The Stony Path

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘Tell me it isn’t what I think.’ It was deep and guttural and seemed torn out of him.

  ‘I . . . I don’t know what you mean—’

  ‘I can count, Polly.’ His face was ashen. ‘Tell me it is your husband’s child and not . . . his.’

  She could lie. She could lie and cover this all up and then they could talk politely about this and that and he would leave not knowing. But she couldn’t. She had lied once before to Luke when she had said she was happily married, but now the time for untruth was past. She raised her head proudly, her eyes like blue diamonds and her chestnut hair with its fiery lights glowing like the flames in the fire, and said steadily, ‘Frederick and I had not slept together in the sense you mean from the first year of our marriage, Luke. There was nothing left between us; in fact, there never had been anything between us of a romantic nature, to be honest. I married him because there was no other option at the time; the farm was bankrupt and my grandda owed Frederick massive debts. He . . . he would have put them in the workhouse if I hadn’t become his wife.’

  Luke’s face had lost every ounce of its normally ruddy colour and he was staring at her as though he had never seen her before.

  He thought she was bad, Polly thought wildly. He thought she was bad to marry Frederick just to save her family, to give herself to a man she didn’t love. And now he knew she was carrying Arnold’s child he was repulsed further. Nevertheless, she forced herself to go on. ‘It . . . it wasn’t a happy marriage, and when he left me to walk home alone the night of the storm out of a fit of pique and Arnold attacked me—’ She drew in a deep, shuddering breath before continuing. ‘Well, I decided Frederick could make some poor recompense for his actions when I discovered I was expecting a child, a child his maliciousness had brought into being. His will stated everything was to go to my mother unless there was a child of our marriage, so –’ she lifted her chin higher – ‘a child there was.’

  He was stunned, consumed with the anguish that was causing him to sweat through every pore of his body. And angry, bitter and angry, although he wasn’t sure if it was Frederick or Arnold he most desired to vent some of this rage on. But no, that was rubbish, he knew all right. He burned at nights in his own particular hell when he thought of Arnold’s hands on her, forcing her. It turned him inside out, and the only relief he got was knowing Arnold was where he couldn’t hurt her any more. But he was still hurting her. A bairn . . . He mentally bludgeoned himself for his stupidity. Why hadn’t he thought something like this might result from Arnold taking her down? But he hadn’t. It simply hadn’t occurred to him. And all this, all this against a background of having lost the one man she’d ever loved, Michael. He felt a sense of awe at the sheer strength of her that seemed to compound the hopelessness of his love.

  ‘So now you know.’ She was standing very stiff and straight. ‘Do . . . do you despise me?’

  ‘Despise you?’ It was in the nature of a growl. ‘For crying out loud, Polly, how could you think I’d despise you? Admire you, wonder at your strength, marvel at your goodness, be amazed at the extent of your sacrificial love, worship you—’

  He hadn’t meant the last words to slip out, and as he saw her lovely eyes widen he said quickly, ‘Please, Polly, don’t be frightened,’ and somehow he found himself drawing her down to sit beside him on the sofa as he held her hands gently in his, mindful of what she might be feeling at a man’s touch after what had happened to her. He could feel her trembling through the fingers resting in his, and it took all his will power not to draw her soft body into his arms to reassure her. Only he couldn’t trust himself, not where Polly was concerned, he warned himself grimly. And the last thing he wanted to do was to cause her further distress.

  ‘Polly.’ His voice had a cracked sound, and he cleared his throat before trying again. ‘Polly, you’re not alone, do you hear me? Oh, I know you’ve got Betsy and Ruth – do they know about that night? What really happened?’ And after she’d shaken her head, her liquid eyes fixed on his face, he continued, ‘I know you’ve got them, but if at any time you need anything, anything at all, I am here for you. Do you understand me? I don’t want you to think—’ He cleared his throat again. ‘I don’t want you to think all men are like Arnold or Frederick. They’re not, sweetheart.’

  It was the last words, spoken with such gentleness, that caused Polly to moan softly as the tears she had been fighting to contain spilled out of her eyes. He cared for her, she’d read it in his face and she wasn’t wrong, she wasn’t. But she couldn’t tell him how she felt until after the baby was born and she was free to leave her old life and every reminder of it, including his brother’s child. And then, if he really wanted her – just her without the farm and all it entailed – the future would be his to declare. It was the only way any relationship between them would have a chance with all that had happened. And there was still Arnold. The roads were almost clear now, and although the snow was still banked high in a few places it would be gone within days. It was better there was no link between them for others to speculate about until all that was finished with.

  She had been resting against him as she’d wept, her head buried in his shoulder, but now she pulled away and rose to her feet. She pulled her handkerchief from the belt of her dress and wiped her eyes before saying, her voice low and contained, ‘I’m sorry, please forget this happened. I . . . I’m not myself today.’

  She was as far out of reach as she had ever been. And he was a fool. Luke’s stomach muscles tightened but he merely nodded quietly before rising himself and walking across to the fire, one hand resting on the mantelpiece and his back to the room as he stared down into the flames. And they remained thus until Ruth returned with the tea tray.

  So that was the way of it! As Hilda scurried back to her room, she blessed the impulse that had driven her downstairs minutes before. From her vantage point at her window overlooking the front garden she had seen Luke arrive, and had thought to ask him of news of Arnold, but on hearing the low murmur of voices from within the sitting room she had peered through the partly open door to see Polly cradled in Luke’s arms.

  For some moments she had continued to stare through the thin gap at the woman she hated with an intensity that was second only to the feeling she had had for her husband, before quickly retracing her footsteps before she was discovered.

  Now she knew, she knew who was the father of Polly’s child – Luke Blackett, a low, ignorant, common miner! Hilda’s teeth ground together. The unfairness of her situation, the injustice of it, had eaten into her very being these last months – she had felt ill constantly, unable to rest properly or eat – and those two down there were the perpetrators of all her misery, Hilda told herself with self-righteous fury. That harlot and the man poor Frederick had always disliked. It had only been the knowledge that her day would come which had enabled her to keep calm in front of them all and pretend she had accepted her lot. God was just, and His justice would prevail – she had known it all along. He wouldn’t be mocked, and what was adultery but spitting in the face of the Almighty?

  Like father, like daughter. Hilda’s thin lips were two straight lines in her bitter face. The pair of them, rotten through and through, and over the last months it had become apparent that Ruth was tainted by the same bad blood. Changed out of all recognition, Ruth had, but before long her younger daughter would see how foolish she’d been to throw her lot in with Polly. Oh, yes. But she had to think about how best to play this.

  Hilda reached the door to her quarters, her mind racing. For years she had lived under the shadow of great personal indignity through the heinous crime her husband had committed, which had come to light through that, that baggage down there. But for her elder daughter enticing Michael to ask her to marry him, no one would have been any the wiser as to the lad’s parentage.

  She shut the door behind her, walking across to the large bay window and staring out on to the small front garden and the cobbled farmyard beyond, before turning and survey
ing the room.

  Her stepbrother’s enormous feather bed had been removed and a smaller one installed, along with two chairs either side of the horsehair sofa. An ornate walnut writing desk and hardbacked chair occupied the far comer of the room just before the entrance into the dressing room, and a matching bookcase and occasional table took up most of the third wall. It was a pleasant milieu, even charming, but Hilda took no pleasure in her surroundings.

  It all should have been hers by right, she told herself for the hundredth time as she turned to look out of the window again with dissatisfied eyes. The whole farm and the land and the farmhouse should be hers rather than her occupying this tiny corner of the house as though she was a lodger. Frederick had left it to her, he had, not his wife’s flyblow. But now God had placed the weapon of retribution in her hands and she would use it wisely when the time was right. And she’d know when that was.

  The clatter of tea things from below and then the sound of Ruth’s high laugh floated up through the floorboards, and Hilda’s teeth ground together as her eyes narrowed into opaque slits. Oh, aye, she would know all right.

  Arnold’s body was discovered by a group of Silksworth miners out for a walk the following Sunday, and by Monday afternoon – after the constable had called at the farm and it had been established that yes, they were aware of someone who was missing, and yes, he might well have been on his way to visit the farm – Luke had been called to identify his brother’s remains; remains which the cold weather had preserved surprisingly well.

  Strange, the police remarked, that two caps were found, one being under the body and the other to the side of it. Was the deceased in the habit of carrying another cap about his person? Not that he knew of, Luke replied, but then his brother had been living in lodgings for some years before the accident, so he couldn’t rightly say what he had been about. And did Luke know, the police asked, if anyone had a grudge against his brother? Had there been an argument with anyone in the days before Arnold went missing, anything of that nature? Again, not that he knew of, Luke said stolidly, but then he had seen very little of his brother the last few years. Perhaps it was better to make enquiries among his cronies? And he did know Arnold was prone to doing a spot of . . . business in a certain area in the dockside now and again. That might prove a useful avenue of enquiry.

  Hilda was very quiet and subdued for some time after the policemen’s visit to the farm, and then one morning at the beginning of June, when Ruth and Emily were busy in the dairy, Polly, sitting at the kitchen table preparing vegetables for dinner and chatting with Betsy, who was dicing meat for some brawn she was making, became aware of a figure standing watching her in the doorway. Betsy had just tipped the small pieces of shin beef into the large pan of cow heel simmering on the range with a meaty bacon bone at the base of it when Polly’s voice made her spin round as she said, ‘Mother?’ in a tone of high surprise.

  Both women stared at Hilda. Not only was she out of bed and downstairs at the unheard-of time of nine o’clock, but she was fully dressed with her hat and coat on. To their knowledge Hilda had only left the farm once since Polly had brought the family to live there, and that had been for her stepbrother’s funeral.

  ‘It’s the first Monday in the month,’ Hilda said shortly in reply to Polly’s amazed face. ‘Market day. I thought I would go in to town with Croft; I presume he’s driving in as usual?’

  Polly nodded. ‘Yes, he is.’

  She was totally taken aback and it showed, and now Hilda smiled thinly as she said, ‘I thought the change would do me good. It’s time I got out a little.’

  Believe that, believe anything! Betsy surveyed Hilda with narrowed eyes. The old biddy was up to something for sure. There had never been any love lost between the two women, but since the reading of the will, when Betsy had spoken her mind all too plainly, Hilda for the most part pretended the housekeeper didn’t exist. This troubled Betsy not at all, but she didn’t like this latest development. She said as much to Polly once the two women had watched Hilda – sitting as stiff as a board – drive off beside Croft in the horse and cart.

  Polly nodded her agreement. The last weeks had been worrying ones, and if she had followed the dictates of her body she would have stayed in bed this morning. The child had been lying awkwardly for the last few days and she was finding she had to visit the privy more frequently, added to which an ache in her back felt like a giant fist pressing inwards and the feeling of nausea reminiscent of the first weeks of pregnancy had returned. But she couldn’t have lain in bed, she just couldn’t. Since they’d found Arnold all her hard-won stoicism had evaporated and she had Luke on her mind night and day.

  Why hadn’t she noticed he had lost his cap that night? she had asked herself a thousand times since the constable had pointed out that this might not be a straightforward accident after all. Only to answer silently in the next breath, You weren’t in a state to notice anything, that’s why. And they couldn’t prove it was Luke’s, or anyone else’s if it came to it . . . could they?

  Half a mile or so away Croft, after one or two fruitless attempts, had given up trying to make conversation with the ‘old witch’ – as Hilda was referred to privately by the farm workers – and the journey into Bishopwearmouth was conducted in silence.

  After the relentless ice and snow of the long winter, spring had decided to arrive with spectacular gusto some weeks previously, and on this mild, early June day the sun had brought to birth the scents of myriad wild flowers and rapidly growing vegetation in the rich earthy air.

  It was all quite lost on Hilda, however. Polly’s mother was blind and deaf to everything but the desire to prove what she knew in her heart to be true: that Luke Blackett was the father of her daughter’s baby and that somehow Arnold had found out about their affair and been murdered for it. Whether to keep him quiet or in an argument over Polly Hilda wasn’t sure – she knew full well Arnold had always desired her elder daughter and that courting Ruth had been a ruse to gain access to the farm, but the situation had amused her, especially because it was clear that Polly loathed the man and didn’t like having him in her home. It had given Hilda great satisfaction to encourage Arnold all she could.

  However, suspicion and conjecture wasn’t enough, even though according to the police their enquiries at the colliery and Arnold’s lodgings indicted that Arnold had gone missing the very same night Frederick had arrived home without Polly and her daughter had stumbled in later, wet through and covered in mud, supposedly from a fall. A fall! Polly had obviously avoided meeting Frederick on purpose so she could be with Luke, and it was clear Arnold had either followed them or arranged to meet them to discuss what he knew. He might even have been blackmailing them. Hilda’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Whatever, she was going to dig and dig until she found out something – anything – to confirm she was on the right track. Someone, somewhere knew something or had seen something. She would use Arnold’s relationship with Ruth as her excuse; what was more natural than a concerned mother trying to find out what had happened to her dear daughter’s betrothed in order to bring her daughter a little peace of mind in these dreadful circumstances? Yes, that was the tack she would take.

  Once in the town Hilda told Croft she would be taking a horse cab home because she was going to be late; there was an old friend she was going to see. Croft could relay that message to Mrs Weatherburn and tell her not to expect her at any specific time.

  Hilda now began to work methodically through the list she had made. She visited Arnold’s old lodgings first but got no joy there; neither did she gain any information in the colliery office or in the shops round Arnold’s lodgings and then later Southwick Road. By tea time she was tired and discouraged and ready to give up. She had spoken to the neighbours at both Arnold’s lodgings and the house in Southwick Road, and although she had had several cups of tea and conversations about everything from Mr Asquith’s refusal to accept the unions’ demand for a minimum wage for miners to the dreadful price of bread at tup
pence a loaf – neither of which interested Hilda in the slightest – she had learned nothing of interest.

  She had actually decided she could do nothing more that day, after being embroiled in a fruitless conversation with an old lady for nigh on half an hour at the top end of Southwick Road, and was making her way down the street whilst keeping a weather eye out for Luke – the last thing she needed was to see him – when a lighted window in the house but one to the Blacketts’ made her hesitate. There had been no one at home earlier when she had knocked at that door, and as she was passing . . . A pretty, fluffy-haired lass answered the door, her dark eyes in striking contrast to her fair curls. She listened with interest as Hilda began to explain the reason for her call, and then she stretched out her arm and pulled her inside.

  Twenty minutes later the door opened and Hilda emerged on to the street again, but now her eyes were bright and her face was flushed. Her stepbrother had always quoted a saying when he was at his most pompous, one that had grated on her unbearably after she had heard it the first ten times, but now it came into her mind and she found herself saying it out loud as she hurried towards Thomas Street to see about a horse cab. ‘The mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceedingly fair.’ Oh, yes. She stopped for a moment, lifting her face to the evening air, which was warm and moist, and putting her hand to her heart, which was racing alarmingly. She must calm down. She took several deep breaths to compose herself. What if she really did have a weak heart? But no, no, it was the excitement, that was all. She was as fit as a fiddle and she intended to live a long and enjoyable life as the rightful mistress of Stone Farm.