The Branded Man

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Cruel? You’re going to show me a cruel secret? I am intrigued, really I am. Here I go, hying for Pandora’s box.’ He did a sidestep that was part of a jig and caused Fanny to giggle, and when the door closed after him she exclaimed to Marie Anne, ‘He’s a lad and a half is Master Patrick. Well, I mean, miss, he’s…oh’—she tossed her head—‘I can say it to you, I think he’s the best of the bunch.’

  ‘I do too, Fanny. Yes, I do too.’

  The best of the bunch was running up the back stairs now and he was still running when he crossed the landing and thrust open the schoolroom door, there to startle his mother, who was standing by the long ink-stained table with the open brown box in front of her and to the side a scattered number of drawings, and in her hand an open diary. This she immediately closed and held tightly to her breast as she demanded, ‘What d’you want?’

  Pat moved slowly towards her. He looked at the box before bringing down the open lid and fingering the broken lock; then he looked at his mother and said, ‘You couldn’t wait. You had to force it.’

  He glanced along the table now to where the small, worn, sharp-edged poker was lying, and he asked a simple question. ‘Why? It held only a child’s diary and apparently—’ he now flicked the number of drawings to one side, then hesitated and picked one up and stared at it for a moment before looking at her, and she answered his look with, ‘Yes. Yes, you might well stare. Did you ever see anything so inhuman?’

  He now spread out the rest of the sheets of paper and, after scanning them, he turned to her again, saying, ‘Inhuman? D’you realise what these are?’

  ‘Yes, I realise what they are. They’re drawings of us, hideous drawings of us.’

  ‘Mother…they are caricatures. Really splendid drawings. She has caught us all with a few strokes. An artist would say they’re a work of genius for a fourteen-year-old girl.’

  ‘A work of genius!’ Her hand went out and grabbed up a sheet, which she thrust at him, saying, ‘Look at that! That is supposed to be me!’

  The woman depicted was definitely his mother, but she was really grotesque. The body was long and thin; the face was long and thin, but it was the pencilled features that showed the hard ugliness of the woman as he knew Marie Anne must see her: the eyes were like pinpoints; the nose like a snout; the mouth like a snarling dog’s. It was really a terrible portrayal. He was silent for a moment before he turned to her again, saying quietly, ‘You have only yourself to blame for making her see you in this light.’ She made no answer, and he added, ‘Why do you feel like you do about her?’

  She now fingered the book she was holding in her hands. The action looked as if she wanted to crush it; and then she muttered, ‘I can’t help it. She…she was never like an ordinary child. Not…not quite human. Wild. You know she was wild, running here and there. The looks of her.’

  ‘Well, everyone in the family says she resembles the twins, and from what I remember of them they were wild enough. Mad Hatters. But they got on your nerves, didn’t they? And you must admit, Mother, you were very glad when they decided they were going to try their luck in Canada. It came as a bombshell to Father, and to Grandfather too; but you took it in your stride, didn’t you, because you were glad to be rid of them. Their escapades were too much for you. And of course there were two of them and you had always found them difficult to handle. But she is different; she was a little girl, a baby.’

  She rounded on him now and her words came from between her teeth as she cried, ‘A baby I never wanted! A baby that came through a physical fight. I had five children growing up fast and I’d had two miscarriages. I was having no more; and Evelyn was ten at the time, remember. Begetting was over and done with as far as I was concerned and he knew this, yet he still came to my bed. That was why I had our rooms moved to the east wing so that you children would not hear the narration that went on from time to time when he couldn’t have his way.’

  Rather sadly, Pat put in, ‘Oh, we heard all right, Mother, at least the shouting, but we couldn’t make out what was being said, though Marie Anne did.’

  ‘She couldn’t have; she was in the other wing.’

  ‘Not always. Remember the fracas on the night she was found sitting at the top of the lime tree?’ He pointed to the window. ‘After she was housebound on your orders for some misdemeanour, she would come up here at all hours, climb through the window and onto a branch and sit in the fork at the top of the trunk. That was until Vincent discovered her escapade and shook a branch so violently that she had to cling on for dear life, and she used her lungs to such an extent that her screams carried to The Little Manor and brought Grandfather post-haste. Then you ordered the windows to be fastened, and as a further punishment she was sent off to school again. But did you do anything to Vincent? No, you didn’t; but Grandpa did: he put the fear of God into him. Threatened to send him to sea. Of course, you did something then. You actually pleaded your son’s cause. It was only a bit of fun, you said. But all this did not stop Marie Anne, whenever she was home, from coming up here and doing her drawings in secret.

  ‘One night she heard voices coming from there.’ He now pointed to the empty fireplace with its high iron grate, and when his mother turned and looked at it she said, ‘Coming from where?’

  ‘The fireplace, Mother, the fireplace. You didn’t know that this chimney was a branch off the one in your bedroom, did you? All the chimneys in this house branch, you know. The tale of a boy-sweep being stuck up one and dying there is really true. Anyway she heard you and Father going at it quite clearly. I heard you myself.’

  He saw that her mouth had dropped into a gape, and he nodded at her, saying, ‘I knew of her night visits to the schoolroom, and I also knew that her loving brother Vincent had found out and would do something to get her into trouble. So I came up this night, and there she was sitting on the fender listening. And I sat with her, and I listened too, at least for a minute or so. Then I pulled her away and took her down to my room, where she cried her eyes out. I tried to tell her it was nothing, that fathers and mothers always fought; but that wasn’t what had made her cry. It was the fact that you had been talking about her and called her a mad thing and that she was a misery to you. And she repeated practically your own words of a moment ago, that she was born in struggle and bitterness and that she had caused nothing but trouble since she had been born.’

  ‘Oh, dear God.’ The words came as a murmur, and because he seemed to recognise a softening, he said quietly, ‘Can’t you try to love her? At least be affectionate to her in some small way?’ And then he was saddened still further with her reply, for, shaking her head slowly, she said, ‘I can’t. I can’t. Because there’s something about her. The very look of her repels me. I can’t imagine that I gave birth to her. I’ve tried. Yes, believe me, Pat, I’ve tried. Years ago I tried. But then I found it was hopeless. She seemed to oppose me at every turn. We were enemies, as it were, from the beginning.’

  ‘Oh, Mother.’ He went to her now and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, dead sorry that you feel this way, because if you had got to know the other side of her, and there is another side…she’s a sweet child really—’

  ‘Oh, Pat!’ The words were derisive. ‘Sweet, d’you say, and drawing things like that?’ She pointed to the papers on the table.

  He now picked up another drawing which caused him to laugh and say, ‘Well, look at that! That’s me. My hair’s standing on end because I always run my fingers through it; my eyes are closed, my mouth wide agape, all my teeth showing. That’s how I must look when I’m laughing, probably when I’m having a great belly laugh, I should say. Don’t you see?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ She shrugged. Then opening the book that was still in her hands, she said, ‘These writings, they’re like her, they’re wild. This should be burned. I’ll burn it.’

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort, Mother.’ He was actually struggling with her. ‘Give me it here!’

  They were standing apart now, th
e book in his hands, and he said, ‘If there’s anything bad in it, all right, I’ll destroy it myself, but meanwhile she must have some pastime, such as her drawing and writing, because she’s going to be in that bed for some weeks still.’

  She stared at him and there was no softening of her gaze; then she turned and was halfway towards the door when, swinging round, she said, ‘Well, the minute she’s out of that bed she’s for London and Aunt Martha’s. I’m arranging it.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I said, she’s for London and Aunt Martha’s. She can have a musical career up there. I admit she’s good at that. Aunt Martha wants a companion and she’s agreed to talk it over. I’m going up there next week.’

  He said nothing. What was there to say? Aunt Martha’s. That gloomy house in one of the dead areas of London. He had called on Aunt Martha during one of his visits to London, but only the once. Poor Marie Anne. But yet, if she was going to have a musical career she wouldn’t spend much time in that house; she’d be at a school of sorts. And anything would be preferable to the life she had to lead here. Poor Marie Anne.

  As he gathered up the drawings he became more amazed at the expertness of the resemblances. It proved one thing to him: she knew people. She could get behind their façade. There was a frightful drawing of Vincent. His face really looked evil but, almost obliterating it, were two hands, the fingers thick and podgy, but all ending in vicious-looking claws. He shook his head in amazement. She knew all about Vincent’s hands: he was forever pawing her, and not only pawing but punching, all under the guise of playing with her. At times he thought that if anybody’s character needed clarifying it was Vincent’s.

  He paused as he picked up the last drawing. It was a caricature of his grandfather. She had given him a small body with an impish face, but the main feature of the drawing was the two arms outstretched as if to embrace. Oh yes, that child—or young girl as she was now—was, he must admit, as his mother plainly said, possessed of some unusual quality—and it could create love or hate. He imagined that the Spectator or Punch would jump at sketches like these. There were some prominent caricaturists with whose work these sketches could surely hold their own. They needed only sharp captions. Dear, dear, what was to become of her?

  He pressed the drawings gently into the bottom of the box, put the diary on top, then closed the lid; he did not immediately lift up the box, but stood looking at it. How was he going to get over the lock being wrenched open? All he could do was say he found it like that. Of course, she would know immediately who had done it, her mother having stopped Fanny from bringing it downstairs. Well, he had to get to work.

  He picked up the box and hurried from the room. In the bedroom, he handed it to Marie Anne, saying, ‘That’s how I found it; but I must go now; the trap’s waiting.’ Then he added, ‘Traps wait but trains don’t. Bye-bye dear.’ He bent and went to kiss her on the brow, but her hand checked his face and her large dark eyes in their oval sockets stared into his before she said, ‘Can’t I have anything of my own?’

  ‘It is your own, dear, all your own, and I want to talk to you, particularly about your drawings. They’re marvellous.’

  ‘You think so, Pat?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do, dear. You have a great talent there. As I said, we’ll talk about it when I get back.’ He now kissed her brow, then patted her cheek, before hurrying from the room.

  Fanny Carter was now standing by the bedside looking at the box lid, and she murmured, ‘I couldn’t help it, miss; I had to take it back.’

  ‘Of course you had, Fanny. Of course you had.’

  ‘You’ll have to have a new lock on it.’

  ‘It won’t matter; I won’t leave my diary in it again.’

  But where would she leave it in the future? Because she meant to go on writing in her diary, for it was her only means of working out troubled thoughts.

  Had her mother had time to read what she had written about her? Oh, she hoped not, because, as nasty as she was, she didn’t want to hurt her, and people could be hurt by words more than blows. She knew that, for she seemed to have been experiencing the pain of words all her life, and the pain of love, withheld love. Her mother had love to give, but she had given it to Evelyn and Vincent and Pat. Never to her. No, never. Nor had her father. Oh no. She couldn’t remember receiving a kind word from her father. What she received from him was silence or long strange looks. He rarely spoke to her, although there was one occasion when she had been playing the piano she discovered that he had been listening, and when she had turned to him hoping for praise, his expression and the movement of his head suggested amazement. But he had only smiled at her.

  She now turned the pages of her diary until she came to a page headed ‘Hands’, and beneath it she had written:

  Hands can talk, talk in all ways.

  Mr Smith in the village, he cannot hear, but he talks with his hands.

  Grandpa’s hands talk: when they stroke my hair or hold me close they talk loudly. Pat’s hands talk. They are smiling hands, they make you laugh. But Vincent’s hands are horrible, and Evelyn’s are cold; Mother’s hands are pushing hands, pushing me in the back, pushing my shoulders, pushing my chest; mostly with two fingers she pushes my chest. Always pushing, pushing me away, pushing and pulling. No, not pulling; she never pulls me towards her. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, for when I run I forget about everything.

  She stopped reading and looked down the bed to the wire cage shielding her foot and leg, and—she almost whimpered to herself—will I ever be able to run again? Doctor Sutton-Moore said I will, but…but, as Grandpa has said about him, he’s a sweet-talk pillow doctor, made to measure for delicate ladies, but he lets the poor cure themselves.

  He had made her laugh when he said that the other day. At times he said such funny things. But she knew what he meant in this case; for her grandfather had also pointed out that Doctor Ridley wasn’t very popular in certain houses; he was too blunt: but give him Doctor Ridley any time.

  Yes, and give her Doctor Ridley too. She liked him, even though he rarely smiled. But he had yesterday when, after straightening her foot, and she had winced without crying out, he had said, ‘We’re doing fine, fine.’ She would have liked to have talked with him, but Mrs Piggott was in the room. Mrs Piggott was a fussy body: she straightened straight counterpanes; she rearranged the already arranged articles on the dressing table; she dampened her finger and thumb in her mouth and ran them down the straight folds of the curtains. What she didn’t do was talk to her. Somehow she felt the little woman was afraid to talk to her. That was another thing her thoughts dwelt on: some of the servants never talked to her except to repeat an order sent by their mistress. Not like Fanny or Carrie or some of the yard men; and the footman, too, was nice. He had once called her a little card. She thought that was a funny name to give her: little card. She didn’t ask anyone what it meant but she knew it wasn’t nasty, because he had smiled as he said it.

  Fanny was speaking to her again, saying, ‘I could send the box down to the carpenter, miss. I’m sure he or one of the men could fix the lock.’

  She considered a moment, then said, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, Fanny; I’ll not be needing it any more.’

  ‘But where will you put your diary, miss?’ There was a note of conspiracy in Fanny’s voice. ‘There’s no place here you can hide it.’

  She answered quietly, ‘It’s all right, Fanny; I know what I’m going to do. I’ll give it to my grandpa and he’ll put it in his safe.’ She was sure he wouldn’t mind it taking up space in his safe, not after she had explained to him there were lots of things she might forget as she grew older. And she didn’t want ever to forget them, because what she had said in this book had been about her life among the people of this house. This house that she should have looked upon as her home but which was, at times, more like a cage. And, as she had already written somewhere in the book, it was indeed a cage filled with different birds, with the big ones mostly cruel.


  Three

  ‘You must go in and see her; I understand the servants are talking. If Vincent can go in, you can.’

  ‘What did she say to Vincent?’

  ‘She was very civil, very proper. He asked her how she was and she said very well. He asked if her leg was painful, and she answered, “Not any more unless I jerk it.” And not even when he said, “It’s taken a broken leg to clip your wings,” did she round on him as she would have done at one time. And yes, she was indeed civil to him. We must face up to the fact that he has teased her unmercifully for years. I won’t have it said that he was rough with her. More likely she was rough with him.’

  ‘Yes, I can well believe that’—Evelyn nodded at her mother—‘because he didn’t get the two scratches on his face from the cat, as he made out at the time.’

  ‘Well, yes; but all that has long passed now. None of you are children any more. Not even her, for she’ll be fifteen shortly. Well, are you coming? You just need to ask her how she is and it will stop those imbecile tongues wagging below stairs. So come along with you, let’s get it over.’

  But here Veronica paused and, turning back to her daughter, she said, ‘While I’m on, I may as well tell you your father is annoyed at your being late down for breakfast so often now. Three times last week you were late.’

  ‘I had a cold, Mother. You know I had.’

  ‘You hadn’t a cold on Sunday when you missed the service, nor the Sunday before. It isn’t very much he asks of you; you could please him in this one thing, surely.’

  Evelyn Lawson stared at her mother, thinking, as she often did, that she was an incredible woman: she must never see herself as she really was. Asking her to please her father; she should ask herself if she ever did anything to please her husband. She had once heard her grandfather yell at her father, ‘Why didn’t you keep your mistress, man?’ She did not catch her father’s reply, only her grandfather’s words again: ‘Oh, don’t give me that, bad for business if it ever came out. Flannagan and Harris have had their women on the side for years and they haven’t lost the respect of the office or those on the floor. In fact they’re better thought of. You’re gutless, man, gutless.’