The Stony Path

by Rita Bradshaw

  Alice was busy dividing up portions of the sly cake as Polly entered the kitchen again after washing the chamber pot under the pump, and Ruth’s mouth was already full of the sugared pastry liberally sprinkled with currants. Alice said nothing as Polly scurried past her for the stairs, but once her granddaughter reappeared in the kitchen, Alice’s voice was soft as she said, ‘Sit down an’ have a sup, hinny.’

  ‘Aye, ta, Gran.’

  It was quick and relieved, and for a moment guilt was hot and heavy in Alice’s heart. The load this bairn – this precious bairn – bore was enough as it was, without her having to act as peacemaker between her mother and grandmother. Alice knew she should have kept her mouth shut the last time she’d gone for Hilda, like Walter had said, at least until the bairns had been out of the road. But he didn’t have to put up with Lady Muck, did he. Alice’s mouth hardened. He and Henry might be out from dawn to dusk and doing the work of four men, but she’d take that any day compared to what she endured.

  Alice brought her chin tightly into her neck. She had considered herself very fortunate when she had been sent to this farm from the workhouse, until she’d got here, that was. Walter’s mother had been sickly and unable to see to the meals and household chores, but if she had been a kind mistress the hard work from five in the morning until late at night wouldn’t have mattered. But she’d been a dreadful woman, eaten up with frustration at her enforced idleness, which had manifested itself in a cruel and biting tongue and an obsessional desire to see Alice crushed and brow-beaten. The missus, as Walter’s mother had dictated she be addressed, had known that by hiring a chit from the workhouse she would be able to have free rein; before Alice a series of girls from the town had come and gone, staying a month at the longest.

  And so, rather than be sent back to the workhouse in disgrace, which would have meant being incarcerated for a good few more years, Alice had cooked and cleaned, fed the poultry and calves and pigs, and suffered Walter’s mother. And when some particular act of spite had been harder to stomach than normal, she’d repeated to herself that this wouldn’t last forever. A few years and she would be experienced enough to work anywhere.

  But then Walter’s parents had died of cholera within a week of each other the third summer she had been at the farm, and on the night of the second funeral Walter had plied her with home-made cider and had his way with her. The next morning when she’d come to her senses she had known it was because he had sensed she was ready to leave the farm and didn’t want to lose his workhorse, but as fate would have it she’d already fallen for Eva and she and Walter were married by September.

  She’d been full of suppressed rage and bitterness all through the pregnancy, railing silently against the farm, Walter, herself, and when her daughter was born she’d barely been able to bring herself to look at the means of her entrapment. She had often wondered since if her rancour during those nine months had communicated itself to her unborn child, because she and Eva had always disliked each other.

  ‘Gran? I’ll carry the kettle through, shall I?’

  Alice came back to her present surroundings to see Polly, having finished her mug of tea and sly cake, attempting to lift the kettle off the hob. ‘Aye, hinny, an’ you, Ruth, get up off your backside an’ help her, an’ careful mind, the water’s boilin’. I’ll flake up a wee bit more soap by an’ by when I’ve finished me tea.’

  As the two girls staggered through to the stone-floored scullery carrying the great black kettle between them, Alice sat on for a few moments more. By, she was tired the day; she hadn’t the list to tackle the mounds of washing, but they wouldn’t poss themselves. And there was that madam upstairs playing the old soldier again, and it was Sunday the morrow. Sunday seemed to come round quicker and quicker, and with Eva and the lads not visiting last week they were bound to make an appearance come the afternoon. She rose slowly, her thin shoulders hunched, and walked wearily through to the two girls to find Polly attacking the poss tub with enough gusto to make the water bubble, while Ruth scraped idly at the big hard chunk of blue-veined soap in a manner that guaranteed only the smallest of slivers fell into the tub.

  ‘Oh, it looks grand, Poll, bonny, but do you think they’ll come?’

  ‘’Course they’ll come.’ Polly smiled at her sister, standing pressed close to her side, before both girls turned again to survey the kitchen, which they had spent most of the day cleaning.

  The fire was glowing a deep red in the shining blackleaded range to their left and it turned the newly polished brass fender rosy pink. It illuminated the hardwood saddle and hid most of its imperfections with the mellow flickering on the old wood, the flock-stuffed cushions appearing plump and soft for once. The kitchen table was sporting its white Sunday cloth over its weekday oilcloth, the six hardbacked chairs clustered round it all seeming to admire the bowl of wild flowers the girls had picked a few minutes earlier. And the colours of the flowers were reflected in the big clippy mat on the stone flags in front of the range. Polly and Ruth had lugged and pulled the mat into the yard that morning, beating the dust and grime from its cloth pieces for over five minutes before hauling it back into the kitchen.

  ‘I hope they come, Poll.’ Ruth ran across to stand in front of the mantelpiece, staring up at the little wooden clock in the middle of it. ‘What’s the time now?’

  ‘Nearly three.’ In spite of all Polly’s help, Ruth still hadn’t grasped how to tell the time, but now, as they heard their grandmother descend the stairs, their sense of expectation grew. Their granny always changed her working pinny for the fancy one with little daisies on before their aunt and the lads came, once she had made sure everything was ready for tea, which was prompt at four on a Sunday. The meal held part of the magic of this one special day in the week.

  Every weekday – if they were at home and not at school, which was mostly the case – the routine never altered. Oatmeal porridge for breakfast, and then tea and bread and butter. This was at six o’clock, after the men had been out an hour milking the cows and feeding the horses – old Bess, and Patience, the last of Bess’s foals, who was four years old now.

  Then the men went off into the fields with the horses, taking a tin bottle of tea with them and two slices of bread and jam, and the girls worked with their grandmother in the house and dairy. The men came in for a cooked dinner at twelve, which they all ate together, and then at three, Polly and Ruth took their grandfather and father their tea in the fields – a can of strong black tea, two thick shives of bread and butter and a currant bun. Supper – bread, butter and cheese – was at seven o’clock, after the men had come in from the fields and milked the cows and attended to the horses. This routine never varied and the food never altered.

  But on Sunday afternoons everything was different. After dinner the girls would help their grandmother fill up the tin bath in the scullery, and the menfolk would wash and change out of their rough working coats and soiled breeches into their Sunday clothes. Then they would disappear into the barn after donning thick hessian butcher’s aprons and work on ‘clean’ jobs for an hour or two. On the arrival of any visitors they would leave the aprons in the barn and stroll in a few minutes later with their pipes alight, as though they had been taking the air after dinner.

  It had taken Polly some years to understand that this act of apparent ease and relaxation was for her mother’s stepbrother’s benefit, and his alone. Frederick Weatherburn always arrived at or about the same time as her Aunt Eva and the lads and, like them, he rarely missed more than one week in a month. He was big and jolly and smelled of good tweed cloth and cigar smoke, and he was rich – or so her mam maintained anyway. Her grandda and da were always hearty and loud when Uncle Frederick was around, and Polly didn’t know if she liked that – it made her feel uncomfortable and slightly embarrassed somehow, although she didn’t know why. But she did know she liked Sunday tea.

  Baked jam roll, cheese scones, fruit loaf, seed cake – they usually had the lot on a Sunday, along with slice
s of her granny’s delicious white bread and butter, and a big plateful of their home-cured ham cut very thin.

  Sometimes, when the farm had been going through a harder spell than usual and Polly had noticed her granny’s stews and broths consisted mostly of taties, and that the flour was the cheaper kind – dark and with bits in it – which made the hard bread she didn’t like so much, she thought they wouldn’t have the white bread and plateful of ham on a Sunday afternoon. But they always did.

  ‘All ready, me bairns?’ Alice was smiling as she walked into the kitchen, but when Polly looked at her grandmother she saw it was her granny’s Sunday smile.

  This smile went hand in hand with her grandda and da being different, the elaborate tea, her mam coming downstairs and perching herself on the saddle near the fire, and her granny’s face sometimes when she looked at Aunt Eva. But Sunday meant Michael too. Polly hugged the thought of her cousin to her and skipped across to her grandmother, burying her face in Alice’s apron and holding her tight round the waist as she said, ‘Look at the table, Gran. Isn’t it bonny?’

  ‘Aye, pet. Right bonny.’

  ‘An’ the rain’s held off. I told you it would, didn’t I?’

  ‘That you did,’ Alice said heartily, too heartily. Bad weather sometimes meant a respite in this weekly torture, although on more than one occasion she had known Eva drag the lads through a foot or so of snow on the two-and-a-half-mile walk from the tram stop. At least now the bairns were grown Frederick couldn’t give them all a lift part of the way home in his horse and trap. She’d suffered the torments of the damned every time that had happened, although Walter had assured her Eva had more sense than to open her mouth to anyone. But Alice wasn’t so sure. Seeing Eva sitting there week after week with her hungry eyes fixed on her brother’s face ... No, she wasn’t so sure what Eva would do if the mood took her.

  And then, as though the thoughts of her daughter had conjured her up, she heard a familiar voice call, ‘Yoohoo, anyone at home?’ seconds before the kitchen door opened and Eva stepped into the kitchen, closely followed by two youths and a young lad. And it was this young lad who ran over to where Polly was now standing by her grandmother and said eagerly, his thin, pale face alight, ‘We came, see? And it’s grand outside. Shall we go down to the stream and look for crayfish?’

  ‘Can we?’ Both Polly and Ruth were looking at their grandmother, who in turn glanced at the two tall lads either side of Eva. They added their own plea by saying,

  ‘It’s really warm out, Gran,’ from the younger, and ‘There won’t be many days like this afore the weather sets in,’ from the older boy.

  ‘Aye, all right, be off with you.’ Alice was laughing at them as she spoke, but once the door had closed behind the young folk and Eva had come fully into the kitchen, seating herself on one of the hardbacked chairs, which she pulled out from beneath the table and turned to face the room, Alice said flatly, ‘Nathaniel not with you?’

  It was her stock address and Eva answered as she did each week, her voice matching her mother’s in tone. ‘He’s at his allotment.’

  ‘Oh, aye.’

  ‘Where’s Henry ... and Da?’

  She knew Eva always mentioned Henry first to get under her skin. Alice turned quickly to the range, taking a cloth and pressing the ready-filled kettle further into the glowing embers before saying shortly, ‘They’ll be in presently. You ready for a sup?’

  Eva opened her mouth to answer, but before she could do so the sound of a horse’s hoofs on the cobbles outside brought her mother walking swiftly across the room, saying, ‘That’ ll be Frederick.’

  Oh, aye, that’d be Frederick all right, and give it another minute or two and in would come her da and Henry with their pipes smoking and their faces smiling as though they hadn’t got a care in the world. Who did they think they were fooling? It was savage. This bit farm was shrinking each year, and there they were trying to play the gentlemen. It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. Her mam and da hadn’t made such a good bargain as they’d thought when they’d got rid of her and kept Henry and his lady wife, had they! She had always done half of Henry’s work along with hers; he was no farmer, Henry. But she hadn’t minded working for both of them, and she still wouldn’t. Oh, Henry, Henry.

  Eva listened to the sound of her mother greeting Hilda’s stepbrother and her expression was bitter, but by the time they entered the kitchen, her father and Henry following on their footsteps, Eva’s face was wiped clean of all emotion. And Alice would have been more than a little surprised if she had known her daughter was echoing her own agonising when Eva said silently to herself, her eyes tight on her brother’s beloved face, Let the torture begin.

  Once outside in the late summer air that smelt heavily of the big pile of manure steaming gently in one corner of the yard, Polly had the desire to laugh out loud, but knowing the others would enquire why she was laughing, she restrained the impulse. She was just so glad to see Michael – and Luke and Arnold too, of course, she added quickly, as a dart of guilt pricked her – and it was such a canny day too.

  ‘Come on then.’ She beamed at the others, her heart-shaped face with its great violet-blue eyes alight with the joy of being alive, and as though her elation had infected the rest of them, the five went running madly out of the yard into the lane beyond. They climbed over the dry-stone wall without bothering to open the gate and then continued pell-mell across the field, leaping over piles of cow dung with shrieks and cries until they came to the stream bordering that field with the next.

  As though at a given signal the boys were taking off their boots and socks and rolling up their trouser legs, wading in over the smooth rocks around which the crystal-clear stream tumbled and frothed. Polly and Ruth followed a little more cautiously. The stream was running high – there had been several bouts of torrential rain throughout September which had created havoc with the crops – and their grandmother didn’t like them plodging at the best of times; besides which, the icy water was stinging like pins and needles on their bare legs.

  Within a few minutes Ruth had had enough and retreated to the bank, laughing and shouting to the others as they searched for crayfish and the little minnows that populated the stream, but although Polly’s feet were numb and the bottom of her dress and her knickers were wet from the gurgling splashing of the water, she didn’t want to miss a minute of playing with Michael.

  Eventually, however, they were all sitting on the spiky dry grass on the bank, toasting their frozen feet to the weak rays of the dying sun. It was Luke, noticing how Polly’s teeth were chattering, who said, ‘Here, I’ve a bag of winter mixture, who wants one to keep the cold out?’

  ‘Me, me, Luke!’

  ‘An’ me!’

  ‘Have you got one of the red ones, Luke? I like to suck’em until they’re nowt but a little spike.’

  As the others clamoured for one of the sweets in the small paper bag Luke had fished out of his pocket, it was Arnold, his dark eyes on Polly’s bright laughing face, who said, ‘Aye, I’ll have one, man. I like a good sucker that puts fire in your belly now and again.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, Arnold.’ Luke’s voice was low but weighty.

  ‘What? I only said—’

  ‘I said shut your filthy mouth, they’re only bairns. Keep your double meanings for them as appreciate it.’

  ‘Shut your own mouth.’ Arnold had risen to his feet, his stance menacing, and as Luke handed the bag of sweets to Michael before standing himself, Polly felt a trickle of fear run down her spine.

  She didn’t understand the portent of what had been said or why the afternoon had gone wrong so suddenly; she only knew there was going to be a fight in a minute if she didn’t do something to avert it. At fifteen and sixteen years old, Luke and Arnold had the tall, wide-shouldered physiques of lads a good few years older; they didn’t take after their father at all. Michael was the small, slim one who appeared younger than his twelve years. If Luke and Arnold started to fight, it wouldn
’t be a bairns’ scrap.

  Polly grabbed the bag from Michael and stepped between the two brothers, her voice carrying a shrill note as she said to Arnold, ‘Here, have one. Please, Arnold, have one.’

  Arnold continued staring at Luke a moment longer before he lowered his gaze to the slender, chestnut-haired figure in front of him, and as Polly raised the bag a little higher he slanted another quick glance at Luke before he said, his eyes running all over her flushed face, ‘You don’t mind me funning, do you, lass? A bit carry-on never hurt anyone, did it?’

  Polly blinked a little. There was something in his manner that she couldn’t put her finger on but which made her want to take a few steps away from the big bulk of him, and she found she had to swallow before she could say, ‘No, no, of course not.’

  ‘See?’ Arnold was again looking towards Luke, a smile curling his thick lips as he took in his brother’s angry face.

  ‘I’m warning you, Arnold – ’