The Mallen Litter

by Catherine Cookson

  When he came up to her and stopped at the foot of the stairs and stared into her face for a moment before going on up them with never a word, she knew without doubt there were now three in the secret, and if she knew anything it wouldn’t remain a secret for much longer.

  He had almost reached the top of the stairs before she moved, and he was opening his bedroom door when she called softly from the stairhead, ‘Sir! Sir!’ When she reached him he was in the room, the door in his hand, and he turned and looked at her as she muttered below her breath, ‘Oh sir. Sir.’ He blinked as if trying to get her into focus; then he lifted his hand and pushed her away and banged the door.

  With the flat of his hands now against it and his two arms stretched taut he stood as if about to do an exercise. The next minute he had pulled the door open again, his head down as if he were about to run but he stopped when he saw Ruth still standing on the landing.

  ‘Whisky,’ he said. ‘Bring me the decanter and…and a glass.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Yes, sir.’

  She ran down the stairs, and returned within a matter of minutes, and went straight into his room without knocking and placed the decanter and the glass on a side table. Then looking at him where he was standing now, his back to her, gazing out of the window, she said softly, ‘I…I would lie meself down if I were you, sir.’

  He didn’t answer until she moved; then he turned and said, ‘Tell…tell your mistress I’—he stopped, blinked, gulped, then ended, ‘I have gone to bed with’—he patted his cheek.

  ‘Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I’ll do that. I will, I’ll do that.’ She nodded at him as she backed away, then she went out and closed the door gently after her.

  It was more than half an hour later when Barbara entered the house and was informed by Ada that the master had come home with a bad face-ache after having a tooth out and had gone to bed. She said nothing about Ben’s escapade; Ruth had warned her to keep her mouth shut. Ruth Foggety, Ada knew, as also did the cook and, of course, Betty, had a standing in the house and the ear of the master, if not the liking of the mistress, who put up with her merely because she could manage the tribe in the nursery. The mistress might rule the house but Ruth Foggety was the power on the top floor.

  Barbara went straight to her room and took off her outdoor things. But before leaving the room to go and see how Dan was she stood thinking for a moment. She regretted having been out when he came home; but he had never been home in the afternoon for years, not on a weekday at any rate. She remembered vividly the last time he had appeared unexpectedly in the house in the afternoon. It was on the day she had met Michael in the wood for the first time.

  She went out and across the landing and tapped on his door, then gently opened it. She saw that he was lying on his side; on closer inspection she imagined he was asleep and had been helped there by a generous dose of whisky—she had filled the decanter herself that very morning.

  She stood looking down at him. His face was very swollen, his mouth distorted. He had a nice shaped mouth, wide, the lips full, yet she had never been able to feel its contact without experiencing a slight revulsion, whereas Michael’s mouth…She mustn’t stand here thinking such things. Yet she couldn’t help but make comparisons for her body was still warm from Michael’s embraces.

  She wondered she had not become pregnant. She told herself she must remember this as a possibility and not spurn Dan’s advances completely. How long was it since he had been in her bed? Eight weeks? Ten weeks? She must allow him there again. She didn’t know how she’d be able to suffer it but that was another of the penalties she must pay for Michael. She was already paying through Brigie.

  She had never imagined Brigie’s displeasure would have affected her so much. Nowadays Brigie looked at her as if she despised her, as she likely did. Brigie’s look made her feel unclean, and she wasn’t unclean. In going to Michael she was fulfilling a function that but for Brigie’s interference in the first place would have been her natural right.

  She moved slowly away from the bed and out of the room. She felt tired, she would like to go to bed herself at this moment, and if she did she knew she would fall into a deep, deep relaxed sleep. She wanted to sleep in the wood; oh, how she had wanted to go to sleep in Michael’s arms. They had found a secluded spot in the depth of a thicket, and even when the few frequenters of the wood passed near them they could not see them, and the undergrowth of leaves and twigs always heralded anyone’s approach.

  Their meeting today had been ecstatic for they hadn’t met for three weeks. Last Friday and the Friday before that he had been unable to come, and she had felt desolate. The reason, he said, was that Hannah had been very ill. She had caught a fever and at one time he had despaired of her life, but now she was out of danger and no protests had been made by the other two when he proposed his fishing trip, for he had sat up the best part of a fortnight with the child.

  She had suggested today that it might be expedient in the future if they were to find some little place in an isolated spot that they could rent. She did not tell him that with this in mind she had made a friend of a Mrs Turner, whom she had met casually at the dressmaker’s. She had cultivated Mrs Turner’s acquaintance when she had heard that the lady had a cottage, lying on the outskirts of Hexham which she let to summer visitors. She was quite entitled to a day out and the journey from Newcastle would be quite simple. It might not be so simple from Michael’s end but nevertheless she knew he would undertake it.

  Oh, how she wanted a long, long day with Michael, a long day that she could turn into a long night. How wonderful would have been their life together if they had married, something beautiful, exquisite, exciting. He had merely to put his lips on hers and her body would respond immediately. Her passion not only equalled his but went beyond it; she thought of it as giving completely of herself.

  Following her line of duty, she now went up into the nursery and there found Ben in the sulks. He would not speak to her, not even raise his head to look at her because she had refused to allow him to accompany her on the walk. Because she felt happy she acted gently towards him, and put her hand on his shoulder and said softly, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, my dear. Tomorrow; I promise you we’ll go for a walk tomorrow.’

  When he shrugged his shoulder from her touch and turned his head still further away she exclaimed sharply, ‘Now you’re acting childishly, like a little girl.’

  She was actually startled by the way he turned on her.

  His head came up as his body swung round and brought him to his feet, and his face scarlet and his lips trembling, he shouted at her, ‘I don’t want to come tomorrow, I don’t want to come with you tomorrow or any time. I don’t! I don’t!’

  ‘That is enough, Ben. You are being rude; I shall tell your father.’

  When Ruth hurried from the other room and made towards Ben, she said to her, ‘See that he goes to bed, and at once. And…and don’t give him any pudding with his meal. Now that is an order; he’s not to have any pudding with his meal.’

  Ruth looked up at her mistress. Her eyes unblinking, she stared at her until Barbara said, ‘What is it? What do you wish to say?’

  ‘Nothin’, madam.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t wish to say anything I will thank you to take that expression off your face when you are looking at me.’

  When the girl continued to stare at her in the same fashion she found herself blinking. She couldn’t put a name to the look on the girl’s face; she was, she supposed, telling her, in the only way she dared, that she disapproved of her slapping Benjamin. At this moment she had the desire to slap her as well. When people annoyed her she always wanted to strike out at them. It was an urge she had to conquer and to remind herself frequently that her present way of life was the result of just one such urge. Nevertheless she would dearly love to be rid of this girl. But she was too valuable in her services and it had to be admitted that she cared for the children.

  She turned about and went into the day nursery where Jona
than and Harry were sitting at a table drawing, and with no small art on Jonathan’s part.

  They both looked up as she came towards them and said, ‘Hello, Mama.’

  ‘Hello, dears.’ She touched first one head and then the other. ‘What are you drawing?’

  ‘I’m drawing a ship,’ Harry said.

  ‘Look what I’ve done.’ Jonathan held up the block to her and she exclaimed, ‘Why, that’s splendid! I…I seem to know the face, who is it?’

  ‘Mr Purvis.’

  ‘Of course, of course, Mr Purvis.’ She put her head down until her chin was resting on Jonathan’s hair and she laughed gently as she said, ‘Poor Mr Purvis, with his drooping eye. You must never let him see it.’

  ‘His lid twitches when he gets excited,’ put in Harry.

  ‘And he sniffs,’ said Jonathan. ‘Like this.’ And when he demonstrated, Barbara, assuming disgust, said, ‘Oh dear. Oh dear. How dreadful.’ Then she stooped and kissed first one and then the other before saying, ‘Be good boys now,’ which was her usual form of farewell.

  As she made to go Jonathan asked, ‘Will you come and see us in bed, Mama?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’ll be up later.’

  The moment Barbara left the nursery floor, Ruth came into the day room and, going to the table, she said, ‘Good lads,’ and they looked up at her and laughed. And when Harry, pulling a face, said, ‘We’re going to share our pudding with Ben, we heard Mama,’ she put a hand on each head and rumpled their hair, and as they laughed together she said, ‘You’ll do, the pair of you. Go on in now and cheer him up…’

  Barbara looked in on Dan again about nine o’clock. He was still asleep. She went to her room and by ten o’clock she too was asleep. It was around this time that Dan awoke. His head was bursting; his mouth was full of blood and tasted vile. His face was swollen even more now, and his lips were so stiff he could scarcely move them.

  Painfully he pulled himself up in the bed. The gas mantle was turned down low; someone had been in and lit it. He tried to collect his thoughts. Something awful had happened, something dreadful. Life had exploded, but how? Why? He couldn’t think. The pain in his head and jaw was excruciating. He wanted a drink. He turned his head slowly and looked towards the table. The decanter was still there, but it wasn’t that kind of a drink he wanted; it was a hot drink, something warm and soothing.

  God! What had happened to him? He brought his legs over the side of the bed and as they touched the floor he remembered, not that the dentist had made four attempts before he got his tooth out and then had broken it in the process, but that his son had seen his mother kissing another man in the wood.

  He remembered too that she had come into the room and he had feigned sleep and had only just stopped himself from springing up and grabbing her by the throat and choking her until he should feel her life slowly ebb away, as his had done this afternoon when he stood outside the summer house and listened to a servant remonstrating with his son to keep his silence and so save the boy from losing a mother and the husband from losing a wife.

  But he had lost his wife, that is if he had ever had a wife. Yes, that was the question, if he had ever had a wife. For her he had been but the means of escape. And let him face it; he had known what he was taking on, and he had been glad of the chance to take it on because he imagined that no man could love a woman as he did her, and as he had done from a very young boy, and in the end fail to gain her love in return. Love bred love…

  But not in this case…Annie of Tharaw. He’d never sing Annie of Tharaw again.

  How long had it been going on? Oh, a long time. Yes, yes, a long time; definitely since they came to live here, and that was almost four years ago. She had hoodwinked him all this time. She had lain in his own arms, let him love her, when perhaps that very day, that very afternoon, during her walk, she had lain with him the big fellow, the blond farmer…God Almighty, if only he had him here! As big as he was, as strong as he was, he’d drive a knife into him. It was a pity he didn’t possess a gun. But he could hire one and go to the farm tomorrow and shoot the swine dead…That’s if he were that kind of a man; but he wasn’t that kind of man, was he? No, he was the kind of man who was made weak through love.

  Well, was he just going to sit back and take it?

  What would happen if he brought it into the open?

  He would lose her. She would go to Radlet like a homing pigeon. And he couldn’t bear the thought of that, could he?

  No, no, anything but that. He dropped his aching head into his hands. Why hadn’t she left him? Was it because of concern for him, or was it because of the children?

  Whatever had stopped her from going to Radlet had been through concern of some kind; she hadn’t been callous enough just to walk out and leave them.

  But there was another side to it. Perhaps Radlet was obliged to stay where he was; perhaps his conscience would not allow him to leave the wife whom Barbara had crippled, nor his mother who doted on him, nor his daughter, for he understood he had a daughter.

  He rose from the bed and staggered to the door and opened it. The landing was dimly lit. He looked across it towards the door of the room that was rightly his, and there swept over him a feeling of such rage that his mental and physical pain was blotted out. For a moment he was his father and raging against duplicity and the fact that he was being made a cuckold.

  He had never held himself in high esteem, he was aware that he possessed no exceptional talents, he was the offspring of ordinary parents, and had his father not made money he would likely have married an ordinary woman of his own class. But his father had made money, and had bought a mansion, and had sent his sons to a school where they had learned the manners of those who lived in mansions; yet he knew that all he had learned merely formed a cloak, a façade, to cover his real self, for all the education in the world could not penetrate a man’s real being, the being that was the core of him. He also realised that in spite of his rage there wasn’t enough of his father in him to burst open the door and drag her from the bed, and leave his mark on her with his fist. He only wished there was, for at least then he would have added to his meagre store of self respect.

  Although he was sober his step was that of a drunken man as he went down the stairs, across the hall and into the kitchen.

  The light was still on and Ruth was sitting by the table. She’d had her head down on her arms until the door opened; now she raised it, peered towards him and blinked the sleep out of her eyes; then she was on her feet, saying, ‘Oh my, sir! My, look at that face! Sit yourself down.’

  She pulled a chair forward, and he gripped its back and lowered himself onto it. Then putting an elbow on the table he rested his brow on his hand.

  ‘You want a drink, something hot? Hot milk? That’s it, hot milk.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. Then, his lips moving stiffly, he said, ‘Coffee, black, strong.’

  She hurried from one side of the kitchen to the other, and no more words were spoken until she placed the steaming cup of coffee, not on the table, but into his hand, and as if she were dealing with a very old man, or a young child, she guided his other hand towards the handle, saying softly, ‘Drink it up now. Drink it up.’

  Not only was the coffee too hot for his tender mouth but he found he couldn’t open his lips wide enough to take the cup. Swiftly now she took it from his hands and, pouring some of the coffee into the saucer, she blew on it, then held it to his mouth, and he sipped at it, then gulped, and in that way he finished the cupful.

  The next thing she did was to bring a bowl of hot water to the table and dip in it a flannel cloth, which she wrung out, waved in the air for a moment, then gently applied to the side of his face.

  As the soothing warmth penetrated his skin he gave a small sigh and relaxed against the back of the chair.

  ‘That better?’ Again and again she wrung out the cloth; then renewed the water and continued with the applications.

  After a while he put out his hand and, his l
ips moving easier now, he muttered, ‘Thanks. Enough for…for the time being. Thanks.’

  As she went to the sink and emptied the dish and hung up the flannel she talked. ‘By! Whoever did that job on you the day wants to go back and learn his trade. I’ve never seen anything like it in me life. You look for all the world as if you’d been hit by a crane. If he had used a grapple on you he couldn’t have done more damage. They say salt and water’s a good thing, hot salt and water. I’d keep washing it out, sir.’ She came to the table now and, bending down to him, she said, ‘If I made you some hot toddy do you think you could manage it?’

  He shook his head.

  Slowly she slid down into the chair opposite to him and, her forearms on the table and her hands joined, she looked at him sadly before saying, ‘You should be in bed, sir.’

  He raised his head. ‘I’ve been in bed, Ruth.’ The words came out of the side of his mouth.

  ‘You want to go back again, sir, and stay there for a day or so.’

  They stared at each other for fully a minute; and then, turning from her, he dropped his face into his hands and although he felt he was sinking to the bottom of self-abasement he could not still the rising tide of tears that swept up through his body and gathered in his throat before pouring from his eyes, nose and mouth.

  He had cried when his mother died and he had cried in private but with joy when his sons were born, and he had cried at the loss of his father, but this was crying such as he had never experienced before. It was a tidal wave of anguish which swept away the remains of his self-respect and his manhood.