‘We had a talk earlier.’ She began to cry as her tongue loosened and she gabbled, ‘I said to him that Joe would never have found another job by himself, that it was down to Jake he had come to the farm. And it was, it was, but in a good way, that’s what I meant. In a good way. And Joe, he’s only just turned nineteen.
Nineteen
.’
‘I know, lass.’
‘And now Mr Wood and maybe the others too will blame Jake. They won’t remember all he’s done for them. They’d be in the workhouse now if it wasn’t for him.’
It was a little while before she calmed down and then she sat with her hand tightly across her mouth as though to prevent more words. Dr Stefford made another pot of tea and he was just about to pour them a cup when a tap at the kitchen door announced Clara’s arrival.
‘Ee, lass, lass.’ Clara took Hannah into her arms, holding her tight. ‘What a thing to happen, I can’t believe it.’ Both women’s faces were wet when they drew apart.
Dr Stefford poured three cups of tea. He let Clara and Hannah drink theirs before he said, ‘I shall make arrangements for the body to be collected early tomorrow morning before Jake comes to. Because of the circumstances there will have to be a post-mortem. You understand?’
Hannah nodded. Joe. Oh, Joe. Like Clara, she couldn’t take in the enormity of what had occurred.
‘Jake should sleep until at least midday and I should be back before then. The concussion may or may not have cleared but we’ll see how things are.’ Glancing at Clara, he added,‘I don’t want Hannah left alone tonight.’ He didn’t add, ‘Until the body is collected,’ but both women knew what he meant.
‘I shall be staying, doctor,’ said Clara firmly.
He nodded.‘I shall notify the police and doubtless they will be here first thing in the morning. Now, could you direct me to the home of the other young man concerned? I would like to check him over before I leave.’
When the doctor had gone, Hannah and Clara continued to sit quietly together. The cats had made themselves scarce earlier with all the hullabaloo but now they crept into the kitchen. After circling Joe’s armchair, they made for the back door, ears laid flat against their heads as they miaowed to be let out.
‘They know,’ Clara said as Hannah opened the door. ‘Animals are far more intuitive than folk give ’em credit for.The night Isaac’s wife died his whippets howled for hours, unearthly sound it was and nothing would shut them up. And then there was the time Neville Kirby turned the tractor over and was trapped underneath. Not used to it, see, it being new to the farm in them days. One of the farm dogs, nice old bitch called Josie if I remember right, she went and barked and nipped at some of the men’s trousers who were working in one of the barns till they followed her to the field. Saved Neville’s life she did that day. I used to see Sybil taking her a bowl of whatever they had for dinner for years after, right until the dog died.’
As Hannah reseated herself, Clara glanced at her white face.‘Why don’t you go and get some rest, hinny?’ she said softly. ‘Likely tomorrow will be a full day.’
Hannah shook her head. ‘No, I’ll stay.’
‘You can’t do owt, lass, an’ I’ll come and wake you once it starts to get light.’
Again Hannah shook her head. ‘I want to stay, Clara. I - I know it sounds daft, but I think Joe would want me to. I’m almost family, I grew up with them all and I don’t want him to be alone tonight. Oh, I know you’d be here and he thought the world of you—’
‘Don’t frash yourself, hinny.’ Clara patted her arm. ‘You stay if you want. Look, I’ll make another pot of tea, how about that?’
Hannah didn’t want more tea but she knew the little woman was as upset as any of them and this was her way of coping, to be busy. ‘Thank you. I - I guess it’s going to be a long night. It was good of you to come over, Clara.’
‘Oh, lass, lass, would that I could do more.’ Clara’s bottom lip trembled and she hastily rose from the table. ‘It’s a bad business, this. A bad business.’
Yes, it was a bad business. Hannah’s mind had cleared, despite her grief and shock. It told her that, terrible though the tragedy was, the repercussions for the man presently lying in a drugged sleep upstairs would be worse. Adam and his father would blame Jake for giving Joe a job at the farm, she knew that, but if his mother added to the guilt which Jake had immediately taken upon himself, what would that do to him? Over the last twelve months since she had lived in such close proximity to him, she had come to realise he was far from being the cold, self-assured individual he presented to the world, a figure who remained aloof and untouched by the normal ups and downs which were most folk’s lot. That was just his outer shell, but like a turtle he had a soft centre that was as vulnerable as the next person’s - more probably, in Jake’s case.
She stared at Clara who was busying herself at the range making the tea, her back to the room. Hannah’s heart was beginning to thump hard; she knew that if it had been in her power she would have done anything to protect Jake from the condemnation that would undoubtedly come from his stepfather and Adam, maybe from all of them. He had had enough to put up with in his life; this wasn’t fair.
Then a question came, sharp, piercing: shouldn’t she be more upset about Joe’s death than how Jake was feeling?
She was upset, she answered herself. Of course she was, terribly upset, but like Dr Stefford had said, there was nothing anyone could do about Joe. But Jake, he had to live on. And somehow she understood him like she had never understood Adam. The anguish she had seen in his eyes tonight was no passing thing. They said time healed everything but she didn’t believe that. It depended on who and what - on lots of things. Some folk felt with their soul, and such depth of feeling was both a curse and a blessing.
‘Here, get this down you, hinny.’ Clara returned to the table and poured the tea.
‘I’ll take Seamus a cup first.’ She knew the farmer would be in a state but she had needed to get a grip on herself before she went to see him.
‘Aye, all right, lass.’ Clara plumped down in her chair. ‘It’s a pity the master is how he is, it would have helped Jake if he was working with him every day like they used to.’
So Clara, too, knew how Jake was going to feel. For a moment the two women’s gazes joined in perfect understanding. ‘This is just not fair, Clara,’ Hannah murmured brokenly as she stood up.
‘No, hinny, it’s not, but like me old da used to say when we were bairns and said the selfsame thing, neither is a blackbird’s backside but he gets on with life just the same.And that’s what Jake’ll do, you mark my words. He’s no quitter, not Jake.’
No, Jake was not a quitter, Hannah thought as she left the kitchen with Seamus’s tea. And he would get on with life. But at what cost to the inner man?
Chapter 16
Rose did not blame Jake for her son’s death, not even before the post-mortem revealed that Joe had been living on borrowed time for a great many years. His heart had been badly damaged, probably as a result of the attack of measles he had suffered as a child, and the doctors agreed it was a wonder he had reached manhood. Even more of a wonder that he’d endured two or three years working down a coal mine. Dr Stefford had been right. It hadn’t been the blow to his head that had killed Joe but a combination of factors working together on that fateful night which had proved the last straw for his already labouring heart.
Jake heard this pronouncement from Dr Stefford at the farm. His stepfather had flatly refused to let him come to the infirmary and wait in the small side room to hear the findings.
His face continued to hold the blank look which he’d adopted since his return to the farm after visiting the house in Wayman Street on the afternoon after Joe had died two days before. He had hardly opened his mouth since then either, except to give the necessary orders to the men concerning their work. With Daniel still laid low and recovering from the beating he’d sustained, Jake was rising long before it was light and going to bed after midnight, but nothing Seamus or Hannah said could persuade him to rest more or eat properly.
‘Do you understand what I’ve just said, Jake?’ Dr Stefford stared at the man in front of him who seemed to have aged ten years since Joe’s death. ‘He was ill, very ill, but no one knew it. He could have gone anytime.’
‘Or he could have lived on as before.’ And as the doctor went to speak, Jake said, ‘Don’t get me wrong, doctor, I know what you’re trying to say and I’m grateful. But the fact remains he worked down the mine for years and he was all right.’
‘I understand from your mother that Joe was involved in a fracas with the police during one of the marches and had some fingers broken. All that kind of thing would not have helped. You have to get it into your head, Jake, that anything,
anything
could have finished him off.’
‘Dr Stefford’s right, Jake.’ Hannah had been kneading dough at the cooking table in a corner of the room while the two men talked. Now she turned, her voice soft as she said, ‘You’ve taken this solely on your shoulders and it’s not right. You’re tearing yourself apart.’
He didn’t argue with her. There was silence in the kitchen for a moment and then, his voice low, he said, ‘You have to be alive to tear yourself apart.’
She stared straight into the face that she no longer thought of as damaged but simply attractive and answered quietly, ‘Joe wouldn’t have wanted this, for you to feel like this. I know for a fact that the last months were the happiest of his life because he told me so. Not once but many times. He felt reborn, that’s what he used to say. Like a bird let out of its cage and free to fly, to be what it had been born for. And I know something else too. If Joe had had to choose between the life he had before he came here and going on another five, ten, even twenty years, or these last months, he’d have taken his time at the farm and thanked you for it.’
This time the silence stretched further. It was Dr Stefford who broke it. He and Jake were sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of Hannah’s homemade lemonade in front of them and he took a sip before saying, ‘Remember that blackbird you and Seamus had in here some three or four years back?’ Turning to Hannah, he said, ‘A hawk had tried to take it, damaged its wing, and Jake found it out on the bridle path. It would have been easy to hit it over the head but Jake brought it in and they put it in an old cage Seamus’s wife had used for her budgerigars. Took a while, but the wing healed and in the meantime that old blackbird grew fat on a diet of worms and what have you. I remember it used to sing like a canary.You remember that, Jake? And then I came one time and it had gone. You recall what you said to me on that occasion, Jake?’
Jake stared at the elderly doctor.
‘I’ll remind you,’ said Dr Stefford. ‘I asked where it was and you said you’d let it go because it had recovered. But it was happy in that cage being fed, said I. Safe too. And you said—’
‘You wouldn’t have said it was happy if you had seen the difference when it flew free,’ Jake put in quietly.
‘Right.’ Dr Stefford looked at him. ‘Like the lass said, that blackbird was doing what it had been born to do and an existence in a cage, even one gilded with plenty of food and warmth, was no comparison. I asked you what you’d do if the hawk took it again and you said one day’s freedom with the sun on its wings being a blackbird again was worth years as a caged bird.’
‘That was a bird.’
‘Aye, it was, and it chose its own destiny same as Joe did. He was no bairn, Jake.’
The story had touched Hannah to the point where her neck muscles were tight and her throat so blocked she couldn’t speak. Swallowing deeply, she managed to murmur, ‘You enabled him to fly, Jake. Don’t you see? For the first time in his life Joe was truly happy. But that apart, his death was not your fault. It wasn’t even solely the poacher’s fault. And if he hadn’t gone like that, if he’d got ill and lingered, he would have hated it.’
‘Don’t tell me that him going so suddenly was the best thing that could have happened,’ Jake said roughly.
She found herself flushing at his tone but her voice was verging on sharpness when she said, ‘Why? Why shouldn’t I when it’s what I believe? You’re entitled to your opinion, Jake Fletcher, but don’t forget other people are entitled to theirs too. And everyone would agree with me and not you, I might add.’
She watched him turn his head and rub his hand tightly across his mouth. ‘Not everyone.’
‘You mean Mr Wood and Adam?’