The coach passed and she turned and put her arm around Annie again, but the girl, staring like someone dazed after the coach, murmured, ‘’Tis lovely, isn’t it, Ma, the coach?’
‘Coaches are just things,’ Emma replied tartly; ‘’tis people that matter. Come, let’s get back.’
As they walked Emma couldn’t get the idea out of her mind that Mr Fordyke had smiled at her, and not unkindly…But why would he do that, when he still kept the land enclosed and spitefully made no use of it for it was full of tares and weeds which blew into their own field? But what matter, her mind was easy with regard to Annie. Dear God! that locket had frightened her …
Later that night she knelt by Annie’s bed and, taking her daughter’s hands tightly between her own, she gazed down at her through the candlelight where she lay, her hair rippling over the pillow like sunlight on water and her blue eyes like pools beneath, and she said to her, ‘You know it’s a sin to tell lies, don’t you, Annie?’
‘Yes, Ma.’
‘And you do tell lies, don’t you?’
There was a pause. ‘Yes, Ma.’
‘Well now, I want you to promise me, promise me on God’s honour. Do you know what that means?’
‘Yes, Ma.’
‘Well, promise me that if your Uncle Luke speaks to you again and you can’t but answer him back, you’ll come straight and tell me. Now will you promise me that?’
‘Yes, Ma.’
‘Honest?’
‘Honest, Ma,’ she said, and made a cross on her breast as she related the promise: ‘Cross me heart if I tell a lie and hope the devil takes me when I die.’ Looking down at their joined hands and knowing how worthless such words were, Emma murmured, ‘That’s only a children’s rhyme, Annie. You’re a big girl, you’re thirteen, you know the difference between right and wrong, don’t you?…Don’t you?’
Annie didn’t answer, and Emma shook the hands within her own, saying in a low whisper, ‘I’ve told you, haven’t I, the things you must not do, and how you must not let men touch you except to take your hand; and what to expect shortly when your time comes and not to be afraid, haven’t I?’
‘Yes, Ma.’
‘Well now, you’ll remember all this, won’t you?’
‘Yes, Ma. I do, and I don’t let them touch me. They want to, but I don’t.’
‘What? Who?’
Annie tried to pull her hands away from the grip that was holding them, as she said pettishly, ‘Well, I don’t know who, just boys, men. I…well, I know they want to touch me but I remember what you said and…and I don’t let them.’
‘Who has wanted to touch you?’ Emma’s words were spoken slowly and hard now and Annie, flouncing onto her side said, ‘Nobody, nobody. I just thought, the things they say…an’ well—’
‘The things who says, girl?’
‘Well, anybody I speak to.’ Annie’s voice was loud now, her tone almost defiant, and Emma, releasing her hold of the tugging hands, rested her elbows on the bed and bent over her forearms for a moment before rising and saying, ‘Go to sleep. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, Ma.’
About to close the door, Emma stopped suddenly for she imagined she had heard her daughter giggle: she stood staring at the candle, her eyelids flickering like its flame in the draught from the landing. After pulling the door closed she still did not move away but put her ear to it: there was no sound; it must have been imagination.
Two
‘She’s a little scut. Whatever way you look at her, she’s a little scut.’
Henry, standing with his back to the fire, his head bowed, muttered, ‘I’m afraid you’re right, but how has it come to be, with a mother like Emma and a father as nice as Barney?’
‘A throwback likely, but wherever she’s got it from, she’s got it bad. She has the makings of a whore.’
‘Oh!’ Henry shook his head vigorously now. ‘Don’t say that, Ralph. She’s at the age when life is stirring in her as it stirred in all of us, whether we like to admit it or not.’
‘Last thing I’d think a parson would admit.’ Ralph slanted his gaze towards Henry, and to this Henry answered, ‘Christ was human.’ Then added, ‘You know, I often think about that: how did he manage the problem?’
‘I don’t know’—Ralph was laughing now, his head back against the pad on the rocking chair—‘but I’d like to bet, if you had been one of the twelve you wouldn’t have reigned long, not with your ideas. It’s a wonder you don’t let them slip through that pulpit of yours.’
‘They do, but in a different form.’ Henry’s mouth went into a quizzical smile now. ‘I’ve got to be careful, and every time I’m careful I despise myself. I wonder sometimes how long I can keep it up, with my true feelings about things.’
‘You wouldn’t have kept it up this long, let’s face it, if you hadn’t been tied to the farm.’
Henry didn’t answer, but swung round and looked down into the fire now, and Ralph said, ‘I’m sorry; that was a winding punch.’
‘Not more than I deserved. I despise myself for that too. But man’—he turned again and faced Ralph—‘I cannot help myself, I’ve got to see her. Years ago I thought once she was married that would be that, I’d get her out of my system; and then when I found her marriage made no difference, I prepared and applied for another living. You remember? Then Barney’s accident happened, and God forgive me’—he turned his head to the side and gritted his teeth for a moment—‘I welcomed it in a way, because I thought that the poor fellow was going to die. And I made up my mind that no matter what the village might say, or the bishop, or anyone else for that matter, I was going to ask her to be my wife. I was quite prepared to leave the church if there were any fuss. And then he doesn’t die, but, base individual that I am, I invented a way in which I could see her two or three times a week, and which would bring no censure on either of us. And so it has gone on, and will I suppose to the end, for Barney could outlive me with the care he gets. Here I am, forty-seven years old and as the years go on the difference in the age between Emma and myself seems to widen. When she was sixteen and I but thirty-three the difference didn’t seem all that great, but now she at thirty, a beautiful woman, more beautiful than she was as a girl, and I feel I am galloping towards old age…’
‘Nonsense! You haven’t even reached your prime. Do you ever look at yourself, man? You look in your early thirties. Forty-seven indeed! Nobody would take you for that, and the best thing you ever did I think was to get rid of your pony and trap, for you must be the only man for miles around that hasn’t got a paunch, and you have the stature of a soldier …’
‘Only because I haven’t had to use my hands like other men.’
‘Ho, ho!’ Again Ralph’s head went back. ‘Only to break a fellow’s jaw. By, you know! that’s talked about even yet, so Mary tells me. But speaking of Mary leads me back to Jimmy. There I was sitting to the side of a bush, sketching the old ruined millhouse, when along comes Jimmy and her. They were on the towpath and when they weren’t but half a dozen yards from me but couldn’t see me, he turned on her, bawling at her, “Get yourself away, you brazen bitch! You’ll lose me me job. And if you do that I’ll not go quiet, I won’t keep me mouth shut, I’ll tell the mister what I know you’re up to.” And then she turns and says to him, “Do it, and he’ll knock you flat.” Then…then you know, Henry, she actually stepped up to him, almost pushed her bust into him, she did. It was like watching a whore at work, a real seaport trollop with no shame. And you know what she said then?’ He looked at Henry who moved his head slightly. ‘She said, “You’re soft; I dare you to touch me.” Yes, that’s what she said. I felt like getting up and taking my hand and swiping her across the face. I never take in all Mary’s chatter, but a short while ago she told me that Mrs Pringle—you know, her husband’s a drayman; they live just off the coach road going into Gateshead Fell—well, apparently Miss Annie had set her sights on him: waylays him at every possible chance. But after what I saw with my own
eyes, I’d believe anything. And no wonder that the schoolmistress wrote to Emma, saying that she thought her daughter needed special tuition. My God! yes, she does. If Emma had been wise she would have used one of her whips on her.’
‘It wouldn’t have done any good.’
‘No?’
‘No. Some people are born with the desire whole in them, in others it matures through growth, except where it’s forced by necessity, you can see that in the back streets of Newcastle any night of the week. There is a company of good men and women who travel those streets at night trying to save the brands from the burning. The Reverend Stoker’s one of them. He says if he has one success in a year he praises God. He thinks the only cure is to feed and house them, but he admits that once they start, some at the age of nine, food and shelter only satisfies them for a time. I think the best thing that could happen to Annie is to get married as soon as possible. It’s a pity in a way that Jimmy has no fancy for her, it would be a solution.’
‘Only for a time. A girl such as Annie would never be satisfied with one man…Are you off then?’
‘Yes; and thanks for the dram.’
‘Oh, you’re welcome…you hypocrite.’ Ralph punched at the air in Henry’s direction and Henry, a half smile on his face, said, ‘Yes, that’s the right name for me, fits me like a glove.’
‘Go on with you. Get out. You’re too good to be true. You always put a doubt in my mind and make me feel I should turn to something. Not religion. I don’t know what, only something. Go on, get out. And by the way, tell Emma I’m running short of bread: she shouldn’t cook so well and I wouldn’t eat so much.’
‘I’ll tell her.’ They nodded at each other, and Henry went out, bending his head and leaning forward against the strong wind. And like this he walked for most of the way, until he reached the stile and as he made to cross it he saw in the distance Emma standing on the rise. She had her hand over her eyes shading them against the sun, and she was calling, ‘Annie! You Annie!’
He left the road and crossed the field, leapt the drystone wall and so came to the bottom of the rise where she was still standing. She had seen his approach and was waiting for him, and before he came up to her she called, ‘Have you seen Annie?’ And he shook his head, saying, ‘No, not today. Where is she supposed to be?’
She did not answer until he was standing facing her and she put her hand flat on her head to secure her starched cap as she said to him, ‘She was supposed to be feeding the hens and doing her morning chores, but the hens haven’t been fed nor anything else done, and it is now three hours since breakfast when I last saw her. She didn’t come in for her break.’
‘I’ll go and look round by Openwood. It’s full of cowslips, she likes gathering flowers. She may be there.’
She nodded, her face puckered with anxiety, and as he made to move hastily away she said, ‘Have you been to Ralph’s?’
‘Yes’—he turned towards her again—‘I’ve just come from there. And don’t worry, if she’s not in the wood I’ll take a walk along the coach road.’ He was thinking of what Ralph had said about Mrs Pringle’s husband: if the man was a drayman he would use that road on his way between Gateshead Fell and Birtley.
For a while she watched him walking away, then turned and scanned the country around her. There was a deep fear in her that Annie was nowhere in the vicinity. Over the past years, as she had watched her daughter grow, she had fought the mounting idea that her child was wanton, that there was something in her nature that was bad, not evil bad like the badness in Luke, but body bad like that which was in low women. But her daughter wasn’t yet a woman, she was not yet fourteen, that was in years, but to look at her and to note the size of her bust and the roundness of her buttocks, anyone could be forgiven for taking her for someone of a marriageable age. But where was she? Dear God, where was she?
She hurried down the slope, then running, made her way back to the farm hoping that she would find Annie sitting in the kitchen having her dinner or teasing her grandfather, if you could call it teasing, sitting on his lap and playing with his whiskers. She had tried to stop her from doing this, telling her that she was no longer a little girl; but the reply her daughter always gave her was that her granda liked it. And she knew the mister did like it; he was in a way besotted with her, too much so. That, too, had made her uneasy.
There was no sign of her on the farm. Jake Yorkless met her in the yard, saying, ‘Well?’
‘I can’t see hilt nor hair of her.’
‘God almighty! she must be somewhere. I’ll go to the wood.’
‘The parson has gone there.’
He stopped and looked at her.
‘I met him on the hill.’
‘What about the painter?’
‘Parson says she’s not there. I’ll go to the village.’ She now ran across the yard and, pushing open the lower sash of the window, she leant forward and said to Barney, ‘We can’t find Annie.’
‘Can’t find her, what do you mean?’
‘Well, she’s not’—Emma was yelling back at him now—‘anywhere. I’m going to the village.’ She watched him let his head fall back onto the pillow in a manner which indicated his frustration, then she pulled down the window and began to run again.
The sweat was oozing out of every pore when she reached the village street and she stood for a moment with her hand pressed tight into her side to ease the stitch that had seized her. The first person she spoke to was Ann Turnbull: she was shooing some birds away from the top of the bags of pulses displayed on a slab of wood resting on barrels just below the bottle-glass window.
‘Have you seen my daughter, Mrs Turnbull?’
‘Annie?’
‘Yes, Annie.’
‘No. No, Mrs Yorkless. I saw her on Sunday in church; then again going down the street to Sunday school in afternoon, but not since. But look, there’s Lily.’ She pointed across the street to where the butcher’s daughter was coming down the three steps leading from the shop, and Emma, saying, ‘Thank you,’ hurried across the road.
Lily Mason was of her own age; they had been to Sunday school together for years. She was still unmarried and was now as fat as a porker. She said to her hastily, ‘Have you seen my Annie, Lily?’
And Lily called back, ‘Seen your Annie, Emma? Not the day. Why? She done a skip to the fair?’
The fair. Yes, there was a fair on the Town Moor in Newcastle. But she would never go all that way on her own, never, and without saying a word. She had been to Newcastle and Sunderland and Durham, but she herself had always taken her.
‘Fair’s very attractive for young ’uns’—Lily was grinning down on her now—‘and she’s spritely, is your Annie. Huh! I’d say.’ She jerked her head and chuckled, and Emma turned away as Ann Turnbull shouted to her, ‘Try The Tuns, a number of them’s in there at this time. Some of them’ll likely have seen her. Or look, there’s Miss Bonney. She’s just come off the coach at the crossroads and heavy with material, been to market, looks like, p’raps she saw her on the road.’
Emma now hurried towards the prim little dressmaker, calling to her well before she came abreast: ‘Have you seen my Annie, Miss Bonney?’
‘No. No, Mrs Yorkless. I have not seen Annie since…when?’ She stopped and cocked her head to one side as if the answer to her question would come out of the air; then looking at Emma again, she said, ‘A week yesterday. That’s it, I saw her a week yesterday when she was talking to the gentleman.’
‘The gentleman?’
‘Yes, he was staying at the inn, on holiday I suppose. But as you know, I’—she shook her head vigorously and the pompoms hanging on the velvet ribbons from her bonnet danced against her rosy cheeks—‘I never frequent The Tuns, never. But that was the last time I saw Annie. Yes, I had been to Mrs Freeman’s to measure her for her new bodice and it was on my way back that I saw Annie and the gentleman in conversation, enjoyable conversation. They were laughing together and I remember I said, “Good-day to you, Annie,�
�� and the gentleman doffed his hat to me, and I bowed to him. Yes, that was the last time I saw Annie…and…’
‘Thank you. Thank you, Miss Bonney.’
Emma was again running along the street, towards The Tuns now. Talking to a gentleman, laughing with a gentleman. That locket, those handkerchiefs. She had never been able to find any other present she might have received.
She herself had never been in The Tuns, but without hesitating she pushed open the door to be confronted immediately by what seemed to be a sea of eyes. There must have been twelve to fifteen men in the main bar and each one had turned and stared at her, some with their moustaches still in their beer glasses. It must have been the way she burst into the room.
They made way for her as she came to the counter where, addressing George Tate, she said, ‘Have…have you seen Annie?’
‘Annie?’ The publican screwed his face up at her. ‘You mean, your Annie?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘No, no; never set eyes on the child, not for days, even weeks. Me not going to church like.’ He looked round his customers and laughed, and some of them laughed with him. ‘But why should you think I’ve seen your Annie?’
‘I…I can’t find her. She’s been missing all morning. By the way—’ She glanced to each side of her now before moving closer to the counter and saying, ‘You…you had a guest staying with you?’
‘We still have two guests staying with us’—he thumbed up towards the ceiling—‘a Mr and Mrs Watson. Like this part of the country they do. Come every year. Have done for this past six…’
‘I mean a gentleman. Er…a lone gentleman?’
‘Oh, you mean Mr Gardiner. He left this morning first thing. Well, not all that early, but he caught the nine o’clock coach going through.’
‘Where to?’
He pursed his lips. ‘Well, as far as I know back to Newcastle. Traveller he be, so he said. Doing business in Newcastle. Went into the city every day he did from here. Why?’
The Whip (The Spaniard's Gift) Page 30