The Stony Path

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘Doesn’t always work like that, m’dear, and I don’t like this new complication, the vomiting. I’m going to leave you some pepsin and strychnine in tabloid form, and you must keep strictly to the dose, all right?’ They were walking to the front door now, and as Polly opened it, Dr Braithwaite looked out on to the swirling snow and leaden sky, and sighed deeply. ‘Hasn’t let up for a minute, has it,’ he murmured. ‘I nearly couldn’t get through again this morning.’

  Polly nodded in reply. She had noticed the doctor had arrived later than was his normal custom when visiting the farm, and that he was on horseback rather than driving his smart horse and trap, and had assumed the roads were bad. The last newspaper the doctor had brought for Frederick had forecast the worst winter for decades.

  Betsy joined her at the door as Polly stood watching the doctor walk to his horse, which was tethered in the large cobbled yard beyond the flowerbeds and small stone wall, and as he turned to wave just beyond the wooden gate into the yard and slipped on the cobbles, she said stolidly, ‘Arse over head he’s gone, everywhere’s solid ice.’

  They looked at the good doctor scrabbling embarrassedly to his feet, and in spite of the dire circumstances Polly couldn’t repress a smile when Betsy added, ‘Pity Croft’s not long led the bull across to the other barn; I don’t think that dung on the back of his nice coat is going to smell too sweet on the ride back.’

  ‘Oh, Betsy.’ Polly leaned against the older woman for a moment. Thank God – and she meant that – for Betsy.

  ‘What’s wrong, lass? An’ I don’t mean all this with the fever an’ all. There’s somethin’ else, isn’t there? You’ve not bin right the last month.’

  She didn’t feel as though she would ever be right again but she knew that would pass. Two brothers and yet they couldn’t have been more different, and what she had to keep remembering – and blanking out the rest – was Luke’s gentleness and concern, his overwhelming understanding in the aftermath of Arnold’s brutality. She remained still for a second more, leaning against Betsy’s familiar bulk, and she had to check herself from giving way to the urge to unburden herself. She wanted comfort; she wanted someone to make the last month disappear and for them to be back at the point where Luke had visited the farmhouse and told them Eva was ill. And no one could do that.

  ‘I’m just exhausted, Betsy, and you must be too.’

  Betsy nodded. Whatever it was that was weighing Polly down, she didn’t want to talk about it, but Betsy had always been of a mind that a trouble shared was a trouble halved. She turned to look into the beautiful face next to her in which the deep blue eyes sat like two jewels in a crown, and her voice was uncharacteristically gentle when she said, ‘You know I’m for you, lass? No matter what, I’m for you.’

  ‘I know that, Betsy,’ said Polly softly. She straightened, squaring her shoulders and stepping back into the hall before shutting the door. ‘I’d better take Frederick some boiled water, it’s all he can keep down at the moment.’

  ‘Aye, all right, lass.’ You could never tell what went on behind closed doors, but she’d bet her life all this with the lass could be traced back to the man lying upstairs. Had he hit her? Was that it? No, Polly wasn’t the type to stand for that. But whatever it was, it was serious.

  Polly took Ruth a drink first, and spent a few minutes talking to her sister, who was now gaining ground rapidly and had got up for an hour or two the night before. And it seemed as if Ruth’s thoughts had moved along a similar vein to Betsy’s, because as Polly rose to leave the room Ruth said quietly, ‘What’s wrong, Poll? There’s something more than Gran and Grandda, isn’t there?’

  Polly didn’t answer for a moment. She and Ruth were getting closer by the day and it really did seem as though the fever had purged Ruth clean of her old ways, but – and awful though it was, considering Ruth was her own sister – she didn’t know if she could trust her. And it was Arnold. Arnold. Ruth was going to be devastated enough when the body was found without anything more. Her thoughts prompted her to say quietly, ‘I’m all right, Ruth, don’t worry, but I’ve been thinking . . . You haven’t mentioned Arnold at all. Are you missing him?’

  She actually found it repugnant to say the name out loud, and as she watched Ruth’s face and the look of surprise that flashed across it she found she was holding her breath.

  ‘Missing him?’ Ruth clearly hadn’t considered the notion. ‘I haven’t really thought of him, to be honest, not with being so ill and all. But . . . well, no, not really, Poll. It’s . . . well, not like that with him and me, if you know what I mean.’

  She was stammering and stuttering a bit, and Polly’s voice was low as she said, ‘I didn’t want to embarrass you.’

  ‘I should be missing him, shouldn’t I.’ It was a statement of fact and made with a note of confusion in her voice. ‘If I thought anything of him.’

  ‘Do you? Think anything of him?’

  ‘I don’t actually think I like him, Poll.’ And now the bewilderment was evident. ‘But I haven’t faced that until now. He was just so keen on me, that’s the thing, but it would have been a terrible mistake, wouldn’t it?’

  Polly noted the past tense with such relief she had to turn away in case her face betrayed her. You aren’t going to break her or me, Arnold, she said fiercely in her mind. We’re stronger than you, do you hear me, wherever you are? We’re stronger than you. ‘I think so, Ruth.’

  ‘I’ll tell him.’ It was said with resolution. ‘The next time I see him I’ll tell him. When do you think people will be allowed to call again?’

  ‘Not until the doctor is sure it’s safe.’ Polly turned at the door to face her. ‘There’s a notice on the bottom gate in the lane stating we’re in quarantine.’ Which had sent Frederick into a rage when it was first put up. The thought of her husband prompted her to say, ‘I’ve got to take Frederick this drink, so try and have a nap. You don’t want to overdo it.’

  ‘I was going to say you’re worse than Mam, but she’s never bothered with either of us, even when we were bairns,’ Ruth said ruefully. ‘I think the only reason she’s ever made a fuss of me at times was to try and get at you. It was Gran and Grandda who brought us up, wasn’t it? I . . . I miss them, Poll. I wish I could have them back just long enough to say sorry for all the times I was nasty . . .’

  ‘Oh, Ruth, don’t cry.’ Polly went swiftly to her sister’s side, sitting on the edge of the iron bedstead and taking Ruth’s shaking body into her arms. Both girls’ faces were wet when eventually Polly pulled away, but she could see Ruth had gained some relief from the outpouring of emotion, although the hard angry core where her own heart was was just as heavy for Polly. But it was helping her to get through each day without breaking down, and that was what she needed at the moment, she reminded herself. She had to stay angry; it stopped the desire to lay her head on the pillow and will herself never to wake up, as she’d done in the first few days before the typhoid fever had hit, and it banished the awful feeling of uncleanness that no amount of scrubbing at her skin could take away.

  It was true what she’d said to Luke that night on the road – she was glad Arnold was dead. She faced the thought head on. He’d paid the ultimate price for what he’d done to her, and she wasn’t going to pretend she felt sorry either. If nothing else, knowing he wasn’t in the world, sniggering, gloating about the rape, made it bearable. Just.

  Once outside her sister’s room, Polly crossed the shadowed landing, the snow-smeared window letting in little light in spite of it just touching midday, and entered the newer wing of the farmhouse. Since Frederick had been taken ill, Polly had followed through on her earlier decision and moved into her grandparents’ old room, ostensibly because of the fever. Since she had done that, she had got into the habit of knocking on the door before she entered her husband’s room, but today – her mind being elsewhere – she simply opened the door and walked in, carrying the glass of water.

  ‘What on earth?’ Frederick appeared to have fallen
out of bed and was scrabbling about on the floor, the big clippy mat at his side of the bed in a heap. ‘What are you trying to do?’ she asked, quickly placing the glass on the small round table by the side of the bed and helping him to rise.

  ‘I need the closet.’

  He was weaker, she knew that, but she didn’t think he was so bad he was unable to visit the closet without help. She would have to bring a pallet up tonight and sleep on the horsehair sofa which stood under the big window, even though the smell from the dry closet leading off the room was enough to turn your stomach. She and Betsy between them were cleaning it every couple of hours but still the stench was bad. Or perhaps he’d have to start using a chamber pot?

  Frederick did not want to use a chamber pot and he made it into the closet and back to bed without help, although he was a little unsteady on his legs.

  Polly straightened the clippy mat whilst he was gone and noticed one of the floorboards it covered had a large chip out of the side of it, which no doubt was the reason for the mat – to prevent splinters in bare feet.

  ‘Here, drink this water.’ Once Frederick had pulled the covers over himself she handed him the glass, and then wrinkled her brow when he gazed at it suspiciously.

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Water, I told you.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re trying to do me in! I know, I know. I want Hilda to take care of me, we’ve an understanding, me and her. Where is she?’

  ‘She’s in the same place she’s been for the last five years,’ Polly said drily, ‘and if you think she would come and tend to you you don’t know her very well. She might consent to swan downstairs and play the gracious invalid in the evenings when everything is normal, but that is the most you will get my mother to do.’

  ‘She’ll come if she knows I want her to. She’d do anything for me, Hilda would. She never argues with me like you do.’

  ‘She wouldn’t touch you with a bargepole with what you’ve got,’ Polly said flatly. ‘Now are you going to drink this water or not?’

  She left him muttering and talking to himself, and once in the kitchen said to Betsy, ‘He’s worse, Betsy. I think he’s a bit delirious. I’m going to have to sleep in there tonight. Would you help me bring up a straw pallet and some blankets?’

  ‘Aye, lass, aye, but I don’t mind a straw pallet meself.’ She cast a meaningful look at Emily, who was occupied in jointing a rabbit. The little kitchen maid was inconsolable at the loss of both her parents, and Polly knew Betsy was having her work cut out to maintain sympathy, especially when Emily insisted on talking half the night about times past with her family.

  ‘Thanks, but perhaps when he’s getting better?’ And he would get better, she couldn’t imagine anything else. Frederick was too healthy normally to succumb now.

  However, by the next morning it was clear there was a distinct change in him. They had had a dreadful night and she had had to change the bed three times, her stomach heaving until she was sick twice. Was she getting it now? She had sat watching the dawn rise at one point, the light-washed sky a sea of pale pink and mother-of-pearl, and she’d wondered when the nightmare was going to end. There was blood in his stools and in his vomit, and in spite of herself she found she was sorry for him. He was so pathetic, so frightened. Surely the doctor could do something?

  Over the next week Polly discovered the doctor was powerless against the slow, insidious creep of death.

  ‘Perforated bowel and other complications,’ Dr Braithwaite informed her. ‘And the ironic thing, the sad thing,’ he continued soberly, ‘is that with Frederick being such a big, strong, healthy individual in the normal run of things, he’s going more slowly and painfully now. More stamina, you see. A lesser being would have been snuffed out long before this.’

  Frederick was delirious most of the time but still in a great deal of pain, and Polly found his suffering had mellowed her feelings towards him. He was dying inch by inch and it was impossible not to feel pity towards him. And he hadn’t meant the attack to happen when he had left her so churlishly that night, she told herself as she sponged down his shrinking body. Whatever else, he hadn’t meant that, and she wouldn’t have wished a rabid dog to die like this.

  She was feeling ill herself, especially in the mornings, which she put down to the horrendous night hours when she was lucky if she snatched two or three hours’ sleep. Betsy had joined her in Frederick’s room on a pallet on the floor, as it took both of them to change the bed, a task which needed to be done incessantly.

  It was on December the eighteenth, a Monday, and very early in the morning, when Polly was roused for the umpteenth time by Frederick mumbling her name. He had done this consistently in his delirium, and often when he had soiled himself, but this time, as she leaned over the bed, she felt his eyes were really looking at her. Betsy was fast asleep on her pallet, and Polly, conscious of her friend’s exhaustion, whispered softly, ‘Frederick? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Polly.’

  ‘Yes, it’s Polly.’ She felt dazed, weary in mind and body, and her voice reflected this when she said, ‘What is it? Do you want a drink?’ He didn’t appear to be lying in a dirty bed.

  ‘Polly.’ His face seemed to have been sucked in but his lips were cracked and swollen despite the goose fat Polly and Betsy smeared on them constantly. ‘Polly; sorry, Polly.’

  ‘It’s all right, Frederick, it’s all right, dear. Go to sleep.’

  ‘No, explain. Explain, Polly.’ And then he fell to muttering nonsense again, and she was just going to walk back to her pallet when he clutched out to her, and, once she had taken his hand in her own, mumbled faintly, ‘Didn’t mean . . . Box yours, Polly. Make it . . . all right.’ And then, his face changing, ‘Pain . . . bad.’

  ‘I know, dear, I know.’ It turned her stomach to see his suffering, and now she did something she would have believed herself incapable of in the first days after Arnold’s attack: she sat down on the edge of the bed and cradled his upper body in her arms, stroking his forehead as she said, ‘Go to sleep, Frederick, and everything will be all right, I promise.’

  ‘Fri-frightened, Polly. So . . . frightened.’

  ‘There’s no need. I’m here and I won’t leave you. Do you understand?’

  ‘Box, Polly.’

  The box again. ‘Aye, yes, the box. Don’t worry about the box now, we’ll sort it. You sleep and I’ll stay with you.’

  As his breathing eased a little, Polly leaned back against the wall, still holding Frederick in her arms, and shut her eyes. She could sleep for a week, a month; she’d never felt so tired in all her life.

  The next time she awoke it was to the realisation that her arms were numb and her neck was in such an awkward position against the wall she felt as though it was cracking. It was still early morning, but light now, and as she glanced down at Frederick in her arms she thought for a moment he had gone, such was his stillness. But then, after seconds, he took a breath before falling into the long stillness again.

  ‘He’s going, lass.’ Betsy was sitting on her pallet and she rubbed sleepy eyes as she said, ‘I’ve seen it afore, this breathin’. It won’t be long now.’

  It wasn’t. Within the hour Frederick died, still in Polly’s arms and without regaining consciousness. She was a widow.

  Chapter Twenty

  Polly was sick again the morning after Frederick’s passing, and whether it was due to the fact that the punishing regime of the last weeks had eased or that Betsy was with her on this occasion – having brought her an early cup of tea – and something in the other woman’s face brought her up sharp, she didn’t know. But suddenly she understood. She wasn’t ill – this was something far, far worse than the fever. She was expecting a child. Arnold’s child.

  She raised her head from the big china washing bowl that normally stood on a table under the window with a matching jug, and which Betsy had hastily brought to her when she had begun to heave
on sitting up in bed, and such was the look on her face that Betsy said quickly, ‘It’s natural, lass, it’s only natural. A bairn will be some comfort to you.’

  Some comfort? The desire to laugh was on her but she knew if she once gave way to it she would go hysterical, and then . . . Then mad perhaps. Who knew? Because certainly if anything was guaranteed to send her over the edge into insanity, this latest development was.

  Once a worried Betsy had left the room, Polly lay unmoving in the big feather bed, her eyes staring out of the window directly opposite. She had chosen this room for her grandda and gran because of the view and the low window, knowing her grandda would never leave his bed again. It was a nice outlook in the summer: field upon field of grazing cattle and a low hill in the distance . . . And then her brain clicked out of the stupor it had taken refuge in after the first shock; she had to get rid of it, people did, didn’t they? Emily’s mother had taken something the year before, according to Betsy, when she’d discovered she was expecting yet another bairn at the ripe old age of forty-five and gone half mad in the process. She’d been ill for weeks, mind, but Polly didn’t care how ill she was if she got rid of this . . . this thing, this monster growing inside her. She couldn’t bear it.