Feathers in the Fire (6 page)

When she reached the gap she looked down the slope and the sight that met her eyes astounded her. Jane was actually fighting Molly, striking out at her with both hands and feet. She had never witnessed anything like it. Molly was protesting, but not loudly, just warding off the blows, saying, ‘Aw, Miss, give over, give over. For God’s sake, Miss. Aw, for God’s sake, Miss, be quiet, it’ll cause trouble. Aw, Miss, Miss, come on away, come on up home.’

‘Don’t touch me, don’t dare touch me, you’re filthy, filthy. Molly Geary, you’re filthy.’

Delia was about to call out, command her daughter to stop making such an unladylike spectacle of herself and demand to know the reason for the scene, when Jane’s next words gave it to her without further questioning. ‘I hate you, Molly Geary. You and Father . . . I saw you both. I saw you in the malt house. You were horrible, and you let him whip you while all the time you knew it was him . . . YOU ARE HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE.’

Delia stood transfixed looking down on them. Her daughter was still gabbling and Molly still pushing off her hands and feet.

Like someone sleepwalking she slowly descended the shallow steps where they turned in a half moon towards the burn. Jane was now spluttering, ‘Planning with Father to make Davie marry you, pretending it was him. You are horrible, dirty. I hate you, Molly Geary.’

‘Jane!’ Delia had not spoken loudly; she was amazed herself at the quiet tone that issued from her lips, for inside her head her thoughts were whirling and screaming.

They both turned towards her now, Jane staring up at her, her face dirty, tear-stained and, in this moment, ugly; but Molly, after one glance at her mistress, drooped her head on to her chest and stood limp, her arms hanging downwards away from her body as if she had no longer any control over them.

‘What is this?’ Delia was addressing her, and when the girl did not lift her head she cried at her, her voice expressing her emotions now, ‘Answer me, girl! What is this I hear?’

When Molly raised her head, startled as much by this new aspect of the mistress as by the fact that she was advancing on her, she could only stammer. ‘Oh, Mistress, Mistress.’

Delia stopped within an arm’s length of the girl, and now demanded, ‘Tell me that my daughter is deranged and not speaking the truth.’

Molly now swung her head from side to side, gulped in her throat, opened her soft wet mouth wide, closed it again; then her head seemed to be jerked off her body by a blow first to one side of her face and then to the other. As she cowered down a voice thundered over them, crying, ‘Delia!’ and Delia turned and looked up the steps to where her husband was standing in the gap.

McBain had taken in the situation; he was too late. Well, what was done was done, and couldn’t be undone; what he must do now was to calm her down, she mustn’t get excited, not at this stage.

He came rapidly down the steps. He looked neither at his wife, nor yet at his daughter, but addressed Molly, whose eyes were on him, her manner now showing her confidence in his protection – the master, her love, whom she knew she could twist round her little finger, he would show the mistress, and the young one an’ all what was what.

Her confidence was wiped away and her mouth brought again into its soft gape by the master addressing her as if someone of no account. ‘Get back to the house, girl, and get on with your work.’

She paused a moment before obeying him. Even before that night when the master had come into the kitchen late on and found her with her skirts above her knees dozing in front of the fire, and she had woken to find his hand on her groin, even before that he had never spoken to her uncivil; it had always been, ‘Molly girl, do this. Molly girl, do that.’ But now he had spoken to her in the voice he used to gipsies and tramps on the road who came a-beggin’ and wanted food without offering to work for it.

As she sidled past she cast a quick glance up at him, but his face was stern; she didn’t recognise the man, who only a few hours earlier had held her tightly and kissed her wounds. She scurried up the steps and when she reached the road she burst out crying.

Now McBain looked at his daughter and he said, ‘And you, Miss, get back to the house and to your room. I will talk with you later.’

Jane stared at her father, amazed that he was putting her in the wrong, it was as if she had committed the crime against her mother, and against herself, for in destroying his image he had destroyed the beauty of life for her. The rage that she had nurtured against Molly all afternoon, then had released on her, was now over like something that had never been. She felt weak, and spent, she did not seem to have the strength even to cry any more; she wished she could die like the foal last week, just lay her head sideways on the straw and die, or be frozen stiff in the snow like the young lambs; or at this moment, she would even thank someone to stick a knife in her neck as they did with the pigs. She had not known how the pigs died, and when her curiosity had been satisfied she was sick for days and wouldn’t touch bacon for a long time.

She didn’t want to live, and if it wasn’t for her mother she wouldn’t live. But her mother was going to need her. As if she were being given a glimpse into the future she knew she was the only one on whom her mother would be able to rely; she also knew that now all talk about her going to Madam Lovell’s school in Hexham would cease. She would never go to that establishment and learn French and music and dancing.

A similar train of thought was passing through Delia’s mind. The knowledge that had come to her in the last few minutes would alter life for all time. It wasn’t just the fact that the man before her had had his way with a kitchen slut; she was no fool, there was hardly a household of any standing for miles around where the masters did not demand their pleasures from their female employees, and not only from girls not yet wedded; a working man’s wife had to have a strong personality and indeed be virtuous if at least one of her many children did not show a marked resemblance to the man who employed her husband. And the husband might black his wife’s eyes because he couldn’t dole out that very medicine to the man on whom he relied for his bread.

No, it wasn’t entirely the fact that her husband had been sporting with that skit of a girl while she herself was carrying his child, but what was indeed filling her with rage was that this man, who was looked up to, whom she herself had been forced to respect even while she had stopped loving him, was nothing but a hypocrite, a sanctimonious mealy-mouthed hypocrite, daring to stand in the pulpit Sunday after Sunday and read the lesson, and sit smugly in their pew listening to old Parson Wainwright singing his praises after yet another donation towards the upkeep of the church: ‘Our good Brother McBain has yet again come to our rescue . . . ’ She could hear the thick fuddled voice of the minister who more often than not was still carrying the previous night’s load of port when he ascended the pulpit. And then Sir Alfred Tuppin, she could hear his thick guttural voice saying, ‘Your husband, Mrs McBain, is an upright man. There are so few left in this England of ours today. Good stock, good stock, the McBains.’ Such praise had even silenced her cynical self, which at times would rise up and present her with a picture of McBain in the night; and she would recall the advice her cousin had given her before she married: ‘There are two men in every husband,’ she had said, ‘a night man, and a day man. See that you satisfy the night man and you will be both master and mistress of the day man.’ Yet even as she offered this sop to herself from time to time she knew it to be trite, untrue, except in very rare cases. There was no opportunity given a woman to satisfy a man; the animals and birds were more courteous to each other, more patient than a husband.

But still she could have forgiven all that, as she had done, accepting it as part of a woman’s existence; but not his play-acting, his lapping up of homage as due payment for his integrity: the head held high, the clear eyes, the tones of the sage, in all appearing like a reflection of God as it were.

‘TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF ME!’

‘Now Delia, you must listen to me . . . I, I want you to listen to me.’

‘You may want, Mr McBain, you may want.’

‘DELIA!’

‘That, Mr McBain, is your “Thou shalt not” tone. Well, I may tell you that for some time now it has ceased to fill me with awe. Yet I have respected you . . . but never no more.’ They were glaring at each other when she asked grimly, ‘Will you go to church on Sunday, Mr McBain, and read the lesson? Will you?’ The last words were high piercing, and he answered coolly, ‘Delia, I command you, be quiet, keep calm for your own good. You must not get excited; you must think of the child.’

‘Which child? Whose child? Mine or hers?’

‘Don’t talk stupidly, Delia.’ He again extended his hand towards her, saying briskly, ‘Come.’ But she stepped back from him, and she said again, ‘I ask you, will you go to church on Sunday and read the lesson?’

His patience was running short now and he answered grimly, ‘Very likely. I see no reason why I shouldn’t.’

‘Do, do that, Mr McBain, go to church and read the lesson. And you know what I shall do? I shall scream the truth to the rafters. Enter that church again and I shall scream the truth to the rafters. I could forgive you for sporting with a low scut if you had ever accepted that you were an ordinary man, but you sported with her while playing God. In two months’ time they are unveiling the stained-glass window. Do you remember why you donated the window to the church? In your own words you told Parson Wainwright it was because God had allowed your wife to carry your child. The window is to be unveiled the day your child . . . your SON is born; it wasn’t to be another daughter, no, no, you had told the Almighty it had to be a son and . . . ’

‘QUIET, WOMAN. How dare you!’

McBain’s thin pale face was almost purple with rage now but it was having no effect on his wife, for, looking at him, her eyes full of disdain, she said, ‘I dare, Mr McBain, at last after thirteen years I dare.’ And with this she passed him and walked with firm but heavy tread up the steps and on to the road.

McBain watched her, but he did not follow her; he stood now with closed eyes, his fists clenched tightly by his sides. There was running over his entire body a cold sweat. No-one in his life before had dared to talk to him as his wife had done. No-one, except himself, had seen the man beneath the skin; but now his wife had seen him. She had called him a hypocrite, and he supposed she was right, he was a hypocrite, not only since he had begun to ease himself on Molly, but in the man he presented to outsiders, for this man had no connection with the one his wife was acquainted with in their personal life. He had used her roughly for years. But then that was his nature; it was ravenous for something he couldn’t attain. He would have respected her more if she had turned on him, refused to put up with his madness; but she had never protested, and so he had used her . . . Yet all the while, underneath her apparent calmness, she had known him, known him for what he was, for what he knew himself to be, a man with an insatiable appetite that was like a disease, a two-faced man, a hypocrite.

He rubbed his hand hard around his face. What was he to do, he was in a cleft stick? If he stopped attending church, what excuse would he give? Illness? No. Dissent? No, he was a firm Protestant. The thought came to him that perhaps by Sunday he would have reasoned with her. He turned it aside. He had not been mistaken in his early suspicions of a self in her that he had no access to. He’d had glimpses of it when they first married, but he had soon subjected her to his wishes and, consequently, he had imagined, stifled all life out of the wayward self. But now he knew that that self had remained very much alive. There were two women in his wife as there were two men in himself.

But dominant self, or no dominant self, she must not be allowed to get the upper hand, yet at the same time he must tread very warily, even gently, with her, until the child was born; once that was accomplished she could show to him whatever self she liked and he would deal with it.

He turned now and followed her, hurrying to catch up with her so that they could enter the farm together. He must put a bold front on things, keep appearances normal, because he knew that the whole incident, like a nine-days’ wonder, would blow over.

Two

McBain was more disturbed than he would admit to himself. The blowing over of the affair was going to take a stronger wind than he had anticipated. Something quite unprecedented had happened last night, Delia had refused him his bed; she had dared to refuse him his bed.

Sitting straight up against the pillows, a hand pressed tightly down on the bedclothes at each side of her, she had stared at him as she said, ‘No more, Mr McBain. If you insist on getting in I shall get out and take up my room across the landing. And I promise you I shan’t do it quietly. But you can save your face by going into another room; you might even convince people it is out of consideration for my condition, at least you can order them to accept such an explanation, what they might think privately is a different matter altogether.’

McBain knew himself to be a passionate man but not a violent one, yet in that moment he had the urge to knock her flying out of the bed, more so to use the whip on her, for he considered that she had earned it much more than ever young Molly had done, even if he hadn’t been the man responsible. Yet while his desires raged in him he had stood dumb before her knowing she had him in a cleft stick; excite her, upset her, and the child could be brought ahead of its time; like a cow in calf being chased by an unruly dog she would drop what was in her without it being fully-fledged.

Only his deep-seated craving for a son, a legitimate son, gave him the strength to turn from her without uttering a word . . . By morning he had decided that if she could see Molly married and apparently out of reach of his hands, this would calm her. There was only one eligible man on the farm and that was Will Curran. He was forty-two years old, the same age as himself, and he was certainly not the man he would have chosen for Molly. But what other course was open to him? He had no doubt but that Curran would be willing; he was a widower these past five years. About Molly’s reactions to the man he gave no thought. She would do as he bade her.

He rose, as he always did, at seven o’clock in the morning and followed the same procedure as always. Leaving the bedroom, he went into the closet room. One side of the room was taken up with a long wooden seat with three holes in it underneath stood three pails, and high up on the wall behind each hole, suspended from a hook, was a lavender bag. Flanking the wall opposite the row of pails was a long narrow table and on it, placed upside down in a neat row and ranging in size from an extra large one to a very small one, were ten spare chamber pots.

The first part of his ablutions over, he went into the dressing room. Here the whole length of a wall was taken up with a long wardrobe, of which the frame was shining rosewood encasing three huge mirrors. Underneath the window at the end of the room stood a table and on this there were two washbasins, with jugs inside. Over one was draped a white towel, through which a thin film of steam was permeating. A couch, a chair, and a bow-fronted chest of drawers were the only other articles of furniture in the room. It took him fifteen minutes precisely to wash and shave and dress. His working clothes were simple, consisting of cord knee breeches and a short homespun coat over a fresh white cotton shirt. His feet were encased in black boots freshly dubbined, his legs in black gaiters equally so.

He did not even glance at the communicating door leading into his bedroom as he passed it, but went out and across the landing and down the steep oak stairs.

When he entered the kitchen, Winnie alone was there. She did not look up from where she was cutting thick gammon rashers from a ham, but she said, as always, ‘Mornin’, Master,’ and he replied, ‘Good morning, Winnie.’

She now went to the stove and took from the hob a china teapot that was standing next to a homely brown one. She went to the end of the table where stood a tray holding a cup and saucer and a sugar basin, and having poured out a cup of tea that looked jet black she spooned four heaped teaspoonfuls of sugar into it; then she handed the cup and saucer to her master.

Now, the master should have walked to the kitchen door and stood looking out on to the farmyard, taking in in one sharp covering glance that everything was as it should be. Even in winter the procedure never altered. Sometimes she wished she could shout at him, as she would have to one of her own, ‘For God’s sake close that door, me legs are froze.’ But this morning her master surprised her by walking towards the door through which he had entered only a few minutes previously, saying as he did so, ‘Get Will Curran to me. If he has already gone to the fields send a boy for him. I’ll be in my office.’

Winnie did not say, ‘Yes, Master,’ until the door had almost closed on him . . .

Will Curran, on the point of leading the horses out of the yard and to the plough, was given the message by young Mickey. ‘Me?’ he said. ‘Just gone seven in the mornin’, Master wants me in the office?’

‘That’s what Winnie says,’ said young Mickey.

‘You’re not havin’ me on, boy, Aa hope?’

‘No, Will, no. Winnie . . . look, there she is.’ The boy pointed, and Will Curran looked towards the kitchen door where Winnie was waving him forward.

Three minutes later, chaffing his hands together as if to rid them of dirt, then wiping them down the back of his breeches, he knocked on the office door and was bidden to enter.

McBain looked at his ploughman and he didn’t like what he saw; he had never liked the man. Perhaps it was his appearance that put him off, red hair, red nose, nearly always with a permanent drop on the end. He was an ignorant man, dull-witted in one way, yet sharp and sly in another.

His voice curt, the words clipped, he said, ‘I won’t beat about the bush, Curran. Are you agreeable to take a wife again?’

‘A wife! Me, Master? What wife?’

‘Molly.’

He watched three drops in rapid succession leave the end of Curran’s nose, two being caught by the man’s chin, and one falling to the floor. It was odd, but a thing like this could make him feel sick; there were niceties in him that years of dealing with animal nature had not erased.

Curran was now rubbing the palms of his hands together in a circular movement, but his voice had a touch of genuine amazement as he said, ‘Molly! Why she’d have no truck with me, Master; I’m a couple of years older than her dad.’

Ignoring this, McBain said, ‘She wants a father for her child; no man has come forward. She will do as she is bid, if you are willing.’

Will Curran’s head wobbled on his shoulders. A smile, sly, yet filled with amazement spread over his face. ‘I’m willin’, Master. I’m as willin’ as a tethered bull.’

‘Very well. Get back about your work; I’ll see you later.’

‘Thanks, Master. Thank you, Master, thank you right kindly.’ Will Curran was backing towards the door, touching his forelock, when McBain said to him, ‘Tell Winnie to send Molly into me.’

‘Aye, Master. Aye, Aa will, Master.’

McBain sat back in his chair, drooped his head on to his chest, and waited. The term ‘lamb to the slaughter’ came to his mind. But Molly was no lamb; she hadn’t even been a virgin when he took her for the first time, and she wasn’t sixteen then. Whoever had taken her virginity she hadn’t said, not even hinted at it; but one thing seemed certain, it hadn’t been young Davie. The name coming into his mind made him think he was going to find it hard to replace young Davie; but still, there was never a good but that there was a better. Even so, he didn’t like new faces about the place, and he’d always had a personal liking for the boy. But not for the man he had suddenly sprung into; it was no boy that had faced him across this desk yesterday. Still, it was a pity he had to go. But go he must; he could not allow himself to be thwarted by one of his work people.

When the tap came on the door he answered softly, ‘Come in,’ and Molly entered.

After closing the door behind her she rested her buttocks against it for a moment, then came slowly forward. She had her eyes tight on his face, and she hesitated at the side of the desk wondering whether to go round to him or stand with the desk between them as a servant should. Something in his face made her take the latter course and she took two further steps, then stopped and stared at him. What she saw disquietened her.

He wasn’t the master of the malt house. He wasn’t the man who tumbled her in the straw. There was no vestige now of the man who had told her to slip back from the fair to the malt house, nor of the man who had arranged there should be no-one on the farm but old Sep Rummery, for he had taken the mistress and the young miss to Allendale visiting, and left them there while he supposedly went into Hexham on business. The business he had done was to take every stitch off her until she was as bare as the day she was born, and although she had experienced his lovemaking before and been surprised by it, there were things had happened in that one hour that she was sure had never happened to anyone else on God’s earth. And she had protested against not one of them, but joyed with him; oh aye, she had joyed with him, and would be willing to die for just one such hour again.

She said softly, ‘You sent for me, Master?’

‘Yes, Molly.’ He did not even put his hand out towards her. ‘I have something to tell you.’

She watched his thin lips wetting each other; then her eyes sprang wide at his next words.

‘I’ve arranged you should marry Curran. He is willing.’

She pushed her head back on to her shoulders and her mouth widened; then she swallowed deeply before gabbling, ‘No! no! Master, not Will Curran I couldn’t, not him; him with his runny’ – she had almost said ‘snotty’ – ‘him with his runny nose. And he’s old, old . . . aw, Master, not him. Not Will Curran.’

He looked at her for a moment in pity while at the same time feeling gratified that she did not consider him to be old. ‘The child must have a name, Molly,’ he said quietly.

‘But Master!’ She was now leaning across the desk, her face only a foot from his. ‘I don’t mind, I don’t mind havin’ the bairn and him claimin’ no name. I don’t, I don’t.’ She moved her head slowly now and, her face full of pleading, she gazed at him. And he could have been softened by the look of her if it weren’t for the fact that if she were to roam loose about the place she would be a thorn in Delia’s flesh, an agitation; and he could not risk that agitation. He said firmly, ‘You must be married, Molly. I want to hear no more.’ He rose to his feet.

‘Master!’ She rushed round the desk now and caught at his hand. ‘I’ll plead with Davie, I’ll beg him to take me. I can make him do it; just give me time.’

‘Your time will be wasted; he was up in the gallery of the malt house when we met yesterday.’

She put her hand tightly over the lower part of her face, and he nodded slowly at her. ‘He had seen Miss Jane in distress and had gone to fetch her.’

Slowly she took her hand from her mouth and her head drooped, and like this she whispered, ‘Will I be able to see you again, Master, if, if I marry Will Curran?’

Tenderly now, he put his hand under her chin and raised her face upwards, and, his voice as low as hers, he answered, ‘You’ll see me again, Molly, when the time is ripe, never fear. Go now and do as you’re bid and I’ll always see that you are well looked after.’

She stared up into his eyes. She had been loved by this man, and she had known pride because of it; and power an’ all, aye, power. She had defied her da because of the secret power her master’s patronage had given her. But now she no longer felt she possessed any power. In spite of the master’s promise he was different. She couldn’t understand it. Why? She had imagined she had him in the hollow of her hand. Her head on her chest she walked out of the room.

McBain turned to his desk and seating himself he placed his hands palm downwards on the ordered pile of papers in front of him and stared ahead for a moment. This part of the business might not turn out so bad after all. If she had married young Davie there would not have been much hope of their continued intimacy, no matter how much she manoeuvred, for Davie was no fool. But with Curran, she could handle Curran, and things would go on as before, for now that he had been deprived of his wife’s bed until the child should be born and for some time afterwards he must find release in whatever quarter was available. And he knew of none sweeter than Molly; neither of his wives had satisfied him as she had . . .

Until eleven o’clock in the morning he saw to the business of the farm, visiting the dairy, the byres, inspecting the animals; his eyes ranged knowledgeably around the harness room, and the coach house where Davie was getting the gig ready. He passed him without a word. But when, in the grain store, he gave a good morning to old Sep, who was setting the terrier on to a rat’s nest, and received no verbal reply, only a curt motion of the head, he walked briskly out and across the yard and into the fields. He was annoyed. There had been disdain in the old man’s look, and the movement of his head had been no answer to his morning greeting, rather it had been one of censure.

He walked right to the top of Shale Tor from where he could see his sheep, well outside the precincts of the farm, away up on the distant hills. And nearer, his herd of eight cows were grazing in the morning meadows. They were the best herd he had reared and he was proud of them. He was going into Hexham this morning to meet Parson Wainwright and the Hospital Board with a view to passing on to the hospital any milk which was surplus to that which he sold to the town. He was a member of the Hospital Board, also of the Board of Guardians. Parson Hedley had proposed that he should allocate the milk to the workhouse, but he was not for this at all, not good, full cream milk – he already made an allowance of skimmed milk to that establishment; he did not believe in pampering the poor and feckless – and Parson Wainwright seconded him strongly in this.

By eleven o’clock he had returned to the farm and was ready for his journey to town. Going into the kitchen, he said to Winnie, ‘Where is the mistress?’

‘In the sewin’ room, Master, along o’ Miss Jane. The seamstress has come from Allenheads.’

He noticed that Winnie had not stopped her work when he spoke to her, nor had she looked at him once today. He felt angry that she dare show her displeasure at the turn of events. Who were they, these Armstrongs? What were they? Chattels, depending entirely on him for their livelihood. They lived well; he was a good master to them; his private life was no concern of theirs and should have brought no response from them. He said curtly, ‘Tell your mistress I shall be back in time for dinner,’ and on this he went out.