All the dear faces

by Audrey Howard

  “Reed . . ."

  “. .. her velvets and brocades are .. .”

  Restraining her instant jealous need to know how Reed Macauley was so well acquainted with velvets and brocades and the marvellous dress maker in Carlisle, she put an imperious hand across his mouth.

  “Stop it, Reed. You are doing it already, arranging me and what I should wear in the way you think I should be. . .

  “Confound it! Annie, you don't mean to wear those bloody trousers forever, do you?"

  “No, but I mean to change them when Annie Abbott is ready, not Reed Macauley. In the meanwhile I want to . . . to talk to you, ask your advice . . ."

  “Of course, my darling." He was at once gratified, she could see, by her female, or so he thought, dependence on him.

  “I mean to . . . put in a man to run Upfell, under my supervision, naturally. No one knows it's mine yet, and of course it isn't until I have paid you what I owe. Two hundred guineas will take a lot of finding . . ."

  “Annie, I don't want it."

  “Reed . . . !" Her voice was forbidding.

  “I'm sorry, Annie."

  “. . . but I should make a fair profit out of the combinedflocks of Upfell and Browhead which brings me to the question of my swills . . ."

  “Swills?" Sitting up, he pressed his lips to her shoulder, his hands still at her breasts, tweaking her nipples between his thumb and forefinger. He hitched himself behind her, his legs splayed one on either side of her body and she could feel the thrust of him between her buttocks. His hands ran down her belly as his mouth moved on her shoulders and at the nape of her neck. His fingers found the sweet, moist parting of her and involuntarily she opened herself wider to allow them to slip inside. The hot fire ran from them, down the inside of her thighs, up into her belly and thrusting breasts and she arched her back .. .

  With a cry of rage she dragged herself away from him, turning on her haunches like a wild cat, her eyes flaring, her teeth bared, her nails ready to claw him and he fell back.

  “Jesus Christ, what have I done now?" he gasped, his face still slack with his desire, his body at the full peak of his arousal.

  “Nothing, except what all men do with women."

  “And you did not want it?" His eyes had become dangerous. He did not like to have his love flung in his face, nor did he care for the crass foolishness of his own male rejected body, which she had caused.

  “Of course I did, but would you deal with a man in the same contemptuous way as you have . . ."

  “Don't be so bloody ridiculous! It is not the same at all." He began to laugh at the very idea, ready to take her in his arms, to smooth the outrage from her naked, female body, but she would not have it. Instead she reached for her clothes and with stiff and trembling fingers, fumbled her way into them.

  “Annie . . ." He was still ready to be amused, to laugh, to forgive, to continue, but she turned on him again, her wild temper beautiful and unrestrained.

  “Treat me seriously, Reed," she spat at him.

  “I do! By God, I do. Am I not demonstrating it by begging you to come and live with me at . . ."

  “Not that." Her voice was scornful "Not that, not us, but me, me, Annie Abbott. I am to be . . . in business as a man is in business and I want respect for it. A serious consideration of how I am to go about it and I am asking you to help me. As a man who has many business connections I wish you to advise another on how to go about . . . well, all the things that will need to be done . . ."

  “Could we not wait until a more appropriate time . . ."

  “You mean when I am sitting prettily in your drawing room, the certainty of my life with you firmly established and the chains you have put on me, locked and secured so that I may be more easily kept at your side with nothing of my own, no one but you, dependent on . . ."

  “Chains, chains! Christ Almighty, would that I could. If you'd let me keep you, comfortably, of course, in a room where no one, no man, could lay eyes on you and where . . . Annie . . . don't do this . . . don't let me do this to you . . . I'm sorry . . . sorry . . ." He groaned, bending his head and she was made terribly aware of how much this strong man loved her.

  “Christ . . . oh, sweet Jesus . . ." and she could hear plainly in his voice the cry that meant 'I can't bear it' and she winced, for despite his strength he was very frail, weakened by his love for her.

  She knelt down and took him in her arms, rocking him as a mother would a hurting child.

  “Tell me," he mumbled into her shoulder, "but first let me get dressed.”

  She meant to go into the business of producing swill baskets, she told him, when they were both calm. She leaned in the curve of his arm as they rested their backs against a rough grey stone which grew out of the grass.

  “Not just a dozen swills at a time, but a hundred, a thousand even. I have the coppicing at Browhead and now at Upfell, and could purchase more. There is a coppice wood for sale by auction in November, at Wood Top near Stepthwaite. Mostly oak of fourteen years' growth so it is almost ready for harvesting, but of course . . . well, when I have the money, that is the kind of land I will belooking for. And I will need a . . . a . . . place to work. I have the building, the barn, which could be turned into a small workshop, but I will need more, and then there are the men to make them. They are used in so many industries, the need is enormous. Coal mines, the shipping lines, farming, they could even be sent abroad. I have served my apprenticeship, Reed, so I know what I'm talking about. I could train boys, men, to be swillers, or take on men who are fully trained themselves. All it needs is someone to find the market for the swills and supply it."

  “And that would be?"

  “Perhaps myself . . . or . . ."

  “I thought so. You would tramp about the country treating with men of business?"

  “I already have a contact in Whitehaven. A sea captain who said, for a small commission, of course, that he would take my swills to Liverpool and sell them for me."

  “I see.”

  Dear God, it was hard and would get harder, she agonised, feeling the struggle of him as he did his best not to turn and shake her into obedience and submission. He didn't like it. He was doing his best to allow her to be the woman she wanted to be, to do what she longed to do, but it went against every instinct in his masculine world which told him that she should be in his life, in his home, in his bed, safe and loved, at least by him; an instinct that detested the very idea of her being independent, free and at liberty to do as she pleased.

  “Will you help me, Reed? Tell me where to start? Where you would start?”

  He was silent for so long she sat up, turning to gaze anxiously into his face. He was looking out over the pool, his attention centred on the still depths of it, his face set, his eyes flat and expressionless.

  “Reed?"

  “I shall lose you if I don't, won't I?"

  “Oh no, my darling, I love you . . ."

  “I know you do, and I also know that if I let you struggle on, unaided, you will do your damnedest to succeed, but you will resent me. Resent my unconcern, though of course, I shall be concerned. I have no choice, have I?"

  “Of course you have."

  “No, I knew it long ago. To keep you I must set you free so . . ." turning to smile sadly into her eager face, ". . . let us begin. Your first lesson in sharp business dealings ... "

  “Honest business dealings, Reed."

  “Indeed, but you must learn that the two can run together.”

  *

  She was vaulting the wall at the back of Browhead when Charlie rose up at her feet. Her heart was light, her face vibrant with it, her eyes dreaming, her senses enthralled with the marvel that was to be her future. With Reed, with her love, with her satisfying attack on the world of business where only men went. For that moment her farm, her sheep, her expansion into Upfell, the life she had lived with Charlie and Phoebe, and before that with Cat and Natty, had evaporated as easily as the mist at the top of Skiddaw when the sun touche
d it.

  “Where in hell have you been?" he snarled, catching her wrist with a cruel, savage hand, one which meant to hurt.

  “Charlie, you scared me, jumping up out of nowhere like that. What were you doing behind the wall . . . ?"

  “Never mind what I was doing, tell me what you were doing, and who with, and not just today but every day for the past few weeks? I've seen you go up there to the peat moss and come back with an empty sledge. You thought I was in the coppice working, as I am supposed to, as I have been doing for the past four years, without wages mind, whilst you crept up there on the fell, and by God, the temptation to see for myself what you were up to has been almost too much to bear, and only the . . . the horror of knowing, of actually knowing, what I only suspect, has kept me from it. I could not stand it you see, having the images which torment my over active imagination, actuallycome to life so I stayed away, but I knew, of course I did . . . oh God, Annie . . . tell me I am imagining it, that you have . . . have been . . . elsewhere . . . anywhere .. but not with him . . ."

  “Charlie ... "

  “Don't . . . don't try to . . . to comfort me, Annie. Don't lie." His face was haunted. "I have never known anyone as honest and brave and beautiful as you, my dearest love, and I couldn't bear it if you lied to me now. I've watched you taking on the whole of Bassenthwaite parish, all by yourself, fighting them and their prejudices, hurting I know, but always getting up again when they knocked you down. You have been my pride and delight and glory and . . . even now . . . I cannot help but love you. I have not been celibate, Annie. It is possible to enjoy a sexual relationship without love in it you know, but nothing, none of them, drove you from my heart. “

  They stood on the high ground at the back of Browhead, the land sloping away to the farmhouse and the patchwork of fields beyond it, each one divided from its neighbour by a grey ribbon of drystone wall. There was a sudden flicker of wind straight from the fell, bringing the summer fragrance of heather and bracken. Nothing moved, only her painful heart as it beat for Charlie's anguish.

  “Charlie, please listen." She put a warm, steadying hand on his arm, affectionate, reassuring, but he threw it off with a violence she had not known was in him.

  “Listen to what?”

  She shook her head for really all she had to tell him, everything she had to tell him would hurt him beyond endurance, so what was she to say? Only the truth, surely.

  “Charlie ... "

  “Annie, I don't think I can bear to hear this, really I can't."

  “Charlie, you must know ... "

  “Must I? must I?"

  “Yes," and she could see him freeze, become suspended in the ice of his pain, his vitality an inanimate thing as he did his best to find mercy. He was fighting to remain calm, to keep a hold on hope, but his eyes told her he knew she was going to leave him. The raw pain in them burned her but she could not look away. She had kept this man here, perhaps against his will, giving him reason to believe that one day, when she was mended from all the many hurts she had sustained in her passage through life, she would turn to him in love. She had smiled on him, leaned on him, laughed and cried with him, relied on his strength, taken his strength, all the while hiding from him the honest truth which was that she could never love, or give herself to any man but Reed Macauley. He had believed the promise she had, perhaps unintentionally, held out to him, and had remained. He had tried to go away once, but her need had brought him back and she had used him as a crutch to get her through. Would he ever forgive her? Could she ever forgive herself ?

  “Charlie . . . I am so sorry. This is my fault. You made no secret of how you felt about me and I have not been honest . . ."

  “Christ . . . don't . . . don't tell me . . ."

  “I must . . ."

  “No . . ."

  “I'm not . . ."

  “Don't say it, please, my darling. Don't say you're not the right woman for me, when what you mean is that I am not the right man for you. I have been mistaken in believing that you . . . that one day you would . . . forget him, but it seems . . . well, I had best pack my . . ." His voice petered away and he turned from her, stumbling on awkward legs towards the farmhouse, blinded it seemed, and her heart broke for him but she knew she must not go after him. Not now. Not this time. He must be allowed to make his own decision without the truth of her need of him to cloud his brain. She did need him. She could not imagine life without Charlie in it, as she could not imagine her life without Phoebe in it. They were her two true friends, both of whom she loved and for whom she would give her life. She wanted him to stay but she also wanted him to be happy and he could not do both. He was a decentman who deserved a decent life. A wife, children, a home, the satisfaction of a day's work well done and perhaps she could give him the latter if he would accept it.

  But not now. Not at this moment when there was nothing but hatred and despair in his heart. He might, as she stood here, held fast by her sorrow for him, be stuffing his few possessions into his bag, taking his leave of a bewildered Phoebe, striding off down the track to Keswick. She might lose him for ever if he went, but she must leave him alone, for now.

  He was not in the farmhouse, nor anywhere in the vicinity of it when she finally went down there. His things were still in his room. The books he had read to them years ago, those which Cat had loved so much, his woollen jerkin, his scarf and worn overcoat were all where he had left them.

  “Tha'd best give Mr Lucas a shout, Annie," Phoebe advised. "His supper's on t' table, tell him, an' I've baked 'im an apple pie. I've saved 'im a drop of cream an' all. Got over two gallons of milk today from Clover, I did, which is right good, or so Maggie told me when she came by with young Jonty. He's a fine lad, that un. Six months old he be an' already tryin' to pull 'isself up. Crawl, he's like a little monkey an' into everything. I 'ad to put all me things away . . ."

  “I am to buy Upfell, Phoebe.”

  The words cut off Phoebe's pleasant ramblings on the happenings of her contented day just as though someone had clamped a gag in her mouth. Her hands which had been busy with pans and ladling spoons, with the proper arrangement of knife and fork and plate, became still. She turned slowly her plain country face, rosy now with good health, as astonished as if Annie had said she had purchased a tiara of diamonds.

  “What?"

  “I am to buy Upfell Farm and almost everything in it, and on it. The farmhouse and what furniture Sally didn't want. The gimmers, wethers, ewes, the cows and a couple of pigs Sally couldn't take with her to Binsey. All the dairy utensils. What was stored in the cow barn. Wood and hay coops, the cart, horse, coppice land .. . everything. It will cost me two hundred guineas . . ."

  “Two hundred . . . !" Phoebe's mouth fell open and the spoon she held dropped from her hand to the floor. Dandy drifted over to it, her sinuous body gracefully twining about Phoebe's skirts before she began to lap delicately at the cream which had splashed on to Phoebe's immaculate flagstones.

  “Wheer d'yer get the money? Not the bank, nor that lawyer from Lancaster. Tha' told me that." Phoebe's words were flat and suspicious, disapproving, for hadn't she known for weeks now what Annie Abbott got up to almost every day on the fell and where else would she get the money but from the man whom she met up there?

  “I haven't got it from anywhere yet. I have some put by and I shall use that as a down payment and pay the rest whenever I can. With interest, of course," she added hastily as though she knew full well what Phoebe was thinking and was determined to let her know this was a bona fide business transaction.

  “I see, an' would I be wrong in thinkin' tha' intends borrowin' from him up at Long Beck?"

  “No, you wouldn't be wrong, Phoebe. In fact I am to buy the farm from him up at Long Beck. It was Reed who got it from the . . ."

  “Tha' knows tha'll be in his debt don't tha'? An' that he's not a man who'll be shy of collectin' it."

  “What is that supposed to mean?"

  “If tha' falls behind he'll mek tha' pay
in other ways, lass.”

  At once Annie's face became brightly flushed and she felt a great need to avoid Phoebe's steady, penetrating eyes as the images of herself and Reed as they had been this very afternoon and on the many afternoons of the past four weeks, flooded her mind.

  “An' what about Mr Lucas?" Phoebe went on, knowing exactly why Annie's face had flooded with colour. "He's notgoin' to like it, you borrowin' money from Mr Macauley. It wouldn't surprise me if he refused ter work for thi'. It'd be like workin' for him, that's 'ow Mr Lucas'd see it."

  “Nonsense!" Annie tossed her head in an effort to appear offended, and then suddenly letting out her breath in a resigned sigh, she moved away to gaze out of the window and down the slope to the lake below.

  “What's the use, Phoebe? I cannot hide the truth from you. I have just . . . spoken to Charlie. Not about Upfell but about me . . . and Reed Macauley."

  “Oh, aye, an' what's there to tell?"

  “Well . . ." Somehow it was very difficult to say the words. To say to Phoebe, "I'm taking up residence at Long Beck and I shall be running both farms from there. I shall be putting in men, here and at Upfell to farm, and herd my sheep. You, of course, will come with me to Long Beck since you are my friend. You will have a comfortable life as my companion. A decent wage, pretty clothes and . . . and . . .”