The Glass Virgin

by Catherine Cookson

After a time she, too, lay down; but now she was feeling extremely embarrassed, too embarrassed to sleep. She couldn’t sleep by Manuel’s side.

  She woke with the sun directly overhead, and when she tried to move and found it impossible she thought she was pinned in some way to the ground. She turned her eyes about until they focused on Manuel. He was sitting paring his fingernails with a penknife. He looked as if he was waiting patiently. But he didn’t look the same Manuel that she knew, he looked years older and his face had lost the glowing tan colour and now appeared mottled, except where the red weals stood out around his chin and neck.

  With an effort she pulled herself upwards, saying, ‘You should have woken me; I’ve slept a long time.’

  ‘The day’s young.’ He glanced at her and said curtly, ‘You feel better?’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m very stiff.’

  ‘That’ll wear off.’ He rose to his feet. ‘We’d better find a village where we can buy some food and stock up a bit. But it’ll be difficult, it being Sunday.’ He now lifted his pack on to his shoulders and adding, ‘Ready?’ he moved off.

  She wasn’t ready, she was still half asleep and her body felt as if it had been stretched on a rack. Again she had the desperate longing to be back in the comfort of the House. It was twelve o’clock in the day, the time when in the summer they had cool drinks and in the winter hot chocolate. Dragging herself to her feet, she picked up the bundle and staggered after him.

  She wasn’t alone in wishing she was back in the House. What, in the name of God, Manuel was asking himself, was he going to do with her? What? She’d never be able to stand this life, and at this moment he had enough on his mind without the responsibility of her. All night he had walked beside a dead man. Wherever he had looked the moonlight had shown him Lagrange’s face, suddenly white after being red, still after being agitated with fury; and it was his hand that had killed him. He had always been afraid of the strength of his hands. Margee used to say, ‘You will be a horse breaker because you’ve got wrists like steel.’ And there were times when she would hold his hands and look into the palms and say, ‘They’re fine hands. You could be anything with those hands, Manuel, anything. They’re not made for labour, Manuel, not ordinary labour.’ Aw, Margee. Margee and her trashy talk. Yet she had foretold what had happened, and she had warned him never to use his hands against any man; that was after he had thrashed Peter for belting into her. Peter was three times his age and twice his bulk, but he had knocked him cold and he was only fifteen at the time. And just before she died she had said to him, ‘You’ll come to wealth, lad. You’ll come to wealth.’ Wealth? Huh! He didn’t want wealth, he only wanted work and a shelter for the winter; and then he’d be off to find the sun in that far country that had always beckoned him. But now wherever he went, and however long he lived, he’d remember he had killed a man.

  They had gone almost a mile before he spoke, and then he said abruptly, ‘You’ll pass without comment except when you speak. Do you think you can say Ta, instead of Thank you?’

  ‘Ta?’ she turned her head to one side and looked up at him.

  ‘Yes, Ta. The less you talk like yourself, the less comment will be made.’

  ‘Oh yes, I see. I’ll try to remember, Manuel.’

  ‘And try sayin’ Aye, instead of Yes.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Another mile; and then another, and another and in silence. The country they were walking through was beautiful. They passed little hamlets with stone cottages, whitewashed and shining in the sun. They passed medium-sized houses standing in precisionally neat gardens. People here and there looked at them but made no comment. Men, sitting outside their doors, some in Sunday grey, some still in working smocks, gave them a salute, for they were just a couple on the road looking for work; and there were many such these days. Two years ago the sight would have been rare except for tinkers, or travelling gypsies, or an odd beggar or two, but now, since the big houses were turning out their staffs, it was no uncommon sight to see couples walking the roads.

  By four o’clock in the afternoon they had only got as far as Ovingham because by now Annabella was limping badly. Manuel had kept the banks of the river Tyne in sight and when he saw that it would be impossible for her to go any further that day he scouted around until he found a low bank where she could sit and dangle her feet in the water, nearby an outcrop of rock, with one section overhanging which would afford them some shelter in the night, for, wet or fine, they would have to stay where they were.

  After taking off his coat and neckerchief he lay flat on the bank and ducked his head two or three times under the water, for the weals on his neck now felt like red hot laces attached to the skin. After he had dried his face and hair on a rough piece of sacking, he donned his things again. Then, taking a can from his pack, he said, ‘I’ll have to go lookin’ for a shop of sorts.’

  She looked up at him with eyes like those of a frightened doe, and, his manner less brusque, he added, ‘I won’t be long; you’ll be all right here. You’re well away from the road, and should anyone happen along say I’m just over there.’ He thumbed over his shoulder in the direction of a copse.

  She didn’t speak and he turned from her and walked along the bank, his step steady and even as if he had just started walking.

  He had to walk more than two miles before he came to a hamlet with a shop open, and in the shop he learned how fast money can fly when you had to buy food. ‘How much is an ounce of tea?’ he asked the old woman behind the counter, and when she surveyed him for a moment before saying, ‘It’s Sunday an’ sevenpence,’ he knew she was sticking on a copper or two because of the day, but he didn’t argue. ‘And a pound of sugar?’ he asked.

  ‘Ninepence.’

  ‘Give me half,’ he told her.

  ‘And what’s your cheese?’ he pointed to a lump of Cheddar reposing within a finger breadth of a bundle of tallow candles.

  ‘That one’s tenpence a pound.’

  He stared at her before he spoke again. ‘I’ll have three-pennorth,’ he said.

  ‘You want bread?’ she now asked him, and when he nodded she said, ‘It’s ninepence quarter stone.’

  ‘I’ll take that,’ he answered. ‘And that bacon.’ He pointed towards the knuckle end of a ham.

  ‘Oh, that’s the best, it’s tenpence,’ she stared at him.

  ‘I’ll have half.’ Now pointing to a sack that stood to his side filled with oatmeal, he added, ‘And two-pennorth of that.’

  ‘Do you want milk?’ She looked at his can. ‘I can fill it for a penny.’

  ‘Is it fresh?’

  ‘As fresh as the cow could give at eleven.’

  He stared down at the rim of the pail with the hooked can dangling from it, both covered with flies.

  When she had filled the can he said, ‘I paid five pence ha’penny for an ounce and a half packet of baccy in the town, what you chargin’?’

  ‘Oh.’ She grinned. ‘I’m cheaper than them. Five pence farthing.’

  ‘And a clay pipe?’

  ‘That’ll be another ha’penny.’ She added up the things now and said, ‘That’ll be three and a penny farthin’.’

  As he left the shop he thought in future he’d have to buy at a different rate from this or there would soon be a hole in his hoard. He had sixteen sovereigns and five half sovereigns in his belt. He had saved this amount during the years he had been at the Hall, and this in spite of his indulgence during his accumulated holidays.

  Even without working he had enough to keep himself for a year, but not two of them, and not if he had to afford her shelter in an inn, for she would never be able to tolerate his kind of lodgings, and she couldn’t keep sleeping out in the open . . . But what the hell! he’d sort that out when he knew where he stood. She might yet have to see to herself. If Amy’s plan went wrong an
ything could happen. He must get to Hexham and get hold of a news-sheet. She’d be able to read it. He could think of nothing clearly until he knew where he stood, and it might be under a gallows tree. Dear God! Why had it come about like this. He wished to hurt no man, but he had to go and kill one, and that one a gentleman, and a man, be what he may, who had in the first place taken him on trust and given him a job.

  She was sitting under the shelter of the rock out of the sun when he reached her.

  ‘I haven’t been so long, have I?’

  She shook her head. He had been gone hours, days, years. It had come to her as she sat here alone that she had never lived one hour of her life, up till the day she went to Crane Street, without people near her; in the house, in the garden, out driving, always someone had been near her. For the past hour she had sat gazing across the river, across the open fields rising to the sun-drenched hills, and the loneliness had terrified her. She felt as if she had been dropped on to another planet. At one point she had found herself crying in her mind with longing, Oh Mama! Oh Papa! and she had chastised herself. She must stop calling them so; but as yet she couldn’t stop thinking about them and she couldn’t stop mourning because he was dead. She couldn’t quite believe he was dead because he had died so quickly; one blow from Manuel’s fist and he breathed no more. She still couldn’t believe that Manuel had killed him. She looked at Manuel now. He was making a fire. He looked grim and troubled, and he had a right to be. What if they should discover the truth and take him away. Oh no! No! That would be unthinkable.

  She watched him putting bacon into a round black iron pan and when it started to sizzle the aroma pricked her nostrils, and a few minutes later, when he handed her the tin plate with the hot bacon and a thick slice of bread on it, she was surprised when she found herself eating the rough food and almost enjoying it. But the tea he brewed had a bitter tang to it. Nevertheless, she managed to drink a mugful.

  The meal over, Manuel took the clay pipe and, having filled it with tobacco, lit it with a spill from the fire, then sat with his back against the rock and drew deeply at the stem.

  Annabella had never seen him smoke before, and somehow the clay pipe offended her. It was the utensil used by the farmhands and the lower servants. But she was forgetting Manuel was a servant. The clay pipe brought home to her the fact that her thinking too would have to change. She must not only forget to say yes, and thank you, but she must remember that she herself was, as it were, now below stairs. The thought rushed on her that she would never come to think this way, for the conditions necessary to bring about such a change would surely drive her insane. She could never become a menial. All her instincts were against it.

  After a while Manuel rose to his feet and, taking up the piece of coarse sacking that had been drying on the grass, he walked away without a word and went along the river bank and round the bend, and out of her sight.

  She sat and watched the shadows lengthening and guessed that it must be about seven o’clock. Manuel had been gone half an hour or more now and once again she began to feel uneasy. Gently, she eased her boots on and walked slowly and painfully along by the river. If he was sitting around the bend, she told herself, she wouldn’t disturb him, yet she hoped that she wouldn’t see him sitting by himself for it would mean that he couldn’t endure her company.

  As she rounded the bend the sun was full in her eyes. The river stretched straight for a long distance from this point, its bed broken here and there by boulders over which the water frothed and gurgled. She brought her eyes from the far distance to some flat shelves of rock not more than a hundred feet from her and there, lying submerged in the lee of the current, she saw him. He was lying as if in a bath, the water flowing over him. Her hand came up and across her mouth and, flinging herself around, she hobbled as quickly as her painful heels would allow back the way she had come.

  When she reached the outcrop of rock and sat down her back was straight and stiff. She could have been Rosina, so deep was her indignation. Bathing in the river like that! He should have warned her. Had he seen her? Oh no! She cupped one cheek with her hand and the heat of her skin told her that her face must be flushed.

  If only she could go back home. If only she hadn’t heard Manuel repeating what her grandmother . . . no, what Mrs Conway-Redford had said, she knew now she would subsequently have returned.

  Another half-hour elapsed before Manuel appeared. He looked cool and fresh and his black hair was lying flat on his head. He looked at her in surprise, saying, ‘You haven’t been down to the river?’

  ‘No.’ The monosyllable was stiff.

  He continued to stare at her for a moment, then gave a slight shrug with one shoulder, before he asked, ‘Would you like the remainder of the milk? It will be sour by mornin’.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  He stared at her again. Her tone was like the mistress’ when she was giving an order, or dismissing a servant. He now pulled his pack well under the shelter of the rock; then taking a blanket out of it, he handed it to her saying, ‘I would cover up – there’ll likely be a lot of dew in the night. An’ I’d get what sleep you can now because we’ll be on the road early. I want to make Hexham the morrow.’

  When she didn’t answer he scrutinised her through narrowed lids. He knew her well enough to detect that she was on her high horse about something, but what? Well anyway, if she felt like that it might augur for good; she would go back and leave him to his own road.

  He lay down, conscious that she was still sitting up, her back as straight as a ramrod. What had got into her? What had upset her? He hadn’t done anything. He had hardly opened his mouth except when it was necessary. Something had happened since he had gone into the river . . . He brought his lips into a silent whistle. Ah, that must be it. She had seen him bare in the river. God sakes! that must be it, her dignity was offended. Even after all she had gone through her mind could still give her time to be offended at his nakedness. Well, all he could say was that if that could straighten her back she was going to see things in the future if she stayed along of him that would bend it over double.

  He put his hands behind his head and stared up into the clear blue sky and a mischievous thought, edging its way into the deeply troubled morass of his mind, said, If the boot had been on the other foot it wouldn’t have put him on his high horse, rather got him out of the saddle as if he’d been tossed. Then turning quickly on his side and facing the rock wall, he chided himself for his levity. She was still Miss Annabella and he’d better not forget it, and he wouldn’t as long as he remained solid and sober.

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon when, after travelling miles through dripping wet orchards, they entered the town of Hexham.

  Manuel had been here a number of times over the years and he led her straight to the Market Square and to a low deep arch under a high building that looked like a pele tower, and from there he pointed across the square, saying, ‘That sweetie shop over there, it deals in news-sheets. Would you go and get the latest one?’

  She wiped the rain from around her face with her fingertips, then nodded and took from his hand a sixpence.

  Within a few minutes she was back with the Hexham Courant and not until she went to hand it to him and he didn’t take it from her did she remember that he could neither read nor write.

  ‘Will you look and see if it says anything?’ His voice was rough, and she opened the paper and scanned the small printed headlines. He watched her eyes going up and down the columns. Then she turned a page, and after a moment her gaze became still and he saw her lips tremble slightly, and he knew that she had found it. He bent close to her, asking under his breath, ‘What does it say?’

  She moved her head slightly twice but didn’t answer him. She was reading to the end of the report, and he was biting tightly on his lower lip when finally she looked up at him and said in stiff, stilted tones
, ‘The horse arrived home riderless and Amy . . . Mrs Stretford, a cottager, found the body and reported it to the House. Death, they say, must have been instantaneous. Mrs . . . Mrs Lagrange is prostrate . . . the funeral is to be on Thursday.’

  The wave of relief that swept over him brought the sweat running out of the pores of his head and it mingled with the rain and ran off the end of his chin. The noose had dropped from around his neck and so heady was the reprieve that he didn’t consider what effect the report might be having on her, but said now brightly, ‘We’ll go and have something to eat; there’s a place in Fore Street, she serves up a good dinner. Come on.’ He walked away through the arch and she followed him, her eyes unblinking, her thoughts like an anchor dragging her back to the house where the body of her papa lay.

  When they entered Mrs Paterson’s establishment the serving maid looked them up and down and said, ‘You can’t take that kit in there, leave it over yonder.’ And when he hesitated she said roughly, ‘Go on, there’s nobody gonna pinch that.’

  The dinner was good and for one and six they ate their fill but all the while Annabella chided herself for eating at all. She didn’t know how she could. In some way it seemed, if not actually improper, then callous. Also she reminded herself she was eating at Manuel’s expense. But in spite of all her worthy feelings, she ate.

  Out in the street again Manuel said, ‘We’ll have to have a place for the night,’ and then he stood pondering as to where he would find a place that would be suitable for her. As for himself, if he had been on his own he would have gone round to the Battle Hill district. He had slept in that quarter before, but it was no place for her. He remembered seeing a small inn up one of the side streets off the market place and he now led the way to it. There was a courtyard fronting it open to the road and a coach and pair, and three horses were tethered to the stand posts.

  As they went to enter she touched his arm and brought him to a stop and said under her breath, ‘I’m . . . I’m in a very muddy state.’ She looked down at her boots and the bottom of her dress, then added, ‘They mightn’t . . . ’