She felt Miriam pat her arm and move away. ‘Now, you go and get some sleep, Kitty. You’ve had a horrible shock today. I’ll see to him tonight.’
The weariness washed over her in waves and all Kitty could do was nod and say, ‘Thank you, miss.’
As Kitty moved towards the opposite bedroom, Miriam opened the door into the room where Jack lay and closed it behind her.
In the days that followed, Kitty felt awkward being at the Manor with Jack and, more especially, with Johnnie there so often too. What if, in his delirium, Jack said something about the boy or about Miriam? And what if the master heard? But, ironically, it was Mr Franklin himself who put her mind at ease.
Meeting her in the hall the morning after the accident, he said, ‘Kitty, come into my study a moment, will you?’
Kitty swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry as he closed the door and motioned her to a seat while he took up a stance before the blazing fire in the huge iron grate. For several moments he stood just looking at her, as if he were assessing every feature, every line of her face, until Kitty, embarrassed, dropped her glance.
‘You’re very like your mother was, you know, when she was your age.’
Now Kitty looked up to meet his gaze again. ‘Am I, sir?’ she whispered.
He nodded. ‘And you have her brightness, her – her mischief. At least . . .’ he paused, considering, and his voice deepened, ‘you used to have. When you first came to work here.’ He paused again and then there was a gentleness in his tone that Kitty had never, ever, heard before in the master’s voice. ‘Until life dealt you some unkind blows too.’
She didn’t need to ask what the ‘too’ meant. She knew he was referring to her mother and his sadness told Kitty that he still carried the burden of guilt for the part he had played in the life of Betsy Clegg.
‘Is she . . .’ his voice faltered, ‘all right? Your mother?’
Kitty felt a rush of sympathy flood through her for this man. His bluff exterior hid emotions she had not thought him capable of. With a sudden tenderness, she smiled at the man who, though he was not, could very well have been her father. ‘She’s fine.’
‘Is she – has she been – happy?’
She returned his gaze steadily. She couldn’t lie to this man. It wouldn’t be fair. ‘I think so, sir. As happy as it was possible for her to be.’
He passed his hand briefly across his forehead and asked, ‘He’s been good to her, Clegg?’
Now she could answer truthfully, for Betsy Clegg herself would never say any different. ‘Oh yes, sir. A good husband and father to us all.’
Kitty saw him relax. ‘Good. Good. I’m glad.’
She wanted to say, And you, sir? Have you been happy? But she could not. Even though he was talking to her now as an equal, still Kitty could not quite bring herself to cross the divide between master and servant. Not with Mr Franklin. And besides, there was really no need to ask the question, for, sadly, Kitty felt she knew the answer.
Between them, Kitty and Miriam nursed Jack, taking it in turns to sit with him through the long nights when he lay quite still, though his skin was burning to the touch, or when he threshed about in feverish agony, his sweat soaking the bedclothes.
Kitty mopped his brow and changed his clothes and sheets, held a feeding cup to his lips or spoon-fed him the thin soup and milk puddings that Mrs Grundy sent up. But it was Miriam who changed the dressings on his stump, Miriam who washed him and attended to his intimate bodily functions. And though she stayed to help, all the while Kitty could see that it was upon Miriam that Jack’s dark gaze rested.
It was ironic, Kitty could not help thinking, as she sat huddled in a blanket near the window in the cold, early light of dawn, that he had avoided going to war only to be maimed in a far worse way than perhaps he would have been at the battle front.
And there was another irony too; the fact that Jack was now lying in the room where for so many months, years even, the young Edward had remained a virtual prisoner in his sickbed, able to watch the outside world only from this very window. She rubbed away the faint mist her breath had made on the pane and strained her eyes to see down the length of the garden, over the wall to where Sylvie still stood in forlorn silence. The stack was half threshed, the drum halted in its work, suspended still in that moment of drama, waiting . . .
Kitty sighed, wondering how they were ever going to cope with the work. Who could she get to finish it? For now there was no Ben to take Jack’s place and old Nathaniel could not work the engine. Jack would blame it all on Ben for going, she thought suddenly. He would blame anyone and everyone else for his accident; Ben, for leaving, and whoever had plastered white feathers over his engine so that he was so angry and forgetful of the danger. The insult had eaten away at him. And her. Kitty was sure he would blame her too. The doctor had said as much only the previous day.
‘He’s over the worst physically, but it’s his mind you’ll have to deal with now, my dear.’ He’d stroked his moustache. ‘I do not envy you your task, for the suffering tend to take it out on their nearest and dearest. I can see that a man such as Jack Thorndyke will not take kindly to what he will consider being a cripple. I’ll get him moved to the hospital tomorrow. It’ll give you a respite and time to get things ready at your home. Mr Franklin has said Bemmy can take him in the motor car and Miriam will go with him . . .’ The doctor’s eyes twinkled merrily for a moment. ‘Just to make sure Bemmy’s driving doesn’t cause a relapse in our patient, eh?’
Kitty tried to smile, knowing the doctor was deliberately trying to lift her spirits, yet all the while she was thinking, Miriam, Miriam, Miriam. It was always Miriam caring for Jack.
As she told him, hesitantly, of the doctor’s plans, Jack lay listlessly, sunk against the pillows, his handsome face gaunt with black shadows beneath his eyes. ‘I don’t see why they’re bothering. They can’t sew me arm back on, now can they?’
‘The doctor wants the – the . . .’ she swallowed painfully, ‘the wound treated properly. Then you’ll come back home to – to the cottage.’
There was silence, then suddenly Jack said, ‘This is his room, ain’t it?’ and he pulled himself up in the bed for the first time since he had been put there, craning to see out of the window. ‘Aye, I thought so. You can see the stackyard from here.’ He was silent as he stared through the window at the deserted yard and idle machinery. Then he flopped back against the pillows and lay just looking up at the ceiling.
‘I used to see him, you know, watching us. Standing at this window, just watching. I reckon he was watching you.’
She began to say, ‘Don’t be silly . . .’ but Jack twisted his head on the pillow to look at her. ‘I thought he was home? Doesn’t he want his room back?’
‘He’s staying at the Hall with – with his sister.’
‘You seen him?’
‘When have I had time to go visiting, Jack? Talk sense.’
He moved his head again to stare once more at the ceiling above him.
‘We’ll have to move you home soon, anyway,’ she told him.
He didn’t speak for a while, then, ‘Have they said they want us out?’
‘No, no, they’ve been very good. All – all of them.’
His lip curled. ‘Aye, even Florence Nightingale herself.’
‘There’s no need to take that attitude, Jack. Miriam saved your life.’
‘Then it’s her I’ve to blame, is it, for still being alive? Getting her revenge on me, was she?’
Kitty’s mouth hardened. ‘You’ve no right to say such things. No right at all. You’ll have to manage on your own for a while. I must go to my mother’s to fetch Johnnie.’ She made to turn from him, but Jack reached out with his one hand and grasped her arm. There was still a surprising strength in his grip. She stood quietly, submitting herself to his hold on her.
‘Don’t bring him here. I don’t want him to see me. Not like this.’
‘He’ll love you just the same, Jack, and besides,
he saw it all. He was there when it happened. In fact, it was him who came running to find me and I believe, though it scarcely seems possible that he managed it, he was the one who stopped the machinery. Nathaniel said when it happened Johnnie and Billy scambled up on to the engine and stopped it.’
His voice was a low growl. ‘He’d a done better to leave me be. Best all round if I’d . . .’ In his eyes, she saw a sudden fear, a desperation. His voice was a hoarse whisper as he said, ‘Kitty, you won’t leave me, will you?’
She smiled down at him gently and shook her head. There was a sadness in her heart, but she strove valiantly to hide it from the mutilated man. ‘No, Jack,’ she said. ‘I won’t leave you.’ He needed her now, more than ever before, and she knew she would stay.
She smoothed the hair back from his forehead. ‘Try to rest while I go and fetch Johnnie home.’
He sank back against the pillows with a sigh, but as she reached the door, he murmured, ‘They should have let me die. I’d be better off dead. And now, I can’t even volunteer to be cannon fodder.’
‘Well, I aren’t staying if you’re going to feel sorry for yasen,’ she said, making her tone deliberately sharp, realizing, more by instinct than by rational thought, that with a man like Jack goading him to anger was perhaps the only way to rouse him from depression. She pulled open the door, stepped out of the room and shut it behind her with a resounding bang. Then she stood a moment, shocked at her own actions as she remembered, too late, in whose house they were.
If the master were at home, then . . .
But as she listened, holding her breath, no angry voice was raised against the noise and she fled down the stairs and into the kitchen, breathing hard.
Two pairs of startled eyes turned towards her. ‘What is it, lass? Is he worse?’
Kitty stopped and placed her hand over her thudding heart. ‘No, no, I just got a bit mad with him feeling sorry for himself and I forgot where I was and banged the bedroom door.’ She gave a nervous laugh. ‘Then I stood waiting for the master to come raging out of his study to shout at me.’
‘Oh he’s out – and madam, too,’ Milly said. ‘So you’re safe – this time.’
‘I’m just going to fetch Johnnie home.’
‘All right,’ Milly nodded. ‘I’ll go up in a bit and take him this jelly.’
Kitty said, ‘You are good, Mrs G. You spoil him . . .’
But the cook was shaking her head. ‘Ain’t nowt to do wi’ me. ’Tis all Milly’s doin’.’ The woman laughed. ‘Reckon she’s glad of a captive guinea pig for her efforts. Mind you, to be fair, and you know I always try to be, Kitty, she’s not shaping up badly. I can see I’ll be pensioned off afore me time if I aren’t careful.’
‘Oh Mrs Grundy, you know we couldn’t do without you.’ Milly dipped her head, pretending embarrassment, but not before her older sister had seen the look of triumph in the girl’s eyes.
Kitty hugged Johnnie to her until he wriggled to be set free. ‘Leave off, Mam.’
It seemed an age since she had seen him even though it was only days. He’d stayed the first two nights at the Manor, but Kitty had made the excuse that, with Jack to care for, she could pay little attention to the boy. The truth was that she didn’t like him seeing so much of Miriam, nor she of him.
‘He can go to my mother’s for a few nights,’ she said, and when she saw the disappointment on Miriam’s face, Kitty knew she had been right to be concerned.
‘I do believe you’ve grown,’ she laughed now.
Betsy Clegg nodded and smiled. ‘He eats well, dun’t he? And . . .’ Betsy leaned towards her daughter, ‘ya dad’s even taken to him. Took him on the train with him yesterday. Now, what do you think of that? I’m that pleased he’s coming round a bit. After all, the little chap is our own grandbairn.’
Kitty straightened up, feeling the familiar stab of guilt. ‘We’d better be going. Thanks, Mam, for having him. And thank me dad, won’t you? Come on, Johnnie, come on home and see your dad.’
‘Home?’ There was disappointment in his tone. ‘D’you mean he’s back home?’
‘Oh no, no. I mean, to the Manor, but he’s being taken to the hospital tomorrow. I thought you’d like to see him before he goes.’
The boy nodded, then his face lit up and his next words brought fresh dread to Kitty’s heart. ‘We’re going to the Manor? Oh good, then I’ll see Mrs Harding again, won’t I?’
Forty-Eight
‘So, Jack Thorndyke, are you going to idle your life away in that bed while your threshing drum rots and poor Sylvie rusts away from lack of care?’
He had been home for three weeks now after his short stay in hospital and he had lain in bed for most of that time, despite the doctor, who still called regularly, insisting that he should be up and moving about now.
There was a time to be gentle and caring, Kitty thought, and there was a time to be tough with a man who, though physically recovered as much as was possible, had nonetheless sunk into a dark despair which no amount of cajoling and sympathy seemed able to dispel.
So, though her heart was pounding, she stood at the end of the bed in the low-ceilinged cottage, arms folded across her bosom, and said her piece.
The answer, from the depths of his pillows, was a low growl. ‘What good is a one-armed cripple in a threshing team?’
‘Ya legs gone an’ all, ’ave they?’
‘By, you’re gettin’ a shrewish tongue on ya, woman.’ But she noticed that anger made him pull himself up in the bed, instead of slouching beneath the covers, sinking lower and lower as if he would bury himself there for ever.
‘I never had you for a coward, Jack. I thought you were this strong, wonderful man, who strode through life taking all its knocks and always with a cheerful grin on your handsome face. Oh, a ladies’ man all right. A real Jack-by-name and Jack-the-Lad by nature,’ her voice dropped a tone, ‘and none knows it better’n me. But I loved that man, Jack, faults an’ all. Where’s he gone now? You tell me that?’
‘Down the bloody drum, that’s where,’ he said bitterly. ‘Threshed limb from limb and spewed out like useless chaff.’
She leaned on the wooden rail at the end of the bed. ‘You’ve people depending on you. You can’t just give up.’
Jack gestured with his hand. ‘They can get someone else and I’ll sell me threshing tackle.’
‘What?’ Now even Kitty was shocked. ‘Everything? Even your beloved Sylvie?’
She saw the hesitation then, saw the hurt deep in his eyes as he thought about the traction engine with her name picked out in gleaming gold and the drum with his nameplate on the side. Resolutely, Kitty pushed home her point. ‘You’d see someone else running Sylvie?’ she asked softly.
Angry frustration spurted again. ‘Well, I can’t, can I? Not like this.’
‘So,’ she said with more resolution in her voice than she was feeling inside, ‘it looks like it’s up to me.’ She turned and made to leave the room.
‘What are you going to do?’
She paused and looked back at him, shrugging her shoulders. ‘What do you care? You’d rather lie there and play the martyr, wouldn’t you, Jack?’
She left the room and though he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Kitty, Kitty! Just you come back here, Kitty Clegg,’ she took not a scrap of notice. For she had suddenly thought of a way to make him get out of that bed.
‘So, Mr Edward, do you know how to start this thing?’
Kitty was standing in the stackyard looking up at the lumbering bulk of metal, a mystery of boilers and gauges, levers and wheels and a puffing chimney. Standing beside her, leaning on his walking stick, his injured leg sticking out stiffly to one side, Edward grinned. ‘Well, I reckon with my one leg and two arms and Jack’s one arm and two legs, we ought to be able to work it.’
Kitty snorted. ‘He won’t get out of his bed.’
Edward’s face sobered for a moment. ‘For the first time in my life, I actually feel sorry for the poor chap. For a s
trong, healthy man like him to be so terribly injured, well, I can understand how he must be feeling.’
‘But you’ve been injured and you’re not lying in bed letting others wait on you. And you’ve more reason to than him. After all, you have been injured in the service of your country, which is more than Jack can say.’
‘I shouldn’t let him hear you saying that, Kitty. You, of all people. Wasn’t that why he had the accident? Because he was raging mad about the white feather business? Maybe that’s the very reason he is hiding himself away.’
She sighed. ‘It was all part of it, I suppose. And the fact that the best workers have gone to the war and all he’s left with are old men, boys – and me.’
Edward was staring at her. ‘Yes,’ he said, so quietly that she scarcely heard. ‘He’s still got you, Kitty, though he doesn’t deserve such devotion.’
They stood a moment, just looking at each other, until Kitty shook herself and said, ‘We’d best make a start. I’ll get one of the lads to stoke for you and, if you and old Nathaniel can work out how to get her going, I reckon we ought to get a day’s threshing in.’
When dusk crept into the stackyard, Sylvie’s engine died. Two boys slid from the top of the stack, Nathaniel climbed stiffly down from the top of the drum, Edward from the footplate of the engine and Kitty emerged from the chaff hole, red-eyed with tiredness and covered in dust. The last sack of grain was heaved into the barn.
‘We couldn’t have managed without you,’ Kitty told Edward.
‘D’you know, I’ve quite enjoyed myself,’ he grinned at her, his teeth gleaming white from out of his smut-blackened face. ‘Goodnight, Kitty,’ he added softly, ‘I hope your little ruse works.’
‘So do I,’ she said, smiling in return. ‘Oh so do I.’
When she reached the cottage, it was to find Milly perched on the end of Jack’s bed, while Johnnie played on the floor of the bedroom with six brightly coloured marbles.
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