The Mallen Streak

by Catherine Cookson

  Carl Breton-Weir merely answered with a tight smile, thinking cynically that this house appeared like a factory for the manufacture of bastards of all kinds. If it wasn’t that tonight he meant to recuperate with good interest all the money he had purposely lost to his host and his friends, he would leave now. But tomorrow, if all went well, he would go, good and early. And he wouldn’t be sorry to see the back of them all; coarse bores, every one of them. They afforded him amusement at first but one quickly tired of this kind of amusement…Where were they going now? And these damn dogs all over the place. ‘Get down! Get down!’ He flung the dog from him.

  ‘She likes you; she likes you, Carl.’ Dick Mallen was laughing at him now. ‘You must have a smell about you she recognises.’

  At this there were great guffaws from the men and open titters from the four women present. Kate Armstrong, an overweight woman in her late forties, decked, even in her outdoor garb, with jewellery, one piece of which would have kept six of her husband’s miners for a year, slapped out at her daughter Fanny, who at twenty-eight was still unmarried and could, they said, tell a joke as good as any man, saying, ‘That Dick. That Dick…I tell you!’

  There was Jane Ferrier, small, fat and as giggly as a girl, which mannerism sat odd on her forty-three years. Her husband, John, owned a number of glass works in Newcastle, and to see the extent of their wealth you had to visit their home and be blinded by the chandeliers.

  Then there was Maggie Headley. She had a name for being careful with the grocery bills, although her husband, Ralph, owned not only a brewery and a candle factory, but a coal mine also.

  Among the men present was Headley’s son, John, and his close friend, Pat Ferrier, both happy men at the moment, for they had made enough out of their friend and host and his London guests during the last two nights to keep them in pin money for some considerable time.

  ‘Where was he, in the same place?’ Thomas was again calling to his son, and Dick Mallen, who was making for the hall door, cried back to him, ‘Aye, the same place. I wonder his legs don’t give out by the time he reaches there.’

  ‘Seven miles over and seven miles back he has to go; done it since he was that high.’ Thomas measured a distance of four feet from the ground. ‘An’ I can’t get near the beggar. And he won’t speak, not a word. Skites off; that is after he’s had a good look at me.’ He gave an exaggerated heave to his chest and preened himself, and his voice now couldn’t be heard for the laughter. ‘Come on, come on, we’ll change our route, we’ll go round by the Low Fields.’

  The whole party now swarmed out on to the terrace, where, below on the broad drive, three keepers were waiting. Led now by Thomas, they went through the gardens, skirted the lake, crossed in single file the narrow bridge over the stream that led to the River Allen, then bunched together again and, with the exception of the keepers, laughing and shouting to each other, they stumbled over the stretch of valley called the Low Fields, which edged the north boundary of the estate, and so came to a ridge of shale hills.

  After rounding the foot of the hills they were brought to an abrupt stop by Thomas, who was standing, his arms outstretched, pointing.

  Before them, about twenty yards distant, a zigzag pathway cutting up the side of a steep hill met up with the lower mountain road which at this time of the year was the only passable road between Alston and Whitfield. At the foot of the mountain and to the right of this pathway was a high peak of rock, accessible to the ordinary climber from one side only, and on top of the rock sat a boy.

  From this distance the boy looked to be about twelve years old. His thin body was dressed warmly, not in the rough working-man’s style, nor yet was his dress like that of the gentry, but his greatcoat had a collar to it which was turned up about his ears. He wore no cap, and his hair, from this distance, looked jet black.

  The whole company looked up towards him and he down at them.

  ‘Why don’t you rush him?’ It was a quiet voice from behind, and Thomas answered as quietly, ‘We tried it. He’s as fast as the hare itself; he could skid down from that rock quicker than I can say Jack Robinson.’

  ‘Have you never got any nearer to him?’

  ‘Never. But one of these days, one of these days.’

  ‘Where does he come from?’

  ‘Oh, over the mountain, near Carr Shield.’

  ‘Well, you could go and see him when the weather’s fine. Haven’t you thought of it?’

  Thomas Mallen turned round and gazed at the speaker; his blue eyes were bright and laughing as he said, ‘Yes, yes, I’ve thought of it; but then,’—he spread one hand wide—‘if I were to visit all my streaks I’d have no time for my estate. Now would I?’ Both hands were held out in appeal now and as the laughter rang over the mountain and echoed into the next valley the boy suddenly disappeared from view, and they didn’t see him make for the pass although they stood for some time scanning the hills before them.

  Two

  It had snowed for two days, thawed a little, then frozen, and the five guests left in the house had skated on the lake. They were Frank Armstrong, his wife Kate and daughter, Fanny, and Dick Mallen’s two friends, William Lennox and Carl Breton-Weir.

  Thomas Mallen had allowed his two nieces, Barbara and Constance Farrington, to join the company. It had been a great day for the children for they were seldom, if ever, allowed to mingle with the guests. When Thomas was at home alone, which wasn’t very often, he had the children brought down in the afternoon to share his dinner, and he would laugh and joke with them and make funny remarks about their governess, Miss Brigmore. The two girls loved their Uncle Thomas; he was the only man in their lives and they had lived under his care for six years now, having been brought to the Hall when Barbara was four and Constance one year old. They were the children of his stepsister who had, against repeated warnings by him, married one Michael Farrington, a man with only one asset, charm. Michael Farrington had deserted his wife when she was carrying his second child but Thomas had known nothing of this until he had received a letter from her telling him that she was near death and begging him to take into his care her two small children. It says much for the man that he immediately made the journey to London and spent two days with her before she died. Then he brought the children from what, to him, were appalling lodgings, back to the Hall.

  First, he engaged a nurse for them and then a governess. The nurse had long since gone, but the governess, Miss Brigmore, was still with them, and Barbara was now ten and Constance seven years old.

  The children’s world consisted of six rooms at the top of the east wing of the house, from which they descended by a back staircase once a day, if the weather was clement, to the world below, accompanied on such journeys by Mary Peel, the nursery attendant. If the coast was clear and Mrs Brydon the housekeeper, or Mr Tweedy the steward, or Mr Dunn the butler, weren’t about, Mary would take them through the kitchen and let them stop and have a cheery word with the cook and kitchen staff, and receive titbits in the form of rich sticky ginger-fingers, or a hot yeasty cake split and filled with jam and cream, two delicacies which were forbidden by Miss Brigmore, who was a believer in plain fare for children.

  The children adored Mary Peel and in a way looked upon her as a mother figure. Of course, they both knew that Mary was very common and of no account; all the staff in the house were of no account, at least those below Brown, who was their Uncle Thomas’ valet, and Taylor, who was Uncle Dick’s valet. But they were aware that even these two personages did not come anywhere near Miss Brigmore’s station. Their governess, they knew, was someone apart from the rest of the staff. Miss Brigmore had not stated this in words, but her manner left no-one in doubt about it.

  The girls had never experienced such pleasure as the afternoon spent on the ice. They squealed and laughed and caused great amusement as they fell on their bottoms and clung to the legs of first one escort and then the other. Barbara fell in love with Mr Weir and Constance with Mr Lennox, because both these gentle
men went out of their way to initiate them into the art of skating. Their Uncle Thomas, too, did his share in their coaching; only Uncle Dick did not take his turn with them for he skated constantly with Miss Fanny Armstrong.

  On the side of the lake they ate hot chops which they held in a napkin, and their Uncle Thomas let them sip from his pewter tankard. The drink was hot and stinging and they coughed and their eyes watered and everybody laughed. It was a wonderful, glorious day.

  They were still under the spell and talking about it at half past six when Miss Brigmore retired to her room to have her supper. This was the only part of the day, with the exception of their exercise time, or when they were in bed, that they were free of Miss Brigmore’s presence; but even now they weren’t alone, for Mary Peel sat with them. But Mary didn’t count. They could say what they liked in front of Mary; being with Mary was as good as being by themselves. Even when she joined in their conversation, as now, it didn’t matter.

  ‘No right to talk about Mr Armstrong in that manner, Miss Barbara,’ she said, lifting her eyes from one of their nightdresses, the front of which she was herring-boning.

  ‘Well, I don’t like him, Mary.’

  ‘What’s there to dislike about him? He’s a fine man; he owns a mine, a big mine, away…away over the hills.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Oh, a long way, Miss Constance; a place I’ve never seen, near the city, they say; beyond the Penny Hills, and that’s a mighty long distance.’

  ‘Have you to be rich before you can be good, Mary?’

  ‘Ah! Miss Barbara, fancy asking a question like that: have you to be rich afore you can be good?’

  ‘Well, you said he was a good man.’

  ‘Well, so he is, according to his lights.’

  ‘What lights?’

  ‘Oh, Miss Constance, don’t keep asking me questions I can’t answer. Sufficient it be he’s a lifelong friend of the master’s, an’ that should be good enough for anybody.’

  ‘Is it true that Miss Fanny is going to marry Uncle Dick?’

  Mary now turned her head sharply and looked at the thin, dark girl sitting to one side of the round table, her paintbrush poised over a piece of canvas, and she asked sharply, ‘How did you come to hear that, Miss Barbara?’

  ‘Little pigs have got big ears.’ This came from the fair child sitting opposite, and the two girls leant across the table towards each other and giggled.

  ‘Little pigs have got big ears’ was a saying constantly on Mary’s lips, and now she reprimanded them sternly, saying, ‘Aye; well, little pigs have their ears cut off sometimes when they hear too much.’

  ‘But is she, Mary?’

  ‘You know as much about it as me, Miss Barbara.’

  ‘I don’t, Mary. You know everything.’

  Mary Peel tightened her lips to suppress a smile, then said in mock harshness, ‘I know this much, as soon as Miss Brigmore enters that door I’ll tell her to smack your backsides.’

  Again they were leaning across the table. They knew that Mary didn’t like Miss Brigmore and that whenever she could she opposed her; as for Mary giving them away in anything, they would have sooner believed that Miss Brigmore’s God was a figment of the imagination, like the ogres in fairy tales.

  ‘When are the Armstrongs going home?’ Barbara now asked.

  ‘The morrow, as far as I know.’

  ‘Oh.’ Both the children now sat straight up in their chairs, but it was Barbara who said, ‘That means that tonight there’ll be carry-on and high jinks and divil’s fagarties.’

  Mary Peel rose hastily to her feet and, coming to the table, she looked fearfully from one to the other, saying under her breath, ‘If Miss Brigmore hears you comin’ out with anythin’ like that, you know what’ll happen, not only to you, but to me. An’ I’m warnin’ you, for she’ll have me kept downstairs and then you could have anybody up here, Nancy Wright, or Kate Steel.’

  ‘Oh no! No!’ They both grabbed at her hands, crying softly, ‘We were only teasing, Mary.’ Barbara looked up into the round, homely face which to her was both old and young because twenty-seven was a very great age for anyone to be, and she said, ‘We like your sayings, Mary, we think they’re nice, much better than Miss Brigmore’s.’

  Mary nodded grimly from one to the other. ‘Well, I can tell you this much, Miss Brigmore wouldn’t agree with you. And how do you know anyway about the…about the divil’s, I mean carry-on?’

  ‘Oh,’—they looked at each other and grinned impishly—‘we sometimes get up and creep down to the gallery. We hid in the armour box last week. It’s a good job it was empty.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ The words came as a faint whisper through Mary’s fingers, which she was holding tightly over her mouth. Then, giving her attention wholly to Barbara, she whispered, ‘Look you, Miss Barbara, look, now promise you’ll not do it again. Promise?…In the armour box! How in the name of God did you get the lid up, child?’

  ‘Well, it was very heavy but we managed to get in. But we couldn’t get out.’

  ‘You couldn’t get out?’ Mary had dropped her hand from her mouth and she gaped at them for a moment before she asked under her breath, ‘Well, how did you then?’

  ‘We knocked on the lid and called, and Waite opened it.’

  ‘Waite?’

  ‘Yes.’ They were both nodding at her.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He just said what you said.’

  Mary screwed her brows up trying to recollect what she had said, and when she seemed to be finding some difficulty Constance put in with a smile, ‘He said, “Oh my God!”’

  Mary sat down suddenly on the third chair at the table and, picking up the corner of her long white apron, she passed it round her face before leaning towards them and saying, ‘Promise me on God’s honour you’ll not do anything like that again…Now come on, promise?’

  It was Connie who nodded her promise straight away, but Barbara remained quiet, and Mary said, ‘Aw, Miss Barbara.’

  ‘Well, I cannot promise you, Mary, ’cos I know I’ll break my promise. You see, I like watching the ladies and gentlemen at their games.’

  Again Mary put her hand across her mouth. Then the sound of a door closing brought her to her feet and all she could say to Barbara was, ‘Oh, miss! Miss!’ before the governess entered the room.

  Miss Brigmore was of medium height. She would have been termed very pretty if she hadn’t looked so prim. Her hair was brown, her eyes were brown, and her mouth was well shaped. She had a good skin and a well-developed figure, in fact her bust was over-developed for her height.

  Miss Brigmore was thirty years old. She had come from a good middle-class family, and up till the age of sixteen had had her own governess. The fact that her governess’ wages, together with those of the eight other staff her father kept in his house on the outskirts of York, and the establishment of his mistress in the heart of that city, were being supplemented by the clients of his bank, wasn’t made public until Anna Brigmore was almost seventeen.

  Her mother did not sustain the shock of her husband’s imprisonment but Anna did. When she buried her mother she also buried her father. When she applied for her first post of governess she said she was an orphan; and she actually was an orphan when, at twenty-four, she entered the service of Mr Thomas Mallen of High Banks Hall in the County of Northumberland, there to take charge of his two nieces.

  On her first encounter with Thomas Mallen she had not thought, what a gross, pompous individual! for her heart had jerked in her breast. She was not aware that most women’s hearts jerked in their breasts when Thomas Mallen looked at them. He had a particular way of looking at a woman; through long practice his look would convince them that they were beautiful, and interesting, and above all, they were to be desired.

  During her six years in the Hall Miss Brigmore had made no friends. She had been brought up to look upon servants as menials, and the fact that she was now earning her own living did not, in her mind, bri
ng her down to their level.

  Miss Brigmore now looked at the children’s embroidery and her brief comment was, ‘You have been idling; go and get ready for bed,’ and turning towards Mary Peel she added, ‘See to them.’ Then she went through the day nursery and so into the schoolroom. Taking from the shelves three books, she sat down at the oblong table and began to prepare the lessons for the following day, but after a moment or two she pushed the books aside and rose to her feet, then went to the window where she stood looking out into the darkness. Yet through the darkness she pictured the lake as she had seen it earlier in the day. She could see them all in pairs, with hands crossed, weaving in and out; she could see the children tumbling about; she could hear the laughter in which she did not join.

  She, like the children, preserved a vivid memory of the skating party because the master had looked at her from the ice. He had not only looked at her, he had laughed at her. But he had never asked her to skate. No-one had thought to ask her to skate. And she could skate; at one time she had been an excellent skater…at one time she had been young. But now she was thirty. Yet the master had looked at her as if she were still young…Slowly she left the window and returned to the table.

  It was around eleven o’clock when the first squeals of delight floated faintly up from the far hall to the nursery and brought Barbara sitting upright in bed. Hugging her knees, she strained her ears to listen. What games were they playing tonight? Would Uncle Dick be chasing Miss Fanny along the gallery, and when he caught her would he pull her behind the curtains like she did with Connie when they were playing hide-and-seek with Mary? Or would one of the ladies slide down the banister again? She had actually seen one start at the top but she had been unable to see what happened when she reached the bottom; but she had heard the squeals of laughter. Then there was the time she had seen three gentlemen in their nightshirts carrying someone shoulder high down the main staircase. She hadn’t been able to see if it was a lady or a gentleman they were carrying, only that the person’s feet and legs were bare up to the knees.