Chaff upon the Wind

by Margaret Dickinson

  Jack was lying head downwards in the opening, the trunk of his body and his legs twisted as if he had been struggling to free himself from the drum which had caught hold of his right arm and tried to drag him into the machinery. Kitty swallowed and moved forward, dropping on to her knees beside Jack’s inert figure.

  ‘Oh – my – God,’ came her strangulated whisper, then suddenly she was on her feet and shouting down to those below, gaping up with fearful eyes.

  ‘Find the master – Mr Franklin. Hurry. And you, Billy, get up top here.’ This to the biggest, strongest lad there. To the smallest and wiriest, she shouted, ‘You, run into the town for the doctor. Tell him it’s – it’s a very bad accident. Life or death. Mek him realize . . . Johnnie, fetch towels and water from the house. Tell Mrs Grundy to come.’

  They were scurrying now in all directions, anxious to do her bidding and fearful lest their inactivity would bring about a dreadful fate for poor Jack.

  ‘Now,’ she turned back to Jack and knelt beside him once more. Thank the good Lord he was still unconscious. At least he was out of pain while they tried to free him.

  Though the three of them – old Nathaniel, Billy and Kitty – pulled and tugged, they still could not turn the drum to release its hold on him.

  ‘We need summat to lever it round. What . . .?’

  There was the sound of running and Kitty glanced round to see Mr Franklin climbing the ladder to the top of the drum. Then he was standing beside her and looking down at Jack. ‘My God,’ he muttered. ‘We must get him out.’

  ‘We’ve tried, sir, but we can’t move the drum with our hands.’

  ‘You’ll not do it from up here. We need to pull on the belt – gently. You stay here and as we turn it, get him out.’

  Kitty licked her dry lips and pushed her hands, wet with sweat, down her skirt. She nodded. She was trembling in every limb, but she would do it. She’d do whatever she had to.

  Mr Franklin stripped off his jacket, carelessly flinging it aside. Then he climbed down the ladder, bellowing to the two lads as he went. ‘You two, help me with the belt.’

  For the first time in her life, Kitty was thankful for the master’s roar of authority, his strong presence and positive action in a crisis.

  Moments later he was shouting up to her. ‘Right, we’re going to start. Get ready . . .’

  Kitty and Nathaniel knelt by Jack, Kitty nearest to the drum, her hands reaching to ease out Jack’s arm, Nathaniel by his legs to help lift him clear.

  The machinery gave a jerk and Kitty winced as Jack groaned. ‘Oh please don’t come round now,’ she mouthed a prayer.

  Then slowly the drum began to turn backwards, while all the time Mr Franklin’s voice floated up to her. ‘Steady, hold it, keep an even pressure or we’ll cause him more damage.’

  Kitty swallowed hard and for a moment her head swam. She mustn’t faint now, she told herself fiercely, but the sight unfolding before her was enough to make even the stout-hearted quail. His arm was a mess of mangled flesh and white, splintered bone as far up as his elbow. Yet, strangely, as the injured limb came free, there was not as much bleeding as Kitty had expected.

  ‘By heck, lass,’ Kitty heard Nathaniel mutter, ‘it’s all but hanging off. He’ll lose it. They’ll never be able to save that, I know.’

  Kitty was silent as she looked down at Jack’s ashen face. The shock of losing his arm would kill him, she thought, even if the accident itself didn’t. Old Nathaniel, who had probably seen several such incidents in his long life, was right. From the elbow down, the limb was crushed beyond recognition as the strong right arm it had once been.

  Swallowing the bile that rose in her throat, Kitty stood up, lifted her skirt and tore her petticoat into strips to bind his arm roughly to his chest while they carried him down to the ground. They managed it, but how, Kitty could never remember afterwards for the big, inert man was a dead weight.

  ‘Oh Kitty – lass.’ Mrs Grundy was standing there, her arms full of towels and old sheets, Milly carrying a bowl of steaming water. ‘Is he – is he . . .?’

  Mr Franklin, who was kneeling down beside Jack, said, ‘Not yet, but he’s bad. Have you sent for the doctor?’

  Kitty nodded. ‘I sent one of the lads.’

  ‘Then I don’t think we should move him again till the doctor’s seen him. Blankets, Cook. We need blankets to keep him warm.’

  In her turn, Mrs Grundy sent Milly scurrying back to the house just as pounding feet heralded the return of the boy sent to fetch the doctor.

  ‘He’s out, mester,’ he panted. ‘On t’other side of town.’

  ‘Damnation,’ Mr Franklin muttered between his teeth. He stood up, appeared to think for a moment and then said, ‘Have him carried into the kitchen. As carefully as you can, mind. On to the table. I’ll fetch Miriam. She’ll be used to sights like these after what she’s seen. Maybe she’ll be able to do something until the doctor gets here.’ He raised his voice and bellowed, ‘Bemmy, start the car.’

  Kitty opened her mouth, stung, in a moment’s thoughtlessness, to protest. But she closed it without uttering a word.

  This was out of her hands now.

  Forty-Six

  Within half an hour the car returned, swerving into the driveway and skidding to a halt and Miriam was jumping out even before the vehicle had come to a halt. Momentarily, she paused in the doorway of the kitchen as she took in the scene. Her glance went, just once, to Kitty and then her whole attention was on the man lying on the table.

  Gently but skilfully, Miriam set to work, and Kitty, standing on the opposite side of the table, feeling ignorant and helpless, was filled with admiration for the girl whose deft hands unwound the makeshift bandage as she calmly assessed the appalling injury to the man who had fathered her child, the man in whose arms she had lain . . .

  Guiltily, Kitty pushed away her thoughts as Miriam said quietly, ‘Kitty, wash your hands thoroughly. You’ll have to help me try to clean some of the dirt from the wound.’

  Kitty felt sick, but valiantly she fought to carry out Miriam’s instructions. A low groan came from Jack and his eyelids seemed to fall open. His legs jerked in an involuntary movement. Then suddenly his left arm came up and he reached out and grabbed at Miriam’s skirt, but the young woman seemed not to notice or to care.

  ‘Kitty, he’s starting to come round. Hold his shoulder. Mrs Grundy, hold his head. Father . . .’ This to Mr Franklin, who was still standing near the doorway. ‘Hold his legs please. When the pain hits him, he’ll . . .’

  At that instant Jack let out a yell that made everyone in the kitchen jump, even though they had been half expecting it. ‘Hold him,’ Miriam snapped. ‘Kitty, lie across his stomach. It’s the only way we’ll hold him down. Where’s that blasted doctor?’ she muttered in language that befitted a field hospital rather than the kitchen of her former home. Yet the bloody scene before them resembled a battlefield.

  ‘Mam,’ Johnnie shouted from the back door. ‘Mam, the doctor’s here.’

  ‘And not before time, either,’ Miriam murmured, but Kitty could detect the relief in her voice.

  ‘Nasty,’ was the doctor’s terse verdict after his examination. He was a big man in his late fifties with an abundance of grey hair and a drooping moustache that hid his mouth, but his eyes, a clear blue, twinkled with a mischief that some found disconcerting in a doctor, yet others found reassuring and human. He was one of them, a man who dealt with tragedy in a bluff, no-nonsense manner, yet with a kindly concern, and with the greatest respect for the blunt truth. ‘The arm will have to come off at the elbow.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Kitty breathed. She had realized that it might happen, yet until the doctor actually voiced the words, she had clung foolishly to a tiny vestige of hope. Now there was none, she was horrified to think what it would mean to Jack. All the bad times fell away and she could think only of the laughing, handsome man who had captured and held her heart so completely that she had been besotted with him, casting asid
e all caution, all common sense. She thought of his daring eyes that were at once mischievous or dark with passion. She thought now only of the sunlit days when his flirting had swelled her heart with love. Memories of his betrayal, of his threats to keep her chained to his side, all faded before her sorrow at the sight of the lacerated body of the handsome, virile man. A man so proud of that virility and manhood that such a mutilation could ultimately destroy him.

  ‘Is there no other way? No chance that you can save it?’ she asked, her voice trembling.

  The doctor shook his head. ‘He’ll lose either his arm or his life. Which is it to be?’

  He glanced first at Miriam and then at Kitty, not quite knowing, being very new to the area, who was the closest to the patient.

  Briefly the two women exchanged a look. They spoke together and with one accord. ‘His arm.’

  ‘Right. I’ll need help.’ He glanced at Miriam. ‘Seems you know what you’re doing, young woman. Nurse, are you?’

  She nodded. ‘A year at the Front.’

  ‘Ha. This is nothing to what you’ve seen then, I’ll be bound. Was there myself until the end of ’fifteen. Right.’ He turned away, took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves and moved towards Mrs Grundy’s deep white sink.

  ‘Good job I’ve learned to carry the tools of the trade with me at all times.’ He turned to face those standing watching him, drying his hands on a towel. ‘Another thing you learn at the Front,’ he added quietly, his glance resting for a moment on Miriam once more. Then he turned to Johnnie hovering in the doorway. ‘Fetch the large bag out of the back of the trap, lad, will you?’

  ‘You don’t mean you’re going to do it here? On me kitchen table?’ Mrs Grundy asked, scandalized.

  ‘Certainly am. Move him and there wouldn’t be any point in trying to operate.’

  ‘Eh?’ Her eyes widened and then came back to the twitching, moaning form on her table, once scrubbed to white cleanliness, now stained with blood and straw and dust. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Now . . .’ His face grim, the doctor glanced round at them all. ‘I’m going to need your help.’

  There had been little in the way of an actual amputation for the doctor to do; the thresher had done it all too well.

  ‘A bit rough and ready,’ the doctor commented, washing the blood from his hands. ‘And I don’t know whether he’ll live even now.’ He glanced again at the two women. ‘Need good nursing. Can the two of you manage it? I don’t want to risk moving him to the hospital for a day or two, though I’d like him to go then to have a better job made of that stump.’

  Again Kitty and Miriam looked at each other. ‘Of course,’ Miriam said. ‘He’ll stay here,’ she decided without deference to her father. ‘We’ll carry him up to Teddy’s room. Father, can you manage his legs, while Kitty and I . . .?’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said the doctor, a strong burly man whose size belied the dexterity of his surgeon’s hands. He moved to take Kitty’s place, near the truncated limb. Laying a hand on her shoulder, he said gently, ‘You sit down in that chair near the fire before you fall down, and let someone make you a cup of tea.’ The perceptive doctor had at last picked out which of the two women was most affected. He looked kindly at her, adding, ‘Else I’ll have another patient on my hands.’

  She smiled thinly and moved towards the chair, though her gaze never left Jack as they lifted him gently and carried him upstairs, leaving a mesmerized Mrs Grundy staring at her table. ‘Well, I never thought I’d see owt like that on here. Never.’

  Exhausted, Kitty leaned her head back against the wooden chair and closed her eyes. Oh thank you, God, thank you for Miss Miriam . . .

  Kitty jumped as someone touched her hand gently and she opened her eyes to see Johnnie watching her, his eyes large in a round face that was suddenly unusually pale.

  A shaft of horror stabbed her. ‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ she whispered, at once consumed with guilt that she had not prevented the boy from witnessing the mutilation of the father he idolized. ‘I shouldn’t have let you see . . .’

  Kitty had been so caught up with the drama that she had not even thought about Johnnie being there, seeing everything. But the boy’s concern was not for himself. ‘Is me dad going to be all right?’

  Kitty looked into the dark blue eyes, so like Jack’s. And yet there was more in these eyes. Despite his youth, there was a concern for others in the boy’s expression, a trait missing, Kitty felt, from Jack Thorndyke’s nature.

  She smiled tremulously and reached out to touch his cheek. The boy’s question, asked with a maturity beyond his years, demanded the truth. ‘I don’t know, Johnnie, but with Miss Miriam’s help, we’ll pull him through.’

  The boy leaned closer. ‘Isn’t she pretty? Who is she?’

  Kitty blinked. It seemed impossible that the boy did not know who she was, and yet how could he when the few who did know had been at such pains to hide the truth from him?

  She opened her mouth but was saved from having to answer as Miriam herself came back into the room.

  ‘There now, he’s as comfortable as we can make him. Milly’s keeping an eye on him for us, Kitty, and Father’s taken the doctor into his study for a well-earned wee dram, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  She came and stood beside the chair where Kitty sat, resting her hand on the back as she looked down into the boy’s upturned face.

  ‘And who,’ she said slowly, her voice low and husky, ‘is this handsome young man?’ Beneath her breath, so softly that only Kitty heard, Miriam added, ‘As if I didn’t know.’

  Kitty cleared her throat nervously and said, ‘This is Johnnie, Miss Miriam.’

  ‘How do you do, Johnnie Clegg?’ And she held out her hand.

  The boy frowned slightly, but put his own hand into hers. ‘My name’s Johnnie Thorndyke, missis,’ he corrected her. Then he added politely, ‘How do you do?’

  It was a natural mistake for Miriam to make and Kitty held her breath, but Miriam only laughed and said, ‘Of course it is, what am I thinking of? I can’t get used to your mother being Mrs Thorndyke any more than she can bring herself to call me Mrs Harding.’

  It was quick thinking and Kitty let out her breath with relief. Then she glanced up at Miriam. Was she imagining it, seeing things in her anxiety that weren’t really there, or did Miriam hold on to young Johnnie’s hand just a little too long?

  Now she was moving forward and putting her arm about the boy’s shoulders, turning him round and leading him towards the door. ‘At the Hall we have a mare that’s just foaled. Would you like to come and see it?’

  The boy’s face was upturned to look at her. ‘Oh yes, please, missis.’

  In the doorway, she paused and looked back at Kitty. ‘I’ll have to go back to the Hall to fetch a few things. I think we’ll both have to sleep here for the next few nights, and, of course, Johnnie can stay here too.’

  All Kitty could do was nod and watch helplessly as Miriam walked out of the back door, her arm still about her son’s shoulders.

  Forty-Seven

  Side by side, Kitty and Miriam stood looking down at the man in Edward’s bed, sleeping now but still not peaceful, for his body twitched and his mouth worked. The two women moved outside the bedroom, away from the sickly sweet smell of blood mingling with the man’s sweat of fear and pain.

  ‘You’ll never manage him on your own, Kitty. We’ll use my old room and take it in turns to sleep there. He mustn’t be left for a while, day or night. And I’ll dress the stump for you.’

  Kitty bit her lip, knowing what she said was true. ‘Are you sure, miss?’

  Miriam nodded. ‘I’m sure.’

  Kitty stared at the girl who had been her young mistress, wilful, obstinate and selfish. The young woman who now stood beside her was very different. There was a calmness, a serenity about her now and that was not all. Deep in her eyes there was compassion. The horrors she must have witnessed at the Front had left their abiding mark upon Miriam. She was a differen
t being to the petulant girl who had made such a fuss about a sliver of glass in her foot or had been unable to sit with her sickly brother. Kitty could see and admire a new strength and purpose in Miriam.

  She was still beautiful of course, and, Kitty guessed, as passionate as ever about what she believed in. And did that passion still include the man lying, so terribly maimed, in the room behind them?

  There was a long silence until Kitty whispered ‘Are you still in love with him?’

  Miriam’s green eyes returned Kitty’s gaze steadfastly. ‘No, Kitty, I’m not. Though I would never have wished something like this to happen, I do see him now for the man he was – is,’ she altered her wording swiftly. There was a silence before she said, pondering, ‘A strange mixture, isn’t he, our Threshing Jack?’

  When Kitty made no answer, Miriam went on, though it was almost as if she were speaking to herself rather than to anyone else. ‘I’ve seen so many men die in so many ways. Some with a silent courage, who slipped away without a word, others stoically bearing the most horrific injuries when we hadn’t the means to ease their pain. And the others, the poor young boys screaming piteously for their mother or big, strong ones getting fighting mad, like Jack in there. He was a fine figure of a male, Kitty, and I am sorry to see him brought so low. Very sorry, but you know,’ Kitty felt Miriam touch her arm, ‘Jack Thorndyke is not a man in the way that Edward is, or – or that poor Guy was. Maybe you don’t see him as I do now, Kitty. Not yet. But if you ever do, I beg you to have the courage to leave him. For if ever you were to stop loving a man like Jack Thorndyke, then your life with him would be a misery.’

  Kitty dropped her head and could not answer. How could she tell this girl, who was now so changed, that it was for her – and her son – that she stayed with Jack? How could she ever explain the hold that the man exerted over her, the threat that bound her to him? The threat that he would reveal Miriam’s secret. Better that Miriam should go on believing that Kitty stayed with him because she still loved him.