The Stony Path

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘I don’t intend to top meself if that’s what you mean.’

  She didn’t know what she meant.

  ‘Goodbye, Polly.’ He was backing away from her as he spoke and the look on his face checked the involuntary movement she made towards him. She had to let him go, she couldn’t make this any harder for him than it was, but oh, she loved him so much. And terrible though this was for her, it was a hundred times worse for Michael, with his da not being his da and Luke and Arnold not even half-brothers, and his mam having done that with her da. Her da. How could he? How could he?

  She knew Michael was crying again as he walked away and she felt her heart was being wrenched out by its roots. Her words were just a whisper on the wind when she said softly, ‘I love you, I love you so much.’ And contrary to her earlier resolve, she found she was watching the small, bewildered figure through a mist of tears, her thoughts whirling and bouncing in her head as her stomach churned and various emotions battled for pre-eminence. She felt utterly grief-stricken and angry and confused and wretched, but overall the anger was growing and taking control. And she welcomed the bitter rage, it was a temporary opiate against the hurt and pain.

  And then she blinked to clear her eyes. She thought she had seen another figure on the path walking towards Michael. It was Miss Collins. She must have decided to take a walk after the brief visit to the farmhouse. Polly tensed as the two met, mentally preparing herself to run and join them. The last thing Michael wanted in his present state was to have to talk to a relative stranger.

  Miss Collins was bending down slightly, her head close to Michael’s, and to Polly’s surprise there was no sudden and offended jerking away indicating that Michael had told her to leave him alone. In fact it seemed as though the two were conversing.

  ‘Polly!’ On hearing her name called she turned to look towards the farm and to where Luke was making his way towards her, but she didn’t raise her hand in recognition or make any movement other than turning back to the two figures some way down the path, who were now walking away from the farm together. She strained her eyes to where they were being swallowed up by the snowswept landscape. Of all the people in the world, Miss Collins would know what to do and say in a situation like this. Her travels and independent spirit had given the older woman an edge that Polly called self-possession but others, less kind, would label worldliness, though Polly wasn’t conscious of that right at this moment. She only knew that Miss Collins would talk to Michael and that she would help him without expressing undue shock or disgust. And that was what her beloved needed right at this moment.

  ‘Come on, Polly.’

  How long Luke had been standing at her side Polly wasn’t sure, she was only aware that when he eventually took her arm to lead her back towards the farmhouse she was very cold and the two figures in the distance had long since disappeared. ‘Miss Collins was with him.’

  ‘Aye, I saw.’

  ‘I hate my aunt and my da.’

  ‘No you don’t, you only think you do.’ Luke’s voice was quiet as he looked down at the beautiful young girl beside him. It had been an afternoon of revelation in more than one direction. He had discovered he wasn’t quite the big fellow he’d always liked to think he was when, amid the surprise and revulsion at what had been revealed, and the sympathy he had felt for Polly and Michael’s circumstances, there had been an element of gratification too. This meant the unthinkable had happened and Polly was free. Free to fall in love with someone else. Someone else? Who was he kidding? Free to fall in love with him was what he had meant. And he’d been sickened that amid all the hurt and pain and horror of those he loved – and he did love Michael as a brother – he had been thinking of himself, and worse, of taking Polly when Michael had been dealt such a killing blow.

  ‘I’ll never love anyone but Michael, Luke.’ It was said in a low voice but with passionate intensity.

  ‘Never is a long time.’

  ‘Be that as it may, I mean it.’ She didn’t sound like young Polly, in either her choice of words or the way she spoke them, and Luke felt his blood chill in his veins. Women were different to men in their attitude to love, or at least most of them were. Of course there were the types down at the docks or in the bars in Monkwearmouth who could give any man alive a run for his money, but most women seemed to love with a sacrificial devotion at the heart of their emotions, whereas with a man the feeling was much more physical and – he admitted somewhat ruefully – therefore more necessary on a day-to-day level. Look at the old Queen, devoted to the memory of her beloved Prince Albert and wearing the black clothes of mourning for more than forty years before her death five years ago. Somehow he couldn’t see a man in such a position of wealth and power doing that.

  Was Polly another Victoria? As they came to the farmyard his eyes ran over her lovely tragic face and the stiff, determined set of her slender shoulders under the faded coat. Only time would tell, she was such a young lass still and it was natural to tell herself now she would never love again when the object of her devotion had been so painfully wrested from her. Nevertheless, the chill deepened inside him and was only put to one side when, on opening the kitchen door, he was hit by the barrage of raised voices from within.

  It was impossible to determine who was shouting at who. Eva had the appearance of a wild woman as – one hand pressed to the side of her face, which was flaming red from Walter’s blow, and her long thick hair falling down from the bun at the back of her head – she faced Hilda and Frederick, the three of them yelling for all they were worth, with Arnold and Alice apparently joining in. Walter was sitting in his chair and he looked ill, and Ruth was crouched at the side of the range wailing and crying. The noise was indescribable.

  And then Luke nearly jumped out of his skin as the young, slight girl at the side of him screamed for silence with enough force to bring every voice to an abrupt halt.

  ‘Where’s Da?’ Polly was talking to Ruth, and when her sister shook her head she turned to the others and said again, her voice urgent with the strange presentiment which had swept over her on entering the farmhouse, ‘Has he been back?’

  ‘Back? No, he hasn’t been back and I shouldn’t think so either. How he thinks he can ever hold his head up again after what’s come out this afternoon I don’t know, and I tell you—’

  What Hilda was about to tell her Polly never found out, because she left her mother in full flow and spun round, clutching at Luke’s arm as she said, ‘We must find him, Luke. He was in such a state.’

  How much of a state Henry had been in became obvious two minutes later. The body was hanging by the neck from a rope thrown over one of the old beams in the barn, and the blue face and grotesquely extended tongue told Luke at once that Polly’s father was dead. ‘Go on out, Polly. Now.’ He tried to shield her from the sight of the gently swinging figure but Polly shook him off, gazing up at her father as she murmured, ‘Oh no, no, Da. No. Don’t go like this, not like this.’

  But it was too late. It had been too late on a sunny summer evening sixteen years ago in this very place, or maybe even six years before that, when a giggling fifteen-year-old girl had led her fourteen-year-old brother into a sweet-smelling hayloft and taught him what passion and desire were all about. Or perhaps the death bell had slowly begun to ring when a bitter young mother had looked into the face of her newborn child and seen only entrapment and a life of toil and relentless drudgery, and had hardened her heart against her firstborn.

  Or perhaps such tragedy never has a finite beginning.

  Chapter Nine

  It was long past midnight, but Polly was still sitting in front of the fire in the kitchen in a state of exhausted numbness. The house was quiet now, and in the dim light from the one oil lamp she had burning, the blackleaded range with its big iron kettle on the hob, the clippy mat on the scrubbed flagstones and the hardwood saddle with its flock-stuffed cushions all looked the same as usual. The battered table covered with an oilcloth and the stout wooden chairs, the big b
lack frying pan and other pots and pans sitting on their steel shelf above the hob were items she had known since babyhood, and yet somehow, tonight, she felt as though she was looking at them all through someone else’s eyes. Because she had changed. All these familiar objects were the same, but she had changed out of recognition to the girl she had been this morning. At least that was how she felt.

  As the kettle began to sing, Polly roused herself. She went to the tall, narrow cupboard on the right-hand side of the range and extracted the big brown teapot from one newspaper-covered shelf, along with the tea caddy and a small glass bowl of sugar. After warming the pot, she spooned in three teaspoonfuls of tea and then added the hot water, sitting down once more whilst the tea mashed.

  Once the tea was ready she stood up again and walked through to the pantry, taking a jug of milk from its stone slab and returning to the kitchen table. Her movements were slow and steady, almost ponderous, and they continued to be the same when she poured two cups of tea and climbed the stairs to her grandparents’ room.

  ‘How is he?’ As Polly silently entered the room she looked at the inert figure of her grandfather in the bed, and Alice raised her head from where she had been dozing on one of the kitchen chairs Polly had brought up earlier. ‘Same.’ Alice shook her head wearily. ‘What are we going to do, lass?’

  ‘First off, you’re going to drink your tea.’ Polly’s voice was gentle. The heart attack her grandfather had suffered on hearing of the death of his son had aged her grandmother ten years, or so it seemed. Her granny seemed to have shrunk inwards since that moment when Grandda had collapsed on the kitchen floor. ‘I’ll leave Grandda’s here. He might wake up later and want a sup.’

  ‘If the doctor’s right an’ your grandda’s going to be bed-ridden, what’ll happen to us?’ Alice asked pitifully, her lips trembling.

  ‘Gran, Grandda hasn’t worked much outside for years now,’ Polly said quietly. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Aye, but there was your da then.’

  Yes, there had been her da then. And now his body had been taken to Bishopswearmouth by the same doctor who had attended her grandfather. ‘We’ll manage, Gran. Ruth can leave school, it’s nearly time anyway, and she’ll have to help me outside a bit as well as helping you in the house. You’ll have your work cut out with Grandda until he gets better.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll get better?’ It was pathetic in its hopefulness, and now Polly lied stoutly as she said, ‘Of course he will, Gran. You know Grandda, built like an ox, as he’s so fond of saying.’

  ‘Oh, lass, lass. An’ where will we find money for the doctor’s bills an’ the funeral an’ all?’

  ‘We can’t deal with everything tonight, Gran.’

  ‘I’m sorry, lass.’ Her grandmother wasn’t speaking about her agitation over money and they both knew it, and now Polly shook her head slightly as she said thickly, ‘I can’t believe me da did that, Gran. Not with Aunt Eva. It’s ... it’s unbelievable.’

  ‘Aye, it is that, me bairn. But don’t blame your da, Polly. Your aunt was the one. Aye, she was. Even if she is me own daughter, she’s a fiend from hell, that one.’

  Polly stared at her grandmother for a moment or two. She didn’t say what she wanted to ask, which was why? Why was her aunt like that? There must have been something that made her that way, surely? Instead she just inclined her head before setting her grandfather’s cup on the floor by her grandmother’s chair and quietly leaving the room. No one had mentioned Michael. Not once, since her Uncle Frederick had gone for the doctor in his horse and trap before taking her aunt home, had anyone referred to him. Not Luke or Arnold, who had stayed until the doctor had come; not even Miss Collins, who had paid a brief visit as the doctor was leaving. It was as though Michael had ceased to exist. But he hadn’t. And Polly wanted him, she so wanted to see his face and comfort him, love him. She was frightened for him, terribly frightened, because she had understood something this afternoon that had hitherto been hidden from her. Michael took after his da, their da. They were dreamers, impractical and gentle, in a world of their own half the time.

  Polly opened the door of the bedroom she shared with Ruth and looked in on her sister, who was fast asleep and snoring gently under the covers, then she closed it again quietly, after taking her calico nightdress off her side of the bed. She didn’t open her mother’s door, neither did she call to her to ask if she was awake and wanted a cup of tea. There had been a scene between her mother and her grandmother after the doctor had left, and both women had said too much, the result of which being that Hilda had taken a heavy dose of laudanum and gone to bed, leaving them all to it.

  On returning to the quiet shadowed kitchen, Polly poked the fire into a blaze and added some more wood, before pouring herself a strong cup of tea, which she drank straight down. She poured another, this time adding more milk as the previous one had burned her mouth, and drank this cup sitting on the saddle watching the leaping flames lick at a piece of partially burnt wood, which sizzled now and again. Then she took off all her clothes but her shift. There was something she had to do tonight before she tried to get some rest. It wasn’t sensible and it certainly wasn’t practical, but she had to do it nevertheless.

  She pulled on her rough calico nightdress, which felt doubly stiff and shapeless after the soft, yielding material of the dress, and then her coat, as the night’s bitter chill was making itself felt. Then she returned to the saddle with the russet brocade dress in her hands, and slowly and systematically began to rip it to pieces. She burned the fragments on the fire one by one, watching steadily as they flared brightly for a few moments before dwindling away to ashes.

  When nothing remained of the dress, she sat quietly for a full minute before reaching up to her hair and pulling the ribbon out of her tangled curls, but just as she was about to send it the same way as the dress, her hand stilled. Her da had gone all the way into Bishopswearmouth with instructions from Ruth about the ribbon, and he had bought her this. His face had been so bright, so proud this morning when he had seen her in all her finery. She ought to hate him for what he had done; she actually wanted to hate him because then this raw, gut-wrenching pain might lessen a little, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t. Her hand hovered for a moment more and then she rolled the ribbon up, thrusting it into the pocket of her coat.

  One thing that would remain from this day, one thing she would wear proudly until her dying day was Michael’s ring. She sat staring down at her hands – the ring on the third finger of her right hand now – and the three small garnets in their band of gold twinkled back at her, their brightness mocking her misery. Michael was gone and her da – their da – was dead. The future that had been so radiant just hours before was now like the dress: destroyed, dark, nothing but a pile of ashes.

  She lifted her head and glanced round the silent kitchen, and as she did so the weight of her family bowed her shoulders. Her da was gone and her grandda would never leave his bed again, although the doctor had indicated he might linger on for months if not years. There was her granny and Ruth, and her mother, and they had all – in their different ways – made it plain to her over the last few hours that they were looking to her. She didn’t mind that so much with her sister and her granny, one still so young and the other old and frail, but her mother ... Polly’s mouth hardened. She wasn’t at all sure just how ill her mother really was.

  What was she to do? What was to become of them? It had been an uphill struggle even with her da alive and her grandda doing the odd job outside. They had sold off a couple of cows each winter just to get through, and even then, without Miss Collins’s rent money, they had barely managed. And now their once bonny herd was down to just six beasts and their winter feed all gone.

  She would have to sell them at market. She shut her eyes tightly at the thought. All except Buttercup. She couldn’t bear to part with Buttercup, her favourite cow; besides which, they would need fresh milk each day. Buttercup would have to stay. But if they were to keep
the two pigs and the hens and geese, the rest of the herd would have to go. There was her da’s funeral to pay for and the doctor’s bills, and her da had said only last week that the farmhouse roof needed attending to. With flour at two shillings and ninepence a stone and tea at sixpence a quarter-pound, they were going to be hard put to even buy the essentials. They would have to cut right down where they could.

  She glanced at the flickering lamp on the table. No more lamp oil at over thruppence a quart, they could manage with candles from now on. And her mam could do without sugar in her tea, although no doubt she’d create a bit. For someone who was supposed to be constantly at death’s door, Mam held on fast to all the little luxuries the rest of them rarely tasted.

  The urge to cry suddenly swept over her and she had the desire to put her head in her hands and give in to it, but something Luke had said more than once in the discussions on a Sunday afternoon came back to her. ‘No good bubblin’ about the injustices and the unfairness, that serves nothing. We’ve got to fight and do it without letting ’em crush us.’