The Whip (The Spaniard's Gift)

by Catherine Cookson

  Three

  ‘It’s a lovely day. You should get out, take a walk. In the winter you’re always saying you’ll feel better when the warmer weather comes, and then when it does come, what do you do? Stick in that room.’ Henry jerked his head back towards the studio, and Ralph Bowman laughed as he said, ‘It’s the weather, man. I just don’t like weather of any kind. When they invent something else to keep us going I’ll take advantage of it. Anyway, up till now it hasn’t done me any good.’

  They laughed together now; then Ralph, in a high voice, cried, ‘You’re the one to tell me what to do for my health’s sake, walking in all weathers soaked to the skin. I don’t believe you can’t afford to run the horse and trap. If you stopped spreading your cash around you could. And you’re blind, you know that? That Nolan fellow for instance, he’s never out of The Tuns. As for the Stoddarts, within minutes of your departure your silver shilling is filling a can to be carried home by one of the youngsters whose mouth you’d hope to fill with bread.’

  A wry smile came on Henry’s face. ‘By! By! you seem well informed for someone who doesn’t like to go out in the fresh air. You must have had visions.’

  ‘No, simply a good runner. When Emma can’t come she sends Mouthy Mary.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, that explains it. Anyway, the little I have to give away wouldn’t mend the horse’s harness let alone buy him oats. And you know, Ralph’—his voice dropped to a deep serious note—‘things are bad all around. I don’t suppose Mary’s brought you the latest news of what happened yesterday on Newcastle quay?’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Oh, just a boat-load of emigrants leaving for the United States of America. A lot of them from Allendale way. All the result of a strike.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I read about the strike in the Newcastle Guardian. But it’s their own fault, they must know they can’t fight men like Beaumont. I’m sorry though to know they’re emigrating.’

  ‘And they weren’t the only ones. And one incident on the quay will always stick in my mind: there was the weeping and wailing of families, but some men, standing apart, booed two poor individuals who were getting onto the boat with cries of ‘Dirty blacklegs!’ I heard later that the miners had threatened them with death, even said that they had dug graves ready for them and that they didn’t know their time, whether it would come night or day. I couldn’t believe it.’

  ‘Oh, I could. Most pitmen are barbarians, else who would take their children down into the mine with them, and them hardly shortened. Anyway, I wouldn’t worry too much about them. Look at Mary Petty and her brood. Dragged up by the scruff of the neck and all hale and hearty. It seems some children thrive on muck. Put them in a mansion nursery and half of them would have been dead before five.’

  ‘Half of them are dead before three in the towns. I think they survive out here because there’s a little more space and the air is fresher…Well, if I want to survive I’d better get to my bed.’

  ‘You look tired, Henry.’ Ralph had walked to the door with him.

  ‘Yes, but naturally tired, otherwise I’m as fit as a fiddle.’

  ‘Well, I can’t see you have anything to brag about there, you’re all skin and bone.’

  ‘It’s the thin ones that last longer. Isn’t it a lovely evening? Look at the mist coming over the hill! I love this time of night; the worries of the day seem to seep away with the light. Of course’—he turned and grinned at Ralph now—‘they come back full of vigour with the dawn. Anyway, I’m off. Take care. I’ll see you sometime next week, if not before. Goodnight, and get inside before the mist falls.’

  ‘Goodnight, and yes, Father, I’ll get inside before the mist falls.’

  At this, Henry walked away smiling. He walked slowly, savouring the evening. At the end of the bridle path he climbed the small incline leading to the stile, intending to take the footpath through Farmer Hudson’s field which would eventually bring him out at yon side of the village. But from his position on the rise he saw in the far distance a number of figures still working in one of the lower fields. Farmer Yorkless and his sons must be still at it. Would she be there? For answer the afterglow of the setting sun seemed to illuminate the stretch of land reaching from the village to the river, and from this height he could espy a steely gleam of water, but what the afterglow showed up more clearly was the dark heads of men and the cotton-bonneted one of a woman.

  It was no conscious decision that turned him from the stile and caused him to leap the low wall and make his way in almost the opposite direction to that which would lead to the village, but as he came nearer the group in the field he saw that they were leaving, for a man was leading a horse onto the narrow road. He could just make out that the animal was pulling a kind of sledge, behind which, at intervals, three figures were walking; but the bonneted woman still remained in the field.

  He crossed a wide field, leapt another stone wall, and dropped into the pasture beyond and made his way towards the figure. She was stooping, and he saw that she was putting cans into a basket, and as he approached her from behind he saw her whip off her cotton bonnet, then put her hand into the crown and use it as a towel about her face.

  ‘Good evening, Emma.’

  She almost left the ground as she turned round to him, and he saw that her face was streaked with dirt and sweat and the hand that gripped the bonnet black with soil.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry if I startled you.’

  ‘You did, Parson.’ She was gasping slightly. ‘One minute there was nobody here and the next minute’—she gave a little laugh—‘there you were.’

  He repeated, ‘I’m sorry,’ then added, ‘You look very tired. Why are you working so late?’

  For answer she flung her arm wide. ‘It’s got to be cleared if we want to plant. Another week I should say and it’ll be done.’

  He narrowed his eyes in the fading light and looked around the field. The walls looked uneven where boulders of all sizes were piled roughly against them. He turned to her again, saying quietly, ‘What a colossal task.’

  ‘Yes’—she nodded at him—‘I think that’s the word for it, colossal task. I never thought to see the end when we started. It’s not so bad when it’s dry but last night it rained and the earth gets sticky.’ She looked at her glary hand. ‘’Tisn’t too easy. Still’—she turned and picked up the basket—‘that’s how it must be. But some good frost on it this winter and we’ll have taties in it next spring. God willing.’ She smiled a small smile and he answered it, saying, gently, ‘He will be.’

  There was a tightness in his throat. It hurt him to see how she had to work like any peasant woman, even harder for they had set hours. But she was a farmer’s wife and there was no six till six or six till eight for such wives.

  ‘Let me carry that basket.’

  ‘No, no.’ She pulled it away from his hand. ‘It’s all mucky.’

  ‘Mucky or not, give it here.’ He tugged the basket from her. The tone of his voice was different, it had a rough note to it like Barney’s had at times. She walked on, he by her side, silence between them now, until he said, ‘’Tis a beautiful evening, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, yes it is.’ She moved her head, looking about her as if she had only now become aware of the soft air falling with the night; then as if to herself she said, ‘By, it’s been a scorcher!’ Then glancing at him, she added, ‘This afternoon we were all wet through.’

  His eyes caught her glance and held it as he said softly, ‘You shouldn’t have to work like this, Emma. And the child, she alone must take your strength.’

  ‘Huh!’ She made a small sound as she looked at him and the smile on her face held a sadness not untouched with pity and a flicker of criticism: ‘And the child,’ he had said, ‘she alone must take your strength.’ Sometimes he seemed like a being from another world. He lived on the outskirts of the village, and his mind, she felt, must be on the outskirts of real living. What about the women who had child after child, some of them born in the tatie f
ields. He was so dear, so wonderful, so clean and beautiful to her, it was like balm to her body just to look at him, yet at times like now he seemed so young. Although he was just about old enough to be her father, of late she seemed to herself to be older than him. And this feeling would come over her sometimes at night when lying awake, and she knew she was betraying Barney by her thoughts. Yet the desire in her then was only to hold this man’s head against her breast like one did a child, like she did her child.

  In the light of day she wondered how she could think such things; but the light of day was going now and her thoughts as she looked at him were beginning to run riot. She’d have to get back among them, among those four men who in their different way forced her to acknowledge that she had a life to live and in order to live it she had to work and sweat and even groan under its weight, as she had groaned many times this day carrying the rocks to the sledge.

  Now, as if she couldn’t wait to continue this life of labour, she put out her hand and, gently tugging the basket from him, she said, ‘I…I must hurry, I’ve things to do. And Mary will be wanting to get away home. You’ll be cutting across here?’ She pointed to the opening in the stone wall, and he stopped and said, ‘Yes. Oh yes. Well, goodnight, Emma.’

  Stepping two paces back from him, she nodded towards him, answering, ‘Goodnight, Parson.’ And with this they parted.

  He did not hurry across the field, nor did he raise his eyes to the beauty of the fading afterglow, he looked at his feet walking between the ridged cattle imprints and the tufts of thistle here and there. If it had been day he might have said to himself: This is a dirty field, Hudson is an indifferent husbandman, but it was coming night and, denying his observation to Ralph that the troubles of the day slipped away with the twilight, his were presenting themselves to him as if the dawn had changed places with the night. And now he was asking of God why the ache in his body seemed to increase with the years; and indeed, not only with the years but with each new sight of her. A minute ago he had looked on her, her face streaked with dirt, her nails broken down to the quick, her hands black with mud, the bodice of her dress showing great arcs of sweat beneath her oxters and the dress itself clinging to the clefts of her breasts, and her beauty had shone through it and almost blinded him to the fact that she was no longer Emma the girl but Emma the wife, and the longing to touch her had become almost irresistible.

  Of a sudden his pace increased. He would go home, he told himself, and when it was sufficiently dark he would go down to the brook where it deepened beyond Openwood and there, lying in the water, his ache would ease. His father used to tell him and his brothers after a day of running wild during the holidays to get themselves into the river and cool their capers. They had been innocent capers, easy to cool, but the caper that was running wild in him now would, he felt, heat the water.

  As he neared the outskirts of the village his head jerked upwards at the sound of loud voices and cries coming from the end of the main street where the inn was situated. Mr Turnbull’s son Billy was standing on the kerb in front of the grocer’s bottle-glass window and he called to Henry, ‘Skull and hair flying along there, Parson, the night. ’Tis likely the pit blokes, being the night of the pays, can’t get rid of their money soon enough. All they’ll have left the morrow will be thick heads and empty bellies.’

  Henry nodded to him and passed quickly on down the street noting that Peggy MacFarlane was at her cottage door, as was Mr Farrow the carpenter at his, with his wife and members of his large family around him. And Mrs Farrow was having a job to restrain the older ones from leaving her side to get a closer view of the fray. There was no-one outside the butcher’s shop, but then Mr Mason only opened it twice a week. But he could see Mason’s wife and his daughter Lily, the one who made him uneasy with her staring, through the parted lace curtains at the window. In the fading light he could not really distinguish their faces but he knew it to be them, peering, as he himself was now, towards half a dozen men bashing each other on the cobbled square.

  Coming to a halt some yards away he wondered what to do, but told himself it would be little use appealing to them, the noise they were making would drown his voice. Yet the next minute he heard himself yelling, ‘Stop this! Stop it! Do you hear?’

  Almost before he finished speaking a man was hurled backwards and almost fell at his feet. His opponent, staggering towards him was yelling, ‘Think you own the bloody place. Could work you off your feet, you Fellburn nowt you! Come to the Phoenix and you’ll see what work is.’ And the man lifted his foot and went to kick the prostrate one but was halted by Henry rushing at him and grabbing him by the arm, crying, ‘Don’t do that! Do you want to kill him?’

  The pitman who was dressed in his best, wearing a bright-coloured neckerchief with a red handkerchief dangling from the breast pocket of his coat, stood for a moment slightly amazed at being confronted by a parson, easily recognisable from his black garb, high collar and flat hat; but he was no respecter of churchmen and so he made to throw this new opponent off, crying, ‘Take your bloody hands off me, ranter!’

  ‘I will, when you decide to go home.’

  ‘Who the hell do you think you’re talkin’ to, eh?’ He made another effort to loosen Henry’s grip, but when he couldn’t he became filled with a sudden fury and with his free arm he struck out and caught Henry a resounding blow on the side of the head which knocked his hat off and caused him to release his grip on the man’s arm and to stagger back from him. Then, as he told himself for days afterwards, he didn’t know what possessed him but the next minute his own fist shot out as it hadn’t done since he was a lad sparring with his brothers, particularly with George who could box as well as a booth man. In fact, George had had a whipping from their father once because he had challenged a booth man. And now there was no-one more surprised than himself when he saw the miner stretch his length on the cobbles alongside the man he had himself floored only a while ago. Then Henry’s anger was replaced by a moment of terror when the pitman lay prone and still.

  Now there was movement all around them: the others had stopped their sparring and were bending over the two prostrate figures, and George Tate and Tom Bessell were looking into his face. Tom was saying, ‘’Tis you, Parson?’

  He didn’t answer for a moment but gently rubbed his clenched fist with his other hand for the pain in it from contact with the pitman’s jaw was radiating up to his shoulder. And when another man shouted, ‘’Twas the parson. ’Twas the parson, I tell you. Look!’ he seemed to come to himself, and now he asked Tom: ‘The man…is he?…is he?’ and he bent over the pitman.

  When the man made a queer groaning sound, he closed his eyes and muttered a short silent prayer.

  George Tate was yelling, ‘Carry them in…carry them inside.’ And combatants from both sides came and picked up their respective member and carried him into the inn. And Henry followed, because he had to know what injury he had done to the pitman. He recognised too that the other man was Willy Stoddart. Well it would be, wouldn’t it? But the little pitman must have given him a mighty blow to knock him senseless because Willy was known to be a tough fellow.

  Willy was groaning loudly now and holding the back of his head. The other man too was sitting up. They had propped him against the wooden settle, but his face was all askew, and now he was holding his hands to it and making moaning sounds, and it was Mary Petty’s husband Ned who, looking at Henry, said in a voice filled with awe, ‘You’ve knocked his jaw out, Parson.’

  ‘Knocked his jaw out? No, no.’ Henry shook his head.

  ‘Well, look!’

  Henry looked closer and saw that Ned Petty was right, he had put the man’s jaw out. ‘Dear God!’ he said. ‘Go and fetch Doctor Rainton.’

  He hadn’t given the precise order to anyone in particular, but Eddy MacFarlane said, ‘Aye, aye; better get the doctor. But ’tis all of two miles away.’ And he turned and looked at one of the other two men who were kneeling beside their mining companion. ‘You had a
handcart, hadn’t you?’ he asked in a conversational tone, as if a few minutes earlier he hadn’t been at this particular man’s throat.

  The man looked up and nodded before saying, ‘Aye.’

  ‘Well then, put him on the handcart, and on your way back home to Birtley call in at the doctor’s. Best thing, save time.’

  The other man, answering as civilly, said, ‘Aye, you’re right. And it would be on our way, as you say. Aye, I would.’

  Strangely, they all seemed to have sobered up somewhat, although Willy Stoddart was being plied with ale to refresh him.

  Within minutes they were all outside again. The pitman being assisted onto the flat barrow looked up at Henry without the slightest animosity in his eyes, and Henry said in a low voice, ‘I’m sorry. I’m very sorry I’ve hurt you.’

  The pitman raised his hand as if in salute, at which George Tate turned to Eddy MacFarlane saying, ‘Go along of them, Eddy, and see what the trouble is. Parson’d like to know…wouldn’t you, Parson?’

  ‘Oh yes, yes.’ Henry nodded at the publican. ‘Yes, I must know.’

  There were eight now standing outside the inn watching the small cavalcade zigzag its way up the road, one man pulling the barrow, and the man behind being assisted by Eddy MacFarlane. Then as they all turned to go back into the inn, they stopped as if governed by one mind and peered through the swinging lantern light at Henry.

  ‘We’ll send you word along, Parson, when we hear,’ George Tate said, and Henry answered, ‘Thank you, Mr Tate. Goodnight.’

  A chorus of goodnights came at him now: ‘Goodnight, Parson. Goodnight to you, Parson. Goodnight, Parson.’

  There were men among them whom he had never seen in church, but for a moment he felt himself to be nearer to them than to most of his regular parishioners.

  Entering the front door of the vicarage he was greeted by Lena Wilkinson saying, ‘I didn’t go, I was worried; you were late.’