by Priya Sharma
“Don’t be standoffish. Sit down.”
Eliza unpacked the gifts at the table. There were some potatoes and onions from the root cellar, some of Maud’s famous bread, and a pat of butter. Eliza sliced off the crust and spread it with the yellow butter. She took a bite, her face dimpled in pleasure. Gideon liked watching her eat. She savoured each mouthful, her white teeth sinking into the thick slice.
“Where are your mother and sisters?”
The girls no longer went to school.
“My mother’s taken them to Carrside. To the wigmakers.”
There was money in hair. Eliza had sold hers first. She’d explained to Gideon how the wigmaker, Mr. Nicholls, had sniffed at her head and pronounced it sweet, asking her what herbs she used to rinse her hair with. How he’d handled it as though it were already on his workbench.
“Do you regret cutting your hair?” Gideon asked.
“Regret is for people who can afford it.”
Gideon knew that for someone so poor, beauty was a heavy burden. He saw how the villagers looked at Eliza, like something spoiled after she birthed a dead baby out of wedlock, but men stood close to her when they could, casually touching her if they thought they were unwatched.
“Don’t you like it, Gideon? I feel lighter.” Without its full weight, her hair sprang into fetching curls around her face.
“It’s as lovely now as it was before.”
“The robin came again this morning.” Gideon enjoyed her pleasure in the simplest of things. She saved them for him. “He was on the gatepost staring at me with shiny black eyes. Cheeky thing. I threw him some crumbs and you should have seen him hop, Gideon, it was so funny. Little hops with his feet together.”
She covered her mouth as she laughed.
“How is it you’re always so jolly?”
Eliza wiped her hands on her apron even though they were already clean and Gideon regretted the question he’d meant as a compliment. Eighteen. Unmarried. One stillborn baby behind her and her reputation ruined. Nursemaid to her siblings. Both her and her mother slandered at every turn. Eliza lived without hope and kept a tidy house.
“My father used to say never be bitter. Once you’re bitter, you’ll be bitter all your life. My mum’s bitter. And I don’t want to be like her. Not for anything.”
She smiled at him, but her eyes were wet. It brought an unbidden thought to Gideon: Sunshine and rain makes rainbows.
“No. You’re not bitter, Eliza. Never you.”
“Nobody understands me like you do. How old are you now, Gideon?”
“Sixteen.”
“I think of you as much older.” Gideon was head and shoulders above her, his neck and chest thickened by heavy work. “You’re so grown up in the way you act, compared to Davey and Michael, I mean. And your Samuel.” These were Ormeshadow’s most eligible bachelors. “And you’re the most handsome boy in the village.”
The pulse in her neck, the smell of the dried rosemary hung over the stove mixed with her loneliness conspired to confuse him.
“Gideon, you can kiss me if you like,” Eliza blurted out. “I wouldn’t mind.”
Her bottom lip was full and red. He imagined it between his own. A thrill of pleasure shot through him.
“Gideon, I’ve always had a fondness for you. Your aunt Maud means to be kind, but she pities me.”
“She doesn’t mean to.”
“It’s no matter. Everyone pities me, except you. You’re the only one I can really talk to.”
She put out her hands to him. Gideon was always hungry. For so many things. Always cold. To lie down beside her, just for a few minutes, would make him warm again.
If Eliza had learnt to bury her bitterness, Gideon had learnt everything has conditions.
“No, Eliza.” Her dimples disappeared. He couldn’t stand her hurt eyes. “You are worth far more. Don’t hold yourself so cheaply.”
He had never seen a smile so full of heartbreak. The sadness dazzled him.
“But I am cheap, Gideon, or didn’t you know?”
* * *
The snow was melting to dirty slush. The ice in the wheel-ruts had been crushed, revealing the dirt beneath. The frosted boughs were wet and dripping. Gideon walked into the yard of Ormesleep Farm to find his cousins hanging about. He wished them away. He wanted to be alone so he could think about the morning and how Eliza had made him feel. How her curls and tears felt against his neck.
This was the winter that Samuel had found girls and Peter had found God. It earned Peter his father’s derision, but he took his strength from the Lord, walking around like a persecuted saint.
Now Peter preached from a stone slab by the barn. He called out to Gideon. “You should take care around Eliza. She’s the lowest of the low. God will judge her.”
Peter was careful not to be too loud in his denouncement, as his mother was in the house and might hear.
“She is a Jezebel. A harlot.”
“Don’t, Peter.”
Gideon lunged at him and Peter leapt away, skidding on the ice in his bid to reach the house and the safety of his parents.
“He’s right.” Samuel had been watching.
Gideon flushed. “No, he’s not.”
“Yes, he is. Late Eliza is Easy Lizzy now.” He gave Gideon a cheeky grin.
“Don’t call her that!”
Samuel’s smile turned into incredulous laughter.
“You like her, don’t you? Of all the girls to be sweet on, you picked Easy Lizzy!”
“Shut up, Samuel.”
“And who’s going to shut me up?”
It was a challenge. Gideon was as tall as the older boy and they had yet to test each other. Gideon shrugged off his coat and threw it over the broken plough which was waiting to be mended, ready for the spring.
“She’s a slattern, you idiot. Peter’s right. And he’s right about your father, too.”
“What do you mean? What’s he been saying?”
They circled each other.
“That he was a weak sinner.”
“Shut up.”
“A worm of a man who wasn’t fit to live.”
Gideon threw the first punch. As he did, Samuel turned his head so it glanced off his cheek. He responded with a jab to Gideon’s stomach. It took Gideon a second to digest the pain before it made him gasp.
“Come on,” Samuel goaded, “or are you a coward like your father?”
Gideon went for him, head down. He caught Samuel around the waist, lifting him off the ground as he charged. Samuel rained blows upon his back. Gideon slammed him against a wall and Samuel slid down it into a heap.
“Your father was a rotten swine.” Samuel was no longer playing. “He left us. He left us all.”
He scrambled to his feet. Their fists flew, rage taking them beyond sense. Samuel’s uppercut took Gideon’s shoulder, making him stagger backward. Nancy danced around them, low growling in her throat.
“You’re no better than your father. Weak and stupid.”
Gideon kicked his legs from under him. He pummelled Samuel with his fists, not allowing him to get to his feet.
“You have no right to talk about him like that!” Gideon raised his hand again to strike. There was blood on it. It stained the sludge around them. “You’ve no right to talk about him at all!”
The rhythm of the battering was tiring Gideon’s arms, but he couldn’t stop.
“Gideon! Sam!” It was Maud.
Thomas stood in the doorway, blocking it with an arm to keep Maud back.
“Look at the pair of you!” Maud tried to get past, but Thomas sent her inside.
“What’s all the fuss for?” Clare’s voice came from deep within the kitchen.
Gideon continued to bludgeon Samuel even though he should stop, if only for his own sake. Thomas curled his lips at the boys.
“Samuel, get on your feet. I didn’t teach you to stay down except when I tell you to.”
Strolling over, he addressed Gideon. “And you
. . .”
Thomas hit him. There was a flood of colour before Gideon’s eyes and then the world went black.
Spring
THE EWE WAS ON her side in a bed of hay. Gideon watched her chest heaving with the exertion of labour. She was tiring, but now she had started there was no choice for her but to go on.
“Go on, then. Help her, you fool,” Thomas said.
“I am,” Gideon replied through clenched teeth. He waited for the contraction to pass so he could check her birthing position. As it was, the lamb was jammed, unable to go backward to the warm womb that wanted to expel it or forward toward the cold, stark light.
Thomas sat on a bale of hay, giving Gideon the occasional order, but mostly he just watched.
Gideon’s shirtsleeves were rolled up over his elbows and his right forearm was slick with blood and birthing fluids. He tried again, this time feeling a pair of hooves. When he tried to seize them he couldn’t get a proper grip, as they were slippery.
He took his necktie off, as he’d often seen Thomas do, and tied them around the lamb’s ankles. He waited for the sheep to strain again, pulling as gently as he could to help her. The lamb wouldn’t move, and Gideon grew afraid his attempts to haul it out would dislocate its legs.
“What’s wrong?” Thomas asked.
“It’s stuck.”
“Any idiot could tell it’s stuck from the way she’s been struggling. What are you going to do about it?”
Thomas looked at him from under his eyelashes and Gideon knew he was alone in this. He explained his plan.
“Go on, then. But mind, if either die I’ll count them off your mother’s portion of the flock. She’ll not be happy about that.”
Thomas was stringent with his tally.
Gideon went to work. There was the smell of straw and the lowing of the cows who watched the unfolding drama from the stalls. Samuel and Peter had been set the simpler tasks of minding the flock and the farm while Thomas and Gideon saw to the lambing.
Gideon ignored his uncle. He put his hand back into the birth canal, following the forelegs. The lamb was desperate for freedom, its haste making its predicament worse. Its head was bent backward instead of being in the natural birthing position of chin on chest, which would ease its passage. Trying to be gentle, he felt the entrance to the ewe’s womb. The lamb’s shoulders were twisted.
Gideon put his hand on her belly and could feel the enormous pressure of her womb’s contractions. No wonder she was exhausted. The ewe had stopped struggling. He hoped she was conserving her energy for the fight ahead.
When he felt her relax, he pushed the lamb back toward the womb’s opening, one hand on the ewe’s abdomen to ease the lamb into a better position. He grasped the lamb’s head and pulled, so its head was bowed.
“Come and check, Uncle Thomas. If I’m wrong, she’ll run out of steam.”
He meant the ewe. Soon she’d be too tired to push at all and they’d have to cut the lamb free.
“Get on with it yourself,” Thomas replied. Then, less gruffly, “You don’t learn from being idle.”
Despite his words, Thomas was now perched on the edge of the hay bale.
Gideon took the ends of the necktie, which was still attached to the lamb, to help her. Soon a black-tipped face appeared, the lamb’s head pushing out into the world. Then the rest of it followed, slipping onto the straw.
Gideon fell back, laughing with relief and delight. His happiness was unguarded. “It’s a ram!”
Thomas was on his feet too and together they watched the scrawny-necked, knobbly-kneed creature trying to find its footing. His mother licked away the torn membranes to reveal wet, soft curls. The ram bleated at her and she responded.
Gideon washed himself, working the sliver of soap into a meagre lather. He used the cold water in the tin bucket to sluice the blood and muck away, leaving him with goose bumps. He was exhilarated.
Spring opened herself to him each year with primroses and violets, releasing imprisoned tadpoles to race around ponds. There were shy wood sorrel and swallows, flaunting their V-shaped tails. There were the lambs, which he loved. The first memory he had of lambing season was watching his father and Thomas help them birth. They gambolled, they flicked their tails, they bleated and leapt. Why else would they do such things except for pure joy?
Thomas stood by his side and they watched the lamb suckling, greedy for life.
“Go on in and get your supper,” Thomas said, then added, “it’s a wonder you didn’t kill them both.”
The pleasure slid off Gideon’s face. By now he should have been hardened to it.
* * *
Maud put the cooking pot in the centre of the crowded supper table. When she lifted the lid there were curls of steam that smelt of herbs. She served Thomas first, setting a brimming bowl before him, then herself and her own children, leaving Clare and Gideon until last.
Gideon frowned. Maud normally had a good appetite, despite being scrawny. Today her own portion was small and she stirred it often, barely putting the spoon to her mouth. Instead she concentrated on the bread, leaving it dry instead of dipping it into the broth.
Charity was the only one who couldn’t bear the silence. She swung her legs until Peter kicked her.
“Father, may I go and see the lambs after, please?”
Charity knew to be meek when talking to her father.
“Yes, of course. Your mother will take you.” Then to Maud, “She can look, but don’t let her pet them, not tonight, especially the new one.”
“I’m tired. Let Peter do it.”
Charity looked at her father, unsure if this was disobedience or not.
“And why are you so very tired, Maud?” Thomas asked smoothly. “You’ve been unwell all week. Tomorrow we’ll need your help.”
“Gideon’s more than capable. You said so yourself. You told me how he managed the stuck lamb like a real farmer.”
Gideon couldn’t help but look up. Uncle Thomas was scowling.
“Don’t give him ideas, Maud. He’ll get above himself.”
“Charity’s old enough to go herself and do as she’s told, Thomas. And I won’t be helping tomorrow.”
“Why not?” Thomas stared at her, the bread he clutched now flattened in hand.
Gideon rushed each mouthful, swallowing the bread and vegetables half chewed. He had no intention of leaving an unfinished bowl of food should Thomas erupt.
Maud had put down her spoon. She drew back her shoulders. “Thomas, I won’t.”
“Are you ill?” Clare looked from one face to the other, stirring her soup, always stirring.
“I’m tired because I’m pregnant.”
Gideon watched his mother’s eyes widen and then narrow. She shot a look at Maud and then Thomas, like they’d been plotting against her. Thomas seemed to enjoy the drama. He took in their astonished faces as he threw back his head and roared with laughter.
* * *
Clare and Gideon cleaned the plates. From the kitchen window the world outside looked vivid and unreal. Gideon could see the honey-coloured moon stuck low on the dark sky, like a puppet show backdrop he remembered from a long time ago. He wasn’t sure if it was something he’d imagined.
He could hear floorboards creaking above them as Maud and Thomas moved around their bedroom. Gideon tried to tell his mother what it was like in the barn; the life he’d delivered from death, the life he held in his arms for a moment and then set free.
There was smashing as Clare slammed down Maud’s best china jug. It lay in blue and white shards at the bottom of the sink.
“For heaven’s sake, what are you talking about?”
“Why are you so cross?” Gideon was irritated. Her moods were as unpredictable as Thomas’s. “Aren’t you pleased for them?”
Clare turned on him.
“You’re a dolt. Just like your father.” She couldn’t have hurt him more. “Don’t you understand? It’s one more mouth to feed. And Maud will expect me to do all the hea
vy chores alone. You never think, do you? We’re servants. Less than servants.”
“Half the farm is yours.”
“At what cost?” Clare hissed. “I hate it here. I never wanted to come here. This was all your father’s fault.”
“Then why don’t we leave?” Gideon’s voice was all quietness and common sense. Just like his father’s.
Clare threw down the rag she’d been clutching and looked at him as though the thought had never occurred to her before.
“I wonder what he’d do if he thought I was leaving?”
Mr. Hipps Comes Calling
GIDEON KNEW SOMETHING WAS wrong when he saw the fine gelding tethered in the yard. Its chestnut coat gleamed. Gideon stopped outside the open kitchen window. The sweet stench of flowers from inside was so strong that it made him giddy. He submerged himself in the thick ivy, keeping as still as he could so as not to draw the eyes within.
His mother was holding an armful of lilies, the huge bouquet bound with pink grosgrain ribbon.
“Mr. Hipps, they’re beautiful.”
“They’re from Lady Jessop’s hothouse in Bath. Such rare beauty.”
Mr. Hipps wasn’t looking at the flowers, Gideon noticed. Gideon’s mother had on her best dress and had piled her hair up and fastened it with pins. When she got up to put the flowers in water, Gideon shrank back, but she didn’t see him.
“How are you, Mrs. Belman?”
“You see my life. Living here cured any romantic notions I had of idyllic country life. I make the best of it that I can.”
“How is your fine son?”
“Without John here he has had to give up his schooling to help run the farm.”
That his mother hesitated over his father’s name made Gideon’s throat tighten. It had been so long since he had heard it spoken aloud.
“Such a tragedy if he’s as clever as his father was, and I have no doubt he is.”
“Our circumstances have much altered. Without good influence and proper example he is becoming rough and wayward.”
“Does Thomas not offer Gideon guidance?”