The Stony Path

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘I’m no girl, and I am expecting a baby, which will become self-evident in a few months.’ Polly was endeavouring to keep calm but it was hard. This woman standing in front of her was her mother. There were women all over the country – nice, gentle, normal women – who tried for a baby for years and never fell, and yet this woman in front of her, this unnatural, cold, horrible woman, had had two babies almost without trying. Where was the justice in that? ‘And while we’re on the subject, Frederick is not – was not – your brother,’ Polly added coldly. ‘In fact, he was no relation to you at all, so even if I wasn’t expecting a child, I think you might find you had no case at all in the courts. I was his wife, his legal wife.’

  ‘It’s not his.’ Hilda was speaking through clenched teeth and the look on her face was terrible. ‘I know it’s not his. You’ve a fancy man, you little—’

  ‘That’s enough.’ Mr Johnson was an unlikely champion, but if the truth be known, he had never liked Frederick Weatherburn, and he liked his stepsister less. This little lassie with the poignantly beautiful face had more in her than first met the eye, and he liked her. He couldn’t understand how she had come to be married to an arrogant, self-opinionated man like Frederick Weatherburn, but he liked her. ‘The terms of the will are most explicit, Mrs Farrow, and as I said, very straightforward. The child Mrs Weatherburn is carrying is the sole beneficiary of its father’s estate.’

  ‘It’s not his. It’s not his, is it, girl, and I’ll prove it if it’s the last thing I do.’

  ‘You shut your lying mouth—’

  Betsy’s words were cut off by Polly’s restraining hand on her arm. Polly didn’t speak; she merely stared at her mother with eyes that spoke her disdain and dislike, and as Hilda made a step towards her – Ruth immediately springing up to stand by her sister – she moved not a muscle. There was a single moment when the two women’s eyes caught and held – Hilda’s cruel and bitter and Polly’s unfaltering – and then Hilda turned and swept out of the room, her black linen dress seeming to crackle with the rage that was consuming her.

  She would stay at the farm until the child was born. As the door closed behind her mother, Polly knew her course was set. Once the baby was born it would be well looked after by Betsy and its future as Frederick’s supposed child would be secure; it wouldn’t need her and she couldn’t stay. She couldn’t love anything that came from Arnold and she wouldn’t wish any child to suffer an unnatural mother as she had. She would leave, putting the last years behind her and reaching out for a new life somewhere else. Somewhere far away where the past would have no hold on her.

  And Luke? As she felt Ruth’s arms about her waist and heard her sister telling her, her voice fierce, that she loved her and was here for her, Polly’s heart felt as though it was breaking. Luke would never want her, not now.

  And then her own arms went about Ruth, and she felt Betsy and Emily patting her back, their voices joined to Ruth’s in support, and she found herself thinking that comfort came at the oddest times and in ways you’d never think of . . .

  When Polly awoke the next day, Christmas Eve, the weak rays of a winter sun were slanting in through the window on to the scrubbed floorboards, catching tiny particles of dust in their golden beams. She lay still for some moments, knowing that as soon as she moved the sickness would come. Betsy and Ruth had tried to insist, the night before, that she must have the day in bed – several days in bed – to recover from the exhaustion of looking after everyone the last weeks, but she wouldn’t do that. It was nice of them and she appreciated the thought and the concern for herself and the baby, but she knew she wasn’t yet sufficiently at peace with herself to be alone for any amount of time.

  It would come – she was determined it would come, and that one day she would be able to put the past with its demons behind her for good – but not until after the child was born.

  It was the right decision to have the baby, but . . . She twisted restlessly in the bed, her head aching and the sickness rising. She couldn’t wait for the next nine months to pass so that she was free of this child growing inside her. It wasn’t the baby’s fault – it hadn’t asked to be born, she knew that – but nevertheless, every day she was pregnant was a day which tied her to the farm and delayed her departure.

  Once up and dressed, Polly spent the day with Betsy preparing the hampers for the farm staff, and at five o‘clock in the evening she left Ruth and Emily decorating the sitting room with holly her sister had gathered from the hedgerows that afternoon, and walked through to the big stone-flagged kitchen. Hilda had stayed in her room all day, refusing to join in any of the preparations for Christmas and declining to talk to anyone. Polly – along with the rest of the household – didn’ t mind that. It was when her mother did open her mouth that life got unpleasant.

  She had popped her head round her mother’s bedroom door before going downstairs earlier in the day, looking long and hard at the grim-faced woman lying in the big feather bed. ‘Two things, Mother.’ Hilda had stared at her but made no response whatsoever. ‘If you want to continue to play the invalid I have no objection as long as you stay out of everyone’s way and see to the cleaning of your room yourself, and that includes the washing of your bedclothes and so on. Betsy will continue to serve you your food, but that is all. The other thing is that you may have Frederick’s suite on the other side of the house if you wish. I have no desire to live in it, and as it is large and can be made into a small sitting room as well as a bedroom, it would perhaps suit you better. I shall continue to sleep in Gran and Grandda’s old room.’

  Her mother’s eyes had widened at the offer and it was clear from Hilda’s face that she couldn’t understand her daughter’s generosity. Polly did not enlighten her mother as to the reasons for her magnanimity. True, Frederick’s wing was spacious and luxurious by any standards, with its dressing room and night closet, but to Polly it was a symbol of her married life and she hated it. Also – and here Polly’s thoughts had a certain wryness – tucked away on the other side of the house, Hilda was less likely to try and interfere with the rest of the household.

  It had been the custom of Frederick’s father and a tradition Frederick himself had upheld to give the families on the farm a hamper each Christmas, and this year Polly was adding a gold sovereign for every man, woman and child, despite the fact that she had been surprised how little money was in her husband’s bank account. After the solicitor had been paid for his services and the funeral expenses had been taken into account, the amount was meagre for the size and prosperity of the farm at just over two hundred pounds, although Croft had assured her the master had recently invested in some prize cattle as well as new machinery, so it could be that.

  Promptly at five o’clock there came a knock at the kitchen door, and Croft and his children, along with Enoch’s two sons and their families, filed into the room. The children were all clutching their yule-doos – baby figures made with Christmas dough with their arms folded across and two currants for eyes – which they had made with Lotty earlier, and as Polly’s eyes rested on Lotty’s youngest, she felt the same pain she had experienced some days earlier as she saw his chubby little hands tight round the dough figure. She remembered past Christmas Eves with her granny and Ruth, when they had savoured the smell of the cooking yule-doos, and then taken them to bed to eat first thing on waking Christmas morning. She had imagined doing the same thing for her bairns one day. . .

  Suddenly Polly wanted to cry, and it horrified her, but as she made her little speech of thanks and gave the delighted families their sovereigns and hampers, no one would have guessed from the missus’s smiling face the effort it was taking.

  And then they had all gone and she let herself sink down on to a kitchen chair, Betsy fussing around her like an old woman and scolding her for doing too much after glancing anxiously at her mistress’s drawn white face.

  So much change in such a short time . . . Polly let her eyes wander round the warm, sweet-smelling kitchen in whi
ch the fire in the brightly shining range dominated the room with its glow. And this was just the beginning. But she would see it through. She squared her slim shoulders and thought again of Lotty’s little one before nodding to the thought. Aye, she had to see it through, and then she would have done all she could and she would go.

  She would brush the dust of Sunderland off her boots and she would not look back.

  Part 4 – The Child 1912

  Chapter Twenty-one

  During the next few months a number of events happened that rocked the country. The terrible loss of life as the Titanic – the great ship which was proclaimed the pride of the White Star fleet and unsinkable because of its sixteen watertight compartments – sank within hours of hitting an iceberg shocked the nation. More than fifteen hundred passengers and crew died in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, and as more facts emerged – the overwhelming one being the richer you were, the more chance you had had of surviving – people got angrier and angrier. ‘Same the whole world over,’ Britain’s working class muttered under their breath. ‘One law for the rich and one for the poor.’

  The big freeze which had taken hold in November continued relentlessly, the temperatures dropping so low in the beleaguered north that two per cent of the population were dying weekly from cold. This was one of the components which fuelled the strikes which paralysed the economy – troops being called in yet again against the coal miners, ostensibly to quell riots. A hundred thousand dockers were talking of strike action, knowing another transport dispute could bring the United Kingdom to a standstill.

  And all this against a background of increasing unrest by the nation’s women; the cabinet being split down the middle on women’s suffrage as it turned more militant, and the police raiding the offices of the Women’s Social and Political Union as things turned nasty. With thousands of people attending protest rallies in Ulster against British government proposals to give Ireland Home Rule – folk came in farm carts, traps and charabancs, preceded by drums playing in the rain – the first few months of 1912 were ones of great trial and civil discontent. Indeed, many politicians likened Britain to a powder keg primed and ready to explode.

  In Sunderland, especially where the farmers were concerned, the weather had produced the hardest and longest winter anyone could remember. On the more modest farms and smallholdings, where money was scarce and profits nonexistent most of the time, animals were simply dying, and in some cases whole families too. Others chose survival and the workhouse, although that could be termed a living death for many. Snow, sleet, packed ice and then more blizzards, with the occasional slight thaw making conditions ten times worse when it froze again, was the north-east’s lot, and it was inexorable.

  The winter seemed even more endless to Polly than most, her changing shape making it impossible to get out most of the time in the icy, frozen world about her. By her twenty-second birthday, at the end of April, she was five months pregnant and had felt the baby move inside her. She had been dreading that moment almost as much as she was dreading the time when Arnold’s body was discovered, but in the event, although it had felt strange when she had felt the flutters deep in her womb, it had not repulsed her as she had expected. As the weeks had passed she’d found she was managing to detach herself from the fact that the child she was carrying was Arnold’s. It had happened gradually, but she welcomed the almost stoical placidity that had come with her increasing waistline. If she had continued to feel as she had done in the first weeks she had realised she was pregnant, she doubted she would have survived nine months of it. The calmness could not last and she knew it, but for the moment she felt as though she were existing in an emotional bubble.

  The first major pricking of the bubble came mid afternoon on her birthday. Encouraged by Polly, Croft had visited the Hendon hirings – which were held in a certain street in Hendon each week – after Christmas, with strict orders from his mistress to hire two men with families for the two vacant cottages – Emily having moved in with Betsy permanently. Men who were down on their luck, Polly had emphasised firmly, with families who needed a good home. And he must be fair and explain the farm was only just out of quarantine.

  Both the men Croft hired had had to place their bairns in the workhouse whilst they and their wives looked for any work they could get, so their joy at being reunited and in secure work along with being housed and fed had warmed Polly’s heart.

  She had asked Croft to put a letter through Luke’s door before he went to the hirings, a short formal note thanking him again for attending Frederick’s funeral and stating that although he was very welcome at the farm they all quite understood that, what with the atrocious weather and all, he would be unable to visit them for some time. She had felt, thinking about it afterwards, that he had felt sorry for her that Saturday before Christmas, and that was why he had made the journey to the churchyard, rather than out of respect for Frederick. And she didn’t want him to feel sorry for her – her whole spirit recoiled from it. She wanted . . . Well, what she wanted was impossible and that was the end of it. But his pity was untenable. Hence the note.

  After being in a state of restless anxiety for days after Croft had delivered the letter, she had finally come to realise and accept that there was going to be no reply. She had cried in the privacy of her room, bitter hot tears for the unfairness of the circumstances she found herself in and not least the cruelty of fate in causing her to love a man who regarded her as a dear friend, maybe a sister, but nothing more. And then she had dried her eyes, wiped her nose, put any fanciful dreams under lock and key and got on with things.

  So she was outwardly calm and composed, and inwardly a mass of jelly, when at half past two in the afternoon on her birthday there was a knock at the front door, and a few moments later Emily put her head round the sitting room door where Polly and Ruth were sitting – Polly patching a couple of sheets which were still too good to use for rags, and Ruth darning some socks for Croft’s children. ‘It’s Mr Luke, missus.’ And there he was in the doorway.

  Polly’s heart was racing and she made herself take a deep breath before she said, ‘Luke, what a surprise. Come in,’ as Ruth leapt up at the side of her, crying. ‘A visitor! We feel as though we’ve been buried alive for months with this terrible weather. Thank goodness we’re nearly into May.’

  ‘Aye, thank goodness.’ Luke smiled at Ruth, and he was conscious of thinking for a second, By, she looks a different lass, before he turned his gaze on Polly. And then, as she rose to her feet, there was something in her face – almost a defiance – that brought a puzzled crease to his brow the second before his eyes dropped on her gently rounded stomach. No! It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be. He hesitated, his jaw bones moving in and out before he could say, ‘Are you both well?’

  ‘We’re very well.’ Again it was Ruth who answered, her tone gay as she continued, ‘Oh, this is lovely, Luke. Have you called to wish Polly a happy birthday?’

  He nodded, his colour rising as he quickly pulled a small package from his pocket, saying, ‘I’m sorry, I should have given you this at once. Happy birthday, Polly.’ He knew he should have stayed away – hadn’t she all but told him to in that letter after Christmas – but it had got so he’d felt he was going stark staring barmy and would be fodder for the asylum if he went one more day without setting eyes on her. It wasn’t fair of him, no one knew that better than him after what his brother had done to her, but in the end he hadn’t been able to help himself. He’d had to come, and her birthday had been the perfect excuse.

  ‘Oh, thank you, thank you, but you shouldn’t have. I didn’t expect . . .’ Polly’s voice faded away as she opened the little box and saw the small silver brooch it contained. The tiny bird was delicate, its open wings worked in lacy, threadlike skeins of silver which was quite exquisite.

  Luke watched her colour come and go, and his voice was quiet when he said, ‘Think of it as flying upwards, Polly, with the sun on its wings and the heavens to soar in; the earth
with all its evil and heartache left far below.’

  She raised her head and their eyes held as the message behind his words reached her, and then Ruth’s voice broke into the moment as her sister said, ‘Arnold is not with you, then? Has there been news of him?’

  Luke was aware of Polly making an almost imperceptible start of distress, and he spoke quickly now, and loudly, as he said, ‘Nothing, I’m afraid, Ruth. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ The warm smile Ruth gave him further surprised Luke, and his face reflected this, which caused Polly – in spite of her agitation – to want to smile. This new relationship with Ruth was precious but no longer a surprise to Polly; she knew Ruth had really changed – and so did their mother. As far as Hilda was concerned, Ruth’s defection to Polly – which was the way her mother viewed it – was a further nail in Polly’s coffin.

  ‘Right.’ Luke was clearly out of his depth and both women recognised this. It was Ruth who took pity on the good-looking miner and said, ‘You sit down by the fire, Luke, and I’ll go and see about a tray of tea for us all. Talk to Polly – you know there’s going to be a happy event in August?’ as she bustled out of the room.

  There was a long silence after Ruth had disappeared, an uncomfortable silence, before Polly said, ‘Do sit down, Luke, and I love the brooch. It’s beautiful.’ And then, when he remained standing, she forced herself to meet his eyes again, and what she saw in them caused her to blush scarlet as she said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about . . . about the baby, but Ruth just assumed you knew.’