The Stony Path

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘You want to see Father Blackett?’

  The priest was old, grey-haired, but his face was not unkind as he stared at her, and when Polly said in a rush, ‘I told your housekeeper, I’m his cousin,’ he nodded slowly. ‘There’s . . . family problems, with his brother – his half-brother,’ she continued stumblingly. ‘My sister and I have come from Sunderland.’

  ‘And she is where?’

  ‘Waiting outside. The horse . . . the horse gets nervous when he is left alone.’

  The father nodded understandingly. When his housekeeper had said a young woman was asking for Father Blackett he had thought she was another of these shameless young things who had all but thrown themselves at his associate since he’d arrived in Consett. May the good Lord forgive him for the carnality of his thoughts. Father Benson’s eyes rested briefly on Polly’s stomach again as he said, ‘Father Blackett is at the school, he’s something of a favourite with the bairns.’

  His smile made it easier to say, ‘Would it be all right if I went there to see him? I won’t keep him long.’

  ‘Of course, Mrs . . . ?’

  ‘Weatherburn. Polly Weatherburn.’ She could see the good father didn’t understand how a woman in her condition came to be asking for his colleague when by rights it should be her husband who had made the journey, and now she looked him straight in the eye when she said, ‘He might have mentioned me? My husband died just after his mother passed away.’

  The priest’s face stretched a little and his voice was grave when he said, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Weatherburn. Sometimes this earthly valley in which the good Lord has called us to walk can be very dark. Would you like me to accompany you to the school?’

  There was nothing she would like less, but she couldn’t very well say so. She forced herself to say politely, ‘Thank you, but I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

  What a nice bonny young woman, and how tragic that her husband would not share in the joy of their little one. The priest’s voice was hearty when he said, ‘No trouble, child. No trouble at all.’

  The school was a stone’s throw away, and Ruth stayed outside the priest’s house whilst he led Polly into the building, which smelt of carbolic soap and something fusty which she couldn’t quite place. ‘Wait here a moment.’ They were in the stone-flagged corridor and he tapped on the first door before opening it, putting his head round and stepping inside. A moment or two later Michael was there in front of her, and such was Polly’s relief that she grabbed at his hands and was quite unable to speak.

  ‘Polly, what is it?’ asked Michael urgently. He had hardly been able to believe his ears when Father Benson had said she was here. And then, as he took in her changed shape, which the full summer coat was unable to hide, he felt a rushing in his ears and his heart began to thud hard. Polly had told him she hadn’t been Frederick’s wife in the true sense of the word for years, but here she was expecting a child. Had they had a reconciliation before her husband had died and determined to try and make a go of their marriage? If so, it would make Frederick’s passing all the more lamentable, Michael told himself forcefully, aiming to quell the feeling which had taken hold of him and which was insisting that Polly had betrayed him in some obscure way. He stared at her, and as he looked deep into the beautiful face under the straw bonnet it was only in that moment that he acknowledged the comfort he had drawn from knowing she was unhappy in her marriage. Which made him what? Michael asked himself. Not the man he had thought himself to be for a start. And certainly not the priest God desired.

  ‘Michael. . .’ Polly was holding on to him as though she were drowning. ‘Oh, Michael. Something . . . something terrible has happened. Luke’s in prison, he was arrested late last night.’

  ‘What?’ She felt his hands jerk in hers. ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘For Arnold’s murder. My mother’s angry because of the baby and she found Katy Chapman who said she’d seen Luke and—’

  ‘Polly, Polly.’ He drew her against him briefly. ‘Shush now, shush. Calm down and tell me all of it from the beginning, all right? We’ll sit in the yard in the sunshine, and don’t worry, dear. Luke hasn’t done anything wrong, I’m sure of it.’ And then, as he saw the expression on her face his words had wrought, he said, his voice very low, ‘Polly?’

  Once in the tiny yard, they sat on the long wooden bench which stretched all down one wall, and Polly told him. She related everything, and in the telling revealed much more than the actual words to the tall, thin man watching her so intently. And when she had finished, Michael took her in his arms once more, his touch comforting as a brother’s would have been because he knew that was how she viewed him, and his voice throaty as he said, ‘You did right to come and tell me, Polly.’ She had taken off her bonnet as they had talked, and her hair was very soft and smelt of apples and corn and summer days. For a moment the pain in his heart was so strong he was a young lad of sixteen again, back on that country lane with his world having fallen down about his ears and in front of him a black abyss in which nothing existed but the horror of living.

  And then she said, ‘I knew you would help me,’ and he opened his eyes over her head and stared across the school yard, and his voice was soft when he said, ‘Of course I’ll help you.’ He let her go, standing swiftly and pulling her to her feet as he continued, ‘Don’t worry any more; go home now with Ruth and rest. Betsy was right, you shouldn’t be jolting about in the horse and trap.’

  Father Benson wasn’t altogether surprised when his young associate asked for leave to go and pray in the church rather than continue with the afternoon lessons. He had seen the look in Michael’s eyes when he had told him who was waiting in the corridor, and he hadn’t got to sixty-five years of age without knowing a great deal about human nature and all its turns and twists.

  The church was quiet and deserted when Michael entered it, sunlight glancing through the stained-glass windows over the chancel and sending beams of light on to the marble floor below. He stood quite still for a moment before the altar and then genuflected and passed through to the priests’ private quarters, where he glanced about him almost vaguely. Help me, Lord. The room was small, holding nothing more than a table and two chairs, a bookcase and two easy chairs either side of the small fireplace, and as Michael fell first to his knees, and then stretched out with his face pressed against the floorboards and his arms and legs spread-eagled, he almost reached either end of it.

  All Luke had done was to defend Polly against a man who had been vile and base; a man who had taken her against her will and given her a bairn in the process. It couldn’t be right for a good man – and Luke was a good man – to go down the line for something he hadn’t intended to happen when he was protecting the innocent, it couldn’t. And Polly loved him. Here his thoughts jangled for a time, whirling through his head as he brought reason to bear on the devastation he had felt when he had read the truth in Polly’s eyes. She loved Luke. He reiterated it in his mind over and over until the sick emptiness began to be replaced by acceptance. For Michael knew she still loved him too – aye, as a brother maybe, but it was love which had glowed in her eyes as she had looked at him. And if he had been there on that winter night and come across what Luke had come across, he would have wanted to kill Arnold. He twisted on the floor, but it was inescapable. Priest or no, he would have had murder in his heart right enough. Dear God, dear God . . .

  Luke was his brother. Perhaps not by blood, but in every other way that mattered. It’d been Luke who had stuck up for him in the playground when the other bairns had bullied him for being so small and slight; Luke who’d wiped his snotty nose and told him he was worth ten of Cyril Bramwell and Philip MacKay and he could knock them into a cocked hat if he’d had the chance to take them one at a time, although they had both known that was sheer bull; Luke who’d got between him and his mother time and time again when her hand had come to clip his ear for some small misdemeanour. She had never struck Luke or Arnold, always him – and hard. So hard he’d
been deaf in one ear for a while. And with Arnold . . . By, he doubted he’d be here now if Luke hadn’t protected him from Arnold. Arnold had always been a perverted, sick individual with a desire to hurt and destroy.

  How long he was on the floor Michael didn’t know, but when he finally rose to his feet his heart was at peace with his God. The law would take Luke’s life if the real facts came to light because the law looked only at the facts, not at the heart. When Rahab the prostitute had sheltered the spies sent against her country, God had looked at her heart and spared her and her loved ones. Moses had killed the Egyptian and God had been merciful to him, the same as He had to Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, who obtained his brother Esau’s birthright and blessing. Pray God, pray God that on Judgment Day, when Michael stood before the Throne of Grace and looked into the Lord’s eyes, He would look at his heart on this matter. And only God really knew the heart of the men and women He had created in His image. Michael was content to leave his eternal judgement in the hands of the One who had died for him at Calvary.

  ‘Well, I don’t mind telling you, Father, we did wonder a bit at this lass, this Katy Chapman, coming forward like she did. Mind, her young man backed her up, so we had to go with it, you understand?’

  ‘I’m sure no malice was intended on the young woman’s part,’ Michael said soothingly to the two policemen facing him across the interview room at the police station in West Wear Street in Sunderland’s East End the next morning. ‘It’s easy to muddle up one night with another when some time has gone by.’

  ‘Aye, maybe, but we’ve since heard reports they were thick at one time, the lass and your brother, and she took umbrage when he wasn’t keen on getting wed. You know, Father, a woman scorned and all that? But if you’re sure Luke was with you from when he got home from his shift that night, that settles it, and you should know – it being the night your mam passed away. Not likely to forget that night, are you? I understand Luke was in a terrible state, but then he hasn’t seen death like you, Father.’

  ‘Quite.’

  The policeman, a good Catholic, nodded reverently. Women were the very devil, and shouldn’t he know? His Mabel could play him up something rotten if she didn’t get her own way. And the bonny ones were the worst. Oh, aye, they were that. Have you disappearing up your own backside, they could, if you weren’t careful. Mind, the old un, the mother of the lass the two brothers were supposed to have argued about, was a tartar in her own right. Came in here breathing fire and damnation with the Chapman lass, she had. More there than met the eye, he’d be bound. Maybe the priest knew the reason for that.

  The priest did, and having outlined the contents of Frederick’s will, the two policemen relaxed back in their chairs, the older one whistling through his teeth before saying, ‘I’m not surprised, I thought there was something fishy about all this, like I said. Money is the root of all evil, isn’t that what the good book says, Father?’

  ‘Actually, it says the love of money is the root of all evil,’ Michael said gently, rising as he spoke.

  ‘Aye, you’re right, Father. Subtle difference there, eh? Subtle difference sure enough. Well, I think we’re satisfied your brother is free to leave, so perhaps you’d like to be the one to tell him, eh? Seeing as you’ve come all this way to put the matter straight?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Inspector.’ Funnily enough, he didn’t want to see Luke right at this moment, or perhaps it wasn’t so strange after all. With the benefit of hindsight he could now see that it wasn’t only himself and Arnold who had wanted Polly. A hundred little incidents, buried in his subconscious but now as clear as crystal, bore evidence to the fact that Luke loved her. And Polly loved him, although whether Luke was aware of that was another question. Whatever, these were the two people he loved best in the world and he could do one last thing for them now. As the Inspector had just said, he could put the matter straight.

  It was another ten minutes before Michael walked out into the sunshine and across to the horse and trap in which Father Benson was sitting waiting for him. ‘All done here, Father?’ Father Benson did not comment on his young colleague’s wet eyes.

  It was a full minute before Michael answered, and then it was with an air of finality that he said, ‘Aye, Father. I’m all done here.’ He had said his goodbyes and he was at peace. This chapter of his life was closed for good, and he would not look back again.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Luke was approaching the farmhouse within an hour of leaving the police station, and as Polly glanced up from where she was sitting in the small front garden shelling peas, she thought for a moment she must be dreaming. And then the tin bowl had fallen off her lap and she was out of the garden and across the farmyard just as he reached the end of the stony path, careless of her shape and anything else but the fact that he was here, he was free.

  ‘Luke! Luke!’ She had felt as cumbersome as a hippopotamus the last weeks, but now it was as though she was skimming the ground, and as he opened his arms to her she went into them without a thought of decorum or the unseemliness of a woman in her condition being whisked off her feet and held against the chest of a man who was not her husband.

  ‘Polly, oh, Polly. My love, my love.’ Luke’s voice was almost incoherent and for long moments they just held each other tight, before Polly raised her head and saw the look in his eyes. Nothing could have stopped the kiss that followed, and it answered the last of Luke’s lingering doubts as to the validity of what Michael had told him more effectively than any words could have done.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Luke’s voice was soft as he placed her on her feet, his arms still about her. ‘The last months I’ve felt like I’ve been going insane thinking you would never care for me. You do care for me?’ he added swiftly, and at her radiant ‘Oh so much, so much,’ he shut his eyes tight for one second before opening them and saying, ‘Last night I was in a prison cell thinking I might as well be dead, and today . . .’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you, not until—’ She shook her head, her burnished curls falling in disarray across her forehead. ‘You know.’

  ‘Polly, the baby doesn’t make any difference, not to me,’ Luke said softly. ‘Don’t you know how much I love you?’

  ‘I’m leaving it, Luke, once it’s born. I’m leaving everything.’ She had to tell him, now, quickly, before he said anything more. And then if he still wanted her – just her with nothing to her name but the clothes on her back . . . ‘I’m letting Ruth and Betsy bring the child up and it will inherit the farm. I don’t want to stay here a second longer than I have to, I hate it now. I can’t explain . . .’

  ‘You don’t have to.’ His voice was so tender, everything she could have hoped for. ‘With ten children or none, rich or poor, in sickness and in health I want you, Polly Farrow. And you’ll always be Polly Farrow to me, until you become Mrs Luke Blackett, of course. And we’re not waiting two or three years to get wed to please folk either, I don’t care what they think.’

  Marriage. For a second, just a second, the images of Frederick and Arnold were there in her mind’s eye, and then she brushed the shadows away determinedly. It would be different with Luke, this thing that most men set such great store by. She had never been taken in love before. Nevertheless, she swayed slightly, and immediately Luke said, ‘Come on, come back to the house and sit down. This has all been too much for you, I shouldn’t have gone on like that.’

  They met Ruth in the doorway to the farmhouse, and Polly had just cried excitedly, ‘Oh, Ruth, isn’t it wonderful! He’s free!’ when there was a high-pitched ‘No!’ from the top of the stairs that momentarily froze everyone, and then her mother was racing down the treads like a mad woman. And it was as a mad woman that Hilda attacked her daughter, leaping on her with such ferocity that the impact bore Polly to the ground, where she landed heavily on her back, her mother’s weight knocking the breath out of her as Hilda thudded down on her belly, crying, ‘You! You! You’ve got him off, h
aven’t you!’ amid curses that could have come from a hard-boiled docker rather than the gentlewoman Hilda purported to be.

  In the resulting mêlée, Polly was aware of Luke hauling Hilda off her by the hair and slinging her aside amid screams and shouts from all and sundry, and then Betsy’s horrified face was bending over her, saying, ‘Lass, oh, lass,’ over and over again. She was still saying it when the first pain hit moments later.

  It was thirty long hours before Polly’s daughter was born, on a sultry Saturday evening, and the hard labour was only made bearable for Polly by the thought that she would soon be free to start a new life with Luke. He had been waiting outside her room throughout, once he had returned from Bishopwearmouth with the midwife. Betsy and Ruth had stayed with Polly every moment; sponging her down, encouraging her, urging her on, and both of the women secretly fearing two lives would be lost. The baby was tiny, and exhausted though she was, Polly had seen the buxom midwife shake her head at Betsy when the first weak mew of a cry was heard.

  Well, wouldn’t that be for the best in one way? Polly asked herself wearily, watching as Betsy wrapped the baby in a blanket. This child wasn’t going to have an easy life if it lived, not living here with Hilda, even though materially it would want for nothing. And then Betsy – without asking – placed the tiny bundle in Polly’s arms, and she looked down into the miniature face, and fell in love. As quickly and as simply as that. Her daughter looked sleepily up at her and then yawned daintily, and Polly felt such a welling-up of love and emotion that the warmth of it melted the last of the ice from round her heart and trickled into the back of her eyes, spilling out on to her cheeks.