Chaff upon the Wind

by Margaret Dickinson

  ‘Eh? Oh yes,’ Kitty dragged her thoughts back to the reason she had come into the kitchen. ‘You used to have some small buckets under the sink, Mrs G. Jack wants Johnnie to carry water from the pump in the yard to the water barrel near the engine. I was wondering if . . .?’

  ‘Of course you can ’ave them, and welcome.’ Already Mrs Grundy was waddling towards the sink and bending down. ‘Here they are.’

  The day went surprisingly well. The young boys worked harder and longer than Kitty would have believed possible and even little Johnnie, following a nap after dinner, managed to carry as much water across to the barrel as Jack needed to run the engine for the whole day.

  But the evening found the boy, and Kitty too, quite exhausted and they were both in bed before the sun had set. The following morning, however, Johnnie was up and trotting after his father as he left to complete all the necessary jobs before the rest of the workers arrived.

  ‘You don’t need to go yet, Johnnie.’

  ‘I want to,’ the boy called back over his shoulder, trying to match his father’s huge strides. Jack turned too, winked broadly, and raised his arm in a wave.

  Kitty stood in the doorway of the cottage, watching them walk across the field towards the Manor. Two dark heads glinting in the early morning sunlight streaming across the flat fields. The man marched with long, easy strides, his arms swinging while his son skipped and hopped alongside him, glancing up every so often towards his father, his piping little voice echoing back to her. ‘Are you going to show me how to start Sylvie, Dad? I know how to stop her because I saw how you did it yesterday . . .’

  Now she could no longer hear him but she knew he was still talking, still asking questions and she shook her head, smiling fondly.

  It was a happy picture; a picture that Kitty was to keep in her heart and remember. It was an image to treasure and down the years Kitty was to wish, countless times, that she could turn the clock back to that last moment of contentment.

  Forty-Four

  ‘Mam, Mam. Come quick!’

  Johnnie was back before she had finished her early morning chores ready to join them in the yard. She stood up from banking down the fire in the range and ran to the back door.

  The boy was breathless, leaning against the wall outside the door. ‘You must come. Me dad—’

  Kitty clutched at him. ‘What is it? What’s happened? Is he hurt?’

  Panting, Johnnie shook his head. ‘Just come and see.’

  She hurried after him, her heart thumping painfully, fear rising in her throat and threatening to choke her. Oh Jack, Jack, what now?

  As she turned the corner of the stables and saw the machinery she stopped suddenly. ‘No, oh no,’ she breathed.

  The threshing engine was daubed with some thick black stuff and over it all had been flung a bag of white feathers. Most clung to the sticky substance, but some fluttered freely, blown about the engine and the yard.

  Jack was standing, his arms akimbo, just looking at his beloved engine.

  She moved towards him and put her hand on his arm. She could feel his anger in every muscle. ‘Oh Jack. Poor Sylvie. It’s not – not tar they’ve used, is it?’ She’d heard tales about tarring and feathering a person. But this . . .

  He didn’t answer but moved closer and ran his finger along one of the rods, picking up some of the stuff. Then he put his finger to his nose and sniffed it. ‘No,’ he said. Then she saw him lick his finger. ‘It’s treacle. Black treacle.’

  ‘Treacle!’ she repeated. She blinked at him. ‘Treacle,’ she whispered again. Treacle came from a kitchen.

  With a sudden, jerky movement she turned about, picked up her skirts and ran towards the house. Past the stables and through the gate in the side wall, she rushed in front of the windows of the master’s room, not even caring if he saw her.

  Crashing open the kitchen door, she cried, ‘Where is she? Where’s that spiteful sister of mine?’

  Mrs Grundy turned startled eyes to her. ‘Milly? She’s upstairs in Master Edward’s old room, giving it a good going over . . . Hey, where do you think you’re going?’

  But Kitty had dodged around the table and was through the door and down the steps leading into the hall. She took the servants’ stairs two at a time and then, twisting and turning through the passageways, came to Edward’s bedroom. The door was slightly ajar and she could hear Milly singing as she worked, shaking the feather bed and banging the dust from it.

  Kitty pushed the door wider. ‘You might well sing, our Milly.’

  ‘Oh! It’s you, Kitty. You made me jump. What are you doing up here? Shouldn’t you be—?’

  Kitty marched into the room and round the bed. She reached out and grabbed her sister by the hair.

  ‘Kitty – ouch! Whatever’s got into you?’

  ‘Come here. Look.’ She pulled the girl towards the window. ‘Down there. Did you do that? Did you take a tin of Mrs Grundy’s treacle and daub it all over Sylvie and then chuck an old feather pillow over it? ’Cos if you did . . .’

  The girl’s eyes widened as, above the wall, she saw the outline of the engine, saw the feathers, like snow, upon its surface. ‘No, no, Kitty. I didn’t . . . I wouldn’t. Honest.’

  Kitty tightened her grip on Milly’s hair and twisted her wrist. The younger girl cried out. ‘Honest, Kitty. I didn’t. I admit I put that one on his steering wheel a while back, but no, I wouldn’t do that. Not all that. I like Jack. You’ve got to believe me. Please, Kitty.’

  Kitty released her as suddenly as she had taken hold of her and Milly, losing her balance, fell to the floor. Kitty bent over her. ‘Do you know who did do it? Have you any idea? Was it them same lads you were on about setting on that poor feller?’

  ‘I don’t know. Could ’ave been,’ the girl muttered morosely and as Kitty reached out again, she said, ‘I don’t know, honest, Kitty. But there are one or two folks in the town who’s lost their boys and they don’t take kindly to Jack still being safely here.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she insisted again. ‘Honest. I just heard Bemmy telling Mrs G.’

  ‘Bemmy? You don’t mean that Bemmy . . .?’

  Milly was shaking her head violently so that two hairpins dislodged themselves and hung down over her ear. ‘No, no, he wouldn’t do summat like that. He’d tell Jack to his face exactly what he thinks about him.’

  She was right about that, Kitty thought. Bemmy might be a grumpy old man but he was not the sort who would skulk around in the night smearing treacle and feathers over machinery. She sighed. It must have been someone from the town. Perhaps some poor soul who had lost a loved one and it had affected their mind. Perhaps, she thought, her anger dying, the perpetrators were more to be pitied than blamed.

  ‘I’m sorry if I misjudged you, Milly.’ She wagged her finger at her. ‘But you can hardly blame me, seein’ how you were talking the other day and now you’ve admitted you did put that other feather on his wheel. How could you do such a thing, Milly? It was wicked.’

  Milly coloured. ‘I know, our Kitty. And I’m real sorry now I did it. Don’t ever tell him, will you? Please?’

  ‘All right,’ she nodded. ‘But you shouldn’t have done it, because it did upset him at the time.’

  ‘But this is worse,’ Milly said in a small voice.

  ‘Oh aye,’ Kitty said wryly. ‘This is much worse. Goodness only knows what this’ll do to him.’

  Kitty left Milly and ran downstairs again. She filled a bucket with hot, soapy water while she explained briefly to the startled cook what had happened.

  ‘Never!’ Mrs Grundy exclaimed indignantly.

  ‘It’s a blessing it’s only treacle, Mrs G.,’ was Kitty’s philosophical remark now. ‘I thought at first it was tar and that surely would have ruined poor Sylvie.’

  ‘I bet Jack’s in a right tekin’, ain’t he?’

  Kitty’s answer was to cast her eyes to the ceiling, pick up the bucket and some clean cloths and step out i
nto the yard.

  They missed a whole day’s threshing because of the incident and the following day it rained heavily and work was impossible.

  Jack was quiet and morose and paced about the small cottage in a foul temper.

  ‘I’ll not be forced into throwing me life away by a lot of patriotic nonsense,’ he burst out at last, beating one clenched fist against the palm of his other hand. ‘But I expect you agree with them, if truth be told, don’t ya?’

  ‘No, Jack,’ Kitty said wearily. She was still tired from all her efforts to clean every last bit of the sticky treacle from the engine. ‘I really don’t have a lot of thought on the subject one way or t’other to tell you the truth. And besides, it’s not up to me, is it?’

  ‘Ah, but your fine friend, Master Edward, he volunteered straight away, didn’t he? Even before he was properly old enough. And he’s the hero now, ain’t he? Got a medal to show off on his chest an’ all.’

  Patiently, as if explaining to a child, she said, ‘Master Edward only joined up to try to prove to his father that he was, well, something. The master had belittled him all his young life. Specially when he was so ill all that time. I saw it with me own eyes, so I know . . .’

  ‘Oh aye, you know all right, don’t you, Kitty Clegg? You and the Franklins. I’m sick of hearing about them. You hear me?’

  ‘You can talk,’ she muttered as she turned away from him and bent to take out a rabbit pie from the oven in the range.

  ‘What did you say?’ he roared.

  She was straightening up and turning towards the table, when Jack grasped her roughly by the shoulder, spinning her round so that she lost her balance and fell over. The scalding gravy splashed on to her hand and she dropped the dish. It smashed on the tiles and the pie spilled out over the floor.

  Tears of pain filled her eyes as she clutched at her hand, the skin burning and reddening already.

  She clenched her teeth against the pain, but faced him. ‘I said, you can talk about being involved with the Franklins.’

  The air was thick with unspoken accusation and recrimination. His mouth twisted cruelly. ‘Well, at least I had m’lady. Oh, she was begging for it, I can tell you. Threw hersen at me, she did.’

  Kitty closed her eyes, but she could not close her ears to his bragging.

  ‘If only she hadn’t fallen for the kid, she’d have been with me still, I reckon.’

  To that, Kitty had no answer, for even she did not know what might have happened if Miss Miriam had not found herself with child.

  Yet despite everything, Kitty did not for one moment regret her decision to take the boy as her own. And the decision had cost her a great deal. Her face was gaunt, her cheeks thin and her complexion worn and dry from working outdoors in all weathers and the constant dust that attacked it. Her hair, drawn back into a bun at the back of her head, was dull and badly needed washing. Exhaustion filled her every waking moment and the days of her carefree girlhood were gone for ever.

  Jack’s lip curled. ‘Just look at you. You look what you really are. A dirty scullery maid. You’re certainly no lady, not even a lady’s maid. Never were. And you’re always too tired, ain’t you, nowadays to be any use to me?’ He thrust his face close to her. ‘If you don’t pretty yarsen up a bit and be a bit more lovin’, like, when I come home at night, you’ll be out, Kitty Clegg. D’you hear me? Out on your ear. But . . .’ menacingly, he wagged his forefinger in her face and said slowly and deliberately, ‘but the boy stays with me.’

  Despite her weariness, anger flooded through her, giving her back some of her old strength and vitality. In turn she thrust her face towards him, her dark eyes flashing. ‘Never. Never in a million years.’

  He laughed, a wry, mirthless laugh. ‘But he’s my son, Kitty Clegg, which is more than you can say.’

  Rage made her reckless. ‘Prove it, Jack Thorndyke, prove it in a court of law.’

  He raised his left eyebrow in sarcasm. ‘What, and drag your precious Miriam through the witness box and tell the world she’s had a bastard?’

  Kitty trembled at the very thought and knew herself beaten, trapped by the promise she had made years earlier.

  There was no way out for Kitty and no escape from Jack for as long as he wanted to keep her bound to him.

  But she would never, ever, allow him to take Johnnie from her. Never.

  Forty-Five

  ‘Madam wants to see you. She’s got some news.’

  ‘Oh Mrs G., I can’t stay. Jack needs me in the yard. We’ve missed two days’ threshing, what with that feather business and then it raining. And he’s short-handed enough without . . .’ Her eyes widened as the meaning behind Mrs Grundy’s words struck her. ‘News? Oh no, not about Master Edward or – or Miss Miriam?’

  She knew that Miriam had been nursing in a field hospital for the past year, the nearest one to the Front. Of course, Miriam hadn’t been able to say as much in her letters, but Mrs Franklin had told Kitty, ‘She’s near the thick of the fighting, at least that’s what Mr Franklin thinks.’ Mrs Franklin had held the thin sheet of writing paper between her hands. ‘She doesn’t say, of course. She can’t, any more than Edward can tell us where he is, but . . .’ The woman had raised her fine eyes to Kitty, eyes that were now clouded with constant anxiety. It was bad enough that her son should be a soldier, but her daughter was out there too. She could lose both her children.

  Now Mrs Grundy was shaking her head. ‘No, nothing dreadful, well, not the way you mean. But you’d best go up. You needn’t stay long, but she asked particularly to see you when you got here. Leave the lad with me.’

  ‘I’ll go out to me dad,’ Johnnie said.

  Kitty nodded. ‘Keep well back,’ she said quietly. ‘Don’t get in his way.’ She could well have added ‘and make him worse tempered than he is already’ but she held her tongue.

  The boy grinned as he headed for the door. ‘No, Mam. I know what to do.’

  ‘Spitting image of his dad, ain’t he?’ Mrs Grundy grinned. ‘’Spect he teks after him for the work an’ all. And he’ll break a few hearts in time.’

  ‘I hope not, Mrs G., oh I do hope not.’ Kitty was shaking her head but nevertheless smiling fondly after him. ‘You’re right about one thing though. He does love the outdoor life and he’s quite a help even though he’s so young.’

  Mrs Grundy sniffed. ‘Farmers’ lads, and their men’s bairns if it comes to that, have always had to help from being young. Why, me brother and me used to be tatie picking nearly as soon as we could walk, following our mam . . .’

  Kitty turned and said, ‘I’d best go up then.’ She didn’t want Mrs Grundy getting launched into her reminiscences. She’d be here all morning.

  ‘Oh Kitty, come in, come in.’ The door was wide open when she reached the top of the stairs and Mrs Franklin was beckoning her into her sitting room. ‘They’re home. They’re back. Both of them.’

  For a moment Kitty was puzzled. ‘Back, madam?’

  It was the most animated Kitty had ever seen the usually serene Mrs Franklin. There was an excitement about her and her lovely eyes were shining with relief and happiness.

  ‘Edward and Miriam. They’re at the Hall. They arrived yesterday. Miriam had special leave to bring him home. He’s been wounded in the leg.’

  ‘Wounded?’ Kitty gave a little cry of horror. ‘Oh no . . .’ But Mrs Franklin reached out and took hold of her hands.

  ‘But it’s all right, Kitty, don’t you see? He’s hurt, yes, but not badly, not life-threateningly and it will keep him out of the war for good.’

  Kitty’s face cleared. ‘Oh I see now, madam.’ She smiled a little tremulously, recovering swiftly from the shock. ‘I couldn’t understand why you were so happy if he’d been wounded.’

  Mrs Franklin laughed, girlishly, light-headed with relief. ‘No, I suppose it must have seemed a little strange.’

  ‘And – and Miss Miriam? Is she going back again?’

  ‘Not yet. She has a lot of leave due to her.
As you know, she’s never been home since she first went out there more than a year ago. So she’ll be at home for a while anyway.’

  ‘Oh madam, I am so pleased for you, so thankful that your son is safe.’

  There was a commotion on the stairs and then suddenly, without warning or even a knock, the door was flung wide and a flustered and distressed Mrs Grundy stood there, clutching the corner of her apron. ‘Oh ma’am – I’m sorry, but there’s been an accident. A dreadful accident – in the yard . . .’

  Both Mrs Franklin and Kitty turned to stare at the cook with wide frightened eyes. ‘Oh no, no, not Johnnie,’ Kitty whispered, but then she heard his high-pitched cry from the hallway below.

  ‘Mam, mam, come quick. Dad’s fallen in the drum . . .’

  She heard Jack yelling as she ran down the garden path and as she came through the door in the wall and into the yard, the terrifying scene made her stop and press her hands to her ribs as panic threatened to engulf her. Then she was running again towards the huge red threshing drum.

  Nathaniel had climbed up on to the top and was leaning over, looking down into the drum. The rest of the workers, boys too young for war, stood around helplessly, wincing at the cries of agony coming from above them. From the ground, she could not see Jack. But she could hear him, oh how she could hear him and they were sounds she had never thought to hear from a man like Jack Thorndyke.

  Then suddenly, as loud as the screams had been, there was silence, an eerie, heart-stopping silence.

  ‘Jack,’ she breathed as she began to climb up the ladder and scramble on to the top of the thresher. ‘Oh no, Jack.’

  ‘I stopped it working, Mam. Me an’ Billy closed the regulator, just like Dad showed me.’ Johnnie’s face was upturned and she glanced down at him briefly and nodded. Her mind, for once, was not on the boy but on the man.

  The old man straightened and turned to face her, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Reckon he’s passed out, poor sod. He’ll be lucky if he survives this, missis.’ Then he sniffed and glanced down again. ‘If ya’d call it lucky,’ he muttered.