Brand X

by Christianna Brand

  ‘I’ll come,’ said Dionne. ‘But not quite yet.’ His voice said in her ears, ‘Look after the children.’ But her broken spirit screamed, ‘Not yet, don’t make me go there again, not yet, and stand in the little room where first I saw him, climb the mountain to the circle of stones where I gave up my soul for the love of him, where first he took me into his arms…’ It was April, the very time of their meetings: across the hillsides the blackthorn would be in bloom again…

  And it was, indeed. All along the narrow lanes, the banks were studded with pale clumps of primroses as she drove down at last, unheralded, so that if her heart weakened she could yet turn back: there were violets between the primroses and tiny white cups, yellow-centred, of future wild strawberries. But as the car toiled up and ever upward to the higher hills, the primroses petered out, even the thin shimmer of bluebell buds in the spinneys was seen no more—only the blackthorn trailed its white loveliness, thorn pierced, over the countryside. The little farm, seen from afar, looked bleak and lonely, perched up there all by itself; the house with its hare-face looked blankly down at her as, sick at heart, she drove steadily up and on. So, blankly, with cold dislike that hardly even bothers to be hate, she thought, will the children stare back at me…

  Cecilia, in her day there, had had the manure heap shifted, the barns a little tidied up: the place looked more habitable, the yard outside was relatively clean. But thistle and nettle sewed the pasture fields, the hay barn was empty already, she heard the shrill bleating of far too many hungry lambs and the dogs, rushing out, barking, to meet her car looked thin and ill-kept. For a moment, no one else appeared: then Robert came running up from the lower fields. ‘Good lord,’ he said. ‘It’s you.’ His face was angry and troubled but she suddenly saw with a stab of incredulous relief that it was not because she was there. ‘One of the ewes is ill,’ he said. ‘I think it’s a vitamin deficiency. But Evan’s run out of the stuff.’

  She followed him down to the field. The poor beast lay panting, heaving itself forward in pitiful, helpless jerks, uselessly trying to get up. ‘I’ll go down to the village,’ she said. ‘She’ll last another hour.’ And she was gone, turning her car in the narrow, rutted yard, bucketing off down the lane. Robert had the hypodermic all ready by the time she returned. But the ewe did not respond. After a little while, Dionne said: ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘I suppose you couldn’t help it,’ said Robert, ungraciously. ‘You went as fast as you could.’

  ‘Evan had no damn business to run out of the stuff.’

  ‘And look at the lambs,’ said the boy.

  Too many of them, far too many of them, piteously bleating, cast off by lack-lustre, indifferent ewes. Alice came into view, staggering beneath the weight of two pails of milk, a couple of lambs trotting like dogs at her side. ‘If I were you,’ said Dionne, ‘as you’ve got so many, I’d move the whole lot up to the top barn. Then you won’t have to carry the milk so far.’

  ‘I like carrying the milk, thank you,’ said Alice.

  ‘All the same—that’s sense,’ said the boy. ‘She does know about the farm.’

  ‘More than Evan knows, apparently,’ said Dionne, looking about her angrily. She gestured at half a dozen ewes. ‘What are this lot doing here?’

  ‘They’ve taken to the artificial stuff a bit. They just help themselves at the hay barn.’

  ‘Well, they shouldn’t: not when you’re so short already. Turn them out to the upper field, for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘It means bringing them back all that way to the lambs in the evening. We’re trying to teach them to look after their babies,’ said Alice.

  ‘It wouldn’t be so far if the lambs were in the upper barn, as I suggested. But I’ll mind my own business,’ said Dionne. ‘It’s your farm.’ She went indoors and looked at the remains of their dismal lunch. ‘Any objection,’ she said to Robert, ‘if I do some cooking?’

  He gave the old, cold shrug. ‘Just as you like.’ He added: ‘May I ask how long you’re staying?’

  She considered it. She said at last: ‘I’ll tell you what, Robert. It’s your farm. I’ll stay over the week-end if you’ll let me. After that, if you’re all right I’ll leave you.’

  And the old, cold ice-war set in. They repudiated her supper, civilly, in favour of canned meat and a tin of stale Welsh cakes sent down some days ago by Mrs. Morgan, they refused interference in the matter of the milking and the evening’s sheep round. But she spent her time examining the untidy mess of farm papers—as his guardian, this was her right, a boy of fourteen was not to be permitted sole authority. ‘Robert, have you seen this letter? They say the milking-shed isn’t kept up to standard, the Co-op Board won’t deal with us, we shall lose our license. What’s happening to the milk if they aren’t accepting it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Evan takes it to the cross-roads as usual.’

  ‘Except there isn’t much to go,’ said Alice, ‘with all the lambs to feed. They take most of it.’

  ‘Most of the yield of fourteen cows? The whole thing’s crazy.’

  And next morning she followed old Evan down to the cross-roads and saw him empty the churns into the river. Caught out he said sulkily that the Co-op wouldn’t take it, they wanted things all new-fangled these days…

  ‘They want them just like they were before—clean,’ said Dionne.

  ‘Well, I’m too old for it single-handed, I can’t go on for ever.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ said Dionne. ‘I’ll have to talk to Mr. Robert.’

  So she talked to him that night, long and seriously. The whole thing was going to pieces, good money would be thrown after bad, she thought they should sell the farm for what little it would now fetch and cut their losses…

  The children were violent in repudiation. Their father had bought it, their father had left it to Robert, it was his one direct bequest—because he knew they both loved it. Never, never, never would they part with the farm.

  ‘But when Evan goes, you’ll have no one who knows anything about it.’

  ‘You know something about it,’ said Robert. ‘You know all about it.’

  ‘What’s the good of that, Robert, if you won’t have me?’ She said quickly: ‘I’m not complaining, I quite understand that you don’t want me here. And heaven knows I’m not asking you to let me come.’ The wheel had gone half circle, the town wife had been relegated to this poor, bare, isolated little place while she herself had been wrapped in the cast-off luxuries; was it to come full circle now and find her back again? She knew that this would be more than she could endure. The enmity of these children might be momentarily alleviated in the pushing, London life, there was somewhere for them to go, to be away from her, she herself might retreat from their chilling unkindness from time to time. Here there was nowhere to go: nowhere but a hilltop, haunted by memories.

  ‘You say you only want what my father would have wanted,’ said Robert. ‘I should think he might have wanted you to stay.’ But lest he should have shown a moment of good-will towards her, he reverted immediately to the old, cold hostility. ‘Because we might have to work together, that needn’t make any—well, difference.’

  ‘I’ll think it over,’ she said.

  And she thought it over long and bitterly, sitting on the bed in the little room that—so long ago, it seemed—had been her own. She had them now in her power; here was something they cared about too much to let them relinquish it rather than plead with her. She could bargain with them now, could force them to some outward show at least of friendliness, could end the dreary loneliness of a life together from which they yet deliberately excluded her. I’ll talk to them, she thought. I’ll tell them I can’t stand this any longer. They must give in, they must relent a little, I’ll tell them that if they want me to stay—we can’t go on like this. And she went down the narrow cottage stairs and found the boy standing there, alone; standing there, in that room—that room where so long ago she, as a child, had stood and looked at Him, and loved him from th
at hour. They are children too, she thought, and they loved him too. Why should they abate their punishment of me who took him away from them? The dream faded. She said only: ‘Where’s Alice?’

  ‘She’s out in the shed.’

  ‘The shed?’

  ‘Her calf isn’t well, that’s all.’

  ‘What, Moonbeam?’ she said, dragging the information from him, piece by piece.

  ‘Yes, Moonbeam.’ He passed a weary hand across his forehead. ‘If anything happens to that calf—’ he said.

  ‘Is it a special one?’

  ‘Oh, well… She was there when it was born, she helped with it. This’ll be the fifth that’s died.’

  ‘You look tired, Robert,’ she said.

  He straightened up at once, repudiating compassion. ‘I’m not tired. I’ve just been cleaning up, that’s all. Evan’s gone, cleared out for good.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Well—perhaps that comes at a good time. I’ve decided. If you want to keep on the farm, you can. You’ll both have to go to school, of course, but you can work it in the holidays. We’ll have to hire some help, but that can be arranged. And if you want me to stay on, very well, I’ll stay.’

  ‘All right,’ he said indifferently; but she could see that beneath the rock-hard surface, he was relieved. To help him to conceal it, she said: ‘Alice is a long time with Moonbeam.’

  He volunteered an opinion; almost for the first time between them. ‘Personally, I think it’s silly giving animals names. They’ve got to be sold in the end, and killed and things. It makes it too sentimental; farmers don’t name their animals.’

  ‘We can keep Moonbeam. She’s going to be a nice little heifer.’ She lifted her head. ‘What’s that?’

  The sound of a barn door pushed open, a terrible, bellowing moaning, footsteps running. Alice burst into the room, desperately weeping. ‘Oh, it’s terrible, it’s terrible! Poor Moonbeam!’ She cast herself into Dionne’s arms, sobbing and shaking. ‘She’s all—all swollen up and she’s making the most terrible noises…’

  She held the child close; but she saw Robert’s swift recoil, he said sharply: ‘Alice!’ and she felt Alice stiffen and draw back, pull away from her. She let her go immediately, affecting not to notice. ‘You say she’s swollen?’

  ‘She seems to be getting bigger every second. And the noises…!’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. She kicked off her slippers, found a pair of old shoes, thrust her feet into them, ran out and across the yard to the shed. She was back in a moment. ‘Ring up the vet, Robert.’ She snatched up the kettle, filled it, put it on the old black kitchen range. Alice said: ‘What’s wrong with Moonbeam?’

  ‘She’s eaten something. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’

  ‘S-sooner…?’ stammered Alice.

  ‘She hasn’t just this minute swollen up like this.’

  ‘I didn’t want to ask you,’ said Alice. She gave Dionne the old, proud, resentful look but she hung her head.

  Robert turned away from the telephone. ‘He’s out on a job. He won’t be back for ages.’

  ‘Can we ring him there?’

  ‘The farm’s not on the telephone.’

  She went back to the calf. When she returned her white face had a new whiteness. ‘Well—we’ll have to do it ourselves.’

  ‘You mean, operate on her?’

  ‘It’s not exactly an operation.’ She poured water, began to scrub her hands. ‘You come and scrub too, Robert. Alice, in the bottom left drawer you’ll find a box with a thing in it called a—a trocha or something, some such name, written on the box. There’s a sort of little tube with it. Yes, that’s the thing. Put it in a big saucepan, put it on the stove, get it boiling to sterilise it…’

  The child, trembling, did what she said. ‘What are you going to do to her?’ She looked at the sharp piercing instrument with horror.

  ‘She’s all blown up, you see. She’s eaten something wrong and it’s fermenting inside her, she’s full of a sort of gas. We have to—it isn’t very nice, but if we don’t, she’ll die—we have to make a little hole in her stomach and put the tube in and let the gas out.’

  ‘Make a hole?’

  ‘Only a little cut. You needn’t come,’ she said pitifully. ‘Robert and I will manage.’

  ‘She ought to come,’ said Robert, ‘if she wants to be a farmer.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think she need—’ began Dionne. But she saw the two stern, withdrawn young faces. ‘Well—it’s for you to decide.’ She slid her hands into rubber gloves, picked up the instrument, went across to the shed with it, the two children following. The calf lay on its side, dreadfully bellowing: it was enormous. ‘You’ll have to turn her over,’ she said. ‘I want the left side.’ She bowed her head, fighting against nausea, praying for firmness. ‘Alice, try and manage, Robert must keep his hands clean, he may have to help me.’

  Outside it was clear and bright, cold but brilliantly starlit. Inside the shed all was shadowy but for the circle of light from the swinging storm lantern. ‘Robert, shine your torch. Give her a rub with the antiseptic—just there.’ She pointed with the sharp tip of the instrument. ‘Quickly: we haven’t got time to be fussy.’ But in her heart she prayed, Let him take a long time, let him dab away for ever, putting off the moment when I must do this thing. (And don’t let them see how my hands are shaking, don’t let them guess that I’ve never done it before!) The boy dabbed, crouching over the moaning calf, took away his hand and waited looking up at her with anxious expectancy. She struggled with the temptation to put the instrument into his hand, to say, ‘You do it, you’re the man here, you’re the precious farmer, so possessive and independent.’ But she did not. She said: ‘Turn away your heads a moment.’ And in a moment, it was over. Sickening, half dramatic, half ludicrous, the released gas hissed out through the opening tube, the heaving balloon of the poor beast’s sides with startling rapidity began to subside, the bellowing moans grew less. She said to Alice: ‘There! It’s over.’

  ‘You look awfully sick,’ said Robert.

  ‘Yes.’ She told him now. ‘I’ve never done it before. Only seen it.’

  ‘Never done it—?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t say I enjoyed it.’ She threw the instrument into a bowl. ‘Take it back to the kitchen and get it boiled up and put away. I’ll stay with her a little while more, and get the tube out. Put on a kettle and make us some tea or something.’ There was no response; she had forgotten for a moment the inevitability of their recoil from her instructions. She said wearily: ‘Never mind. I’ll do it when I get in.’ They got up and went out, silently. She bent forward and gently rubbed the calf between its incipient horns. ‘Poor little Moonbeam! You’ll be better soon, darling.’ It came to her with terrible loneliness and grief that not since Charles died had she used an endearment.

  She stayed a long time with the calf, sitting alone on the straw in the shadowy stable; and, in the bitter solitude, reaction set in, she gave herself over to a desolation of weeping. The long years stretched ahead of her, a prisoner in this small, bare, hard-working, unsheltered, narrow place, all the beauty, all the little charms that once he had worshipped, fading unseen and uncared for—friendless, unloved, unwanted, forced by her own honesty and conscience to accept the day-in, day-out, year-in, year-out chill hostility of two mere children—who nevertheless must constitute all her world. Worn out at last, the calf safe and peacefully sleeping, she rubbed away as well as she might the traces of her tears, blew out the storm lantern and went back, spiritless and weary, to the farmhouse.

  And yet… Her heart rose a little in her as she went. Surely after this, she thought, surely after this—? Would they not at least have thought about her? Discussed her, perhaps, been a little grateful? Have something ready for her to eat after the long, chill vigil, her task accomplished—the task which they must have seen had cost her so much, which at any rate had meant so much to them? At least a cup of tea…?

  The kettle was steam
ing away on the black range as usual, like an old man puffing contentedly at his pipe. For the rest—plates, cups and saucers had been flung on to the table, two of each; evidently she might get her own. There was a batch, the flat round Welsh loaf, a lump of butter long made unlovely by the digging-in of crumby knives. Mrs. Morgan’s stale Welsh cakes were there again. Nothing more. They sat with their elbows on the too-long-unscrubbed white deal, looking up sharply when she came in, to enquire: ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘Yes, she’s fine,’ she said.

  With reassurance, the eagerness was switched abruptly off. ‘Oh, good,’ said the boy, and reached out and shoved the bread towards his sister. Obviously they had been too anxious up to now to eat.

  Resentment burst from her. She said: ‘Haven’t you even got a word of thanks?’

  They reacted as always, immediately: cold, indifferent. ‘Oh yes—thank you,’ said Robert, expressionless. ‘Alice—?’

  ‘Thank you,’ mumbled Alice, not lifting her head.

  She turned and went out again. At the mouth of the rutty lane, a spray of blackthorn glimmered like a ghost and she tore a sprig from the parent stem and, barely conscious of the hard thorns pricking into her breast as she clutched it to her, walked slowly up over the mountain in the evening light. If all that failed to move them, she thought, what will? They needed me and I didn’t fail them. They knew what it cost me to do it. If even after that they won’t give way a little, be a little kind… And, she thought, wistfully—love me a little… But they would not; they could not. Long, long ago, all those aeons of agony ago, she, a child herself, had made this very sacrifice: had renounced, for the One Desire, all other loves.

  Up here. Here in this bare place where the great boulder crowned the summit of the rolling mountain, she herself had made the sacrifice: had sold her soul, had exchanged for the One Desire, all her powers. Had prayed: ‘Great Master, if you will give me the Desire of my Heart, I will give back my magic to you, from whom it came.’ And had built a ring of stones and within the ring had burned a fire of blackthorn—had felt the magic drain away from her, for a moment been spent and empty, terribly bereft; had known that now indeed the magic was gone.