The Stony Path

by Rita Bradshaw

  She rolled over on to her stomach and then pulled herself to her knees, glancing over to where Luke and Arnold were locked together, Luke’s fingers round Arnold’s throat and Arnold’s fists battering at his brother’s torso. Arnold’s knee came up into Luke’s groin with enough force to cause Luke to emit a shrill cry, and Luke pushed his brother violently as his hands let go of Arnold’s neck and jerked to the bruised flesh between his legs. Arnold stumbled backwards before losing his balance and falling in a sprawl of arms and legs into the long ditch running at the side of the lane.

  Luke was on his knees now, groaning horribly and quite unable to move, and as Polly struggled up and stumbled across to him, her one thought was to get him on his feet again before Arnold scrambled out of the ditch. By the time she reached him, Luke was retching, his face as white as the snow about them, and she knelt beside him, shaking his shoulders as she said, ‘Luke, Luke, please. Please, before he gets up. Luke, take some deep breaths, please.’

  ‘In . . . in the name of . . .’ Luke was hunched with his forehead touching the ground. ‘Where . . . where is he?’

  ‘He fell into the ditch,’ Polly said through chattering teeth. ‘Please, Luke, get up.’

  It was another minute before Luke could comply with that request, and then he looked as though he was going to vomit. He stood, swaying slightly, as he looked towards the side of the road, where it appeared Arnold had knocked himself out, and then he said, ‘Are you all right?’

  She had the shakes so badly she could barely answer, but when she shut her eyes tightly and shook her head, Luke’s voice held a world of grief and anger and regret as he said, ‘Oh, Polly, Polly. I’m sorry, lass. Here . . .’ He took off his jacket and wrapped it round her shoulders, brushing ineffectually at her wet clothes. ‘I’ll kill him, I swear it.’

  ‘See . . . see what’s happened.’ Polly gestured towards the figure in the ditch, one leg – which had got tangled in a tree root – being the only part of Arnold visible. ‘Be careful.’

  Be careful, she said. Luke looked again at her chalk-white face, her lips blue with cold, and the urge to throttle his brother rose again in a consuming flood. He would have killed him a minute ago, aye, he would, and Arnold had known it – had read the knowledge in his face. He’d seen Arnold’s eyes widen when he wouldn’t lessen his grip round his neck, seen stark fear come into them. And then he’d pulled the little trick with his knee. But this wasn’t over yet, the filthy, dirty, stinking swine. He’d beat him into a pulp.

  He didn’t have to.

  Arnold was quite, quite dead, and when Luke moved the lolling head and saw the extent of the wound caused by the razor-sharp piece of slate which had sliced off the back of his brother’s skull, he knew retribution had been swift and final.

  ‘Luke?’

  He had told Polly to stay where she was, but when she appeared above him at the side of the road, he said quickly, ‘Go back, Polly.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘He hit his head.’

  ‘His head?’

  ‘He’s dead, lass.’

  Luke had been climbing out of the ditch as he spoke, and when he saw her eyes widen he didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t the words which came out of her mouth as she said woodenly, ‘I’m glad. I’m glad he’s dead.’

  ‘Polly. Polly, lass—’

  ‘He . . . he . . .’ She couldn’t go on. Was this Eva’s revenge? Had her aunt’s curse already begun to work? But no, she didn’t believe that. This was Arnold’s doing and no one else’s.

  Luke took Polly gently into his arms, not knowing if she would want him to touch her after what had just occurred, but she leaned against him, still shaking uncontrollably as the flood of tears came in an engulfing torrent.

  How long they stood there with the snow falling silently about them Luke didn’t know, but a separate part of his mind to the one still reeling with the shock of seeing Polly spread-eagled on the floor with Arnold on top of her, and then the gory mess that had been his brother’s head, was thinking, It’s taken this, rape and murder, for me to hold her in my arms. Rape. Rape. And Arnold dead. He looked over Polly’s bent head towards the ditch and felt he wanted to retch again, but that separate part of his mind was now saying, If he had lived he would never have let her alone until his dying day. She’d been an obsession with Arnold, a dark obsession. He had known that for years.

  ‘Luke?’ The tears that had been raining down Polly’s face were gone, but her great blue eyes were black liquid in the shadows. ‘He followed me here on purpose, this was premeditated. And . . . and people would never believe that he died by accident. They’ll say you killed him in a fight over me or something, and with all the lies he’s told you could go down the line for him.’

  ‘I’ll take me chance—’

  ‘No.’ Polly pulled away from his arms and he made no attempt to hold on to her. ‘Don’t you see? We can’t say anything, we can’t.’

  ‘Lass, he forced you.’

  ‘We’ve got no way of proving that. It’s common knowledge the two of you have never got on, and who would believe you just happened along here when he was –’ she gulped painfully – ‘attacking me? Luke, he’s done too good a job in the past, don’t you see? You have to see. And anyway . . . She gulped again, shutting her eyes for a second before she said, ‘I don’t want people to know he did that to me, not . . . not with him. It can’t do any good now he is dead, but if we tell the police they’ll likely blame you.’ And then she would die. She would really die if Luke was sent down the line over her.

  She could see he was wavering, and his tone confirmed this when he said, ‘But what’ll we do then? Just leave him here?’

  ‘Aye, exactly.’ She didn’t think she would ever stop shaking again in all her life; the trembling seemed to be coming from a whirlpool of churning deep inside, but somehow her mind was clear. She had to get Luke to understand the danger he was in. ‘It was an accident, we both know that. He fell into the ditch himself.’

  ‘I would have killed him, lass, and he knew it. I might not have sliced his head open but I as good as did him in and there’s not any part of me that’s sorry. He was a wrong un, always was and always would have been, but when I saw him with you tonight—’ He couldn’t go on.

  Polly was frozen, inside and out, and feeling very strange, and her face must have reflected this because Luke said, ‘I’m going to carry you, lass. All right?’

  ‘I can walk.’

  ‘Polly—’

  ‘I’d rather, please.’ Nevertheless she found she had to lean on Luke’s arm when her legs threatened to let her down, and they had only gone a few yards when she said, ‘My hat. Look, there.’ And then, as the thought occurred to her, ‘And my purse, Luke. It’s on the ground somewhere.’

  Luke found the purse and brought the hat to her and they continued on their way, the snow a thick curtain in the silence of the night. It was taking all of Polly’s will to put one foot in front of the other, but mercifully that was stopping her mind from thinking. She didn’t want to think, she didn’t ever want to think again.

  They neither of them said a word until they came to the entrance to the farm road, and then Polly roused herself enough to murmur, ‘You’d better go back now, I can manage from here. You mustn’t be seen. I can say I fell over with the snow and all.’

  ‘I’m not leaving you here, there’s still a good half a mile to go to the farm.’

  It was said in such a way that Polly didn’t argue, and as they stumbled along in the bitter cold, the wind was chilling without the trees to break its rawness, the sheep either side of the four-foot dry-stone walls huddled together in groups as though seeking comfort from the storm.

  When the lights of the farmhouse were clearly visible through the driving snow, Polly stopped. ‘This is far enough, Luke,’ she said quietly.

  He stared at her, his eyes desolate. ‘I ought to come in with you; if nothing else to ask why that bast—’ He stopped abrup
tly. ‘Why that husband of yours didn’t wait for you tonight,’ he said tightly. ‘How he could leave you to find your own way home is beyond me.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Nothing mattered. She wanted to sink into oblivion, to shut out this thing called life that sucked and sucked at the inner self until it was shrivelled and dry. She could feel herself shrinking, diminishing down and down, and she didn’t have the strength to fight the feeling. He had entered her. Arnold had entered her. It wasn’t to be borne.

  ‘It does matter. Polly, you need help after—’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ And then, as he went to say more, she repeated fiercely, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ He was clearly out of his depth and she had it in her to feel sorry for him for a moment.

  ‘Please, Luke, I’ll be all right,’ she said flatly. ‘I just need to . . . to get home.’ Home where she could wash herself, scrub at her skin, remove every trace of what had happened from her flesh. She was sticky between her legs and it was from him . . . Oh, dear God, how was she going to be able to bear it? What would she say to them when she first walked in? And Luke, what must he be feeling? He had killed a man tonight and the man was his own brother. She ought to comfort him, say something, but she was glad, glad Arnold was dead, so what comfort would that be? She pulled her arm from his, her head whirling. ‘I . . . I have to go.’

  She hadn’t thanked him, but how could she say thank you for killing his brother? The urge to cry was on her again and she knew she mustn’t give in to it this time. If she started to cry now, she wouldn’t be able to stop. And she had to be in control of herself when she walked in the farmhouse door. Miffed at Frederick, tart and irritated maybe, but clear and controlled in the role she had to play. Luke’s life might depend on it.

  ‘Goodbye, Luke.’ She touched his arm briefly, and as he looked down into the dark pools of her eyes, the snow a white mantle like a veil on her hat, his Adam’s apple worked convulsively but he didn’t speak.

  And then she turned, smoothing down her wet coat as she stared ahead through the swirling flakes, and putting one foot in front of the other she continued walking down the stony path.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Luke was halfway home when he first missed his cap. He stood for a moment, his hands twisting together as he tried to decide whether to go back and look for it, but after retracing his footsteps right to the entrance of the farm road and finding nothing, he started for Bishopwearmouth again. A cap was a cap, he’d others, and there was nothing on it to mark it as special in any way. A cap was the least of his problems the night. Polly, oh, Polly, Polly. He said her name out loud, his breath misting in a cloud, and his mind continued to reiterate it with every step he took until a sudden picture of Arnold sprawled in the ditch intervened.

  He’d killed him, his own brother; shouldn’t he be feeling bad? He took a great pull of air that swelled his chest and then let it out in a long hiss. But he wasn’t going to play the hypocrite. He remembered one of the priests preaching a sermon on Cain and Abel – Father McAttee, it’d been – and how the one that had killed the other, he couldn’t remember if it was Cain or Abel, had been cursed from God from that point on. But that had been an innocent man’s blood if he remembered right, and Arnold had been far from innocent. By, if he lived to be a hundred he’d never forget the obscene sight of him when he’d yanked him off her. Oh, Polly, Polly. Why hadn’t he made himself known to her when she’d walked past the colliery yard? He could have accompanied her to where she was supposed to be meeting Frederick and then walked her home when it became apparent he hadn’t waited for her.

  He gulped spittle into his dry mouth, his face screwing up with painful remorse. He hadn’t wanted her to see him in his working clothes covered in muck and coal dust. The truth was like a lead weight in his stomach. Well, they said pride went before a fall, but in this case the fall had been taken for him. Damn it. Damn it.

  He shook his head in the manner of a boxer after a heavy blow. He couldn’t believe this had happened; not to Polly, to Arnold, to him. It was the sort of thing you read about in the Sunderland Echo, the sort of thing that happened to other people, like the Newcastle train murder the year before. The colliery book-keeper who had been murdered then had been carrying a leather bag containing a small fortune, and the motive for the violence had been plain. Arnold was just an ordinary working man; what would the police make of his death? Murder? An accident? What?

  A sudden and grotesque picture of how Arnold’s head had looked flashed into Luke’s mind, and his limbs became weak, all strength leaving him. He leaned against a tree trunk for support, his eyes searching the swirling white night ahead for the lights of Tunstall Hills Farm. His whole body was shaking now, as if with St Vitus’s dance, and he found himself recalling how Polly had shaken in the first minutes he had held her. It was as though she’d been a puppet on jangling wires. How was she going to be able to go on after this, and not even being able to tell anyone? He shouldn’t have left her. He should have gone with her to the farm, whatever she said.

  His mind continued to rock back and forth with the impact and consequences of what had happened that night, right up until he reached Southwick Road. It was after eight o’clock and four hours since he had left the house at a run, and due to the severe blizzard conditions which now prevailed, the streets had been mercifully deserted for the most part through both Bishopwearmouth and Monkwearmouth. Which made it all the more ironic that he was literally on his own doorstep when a well-remembered, perky voice just behind him said, ‘If it isn’t the great and mighty Luke Blackett.’

  For a moment Luke contemplated just opening the door and walking in without acknowledging Katy, but his racing mind steadied itself and spoke to him with clear reasoning. She was quite capable of banging on the door and demanding to know why he had ignored her if he did that, and he didn’t want a scene. ‘Hello, Katy.’ He turned to face her but he didn’t smile, and there was no smile on the hard, pretty face looking him up and down either.

  ‘This is Dennis Pearson.’ She was on the arm of a tall, lanky lad who looked to be a good few years younger than Katy; his face still covered with pimples and his narrow shoulders yet to gain the physique of a man. ‘He’s my lad.’ This last was defiant and said quite clearly that she neither wanted nor needed Luke any more.

  Luke nodded at the boy, whose bemused expression clearly showed that he was out of his depth with the volatile Katy.

  ‘What’s happened to you, then?’

  ‘What?’

  Katy pointed to his coat, and for the first time Luke realised his sleeve was torn and his pocket hanging off. ‘Been in a barney?’ she asked pertly, her eyes flicking to his bare head.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Huh.’ It said quite clearly she didn’t believe him, and Luke could have cheerfully wiped the saucy expression off her face with the back of his hand.

  He shrugged instead, keeping his voice quiet and even as he said, ‘It’s a might treacherous, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

  The ‘huh’ came again, followed by, ‘Come on, Dennis. We can have the front room till me mam and da get back from our Sidney’s.’

  Aye, Luke remembered Wednesday nights well. Katy’s mam and da round at their eldest son’s place for cards and beer, and him and Katy on the sofa in the front room. He didn’t envy the poor devil in front of him. She used sex like a weapon, did Katy, and he hadn’t caught on for some time what she was about. The skittish façade she put on was just that – a façade; underneath she was a praying mantis, or perhaps a black widow spider was a better analogy. They were venomous and they devoured their mate. Aye, black widow described Katy Chapman to a tee.

  As he opened the front door he heard the lad say, ‘Who’s that then?’ and Katy’s reply came loud and clear the second before he banged it to, ‘He’s nowt.’

  Nowt. By, he’d had a lucky escape there, even if in the finishing of it her brothers
had tried to break every bone in his body.

  He walked into the kitchen feeling drained and empty. His world had exploded and the one person he would have done anything to protect had been hurt beyond measure. And it was down to him. Aye, some of it was down to him. And then he looked at Michael’s face as he raised his head, and he knew Eva had gone.

  There was something very wrong with Polly. Betsy glanced at her mistress, who was working alongside her in the dairy, straining the milk into the thick white-glazed bowls ready for the next morning, when the cream would be skimmed off and put in the deep creampots. Polly was blaming her demeanour on the fact that she had caught a chill from the soaking she’d received five nights ago, but Betsy didn’t altogether believe her. Ever since that night they’d barely had a word out of her, and that wasn’t like the lass, well or not.