The Whip (The Spaniard's Gift)

by Catherine Cookson

  She half filled the sack with oats, then leaned it against the old millstone which had once graced the mill that stood to the side of the bridle path about half a mile from Mr Bowman’s cottage. When the mill was burnt to the ground, leaving only one room at the end with a loft above, Jake Yorkless, his father, and two horses had brought the millstone to the farm, thinking to make some use of it. They had rolled it on its end into the barn and brought it to a standstill just below the platform that extended over one third of the barn. Whatever use they had hoped to put it to had not materialised, except that it was used for sharpening scythes and such implements.

  Emma climbed the ladder to the platform above. She went to the far corner where the bales of hay were stacked and was about to pull the top one down when she stifled a cry as Luke appeared round the end of the stack with a pitchfork in his hand. He seemed amused at her fright and he muttered, ‘Nerves on edge?’

  She made no reply and he turned and pulled a bale onto the floor in front of her feet, not to help her but to impede her way. Then after staring at her for a moment, he said flatly, ‘Nowt’s gone right on this place since you came into it. Do you know that? I’ve said it afore and I’ll say it again, you put a spell on it, you’ve got an evil eye…a foreign evil eye. You helped to knock me mother off.’ She clamped on her lips to prevent a retort and he went on, ‘Now you’ve talked Pete into taking to the sea. You’ll not be happy until you get rid of me da and me and then you’ll have the place to yoursel’.’

  As she turned her back on him and bent down from the waist to pick up the bale, it happened. Lifting the pitchfork, he thrust it into her buttocks, and the scream she let out caused him to screw up his face and yell at her, ‘Didn’t kill you! Soft you are in some parts, soft you are.’

  She stood for a moment, her hands pressed tight to her bottom; then gasping, she turned her head from side to side as if in search of a weapon, and she saw it, one that she could handle. It was a piece of thick rope with a frayed end. She sprang towards it and with lightning speed she had gripped the end of it and given it one swirl about her head before bringing it fully across his face.

  Now it was he who screamed and the sound was like a roar of an injured beast, and like a beast he sprang on her and bore her to the floor, where they rolled together tearing at each other, until at last he had her spreadeagled, his body on top of hers. And now her terrified eyes were looking deep into his throat for his wide-open mouth seemed like a lion’s jaws, and she knew terror as she had never known it before.

  When she felt his teeth go through the lobe of her ear she screamed to the heavens. Then they were rolling again. Now she was tearing at his face with her nails, but even as she did so she knew she was weakening, his weight was too much for her.

  At one period when she managed to free one hand she stuck her thumb into his eye, and when his head went back she screamed, ‘Barney! Barney!’ And almost immediately it seemed that her cry had been answered for the weight was dragged off her leaving her limp and gasping and covered with both Luke’s and her own blood. For a moment she thought she was going to slip into unconsciousness; then the growls and the curses to the side of her brought her onto her hands and knees from where she was again knocked onto her back by the two struggling forms.

  It was as Jake Yorkless came running into the barn that the locked figures reached the edge of the platform and before a cry could escape his lips he saw his eldest son topple over. There was a dull bone-crushing thud, then a strange stillness.

  With a mixture of horror and incredulity he looked to where Barney hung backwards over the millstone for a matter of seconds before his body slid slowly and quietly onto the floor of the barn. He now lifted his head and looked to where his other son was dragging himself back from the edge of the platform; then his gaze moved from him to see his daughter-in-law kneeling further along the platform looking downwards. Her whole face appeared to be covered with blood.

  Then the silence was broken as he let out a great oath and, dropping onto his knees by the prone figure, he straightened out his son, calling loudly now, ‘Barney! Barney!’

  When there was no response to his appeal he looked towards where Luke was staggering down the ladder and he cried at him, ‘You bloody, bloody madman! You’ve killed him. You’ve killed your brother.’

  ‘Tweren’t me. Tweren’t me.’ Luke was standing apart now, shaking his head. ‘’Twas her. ’Twas her. Look at me face.’

  As Luke drew his hand over his bloodstained face, Jake Yorkless turned his gaze upwards again to where Emma was now descending the ladder. Having reached the bottom she still clung to it for a moment before she tottered towards the millstone and there, dropping onto her side near her husband, she now cried, ‘Barney! Barney!’ Then she was tearing at his jacket, her good ear against his chest.

  Turning her eyes to look at her father-in-law and her voice merely a whimper, she said, ‘He’s…he’s breathin’. Get…get the doctor.’

  ‘You!’—Jake Yorkless was bawling at Luke now—‘come and give me a hand to get him into the house.’

  ‘No! No!’ Emma flung herself across the prostrate form, crying, ‘He won’t touch him. I won’t let him touch him.’ Then she looked towards the door to where Billy was standing and she yelled to him, ‘Go to the Hudsons’, Billy. Tell them we want help. Tell them to ride for the doctor, and send Tony. He’ll help. He’ll help.’

  Neither Jake Yorkless nor Luke made any protest at this, but she, with growing strength, got onto her knees now and looking at her father-in-law she cried, ‘Take him away.’ She thrust out her hand towards Luke. ‘I tell you, take him away.’

  When Jake Yorkless didn’t move, her voice in a scream came at him again, ‘I tell you, get him out of this, or I’ll do something to him. I’ll stick the pitchfork into him like he did me.’

  His eyes widening, Jake Yorkless looked towards his son, and he said, ‘Pitchfork?’

  ‘Yes, that was the start. He…he stuck the pitchfork into me as…as I bent down.’

  ‘Bugger me!’ Jake Yorkless’ face screwed up and his eyes became almost lost in their sockets as he stepped towards Luke.

  Stepping back from him, Luke yelled, ‘I only did it after she gave me this’—once again he drew his hand over his bloodstained face—‘with the pulley rope. How would you like it across your face?’

  ‘Get out!’ Jake Yorkless jerked his head stiffly to the side and Luke obeyed him, backing slowly towards the open door of the barn. But there he stopped and, almost screaming now, he said, ‘Whatever’s happened she’s to blame. There’s no luck where she is; she’ll be the death of us all afore she finishes. Mark my words. Aye, mark my words.’

  For some moments after he had disappeared into the yard his father stood looking towards the door. Shoulders rounded, his head hanging, he had the pose of an old man. But then, seeming to pull himself together, he turned and walked back towards the millstone, to where Emma had raised Barney’s head and had it rested against her knee.

  Looking up at her father-in-law and her voice and her attitude now depicting her age, she muttered as a young girl might, ‘I didn’t start this, ’twasn’t me. Believe me, mister, ’twasn’t me.’

  He gave her no answer but continued to stare down on them both; then with a shake of his head he turned slowly away…

  It was twenty minutes later when Alec Hudson and his son Anthony arrived, and during that time Emma had had to fight a great wave of sickness and faintness that threatened to overcome her. Her body was aching as if it had been pummelled by a mallet. But there was a different pain in the side of her face. The blood had clotted around her ear and there was something dangling from it. She daren’t, however, put her hand towards it, but when Alec Hudson came into the barn he stopped in his stride and, looking towards her, he said, ‘My God,girl! what’s happened to you?’

  And for answer she said, ‘Have you got the doctor?’

  ‘Andy’s ridden for him; he should be here in a short while. Sh
all we get him into the house?’ He was looking down on the prostrate figure.

  ‘I don’t know. He…he hit the stone when he fell.’ She lifted a weak hand towards the stone. ‘He hit it with his back. I fear…I fear—’ She dropped her head forward.

  ‘All right, lass. All right. Come on, get to your feet.’

  It was when the kindly man’s hand came towards her and she felt herself being assisted upwards by him and his younger son that the wave of faintness became so great that she sank beneath it and dropped into peaceful blackness.

  Twice she had begun to emerge from the blackness but each time sank back again into it. The first occasion because she told herself she didn’t want to face the day; the second time through pain, something was happening to the side of her face. The third time it was Mary’s murmuring that brought her up, and the soothing feeling of warm water on her neck and chest. She lay savouring the comfort of it for a while until, full realisation sweeping over her, she jerked her body in an effort to rise.

  But Mary’s hands kept her down. ‘There, there,’ she said. ‘There, there. Quiet now, till I get you dried.’

  ‘The doctor?’ Her mouth seemed stiff, her whole face seemed stiff.

  ‘He’s upstairs.’

  ‘Barney.’

  ‘You’ll know in a short while. But you’ve got to prepare yourself, lass; least that’s what I think ’cos me sense tells me that you can’t fall backwards onto a millstone and bounce off again whole.’

  ‘Oh.’ She put out her hand towards her ear and felt a bulge there, and Mary, nodding her head at her now as she tossed the towel aside and buttoned up the front of Emma’s dress, said, ‘You’re going to be short of a lobe, lass. It was hanging, he had to cut it off. In the name of God, how did it all happen? But quiet now, quiet, there’ll be plenty of time for talk after.’

  Not that Emma had any intention of talking, she only wanted to get up and go to Barney. At that moment, however, the doctor came into the room.

  Doctor Rainton was a big man with a small voice and a gentle manner. He bent over her, saying, ‘How are we now?’

  ‘I’m…I’m all right, doctor.’ Her words came out on gasps; then she added, ‘Barney. What’s wrong with him?’

  The doctor straightened his back, moved his lips one over the other for a moment, then, bringing his chin into the collar of his grey tweed jacket, he said, ‘You’d better steel yourself, Mrs Yorkless. Indeed yes, you’d better steel yourself.’

  ‘He’s…he’s not?’

  ‘No, he’s not dead, and I don’t know as yet whether he’s going to die, at least soon. But what I can tell you is that his back is broken and he is paralysed.’

  She put her two hands up to her face, then moved the one quickly away from her left cheek and placed it on top of the other that was across her mouth, and the ‘No! No!’ that was yelling inside of her, did not escape, but her eyes stretched as far as the pain in her face would allow.

  ‘He…he can move his head and his right arm, but that is all as yet. And…and he has regained consciousness. But I have given him some medicine; more I shall leave you, which will keep him from thinking for the next few days. The realisation of his condition will definitely come as a shock, and it is this that we have to be prepared for. It is a tragic happening; his father tells me he was so sure-footed and cannot understand how he slipped off the platform.’ He had now bent his head towards her and his eyes were asking the question of the words he had just uttered: were they true or false? But she did not answer the question, she was too numb. Yet her mind was asking, if this was the story that the mister was putting about, how would he account for Luke’s face, because the frayed rope had drawn blood and he would be scarred for some time. And then, her ear. But that didn’t matter, what mattered was that Barney, dear Barney was paralysed and all through her screaming for help. Yet if she hadn’t screamed, what would have happened to her? Would he have taken her there and then as he lay on top of her, his body screwing her into the platform? No, no; the desire that was in him at that moment wasn’t for her body but for her life. He had wanted to kill her. She had seen it in his eyes and she knew that as long as she lived and while he was alive, she would fear him. There were some things she could stand up to, but not such a hate as was in her brother-in-law. And what was the end to be?

  When she shivered violently and her head dropped back onto the hard rolled horsehair bolster, the doctor, turning to Mary, said, ‘Stay with her, see to her. She needs to sleep too. I’ll leave you something that will make her sleep.’

  On this Emma raised her head with a jerk, saying now, ‘No, no, doctor. I want no more sleep. I’ll be all right. In a short while I’ll be all right.’

  And she knew she must be all right, and now, in order to speak to the mister, for she’d have to ask him…no, tell him that his murdering son could no longer stay in this house. He had a woman over at Birtley who would no doubt welcome him. Moreover, if the mister made any bones about it she wouldn’t lift another hand inside the house or outside it, she would see to her husband and her child and that would be all; to cook for, or sit at the table with, or even look at that fiend of a man, never, never again.

  As she swung her feet to the ground and sat up the doctor stood above her, amazed at one so young, who had just come through some great physical struggle, if her torn ear and bruises on her face, neck and arms were anything to go by, yet who could show such resistance to the pain she must be suffering. But then women were strange creatures, all different and no accounting for them. But this one had foreign blood in her, Spanish blood he understood, and Spaniards he also understood were a fierce people, as their conquering history showed.

  All he could say to her now was, ‘Go easy. Go easy. I shall be back in the morning.’

  And her answer to this was simply, ‘Thank you.’

  Mary escorted the doctor to the front door and when she came back into the room and saw Emma standing supporting herself against the head of the couch she cried at her, ‘Oh, you’re a silly young bugger. Don’t push yourself, lass, you can barely stand on your feet.’

  ‘I’ve got to stand on me feet, Mary,’ Emma said quietly. ‘I’ll have to stand on me feet.’ And to this, after a moment’s pause, Mary raised her eyebrows, then looked down towards the floor, muttering, ‘Aye lass, I suppose you’re right. You’ll have to.’

  Five

  Emma stood at the side of the bed holding Barney’s hand, looking down at him, and the pain in his eyes was almost too much for her to bear. It was five days now since his body had hit the stone and only this morning had he seemed to take in the fact that his life was broken and never again would he walk. He could move his head and his right arm, but the rest of his body was dead. It was as if he had been dismembered and all that was left was the part of him that recognised his dismembering and could brew the horror and the pain of it.

  ‘Why couldn’t it have taken me altogether?’ His voice was a croak.

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘But what use am I, Emma? Oh Emma’—his head moved slowly on the pillow—‘what use am I? Do you understand what has happened? I’m no use, in no way, I’m no use.’

  ‘You’ll always be of use to me.’ She now sat down on the side of the bed close to him and his lips trembled as he looked up to her and asked, ‘Why had it to happen? Why? What have I done to anybody that this should happen to me?’

  When she did not answer but bowed her head, he remained silent; then his voice stronger, he said with bitterness, ‘He’s always been mad. If he couldn’t get his own way, he…he made somebody pay for it, but mostly Dan, because Dan was the weakest. Why he should go for you though is beyond me. But no.’ Now he closed his eyes tightly and repeated, ‘No, ’tisn’t beyond me. I wanted you and he’s resented it; you were young and clean and lovely, not like the trollops he’s favoured since the first urge took him. And he couldn’t get at me, so he got at you.’ He opened his eyes and asked quietly, ‘Where has he gone? Da would
n’t tell me, but I know he’s not here, I can feel that he’s not here any longer. Funny that, but I suppose ’tis because the same blood flows tightly through both of us.’

  ‘As far as I know he’s gone to that Laura Nixon outside Birtley township, and Billy says he’s working on a farm down Lamesley way.’

  Pressing his head back into the pillow, Barney gritted his teeth together, then said, ‘I hope his time there is short and he soon goes to hell and the devil sticks a pitchfork into him and lops off his ear.’

  She started slightly; she hadn’t told him about the pitchfork or her ear. But now he opened his eyes and said, ‘I know, the doctor told me. Da tried to hoodwink him and me an’ all, but the doctor’s no fool. I’m glad you marked him. He was always vain about his looks, thought he was pretty. Well, doctor says you did a good job on him, and for that I’m grateful.’

  ‘Oh. Oh.’ She bowed her head and almost whimpered now, ‘I’m not proud of it, Barney. I didn’t want to mark him or anybody but when the prongs pierced me flesh I too went mad for a minute. He says I hit him first but I had no reason to.’ She looked at him now and, moving her head slowly, she said, ‘I never liked him, I couldn’t like him, but ask yourself, would I take a rope at him out of the blue like?’

  ‘Don’t distress yourself; and I say again I’m glad you did it. But Emma—’ He was now gripping her hand and she watched his lower jaw tremble before he brought out, ‘About us, do…do you know what this means? I…I love you Emma; I’ve always loved you; but…but never again will I be able to show it. Never, never.’ His lower jaw was wobbling, his eyelids were blinking and when the tears burst from his eyes she took him into her arms, crying, ‘Oh Barney. Barney, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, not that. Don’t please, don’t cry Barney. Barney. I…I can’t bear it if you cry.’