‘Aye. And you’re about a foot taller than me.’ She blew out her cheeks noisily. ‘My little legs have to work twice as hard to get half as far.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘It’s not! Stands to reason if you think on it. Are you all right?’
‘Yes. I’m fine.’ He straightened. ‘No picnics today, eh?’
They gazed at the deserted area like a pair of monarchs surveying their domain, carpets of varying greens all lush with frequent rain, church towers in the distance, clumps of tree and shrub punctuating the rolling landscape. Everything was edged with the mellow tints of autumn, golds and reds made brighter by an unseasonably warm sun. The sky was stained here and there, streaked by the greyish emissions from faraway chimneys.
‘Lancashire’s beautiful,’ he said quietly. ‘People think it’s all machinery and filth, but they’ve never taken time to look at these moors.’
‘Aye. Only it’s not all like this, is it?’ Her tone was clipped. ‘Most folk don’t get chance nor time to come up here that often. They’re too busy running the rest of it.’
‘Oh, Molly.’ He leaned against the small stone tower, hands thrust deep in his pockets, brow creased into a frown. ‘If it wasn’t for the moors, there’d be no mills, no work. These hills keep the damp in. They help the cotton spin without breaking. There’s no sense in resenting what’s down there. What’s down there is affluence and a way of life. Would you rather we all begged for a living?’
‘No sir.’
‘Charlie!’ He tutted quietly and shook his head. She’d never use his Christian name, would she? ‘Oh, I know what it’s all about. There’s us and there’s you, the owners and the workers. Neither could exist without the other. Have you ever seen a picture of underwater life, Molly?’
‘No. There’s enough goes on up here without me being right bothered about the blinking sea. What’s underwater got to do with it anyroad?’
‘Well, there are fish down there the size of battleships. They could swallow a piano in one gulp – stool, sheet-music and all. Great mouths, they have, bigger than the Town Hall doors.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Yet there’ll be one particular little fish, a very ordinary sort of chap, swimming in and out of the big fellow’s mouth, cleaning his teeth and eating up what he leaves. Does the big fish swallow the little fish? No. Never. Because he depends on the little scavenger for his life, you see, couldn’t manage without him. They’re interdependent – almost married to one another. The big fish would die without the little fish – and vice versa. It’s called a symbiotic relationship. We have that – you and I.’
‘Do we? How?’
He sank to the grass and squatted on his haunches. ‘You serve my meals, clean my house. I pay your wages.’
‘But you wouldn’t die without me.’
‘No.’ He shook his head thoughtfully, wondering obliquely whether or not life would be worth living anyway without characters like Molly. ‘I’d live on shop-bought bread and lumps of cheese if I had no servants. I don’t know the first thing about baking and looking after a house.’
‘Then you’d have to bloody learn, wouldn’t you?’
‘I haven’t the time! It’s the same at the mills – do you think I could run hundreds of mules and looms . . . ?’
‘Without the little fish?’
‘Exactly.’
She joined him, spreading out her yellow skirt as she sat. ‘What I want to know is this. How do I get to be a big fish, ’cos I’m sick unto death of swimming in and out of other folks’ gobs and feeling grateful for the leavings.’
‘Molly.’ He took her hand. ‘You don’t need to be a big fish to be necessary and important. Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said? Giant fish have mammoth responsibilities. First, they’ve got to take care not to swallow a friend by mistake and that takes practice . . .’
‘I could learn . . .’
‘Secondly, there are always even bigger fish with huge teeth lurking behind every rock. There’s the bank manager fish – an ugly brute which eats everything in its path. Even he pales into insignificance at the side of the government fish with the kangaroo pouch on his belly for collecting taxes in. He’s the real thief, everybody’s enemy. Then there’s the union shark – that one used to be a stickleback, but he grew while no-one was looking. It’s not safe for any of us, my dear.’
‘Then we’d best stop out of the water, eh?’ His grip on her hand had tightened and she made some small effort to pull away, but he held on fast. ‘Master Charles?’
‘Yes?’
‘Why are you holding my hand?’ Her eyes were wide – not with fear, but with amazement.
‘Because . . . because I like you. I like you very much. The main thing is for you to carry on being yourself, be sure of who you are and what you want.’ He paused. ‘Are you sure, Molly?’
‘What about?’
‘Well – what you want from life, where you’re going . . .’
‘Back to Briars Hall, I’d say.’
He knew then what it was about her that he loved. Was it love? Whatever, the thing that drew him was the way she skipped from child to woman in a matter of seconds. She knew nothing, yet she knew everything, was possessed of an innocent awareness – if such a contradiction in terms could be possible.
‘I think we’d best get back, sir.’
Sighing, he let her go and rose stiffly to his feet. She grinned at him. ‘There’s only one way down . . . Charlie.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Well, you said I’d to call you your proper name and this once, I will. ’Cos up here, we’re all the same with everything being so . . . so big. But there’s rules, see? You can’t walk. It’s not allowed to walk. If you walk down, then you’re a chicken.’
‘Oh.’
‘You wouldn’t want to be a chicken, would you? Better a bloody great fish than a chicken, eh?’
‘If you say so.’
With no outward sign of embarrassment, she bent to tuck her skirt into her knickers as if she were preparing for a paddle in the sea. He caught a glimpse of thigh above a gartered stocking, his heart skipping a beat at such arrant provocation. Or was it?
She raised her chin and stared challengingly into his face. ‘You see, you’re on our patch now. This is all ours, not yours.’ She waved a hand across the view. ‘Top of the Pike, you do as we do. That there Lord Whatsisname . . .’
‘Leverhulme . . .’
‘Aye, him and all – he left this place for us, for the workers. So now you have to do what I say, same as I’m forced to do at the big house. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘Your clothes’ll get spoiled. Mine are all right – they’ll go in the tub.’
‘Fair enough.’
She looked down the steep slope. ‘Now, there’s a right way and a wrong way of tackling this. Don’t go head first – Jimmy Pickles from our school did that and finished up in hospital with a funny brain. Mind you, he were as daft as a bucket of frogs before we ever kicked off. You go sideways. Keep your head up when you’re face down and your head down when you’re face up.’
‘Pardon?’
She put a hand to her forehead and whistled under her breath. ‘Do you understand English or what? Would you sooner I talked Yiddish or rubbish? Listen. Watch my lips while I’m speaking. Keep your face out of the dog muck. Is that clear enough for you?’
‘Yes.’ A laugh was threatening in his chest, rumbling deep inside him in a place where he hadn’t felt joy for months. ‘Are you suggesting that I roll down this hill, Molly Dobson?’
‘You can bloody fly down if you want. The rule is that you don’t walk. If you can find any other way of getting to the bottom, then do it and welcome.’
He suddenly fell flat on the grass, arms folded across his chest.
‘Hmm,’ she muttered. ‘I reckon you’ll make a fair enough corpse once you set your mind to it. Ready?’
‘Ready as I’ll ever be. If I don’t co
me out in one piece, make sure Harold looks after my car.’
She settled herself away from him, on a part of the slope with which she was familiar, a quicker route to the bottom. ‘Any more last requests, then?’
‘No irises at the funeral. Evil-looking flowers, they are.’
‘Right. On your mark . . . get set . . . go!’
He tumbled into the abyss, bumped and jostled on uneven soil, his eyes assaulted by flashes of sky each time he turned. But he could understand why they did this thing every Easter, because it was exhilarating, joyous, unbounded by propriety, completely unfettered and free. When he reached the bottom, she was waiting for him, skirt correctly arranged, hair still pinned, not a mark on her. He struggled to his feet and looked down at the ruined suit. ‘Why are you so clean?’ he asked, amazed by the difference in their conditions.
‘Oh. I forgot.’
‘Forgot what?’
‘To tell you that some places are better than others. And I know the good places. Sorry.’
‘You’re not sorry at all! This was deliberate, just to put me in my place. Molly Dobson—’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Back to sir, is it?’
‘Back to earth, sir.’
‘This amounts . . .’ He brushed at his muddy jacket. ‘This amounts to an assault on my person.’
‘I never touched you! Nobody forced you to come rolling down the blinking hill! What’s a man of your age doing rolling down the Pike, eh? Ooh . . .’ She bent double with laughter. ‘If they could see you now—’
‘Who?’
‘Your mam. Your dad. The workers . . . oh God, I’ll never walk again. Your face is all green. Is it ’cos you’re sick or is it grass? And you’ve dirt in your hair. Oh, come here. I don’t know. Whatever shall we do with you at all?’ She pulled the grass and soil from his hair, then walked around him in a large circle as she examined his clothes. ‘You’ll have to say you’ve had an accident.’
‘With what? A tractor or a herd of cows?’
‘You could always—’ She doubled over again.
‘I could always what?’
‘Say you’ve . . . got greenmould . . . oh, I’ll never look you in the face again. Can you imagine it? Me serving your dinner and asking “any more greens?” Ooh, no!’
‘Molly!’
‘What? For God’s sake, take me back before I go hysterical. You look like . . . like you’ve crawled out of that . . . underwater world. A big fish! Covered in seaweed!’
‘Molly! Behave yourself or things will get really out of hand.’
She attempted sobriety, but failed immediately, sinking to the ground as she groaned, ‘Out of hand? They’ve got fins, not hands. And I’m a giddy kipper aren’t I? So that makes two of us . . .’
He pulled her roughly to her feet and into his arms. She was easy, so easy! Her mouth opened the second his lips touched hers and there was no rigidity in her tiny body. ‘Molly, Molly,’ he murmured as he released her. She stood round-eyed and open-mouthed, hands still resting on his shoulders. ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’ she asked at last.
‘Loving you. Celebrating. Oh, I don’t know—’
‘Well, you’d best find out, hadn’t you? And when you have found out, happen you’ll send me a telegram so’s I can be in on the secret too. Put me down. I’m not going to fight you, ’cos I know it’d be no use, might as well set a mouse to flay a cat.’ She drew away from him. ‘Take me back. Take me back now, this minute, otherwise I start walking.’
‘Molly! I love you!’
She turned and glanced sideways towards the village of Rivington. ‘We’ve had a lovely day, Master Charles. A stolen day, it was, a day that should never have happened. You can’t love me. You’ve a wife at home, a kiddy coming—’
‘That’s . . . different,’ he said lamely.
‘Is it?’ She faced him squarely, hands on hips, head raised so that she could meet his eyes. ‘So I’m for a cottage, am I? Like your old dad’s bits and pieces, tidied away where I can do no harm? Well, you can shove that, Mister.’
He groaned his frustration. ‘Look, you silly little girl. Perhaps I married the wrong one, perhaps it should have been you or someone like you. But I didn’t know that then. Must I suffer all my life like my father did?’
‘That, sir, is nowt to do with me!’ She turned and ran, fleeing past the car and down the lane before he could react. Following an instinct that was purely animal, she threw herself into the ditch, covering her body as best she could with the long grasses and weeds.
She heard him, first shouting and running, then starting up the car. Back and forth he drove, up and down the lane until dusk began its descent. From time to time he left the vehicle and walked along the roadside calling her name. And still she remained in her hide. When at last he seemed to have abandoned the search, she began the endless walk back. It was too late now to worry about what Cook might say and do. And anyway, she had other and more pressing concerns, hadn’t she?
The last lap was the worst, those final few hundred yards along Stitch-mi-Lane, the lights of Briars Hall appearing now and then in gaps between trees. With eight or nine miles under her belt, she was exhausted to the point of collapse, yet still her mind worked on and on, going over the day in a series of pictures that flashed across her weary brain. She shouldn’t have gone. He shouldn’t have asked her to go, shouldn’t have kissed her like that. And most of all, she should not have enjoyed that urgent embrace. Cool air fanned cheeks ablaze with embarrassment as she recalled how she had clung to him, the sweetness, the pleasure, the promise of further joys beyond her comprehension. She was, she admitted to herself as she furtively opened the rear door, too young for all this.
Cook turned from the table, arms akimbo, sturdy legs set well astride as she surveyed the returning prodigal. ‘Well?’
Molly glanced quickly at the clock. A quarter to ten – not too bad, not as bad as she’d imagined while stranded on endless lengths of unlit road. ‘I missed the tram.’
‘Missed the bloody tram? It looks as if the tram never missed you, though. Or have you been set about by a gang of thieves and murderers?’
Molly looked down at her filthy ditch-stained dress. ‘I fell over a stone in the lane.’
‘Oh yes?’ Cook’s practised eye swept over the girl’s dishevelled clothing. ‘Aye, I reckon you could fall over your own shadow, you could. You’d best start framing yourself or you’ll be breaking your neck afore long. But that’s not new dirt, Molly Dobson. That there muck is hours old and you’ll never get the grass stains out of the frock. I reckon the coat’s seen better days and all. Been messing about with some daft lad, have you?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
Cissie Mathieson tapped the toe of her shoe on the stone floor. ‘Happen you’d best get a bath and straight to bed, lady. There’s cocoa in the pan if you want some.’
‘No, ta.’ Molly ran gratefully from the room.
Cissie sat up well into the night pondering. It didn’t take much to put two and two together, did it? Mind, there was nowt worth proving, ’cos her job would likely be on the line if she opened her gob. But Sid Potter had been down earlier with Master Charles’ suit, trying to sponge the grass marks out of it. Missed the tram? Christ, she’d be missing more than the flaming tram if Ma Maguire got wind of this capering on. What the hell was the girl up to? She seemed bright enough, sharp and quick to learn – quite the full shilling, in fact. Had her head been turned by a married man and a master into the blinking bargain? Oh, it didn’t bear thinking of! And she wouldn’t think of it, that she certainly wouldn’t! Years of experience had taught Cissie Mathieson when to switch off, so she simply stopped thinking and went to her bed. She had heard nothing, seen nothing and would say nothing.
In her attic room, Molly lay staring at the ceiling, her body still glowing after a hot bath. She turned towards the window, a groan escaping from her lips. There was nothing else for it, she would have to leave the H
all, work somewhere else. Because she couldn’t stop him, wouldn’t stop him. Why, though? She’d been brought up proper, first by her mam and then by Ma, always told to keep herself to herself, forever instructed – especially by Ma of late – to avoid contact with men. But this fevered flesh was not caused just by the hot bath. Oh no. Whatever it was that went on between men and women had nearly happened to her. And she’d wanted it to happen, still did. Where was her loyalty to Ma, to Mrs Amelia, to herself? She stuffed a corner of the pillow into her mouth as she wept, choking back the noise of her grief. She would miss him, she really would. He’d been a good friend, kind and gentle. Still weeping, she fell asleep only for the torment to continue, because now she dreamed of him, felt his strong hands on her body.
By the time it stopped being a dream, it was already too late for Molly. When he roused her to partial wakefulness, she became instantly malleable and responsive, clinging to him, returning his kisses with an ardour that surprised and delighted him. He was tender, excruciatingly slow and careful, expertly leading her along a pleasurable path from which she had neither the strength nor the will to turn. She wept when he finally hurt her, but he smothered her tears with grateful kisses and words of comfort. Then it was over. The bed was narrow and hard and she found herself wedged between him and the low window, her body aching with tiredness and discomfort, yet still silently screaming for some kind of completion. Was that it, then?
He stood at the side of the bed, just a shape outlined against a cream-painted wall. Who was he? What had they done together and why did it hurt so much? Oh, this wasn’t just a physical injury; this went a long way past the merely physical, because although she had co-operated fully, the thing that had happened would be with her for always. He could walk away and forget it, but it was in her, incorporated now, not mendable, not forgettable.
‘Are you all right?’ he whispered.
‘No.’
‘Can I . . . can I help?’
She lay back against her tear-soaked pillow. ‘I reckon you’re the last one who could help me, Charlie. Go away.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Aye, I dare say you are. And so am I.’
With Love From Ma Maguire Page 16