“No,” she said. “No. Please go, at once.”
She did not dare to speak louder. I should have locked it, she thought. What was I about? It was suddenly too late: she did not mean, would never have chosen to, was not that kind of person—and yet here it was happening.
Caresses. How she had missed caresses. It was the first touch, perhaps, that was her undoing. If it, he, could only stop there. If she could stop him. But she found it impossible to resist this caring, for that was what it felt like.
“No, no,” she repeated. And then did not speak again. She clung to Charlie and tried to forget.
She did not sleep afterward, but lay awake till morning, trembling. Remorse and guilt (my best friend) lay thickly, painfully, over her unhappiness. What have I done, she thought, what have I done?
Home again, she sealed up in a leather box everything to do with Val. Letters, pressed flowers, his shirt, even the opal ring. Lover’s opal. It was all over.
17
Yesterday, Easter Sunday, there’d been enough sun to make you think it was May or even June. Today, decided Hal, didn’t look half as good. By afternoon, when he thought of going out on his own, the sky had grown dull and heavy. The tutor, Mr. Pettinger, that bandy-legged purveyor of Latin and Greek, had gone home to his family in Leicestershire. Otherwise some horrid idea would have been thought up for today: a nature outing, perhaps, with Mr. Pettinger (who knows nothing about anything unless it’s out of a book, and who has never been fishing in his whole life).
But “Jack has the measles, Jack has the measles” he chanted now, going through the thicket, out at the back behind the orchard. Probably there wouldn’t be any lessons for a while, since he mustn’t go near the Hall (soon something would be arranged—Mr. Pettinger would come to The Towers, alas). And all, he thought, because I have to be extra careful, on account of my—my—but he didn’t want to say the word, or there might come suddenly that beating in his chest.
I nearly died. They told him that, often. Worse, the suggestion that for a nothing, it might happen again—if he didn’t take care. The shadow on the bedroom wall when the wax night-light flickered, the enormous shadow with its changing shape, open shut open, got you! Death.
This afternoon Nan-Nan said he might do as he pleased. His parents were both out. Father he had no idea where, but his mother was with Mrs. Hawksworth. They were working together on a plan for curing children with rickets, which could make you lame. Mother was to speak to important people about obtaining funds, especially supplies of milk. He had heard Father call it, in a cross voice, “Mother’s good works.” (But it is good, he thought.)
Because he didn’t care to stay indoors, he decided on a walk. He said to Fräulein, who was passing along the corridor, hatted and gloved, “Fräulein, if anybody looks for me, I’m over the hills and far away—”
“Yes, yes,” she said. “Good. And nice.”
“Die wetter, das wetter ist gut, ja, nein?” he said. But she had already passed by.
For a while he followed the stone wall as it went up the hillside. Looking back, he could see The Towers and the fenced thicket behind, all growing more distant. It was cold, and wispy clouds had run together. Beneath, lowering almost, were the brown outlines of the moors. He knew where he was, but wasn’t sure what happened when you climbed over into the next valley. Farther up, he looked back to where he could see the river run: Flaxthorpe Bridge, the houses grouped on the green, the church tower square and dark; the patterns of the dry stone walls as they crossed and recrossed the hillside.
The ground was dry and springy from yesterday’s weather. As he came down into the valley he wasn’t so sure where he was. I might go back now. He wouldn’t, anyway, climb up on the high moor. He followed a grassy lane for a little, passing a cow barn. Below was meadow, and he could see farm buildings.
Then a sheepdog, brown and white, rough-haired, came through a gap in the stone wall higher up the hillside, running in his direction. A moment later a boy appeared. He was carrying two rabbits on a string. Seeing Hal, he stopped, stared a few seconds. Then began walking toward him.
“Tess,” he called to the dog, “way here, way here, Tess …”
The chill air, the lowering sky. I wish now I’d turned back, Hal thought. Faint rumble of thunder …
The boy drew nearer. “Tess, Tess, way here!”
(Once upon a time the king of the Goldland lost himself in a forest and try as he would he could not find the way out. As he was wandering down one path …)
I know that face….
(“What are you doing here, friend?” asked the stranger. “Darkness is falling fast.”)
“Bye, hell,” said the boy, “if it’s not His Lordship from The Towers.” He grinned. He had still that friendly grin, which at once altered his face.
Hal shivered. The sky, darkening rapidly, the air growing chiller.
“They call me Stephen,” the boy said. He pointed ahead. “Ibbotson. Lane Top Farm. You mind we met afore?”
“Yes, yes,” Hal said. “Yes, I remember.”
“And ye never told on me, eh?” He stood, swinging the rabbits from his arm.
The wind was getting up stronger. Earlier, Hal had noticed the sheep huddled together.
Stephen said, “Look at sky. We’re in for a storm.” Tess, the dog, was crouched at his feet, head on ground, eyes darting warily from side to side. “Birds—they’ve hushed singing. And Tess, she knows right enow—
“Tess, way home. Home then!” He shooed her suddenly. “Me dad, me brother Will, he’ll be vexed and all—that I’ve took her. He’s forbid me—”
The lightning came first, flashing the grass to the west of them an electric green. Tess, who’d been moving reluctantly, shot forward in sudden fear. Claps of thunder followed.
“Bye—hear that! We’d best—” Stephen’s voice was drowned.
Down it came, across it came, sleet, great hailstones, battering, stinging, against his ears, his cheeks.
Stephen grabbed the sleeve of Hal’s Norfolk jacket. “Come along of me. Come by our place.” Together they ran down the stony grass to the track leading to the farm. Looking too near his feet, Hal stumbled over the cart ruts. Now, Stephen was ahead of him, the rabbits’ bodies swinging.
The violence of those hailstones. He was running into them, it seemed. And then it seemed they came at him, icy, from every side.
As he went through the gateway, he saw a door slightly open. Stephen’s face came around it. “Bye, but ye’re slow.” He pulled him inside roughly. Both of them shook themselves like wet dogs.
Seconds later he found himself in the big farm kitchen which seemed full of people—more than he could count, all staring at him. Or perhaps they weren’t? When he looked again he saw that two of them at least were paying him no attention at all.
“Come close to fire, then.”
But he was afraid to move. A man sat one side of the fire, mending something, tying, or was it untying, knots. He wasn’t noticing Hal at all. In a wooden armchair a little bit away there was an old woman wearing a grubby cotton cap. Her feet, planted firmly, were in what looked like men’s boots, without laces. She appeared to be asleep.
“Who’s this now?” the man asked. He didn’t look up.
A boy and a small girl, about his own age, sat at the kitchen table. The girl, who looked like a little brown bird, was watching him, gravely, with interest. A lanky boy of about eighteen, who’d been standing by the fire, crossed the room toward them.
Stephen said, “We got ourselves wetted and all—”
“Aye, I see that.” He was dark-haired, with a jutting underlip. He looked over at Hal. “Who’s this, then?” But when Stephen told him, he only looked sour. “What were ye about, the two of you?”
“Just walking, Will. And him here, Mr. Firth, I found him. He were walking.”
It must have been their mother came in then. Pale, thin, tall: origin of Will’s lankiness. Her head drooped on her neck. She spoke in a ti
red, kind voice:
“… summat hot to sup. Poor bairn. And a bite to eat.” Cloths were brought to rub down his hair, trousers and a heavy shirt found for him. Too big, but warm, dry. He changed in the room downstairs that Stephen shared with Will and the other brother, James. Stephen showed him the little cupboard under the stairs. “That’s where me sister, that’s where our Olive sleeps.” Outside, the hail battered still.
“How many are there of you?” Hal asked.
“Will, that you’ve seen—he’s all but head of us. Dad minds nowt. Then James, and—and me and Olive. Mam, Dad, and Granny Willans—her with the boots.”
“I noticed those,” Hal said.
“Deaf as a post, she is. And never sits near the fire. She’s afeard she’ll crack her boots. Alius worn them, she has, T feel safe, like,’ she says, ‘I like to move me toes about.’ “
Back in the kitchen, his Norfolk jacket, his sturdy tweed knickerbockers with their now damp leather knee bands, were hung by the fire. He said, “I really ought to go—”
“Not in this weather. No.” Mrs. Ibbotson sounded firm in spite of the faint voice and the feeble way of moving. She insisted that he sit by the fire.
It was Dad, Mr. Ibbotson, who hadn’t much to say for himself. Nor James. Will spoke the most. The little girl, Olive, smiled twice at Hal, her mouth widening slowly.
Will asked, fixing Stephen with a look, “Where were ye then, our Stephen?”
“Out …”
“Ye didn’t mebbe tak Tess along t’walls? Ye weren’t after rabbits …”
Stephen shrugged his shoulders. Will said, “Dad, he were out again.”
“Bye hell—what if I did?”
“We’ll not have any of that talk, son,” his mother said. “There’s words we don’t use.” She paused. “And ye boots … when we’ve rugs down and all …”
Hal looked around the kitchen. Cotton handmade rugs covered part of the flagstones. Above him, something like a ladder on the ceiling had lengths of what looked to be dough hanging over its slats. He asked, “What are those?”
Olive answered first. “Havercakes.”
“She fashioned them,” her mother said. “Olive fashioned them.”
“I like to bake.” Olive said it solemnly. “Even rest days.” She pointed to an iron plate beside the fire. She said proudly, “It’s there I bake them, after I’ve pulled the dough out, like.”
“Give lad a bite of it—”
“Do ye want some, then? Will ye eat some?”
It tasted very good. It had a thick slice of cold bacon laid across it. It tasted like nothing at The Towers.
After a while, not much notice was taken of him. There was some talk, about lambing mainly. He liked the way Olive watched him all the time. Whenever he caught her eye, she smiled at him.
James said, “She can’t manage her school work—”
“It’s a rest day—” she began.
“It’s to be done,” Will said. “If you’ve brains you’d best learn to use them while chance comes your way.”
“Fuss, fretting,” Mr. Ibbotson said. “Content yissen running farm, or learning to. Day’ll come, soon enow, I’ll not be able …”
“Nowt much amiss with ye now,” Will said a little sulkily.
“There will be, lad, there will—”
By way of answer Will fetched over a large red book with gold lettering on the cover, and buried himself in it.
Hal asked Olive, “What is it you’ve to do?”
“Sums,” she said promptly. “Like this.” She slipped down from the table and brought him over the copybook.
“ ‘If a draper sells braid at sixpence three farthings for nine yards, what is the cost per foot?’ “
“Easy,” he said. “There’s three feet in a yard, so that’s three times nine to find your feet, and …”
Some time later, and after he’d eaten a meal with them, Mrs. Ibbotson said, “I reckon they’ll be worried at Towers. So if ye’re warm and dry, lad …”
Home. But he didn’t want to leave.
Will said, “It’s let up, the weather. It’s faired up enough. He can be away.”
They discussed it among themselves. “Light’s going fast…. He’ll have been missed. … He could go wi t’pony…. He’d be best in cart. …”
Mr. Ibbotson said, “James, tak t’cart, then. And Bluebell. Stephen’ll go along of ye.”
It was further going down by the road, and around and up again, over the moor. Strange dark shadows. A lamp swung from the cart. James didn’t speak. To look at, he was like his father. Occasionally he murmured something to the gray horse, with its shaggy winter coat. “Hoa there, easy there, Bluebell …”
Stephen talked. About fishing, rabbiting, going to market. About how clever Will was.
Fishing. “I know t’best places,” he boasted, hand pointing over to where in the darkness the river ran away as a stream. When Hal said nothing, he said, “I could mebbe show you—if ye’ve ever a mind.”
“I might,” Hal said. (I shall, I shall) A curtain drawn back, showing a bright warm different world. Dangerous, even. Different …
Hailstones lay by the road still. The lamp on the cart showed them up. A white landscape now, where this morning there’d been sun. But on the lower road there was little sign of the storm.
“It’s alius worse up our way,” James said. “We was snowed off eight week t’year Ted were born.”
“Ted?”
“Ted that died,” Stephen said. “He’d the same sickness as I took. He were first—then Will and me…. Diffy sickness they call it, when there’s poison right across t’throat. I were took bad three days afore Ted went. Our Mam thought we’d all be lost. Eh, James?”
“Aye,” James said, without moving his head. “That were a bad time and all. Diphtheria,” he enunciated slowly. “They brought it up from Settstone village.”
Hal said, “I was sick with it.” He added, not without pride. “I all but died too.” He kept quiet about his heart.
“You’re a wicked boy. A bad wicked boy …”
His mother, his beautiful mother.
“I thought, we thought—dead. Some terrible accident. We’ve been out of our minds, Hal.”
But how? Why? The King of Goldland safe home who had been lost in the forest. Saved by the stranger….
Mother cried over him. Father was very angry. Alice fussed and looked pinched from the upset. He protested:
“But Nan-Nan said—”
“No excuses, young fellow-me-lad. No excuses, sir. Eight o’clock of an evening—and last seen at two in the afternoon. Outrageous …”
His clothes, tied up in a bundle. Nearly dry now. The feeling of disgrace (the same feeling as when his nightshirt, his sheets, were discovered wet— when he was much, much younger. He thought he’d forgotten how that felt.). Everything spoiled. Gold that was really dust. Like in the fairy tales. King of Goldland …
“The Ibbotsons. Yes. They will be thanked, and the clothes returned.” He heard money mentioned. “A small token, some appreciation naturally. Although it was only their duty.”
Later Nan-Nan, cross too, said, “We’ve the worry already that you don’t catch measles off Master Jack—then you go putting on farm boy’s clothes.” She sniffed, and held up the trousers with their frayed leather belt. Farm boy’s clothes.
“He—the boy whose clothes those are, he’s going to show me, about fishing. Stephen’s twelve. He goes anywhere by himself. He takes one of their collie dogs along the walls, after rabbits.”
Such tiredness, such happy tiredness.
“And I’ll be seeing him again. Soon.”
“That’s as maybe,” Nan-Nan said. “What a bag of moonshine.”
18
Sadie’s mouth trembled a little. She said, “The boys—Mr. Pettinger won’t have finished yet. For Greek, they have always an extra half hour.”
Her manner was very odd. As Lily stepped forward to embrace her: “Lily—no!” She st
ood back a little. “I don’t care that you should. I’ve—” Her fingers were clawing at the silver clasp of her belt. “There’s something, I want to say something to you. I was going to—maybe call, but seeing you’re here—I—”
“Whatever is it, darling?” It wasn’t the Sadie she knew. Overtired, yes. She had been doing too much lately. Perhaps they both had?
In the end the Braille work had not been nearly enough for Lily. It had been Sadie’s suggestion they should work together. Just now they were raising funds to help children whose fathers were in prison. “Why should the innocent suffer?” Lily drafted letters, suggested from among her large acquaintance speakers who might touch hearts, and purses, used shamelessly all her theatrical connections. She was thoroughly busy, and more than a little consoled. She was worthwhile, useful. She felt, too, that it made her a better mother. And although Robert mocked, she found that it made her more able to withstand his jibes—and the emptiness of their relationship.
It was so good to work with Sadie, to talk in free moments about anything, everything. (No, no, not everything.)
Long days of summer: Hal and Jack still being tutored at the Hall. Jack, his father’s son, with Sadie’s vivacity. Impulsive, often obstinate but never sulky. Sadie said once:
“Let others be angry with him. I can’t. Perhaps he’ll go to the bad with my spoiling.” She had smiled fondly. “And perhaps not.”
Indeed Lily couldn’t imagine it. Hal and Jack, inseparable, although lately often making off to that farm where Hal had sheltered. Going fishing with one of the boys. Besides Hal’s seriousness, intensity, Jack was an excellent foil. Both had two younger sisters, both expressed scorn for them. Each son was quite different. And quite perfect.
Today she was bursting with news from America. Sadie followed always so closely the fortunes of Daisy and her family. A letter from New York today that said all was well. Daisy’s daughter Anna, at nineteen, had just married a lawyer’s son. It was a really good match. And so happy together. Joe, Daisy’s eldest, doing well too. Daisy was helping with immigrants at the Henry Street Settlement.
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