The Maltese Angel

by Catherine Cookson

  From this particular stretch, the trains ran every day to Rouen. If they left in the evening they didn’t arrive there till about five the next morning. But what was worse, they had to pass several stations this side of Amiens and see hundreds of stretcher cases lying on the ground and hundreds on hundreds of walking wounded waiting patiently to be loaded into some vehicle or other.

  When it was rumoured that the Fifth Army had been routed, spirits could not have been lower, and everyone waited for the end, telling themselves that whatever the outcome it couldn’t be worse than this.

  The end didn’t come quickly. Nor, to David’s surprise, did Gerald’s final collapse; for not only through April and May did he continue to be very voluble, but at every available moment he could be seen scribbling in his notebooks.

  It was on the 2nd of June that Gerald sent a batch of handwritten material to the War Office in London, and with its despatch his mind closed down on him. That night he lay in his bunk and a voice from a great distance told him not to get up again, and of a sudden, he was enveloped in a great peaceful silence.

  So Gerald Bede Ramsmore, the conscientious objector, was called up before not a military court but a medical one, after which he found himself in hospital, where he lay quite content as long as no-one tried to get him back on to his feet, for then he became aggressive.

  He arrived in England on a stretcher and heavily sedated. He was taken straight to hospital. And he knew nothing about the Allies preparing to advance again and doing so in August, and nothing whatever about the armistice on the 11th of November.

  PART TWO

  One

  ‘Where are the men?’

  ‘I’ve let them go. Rob will be back later to give me a hand. There’s a Victory Tea in the Hollow.’

  ‘It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that.’

  ‘You’re taking too much on yourself.’

  They were both standing in the doorway of what had been the old barn. And now Carl stepped into the open as if putting distance between himself and this man. And after taking in a deep breath, he said, ‘Yes, perhaps I am, but that wouldn’t be necessary if you hadn’t left the whole of this place on my shoulders for years now. When, may I ask, did you last turn a hand in this yard? You walk through it only when the fit takes you.’

  Carl watched Ward’s colour deepen into an almost purple hue, and his voice was a growl as he said, ‘You forget who you are talking to.’

  ‘No, I don’t forget who I am talking to. I only know that ten years ago I wouldn’t have dared to address you in this way. But now, when you don’t give a damn for man or beast, I consider it my right to speak my mind. And I’ve been wanting to do it for a long time, and there’s no time like the present. I’ve been working for you for over thirty years and not only have I kept this farm going, I’ve turned it into a profitable business. Oh, yes,’—he made a wide gesture with his hand as if throwing something off, as he said, ‘There is the carrot of the half-share. Well, I don’t give a damn for that, let me tell you, because I could leave here tomorrow and start up on my own, and the men would come with me.’

  ‘Huh! Start up on your own? Don’t make me laugh. What would you pay your men with? Eh?…My men…with rabbit skins?’

  A number of seconds passed before Carl, his voice low but his words steely, said, ‘The agreement was that I had a part of the profits over a certain amount. Yes; on top of this I had my wage and Patsy had hers, and we’ve saved.’

  ‘Huh! You’ve saved. I know what you’ve got over the profits and your wages. And what would that amount to? You couldn’t run a house and allotment and one man on it, never mind livestock.’

  Carl’s jaws were tight. He knew that this was true. However, it would be a start, and he knew he could rely on Mike and McNabb; they would go along with him, small wage or no. Then a thought struck him. He did not know from whence it came, unless it was perhaps from Janie’s talk of the prospects that lay in the Hall acres when the young master was well enough to come home. And now he heard himself say, ‘I certainly wouldn’t have to start at the bottom for land. There’s an offer open to me from the Hall. There’s land there and buildings that would house stock; all it needs is labour. And as I warned you, the men would be with me. So what d’you think of that?’

  What Ward thought of it had silenced his tongue for a moment. He knew only too well what would happen to this farm if Carl left. But he couldn’t bear to be downed in this manner. So he answered, ‘Talk. That woman hasn’t enough money to hire a couple of servants, never mind stock a farm. And this is the gratitude I get. You forget what I took you from. You owe everything you are to me.’

  ‘I owe nothing that I am to you, sir, for from that boy that you took in, I worked for my keep, and more. But you owe me a lot, for you crippled my wife. Yes. Yes, you did.’

  ‘I did no such thing. It was the other one I was thrusting away. I did not cripple your wife, and don’t you dare say that again.’

  ‘I’ll say it, not only again, but with my dying breath.’ And now he leant forward and growled into Ward’s face, ‘You crippled my wife. You could have murdered her, and the youngster, but in a different way from that you did your daughter. Oh, you can look like that, but I know what I know.’

  Ward now stepped back into the doorway as he muttered, ‘No! You’re out of your mind. You’re mad. You could be brought up for even suggesting such a thing. Do you know that?’

  ‘I’d be quite happy if you did bring me up. I saw you taking the poison from the tins. You made one mistake, though: you left the milk glass on the wash-hand stand and there was sediment in it. And I’m not the only one who knows.’

  After saying this he realised he might be incriminating the doctor and so he added hastily, ‘I took it to a chemist and had it analysed.’ And then his imagination took him further when he added, ‘He put his findings in writing.’

  Carl now watched Ward put his hand out as if to support himself on the stanchion of the door, but felt no pity for the man, for now he was speaking his mind. ‘You became obsessed with your daughter, as you had been with your wife,’ he went on. ‘You could do nothing wrong. Your love for them became a mania. But for the child that your daughter gave birth to, and no matter who the father was she was the daughter of your child, and you are her grandfather, what have you done for her? I’ll say what I’ve thought for years. It’s a damn good job she didn’t inherit any trait of either your wife or your daughter, else her mind would have been turned years ago under your treatment. But what she has inherited, God knows where from, has stood her in good stead and given her the strength and the power to stand up to you, because she doesn’t fear you. As she herself said, she only hates you. And you’re the one to know what hate can do. You had your first lesson from the village. But that first wave did nothing to what they felt for you after you ruined three families, one of them for the second time.’

  He stepped back quickly as he thought Ward was about to strike him. But when the hand left the stanchion of the door and was lifted forward like a blind man groping his way, he did feel a sudden pang of mixed guilt and sympathy.

  He stood where he was and watched the older man walk across the yard and round to the front of the house. He never entered these days by the kitchen door, not since Patsy took to crutches.

  He, too, now felt in need of the physical support of the barn wall, and he stood there for a full minute, his head back against the overlapping slats, his eyes tightly closed. And then he actually jumped as a voice to his side said quietly, ‘Carl.’

  ‘Oh! Miss Jessie. You startled me.’

  ‘Carl, is…is it true? I heard…I heard it all. I was just at the corner coming round.’ She could have added, ‘as clearly as I heard you and Patsy through the slats of what was the old barn years ago.’ But when he bowed his head and made no answer, she muttered, ‘Oh dear Lord! What next? This house is indeed doomed. But…but Carl’—she clutched his arm—‘a
bout you leaving and going to Lady Lydia’s. Oh, please! Please, don’t do that. Never leave…I mean, I just couldn’t bear it.’ Her voice was breaking now and she didn’t say why she really couldn’t bear it, but she added, ‘To be left here with him alone. No! No! I would have no-one. Janie, I have lost her. I know I’ve lost her already. I lost her years ago, first to…to that man in the Hall, and now to his mother. And if you went…’

  ‘There, there. There, there.’ He patted her hand where it still lay on his arm and as he looked into her tear-stained face he felt an ache in his heart for her, for he well knew of her feelings and her awareness of the hopelessness of them. And so by way of comfort he said, ‘I’ll…I’ll not go as…as long as I can stick it out. And anyway’—he forced himself to smile—‘where would I find anyone to help Patsy as you have. You’ve been wonderful with her and she appreciates it. As for me, I’ll never be able to thank you enough.’

  ‘Thank me enough?’ She turned away now from him, her lips rubbing one over the other. ‘You to thank me when, as you said, Patsy’s accident was due entirely to Father?’ Turning slowly about and facing him again, she asked, ‘Has this ever been a happy house, Carl? Can you remember?’

  He seemed to consider for a moment, then said, ‘It was a long time ago, shortly after your mother came, before things began to happen from the village. But when she died…well, I think all happiness went with her, at least for him. And yet there were times in your early childhood when you and Angela romped and played with him.’

  ‘I…I can never remember romping or playing with him. Angela used to, but not me. All I can remember of my childhood is feeling lost. Needing someone, wanting someone to love me.’ She brought her eyes fully onto his now, and in a very low voice, she ended, ‘But you know all about that, don’t you?’

  She turned away and walked briskly along by the barn and retraced her steps to the cottage, and there, to her surprise, she found Janie. And she expressed her surprise by saying, ‘Well! That was a short visit.’

  Janie was bending down warming her hands at the fire when she said, ‘Lady Lydia was away. She won’t be back until tomorrow. She’s gone to see Mr Gerald.’

  ‘I thought she only went once a month, and she visited him last week, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, she did.’ She straightened up now and turned and looked directly at Jessie as she said, ‘Perhaps they’ve sent for her to bring him home. Perhaps he’s well enough.’ She stopped herself from adding, ‘And you wouldn’t like that, would you, Auntie Jessie?’ Why, she was always asking herself, did her Auntie Jessie not like Mr Gerald? She knew that she had been disturbed when she heard that he was being brought back from France. She also knew that she had been relieved when she found out he was to be kept in a hospital, not for wounded men, but for those that were sick in the head. She herself could never imagine Mr Gerald going sick in the head. To her, he had always appeared so sensible and wise.

  Jessie said now, ‘I’ll have to go over shortly and help Patsy with the meal; Mrs McNabb has gone to the Victory Tea in the Hollow.’ Then she added in a querulous tone, ‘They’ve all gone mad with their Victory Tea. I’ll leave your meal out for you.’

  ‘I can see to it myself, Auntie Jessie. You know I can.’

  ‘Very well, very well, see to it yourself.’ She half turned away, then paused a moment before she said, ‘By the way, what’s this talk about Lady Lydia turning the place into a farm?’

  As this was absolute news to Janie, she just stared at Jessie, which only made her aunt snap, ‘All right! All right! If you’ve been told not to say anything. But don’t tell me you don’t know anything about it, when Carl says he’s been approached. I think it’s very bad of her ladyship, anyway, to try to take another person’s men…staff. And I would tell her that if I met up with her.’ And on this she flounced round and went into the kitchen.

  Lady Lydia starting a farm, and asking Carl to go and man it? Lady Lydia hasn’t got any money. They had talked about it only yesterday. She herself had suggested how good it would be if they could engage two or three men to get the land back into shape for when Mr Gerald came home, and what had Lady Lydia said? Her income was just enough to keep the house going, pay its rates and Nancy. What money she had received from the military for housing them she had put away for Mr Gerald, because he had been given no actual pay, no money for the work he had done during the war years, which had struck her as being very odd, because even the wounded men in the Hollow got some kind of a pension. And in a way Mr Gerald had been wounded. She must get to the bottom of this. She must see Carl.

  She waited until she knew that Jessie would have reached the house, then she bundled herself into her coat and woolly hat and went out.

  She found Carl in the cowshed; and now, leaning towards him where he was lifting a pail of milk away from a cow, she whispered, ‘Can I speak to you?’

  Laughing at her, he whispered back, ‘Any time, any time. But it’ll cost you.’ Then straightening up, he said, ‘Come on into the dairy. What is it?’

  She didn’t answer him until he had finished pouring the milk into the cooler, and then she said, ‘Auntie Jessie has just said something very odd to me. It is that you have been approached by Lady Lydia to start a farm.’

  She watched him now take his broad hat and pull it slowly down over his face; and then he said, ‘Oh dear me!’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘No, my dear, it isn’t true’—he was bending down to her and whispering—‘you see, I got so mad with your…grandfather’—he always hesitated when naming the man’s relationship to her—‘that I threatened him I would walk out. And when he pooh-poohed the idea that I could ever make a living outside this place, I thought of you and your chatter about the smallholding and what could be done there when Mr Gerald came back…that was before he…well, went into hospital. And it just came out. I said I had been approached. And you know something?’ He wagged his finger at her. ‘They’ve got enough land there and facilities to start a little farm of their own. I’ve thought that time and time again. A few men and a bit of money behind them and I wouldn’t mind doing it.’

  ‘It’s a pity Lady Lydia hasn’t got that kind of money, for then you could start. But…but then what would become of this place? Everyone knows it’s really your farm.’

  ‘Oh, no, no. I’ve kept it going. I give myself that much credit. But it isn’t my farm. And as you know, I’m supposed to have a half-share in it when he goes. But I’d give that up tomorrow if…if I could work, if we could all work under happier conditions. You know what I mean?’

  She stared at him for a moment before she nodded her head, saying, ‘Yes, Carl. Yes, I know what you mean.’

  He shook his head and then said softly, ‘Of course, of course. I know, lass. Yes, I know. Your years here have been tough going too. You know, when I look at you I can’t believe you’re still only fourteen. You’ve got a head on your shoulders that many a one hasn’t at twenty. It isn’t fair.’ He put his hand on her cheek now, then patted it as he added, ‘And it isn’t fair either, no, it isn’t, that you’ve had no childhood, no girlhood.’

  ‘I don’t mind not having any childhood. As for girlhood, I don’t feel like a girl, Carl.’ She turned her head away now as she said, ‘I passed some girls on the road a while back. They were chatting and talking and laughing before they came up to me. Apparently they had left school; they looked fourteen, but they sounded so silly. They were like…well, I really hadn’t anyone to compare them with, but I knew they weren’t like me, or me like them. And…and as I passed them they all stopped and stared at me as if I was something strange.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I suppose I am. Yes, I suppose I am.’

  ‘Don’t say that, dear, don’t say that. Now don’t say that. You’re a normal, lovely-looking girl, and, with another few years on you you’ll be a spanker.’

  She smiled at him now, saying, ‘You know what I did when they stood like stooks? I stepped past them and then turned
quickly and went, “Boo! Boo!” And they scattered like frightened rabbits. And you know—’ Both her expression and her tone now altered: ‘I should have laughed, but I couldn’t. I just felt sad, like I did, you know, when I told you last year about that old man whom I’d seen standing by a stile a number of times. And…and when he came up to me he looked as if he was about to cry; then he said, “Hello, dear.” You remember?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I remember.’

  ‘You still don’t know who it was?’

  His tongue moved in and out of his mouth before he said, ‘No. No. I never found out. And anyway, he wasn’t there any more, was he?’

  ‘No, I never saw him again.’

  No. No, you wouldn’t, he thought. Poor old Mr Mason, the man whose family had been torn asunder by this child’s grandfather. His daughter was still in the asylum, his eldest son was God knows where, and his wife had died of a broken heart, and he was left with one son on a farm that had once been prosperous. The old man had likely wanted to see the child who could be his granddaughter: it was more likely that his son, not one of the others, would have been the first to take her mother, for his feelings for Ward GIbson had been those of real hate.

  He said now, ‘Is there any news of Mr Gerald coming home?’

  Shaking her head, she said, ‘Not this year anyway. Perhaps next, Lady Lydia says.’

  ‘Do you know what is really wrong with him?’

  ‘No; only that he is not wounded; he won’t talk. And you know, that’s very odd because he used to like to talk, as I do.’ She smiled at him now. ‘I always want to jabber, but I never really do until I get to the Hall.’

  ‘And you jabber a lot there?’ He was smiling widely at her.