bread pudding in his hand. ‘Supposing I think it is?’ he said. ‘Supposing I go and try to find out?’
He left the house and followed Tom to Millery Bridge, taking care to keep out of sight. Just past the Malthouse, Tom turned off along the road to Blagg, and when Dicky got to the corner, he had already reached Shepherd’s Cross. There, as he passed the old ruined cowsheds, a girl stepped out and ran to meet him, and Dicky, watching from the Malthouse doorway, saw that it was Tilly Preston.
He returned home in triumph and told his father what he had seen.
‘Oh, well,’ Jesse said, ‘she was always sweet on him, warnt she, that girl?’
But Betony was extremely puzzled.
‘Are you sure it was Tilly Preston?’
‘Laws!’ Dicky said. ‘I’ve seen her often enough, surely?’
Tilly had waited for Tom at the old cowsheds. She was shrammed with cold and shivering. Her face was pinched, red, miserable.
‘Are you avoiding me, Tom Maddox?’
‘No, not exactly,’ Tom said.
‘I think you are!’ she said, hugging herself and rubbing the upper parts of her arms. ‘Oh, yes! I’m certain of it!’
‘You’ll catch your death of cold, Tilly, hanging about in this weather without a proper coat on.’
‘Whose fault is it I’m hanging about? You’ve got no right, avoiding me, not after all that’s happened between us, and I shouldn’t have to come looking for you. You should ought to be calling on me.’
‘It was all a mistake,’ Tom said. ‘It shouldn’t never’ve happened by rights.’
‘A mistake? Really? Well, that’s nice, I must say! You’ve made my day for me now, ent you, telling me a thing like that?’
‘It was a mistake, though, all the same.’
‘It’s a bit late for saying that, and it don’t get us no further forward, does it?’
‘No. Maybe not. But I dunno what else to say.’
‘You was glad enough the night it happened. You was quite content and don’t you deny it, taking advantage like you did. But now you’ve got other fish to fry, ent you, and don’t care tuppence what happens to me?’
Tilly was crying, her eyes almost closed, the tears squeezing out between reddened lids. She was shivering violently, cold to the bone, and she cried with little gasping noises, holding both hands against her mouth.
‘You ought to get home,’ Tom said, ‘or you’ll get a chill as sure as fate.’
He put out a hand to touch her gently and she took it eagerly in her own, holding it close against her chest.
‘Why not come home with me and see my dad? Why not tell him we’re going to be married? I’m sure he’d be pleased. ‒ He’s quite changed his mind towards you ever since you went as a soldier.’
‘No,’ Tom said, and drew back his hand.
‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘Why shouldn’t we get married?’
‘It wouldn’t be right for us, that’s why.’
‘Supposing we had to?’ Tilly said. ‘Supposing I was having a baby?’
Tom was silent. He looked at her for a long time.
‘You ent, though, are you? No. Surely not.’
‘I don’t know. It’s too soon to say. But I think about it all the time and it makes me so scared I could nearly throw myself into the Derrent.’
‘You can’t be,’ Tom said. ‘No. Surely not.’
‘Why can’t I, for goodness’ sake? These things do happen, as well you should know, seeing it’s how you come to be born your own self.’
‘I know it happens, but is it happening to you, that’s the point?’
‘I don’t know. We’ll just have to hope for the best, shan’t we? It certainly won’t work out that way if I can help it.’
‘Don’t you go doing nothing foolish!’
‘It’s too late saying that.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘No. I don’t. What do you mean?’
‘Well, if it should happen there is a baby, you won’t do nothing to harm it, will you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I won’t do that, I promise, honest.’ And she looked at him from under her lashes. ‘You do care what happens to me, then, after all? I knew you did, deep down, underneath. I knew you couldn’t be horrid to me.’
‘I reckon I’d better see you home.’
‘And speak to my father while you’re there?’
‘No!’ he said. ‘I got nothing to say to him at all.’ And he thrust his fists into his pockets. ‘I’ve got to have time to think things out. I shall need to know about that baby.’
‘Meantime, perhaps, you’ll be making up to that Mercybright girl who lives with her dad in Stoney Lane? Oh, yes, you may well look surprised, but I know what takes you out to Blagg every moment you got to spare!’
‘I’ve got to go,’ Tom said, and walked away, making towards Puppet Hill.
‘You’ll be hearing from me!’ she called shrilly. ‘You can’t just drop
me like an old glove. Not after all that’s happened between us! I won’t take it. I won’t! I won’t!’
One evening, a week or so later, Jack Mercybright was in The Rose and Crown, buying a pint of Chepsworth ale and four new clay pipes.
‘Quiet this evening,’ he said to Tilly, for he was her only customer.
‘Too many folk ill in bed with the ’flu, including my dad and two of my brothers.’
‘You ent sickening for it, I hope?’
‘I hope not indeed. I’ve got troubles enough already.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ Jack said.
‘You might be sorrier,’ Tilly said, leaning her elbows on the counter, ‘if you knew the other party concerned.’
‘What’re you on about, girl?’
‘I happen to know that Tom Maddox is a friend of yours, made welcome in your home.’
‘That’s right He’s a friend of my daughter’s.’
‘You ought to warn her,’ Tilly said, ‘or she might end up the same as me, carrying his baby.’
Jack, smoking, looked into Tilly’s watchful eyes. His own face was blank. She would read nothing there if he could help it.
‘Does Tom know you’re having his baby?’
‘I wasn’t too sure of it last time I saw him, and he ent been near me since I mentioned the matter.’
‘What about your father? Does he know?’
‘Lord, no! My father would kill me. He would, honest. He don’t think a lot of Tom Maddox. I dare not mention it till the wedding day is fixed between us.’
‘You’re very free in airing your troubles, young woman.’
‘I wouldn’t air them to no one else. But you’ve got a daughter to consider. You wouldn’t want no harm to befall her.’
‘It ent likely to,’ Jack said. ‘My daughter is no slut.’
He drank his beer and left without speaking another word.
He went straight home to Lilac Cottage, and there, when he entered the bright, warm, comfortable kitchen, Tom was helping to wind Linn’s wool, holding the skein on outstretched hands while she wound it up in a soft ball.
‘Gracious,’ she said, as Jack stood on the hearth between them, ‘you look like murder, Dad, you do, really.’
The Sorrowing Wind (The Apple Tree Saga Book 3) Page 13