Oh, my God! she was doing it for him. She wasn’t bothered about them stealing it from her but because of all the work he’d put in. Yet even in this knowledge he couldn’t bring himself to run out from his hidey-hole and tell them where it was. He just sat there shivering, listening to the sound of flesh hitting flesh. He covered his ears to blot out the sound, but the vision was still in the front of his mind. He had often imagined scenes like this with himself as the hero, rescuing some under-dog from a gang of cut-throats. The swashbuckling victor remembered that now in this craven reality and felt worse than ever. And still he made no move to help her.
As he took his hands away from his ears to see what was happening there came the sound of a body slumping to the ground, followed by footsteps over the gravelly yard. He stole a swift glance round the corner of the wall. They were going into the house. Panic rose. Had she told them where it was while Dickie had feigned deafness? Still rooted by fear, his horrified gaze affixed itself to the inert, crumpled figure lying among the farmyard droppings, while his ears listened to the sounds of ransack coming from the house.
Eventually they came out and without sparing a glance for their victim came straight for Dickie’s hiding-place, faces dark with bad temper. One of them carried the musket which Torie had not had time to snatch up as they vaulted over the wall and surprised her on her way back from the shippen. Dickie pulled his face sharply away from the edge of the wall and ran, spurred by panic, towards the nearest hideout – the pigsty. He quickly let himself in, pleading, coaxing, entreating the animal to behave itself, leaned over the lower door and bolted it, then pulled the top flap as close as he could. Percy’s disdainful sneer made itself felt even in the darkness as he crouched in the reeking straw and waited.
The encroaching footfalls renewed his trepidation. He pressed himself further into the recess of the sty. He stopped breathing and listened. There was sudden rush of orange light as the top door was flung open, then the sound of the bolt being grated through its socket, followed by voices.
‘D’yer think there’s owt worth pinchin’ in here? Nice lookin’ pig; fetch a few quid.’
The door creaked on its hinges. Dickie’s heart stopped. He crammed his knuckles into his mouth and bit down on them. He felt positive that the men could hear the nervous belches that kept bubbling up his windpipe. A shadow fell over him. ‘Well, what have we ’ere?’ The man set one foot towards him. Dickie felt his whole body dissolve – and then the pig struck.
There was uproar as the enormous pig launched himself at the first intruder, sinking his teeth into a considerately-placed thigh. The man screamed for his partner to help him, but the other was halfway down the hill by now. Percy slashed and tore like a maniac, driving his victim from the sty, squealing in porcine delight. Then they were out in the open and running, all three of them, down the hill.
Dickie had almost passed out when the pig had charged but now in his relief he fell over into the stinking straw, listening to the shrieks of the robbers as they fled with the manic pig snapping at their heels. He tried to control the shaking, but couldn’t. The sound of those blows on poor Torie’s head kept rebounding through his brain. He must go to her. But he daren’t, he daren’t. What if they should come back? They had the gun, hadn’t they? They could shoot the pig and come back for him.
The thing that finally decided him was the faint sound of grunting as Percy made his vainglorious return, a tatter of blue serge caught on one of his tushes. Dickie edged his way out of the sty and around the perimeter of the house as Percy stopped to root happily in the yard.
He stared down at Torie’s immobile, twisted form and knew that she was dead. Such a pitiful, tragic sight … her hair, without its pork-pie hat, plastered with glistening black fluid, one leg buckled at an abnormal angle, obviously broken, the periwinkle eyes dulled by the glaze of death, and the face that had smiled so fondly at him this morning streaked with blood and dirt. He knelt down and pulled out his handkerchief, gently wiping the blood from her temple. ‘I’m sorry, Torie.’ His breath caught in a sob. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He remembered the stockings and sweets and brought them from his pocket. ‘I was bringing ye these an’ all … God, what am I going on about? Ye can’t hear me, can ye?’ He laid the offerings at her side, then stood up quickly and turned his steps towards the house.
The kitchen had been all but demolished. Dead chickens mingled with the broken crockery. Among the debris sat sixteen deeply offended cats, fur puffed out, tails twitching.
But he spared no thought for any of this. Instead his eyes flew to the place where the biscuit barrel normally stood. It was lying on its side. The lid was somewhere with the other pieces of smashed pottery. He did not need to go further to see that it was empty.
The rage seethed up in him and emerged in a stream of curses. ‘The shit-necked, whore-pigs! They’ve taken my bloody fortune!’ He slashed and clanked about amongst the rubble searching for a stray coin, but found not one. They had taken it all. His fury magnified. He lashed out at the cats, dislodging them from their chairs and booting them in all directions.
‘Out, you bastards, out!’ He picked up a dead hen and ripped off its wings, tearing frenziedly at its feathers in uncontrollable rage, his teeth bared like some rabid animal, then flung it with all his strength at the window off which it bounced with a sickly plop. The fact that the window remained unbroken seemed to infuriate him further. He picked up a chair and hurled it. There was a noisy splintering of glass as the chair leg did its work then ricocheted back into the room. He picked it up again and lifted it over his head, bringing it down upon the flagstones time and time again until each leg was snapped off.
His temper took half an hour to re-harness. Still trembling, he dashed the tears of injustice from his cheeks and went outside to bury Torie alongside the graves of her cats, the idea of sending for a doctor never occurring to him. She was dead after all – anyone could see that. He was suddenly assailed by an unfamiliar feeling of guilt and shame as he picked her up – emotions he had never experienced in all his twenty years. She weighed next to nothing in his arms. How could he have stood there and let them do it to her? He could have told them where the money was, for had they not found it in the long run? And Torie had had to suffer for nothing. Poor old darlin’. He turned in the direction of the cats’ graves, feeling a deep loathing for himself. ‘What is happening to me? What kind of a shit am I?’ he asked out loud.
* * *
Later, he took a broom and swept up the mess in the house, apologising to the cats who had reclaimed their territory and now sat glaring at him. He ran the broom along the dresser, sweeping everything off it, both whole and smashed, onto the floor and did similarly with the table, collecting everything into one big mound on the stone floor. The swines had even overturned the last jug of milk. He went to fetch a shovel and began to scrape up the rubbish. The biscuit barrel, still unaccountably in one piece, evaded his broom and cruised across the floor.
‘Now where d’ye think you’re off to?’ He stooped to rescue it. ‘You’re the first to go in the bin, you bloody useless piece o’ trash!’ He dashed it to the ground where it finally shattered and was swept up with the rest.
The kitchen was tidier than it had ever been. He looked around for something to eat, picked up one of the dead hens and half-heartedly began to pluck it, then decided that would take too long and carved himself a thick slice of bread in its place. He clamped it between his jaws while he put the kettle on to boil. This done, he stared out of the broken window munching his meagre supper. There was something missing from the scene; what was it? Ah, gob! it was the spyglass. That was another point against him. If he had not acted the fool last night it would still have been there and Torie would have seen the two men coming a mile off and been ready for them. But it was lying in the shop awaiting repair and there it would stay. He watched Percy enjoying his freedom, lumbering about in the gloaming. ‘Now how am I going to get that brute back in his sty?’ he asked himself
.
After the kettle boiled and he had drunk his black tea he went out into the dusk to try and corner the pig, taking a lantern with him so as to be able to see every move the animal made. Surprisingly, and for the first time ever, Percy offered no violence, trotting into his sty as meek as any lamb. ‘You’re a contrary old swine, ye know that?’ said Dickie. ‘You’re no good for nothing except pork pies. D’ye hear me? PORK PIES! Still, I suppose I oughta thank ye for getting rid o’ those two villains. The thieving poltroons. Well, Percy I’ll away to me bed now, an’ in the mornin’ we’ll have to think of our future. Both of us. Ye realise we can’t stay here now that Torie’s gone? Shall I tell ye something, Perc? I’ll bloody-well miss the old crow, an’ I guess you will too.’ Grateful for the pig’s cooperation he divided some food from amongst the smashed pots and threw a handful into the sty. ‘Who knows, I might even surprise the both of us an’ muck ye out tomorrow – there’s no one else’ll do it now,’ he added sadly.
It was Dickie who was the recipient of the surprise. At dawn with no cow to milk and accustomed to rising at this hour, his first task after a cold breakfast was to clean out the pigsty. Coaxing Percy into the yard with a bucket of swill he nipped into the vacated sty and closed the door firmly behind him, just so the pig wouldn’t sneak up on him – it was not above himself, thought Dickie, tossing the straw about.
The surprise came when his pitchfork delved into a corner to rake at the straw and made a tinny clank. Teasing aside the stalks he came across a box – the box into which, after that first day’s temptation, Torie had transferred her savings, plus her bank-book and the deeds to the farm, and had hidden them in the safest place she could think of.
Dickie had found his fortune at last.
* * *
Neither Patrick nor his wife had interrupted Dickie’s story up till this point, still dazed by his sudden reappearance, but now the former asked, ‘What happened to the farm?’
Dickie extracted a gold hunter watch and flicked open the lid. ‘I sold it. Look, I didn’t realise this would take so long in the telling – can we continue it later? I’ve an important appointment in half an hour with my stockbroker.’
‘Oh, my stockbroker is it?’ His mother rose with him. ‘We are distinguished, aren’t we? Well, I’m afraid your stockbroker will just have to wait; I need to know more about this. How could you sell the farm? It didn’t belong to you.’
‘An’ who knocked it into shape, might I ask?’ enquired Dickie. ‘Who sweated … listen, when I first went there it was nothing more than a glorified shed in the middle o’ forty acres o’ weeds. I spent fifteen hours a day ploughing, planting, joinering, milking, breaking my back … it belonged to me as much as anybody.’
‘But not legally,’ argued his mother. ‘She never left a will. You had no right.’
‘Stuff legally,’ retorted Dickie. ‘I spent two hard years on that farm. I’m damned if I’m having some lawyer crossing that out with a stroke of his pen just ’cause she never left a will. Anyway, she meant it for me. I held the deeds in my hand. No one was going to tell me it wasn’t mine.’
‘I don’t like it, Dickie,’ said his father gravely. ‘You burying her without first calling a doctor.’
‘Dad, we were out in the wilds! D’ye think a doctor would be very pleased to travel all that way out just to issue a death certificate?’ He turned his back. ‘Besides, I wanted to get her buried as quickly as possible. She was very dear to me, ye know. I couldn’t bear to look at her after the pig had savaged her like that.’ This was one of many points where the story had transgressed from the truth. Rather than relate his cowardice he had concocted a fictitious attack by the pig, whereupon he, Dickie, had come home to find her already dead. ‘He was a terrible animal, ye know,’ he told them, rolling up his sleeves to add truth to his story. ‘See! That’s what he did to me on me first day. I tell ye, the first thing I did was to send him off to market.’ That at least was true. Percy had been the first to go, then the hens. The cats had been allowed to stay until he had found a buyer, for deprived of their plentiful diet they served to keep the rats down. He couldn’t abide rats. It had broken his heart when the bank had refused to release Torie’s savings to him. He had not pressed the matter for fear of attracting too much attention. He had had to suffice with the money that the farm had brought and the contents of the box in the pigsty. Which was no mean sum, but the thought of all those hundreds going to waste in the bank was almost unbearable.
‘So,’ said his mother, following the lines of his immaculately turned out appearance. ‘You’re a rich man.’
‘I am indeed.’ After selling up he had gone to the nearest city and found himself a room at the best hotel.
Apart from two sets of expensive clothes this was the only luxury he had permitted himself. He was rich in comparison to his former state but with a little gambling on the Stock Exchange he could be even richer. Despite Torie’s views on the detriments of gambling, his flutters, with professional help, had paid off. He was now prosperous enough to return to York without fear of repercussion from his previous digressions. Clancy was a brute of a man, but Dickie could buy his sort of power a thousand times over. Money was the real strength. Men like Clancy didn’t frighten him any more.
Besides all this, he had a score to settle with his mother. He had in fact been in York for some weeks but it was only when the whisper had come to him of Thomasin’s interest in the Parliament Street property that he had decided to show himself. He had not expected the opportunity for revenge to come so quickly but when it had, he grasped it in his usual predatory fashion.
‘I really must be off,’ he told them, reaching for his topper from the circular table.
‘I’ve not finished!’ Thomasin waylaid him again. ‘What are you going to do with that building you’ve just bought?’
He appeared somewhat baffled. ‘Oh – I hadn’t really thought about it. I just bought it on a whim, really.’
‘Your mother had set her heart on it,’ Patrick informed his son, stepping forward to put his arm around his wife’s waist. ‘She was going to expand the business.’ He looked at Thomasin when he next spoke. ‘Perhaps Dickie might like to …’
Before he could finish his sentence Dickie had severed it with a laugh. ‘God, no! I’m afraid the grocery trade isn’t up my street at all.’ He smoothed the wrinkles from his gloved fingers. ‘But, if Mother has her heart set on it, who am I to steal her dream? The building means nothing to me.’
‘You mean you’ll let me have it?’ said Thomasin guardedly.
He smiled but there was no pleasantness in it. ‘At a price.’
Her face immediately hardened and her hand came up, but Patrick tightened his grip on her waist and she put aside the idea of striking her son. ‘How much?’
He named a sum that exceeded his buying price by five hundred pounds.
‘Why, you little bloodsucker!’ cried his mother, and whirled away in disgust.
‘Mother, I thought ye’d set your heart on it,’ he answered mildly. ‘I know if I wanted anything that badly I’d be willing to pay any price. I thought my offer was quite reasonable.’
‘This is your mother, Dickie, not a business opponent,’ said Patrick sternly. ‘Ye’ve no right to do this after everything else ye put her through.’
‘There’s a lotta talk about rights being bandied about,’ said Dickie, his smile gone. ‘’Tis a pity no one in this house gave a thought to my rights while I was here before. Now, I’m not stayin’ to argue. Mother, if ye want the place ye can have it – at the price stipulated. I’ll call back later for your answer.’
‘Don’t bother!’ spat Thomasin. ‘You can have it now.’ She went to the bureau and scribbled out a cheque.
The ease of her submission rather took the spark out of Dickie’s triumph. He had expected her to fight harder than this.
‘Tommy, are ye sure ye know what ye’re doing?’ asked her husband gravely as she handed over the cheque to her son.
‘Oh, I know all right,’ was her bitter reply as Dickie, grinning again, pocketed the cheque. ‘I’m paying him off. That’s the only money he’ll ever see from us. The minute he goes from here I’m off straight to my solicitor to alter my will. I still held out some hope, you see,’ she enlightened Dickie spitefully. ‘Never had the heart to amend it after you disappeared. Oh, when I think of all the years of anguish you’ve caused us,’ she hissed at him. ‘All this time when we didn’t know whether you were dead or alive, and you never sent so much as a letter to put our minds at ease – and you dare to talk about rights! You forfeited those with your scurrilous treatment of those closest to you. And now this. Knowing the way your mind works I suppose you see it as a way of getting your own back – though God knows what for. You brought your troubles on your own shoulders, my lad. Well, now you’ve had your revenge you can get out and don’t bother to come back. You’re not welcome in this house. As far as I’m concerned you are dead.’
Dickie looked to Patrick. ‘I wonder what Father has to say – or does she keep you in tow as well, Dad? You’re a fair-minded man, are ye going to let a woman dictate what goes on in your house?’
Patrick had had much experience in fighting down his temper; he was not going to allow a shallow character like his son to rile him. ‘Nobody dictates to me, Dickie, least of all you. It so happens that your mother took the words right out o’ my mouth – only I’d’ve probably made them a mite stronger. You’re very adept at your chosen subjects I’ll grant ye – a liar, a cheat and an opportunist. But I can tell ye this and it’ll not cost ye a penny – you’re a dead loss as a son. Now, take your misbegotten rewards and get out of my house, for nobody in it ever wants to see you again.’
Part Five
1874
For My Brother’s Sins Page 56