‘Oh aye, it is, an’ you can’t bear it! You’ve made sure me da’s never liked me but you couldn’t turn Henry agen me an’ that’s always stuck in your craw. Well he’s not marryin’ that dried-up stick tomorrow, he’s not. I won’t let him!’
Eva’s face was dark with resentment and hatred, and like two combatants the women faced each other; Alice’s small wiry frame bristling with self-righteous fury and her daughter’s big stocky body straining against the rough material of her working clothes.
When her mother’s hand caught Eva full across the face it was not a surprise. Alice had often boxed Eva’s ears from as far back as her daughter could remember and Eva hadn’t been expecting anything less, but what did surprise her was her own response to the blow. She seemed to hover over the smaller woman like an enraged giantess and then her hands shot out in a violent push which sent her mother hurtling backwards to land with a thud against the far wall of the hayloft.
She wasn’t aware her father had entered the fray until she heard Henry shout, ‘No, Da, no!’ and then she felt as though her hair was being torn out by its roots as she was pulled backwards with enough force to take her off her feet.
‘Get down there, the pair of you.’ Her father had left Eva sprawled in the hay as he went to help his wife, and now his big face was crimson as he raised Alice’s thin shoulders under one mighty forearm before turning to his children and growling again, ‘Into the house if you know what’s good for you.’
‘Henry? Oh, Henry.’
When Eva reached the bottom of the ladder she swayed for a moment, her eyes fastening on a collection of old farm implements in the far corner of the barn, and then her brother, who had followed her down the ladder, took her arm, saying roughly, ‘You knocked her out. What on earth were you thinkin’ of to push Mam like that?’
‘Me?’ It stung Eva into life, a touch of her old defiance returning as she said, ‘I’m sick of her skelpin’ me, that’s why,’ but by the time she had followed Henry out of the barn, past the row of cow byres and the stable and into the yard, she was shaking with fear at what was in store.
The farmhouse was small but clean – a large scrubbing brush and hard bar of carbolic soap saw to that, along with the scouring of the stone slabs on the floor once a week when the range was blackleaded and the brass fender polished to gold – but now, as Eva came to a halt in the kitchen, she gazed round the familiar surroundings almost vacantly.
A couple of hours ago she had stood in this room, after watching her mam and da depart in the horse and cart for Stone Farm, and she’d known exactly what she was going to do. She would tell Henry he had to call off the wedding. She’d told him the same thing several times a day without fail for the last five months, since her brother had asked Hilda Craggs to marry him, but this evening he was going to be informed of a certain fact which made it imperative he didn’t get wed.
Eva walked further into the kitchen, her feet dragging, before she sank down on to a hardbacked chair in front of the table covered with an oilcloth on which were piled several soot-smeared pans and a heap of dirty dishes. Her mother had left these for her daughter’s attention before she’d gone to visit the prospective in-laws.
A fire was burning in the hearth despite the warmth of the muggy summer night, and a massive black kale-pot containing the family’s supper of thick rabbit stew was hanging from a chain joined to a cross-bar below the chimney opening. The smell rose up in Eva’s nostrils and she swallowed hard, her stomach heaving as she told herself she couldn’t be sick. Not now. Not right now.
‘He’ll kill me. When Mam tells him he’ll kill me.’
Henry voiced what Eva was thinking, and she brought her eyes to the slight, thin figure of her brother standing in front of the fire and to one side of the range oven. ‘He won’t.’ It carried a shred of bitterness. ‘It’ll be me that gets it. The sun shines out of your backside with the pair of ’em an’ you know it.’
She wanted to ask him if he was going to stand with her in this; brave the wrath of their parents and maintain a united front, but she didn’t dare. She was too frightened of the answer or the look on his face when he lied to her.
And then her father burst into the room, his face demented, and all hell broke loose.
‘By all that’s holy, Walter, you could have killed her.’ Alice’s thin face was even more pinched than normal, her voice nothing but a whisper.
‘You given her the laudanum?’
‘Aye, I’ve given her it, but she’s in a state, Walter. She is that.’
‘She’ll survive; the devil looks after his own.’ It was savage.
‘She needs a doctor—’
‘Don’t talk daft, woman. You get a doctor to her an’ what’s the result? Our business spread across half of Sunderland. She’s a slut, you know it an’ I know it, but are you tellin’ me you want it spread abroad, eh? Put plenty of goose fat on her an’ she’ll do.’
‘The buckle’s marked her—’ Alice’s voice was cut off abruptly as her husband slammed his fist down on the kitchen table with enough force to make the pots and pans jump.
‘She’s to be kept away from him until he’s wed an’ off on the fancy honeymoon Hilda’s brother’s paid for, you understand me? She’s no bit lass, not Eva, an’ you know it. By ...’ Walter ground his teeth, his jaw working fiercely. ‘When I think about it me guts turn to water.’
‘I know, I know.’ Alice stared at her husband’s bent head for a moment or two, before reaching for the big brown teapot and measuring two spoonfuls of tea from the caddy into its cavernous depths. After lifting the kettle from the hob she filled the teapot to half full, mashing the tea and letting it draw a minute or two before she said tentatively, ‘Shall ... shall I take him a sup?’
‘What?’
‘Henry. Shall I take him a sup the night?’
Walter’s head had been bent over the kitchen table but now he raised it slowly, looking into his wife’s eyes as he said, ‘Aye. Aye, take him a sup, lass.’
Alice motioned with her head but she didn’t speak again before leaving the room with a big mug of black tea, and Walter continued staring after his wife as the sound of her footsteps echoed on the bare wooden stairs leading to the upper storey of the house. He heard the door to Henry’s bedroom open and close, and when his wife’s tread didn’t sound again assumed she had remained with their son.
By, this was beyond his understanding. He dragged his hand across his face, which was still sweating as a result of the beating he had given Eva. His own flesh and blood behaving worse than any harlot. Even the worst of the whores down on the dock sides in the East End and Monkwearmouth kept it out of their own backyards. And it was her, not him Oh aye, it was Eva all right, he was with Alice on this. She was bad right through, tainted.
Walter reached out for his own mug, which Alice had passed to him before she’d poured Henry’s tea, but as he raised it to his lips the nausea he’d experienced in the barn when Alice had come round sufficiently to acquaint him with the full facts overcame him again, and he put it down without tasting it.
And him up there getting wed the morrow! On this thought he turned from the table and rose, walking to the kitchen door, which was open. Outside, he stood looking up into the darkening sky, and as if in answer to something which had just been voiced he reiterated out loud, ‘Aye, it’s that trollop all right. Look at ’em; she’s twice the size he is an’ as brazen as they come, the lad wouldn’t have stood a chance.’
Well, she’d remain where she was, bound and gagged like the dangerous animal she’d shown herself to be, until the lad was safely away. Henry had to marry Hilda. Walter flexed his great hands, letting his chin fall into his neck before he again raised his head to the charcoal sky, in which the first stars were beginning to appear. It was a good match, a marvellous match – his lad marrying Weatherburn’s stepsister. The Weatherburn farm’s fields adjoined theirs, and the farm was doing well – more than well – unlike theirs. Blood was thicker than water in these situations, and an ally like Weatherburn wasn’t to be sneezed at.
Walter turned abruptly, stepping back into the dark kitchen now lit only by the glow of the fire, and walking across to the heavy stone mantelpiece running the length of the range. He reached for the clay pipe lying at one end and, picking out a thin coil of tobacco from a small earthenware jar next to where the pipe had been, retraced his footsteps outside.
Why had he only had one son and him as slight and small as his mother, whereas his daughter took after the Farrow side? The thought of Eva brought Walter’s blackened teeth grinding together, and he walked across to a roughly made bench set against the wall of the farmhouse and sat down, working the twist of tobacco between his fingers until it was sufficiently shredded to fill the pipe.
Once he was puffing he rose again, walking across the yard and out in the opposite direction to the cow byres. Five minutes brought him to the crest of a slight hill, beyond which stretched sheer blackness, but as though he could see the Weatherburn farm – situated east of South Farrington with its fields adjoining Silksworth – and on beyond into the expanding suburbs of the rapidly growing town of Bishopswearmouth, his eyes continued to roam back and forth.
How often had he complained about the four-mile drive into the heart of Sunderland? he asked himself. Plenty, especially when the weather was bad and the horse and cart got bogged down in snow drifts that had him digging out the wheels every ten yards or so. But he was thankful for it now, by, he was that. In the villages and the towns you only had to sneeze for it to be common knowledge. The chill inside him deepened. He’d kill Eva, aye, with his bare hands before he’d let a word of this lot get out. They might not have two farthings to rub together but he’d always been able to hold his head high; he’d be damned if the Farrow name would be brought low by his own kith and kin.
Henry would do what he was told. The certainty of his son’s malleability brought Walter no joy, only the nagging sense of irritation he always felt when he thought of his younger child. And then he shrugged the feeling off with a physical movement of his massive shoulders. He needed Henry and his new wife living and working on the farm; pray God Hilda was fruitful and would give him a quiver of grandsons to bring fresh life to the place. Big, robust grandsons, lads who would turn the ailing fortunes of the Farrows around and continue the blood line.
He turned slowly, pulling his cap further on his head as he began to retrace his steps to the farmhouse below. Another month or two and he was going to have to face letting old Amos and his son go, possibly Wilf too, after hay-making. Their four shillings a week wages along with their perks and their cottages wasn’t much compared to what Weatherburn paid his men, but nevertheless he couldn’t stretch to it. But how was he going to manage without them? By, he didn’t know which way to turn, and that without this latest trouble his slut of a daughter had brought upon him. He’d wring her neck for her ...
‘It’s done then.’ It was the evening of the following day and Henry was married. Alice and Walter hadn’t spoken a word during the ten-minute drive home from Stone Farm in the horse and cart, but once in the yard and before she climbed down from her seat Alice had turned to her husband and voiced what was in both their minds.
‘Aye, as you say, it’s done.’ Walter could see Amos in the far field through the rapidly deepening twilight, and his voice was preoccupied when he said, ‘I’d better go an’ check they’ve done all I wanted afore they turn in. I’ll send the lad’ – Walter always referred to Amos’s youngest son as the lad despite the fact he was eighteen years of age and did a man’s work – ‘to see to Bess an’ the cart. You go in, lass.’
Alice clambered down from the cart mindful of her Sunday frock, and stood watching the tall, broad figure of her husband as he walked briskly out of the farmyard to the lane beyond. She continued to watch him as he opened the large wooden gate set in the dry-stone wall bordering the field, and, after fastening it again, walk across the field through the herd of grazing bovines to the approaching Amos.
You go in, lass
. What Walter had really meant was for her to go in and see to Eva. The thought brought her brow into a frown. He’d made it very clear over the last twenty-four hours that their daughter was her responsibility, emphasising that nothing must be done or said to upset Henry’s new wife when the couple returned from their few days at the Grand Hotel in Bishopswearmouth. Which was all very well, but he knew Eva’s strength of will and blind stubbornness – he should do, she got it from him.
Alice shut her eyes, screwing them tight as though in pain, and when she opened them again her mouth had set into a hard line and she didn’t look towards her husband and his farm hand but turned and entered the kitchen.
The fire was all but dead in the range. Alice glanced at the faintly glowing embers, which was all that remained of the fire she had so carefully banked early that morning with slack and damp tea leaves. She’d better get that going before she did anything else; Walter would want his sup of tea and shive of lardy cake before he went to bed. He was a great one for his supper, was Walter.
She drew her stiff hessian apron off the peg behind the kitchen door, well aware that she should go and change her dress before she touched the fire. The shadow of what she had to face when she climbed those stairs had been with her all day, clouding the wedding service at the parish church in Silksworth and the jollifications at Stone Farm afterwards, and even now she was putting off the moment.