The Mallen Girl

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘I’ll not, I’ll…’

  ‘Go on with you.’ He made to chase her, and once again she was running and laughing as she ran; and she continued to laugh until she came to the beginning of Rotten Bottom and saw a figure emerge from the copse and come swiftly toward her…

  Miss Brigmore and Barbara had arrived about twenty minutes previously. Barbara had remained patient long enough to drink a cup of tea in the sitting room before inquiring where Michael was, and, having been told by Constance that he was attending to some sick sheep up on the high lands, she had said quietly, ‘Oh, I’ll take a walk in that direction because we can’t stay long; Brigie wants to get back before dark.’

  The fact that she had said that the visit was going to be short checked the protest that Constance would otherwise have made.

  Like Sarah, Barbara, too, took the short cut through the copse, and it was as she emerged that she saw the figures by the gate. She saw the girl sitting on the top bar and Michael with his arms up and about her. She saw that they were talking, their faces close. She saw him lift her to the ground then bounce her. She saw them become still while staring at each other, and although she couldn’t hear the call nor see who had made it, she knew the lover-like trance had been broken by a voice.

  The feeling the picture of them evoked in her mind was unbearable; she was being consumed by a flame of jealous hatred that had been smouldering for years and now was enveloping her in a white heat that blotted out sanity. There was in her a desire to rend, to tear, to grind her heel into the face of the girl approaching her. So powerful were the emotions controlling her that Sarah’s features were blotted from her sight for a moment as they came face to face.

  Then words erupted from her throat. She was aware of shouting but not of how loud, or of how terrible her voice was. ‘You! You! you’re trying to steal him, you horrible, low dirty creature you!’

  ‘I’m not. I’m not.’

  She read the whispered frightened words coming from between Sarah’s trembling lips.

  ‘You are! You are!’ As she advanced on her, Sarah retreated. ‘You common low creature you!’ With the last words her hands came out like talons and would have gripped Sarah’s throat only that in the last moment Sarah strained away. But as the hands clutched at the front of her cloak and flung her from side to side, the terrified girl screamed, ‘Michael! Michael!’ Then the scream ended in a long drawn out ‘O O O Oh!’ as the hands sent her flying and she felt herself falling backwards.

  Like an animal deprived of its prey, Barbara stood on the brink of the slope and watched the green-enfolded figure tumbling downwards toward the bottom, and she did not hear the long bloodcurdling cry that Sarah uttered as her body fell in among the rusty machinery. Nor did she see the two men racing toward her. Not until they paused at the top of the bank beside her and looked downwards was she aware of their presence. Then the look they both turned on her took the blood mist from her eyes and she staggered back as they jumped downwards and disappeared from her sight.

  The sweat was running down her face and her garments were wet with it. She went down to the copse, leaned against the bole of a tree and waited; she waited for an eternity that covered five minutes, and then they came into sight struggling upwards over the top of the bank, carrying the limp form between them.

  They didn’t look toward her, they didn’t know she was there. She didn’t move from the tree but she turned her head and followed them with her eyes. Their arms entwined, they walked crabwise. Sarah’s head hanging down between their shoulders and her legs dangling over their clasped hands. One end of her green cloak trailed on the ground, but it was green no longer, for its colour was marred with dark brown patches, as was the colour of her white apron, but here the colour was scarlet, bright scarlet.

  She began to moan inside herself like a child calling for its mother. She repeated over and over again, ‘Brigie. Oh! Brigie.’ What had she done? Had she killed her? Well…well, if she had she wasn’t sorry…Yes she was; oh yes she was. But he had been about to kiss her; and she had enticed him, she had held her face up to him. She hoped she would die. No! No! She didn’t. Oh dear Lord! Dear God! What was the matter with her? Brigie. Oh! Brigie.

  She moved from the tree and began to walk round the copse, circling the small area again and again as if she were in a dark forest trying to find a way out. Why didn’t Brigie come? Why? She wanted to feel her arms about her, to see her say she understood; she wanted someone to understand. She stumbled toward the end of the copse facing the road, and there on the sunken track coming from the farm she saw Jim Waite urging his horse forward.

  He had almost passed her when some movement she made brought his head round toward her, and he reared the horse in sharply, and he stared at her for a moment before alighting from the saddle and coming up the bank, even in his climb not taking his eyes from her.

  As he came slowly toward her the look she saw on his face interpreted in some strange fashion the feeling she herself had experienced so short a while ago. He looked fierce, mad, no relation whatsoever to the Jim Waite she had known from childhood and had never really liked.

  ‘You…murdering…bitch…you!’ His big mouth looked cave-like as he stretched his lips in slow enunciation. ‘I’ve…a…good…mind…to…kill…you…meself.’ His great arm swung up in front of her eyes and when the flat of his hand crashed against the side of her head the world exploded. As she fell against a tree all the sounds on earth reverberated through her. She heard a voice, something that she hadn’t heard in years, but this was a screaming terrible voice, like the voice of God, a fearsome God. She heard the birds screeching, the branches groaning; she heard the very air breathing in on itself. The silent mountain within her was being filled with noise, indescribable hell-exploding noise. She wanted to flee from it, rush back into the silence, away from this sense she had longed for but which was now beating on her with physical force.

  She pressed tight against the tree, her head thrust back on her neck, while staring into Jim Waite’s mouth. Hearing and seeing his words at the same time had a double impact on her. ‘You’re a cruel bugger, you always have been; you’re like all your breed, you’ve got the streak of the Mallens in you. By God! you have. White and wide it is on the men and there to see, but black in you and hidden. You’re a chip off the old block, you are that. One of old Tom Mallen’s bastards to a tee, an’ the worst of the bunch if you ask me. You were bred of a rape. Do you hear me? You were bred of a rape!’ His mouth opened so wide it seemed to envelop his face. ‘They say you don’t know about it; well, I’m tellin’ you. Do you hear? You were bred of a rape. He raped your mother who he had brought up as his daughter. Rotten he was, fat, dirty old bastard. An’ the one that brought you up wasn’t much better than a whore, for she was his kept woman for years, and she stole from the house to keep him, aye she did, silver, jewellery, the lot. She should have been nabbed an’ all. Oh, you’ve come from good stock you have and don’t my family know it. Your uncle…No. No, he wasn’t your uncle, he was your brother, the one that ran away after he nearly murdered one of the bailiffs they put in at High Banks when old Mallen went bust. An’ he tried to do for me dad an’ all. And now you, true to your breed, have done for our Sarah.’

  His arm was lifted once again, and again he struck her. Her head bounced with a resounding crack against the trunk of the tree and for a moment she could see nothing. The current of noise made by the trees, the air, and the birds was still tearing through her. He mouthed at her, ‘Did you take it in, you dirty bastard? Did you take it in? And now listen an’ take this in an’ all. If she pegs out I’ll come and do for you, I will. That’s a promise. With these very hands I’ll come and do for you.’

  Gripping her by the shoulders now, he shook her like a rat, and when he released her she slowly slid down to the ground. Her eyes were wide, her mouth was wide, her face in front had the pallor of death on it, but at each side it was red. She saw him go toward the bank, then he disappeared from her
view, to appear again by the side of the horse. Then as he was about to swing himself up into the saddle she heard a voice shout, ‘Hie there, Jim. Wait! Wait a minute.’ It was a man’s voice, one she hadn’t heard before, but she knew it to be Michael’s.

  Unblinking she stared before her until his head and shoulders came into view. She saw him speak rapidly to Jim Waite but she could not hear what he said, nor Jim Waite’s answer, but a moment later they both looked in her direction. Then Jim Waite mounted the horse and put it into a gallop. She knew it was galloping because she could hear the dull thud of the hooves.

  When Michael disappeared from her view too she thought he had returned up the road; but just as she pulled herself drunkenly to her feet in order to call he came over the top of the bank.

  Her hands thrust backwards gripping the trunk for support, her breath coming in great gasps that caused her head to wobble, she watched him cover the distance between them. He stopped when about two yards from her and she saw instantly that he, like Jim Waite, had also changed. There seemed to be no recognisable feature in the face before her for it was suffused with an anger that had given the fair skin a purple hue and made it look old in contrast to the dishevelled mop of straw-coloured hair.

  She watched his teeth grind against each other before his lips too moved into wide articulating movements. ‘You’ve done it at last, haven’t you? You’ve always meant to; you always meant to hurt her. YOU!’ He drew the word out and shook his head slowly as the echo of it died away.

  Michael was talking to her, she was hearing his voice and she didn’t like it for it matched the man before her; it wasn’t the voice she put to her Michael, her beloved Michael; it wasn’t the voice that whispered to her in the night telling her that she was beautiful, beloved, adored, desired.

  ‘You’re cruel. Mother’s always said there was a cruel streak in you, and she’s right; she’s been right about everything. I must have been mad to think that I could care for you. Well now, listen to me and listen well. Read my lips because what I’m going to say I would have likely said to you in any case. I’m going to marry Sarah, do you hear? I’m going to marry Sarah; that’s…that’s if she lives. If she doesn’t I’ll hate you, I’ll curse you till the day I die. I’ll curse you anyway because it’s ten to one you’ve left her crippled. That would please you, wouldn’t it, if you knew she was a cripple? You used to hate to see her dance. You! I…I wonder how I came up from the same branch.’

  ‘M…M…Michael.’

  ‘Don’t Michael me.’

  ‘Please, please, Michael, listen to me.’

  ‘I never want to see you again, to speak to you again, do you hear, never!’ His body was half bent toward her.

  When he flung round from her the pain in her head, the noises beating on her brain were for the moment blotted out by a rebirth of her anger. Like lightning it flared through her and she yelled at him now, ‘Who are you to feel so proud of your beginnings! And you needn’t wonder any more about coming from the same branch because you didn’t. He wasn’t your father; Mallen’s son wasn’t your father.’

  He had stopped at the top of the rise, his face half turned over his shoulder staring at her. She was still supporting herself against the tree trunk, but her upper body was straining forward; and now she screamed at him, ‘You’re like me, there’s a pair of us did you but know it. We’re both bastards. And your mother’s no better than a whore, for no-one but a whore would go with her husband’s brother in the filthy derelict house on the high fell, and that’s where you were begat. Now, now, how do you like the truth, Mr Michael Radlet?’

  He did not move for some seconds and their eyes held like joined firebrands across the distance; then he turned slowly from her and went down the slope.

  Once again she slid to the ground, weighed down by the renewed rage still burning within her. It was churning all the strange sounds about in her head. She wished they would stop; she wanted silence, silence. Suddenly her body doubled up, she buried her face in her hands, and rocked from side to side. The great cacophony of sound was terrifying and she had no way of modifying it.

  Her silent world had disintegrated when Jim Waite struck her across the ears. Brigie had said it could happen, that one day she might hear again, but it had come too late. Her life was finished, she had nothing more to live for…

  The sound of the trap wheels as they came over the rough road screeched through her eardrums.

  When Miss Brigmore came into view sitting erect in the front seat she did not rise and go toward her but watched her lift her hand and imperiously beckon to her.

  It was a full minute before she dragged herself to her feet then slowly, as if slightly intoxicated, she walked toward the top of the bank, stumbled down it on to the road and around the back of the trap. When she pulled herself up into the seat she did not look at Miss Brigmore, nor Miss Brigmore at her; and so they began the journey.

  Not a word was exchanged throughout the journey because Miss Brigmore did not turn her head toward her once, but when she murmured in an agonised fashion to herself, ‘Oh girl, you have not only almost severed that child’s leg off, you have, did you but know it, severed a number of lives this day. What is in you? What is in you? Where have I failed? It must be me for there was no real harm in Thomas, and none whatever in his mother,’ the words resounded like a bell tolling out doom in Barbara’s ears.

  Thomas, the big pot-bellied man whose picture dominated the fireplace in the cottage; that man was her father. The truth had indeed been spilled today. That horrible fat man had raped her mother, and this after having brought her up as his own child. Yet here was Brigie saying there was no real harm in him. And she had been his mistress, this prim, even sanctimonious woman had been her father’s mistress, not his housekeeper as she had understood, but had slept in his bed, in the bed of that man with the big fat stomach and the fleshy jowls…And he was her father! No wonder Brigie had been afraid of her knowing. She was sick. She was sick, she would vomit.

  Was it surprising there was wickedness in her? Was it surprising there was violence in her? Was she to blame for what she did? And Jim Waite had said that her brother—she had a brother then, or a half-brother, and he had almost murdered two men. The Mallen streak…This is what they meant by the Mallen streak. Badness. Badness of all kinds. And she was a Mallen! But was she to blame for that?

  The question was as loud now in her head as was the noise and creaking of the cart, the clop-clopping of the horses’ hooves, the sound of the wind, the cutting wind that was chilling her through. The wind was made up of voices; they were coming over the valley, shouting at her in Jim Waite’s voice, in Michael’s voice: ‘You’re a bastard, that’s what you are, a murdering bastard! I’m going to marry her. I never want to see you again. I’ll hate you all my life.’

  They were passing the house where he was begot, the filthy house with the holes in the roof. Michael himself had taken her there. They had ridden their horses up to the doorless gap and it was he who had pointed out where the tramps slept. Ha! ha! ha! Ha! ha! She was laughing loudly inside. It was funny, funny. He had come into being on that filthy floor; his mother and father were no better than the tramps. Her Aunt Constance was a tramp, a road woman; and he, who was he to spurn her? He had left her with the weight of the world on her; he had burnt out her heart so that she could feel no more, but he would go on feeling, on and on, and every time he looked on his mother he would hate her. Oh, she hoped that he would hate her; she hoped that her Aunt Constance would live in misery for the rest of her life.

  The wind’s voice became louder as they went downwards toward the valley, and it was screaming in her ears when Brigie stopped the trap outside the cottage gate. But even before the horse had put its last foot down she had jumped from the seat and was running. She heard the voice calling, ‘Barbara! Barbara! Come back. Don’t be silly, come back. Please! Please! Barbara. Do you hear?’ Brigie must have forgotten that she couldn’t hear. Her mind was still sufficiently rat
ional for her to realise the incongruity of this reaction.

  The twilight was falling and she ran into it, on and on toward the time when she would feel no more.

  Five

  ‘Now look here, lad, what you’ve got to understand is that a mill has a six-day working week and that you can’t go jaunting off every weekend. I’ve been very lenient; you can’t say but I haven’t. I meself would like to go down every weekend…’

  ‘Then why don’t you? There’s nothing really stopping you.’

  ‘Nothing stopping me!’ Harry’s brows gathered over the top of his nose and he flung his arm outwards indicating that beyond the office walls lay the mill that couldn’t manage without him.

  ‘Well, what’s Rington there for?…and Willy? Willy’s just waiting for the chance to run the whole concern on his own.’

  ‘Oh, is that what you think about Willy?’

  ‘Yes, it is. He’s not satisfied with a ten-hour day, he goes to extremes and works twelve, and would make everybody else do the same if he got the chance. Oh, I’ve got Willy’s measure; there’s two distinct sides of Willy, and that you’ll find out.’

  ‘Well, that’s interesting to hear; it’s as much as tellin’ me I’ve been blind all these years, and don’t know men.’

  ‘You don’t know Willy. Anyway, there’s our John. What do you think he’s doing, if not seeing to the mill…and all its works?’

  ‘John’s got to spend most of his time in the office, like meself. Anyway, that’s not the point; the point is you’re here to learn the ropes, and if you let hands see you going jauntin’ off on a Friday night, week after week, they’ll go slack.’