‘What on earth ‒!’ Linn exclaimed. ‘Mind what you’re doing, both of you!’
The draught was making the chimney smoke and she hurried across to shut the door. Charlie, with his snowball in his hand, cornered Philip at the foot of the stairs and caught him by his jacket collar.
‘Now, then, my lad, you’re for it!’ he said. ‘A taste of your own medicine!’
‘No, that’s not fair!’ Philip howled. ‘Not down my neck, you rotten pig!’
‘Will you say you’re sorry, then?’
‘No, I won’t! I’d sooner die!’
‘All right, you’ve asked for it! Here it comes!’
The snowball was touching Philip’s cheek and moisture was trickling down his neck. Squirming, he struck at Charlie’s hand and the snowball fell to the kitchen floor, plopping and bursting on the tiles. Crowing with triumph, he kicked at it, spreading the snow about still more and sending it spurting everywhere. Charlie caught hold of him by the arms, swung him giddily round and round, and suddenly hoisted him up in the air till his head was almost touching the rafters.
‘Now, then, I’ve got you, haven’t I? What’ve you got to say for yourself?’
‘I shall say something if you don’t watch out!’
‘What’ll you say?’
‘Sod, hell and damn!’
‘Is that what they teach you to say at home?’
‘Mind your own business! Put me down!’
‘Ask me nicely and maybe I will.’
‘Stop it! You’re tickling! Put me down!’ Philip’s voice rose to a shriek. His face was as red as a turkeycock’s. Charlie’s hands were under his armpits, holding him in such a way that his arms were helpless, flailing the air, and even his feet, although he kicked out, could not quite reach Charlie’s stomach. ‘Stop it, I tell you! You’ll give me a stitch!’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Linn said. ‘You’ll send the wretched boy into fits.’
‘He’s got to say he’s sorry first.’
‘Devil! Devil! I shan’t, so there!’
Philip, red in the face, looked down, and Charlie, laughing, looked up at him. His fingers moved under Philip’s armpits, tickling him and making him squirm, and suddenly Philip, pursing his lips, leant forward in Charlie’s arms and spat directly into his face.
‘Ach! You dirty little grub!’ Sobered, Charlie let the boy down. He groped for his handkerchief and wiped his face. ‘Where did you learn that dirty trick?’
Linn, with an exclamation of disgust, darted forward and gripped the boy’s arm. Angrily, she gave him a shake.
‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’ she said. ‘Spitting in people’s faces like that! I don’t know what we’re to do with you. You’re a hateful, dirty, horrid little boy!’
Philip was now as white as white. His face was contorted, his lips compressed. Writhing, he pulled away from her, punching her stomach with both his fists. Linn reached out with the flat of her hand and caught him a clumsy smack on the head. He rushed from her and stamped up the stairs. The bedroom door opened and closed and they heard the creak of the floorboards above.
‘Such behaviour!’ Linn said. ‘He wants a good spanking, that’s what he wants!’
‘It’s all my own fault,’ Charlie said. ‘The boy’s highly strung and I got him worked up. You could see he was sorry afterwards.’
‘I couldn’t see any such thing! There was no sign of shame in his face at all!’
‘Maybe I’d better go up to him.’
‘Maybe you’d better leave him alone!’
Linn got a cloth from the scullery and began wiping the mess from the floor. Charlie stood watching her.
‘I was just going out,’ he said. ‘I thought of taking the boy with me.’
‘No need to ask where you’re going, I suppose?’
‘Mrs Shaw is almost out of oil. I’m taking her up a two-gallon can.’ He went to the door for his jacket and cap. ‘There’s a lot more snow on the way,’ he said, ‘and she’ll have run out in a day or two.’
‘What about us?’ Linn said. ‘We’ll need it, too, if we’re snowed up again.’
‘We’ve got plenty in the tank.’
‘It won’t last long if you give it away.’
‘Two gallons of paraffin! You surely don’t grudge a neighbour that?’
‘I hope she pays for it, that’s all. I have to pay for it, don’t forget.’
Linn, having hung up the floor-cloth to dry, returned to her bowl of washing-up, and Charlie looked at her cold, clenched face. Sometimes, she seemed a stranger to him and he wondered if all marriages ended like this, with discontentment on either side. He and Linn still loved each other; their lives were close-linked in so many ways; but how long could love last when carping disapproval on one side and baffled withdrawal on the other hardened into a daily habit, shutting out trust and sympathy?
He took some money out of his pocket and plonked it down on the table.
‘There you are, it’s paid for,’ he said.
He crossed the room and called up the stairs.
‘Philip, are you coming down? I’m going up to Slipfields. You can come with me if you like.’
There was no answer from above and Charlie, after listening a while, shrugged and left the house by himself. He collected the can of oil from the yard and set out across the fields. The north wind was now blowing hard and the dark clouds, piling up in the sky, bulged with the burden of snow to come. He turned up his collar and bent his head.
Philip, at the bedroom window, saw Charlie crossing the yard and watched him trudging up the field, by the pathway already worn in the snow. The boy wanted to follow him. ‘Yes! I’m coming! Wait for me!’ ‒ The words went hallooing in his mind. But when he reached the bedroom door, something caught him and held him back. He kept seeing Charlie’s look of disgust in that moment when he had spat in his face, and the thought of it made him turn away. When he looked through the window again, Charlie had already gone from sight.
The light was poor in the little bedroom. Philip took a pillow from his bed and laid it on the window-sill. He hoisted himself up and sat on it, with his box of wax crayons in his lap, and one of the books from the chest of drawers. He opened the book at the very beginning where, on the fly-leaf, in a neat, tidy hand, was written the name, Robert Mercybright. He crossed out the name with a red crayon and began writing a letter home. ‘Dear Mum and Dad and Mrs Quinn …’
The room was cold. He was shivering. He hunched himself up, inside his jacket, and pulled the sleeves of his jersey down until they half-covered his hands. His fingers, grasping the crayon, were numb. He breathed on them to make them warm.
Downstairs in the kitchen Linn finished her washing-up and put the china away on the dresser. When every piece was in its place, she began clearing the kitchen table, taking the bowl out to the scullery and emptying the water into the sink. She returned and wiped the table clean and hung the tea-towels up to dry. The clock on the mantelpiece said half-past one. Philip had been in his room half an hour and that, she felt, was quite long enough to have taught him a lesson he deserved. He would catch a chill if he stayed there too long. She knew she would have to go up to him and help him out of his fit of the sulks.
Philip, hearing her step on the stairs, scrambled from his seat on the window-sill and closed the book he had been writing in. In his haste he dropped it and the coloured crayons spilt from their box and went rolling about over the floor. He kicked the book under the bed, but it slithered across the polished boards and out again at the other side, fluttering open on the mat that covered the floor between the beds.
Before he could reach it, Linn had come in. She saw the book and picked it up and her face, as she turned over the pages, became darkly flushed. The fly-leaves were covered with scribbling and the margins of every printed page were defaced with childish crudities. ‘Sez you, Clever Dick!’
‘Who’s Copernicus when he’s at home?’
‘Newton stinks and so do you!
’
‘Dung and pisswater! Hah! Hah! Hah!’
‘How dare you do that to my son’s books?’
She moved quickly to the chest of drawers and began to look through the rest of the books. There were about a dozen in all and every one had been defaced. The scribblings and drawings glared from the pages, leaping at her and hurting her, filling her with unspeakable rage. That Robert’s books, which he had so loved, should be defiled in this careless way with dirty, ugly, meaningless words! Trembling, she looked through every one, and Philip stood watching her, pale and sharp-eyed. When at last she turned to him she was filled with loathing and disgust. She could never forgive him for what he had done. He would always be hateful to her now.
‘How dare you ruin Robert’s books? Oh, yes, you can cringe, you horrible boy! You deserve to be whipped for what you’ve done!’
‘Don’t you touch me!’ Philip shrilled.
‘I shan’t touch you, never fear! But I shall certainly write to your parents and tell them about your behaviour today. Spitting in Charlie’s face like that! Scribbling filth in Robert’s books! I just don’t understand you at all. After we’ve taken you into our home and done all we could to look after you ‒’
‘I didn’t ask to come to your house!’
‘We didn’t ask to have you, either, but we’ve done our best, Charlie and me, to make you feel welcome just the same, letting you sleep in my son’s room ‒’
‘Rotten old room!’ Philip cried. ‘Rotten old dirty stinking farm! Everything here is horrible and I’ve written home to tell them so!’
Linn took a step towards the boy, but he darted past her, ducking his head. His foot caught in the edge of the mat and he stumbled forward, awkwardly, knocking his knee on the iron bedstead. Rubbing himself, he glared at her and edged his way towards the door.
‘What do I care about your son?’ he said, with an ugly curl of his lip. ‘I hope he never comes back from the war! I hope he’s dead and blown to bits!’
‘I think you’d better get out,’ Linn said, in a voice she could only barely control. ‘Go on, get out! Get out of my sight!’
‘I’m going, don’t worry!’ Philip cried. ‘And I’m never, never coming back!’
He ran from the room and clattered downstairs and she heard him go slamming out of the house. Then she heard his step in the yard and when she looked out of the window she saw him vanishing into the barn. She turned to the books on the chest of drawers, gathered them up into her arms, and carried them out across the landing, into her own bedroom.
Philip stood in the middle of the barn and stared at a rope that hung from the rafters. Earlier, a cow and her two calves had been housed for a while in the barn, and a few strands of hay, which had been the cow’s feed, still remained in the rope’s noose. Philip reached up and pulled it out, strewing it over the stone-flagged floor. He went and fetched a wooden box, clambered on to it, breathlessly, and placed the noose about his neck.
The rope was old and very hard, chafing against his tender skin. He raised his hands to tighten the noose but the knot was too stiff and refused to budge. It hurt his fingertips, making them sore, and he held them for a moment against his lips, sucking them until they were soothed. Looking down at his booted feet, he inched his way to the edge of the box. The rope’s noose was very wide; much too wide to encircle his neck; and although its lower edge was under his chin, the knot was high above his head. Cautiously he put up his hands and tried again to tighten it.
Suddenly the wooden box, placed insecurely on the flagstones, tilted away from under his feet and he clattered, sprawling, to the floor. The rope, as it slid from under his chin, jerked it upwards painfully, its roughness scraping his lip and his nose and bringing the hot quick tears to his eyes. Heart pounding, he scrambled up, and the rope with its noose swung to and fro, two or three feet above his head. He stood for a while, watching it, giving a little whimpering cry, then went and peered through a slit in the wall.
The house was visible from the barn. Its door was obliquely opposite. He climbed on to a pile of sacks and settled himself to watch and wait. The sky was darkly overcast and a few flakes of snow were fluttering down, absently, with no will of their own, but tossing about this way and that as though reluctant to reach the ground. Through the narrow slit in the wall the wind came blowing, stinging his eyes, and up in the great high roof above he heard its whining song in the beams and the way it whispered and shuffled and crept as it played among the loose, shifting tiles.
After a time the house door opened and he saw his Auntie Linn come out. She picked her way across the slush, went into the dairy, and closed the door. Philip waited a few minutes and then crept from his place in the barn. He crossed the yard and went into the house.
The warmth of the kitchen surged about him, bringing goose-pimples up on his skin and making him shiver like a dog. He took his overcoat from the door and put it on. He buttoned it up, right to the throat, and put on the warm balaclava and scarf that his mother had sent him for Christmas. He found his warm woollen gloves and stuffed them into his coat-pockets.
After glancing through the window to see that the dairy door was still closed, he went across to the kitchen cupboard and took out Auntie Linn’s cashbox. It was locked, as it always was, but Philip knew where to find the key. He took two pound notes and some loose change and, delving under his overcoat thrust the money into his trousers pocket. Carefully he relocked the cashbox, put it back into the cupboard, and hung the key in its hiding-place. Quietly, with trembling hands, he closed and locked the cupboard door.
Outside in the yard the wind struck cold and as he passed the end of the house a flurry of snow came whirling at him. But he was snug in his helmet and scarf, with his thick-napped coat buttoned up to the neck, and the wind and snow were nothing to him. He crossed the yard, treading quietly, and climbed over the five-barred gate. Once on the track he felt free to run. His rubber boots kicked up the slush and the wind behind him helped him along, making him feel he could run forever.
He met nobody, all the way; not even in Ratter’s Lane; so that when he climbed the fence by the bridge and slid down the bank to the railway line, there was no one to see him and turn him back. He was alone in a white silent world, under a sky dark with clouds full of snow, and the daring of it warmed him inside.
At either side of the railway track the snow was piled up two feet high, so Philip walked between the rails, where trains had flattened out the snow until it was only a few inches thick, dirty, discoloured, and spotted with oil, barely covering the wooden sleepers. There had been no drifts on this stretch of line because it was sheltered from the wind, but here and there, during the thaw, the snow, which had drifted as high as a man up on top of the northern bank, had slid down the slope on to the track. The sheer weight of the piled-up snow brought it tumbling down in a rush, like a miniature avalanche, and where there were no bushes to stop it, it fell in heaps on the line itself.
Philip, walking along the track, witnessed one of these falls of snow, only twenty yards ahead. He heard it rumbling up on the bank and stood quite still, nervous, alert, while it rippled and billowed its way down the slope and came to rest with a dull-sounding crump, spreading right across the rails. It wasn’t enough to block the line. Philip had seen, as he walked along, where similar mounds had been flattened out, dirtied and blackened, by the trains. But now, as he went on his way again, he kept a sharp eye on the steep north bank and listened for the rumble of toppling snow. It must be a terrible thing, he thought, to be buried under an avalanche.
There was scarcely any wind along the line. The high embankment shut it out and its whining song was only heard in the telegraph wires strung from their posts. Overhead, high in the sky, the fluttering snow was thickening, and soon it began to fall more quickly, big wet flakes that flopped in his face and gathered, glistening, on his brows.
Now and then, as he tramped along, he thrust his hand into his pocket and felt the money hidden there, snug and
warm against his thigh. When he got to Mingleton he would buy a ticket and get on a train and if anybody questioned him he would say that his mother had been taken ill and that his father had sent him a telegram telling him to come home at once. Charlie had said it was two miles along the line to Mingleton but two miles was nothing, Philip thought, and there was no hurry, anyway. He liked the quietness of the line, and the snow coming down on him, wetting his face. It was a bold, adventurous thing to be walking along all alone like this, with nobody knowing where he was. Sometimes he glanced over his shoulder, through the rapidly falling snow, watching in case a train should come; but he knew that he was perfectly safe because, as Charlie had said that time, even if a train did come, you could hear it a mile off, couldn’t you?
Somewhere along the bank, just here, was the place where he had buried the thrush, but he couldn’t tell where it was, exactly, for now it was buried under the snow. The thought of the thrush, killed on the line, gave him a strange feeling inside; of pain and pleasure twisted together; melting, hot, like tears in his heart. When he thought of Charlie, however, he was filled with unbearable guilt and shame, because Charlie had been a friend to him and he had spat in Charlie’s face. It was the devil that had made him do that; it was something he hated and wanted to kill; something he couldn’t talk about for no one would ever understand.
Trudging on along the line, he felt he was leaving the sin behind, hidden and buried, like the dead thrush, in a secret place that couldn’t be found. The snow fell, cold in his face, and he bowed his head to it, hunching himself, feeling it soaking his woollen helmet, which sagged cold and wet on the back of his neck. It seemed a long way to Mingleton. He had not even reached Scampton Halt yet. He lengthened his stride and hurried on.
Linn, having finished her chores in the dairy, went to the barn and looked inside.
‘Philip?’ she called in a loud voice. ‘It’s high time you came indoors. You’ll catch your death of cold out here.’ She opened the door wider still, to let more light into the barn, but the boy was nowhere to be seen. ‘Philip, are you hiding?’ she called.
Seedtime and Harvest (The Apple Tree Saga Book 5) Page 27