‘What are you going to do?’
‘What can I do?’ The sob in his voice wrenched at her heart, but when he stopped and turned to face her on the snow-covered path she saw his eyes were dry and burning. ‘I can’t go back home, not now I know. I’d kill her, I would, I tell you.’
‘Oh, Michael. Michael.’
‘I ... I don’t know what I’m going to do, where I’m going to go. It’ll have to be far away, far far away, that’s for sure, because Arnold won’t keep his mouth shut about this little lot. He hates me, he always has since he knew you an’ me cared for each other, and he won’t miss the chance to put the knife in.’
‘He won’t,’ Polly said feverishly. ‘Luke won’t let him say anything.’ A separate part of her brain that seemed to be working quite independently at the moment noticed he hadn’t said the word love – that they loved each other – but cared instead, and she realised in that moment he had already gone from her. And he had to go – she knew he had to go – but how was she going to be able to bear it? She would never love anyone other than Michael, never.
‘I have to go anyway.’ His eyes were moving over her face now, his own face very white and strained. They seemed to drink in each feature, each little chestnut curl dancing free of its confines in the icy wind. ‘You know I do. I can’t stay here and not see you, and ... and I can’t see you.’
He bowed his head and began to cry. It was silent crying at first, evident only in the shaking of his body, and then as Polly gave a little moan and put her arms round his waist with her head resting against his chest, he gave vent to his despair, holding her close for the last time as they both sobbed against the cruelty of fate. It was Polly who pulled herself together first, raising her head and sniffing desperately as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Her deep blue eyes looking almost black in her white face, she said brokenly, ‘You can’t just go, Michael, without knowing where.’
‘It doesn’t matter where.’
The agony in his voice was too much and it brought Polly’s hands to her eyes to press her tears back. She mustn’t cry any more, that could come later when she was in bed and Ruth was asleep. For the moment she had to make Michael see that he wouldn’t be able to cope if he just went off, he wasn’t made that way. Her lips moved hard, one over the other, before she said, ‘It does matter, to me. If you did anything silly ...’
‘I don’t intend to top meself if that’s what you mean.’
She didn’t know what she meant.
‘Goodbye, Polly.’ He was backing away from her as he spoke and the look on his face checked the involuntary movement she made towards him. She had to let him go, she couldn’t make this any harder for him than it was, but oh, she loved him so much. And terrible though this was for her, it was a hundred times worse for Michael, with his da not being his da and Luke and Arnold not even half-brothers, and his mam having done
that
with her da.
Her da.
How could he?
How could he?
She knew Michael was crying again as he walked away and she felt her heart was being wrenched out by its roots. Her words were just a whisper on the wind when she said softly, ‘I love you, I love you so much.’ And contrary to her earlier resolve, she found she was watching the small, bewildered figure through a mist of tears, her thoughts whirling and bouncing in her head as her stomach churned and various emotions battled for pre-eminence. She felt utterly grief-stricken and angry and confused and wretched, but overall the anger was growing and taking control. And she welcomed the bitter rage, it was a temporary opiate against the hurt and pain.
And then she blinked to clear her eyes. She thought she had seen another figure on the path walking towards Michael. It was Miss Collins. She must have decided to take a walk after the brief visit to the farmhouse. Polly tensed as the two met, mentally preparing herself to run and join them. The last thing Michael wanted in his present state was to have to talk to a relative stranger.
Miss Collins was bending down slightly, her head close to Michael’s, and to Polly’s surprise there was no sudden and offended jerking away indicating that Michael had told her to leave him alone. In fact it seemed as though the two were conversing.
‘Polly!’ On hearing her name called she turned to look towards the farm and to where Luke was making his way towards her, but she didn’t raise her hand in recognition or make any movement other than turning back to the two figures some way down the path, who were now walking away from the farm together. She strained her eyes to where they were being swallowed up by the snowswept landscape. Of all the people in the world, Miss Collins would know what to do and say in a situation like this. Her travels and independent spirit had given the older woman an edge that Polly called self-possession but others, less kind, would label worldliness, though Polly wasn’t conscious of that right at this moment. She only knew that Miss Collins would talk to Michael and that she would help him without expressing undue shock or disgust. And that was what her beloved needed right at this moment.
‘Come on, Polly.’
How long Luke had been standing at her side Polly wasn’t sure, she was only aware that when he eventually took her arm to lead her back towards the farmhouse she was very cold and the two figures in the distance had long since disappeared. ‘Miss Collins was with him.’
‘Aye, I saw.’
‘I hate my aunt and my da.’
‘No you don’t, you only think you do.’ Luke’s voice was quiet as he looked down at the beautiful young girl beside him. It had been an afternoon of revelation in more than one direction. He had discovered he wasn’t quite the big fellow he’d always liked to think he was when, amid the surprise and revulsion at what had been revealed, and the sympathy he had felt for Polly and Michael’s circumstances, there had been an element of gratification too. This meant the unthinkable had happened and Polly was free. Free to fall in love with someone else. Someone else? Who was he kidding? Free to fall in love with him was what he had meant. And he’d been sickened that amid all the hurt and pain and horror of those he loved – and he did love Michael as a brother – he had been thinking of himself, and worse, of taking Polly when Michael had been dealt such a killing blow.
‘I’ll never love anyone but Michael, Luke.’ It was said in a low voice but with passionate intensity.
‘Never is a long time.’
‘Be that as it may, I mean it.’ She didn’t sound like young Polly, in either her choice of words or the way she spoke them, and Luke felt his blood chill in his veins. Women were different to men in their attitude to love, or at least most of them were. Of course there were the types down at the docks or in the bars in Monkwearmouth who could give any man alive a run for his money, but most women seemed to love with a sacrificial devotion at the heart of their emotions, whereas with a man the feeling was much more physical and – he admitted somewhat ruefully – therefore more necessary on a day-to-day level. Look at the old Queen, devoted to the memory of her beloved Prince Albert and wearing the black clothes of mourning for more than forty years before her death five years ago. Somehow he couldn’t see a man in such a position of wealth and power doing that.
Was Polly another Victoria? As they came to the farmyard his eyes ran over her lovely tragic face and the stiff, determined set of her slender shoulders under the faded coat. Only time would tell, she was such a young lass still and it was natural to tell herself now she would never love again when the object of her devotion had been so painfully wrested from her. Nevertheless, the chill deepened inside him and was only put to one side when, on opening the kitchen door, he was hit by the barrage of raised voices from within.
It was impossible to determine who was shouting at who. Eva had the appearance of a wild woman as – one hand pressed to the side of her face, which was flaming red from Walter’s blow, and her long thick hair falling down from the bun at the back of her head – she faced Hilda and Frederick, the three of them yelling for all they were worth, with Arnold and Alice apparently joining in. Walter was sitting in his chair and he looked ill, and Ruth was crouched at the side of the range wailing and crying. The noise was indescribable.
And then Luke nearly jumped out of his skin as the young, slight girl at the side of him screamed for silence with enough force to bring every voice to an abrupt halt.
‘Where’s Da?’ Polly was talking to Ruth, and when her sister shook her head she turned to the others and said again, her voice urgent with the strange presentiment which had swept over her on entering the farmhouse, ‘Has he been back?’
‘Back? No, he hasn’t been back and I shouldn’t think so either. How he thinks he can ever hold his head up again after what’s come out this afternoon I don’t know, and I tell you—’
What Hilda was about to tell her Polly never found out, because she left her mother in full flow and spun round, clutching at Luke’s arm as she said, ‘We must find him, Luke. He was in such a state.’
How much of a state Henry had been in became obvious two minutes later. The body was hanging by the neck from a rope thrown over one of the old beams in the barn, and the blue face and grotesquely extended tongue told Luke at once that Polly’s father was dead. ‘Go on out, Polly. Now.’ He tried to shield her from the sight of the gently swinging figure but Polly shook him off, gazing up at her father as she murmured, ‘Oh no, no, Da. No. Don’t go like this, not like this.’
But it was too late. It had been too late on a sunny summer evening sixteen years ago in this very place, or maybe even six years before that, when a giggling fifteen-year-old girl had led her fourteen-year-old brother into a sweet-smelling hayloft and taught him what passion and desire were all about. Or perhaps the death bell had slowly begun to ring when a bitter young mother had looked into the face of her newborn child and seen only entrapment and a life of toil and relentless drudgery, and had hardened her heart against her firstborn.
Or perhaps such tragedy never has a finite beginning.
Chapter Nine
It was long past midnight, but Polly was still sitting in front of the fire in the kitchen in a state of exhausted numbness. The house was quiet now, and in the dim light from the one oil lamp she had burning, the blackleaded range with its big iron kettle on the hob, the clippy mat on the scrubbed flagstones and the hardwood saddle with its flock-stuffed cushions all looked the same as usual. The battered table covered with an oilcloth and the stout wooden chairs, the big black frying pan and other pots and pans sitting on their steel shelf above the hob were items she had known since babyhood, and yet somehow, tonight, she felt as though she was looking at them all through someone else’s eyes. Because she had changed. All these familiar objects were the same, but she had changed out of recognition to the girl she had been this morning. At least that was how she felt.
As the kettle began to sing, Polly roused herself. She went to the tall, narrow cupboard on the right-hand side of the range and extracted the big brown teapot from one newspaper-covered shelf, along with the tea caddy and a small glass bowl of sugar. After warming the pot, she spooned in three teaspoonfuls of tea and then added the hot water, sitting down once more whilst the tea mashed.
Once the tea was ready she stood up again and walked through to the pantry, taking a jug of milk from its stone slab and returning to the kitchen table. Her movements were slow and steady, almost ponderous, and they continued to be the same when she poured two cups of tea and climbed the stairs to her grandparents’ room.
‘How is he?’ As Polly silently entered the room she looked at the inert figure of her grandfather in the bed, and Alice raised her head from where she had been dozing on one of the kitchen chairs Polly had brought up earlier. ‘Same.’ Alice shook her head wearily. ‘What are we going to do, lass?’
‘First off, you’re going to drink your tea.’ Polly’s voice was gentle. The heart attack her grandfather had suffered on hearing of the death of his son had aged her grandmother ten years, or so it seemed. Her granny seemed to have shrunk inwards since that moment when Grandda had collapsed on the kitchen floor. ‘I’ll leave Grandda’s here. He might wake up later and want a sup.’
‘If the doctor’s right an’ your grandda’s going to be bed-ridden, what’ll happen to us?’ Alice asked pitifully, her lips trembling.
‘Gran, Grandda hasn’t worked much outside for years now,’ Polly said quietly. ‘You know that.’
‘Aye, but there was your da then.’
Yes, there had been her da then. And now his body had been taken to Bishopswearmouth by the same doctor who had attended her grandfather. ‘We’ll manage, Gran. Ruth can leave school, it’s nearly time anyway, and she’ll have to help me outside a bit as well as helping you in the house. You’ll have your work cut out with Grandda until he gets better.’
‘Do you think he’ll get better?’ It was pathetic in its hopefulness, and now Polly lied stoutly as she said, ‘Of course he will, Gran. You know Grandda, built like an ox, as he’s so fond of saying.’
‘Oh, lass, lass. An’ where will we find money for the doctor’s bills an’ the funeral an’ all?’
‘We can’t deal with everything tonight, Gran.’
‘I’m sorry, lass.’ Her grandmother wasn’t speaking about her agitation over money and they both knew it, and now Polly shook her head slightly as she said thickly, ‘I can’t believe me da did that, Gran. Not with Aunt Eva. It’s ... it’s unbelievable.’