The Whip (The Spaniard's Gift)

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Lie still, dear. Lie still. You’re better this morning.’

  Was she better? Was she not going to die? She was very tired, she was very very tired. If you could die in your sleep it could be a good way to go, not knowing anything about it.

  She continued to drift in and out of sleep. She seemed to float away on the subdued voices. Sometimes she could hear what the voices were saying; but it didn’t make much sense to her. Mary was talking to someone down the kitchen now.

  … ‘That Mrs Bessell was talking to her man, and Bett Skinner who was there doing the washing heard that apparently Mrs Bessell called at the vicarage the next morning and there was Miss Wilkinson having hysterics. As far as Bett could make out it was over some book or other she had found that the parson used to write in. Filthy, she said it was. Can you believe it? The woman’s gone off her head: man starvation attacks spinsters like her an’ they’ll say anything. But Bett said there must have been other things in the book; blasphemous, Mrs Bessell said they were, not believing in God and things like that. Now I ask you, our Jimmy, can you believe it? People will say anything, make mountains out of molehills, like they did about finding them together. As I said, what did you expect them to do freezing to death, sit at each end of that sodden floor? Daft, that’s what people are, daft. Not that I don’t think they weren’t fond of each other, mind. Well, he practically brought her here, didn’t he. But as for hanky-panky, well he wouldn’t get up to that, would he, not in his position. Although mind, I’ve often wondered about a man like him not being married, because he didn’t look like an ordinary parson, white-livered you know like some, or barrel-round like others with noses you could strike a light off. No, he hadn’t the face of a parson; nor the voice for that matter, not that I ever heard him preach. But that’s another thing about him: because you didn’t go into his church he didn’t pass you in the road without a word. Asked after everyone of mine he did from they were nippers; knew them by name an’ all. Anyway, there was hell let loose down there as far as I could gather yesterday, but more about him writin’ something about potching the rum-runners years ago. Aye; aye; they’re saying it was him, but they can’t prove it like. An’ he didn’t say in his book where the stuff was. They’ve been turnin’ over headstones in the night, they say. Eeh, the goin’s on! Pity I wasn’t there all the time, I’d ‘ave got me ears stretched as to the latest. As for you, our Jimmy, you’re like a clam.’

  ‘Enough talkin’ when you’re at it, Ma. By the way, how long do you think she’s gona be like this?’

  ‘Oh, it’ll take some time to pull herself round. But I hope it isn’t too long ’cos I want to get down home; I don’t know what they’re up to there.’

  ‘Oh, they’re managin’, they’re big enough.’

  ‘Aye, you said it, three hulkin’ brutes. Any road, I’ll be shot of two of them this year and maybe then I’ll be able to put me legs up…that’s until their bairns start runnin’ about me again.’

  Bairns running about. Emma saw a bairn running about: she was running all round the kitchen table, dancing as she sang:

  Two, four, six, eight,

  Mary at the cottage gate,

  Eating cherries off a plate,

  Two, four, six, eight.

  She was bonny like a fairy. She was dancing up the kitchen. Now she had jumped on the bed and thrown herself across her and made her cry out against the weight.

  ‘There! There! Come on, drink this. Open your eyes, that’s a lass, open your eyes.’

  Emma opened her eyes and muttered something, and Mary said, ‘What is it, lass?’

  ‘The book.’

  ‘The book? You want the book?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was the breath of a whisper.

  Mary turned from the bed now and, looking down the kitchen, she said under her breath, ‘She wants the book, the Good Book. It’s in the sitting room on his table; bring it.’

  A few minutes later Mary placed the Bible in Emma’s hands which now looked white and soft, only to have it thrust slowly away.

  Mary handed it back to Jimmy, saying, ‘She doesn’t want it now.’

  ‘Ma.’

  Jimmy beckoned her from the bed, then said quietly, ‘You were talking about the parson’s book; do you think she heard?’

  ‘No, no, me voice wouldn’t carry up that far.’

  ‘You could use your voice for a hunter’s horn, Ma.’

  She pushed him now, saying, ‘Go on, get outside afore I clip your ear. Isn’t there any work to be done?’

  ‘Mary.’ The whisper came from the bed, and she hurried back to it and, bending over Emma, said, ‘Yes, me dear.’

  ‘What…day…is it?’

  ‘What day is it? Well, the morrow’s New Year’s Eve, lass. And look, can you see, the sun’s shinin’. Would you believe it? The sun’s shinin’ an’ the morrow’s New Year’s Eve. It’s got a nerve after the weather we’ve had lately. But there it is, lass. Can you see the window?’ She raised Emma’s head gently from the pillow. ‘It’s gettin’ us ready for the New Year and brighter things ahead. They would have to be brighter, they couldn’t be worse than this one’s been. Anyway there it is, the sun, and it’ll soon have you on your feet. Nothin’ like the sun for gettin’ people on to their feet.’

  It was the second week in January when she put her feet to the floor and it was snowing again, but a fine thin snow, and Mary said it wasn’t lying.

  It was only with the aid of Mary’s thick arm that she could stay upright, and when she reached the chair by the fire she felt faint with weakness. She had been in bed for more than a month and it was the first time in her life, apart from when she had the child, that she’d been ill, and now she was feeling so weak she doubted if ever her strength would return.

  After a few moments she looked at Mary who was heating some milk on the fire and said, ‘How is he?’

  Mary straightened her back and, her head jerking towards the far end of the room, she said, ‘You mean mister?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, just the same. Well’—she suddenly lifted the pan from the fire and blew at the rising froth—‘he’s missed you. That’s only natural. And he hasn’t much to say, not even to Mr Hudson or his missis when they come in to see him, and you. But perhaps you don’t remember.’

  Emma shook her head slowly, and Mary went on, ‘And then there’s Tom Turnbull; he’s been up twice. I nearly asked him what brought him ’cos he’s a Nosy Parker if ever there was one.’

  ‘Mary.’

  ‘Yes, lass?’

  Mary had poured the milk into a cup and was now sprinkling cinnamon on the top of it, and as she stirred it she brought it back to Emma, saying again, ‘Yes, lass?’

  ‘The parson, was…was he here before when…when I didn’t know anything?’

  Mary drew a cracket from the side of the fireplace and placed it by Emma’s chair; then putting the cup of milk on it, she turned to the fire again and, taking up the poker, she said, ‘Truth to tell, lass, I haven’t seen hilt nor hair of him. But…but then it’s understandable.’

  Some seconds passed before Emma said, ‘What’s understandable, Mary?’

  ‘Oh, lass, we’ll talk when you get a bit better.’

  ‘Mary—’ Emma put her hand out and clutched at Mary’s skirt, staying her hurried departure from the fire, and now she said, ‘Please. I’m…I’m all right, but tell me what’s happened to him. I’ll only worry.’

  ‘Well’—Mary tossed her head from side to side—‘there’s nobody likes a bit of gossip more than meself, you know that, Emma, but down there it’s all hearsay—he say, an’ she say.’

  ‘Tell me, Mary.’

  Mary went to the seat placed at the opposite side of the fire and, sitting down, she lifted up her apron and began to smooth the bottom hem of it between her finger and thumb as she said, ‘’Twas all started by that skinnymalink Miss Wilkinson. She found a book of some sort that the parson had been writin’ in, what they call a dairy, or a diary, I
don’t know which, but anyway he had been writin’ in it every day for years apparently. And because she’s always had a fancy for him, an’ that’s well-known through the village, she had hysterics. So what does she do? She ups and sends it to the bishop.’

  ‘No! No!’

  ‘Aye, lass, that’s what she did. An’ well now, the latest is, he’s on the carpet, an’ some say he’s likely to get the push.’

  There was a long silence. Mary sat still plying the hem of her apron, her eyes cast down towards it, while Emma’s gaze was centred on the heart of the fire.

  It was when Mary suddenly said, ‘Drink your milk, lass, while it’s still warm,’ that Emma looked at her and asked, ‘Was…was he ill too?’

  ‘Well, he was out for the count for some days, I understand, but not like you. You got the pumonia an’ more besides. I’ve seen pumonia afore, but the dose you had went to your head good’n proper.’

  There followed another silence; then Emma asked quietly, ‘How is Mr Bowman? Do you know?’

  ‘Coughing, worse, I understand from our Jimmy. I send him down now and again. ‘Course I haven’t seen him. Jimmy takes the bread down and gets his coal in an’ does odds an’ ends for him…By! Emma, I’ve got to say this to you although it’s like braggin’ ’cos he’s as good as me own, but you would have been hard put to it if it hadn’t been for our Jimmy.’

  ‘Yes, I know that, Mary, and I’ll be ever grateful.’

  ‘Well, you’ve started by lettin’ him have the cottage; he’s luckier than most at his age.’

  ‘It’s nothing, the cottage.’

  ‘It’s as good as what we’ve got except that we’ve got an outhouse and a lean to. By the way, the mister was asking when you’d be able to get up. Do you think you could toddle in and see him in a little while?’

  ‘Not today, Mary; I don’t feel up to it yet.’

  And she knew she wouldn’t feel up to it tomorrow, or the next day either. She didn’t know how she was going to face Barney, for she wasn’t the same person he had looked upon before the snowstorm. She would never be that person again. Those two nights and two days spent alone with Henry had changed her, but more so had Annie’s craftiness, leading up to her desertion. That would leave a mark on her she’d never be able to erase.

  It was three days later when she went into the sitting room, and the change she saw in Barney’s face was as great as the mirror showed her in her own; and there was no welcoming look in his eyes. He didn’t speak until she reached the foot of the bed and had pulled a chair towards him and sat down, when he said, ‘Well, here we are then.’

  ‘Yes, Barney, here we are. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Oh, me? I’m feeling fine. Lying here doing nothing all me life, just thinkin’, thinkin’; what else could I feel but fine?’

  ‘What’s the matter, Barney?’ Her voice was quiet. ‘What’s making you like this? I’ve been ill, you know I have, or else I would have been about me duties afore now.’

  ‘Yes, I know you’ve been ill, and I know how you got ill. The whole countryside knows how you got ill, trapped in the old mill with the parson. But you didn’t expect to be snowed up, I suppose.’

  She pulled herself to her feet, then hung on to the back of the chair as she said, ‘It’s not true, it isn’t. I was out looking for Annie. I went down to Mr Bowman’s cottage thinking she might be there. I was half-demented. The parson came and he was to help me home. You will have heard what kind of a night it was. Well, you could see from the window.’ She pointed. ‘Do you think we stayed in there on purpose? We dug at the snow with our bare hands for hours.’ Her voice was rising and weak tears were raining down her cheeks now, but they did not seem to have any softening effect on Barney for he cried back at her, ‘Aye, and by all accounts you must have lain together for hours an’ all. And he’s losing his job over it, because he’s been writing about you and him for years. They came up from the village bustin’ to tell me, but I couldn’t tell them it wasn’t any news to me. Oh. Oh, you can look surprised. It was a long time afore I cottoned on. I used to think it was out of kindness for me condition he came and read his blasted books and talked his high-falutin talk. But no, it was so that he could eye me wife and more likely have it on the side afore you got to the mill. Or was that a meeting place?’

  She wasn’t aware that Mary had come into the room until she felt herself being turned about while Mary yelled at Barney, ‘You want somethin’ for your corner, goin’ on like that! You should be damned glad she stuck to you all these years. Another would have been off an’ you would have ended up in the poorhouse hospital. If she’d had ten men, could you have blamed her? Who do you think you are, bawlin’ your head off?’

  ‘Get out of here, out of my house!’

  As the sitting room door closed on them, Mary repeated, ‘Out of my house. Well, whoever sees to him from now on, it won’t be me. Come on, lass. Come on.’ She led Emma forward, adding now, ‘Stop your crying, it’s not gona do you any good. And when I get back to that village I’ll skite the hunger off Tom Turnbull, you see if I don’t. That’s all he came up here for. I knew it, I knew it, because after he was gone that one was unbearable, like a bear with a sore skull, nothin’ pleased him.

  ‘There now. Sit down, sit down.’ She pressed Emma into the chair by the fire; then bending her face close to her, she said, ‘That parson should have married you years ago, an’ him a young fellow full of stridin’ life. It was bustin’ out of him then. Yes, that’s what he should have done, married you years ago, and you would have had none of this. ’Cos what life have you had? I’ll tell you this, I wouldn’t swop mine for it. No lass, I wouldn’t, for you’ve been nowt but a skivvy from the day you stepped into this yard.’

  Mary was right. Oh yes, she was right; she was Mrs Yorkless the farmer’s wife but she was still a skivvy and was likely to go on being so. Why hadn’t she died in the mill? It would have been good to die there.

  Twelve

  ‘After I’d said my piece with regard to resigning he dismissed his chaplain with a nod, and the other God-fearing men, and then he bade me sit down, after which the business of the diary came up.

  ‘He was very interested in the part about the liquor. He laughed. Did I actually remove it? And where was it now?

  ‘“Well, my lord,” I said, “you’ve read the diary.”

  ‘You see I had made a joke about that part, and I had never actually stated in my writing that we’d moved the stuff. The only clue he would have got from his reading was, I mentioned the number of bottles. It’s a good job I didn’t refer to the tomb of John Freeman Ellis. Anyway, I felt sorry for I saw he was embarrassed; he practically apologised for having read my diary. I’ve always known he was a gentleman, and a very learned one, but at our meeting I found him to be a very human one too.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘Oh,’—Henry swivelled round in his chair and held out his hands towards the fire before continuing with a smile—‘he began to talk. And he talked, and he talked, and he talked. How such men can talk!

  ‘And they are good to listen to, even if you don’t believe what they are saying. There he sat behind his magnificent desk, a great blazing fire in the grate, the room as sumptuous as any I have ever seen, much more so, and he spoke of the flock who had to be defended and protected. He didn’t say from such as me, but somehow I got that feeling. Yet all the while, I knew he was aiming to be kind and understanding.’

  Henry now gave a deep laugh and moved his head and said, ‘There were parts in my diary that I’m sure he enjoyed, the parts where I spoke of my love for Emma. I recall I sometimes became quite flowery and poetic; it was my only outlet. He even touched on that. He said that he could not understand the liaison when it was open for me to take a wife. Here I was, he said, in the prime of life, still a very presentable man. Yes’—he smiled again as he nodded towards Ralph—‘that’s what I am, a very presentable man, so why did I frustrate myself by…lusting? Yes, yes, he did,
Ralph.’ He was laughing now. ‘He used the word lusting, but tentatively. Why did I demean myself by lusting after a married woman, and she handicapped by an invalid husband?’

  ‘You should have said that was the reason.’

  ‘You know something? I did in so many words. The poor man; he didn’t know I was drunk with a kind of spiritual freedom. Anyway, he changed the subject back to my ministry. And at this point I told him I’d never voiced the opinions in the book from the pulpit. But he came back at me here, saying that it was impossible for man’s inner beliefs not to seep through into the words of his mouth, and that there was a section of Christians who weren’t blind believers, and it was they who would read between the lines; it was they whom I might set thinking. I said, wasn’t it a good thing that they should think? And you know what his answer was to that? When one had faith one did not question. He pointed out that that was why the Roman Catholic church was so strong: they were taught not to question. He regretted, he said, that there was a tendency in our church today for a section of the flock to ask questions with regard to their faith. It wasn’t a healthy sign, but one of sickness…And more and more. We got in deep here, and I got the feeling that if I’d known him better I might still be in the ministry, for he obviously had a feeling for the poor. Yet, at the same time, I felt bound to ask him what the church really did for the poor, and pointed out the one and two roomed cottages from which the church drew rent, their assets being mud floors and dungheaps. I wished I hadn’t liked him for then I could have let myself go. Anyway, by offering my resignation, I saved him the trouble of having to defrock me or having me brought up before a consistory court…or whatever.’

  ‘At the end he shook my hand and said he would pray for me, and his final words were, “You should never have come into the church because you have never found God; you are really an agnostic.”‘