Bellman & Black (10 page)

As it turned out, the gap between Rose’s teeth was every bit as pleasant to his tongue as he had imagined.

“Every time you smile, I see that gap and I have to kiss you,” he told her.

“That’ll be a lot of kissing then,” she replied, “because I smile all the time!” And it was true. She was smiling as she said it. He kissed her again.

How many Sundays had it been now? Three, including that first. Only a fortnight then, and a whole new world.

In a field, under a tree, they kissed and clung and petted. His fingers had found the way into her undergarments already, and hers into his.
They were delighted with the thrills hands could give and receive but yearned for more advanced pleasures.

“I want—” he said and, “So do I,” said she.

The trouble was, having got her parents’ cow out of a ditch he was indebted. That good woman, kindhearted and so quick to think of his boots. Making her cross? It was unthinkable. He thought of the tender man who had spoken so soothingly to his terrified cow. No. It was a happy home, and William would not bring grief into it.

But, but, but. They couldn’t go on as they were. Bliss, disaster, call it what you will, the thing was bound to happen sooner or later, they wouldn’t be able to stop themselves. It was a predicament.

On Thursday, in the tenterfield, the solution came to him.

“Uncle Paul!”

Paul half rose in alarm as William burst in. “What is it?” He prepared himself for news of an accident: someone burned or drowned, cloth scorched or torn or blown away.

“I must have the horse. I have to ride to Nether Wychwood.”

“Now? Why?”

“There’s a girl. I have to marry her.”

“This minute? Surely not. Sit down.”

William didn’t sit down. He didn’t even remove his hand from the door handle but stood ready to be out the door the minute he had permission. But he did answer Paul’s questions. Who are her people? And this Rose, what does she do all day? Why is it this girl that you must marry?

They rode to Nether Wychwood together. Paul saw that the Westons were good people. The Westons liked what they saw of Paul. Will and Rose sat palely on the settle, hand in anxious hand. The date was set for a fortnight’s time.

T
he hopes of the Misses Young, which had never matured into expectations, now died. Poll ruffled William’s hair like a pet dog when Ned took him for a last bachelors’ drink in the Red Lion. “Nice girl, is she?” and on learning the answer, “that’s all right then.” The spinsters teased relentlessly until they made William blush, for once he was wed, they would never be able to tease him again. And everywhere he went in the mill, men shook his hand and offered congratulations or jovial warnings. Mute Greg presented him with a pair of figures, a bride and groom, that he had twisted himself out of straw.

William met Fred and Jeannie arm in arm in the high street, she buxom as a hen, he grown fat on bread and contentment: “Good news, William. It’s a sweet life!”

“And this is from Charles,” Paul said. It was a letter congratulating him and letting him know that he was sending a gift for William and his new wife: a painting of Venice, to put on their wall.

And now, walking home after midnight, the night before his wedding day, he failed to see a form hunched low against a wall in the dark. The first he knew of it was when his foot caught and he went flying, hands out to save himself from a fall. The thing he had tripped over sprawled and grunted and something sounded: glass, a bottle tipping over.

“Luke? Is that you, Luke?”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s Will Bellman.”

The figure in the dark groped for something, there was a tiny chinking noise and a murmur of satisfaction. The bottle was not broken, then. The smell of drink was strong off him, and William was not certain that Luke knew who he was, nor whether he knew someone was there at all. He put a hand on Luke’s shoulder—he was even thinner than he had been as a child, if that were possible—and shook gently.

“Luke? You all right? What are you up to, these days?”

There was a long silence, long enough for Will to think the drink had put him to sleep, before Luke came to himself and spoke.

“I remember . . .” Words failing him, Luke resorted to an impoverished pantomime with his shaking hands. Spitting in his palm—well, that was what it looked like—and fingertip meeting thumb with drunken delicacy, and a gesture, fine, stroking, meaningless. Luke expelled a few more syllables—
catapult,
it sounded like that, anyway—and chuckled in pleasure.

William waited, but there was no explanation.

“I’m getting married tomorrow,” he said.

There was no sign that Luke had heard him. After another silence, William made up his mind to go, but Luke’s voice came again: “Do you remember? I remember . . .”

William turned. He walked home for his last night alone in his bed.

I am getting married tomorrow, he told the house as he entered it. I am getting married tomorrow, he told the candle, snuffing it out. He laid down his head and whispered “I am getting married tomorrow” to the pillow. And then, in the moment before he fell asleep, the thought came to him of a drunken night in the Red Lion:
I’ve covered her up, nice and cozy
.

But it didn’t keep him awake. He was getting married tomorrow.

W
illiam Bellman no longer drank at the Red Lion. He played no more games of cards behind the fulling stocks. He had paid his debts, settled his slate. That part of life was over. At the age of twenty-six, the young man had a regular income, health, and the liking and respect of his fellow men. After five years of marriage, he had discovered more reasons to be in love with his wife than he knew on the day he had married her, and when they argued they did it rapidly, effectively, and made it up with good hearts. His daughter Dora was a healthy child, curious and quick to learn, and his baby boy, who in good Bellman tradition they had just named Paul, laughed at everything and grew strong.

Life was good to William Bellman. Even those who did not know him but only saw him in the street could not help but be struck by the impression he gave of himself: here is a man who is healthy, happy, and successful said his gait, and even his clothes, from his hat to his boots, seemed to have a word to add about the positive qualities of their bearer.

William was not unaware of his good fortune, but being more given to action than contemplation, he enjoyed his happiness rather more than he thought about it.

Others were not so lucky.

There came a hammering at the cottage door early one winter’s morning. William opened the door and snow blew in. It was Mute Greg, snow on his shoulders, shivering and with urgency in his eyes.

Was it a fire? Had there been a break-in? Were the machines wrecked? It could not be unrest among the workers: he’d have known. Other millers then, jealousy . . .

William piled his clothes on over his nightshirt and ran with Mute Greg back to the mill. When he was heading toward the buildings, Greg took his arm and tugged. Not that way. He drew a circle with his hand in the cold air: the wheel.

There was no separation between the sky and the land. There was only snow. The only things not white were the oaks. In the upper branches were black clots of twigs, last year’s rooks’ nests. A few mill hands awaited them. These were the men with no homes, who slept in the mill, huddled around the stove that heated the warming plates for the first part of the night. If it was bitter cold they moved then to the seg barrels, put up with the foulness of the stink for the fermenting heat.

William stood by them, and they considered the wheel. Something was impeding its movement. A branch, most likely. Perhaps the weight of snow had made it fall. Or else someone’s timber stack had toppled and a log had rolled into the water, been carried down river, jammed the wheel. Or some desperate soul had stolen a barrel of beer and after drinking the contents had dumped the barrel in the river for fear of discovery.

Will took off his coat and jacket. Hesitation could only make it worse. He lowered himself in a single shocking moment into the water, and only frowned at its bitter sting. Quickly, before the cold could stun him absolutely, he waded to the wheel and peered at the dark shape through the splash and spume, trying to get a sense of its length and its lay. He must get a firm grasp on it in the first moment, before his hands were too cold to know what they were doing. He plunged his arms in to the shoulder, took hold, and heaved.

The first effort achieved a minuscule shifting. At the second the obstacle came free. A hand flailed out of the water and gave William a thump on the mouth. For a second William thought it was his own
fist, benumbed by the cold. He dragged the waterlogged cadaver to the edge; the men grasped the drowned man by his clothing while Greg reached out a hand to Bellman. They came out of the water together, the dead man and the living, icy water streaming off both their bodies.

“What’s going on?” It was Paul, come running, alerted by a messenger. “Good Lord! Who is it? Anyone know?” And then, more urgently, “Get William home, quick, before he freezes to death. Get him dry. Get him warm.”

William felt a fire inside him. He could not carry his own weight, needed a man on each side of him, his arms across their shoulders, and supported like that he could just manage to put one foot in front of the other.

Behind him, they rolled the body over.

“One of the Smith boys,” somebody said. “Better send to the forge and tell his brothers.”

“They won’t want to know. He never had much to do with them. Nor anybody.”

“He’ll have been dead drunk and fallen in. That’s what it is.”

Paul spoke. “He dug the graves, didn’t he? Poor fellow.”

William turned to look over his shoulder.

On the snow, a flare of brightness. Copper hair, washed clean by the Windrush.

An urgent rook in the treetops cawed a stony message that only the dead man heard.

·  ·  ·

Rose stripped William, rubbed him dry, and draped blankets over him. She stoked up the fire. She boiled water and he drank honey water fortified with liquor. She heated more water for the tub, and he sat waist deep in it while she poured bucket after bucket of hot water over his shoulders. She dried him again, dressed him in more layers of clothing than he knew he had. She dragged the armchair close to the fire and sat him in it.

First he was hot, then he was very, very cold.

The baby slept, but Dora, made curious by the unusual activity, got in the way. Rose scolded her, sent her away. He heard his daughter weeping.

“Let her come,” he said.

The child climbed onto his lap, and his painful fingers managed to wrap his blanket around her. Enchanted by the novelty of the snow and having her father at home by day, Dora rested quietly against him. He felt her breathing grow steady and regular. The solid weight of her against his thighs and belly. How warm she was!

William felt his eyes close. His body was paralyzed by weariness, and as he approached the border of sleep, memory rose up in his unguarded mind: Luke at the Red Lion,
She was all right, your mother
. Some other time, late at night, in the street: “
D’you remember . . . ?”

Unease brought William suddenly awake. At the moment of opening his eyes he registered a perception of something: a momentary darkening. Something had been there at the window, blocking the light. He had seen it—or if not seen then glimpsed. A dark figure, looking in at him. He stared in alarm at the window. There was no one there. Only a white landscape, broken only by the oak trees, stretching their black branches across the white sky. To get up and peer out would mean waking Dora, and in any case, his limbs were slow with sleep.

Dora shifted slightly in his lap.

Looking down, he met his daughter’s steady, sleepy gaze. Gravely she raised her hand, and he felt the mysterious touch of her fingertips drawing down his eyelids. Sweet child! His heart returned to its proper rhythm. How good it was to be warm. He could hear the fire crackling and billowing, smell the fragrance of something good in the kitchen.