‘Yes, missis.’ Rory cut a slice of bread from a new loaf and put a tablespoonful of pease-pudding on it, and all the while Mrs Cornwallis stood by the table looking towards the far door. Yet nothing seemed to escape her, for without turning her head she said, ‘You needn’t be stingy, give him another dollop. An’ you can cut him a slice of brawn.’
‘Yes, missis; thanks, missis.’
When Sammy was only halfway through his meal the far door opened and the doctor, coming into the room, closed it after him. He glanced at the two boys, then said to Mrs Cornwallis, ‘Come downstairs a minute, will you?’ and on this he marched out of the room. Mrs Cornwallis followed him.
They had no sooner gone than Sammy, putting the knife and spoon down onto the plate, looked up at Rory and said, ‘I can’t eat no more, Rory.’
‘You can’t eat that, that good food?’
‘It’s made me full up.’
‘Give it here.’ Rory picked up the plate quickly and finished off the food before saying, ‘The missis would be vexed to see good food left on the plate. You’ll have to learn to eat everything she puts afore you. But there—’ he looked down at the weary face and added gently, ‘Likely you will; it’s all strange. Come on.’ He held out his hand and led Sammy out into the passage and pushed him up the steep ladder into the loft, and there, having tucked him up in the pallet bed on the floor, he knelt for a moment beside him and whispered, ‘All right?’
‘Aye, Rory. Do…do you think she’ll let me stay?’
‘I hope so, but as she says, it’ll rest with the master. I’ve got to go now, so go to sleep.’
‘Aye, Rory…Rory?’
‘Yes, what is it?’
Sammy moved his head on the pillow and his eyelids blinked and the muscles of his face jerked as if he had the tick before he said, ‘Ta for bringin’ me.’
‘Aw, you!’ Rory pushed gently at the top of his brother’s head, then got up swiftly and left the attic.
When he entered the living room he saw that the bedroom door was partly open and he heard Mr Cornwallis’s voice saying, ‘Give over, woman, give over, I’ve got to think,’ then Mrs Cornwallis’s voice answering, ‘And I’ve got to think an’ all; I’ve got to think for you. You’re in a bad way, you know that. Oh, that this should happen! Are you in pain?’
‘No, no, I’m not in pain. I wish I was; I wish I could feel my back, but I can feel nothing; once I can feel I’ll know there’s hope for me. But that’s not worrying me at the moment.’
Now Mrs Cornwallis’s voice said slowly and emphatically, ‘If you can’t go, you can’t go.’
‘Woman, if I can’t go then somebody’s got to go.’
Rory found himself staring towards the door. He knew he shouldn’t be listening but there was a desperate urgency in his master’s tone that kept his ears stretched. Then his mistress said two words. She said them with such force, such bitterness that he was startled.
The words were ‘blue baccy’.
Then she repeated them. ‘Blue baccy!’ she said again, and it was as if she were swearing, cursing.
The master was speaking quietly now, saying, ‘Somebody’s got to go, woman.’
‘You could send a letter.’ The mistress’s voice had a pleading note in it.
‘Not to her I couldn’t. Anyway, a letter wouldn’t be able to carry it back, would it?’
‘She would understand this once.’
‘No, no; not Ma.’
The master was talking about his mother. It was his mother he travelled to the other side of the country to see. He was a dutiful son; the men at the shop, everyone in the village knew he was a dutiful son, but his mother mustn’t be a very nice woman if she wouldn’t take any notice of a letter and understand he had hurt his back and couldn’t come.
His master’s voice was very low now and he could only catch a few words here and there, such as, ‘No, no. God sakes, woman! I couldn’t trust Morley.’ Then his mistress’s voice talking rapidly and ending, ‘You may have to.’ Then the master again, ‘Never! Nor one of his house. I…I’ve got to think.’
The conversation became muttered and too low for Rory to follow, and as the thought came to him that the missis would be very vexed if she found him, with his lugs cocked as it were, he was about to turn away when there she was standing in the open doorway looking at him. He felt the colour flushing up over his body and right up to his head as if he had been caught doing something really bad.
‘I’ve…I’ve put him to bed, missis. I’ve…I’ve just come down to see what you want doin’.’
Rose Cornwallis looked at him as she walked down the length of the room and to the table and she continued to stare at him without speaking while the colour deepened in his face and he stammered, ‘Is…is the master bad, real bad, missis?’
Mrs Cornwallis now closed her eyes for a moment and made a small motion with her hand. It was as if she had been dozing and had just come awake, and she said quite quietly, and gently, ‘Yes, boy, he’s bad, very bad.’
‘Can I do anything, missis?’
‘Yes, boy, yes, yes, I think you can. But first of all, get yourself some food. Then get off to bed.’
‘Yes, missis; yes, I’ll do that. But…but if you want me to stay up, sit with the master I will, I’m not tired, not a bit.’
‘Thanks, boy, I may take you at your word. But do as I bid you now; if I need you I’ll call.’
‘Aye, missis. I’ll be waiting.’
Again she said, ‘Thanks, boy,’ and they stared at each other for a moment before he turned away and went downstairs.
Chapter Two
Rory was woken from a deep sleep and a wonderful dream, in which he had been loading the furniture from the stinking cottage in Hebburn onto a handcart; and although it was only a small handcart he had laid his parents’ pallet bed on it, his father still lying there. He had packed the children round the edges, even Bill, who, under ordinary circumstances, would surely have been in the blacking factory while it was daylight; but there he was perched on the tail end of the handcart. They were going to a new home, and the new home had wooden floors.
‘Aye? Yes? Oh! Oh, missis! Do…do you want me?’ he stammered, blinking and peering up through the candlelight at Mrs Cornwallis, and she whispered, ‘Yes, boy. But come quietly; don’t disturb the youngster.’
‘Is the master worse?’
‘No worse, no better, boy. There now, come along. It doesn’t matter about your coat, I’ll give you a blanket to put round you.’ In the living room she stopped and, putting her hand on his shoulder, said, ‘Your master is not asleep, but he wants to talk to you, and very serious talk. Listen carefully, boy, and you won’t lose by it, you understand? He has a great opinion of you, boy, a warm liking.’ The words brought a swelling into his throat; but it was a comfortable swelling, not the choking kind.
‘Come now.’ She led the way into the bedroom, and Rory followed her slowly to the big four-poster bed in which the master was lying.
When the door closed behind her John Cornwallis made a small movement with his hand and he said, ‘Turn the chair, boy, so that you’re looking at me squarely.’
Rory did as he was bid; then he became embarrassed, for the master didn’t speak but just lay staring at him.
He had come to the stage when he didn’t know where to put his hands and was about to place them in between his knees, as he often did when lost for words, when his master said something that made him forget everything else. ‘You’ll remember this night for as long as you live, boy,’ he said. ‘When you’re an old man you’ll look back on it and you’ll say to your children, it started then, that night sitting by me master’s bedside.’
Rory blinked rapidly. He could say nothing. He had no idea what the master was on about.
‘Do you like me, boy?’
‘Aw aye, Master. Yes, very much I like you.’ He could say this without hesitation.
‘Would you do me a service if you could?’
; ‘Yes, Master. I think you know that, ’cos I owe you a great deal. If there’s any way I can pay you back I will, an’ like a shot.’
‘There’s a way you can pay me back, boy; oh, yes, there’s a way you can pay me back.’ The master’s eyes were closed now and his head was moving slowly. When he opened his eyes again there was a look of deep pain in them, and he said, ‘There’s no real black in this world and there’s no real white. I’m not referring to the colour of a man’s skin, boy, but to a man’s character. Remember that, remember those words. No soul is really black, and no soul is really white.’
‘Aye, Master.’ It was on the point of Rory’s tongue to say, ‘I think your soul’s white, Master.’ But then you didn’t say things like that, you only thought them.
‘You know I was to make a journey the day after the morrow, don’t you?’
‘Aye, Master.’
‘Where was I going?’
‘Where was you going?’ Rory jerked his chin sideways, then said, ‘Where you always go, Master, when you make a long journey, down to the West Country, right across the land to the West Country to visit your mother.’
‘Aye, right across the land to the West Country to visit my mother…But I can’t go, can I?’
Rory said nothing to this.
‘So I’m going to send you in my stead.’
‘Me, Master?’
‘You, Rory.’
‘Right across the country?’
‘Right across the country.’
Rory made to get up from his chair. He half raised himself by gripping the arms, then sat down again; and now he did put his joined hands between his knees and rocked his body backwards and forwards two or three times before he said, ‘You want me to take a message to your mother?’
‘…Yes, Rory.’
After staring at the master for a moment Rory glanced towards the lamp on the table to the left of him, then he looked down at his hands. Why couldn’t the master send the message by letter? It could get there as quick as him, quicker maybe.
‘Boy, give me your hand.’
Rory pulled his hands from between his knees and extended one towards his master and felt the hard fingers wind round his and grip them. Presently, while they both gazed at each other, John Cornwallis said, in a voice that was not without a tremor, ‘Boy, I don’t know how long I’ve got to live. If what has happened to my back is what I think has happened, I could lie here for ten years, or just ten days. But however long I’ve got of life I’m entrusting it to you this night. From now on you’ll hold my life in your hands. Do you understand me?’
No, Rory did not understand him. ‘You talk, Master,’ he said, ‘as if you were in trouble, real trouble.’
‘You’ve said the right words, boy. I am in trouble, real trouble.’
Rory’s face puckered. ‘You hold my life in your hands,’ the master had said, yet of one thing he was certain, whatever trouble the master was in it wasn’t of his own making. But he was speaking again. ‘Tomorrow early you’ll go into Newcastle and you’ll buy yourself a good suit of clothes, boy, and an overcoat and stout boots and stockings. Now listen carefully. I’ll tell it to you slowly what you have to do, but I’ll also write it down on paper so you can’t go wrong.’
The master now lay silent for some minutes and the only sound in the room was the gasping of his breath; then slowly he said, ‘You’ll take the train from Newcastle to York…’
‘The train, Master! Go in one of them?’
‘Listen, boy.’ The master’s words came slower still. ‘Before we see each other again you may have travelled by stranger ways than in a railway carriage.’
‘Aye, Master.’ Rory swallowed deeply.
‘You will go by York to London. Now everything will be straightforward from here to London. It is from there that the journey may be difficult. It is three years since I went that way, and then it was all stops and starts and changes. However, you will finally get by train to Axminster, an’ from there you’ll take a slow coach to your destination…’
‘To your mother’s house, Master?’ Rory’s voice was eager, but as he watched his master lift his hand and cover his eyes he shook his head at himself—he should keep his mouth shut and listen and not interrupt his master.
The master now went on: ‘The house is called “St Helier’s House” and the name of my…the lady is Ma…Miss…Mrs Bluett.’
Mrs Bluett! Rory’s lips formed the name but he didn’t speak it aloud. The master’s mother; she’d surely be called Cornwallis, not Bluett. But then, she could have married again. Aye, that was it.
The master had now taken his hand from his eyes and was looking at him and the look disturbed him. He felt forced to enquire, ‘Are you in pain, Master?’
‘No, boy, not as you know pain.’ His hand came out again, and once more Rory’s was gripped between the work-worn bony fingers.
‘Can I trust you, boy?’
‘With me life, Master. I’ve said it.’
‘Aye, an’ I know it. I trust you, boy, as I would me own flesh and blood. It may come as news to you, boy, but I look upon you as my flesh and blood, an’ if it wasn’t that you already have a mother and father, and your loyalty is to them, the missis and I would have long since taken you completely into our home.’
Rory’s head moved slightly from side to side. He could find no words with which to express his feelings. Then Mr Cornwallis spoke again.
‘If you had one wish in the whole world, what would it be, boy? Tell me truthfully at this moment.’
Rory’s head stopped moving. He stared back into the grey face on the pillow and he had no hesitation in voicing his wish. ‘A home for me people, Master, that’s me one and only wish, a real home with wooden floors and away from the muck of the town; they need fresh air.’
Mr Cornwallis looked at him for a long while; then he said, ‘When you come back, boy, your wish will be granted. Whether I am alive or dead, I’ll see it is granted.’
‘Oh, Master!’ It was Rory’s hand that went out now and diffidently touched his master’s arm, and Mr Cornwallis patted it for a moment, then cut off Rory’s stammering thanks by saying in a low voice, ‘There are lots of things I could explain to you but they would only befuzzle your brain—and you’ll have enough to puzzle you on the journey, for it will all be strange to you. But listen now, and listen carefully. If anyone should enquire of you where you are bound for, you’re visitin’ your granny…your grandmother…’
‘Me grandmother?’ Rory coughed, then moved his head down, and Mr Cornwallis repeated, ‘Your grandmother, boy. That is the tale you will tell until you reach Axminster. Should you be asked from there on what you are about, just say you’re on your way to St Helier’s House, and nobody will trouble you further. Once there say what you know, I’ve had an accident, and I’m in me bed unable to move me limbs. From then on say nothing. Keep your mouth shut except when you’ve got to open it for politeness or eating. You get my meaning?’
Rory nodded slowly.
‘You may have to stay put for a while, say a couple of days; then you’ll be given a package, perhaps two, to bring back…Now…Now, this is the very important part of your journey, boy, for whatever happens, whatever happens, nobody must know what you’re carrying until you’re in this room again, you understand?’
‘Aye, Master.’ He could say ‘Aye, Master,’ but he didn’t understand the half of it, no, not half of it; fact was, none of it.
John Cornwallis now said, ‘I understand you’ve brought your wee brother back with you to save him from the chimneys; it was a thoughtful deed, an’ you can rest your mind on it. At seven he’s of an age to make himself useful; there’ll be work found for him, never fear.’
‘Thank you, Master.’
‘Go now, boy, for it’ll soon be light. Wash yourself well, an’ eat well, an’’—he paused—‘bring your shirt down to the missis; she’ll want to put a patch or two on it.’
‘Me…me shirt, Master? But…but it’s the
one the missis made for me; it’s good an’…’
‘The safest place to carry a letter is under a patch, boy; an’ that goes for money too an’ all.’
‘…Oh! Oh, aye, Master. Aye, you’re right.’
‘I’ll see you afore you go, boy.’
‘Yes, Master.’ Rory rose from his chair and walked backwards down the side of the bed, then he turned and went hastily from the room.
Mrs Cornwallis was standing in the kitchen as if she had never moved since the moment he had left her, and when Rory came to her side she said softly, ‘Well, boy?’
‘I’m to go on a journey for the master, missis.’
‘Yes, boy.’ She nodded her head three times before adding, ‘And you won’t lose by it, ever. Bring me your shirt down now.’
‘Yes, missis.’
As he turned towards the door her voice stopped him. ‘The master’s a good man,’ she said.
He stared at her, his mouth slightly agape, before he confirmed her words, saying, ‘Yes, missis, I know he’s a good man.’
The dawn was fast breaking, the light was seeping through the attic window, and Rory was ready to go.
Sammy stood beside him. His face white, his brown eyes looking like those of a startled seal, he gazed up at Rory and asked, ‘But will the goat not butt me?’
‘No, I’ve told you, she’s tame. But for goodness sake remember to see she’s well tied up; keep your eye on the ground stake, she’s not called Scapegoat for nothing. You just call Scape! Scape! and she’ll come to you.’
‘And she won’t butt?’
‘No, she won’t butt; it’s a nanny not a billy. She’s as gentle as a kid. Only once she’s off the tether she’ll be away over the fells an’ somebody’ll have to go right to the Inn at Gateshead, and the master’ll get mad; she always makes her way back to the inn, ’cos she remembers the beer she used to get. So you remember. An’ besides that, remember all I’ve told you an’ be a good lad an’ do everything the missis says.’
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