His face continued to hold the blank look which he’d adopted since his return to the farm after visiting the house in Wayman Street on the afternoon after Joe had died two days before. He had hardly opened his mouth since then either, except to give the necessary orders to the men concerning their work. With Daniel still laid low and recovering from the beating he’d sustained, Jake was rising long before it was light and going to bed after midnight, but nothing Seamus or Hannah said could persuade him to rest more or eat properly.
‘Do you understand what I’ve just said, Jake?’ Dr Stefford stared at the man in front of him who seemed to have aged ten years since Joe’s death. ‘He was ill, very ill, but no one knew it. He could have gone anytime.’
‘Or he could have lived on as before.’ And as the doctor went to speak, Jake said, ‘Don’t get me wrong, doctor, I know what you’re trying to say and I’m grateful. But the fact remains he worked down the mine for years and he was all right.’
‘I understand from your mother that Joe was involved in a fracas with the police during one of the marches and had some fingers broken. All that kind of thing would not have helped. You have to get it into your head, Jake, that anything, anything could have finished him off.’
‘Dr Stefford’s right, Jake.’ Hannah had been kneading dough at the cooking table in a corner of the room while the two men talked. Now she turned, her voice soft as she said, ‘You’ve taken this solely on your shoulders and it’s not right. You’re tearing yourself apart.’
He didn’t argue with her. There was silence in the kitchen for a moment and then, his voice low, he said, ‘You have to be alive to tear yourself apart.’
She stared straight into the face that she no longer thought of as damaged but simply attractive and answered quietly, ‘Joe wouldn’t have wanted this, for you to feel like this. I know for a fact that the last months were the happiest of his life because he told me so. Not once but many times. He felt reborn, that’s what he used to say. Like a bird let out of its cage and free to fly, to be what it had been born for. And I know something else too. If Joe had had to choose between the life he had before he came here and going on another five, ten, even twenty years, or these last months, he’d have taken his time at the farm and thanked you for it.’
This time the silence stretched further. It was Dr Stefford who broke it. He and Jake were sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of Hannah’s homemade lemonade in front of them and he took a sip before saying, ‘Remember that blackbird you and Seamus had in here some three or four years back?’ Turning to Hannah, he said, ‘A hawk had tried to take it, damaged its wing, and Jake found it out on the bridle path. It would have been easy to hit it over the head but Jake brought it in and they put it in an old cage Seamus’s wife had used for her budgerigars. Took a while, but the wing healed and in the meantime that old blackbird grew fat on a diet of worms and what have you. I remember it used to sing like a canary.You remember that, Jake? And then I came one time and it had gone. You recall what you said to me on that occasion, Jake?’
Jake stared at the elderly doctor.
‘I’ll remind you,’ said Dr Stefford. ‘I asked where it was and you said you’d let it go because it had recovered. But it was happy in that cage being fed, said I. Safe too. And you said—’
‘You wouldn’t have said it was happy if you had seen the difference when it flew free,’ Jake put in quietly.
‘Right.’ Dr Stefford looked at him. ‘Like the lass said, that blackbird was doing what it had been born to do and an existence in a cage, even one gilded with plenty of food and warmth, was no comparison. I asked you what you’d do if the hawk took it again and you said one day’s freedom with the sun on its wings being a blackbird again was worth years as a caged bird.’
‘That was a bird.’
‘Aye, it was, and it chose its own destiny same as Joe did. He was no bairn, Jake.’
The story had touched Hannah to the point where her neck muscles were tight and her throat so blocked she couldn’t speak. Swallowing deeply, she managed to murmur, ‘You enabled him to fly, Jake. Don’t you see? For the first time in his life Joe was truly happy. But that apart, his death was not your fault. It wasn’t even solely the poacher’s fault. And if he hadn’t gone like that, if he’d got ill and lingered, he would have hated it.’
‘Don’t tell me that him going so suddenly was the best thing that could have happened,’ Jake said roughly.
She found herself flushing at his tone but her voice was verging on sharpness when she said, ‘Why? Why shouldn’t I when it’s what I believe? You’re entitled to your opinion, Jake Fletcher, but don’t forget other people are entitled to theirs too. And everyone would agree with me and not you, I might add.’
She watched him turn his head and rub his hand tightly across his mouth. ‘Not everyone.’
‘You mean Mr Wood and Adam?’
He wet his lips. ‘Aye.’
‘They are wrong. And they’ve never liked you.’
‘Maybe, but they did love Joe.’
‘We all loved Joe. Joe was one of those people.’ She was speaking softly again now, her voice scarcely above a whisper. Turning back to the dough, she began to pummel it.
It was a full minute later before the silence was broken by Dr Stefford. He stood to his feet, saying, ‘I’ll take a look at Seamus while I’m here and then I’ll be off.’
Jake stood up too. ‘Thanks for coming to let me know the results of the post-mortem, doctor. I appreciate it.’
‘No trouble.’
Hannah didn’t turn from her kneading as Dr Stefford left the kitchen. There was silence for a moment or two and then she heard the kitchen door click to. It was only then she allowed her shoulders to sag.
It was gone midnight and she was still awake. For the last hour she’d lain on top of the bed looking out of the window which she had opened wide before retiring.
The day had been hot and cloudless and the night was so warm it felt stifling inside. A full moon had risen high in the sky, casting its benign light over the world below. The trees and barns were clearly outlined like Indian-ink silhouettes against a background of star-speckled, midnight blue and not a breath of wind stirred the air. Every so often the melancholy hoot of a barn owl or the low moo of cattle disturbed the silence but other than that there was no sound to be heard.
She had gone over the earlier conversation with Jake and Dr Stefford a hundred times in her mind since coming to her room and cried a little. Now her skin felt tight and irritated. She swung her legs to the floor and padded over to the dressing table, clothed only in her lawn nightdress, and poured a small amount of water from the jug into its matching bowl. After washing her face she felt cooler and she walked across to the window, knelt down and stared up into the sky.
All those stars in such a vast endless expanse . . . Tears pricked at the back of her eyes again. And down here such heartache and misery. Every night when she’d said her prayers she had thanked God for letting Joe come to the farm and now it felt as if He had thrown it back in her face. She had only gone to Mass a few times since coming here, with the church being so far to walk; if she’d gone every week, would God have saved Joe?
Then she shook her head, suddenly angry with herself. She was being daft now, stupid. It was because she was all hot and bothered and tired.
Jumping to her feet, she decided she couldn’t stay in the house a minute longer. She’d go and sit in the garden for a while, it would be cooler there and peaceful. She needed peace of mind tonight.
She pulled on her old faded dressing gown and thrust her feet into her everyday boots. All the world was asleep, no one would know and if she sat for an hour or so in the fresh air she would be able to sleep. Rather than lighting the oil lamp she made her way downstairs more by touch than sight, and once she had stepped outside, the moon lit the farm as though it was late twilight. Buttons and Polly had followed her as she had passed through the kitchen. She rather thought they looked on her a
s an escort who would protect them from the farm cats, most of whom were almost feral and inclined to pick on the two, given half a chance.
She made no sound as she walked to the garden. It would be harvest time soon, then would come the chill of autumn and before they knew it winter would be on them again. She had been here a whole year and in spite of what had happened with Adam, she would have said she had been happy until the last two days. Now she wondered if the farm would ever be the same again.
No, not the farm, she admitted to herself in the next breath. Jake. Would Jake ever be the same again? It was strange, and she didn’t quite know how it had come about, but his grief and agony of mind were affecting her deeply. Perhaps it was because he and Seamus were such a huge part of her life. The three of them were like a small family, or that’s what it felt like. And living in such close proximity, what affected one was bound to concern the others, and this was such an awful, terrible thing.
The rich perfume of roses wafted to her even before she stepped into the garden. She had pruned them hard in the spring and they had rewarded her scratched and torn hands with a magnificent display come the summer. Along with gilliflowers of all varieties, giant sunflowers that always turned their broad smiling faces to the sun and a host of other flowers, Hannah had discovered Bess’s little herb garden when she had started to tackle the overgrown tangle. Mint, thyme, rosemary and other plants scented the air, and she had arranged for Seamus’s bench to be placed close to the herb bed. Hannah made her way towards this now, pausing to drink in the heavy perfume from a cluster of old white damask roses which wound round a trellis arch.
Immediately she sat down, the two cats jumped up alongside her. She didn’t push them away, glad of the company. ‘You’re a fussy pair,’ she said, scratching their furry heads.
‘Hannah?’
As one of the shadows at the far end of the garden moved, she felt her heart jump into her mouth. Her hand at her throat, she stammered, ‘J-Jake?’
‘What are you doing down here this time of night?’ As he made his way towards her, the moonlight caught the white of his shirt, turning him into a moving monochrome of black and white. ‘Are you feeling unwell?’
She found she couldn’t answer him. She wanted to, she knew she had to, but the element she had first found disturbing about him was back tenfold. His shirt was open almost to the waist, showing thick black body hair on his chest, and the thin cotton accentuated the broadness of his shoulders. The shyness she would have sworn had gone for ever was tying her tongue and as he reached her, something akin to a shiver flickered down her spine.
‘Hannah? Are you unwell?’ he said again.
‘N-no.’ She breathed in deeply through her nose. ‘No, just hot. It’s so warm. And . . . and I was thinking of Joe.’
He nodded but didn’t speak, dislodging Polly with a push of his hand before sitting down beside her. The sense of loneliness she had recognised in him months before - probably because it was something she identified in herself too - clothed him like a garment tonight. She searched her mind for something to say but before she could come up with anything, he said, ‘I should have thanked you for what you said earlier, when Dr Stefford was here. It’s strange because my mother said much the same thing the day I went to the house. Of course Adam and Wilbur had a different point of view.’
‘I’m sorry.’ The deliberate casualness in his tone told its own story. She had long since come to understand that Jake recoiled from showing his feelings.
He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does matter.’They were both staring ahead, not at each other, and this made it easier to say, ‘Adam is more like his father than I had ever imagined.Whatever they said, it would be untrue.’
He gave a harsh laugh. ‘I don’t think it’s a matter of truth in this particular instance, Hannah. Merely a different way of looking at what happened.They hold me responsible for Joe’s death but I expected that. And I don’t blame them. I can see why they would feel like that.’
‘Joe’s death was not your fault, Jake.’
He did not answer immediately. The warmth and scents of the garden enveloped them and somewhere in the distance the owl hooted again before he said quietly, ‘I’m trying to bring reason to bear, Hannah. Believe me.’
‘You must.’ In her desire to get through to him she turned to face his profile and put her hand on his forearm. Hard muscles clenched beneath her fingers but he did not look at her. ‘It’s right to grieve for Joe but not to hold yourself responsible for what happened. Such things can put iron in your soul if you let them.’
He glanced at her, a faint smile twisting his mouth. ‘That is very profound for one so young.’
‘Clara said it actually.’
‘Ah, that would explain it. Clara’s full of such gems.’
‘But she’s right.’As she dropped her hand to her side, she said again, ‘She is right, Jake.’
‘Clara often is.’ He sighed, stretching his long legs out in front of him before bending his knees again. Almost to himself, he said, ‘There’s the funeral to come yet.’
‘You’ll go, won’t you?’ She knew Wilbur would try to prevent it if he could, just as he had stopped Jake attending the post-mortem.
‘Oh aye, I’ll go. And you?’
She nodded.
‘Good.’
Just one word but it warmed her.
They continued to sit quietly in the shadowed stillness and when Polly gingerly jumped onto Jake’s lap he did not push her down.
Chapter 17
Rose stood gazing into the narrow speckled mirror attached to the back of the wardrobe door. She adjusted the collar of her black coat, bought hastily the day before from one of the second-hand stalls at the Old Market in the East End. The coat she’d worn for years and years was a dark bottle green but still not funereal enough. She knew eyebrows would have been raised if she had worn that. Her felt hat was a dark charcoal colour so that had been near enough.
She was ready and she knew the undertakers would be here any minute in their black carriage but still she did not move. She wasn’t crying, she felt there were no more tears left. This day was the culmination of years of niggling worry about her bairn, her Joe, and now he was dead. She had thought he had escaped the presentiment which had been with her for so long when Jake had taken him on at the farm but she should have known you can’t cheat fate. And now the waiting was over.The pain inside her caused her to bend over slightly although it was not a physical thing. No more would she see his smiling face, and he had been a smiler, had Joe. Especially the few times she had seen him since he’d gone to the farm. Different lad he’d looked. And so she had hoped . . .
She raised her head, meeting the eyes of the woman in the mirror. Foolish to hope. Her lips pushed together. Foolish to expect anything good. For a while she’d thought things were looking up - Joe free from the pit but still bringing in more than Adam who had been set on at the face again the last weeks, thank the Almighty. Out of habit she crossed herself. She had been able to clear something from the rent arrears and there had even been talk of the new deputy taking on Wilbur after Adam had gone cap in hand to the man, promising that his father would toe the line. Not that Wilbur knew Adam had put it quite like that.
Wilbur. Rose turned her head towards the kitchen, where her husband sat in his Sunday suit with his mouth clamped shut and his face as black as thunder. And not because of Joe, oh no, not really, but because she had insisted Jake come to the house and follow the coffin with the rest of them rather than meeting them at the church as Wilbur had wanted.
She shut her eyes tightly. Why was it Joe’s death had taken the lid off the feeling she’d been fighting to subdue for a long time? And now the lid was off she couldn’t pretend any more. She didn’t like her husband, she hadn’t liked him for years. He was an ignorant man, narrow in his thinking and capable of great vindictiveness. He had all but hounded Jake out of the house when he was a lad and was still doing th
e same today. And yet when she had produced the money for the undertakers he hadn’t asked where it had come from. Nor would he. He was a hypocrite and she was done making excuses for him in her mind.
‘Mam?’ After knocking on the door, Naomi entered her parents’ bedroom, her eyes pink-rimmed and her nose red. Her voice low, she said, ‘They’ll be here in a minute, Mam.’
Rose nodded, her stomach turning over. Her bairn in a wooden box. It wasn’t right for a parent to outlive their child. For a moment the enormity of what was in front of her in the next hour or two overwhelmed her. Her hand reaching out to Naomi, she murmured, ‘Stay - stay close to me today, lass. I don’t feel too good.’ She didn’t want Wilbur or any of the lads, not even Jake, much as she loved her firstborn. Today it was her daughter she needed near. Their relationship was such that they understood each other without the need for words.
By way of answer, Naomi put her arms about her mother, holding her tightly. They stood like this for some moments until the horse and carriage carrying the coffin arrived.
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