by Norah Lofts
Joanna made five pancakes.
Henry said, ‘I’ll take theirs across.’
‘No. You sit down and eat yours, Henry. This is one of my jobs.’
One of those which Griselda had assigned, rather more than a month ago when the two men had arrived, ragged, coughing, dying. Griselda had refused to have them in the house and it was Joanna who had remembered the empty rooms on the other side of the yard, rooms which had for her as poignant memories as they held for Henry, but different.
Griselda had accepted the need to provide food for the ailing men; but she had done it grudgingly and ordered Joanna to do the carrying. The other side of the house had a kitchen of its own; its kitchen door faced, almost exactly, that of the main house. But for good reasons of her own—which nobody knew about—Joanna’s mother, Tana, who had built the new wing, had built it with a kitchen accessible to the yard but not to the two rooms which made up the dwelling place. Even when that kitchen had been in use anything cooked in it must have been carried out, round the end of the building and in by the door on the garden side.
Accepting the dinner—surely the best anybody could have produced in such short time with so little—John said, ‘Is this all?’
Joanna said, ‘For now. There will be pigeon pie for supper, I promise you.’ The words sounded placating but the glance she gave him was not. Her feelings towards him and towards Young Shep were not much unlike Griselda’s, though stemming from a different cause. The two men, too ill to be useful, not ill enough to die, were part of Henry’s burden and, loving Henry as she did, she could only resent them and regret that she had suggested housing them here, in comfort, instead of letting them go, as Griselda had shouted, to sleep in the barn. She’d acted on impulse, wishing to help Henry when Griselda turned so awkward.
‘You know, Joanna, properly dressed, you’d be very pretty.’ John was beginning to exercise his charm. Too late. Hitherto he had taken little notice of her, answered her questions brusquely and often seemed ungrateful for what she brought.
Now she said, ‘I know,’ and hurried back to her pancake.
In the kitchen Jem Watson was displeased with his meal—a bloody pancake, like the beginning of Lent!—and displeased, also, by Henry’s uncommunicativeness. He’d have liked to know what ailed a woman who was unable to make a dinner but, to judge by the noise, was capable of romping about in the hall. It could be mere bad temper. Jem knew that the Missus was a nagger and a scold but never before had she failed to provide and he would have liked to know why.
Spearing up the last crumb of pancake on his knife, chewing thoughtfully and then speaking before he had emptied his mouth, Jem said, ‘Would it suit better if I brought my bit of docky with me in future?’
‘Your what?’ That was infuriating, too. Master Tallboys wasn’t Suffolk-born but he’d lived here long enough to know the language.
‘My docky, my dinner, my nosebag. I mean, if it suited better, my owd mother could put me up a bit of dinner in a poke. Then I’d hev to ask another fivepence a week.’
Henry gave a sour smile. ‘I’m glad you think that your usual dinner here is worth that much!’ It was a third of Jem’s weekly wage.
One of the reasons why a good dinner was so often part of the bargain between master and man was that in most places cash money was in short supply; even now the system of barter ruled many transactions. Between Henry and the miller who turned his wheat into flour or the smith who shod his horse, no coin ever changed hands. The miller paid himself by withholding so much flour, the smith would accept a dozen eggs, a pint of butter, a goose ready for the oven.
Thinking of this, Henry Tallboys cast a backward look upon two things which, because they had involved him in cash transactions, had kept him poor. His brother John, seven years ago, had insisted upon taking his share of Sir Godfrey’s estate out in cash; and to buy-in John’s share of the flock, Henry had been forced to borrow and pay interest. And then there had been the question of his other, much younger brother, Robert, who had simply disappeared. Joanna insisted that he was dead but of that there was no proof. Until there was Henry would go on taking Robert’s share of the dwindling profits from the flock into the office of the lawyer, Master Turnbull of Baildon. Henry was well versed in the lesson that people could disappear and then, after years, turn up. Hadn’t his own father, Sir Godfrey, vanished into Spain, been deemed dead and then turned up after eight years of slavery with the Moors? Five years ago his brother Robert had disappeared, a child, six years old; possibly stolen; he’d been a pretty boy… Roaming bands of people, half entertainers, half beggars, did recruit attractive children—or steal them… Anyway, if Robert ever came home, he would find his bit of patrimony safe and ready; in cash, safely invested by Master Turnbull.
It took Henry only a second to recall these things which, with bad weather and bad luck, had contributed to his present state. He also had time to think that so far, although he had taken heavy knocks, he’d never yet been floored. So he said, ‘Please yourself, Jem. But twopence is the limit. And mind this—if you can find another job, better paid, better fed, within walking distance, go to it. Never mind about our Michaelmas bargain.’
Jem said, ‘I was only thinking, Master Tallboys…’
Thinking—Jesus and Holy Mary, where would I find a job between Michaelmas and Candlemas Day? Within walking distance, at fifteen pence a week and a good dinner?
‘I was only thinking,’ he said again. And an explanation occurred to him. The Missus had just started up another baby!
Women often went funny at such times, took against their husbands and against rounded, bulging things, like cooking pots. Not the first time so much, the first time they were in pod they were glad… If they got a boy and managed to rear him out of the cradle, they reckoned their job was done. Men often felt the same.
Down in the village Jem knew of a couple—and it was odd, they’d both worked up here at Knight’s Acre at one time. Bert Edgar, when he inherited Edgarsacre, had married a woman called Jill. He’d wanted one son and got him; and in every following year, every time Jill came into pod again he’d given her such a thrashing!
Had such a thing happened here? Was Mistress Tallboys away there in the hall, hiding a bruised face?
‘Henry, you don’t pluck pigeons,’ Joanna said in reply to his offer to help. ‘Is that water hot yet? Good, then I will show you.’ She plunged in the little bodies, heads and feet chopped off, disembowelled but still wearing their feathers. Count a hundred and there they were, dredged out, feathers stuck together, ready with the skin that held them to come off like the shell of a hard-boiled egg.
‘That’s a trick I didn’t know,’ Henry said. ‘Where’d you learn it?’
‘When I was young,’ she said, speaking as though youth were a far distant thing, ‘I used to watch Griselda. There, now I have only the pastry and the bread to make. Thank you for firing the oven for me.’
‘Call me when you want it opened. I shall be nearby, shovelling muck.’
The oven had an iron door, placed at a height in the wall suitable for a grown woman; a little too high for Joanna, though she was tall for her age; and far too heavy, hardy as she had proved herself to be at field work ever since her banishment from the kitchen. Anxious to prove herself, anxious indeed to excel, she had often succeeded in seeming to be what she looked like—a small but willing and capable plough boy. Henry had always been aware that she was in the wrong place, leading a highly unsuitable life; wished he could do something about it. Had finally been able to. And to what end? He still shuddered away from the memory of that unbelievable, fantastic scene in the wood after he’d told her what plans he had made for her; but he did remember the extreme lightness, the seeming frailty of the body he’d dragged from the pool.
‘Thank you, Henry. I’ll call if I need you.’
She was, she thought, behaving very well; giving no sign of the jubilation which shot through her—stimulating as wine—as she thought; he never offered t
o do that for Griselda!
Thumping the dough and setting it on the hearth to rise, turning her attention to the pastry, Joanna thought about Griselda and hoped that this latest queer mood would last for ever. She knew in her bones—had known it for a long time—that she fitted Henry far better than Griselda did. They could share jokes; not only outright jokes but the unspoken things, the lift of a shoulder, the twitch of one corner of the mouth which said: Funny! He’d always stood up for her, even when, in desperation, she’d stolen Godfrey. She’d done him no harm, he was warm and snug and safe and the bargain could be struck in a minute—Promise to bring Robert home from Moyidan, where he is so unhappy, and you can have your baby back. It hadn’t worked. She’d had to try other, even more desperate means—and Robert had died because of what she had done. But that was all long ago and far away. Her attachment to Robert, motherly and protective, had transferred itself to Henry and was altogether different.
Now, if only Griselda could remain moonstruck, she could prove to Henry that she was as useful inside the house as without. That done, she could surely coax him into using some of her money to buy new animals, hire more help. Beyond that her view of the future was hazy but it included fine clothes and good horses and living in the hall which she could just remember, so splendid with candles when Godfrey was christened.
Joanna did not visualise marriage; her emotional experience was already wider than that of most adult women but her knowledge of the world was very limited; and half her blood was Tana’s, wild and free, not concerned with monogamy. Joanna was unaware of this except in instinct, in her bone marrow. What she did know was that it would be to her advantage to manage the oven without calling Henry from his work.
The faggot which he had placed in it and fired had burnt out now. Standing on a stool she grappled with the heavy door, felt the full blast of the heat which the bricks had absorbed and were about to give off; raked the ashes to one side, pushed the bread to the back of the hot cavity and placed the pie in the front. Slamming the heavy door, she thought of the words with which she would produce it—Henry, not the four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie, but the best I could do. He’d understand and smile, at least.
Griselda had shot her bolt, made her stand. And so far nobody had taken any notice. What they’d done about dinner she didn’t know. When Godfrey tired of the hunting game and turned querulous she had said, ‘All right then, we’ll go for a walk.’
‘Not to church, if you please.’
Quite suddenly he’d begun to grow away from her, could speak properly, watch, ask questions; soon he would be hers no longer; and he was the only person, the only thing she had ever fully possessed in all her life—except Tom Robinson’s devotion, the value of which she had realised too late. ‘No. We’ll walk in the wood.’
‘And gather sticks?’
‘Yes, darling. And nuts if there are any left.’ She sounded like herself again and her son reflected, with childish complacency, that she was never angry with him for long. He did not notice that she was unusually quiet or that she gathered sticks and hunted for nuts with less energy than usual.
He was never allowed to venture into the wood by himself, so he had developed no sense of direction and was displeased to find that as they emerged from the trees they were near the church and the priest’s house.
‘I said not church. Did you forget?’ He spoke with the arrogance of a pampered child.
‘Not to go in. Just to go past,’ Griselda said.
That was all right then. The little boy did not know that he led an unusually boring life every day but he did know that he hated those long sessions alone in the church with his mother who knelt down, covered her face with her hands and seemed to go away. When he had studied the pictures on the walls, and they were all too familiar by now, there was nothing to do; he mustn’t speak and if he moved must go on tip-toe. By contrast he liked church on Sunday morning, with more people there, when Father Benedict did mysterious things at the altar and you knelt or stood and were allowed to say things at times, even if you hadn’t yet fully mastered the words.
He hoped that Mistress Captoft would come out of the house by the church and perhaps invite them in and give him a honey cake. Quite apart from her offerings, he liked her; she had a smiling face—for him, at least—her clothes were pretty and she smelt sweet.
Mistress Captoft spent a good deal of her spare time looking out of the window; not that there was anything to see, except the sheep-fold across the track and, beyond it, just a glimpse of the roofs of the highest standing village houses; but looking out of the window was a habit she had formed when she lived at Dunwich, a busy, bustling place.
Now she looked out and saw Mistress Tallboys standing stock still and staring into the graveyard, as she often did. Rather a puzzling habit, for only the dead of Intake lay under the mounds there and Mistress Tallboys was not a native of the village. The only grave in which she might be presumed to take an interest was inside the church, where Lady Sybilla slept under a rather short slab of black marble. Lady Sybilla had employed the girl as a nursemaid. Later, after his mother’s death, Master Tallboys had married her, so there was a relationship, although a posthumous one. (All this, and some other things, Mistress Captoft had learned, not from village gossip—that she sedulously avoided—but from the old woman who had kept house for the former priest and who now shuffled up to do the roughest work.)
Mistress Captoft took a honey cake, lifted her cloak from the peg inside the door and went out. She wouldn’t ask them in this afternoon for Father Benedict was in the parlour, busy with his studies, and the other little room, having no hearth, was cold.
‘Good day, Mistress Tallboys,’ she said brightly. ‘And how is my god-son today?’
It was true that she had sponsored the little boy at the font and as she placed the honey cake into the eager hand she had a piercing memory of that occasion, of all that it had seemed to promise and the nothingness that had resulted. Master Tallboys’ brother, Sir Richard, had been there, one of the child’s godfathers; a Cambridge man, himself ordained and a great friend of the Bishop of Bywater. Hearing him and Benedict exchanging Latin quips across the well-lighted, well-spread table, Mistress Captoft had cherished high hopes that Sir Richard would report to the Bishop that a man so learned was wasted on a place like Intake and should be offered a post. Sir Richard was then in charge of the real Tallboys estate at Moyidan, acting as guardian to its heir; but something—nobody knew what—had happened. Sir Richard had vanished from the scene and the manor and the boy had been taken over by the Church.
All this could be remembered in the time that it took for Mistress Tallboys to come out of what seemed almost a half-trance and mumble a greeting. It struck Mistress Captoft that the woman was not quite like herself; a heavy scowl knotted her eyebrows together and her mouth was like a trap.
‘Growing like a willow,’ Mistress Captoft said, attempting the right note, ‘and his hair even prettier.’ This was the kind of thing Godfrey liked to hear and he gave a puppy-like wriggle. It was also the kind of thing mothers like to hear; but this afternoon Mistress Tallboys made no response. Then Mistress Captoft remembered the situation at Knight’s Acre; two men, one Master Tallboys’ young brother and his friend, come home to die of the lung-rot. No wonder the woman looked distraught.
In a less hearty voice Mistress Captoft asked, ‘And how are the invalids?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ Griselda said, roughly, coarsely. Again unlike herself, for though, railing against Joanna, against Henry, against things in general she had, both in voice and manner, reverted to her origins she had so far held with outsiders, such as Mistress Captoft, to the gentle speech and the courteous manner which she had so resolutely copied from Lady Sybilla herself.
In his clear treble, Godfrey said, ‘We don’t go near them. They live on the other side of the house.’
Mistress Captoft knew that, for Jem Watson had carried the news to the village an
d, by way of the old woman who came to scrub and wash, it had seeped through. Mistress Captoft had behaved as a neighbour should; she made good brews—some deliberately designed to be unpalatable—one should not encourage malingerers. But the one she had made and carried to Knight’s Acre had been one of her best; the root of a plant brought from abroad—glycyrrhiza, commonly known as liquorice—she had brought several plants of it when she was making her garden; it had flourished fairly well; then there was horehound and honey, an excellent concoction. Master Tallboys, happening to be near the door, had opened it, received her offering, and thanked her most courteously—but had not invited her in to view the sufferers; nor had he told her anything that she did not already know. A very aloof man.
‘My Uncle John is better,’ the child gossip said. ‘He can walk about now. But they still have the best of everything, don’t they, Mumma?’
He had never gone without, Griselda had seen to that, but what delicacies the impoverished household could afford were no longer strictly reserved for him. That was one of the things Griselda greatly resented. The last of a mounting list of grievances.
‘You talk too much,’ Griselda said in a voice harsher than Mistress Captoft had ever heard her use to the child before. In fact there was about her whole manner this afternoon something different, coarser. Mistress Captoft was acutely class conscious and, knowing that Mistress Tallboys was of lowly birth, had often wondered that her speech and manner should be so very ladylike. She now thought with a touch of malice—truth will out! Masks fall in times of strain. Then her better nature came uppermost. She was even willing to forget Master Tallboys’ civil but chilly reception of her cough cure.
‘You must have your hands full,’ she said sympathetically. ‘If there is anything I can do… I have experience; my husband ailed for several years.’