by Adam Roberts
It was during this time that Henry got together with a man called Rossi. They weren’t church-married, but it was a to-all-intents-and-purposes union. He was sweet, and physically demonstrative, and good-looking; although he was also weak and dreamy and almost wholly lacking in initiative. But she let him stay, because it was better than being alone. And in a little while they had a daughter. Henry called her Rosie, because Henry thought that went cutely with the name Rossi.
Four years went by with nothing but the usual ups and downs.
Henry had acquired a reputation amongst the youngsters of the Borough as a humourless old bag. It was true she rarely laughed—but then again, what was there to laugh about? It didn’t help that she was with a man nobody respected. Teens would yell jokes at her, “Did you hear about the woman so stupid she had a man’s name?” And once, when she was waiting on a fishing line by the pond, and couldn’t just move away, three youngsters came up and told her a story about the stupid woman who married Rossi.
“How stupid was she?”
“She was so stupid that one day she came home and found her husband cheating on her with another woman—a redhead, it was.”
“So what did the stupid woman do?”
“What did she do? She pulled out a gun and held it to her own head, to pull the trigger. And when Rossi leapt up and said, stop, what are you doing? she said, ‘Shut up, I’m shooting you next.’”
Jokes weren’t funny. Best to just ignore them.
One day in the summer Henry was coming back from Bicester where she had done a bit of trading, and settled a few promissaries, and stayed overnight. In the morning, she’d had breakfast and headed home with nothing in her backpack, and accordingly no real fear of being robbed. But a mile or so from home two teenage lads had jumped her, dragged her into the trees and bundled on top of her. She struggled, but they were stronger than she was. For a while they felt her up, and excitedly called out all the obscene things they planned to do with her, and how much she would love it all. She knew who they were, of course: one was Hal, Old Denny’s youngest son from Oakmanor farm, and the other was one of the Stringley boys. So she kept her head, and tried rebuking them in as stern a voice as she could manage. Told them to stop. Warned them that their actions would come back to punish them, that she would tell their parents. They laughed at her, and pulled her top off, and tried to get her trousers off. This proved a harder task than they had anticipated, and after a little more struggling they suddenly gave up and ran away. Henry sat in amongst the trees, gathering herself and putting on her clothes again. She could hear their laughter receding into the distance.
She went straight home and told everybody what had happened to her. Her brother Ted was furious; and Rossi looked pained and distant. Mammy counselled caution, and there was a big row about the whole thing.
“We can’t afford a war with Old Denny,” she said. “He’s much richer than us. He outnumbers us in friends and allies. We’d lose, and that’s that.” But the next morning Ted had borrowed two horses from Carrie, two farms down, because (he said) riding on horseback made it harder for other people to ignore the three of them. Then he had ridden one horse, and Rossi and Henry had shared the other, and they all made their way to Old Denny’s place. The old man was expecting them, of course, and opened his gate and came out to speak with them alone. He was carrying a rifle, and his people shut the gate behind him.
“I know what happened,” he said, without preliminary, “and I’m sorry. I’ve thrashed my boy. I can’t speak for that Mam Stringley, or what she’ll do to hers, but mine’s been punished.”
“We’re not happy about it,” said Ted.
“Won’t happen again,” said Old Denny.
Rossi said nothing. He was staring away to the left, like a mooncalf, distracted by some birds in the trees.
“It’s a bad business,” said Ted.
“I can offer you two piglets,” said Old Denny. “I can’t speak for Mam Stringley, but she’ll surely have something to offer you too.”
“Well all right then,” said Ted, shifting in his saddle. “Two, is it? Well all right.”
“I don’t want piglets,” said Henry, speaking loud enough for everyone in Old Denny’s compound to hear. “I’m the one was wronged, and I don’t want piglets.”
“What do you want then?” asked Old Denny, his features taking on the familiar lineament of his bargaining face.
“I want to thrash the boy myself.”
Nobody was expecting this answer. Old Denny stared up at her, and then said, “I’ve already whipped him. He’s had his thrashing.”
“Not at my hands, he hasn’t. I’m the one he wronged.”
“Being thrashed twice for…” Old Denny began, and stopped with a growl. He changed his tack. “They’re just kids, and they was just mucking about. There was no—” but he couldn’t maintain eye contact with Henry for this next word, “rape performed.” He faced Ted again, and addressed him directly, “Two piglets is more than fair.”
“We can always find room for pigs, sis,” said Ted.
“Rape was what they were planning,” said Henry.
“They were just mucking about,” Old Denny repeated. “Having some fun.”
“Wasn’t fun for me.”
“Well,” said Old Denny, shifting his rifle from one hand to another, and still looking at Ted, “I’ve made my offer.”
“Sis?” urged Ted.
“Keep your piglets, Denny,” said Henry. “Let’s go home.”
“I already thrashed him, like I said,” Denny called after them, as they rode away. “He’s learned his lesson—I made my offer. You all heard it.”
Back home there was another row. Henry used the J word, but Mammy laughed in her face. “How do you get justice by picking a fight with Old Denny? If you beat Hal he’ll come wanting restitution from us, and it won’t only be a couple of piglets he demands. You’ll just have to let it go.” Everybody had an opinion. Sally said she’d always hated Hal, and that he’d once pushed her against a wall in Bicester and put his hands in her pants. Ted said they’d lost face by not taking the piglets and now they had nothing and would get nothing.
“I’m going to see Mam Stringley,” said Henry.
“In that case I’m coming with you,” said Ted.
“You can come if you keep your mouth shut,” said Henry.
So they rode off together, just brother and sister, this time with Henry leading the way on her borrowed horse, and Ted checking his gun over and over.
Mam Stringley didn’t even come out of her compound. She leaned from a first floor window and demanded to know why she was being bothered at all.
“You know why I’m here,” Henry said. “You know what your boy did.”
“High spirits,” said Mam Stringley.
“Bring him out, and I’ll show him some high spirits of my own,” said Henry. “I have a crop here.”
“A what?”
“A riding crop. Send your boy out.”
“He won’t be coming out to be whupped by you, Henrietta. He is not going to be whupped by no-one, I say. What did he even do wrong? Whupped, for a little kiss and a cuddle?”
“A kiss, a cuddle and an attempted rape.”
“Who cares, Henrietta? I heared what passed at Old Denny’s. Such airs, you have! You’re no thirteen-year-old virgin, that we should get upset you get fucked by strangers. You’re old. If you ever were anything save an old boot to look at, I’m surprised to learn it. You ought to be grateful for the attention.”
“You a woman,” said Henry, calmly enough. “You, to speak such.”
“Fuck off Henrietta Taylor, and don’t bother us no more.”
“Mam Stringley look me once in the face, just one time, and then you can go your way. Look me right in the face, one woman to another.”
“One mother to another,” said Mam Stringley, meeting Henry’s gaze, “boys is boys.”
This, Henry reflected afterwards, was when the softer tiss
ues of her heart crystallised into a more pitiless substance. It took all her self-control not to yell back at Mam Stringley that Owl and Crow had been good boys, and brought up in the ways of respect, and would never do what the Stringley brat had done. But her beautiful lads were dead and Stringley’s were, however worthlessly, alive. And Stringley only said what she said to get a reaction. So Henry kept her lid down, and smiled and said, “You let yours run wild the way they are, they’ll be hanging from one of Father John’s ropes, Mam Stringley.”
“Nasty woman,” said Mam Stringley, laughing. “They should have fucked you proper, my dearie, and maybe you’d be happy instead of so cranky.”
“That’s uncalled for, Mam Stringley,” yelled Ted, suddenly. He was, Henry realised belatedly, very angry. That explained his uncharacteristic silence. “You ought to be ashamed, saying such a thing to my sister’s face.”
“Oh,” returned Mam Stringley, pleased (Henry could see) to be given a reason to lose her own temper, “and her telling me my own boys will be hanged by Father John is not shameful, is that it? Shame on the whole withered Taylor clan, I say. You’re all cursed in the heart, and none of you will prosper.” And she drew herself in and shut her wooden shutters and that was the end of their conversation.
The following weeks were pretty uncomfortable, but things settled down eventually. Settled down everywhere except inside Henry’s heart. But for the time being she had to put up with Hal swaggering about, and gurning at her insolently every time he saw her, and had to put up with young Tor Stringley spreading rumours that she’d been the one to initiate the whole encounter—she’d waylaid them on the path, he was telling people, and begged them to take her into the forest and do her. They’d only held back out of respect for Rossi, Tor said. That last bit was a particularly risible touch, for nobody in the district had any respect for dreamy, quiet-headed Rossi.
There was nothing she could do. It would have been a simple matter to ambush either boy and punish them—beat them, slice their nostril, drill a hole in some extremity. But everybody from Bicester to Buckingham, more or less, knew the story, so straightforward revenge would come straight back and bite her. The general opinion in the Borough was that she’d been stuck-up and stubborn-headed to turn down Old Den’s offer of two piglets. It wasn’t that people necessarily believed Tor’s malicious stories. They knew what those boys were capable of. But that didn’t mean they had much sympathy to spare for Henry. Any punishment she herself meted out, directly, would have consequences. In all likelihood it would lead to open war—a bad idea on any terms, Mammy pointed out, not least in the likelihood that a squad of Father John’s enforcers would ride down to restore the peace, and hang up half a dozen people picked at random to encourage the others—by their thumbs if John was in a good mood, by their necks if he wasn’t. So Henry just had to endure it.
Autumn passed, and the shame of the assault died down. But at Christmas Old Den made a big deal of sending round a young suckling pig, cooked with wild onions and tied up with a thick strand of string. Just string, said Mammy, but Henry knew perfectly well it was supposed to represent a whip. A peace offering, the lad who handed it over said. A peace offering. But it wasn’t. It was a foot on Henry’s neck. And everybody was talking about the gift, and at chapel Old Den was there staring pointedly at the altar, but his sons couldn’t hold back from peering at her and grinning.
By that stage, though, she had hardened her heart.
Still she was invested, as the phrase goes, in keeping the momentum of everyday life going, and her daughter was a comfort. Rose was a withdrawn, rather serious child, who took after her father more than her mother. But she was affectionate—as was he—and seemed healthy.
One day, in mushroom season, Henry was picking fungi in the forests north of the compound when Tor Stringley—a young man now, and considerably stronger than she was—came at her from, it seemed, nowhere. He must (she reasoned afterwards) have been watching her movements, and have followed her. At any rate, he grabbed her by the neck. He banged her against the trunk of a tree, and threw her on the ground. Then he pulled her trousers down to her thighs, just enough to humiliate her, and sneered, “I wouldn’t if you was the only woman in the Borough. I wouldn’t if you was twenty years younger and twenty billion times as pretty. I’m going with Laurie from Mayfield now, and she and I do things you wouldn’t credit, old woman.” And he left her.
There was nothing she could do about this incident.
The next thing to happen was that Rossi went off with a cult, and took Rose with him. This was a blow made harder to bear by its unexpectedness. A wandering band of religious loonies came through the district and stayed for a few weeks in tents by the Common Pond, until they were chased away. They worshipped not the One God, or Big Christ, or any of the regular things. They didn’t even observe Christmas. They worshipped the Sisters, they said. According to them the Sisters were goddesses who lived in heaven, and they were displeased with humankind for the way men had made war on women. Women were the sacred principle, they said, and the planet Venus was the true centre of the solar system and a mother-goddess in her own right. The sun was a male deity who had elbowed himself aggressively close to the Earth, and the effect of his rays was to make men violent and red-raging and burnt up with lustful fires. But a true worship of the Sisters, the triple goddess in the form of maiden, mother and crone, would restore harmony and fertility to the world. There was a lot more in this vein. It didn’t surprise Henry that Rossi drank it in like a thirsty man at an oasis. A lazy, randy fellow who had spent his life drawn to stronger, older women, it chimed perfectly with the masculine passivity of his worldview. But Henry didn’t quite realise how deep this new gospel had sunk into him. He spent all day with the Sisterhood, and when he came back to the farm he attempted to convert Henry to their views.
“Bollocks to that,” she told him. “You know how many bonkers religions have sprung up in this benighted country? They’re a cult, leave them be.”
He tried three nights running, and by the third night she was so pissed off with his unusual persistence she smacked him right in the face. He took this rebuke meekly. Indeed, it wasn’t as if she’d hit him very hard. His beard took the brunt, so she didn’t even leave a red mark. But two days later the Church of the Sisters packed up their tents and left, and Rossi went with them. He took Rose because, it turned out, the Church valued virgin girls above all other kinds of human being. Indeed, there were rumours that the real purpose of these missionary treks around the countryside was to pick up as many pre-pubescent girls as possible, with their parents if the parents could be persuaded, by straight abduction if not. These girls were taken to be priestesses of the Sisters in some great holy chateaux in the north—at York, some said. On a platform in the Eastern Sea, said others. Others even suggested the palace was located on the moon, and that the girls taken there would never grow up but would spend eternity dancing in complex circular patterns and singing songs to the Sisters to avert a renewed tragedy.
It was all bollocks, of course it was. But although Henry wept and raged, and ranged about the countryside looking for them, they were gone. Nobody would help. Nobody would lend her a horse; nobody would even rent her one, and she couldn’t afford to buy one.
Carrie told her to her face, “You’ll be riding off up and down the county trying to find your girl, and wearing my nag out, and if you did find her there’d be a firefight and my nag would get hurt. No, Henry, not with my horses you don’t.”
Ted said he would help, but he also said he was glad to see the back of Rossi, who had never been a proper man, and whom he’d never much liked. But Mammy was not who she had been, and Ted was kept very busy running the farm. So in the end it came down to Henry filling a pack with supplies and taking a walking stick out into the countryside, trying to track the group. It was fruitless, though it took her two weeks to accept that fact.
She lived another four years in that place, as her Mammy grew vaguer and vaguer in he
r mind. Eventually Mammy Taylor became a sort of elaborate walking-talking-pissing life-size toy version of a human being. Ted took over official ownership of the farm, and it stung Henry that he didn’t even discuss it with her first. Mammy took to absconding at night, when everybody was asleep, and wandering the woodlands naked, calling some man’s name over and over—not Dadda’s name. Some prior lover, to whom her ruined brain now returned. It didn’t matter in the summer, but when the colder weather did not deter her they began locking her in her bedroom. Eventually she stopped eating, and they had to tip mugs of broth in her mouth to keep her alive. But then she stopped drinking, kept her lips stubbornly sealed, and that led quickly enough to her death.
Henry was an old woman now, by the standards of her community. She was reduced to a condition of effectual childlessness, and uncourted even by the single men in the area, and now Ted ran the farm. He was not so skilled at getting the wheat and corn to grow as Mammy had been, but he did what he could, and he enjoyed enough success to maintain his reputation. Ted had his wife, Angelica, and his own kids living on the farm: six kids, all told. One died in the first few days and another died of sepsis at eight. But the remaining four were growing, and working the farm. Henry felt increasingly marginalised by this new centre of gravity.
One fine spring morning Father John sent a man down to live on the farm. He had heard such good things about the way they eased crops out before Monsoon, and grain was so valuable, the fellow said, Father John took a personal interest in it. Barry Winstanley was this man’s name, but he insisted that his friends called him Stan. He was a tall, skinny fellow of middle age with three long scars running down the side of his face and neck—from fighting at Father John’s right hand, he said. There was a nasty glint in his eye. Henry knew better than to trust any man who had got so used to getting his own way.