by Norah Lofts
Henry had risen from the divan where he had lost his virginity and begun to plan; immediate marriage, a lifetime of happiness. Tana, for some inexplicable reason of her own, had gone riding on her only half-broken stallion which had thrown her, as everybody had predicted. Henry had found her, dead, just at the yard’s entry.
Think about; ask about sheep!
Willing as he was to be helpful, Young Shep was vague; what he knew about sheep had either been inherited from his shepherd father or acquired at such an early age as to be almost incommunicable. He said: Well, that’d depend on the weather; or: I’d know, just by taking a look.
His cough was not troublesome but he sounded weak and breathless and at one point asked, ‘Could you prop me a bit higher?’
John forestalled Henry’s move, re-arranged the pillows and settled Young Shep on them with hands as gentle as a woman’s. Then he said, softly, secretly, menacingly, ‘Don’t tire him!’ And in a loud, rallying, fate-defying voice, ‘Do the questions matter? In a week or two Nick will be up and about and can show you!’
In a week or two Young Shep would be dead. He knew it; Henry knew it. Only John refused to face the truth. But then, he never had. He’d always been, in Henry’s opinion, idle, frivolous, dodging work when he could and sneaking off to consort with the shepherd boy, slightly his elder, a maker of songs and a player of pipes.
In fact even at this moment when Henry, seemingly so stolid and insensitive, could feel the throb of conflicting emotions in the room, he was also thinking that between them John and Young Shep had been largely to blame for his present poor financial position. If John hadn’t insisted upon taking the value of his share of his father’s inheritance out in cash—money Henry had been obliged to borrow at an exorbitant rate of interest; if he’d settled down and worked, as a younger brother should; if Young Shep had remained in charge of the whole flock…
No good thinking of that, either. What was past was past. Ask about scab!
John fidgeted about, pulled a curtain closer, added a little charcoal to the brazier. Tana had made these apartments as much like one of her father’s pavilions, which had neither been in Moorish Spain nor Christian Spain but in North Africa, as possible; she had called this part of the house her pavilion and had no hearths; just charcoal braziers. Providing the charcoal had been easy for her; she was rich. For Henry it was an extra burden, borne without grudge.
Abruptly, John interrupted: ‘Did you bring the milk, Henry? We’ve had none today.’
‘No. I’m sorry. We’ve had a bit of an upset in the house today. I’ll fetch it.’
He wanted to get away from this place with its bittersweet memories of the past and its present sad little drama; but in the time it took him to get up from the low, soft divan, not designed for sitting upon, and to think of what he had called a bit of an upset—Griselda violent and incoherent, he saw Young Shep’s eyes fixed on him in dumb appeal.
‘There’s more I can tell you, John can fetch the milk.’ Henry thought; what now? He said in his imperturbable way, ‘There’s a candle in the kitchen, John. And the milk is in the dairy. In a brown jug.’
‘You get it, Johnny,’ Young Shep said and his skeletal hand made a gesture, commanding, dismissing. Something flashed through Henry’s mind, a recognition of something out of order. After all, his father, and John’s, had been Sir Godfrey, at one time the premier knight in England. Young Shep’s father had been Old Shep. And when John and Young Shep had failed in their venture, it was to Knight’s Acre that John had come home, dragging Young Shep with him.
Henry had risen to his feet and the door had hardly closed behind John, going obediently to fetch the milk, before Young Shep moved his hand again, this time to grip Henry’s wrist in a weak, yet urgent clasp of thin, burning hot fingers.
‘Master,’ he said, reverting to the old mode of address and the rustic way of speech. ‘You been here… All along. Please, did you ever see or hear tell owt of Beth?’
Beth? Complete blank. The name meant nothing; conjured up no mental… wait a minute…
‘She used to come with the shearers, she was their gang woman,’ Young Shep said, helpfully.
Then Henry remembered—not the berry-brown girl with a mouth as red as a rose-hip but the fierce, bitter, resentful woman who, after some years of absence, had appeared again, a deserted wife, sole support of her child and hating the very name of Tallboys because John Tallboys had lured her husband away.
Was this something to tell a dying man?
Henry thought not. He said, ‘Only indirectly. But she was well.’
‘I did wrong by her. Thass hard to explain. I married her and sort of settled down.’ His fever-bright eyes looked flinchingly towards the door by which John had gone out and at any minute might come back. ‘He never did understand… That a man could be sort of divided, neither one way nor t’other. I used to send her money. Sometimes easy. Sometimes a pinch. There was allust a row. Proper owd mess I made of things, Master. I’d’ve liked her to know I was sorry.’ Henry was aware of something being demanded of him: aware, too, of being at a loss. Ought he to speak with false cheer, pretend as John was pretending? Tell Young Shep that he’d be up and about in no time and able to talk to his wife himself?
‘If I ever see her, as I well may, I’ll tell her. And now… Would you like the priest to come?’
‘Thass a kind thought, Master. I would. But it’d upset him. And he’ve been so good to me.’ His voice trailed away and he loosened his clasp on Henry’s wrist.
Ever since the lung sickness had come upon him he’d thought of it as a judgement on himself: for being neither one thing nor the other. To die young with all those songs unmade, unsung. He’d always been the song maker; a tune on his pipe first, then the words to go with it. John’s quick ear had picked up the tune and the words and the combination of voice, lute and pipe had been just that little bit out of the ordinary that made for popularity. They’d had wonderful times, welcome wherever they went, treated like princes.
Now that the good times had gone and the end near, Young Shep sometimes remembered that shepherds usually lived to be old, saw their children learn their craft, getting a bit stiff in the joints but able to hobble out on the first mild day of sunshine, see the lambs skipping and the primroses in flower… None of that for him. And to be honest he had to admit to himself that during his spell of married life he’d been restless, discontented. It had taken very little persuasion from John to coax him away from Beth. Bad husband and never really wholeheartedly the other thing, either. A lot of pretence. And now he must pretend absolutely, even forego the consolation of the last rites, say each day, as he felt worse, that he felt better.
‘I’m glad we got here. He’ll hev you to turn to,’ he said. Henry thought: and that won’t be much comfort to him! ‘I’ll do my best, Nick,’ he said simply.
Going back towards his own part of the house, Henry looked up at the window of the room into which he had locked Griselda. She might be better tomorrow but somehow he doubted it.
When Griselda woke she was a little confused, not instantly remembering what had happened. She came out of sleep unwillingly, as she always did, facing another hard-working, thankless day. She stirred and felt more than the usual morning heaviness, especially down her left side. Then her mind cleared and it all came back. Not merely the events of yesterday but all that had led up to that complete loss of temper. That was all it was, just being tried beyond endurance.
Nobody knows what I have borne. Everything against me. Still, that was small excuse for throwing good bread on the floor! That was crazy! In future I must be more careful.
She went, a bit lopsidedly, to the door. As she expected, it was locked. So she couldn’t get to the stool room and must use the chamber pot. She found and replaced the shoe she had taken off but her preparations for facing the world, for facing Henry, stopped there and she did not, as on other mornings, run the comb through her hair. Instead she sat and thought how silly she ha
d been to hammer on the floor and scream; and to think of doing it again. Very foolish.
Presently the lock clicked and there was Henry, looking wary, edging in, carrying a tray, clumsily as all men did.
Now, be humble, placating, apologetic; the only way out of this.
She said, and it sounded just as it should; Henry, I am sorry about yesterday. Something came over me and I gave way. It will not happen again, I promise you.
Henry thought: No better! Meaningless babble. The room faced east, the merciless morning light showed him what had happened to her face and her hair was all rough and tumbling down. Her face looked as though invisible fingers were pinching it, pulling the comer of the left eye down, the mouth on that side upwards. No better; rather worse.
He felt sorry for her. He’d never loved her but until she changed, little by little, into a nag and a scold, he had respected her, decent, amiable, industrious woman, just what he and Knight’s Acre needed. But the years, the oddities of behaviour, the spurts of violence had eroded even that amount of feeling for her and now he was able to regard her dispassionately; a pitiable creature, rather like the cripples and beggars with sores seen on Baildon Market Place.
The only difference was that for her, he was responsible… Because she could be violent, he must restrain her; he must feed her, keep her clean, empty the chamber pot.
Griselda said, deliberately controlling her voice: Henry, why do you pretend not to understand? How can it serve you? What more can I say than that I am sorry? What can you gain? What harm did I ever do you that you should treat me so?
For years she had complained of having too much to do; now she had nothing. Absolutely nothing to do and that in itself was torture. And what was happening to her child?
Against her better judgement—and yet what did judgement count for in such a lunatic situation—she screamed.
Downstairs Jem Watson, all agog with curiosity, cocked his ear to the ceiling.
‘Missis took bad?’
‘She has some pain,’ Henry said. ‘Tomorrow when I go to market, I shall consult with the doctor.’
The doctor who had already been once to Knight’s Acre and there given the best advice possible in such hopeless cases, greeted Henry with a certain reserve but warmed to the business when told the real situation.
‘How old is Mistress Tallboys?’
Who knew?
Henry could remember her arriving at Knight’s Acre, a pitiable waif, who’d made a lot of growth, fed properly. She couldn’t have been very old.
‘Twenty-six or thereabouts.’
So it was not the menopause, that most common cause of mental disturbance in women.
‘Is she pregnant?’
‘No.’
‘Master Tallboys, forgive me. How can you be certain? Women are often secretive—in the early stages.’
‘I am certain. I have one son and shortly after his birth my wife said that she wanted no more children. I respected her wishes. We sleep apart.’
Very odd: but then the man himself was an oddity, wearing homespun as though it were cloth of silver.
He considered the possibility of fits, the ancient, known disease of epilepsy. And Henry who had seen, in Baildon, men writhing, frothing at the mouth, said, ‘No. She is at times… violent. That very morning Griselda, despairing, had sprung at Henry and tried by force to get to the door.
This stripping away of all reserve, to a man so naturally self-contained, was a painful business.
The doctor said, with the air of one propounding an original theory, ‘Violence must be controlled.’
He was not eager to go jogging out to Intake again. On the previous occasion it had proved a longer ride than he had envisaged and the days were shorter now, the roads more miry. And seeing the poor woman would tell him little that he had not been told already. So he said a few things about diet for the demented; nothing heating, no spices, no wine, a low diet, in fact, and said he would provide some soothing drops.
He then remembered the two young men with lung-rot and asked about them.
‘My brother is making a good recovery; his friend is dying.’
There was no recovery once the lungs began to fail; there were intermissions. This he did not say. He offered a little general advice. John must avoid physical exertion, exposure to the weather, any kind of coarse food. He handed over the little leather bottle of soothing drops and once again said that his fee was two nobles. Secretly Henry was appalled; so much of his scanty ready money and so little for it; the man had made no journey, spent no time on examination. In this he underestimated the cost of the bottle’s contents; its chief ingredient came, like spices, from far away.
Riding home he suffered a bout of the lowness of spirit which often attacked him on this road. He never fully realised to what extent sheer hard work had protected him from melancholy. With nothing to do—even the horse knew its way and needed no guidance—he was ready prey.
He thought of the failure of all his youthful hopes.
Twenty-seven years old and if anything worse off than ever. The last year had been calamitous.
Griselda to be controlled, cared for. John to be coddled and fed special food.
Joanna to be by some means persuaded to go to Stordford and take her proper place in life.
Into the lane towards Intake; through the water-splash at its lowest point; on to the track which led only to the church, the priest’s house and Knight’s Acre. There it stood, his good solid house, with the rose-trees in front, the garden to one side and the fields on the other. The newly ploughed, newly seeded furrows lay ridged, dark brown on one side and in this dying light a curious, muted purple, almost a shimmer, on the other. At the sight, strength and determination flowed back into him. I have my house and my land: I shall manage…
He made a mistake in the administration of the drowsy syrup. There was only one handsome drinking vessel in the house—the silver christening cup given by Sir Richard, then apparently rich and in control of the family manor at Moyidan, to his god-son, young Godfrey.
With an equal amount of warm water, or milk, and well stirred, the doctor had directed.
‘It’s doctor’s stuff,’ Henry said, holding out the cup. Griselda stretched out her hand as though to take it and then struck his wrist upwards, so that the dark, sticky stuff shot in an arc, soiling his best, market-going jerkin.
You can’t fool me! It’s some filthy brew that little slut made. I remember her doing it once before. In that same cup. Don’t look at me like that! You know very well what I’m saying. I suppose you thought that locking me in here with nothing to do would drive me mad. But that wasn’t quick enough. So now it’s poison!
The noise was angry, but meaningless.
‘We could try it in broth,’ Joanna suggested.
Griselda could resist broth; and bread and milk, well sweetened with honey; and a coddled egg, done just as she had so often prepared one for Godfrey. She had learned, early in life, to stay alive on very little. She could keep alive on little sips of water, until they came to their senses and stopped the silly pretence that they couldn’t understand her. That she was mad!
Mad! The word had more meaning for her than to most people for the convent which had taken her in—a beggar child—also stretched its limited resources to offer asylum to the mad. There was no traffic between the orphanage side and the bedlam, the whole convent building and the chapel lay between, but from part of the garden where able-bodied orphans worked and regarded themselves as specially favoured, the iron grille in the far wall was visible and behind it, sometimes faces. Some terrible faces which, if not behind bars, would have been frightening. Safely locked away, they were amusing. Sometimes there were cries from the building too.
Griselda did not realise that her own face had slipped into a grotesque mask, or that the extremely sensible things she said emerged as nonsense. Her link with real life had not actually snapped but it was like a frayed rope; some strands had given way. She did
not ask herself why Henry and everybody else should be in plot against her; she only knew that everybody was.
She still tried to reason with Henry.
Henry, I know I offended you. All those jewels which I found in those rooms that had been shut up for years. I thought that finding them made them mine—ours—and that we should be safe and comfortable for ever. You said they were Joanna’s because they belonged to her mother. All right. I was angry at the time but I accept it now. Let her have them. And I offended again when John and Young Shep arrived, all in rags and nearly dead. Yes, I said then that I’d burn the house down sooner than have them in. But Henry, I knew it was lung-rot; I knew what it could do… Henry please, I must see my son, I must have something to do. Shut away here like this, I shall go mad.
He went on pretending not to hear or not to understand. It was all babble. And apart from that, would any woman in her right mind go on rejecting food; or take a thread from a blanket and try to play cat’s cradle with it—a game which after two moves needed another player?
Griselda lost count of time but she knew that even she could not live without eating. Not forever. What she must do to save herself was to get away, find somebody who was not in the plot and explain. The only way to do that was through the window and it would be difficult; very difficult, for it was a barred window.