He glanced at Polly now – he had noticed she had been listening avidly while they had been talking, her huge blue eyes flashing from one to another – but she was looking at Michael. By, she was growing up fast, and she was going to be a stunner. What would she say if he told her that the main reason he continued to accompany his stepmother each Sunday was to see her? Laugh, most likely; she wouldn’t understand, she was still just a bairn. And there was Michael. The two of them were as thick as thieves, always had been, and he wasn’t sure if it was just bairns’ friendship or a stronger bond that would develop into something more as they grew. The thought caused the familiar ache in his chest and he now rose abruptly from his seat at the side of the table, nudging Arnold sitting at the side of him to do the same.
Walter, Alice and Henry, along with Eva, had followed Frederick outside into the yard, where the horse and trap were tethered, and now Luke nodded at Hilda, who was still sitting on the saddle with her shawl drawn tightly across her thin shoulders, as he said, woe 11 have to be making tracks too. Goodbye, Mrs Farrow. Come on, Michael.’
Hilda inclined her head coldly but she said nothing, although inwardly she was seething.
How dare
this big, gangling half-nowt, this
pit-yakker
upset Frederick! Henry should have said something, put him in his place, instead of just sitting there with that silly look on his face, smoking his stupid pipe. She’d have something to say to him later, the weak, spineless fool.
Once Polly, Ruth and Michael had followed Luke and Arnold outside, Hilda rose to her feet, drawing her breath in through her teeth in a low hiss as her anger continued to burn. Where was the respect for Frederick’s superior knowledge? He was well read; the study at Stone Farm was lined with books, and besides Frederick’s taste in literature and the arts, he had an excellent knowledge of current affairs. Their father – Hilda was emphatic in claiming the paternity and never allowed herself to dwell on the reality – had always maintained it was education that made the difference between the working man and his betters, and he had been right. Oh, why had she allowed herself to become linked with these people? If only she had known then what she knew now. It would have been better for her to remain a spinster all her days than to be interned in this dreadful place.
She climbed the narrow, steep stairs slowly, the muscles in her legs being weak through lack of use. Once in the bedroom she sank down on to the bed as her thoughts continued to flow on. Henry had tricked her when he had married her and brought her here, oh yes, he had, he had. He had given her to believe that this farm, although smaller than the one she had grown up on, was a prosperous entity with plans for growth, but within a month of their arriving home from honeymoon Walter had dismissed his men and closed up the cottages. When she thought of those early days of marriage ... She shut her eyes tight, swaying slightly as her arms crossed over her flat stomach and her hands gripped either side of her waist.
She had been expected to work harder than ever Betsy and the kitchen maid at Stone Farm had done, and the nights with Henry, the close proximity with this man who had changed from courteous, respectful suitor into someone with wants and needs that horrified and disgusted her, had been unbearable. She had never imagined that people did ‘that’ to procreate. Perhaps if her mother had lived longer she would have explained something of it to her, but the degradation, the utter baseness of the night hours had sickened her. And she didn’t believe Henry when he said that some women found it acceptable, even pleasurable. It was too, too humiliating, too vile for that. And what was the end result? Months of wretched bloatedness, and then agonising pain as the thing planted in her had made its appearance into the world. But she had put a stop to all that.
The thought brought Hilda’s head – which had been bent over her flat chest – slowly upright, and the rocking stropped-as her cold pale blue eyes narrowed. Henry had always denied he married her to establish a solid link with Stone Farm, but if it hadn’t been that, then what else? It certainly hadn’t been because he loved her, she had realised that even before they had been wed; in fact from the first time they had walked out together. But she hadn’t cared for him in a romantic sense so she hadn’t been unduly concerned. Henry had been the only man of her acquaintance who had shown the slightest interest in her, that had been the plain fact of the matter, and she had known that if she’d refused him she would have been condemning herself to a life of spinsterhood – a life which appeared very sweet with hindsight, Fredenck would have taken care of her; he wouldn’t have expected her to soil her hands with low, menial work of the kind she had encountered here.
She undressed slowly, but her indolence was engendered more by the bitter nature of her thoughts than by fatigue, and when Henry opened the bedroom door a few minutes later and glanced across at the thin, still figure of his wife lying primly under the worn, darned sheets, Hilda was ready for him, her invective flying forth before her husband had time to open his mouth. ‘Well? I trust you’re satisfied with your afternoon’s work?’
‘What?’ He had been about to change back into his working clothes but now he paused, his brow wrinkling. She was in a tear about something, but then that wasn’t surprising. That scrawny frame of hers held a capacity for venom that had used to amaze him in the early days of their marriage.
‘Don’t look at me like that, you big galoot. You know full well what I mean.’
Henry’s mouth had thinned and now his voice was a snap when he said, ‘I don’t know an’ I don’t care, there’s the cows to be seen to.’
‘The cows to be seen to.’
Hilda repeated the words with acid mockery, her lips curling back from her teeth in contempt. ‘That’s all you’re fit for, to see to the cows, Henry Farrow. Well, for your information, I’m talking about the way you allowed that gormless yap to argue with Frederick.’
Henry said nothing for a moment, then, on a deep intake of breath, he growled, ‘Luke Blackett has been workin’ down the pit for nigh on fourteen months, he’s no lad, an’ furthermore, he’s entitled to his own opinion same as everyone else.’
‘His opinion!’ It was said cuttingly, Hilda’s plain, sallow face wrinkling in a sneer. ‘How can someone like him have an opinion?’
By, he’d do for her one day, so help him. Lying in this damn bed twenty-four hours a day, making his life and everyone else’s a misery, turning the screws whenever she had the chance ... She was a devil of a woman, and yet she’d been so quiet, so contained when they were courting. Uppity maybe, but then she’d been entitled, being Frederick Weatherburn’s stepsister. How often had the words he’d said to Eva come back to haunt him? ‘Happy doesn’t come into it.’ By, if ever there’d been a self-fulfilling prophecy, that had been it. And Eva wasn’t happy, he knew that, although they’d never spoken of it or the past. What he should have done, that day his mam found the pair of them, was to have taken Eva and gone far away somewhere. She’d have gone with him. Oh, aye, she would. Followed him to the ends of the world, Eva would have.
He brushed the thought aside as Hilda continued to rant and rave, divesting himself of his clothes and pulling on his grimy working breeches and shirt without looking at his wife again. He let her voice flow over him and around him but not into his head; he knew from such scenes in the past that his detachment was the one thing that reduced her to a heap of quivering frustration and then a stony silence that could go on for days, weeks maybe, if he was lucky.
But it was as Henry was leaving the room that his wife’s voice, now low, hissed at him, ‘I’ll make it my business to see Eva’s brat and those other two hulks don’t set foot in this house again, you see if I don’t. They’re a bad influence on the girls, especially Polly. She runs wild when they come, and Luke and Arnold aren’t even family, and Michael looks as though he’s riddled with the consumption—’ Then she stopped with a surprised squeak as Henry swung round.
‘Shut your evil mouth.’ Henry’s face was turkey red with temper and he no longer appeared to Hilda as the stoical, long-suffering, weak individual she thought she knew. He was staring straight into her startled eyes and his own were narrowed with hatred. ‘Them little lasses don’t have much of a life as you well know, but they look forward all week to seein’ their cousins – an’ they look on Luke an’ Arnold as their cousins just the same as young Michael. You do anythin’ to spoil the one thing that gives ’em a bit of pleasure, an’ so help me, woman, I’ll swing for you.’
‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that.’ Hilda’s voice was choked with outrage but threaded through it was a new emotion, one of fear, and it was this that Henry’s sixth sense picked up and which he capitalised on.
‘Oh, I dare, lass. Make no mistake about that,’ he ground out slowly, walking across to the bed and bringing his head low until his face was no more than a few inches away from that of his wife. ‘I’ve not much joy in me life, you’ve seen to that, but me bairns’ laughter is somethin’ I couldn’t put a price on, an’ I’ll be damned if I let a spiteful bitch like you finish it. You say one word to stop them lads comin’ or break up their friendship an’ you’ll have me to answer to.’
The hatred which was in his eyes was reflected in the narrowed, opaque orbs staring back at him, and after waiting a moment or two for Hilda to speak, Henry straightened, staring down at the rigid, furious figure in the bed as he said, his voice quiet now, even calm-sounding, ‘I mean it, Hilda. I’d do it an’ you know I’d do it, don’t you.’ It was a statement not a question, and Hilda remained silent as he turned and quietly left the room.
His bairns’ laughter! Hilda ground her fleshless buttocks into the bed. His
bairns
. As far as Henry was concerned – and Walter too – she had only ever given birth to one bairn, their beloved Polly. Her mind conjured up the image of a bright, laughing face with great azure eyes set under fine curving brows, and again her buttocks churned the mattress. Always cheerful, always seeing the rainbow in the storm, the girl was enough to drive anyone mad. Ruth now, Ruth was different. Ruth understood her mother was a gentlewoman, that she had been born to better things than this miserable farm.
Henry had called her an unnatural mother once, and maybe she was. She considered the thought quite objectively. It had been when Polly was learning to walk and was always hanging on her skirts, and one day she had lost her temper and smacked the child’s hands away. They had all gone for her on that occasion – Walter, Alice and Henry, and she had shouted back that she hated the farm and everyone and everything in it, including her daughter. And she had meant it, and Henry had known she meant it.
He had talked to her that night once they were in bed, his voice soft and flat, and she had known quite clearly that they had reached a crossroads in their marriage, and the way they would proceed from that point would depend on her. ‘I know you’re not happy, Hilda, an’ bein’ wed isn’t all you thought it would be, but all I’m askin’ is that you make some kind of an effort, if not with me an’ Mam an’ Da, then with the bairn. Can’t you try an’ love her? At least show her a bit of affection now an’ again? Mam said you boxed her ears yesterday for nothin’ an’ shut her away upstairs, an’ she was still bawlin’ an hour later.’
‘It’s up to me how I deal with my own child, I’ve told your mother that.’
‘Aye, maybe, but she’s nowt but a babby still an’ it’s not fair to take out your disappointment with me on her.’
She had been surprised then, she hadn’t credited him with such insight, but her voice hadn’t mellowed when she said, ‘She might be young, but she’s wilful with a mind of her own and it needs breaking. Your parents are too soft with her, that’s half the trouble.’
‘It upsets ’em when you won’t pick her up when she comes to you, or speak kindly to her, an’ it does me an’ all if you want to know.’
‘I don’t want to know.’ The darkness had made it easier to say what had to be said. ‘I don’t care what you and your parents think either, Henry, and I shall continue to discipline Polly as I see fit. Spare the rod and spoil the child.’
‘She’s barely fourteen months old, woman!’
‘And don’t woman me!’
Things hadn’t been the same after that. Hilda settled back against the bolster, and there was no regret in her thinking. But her frankness hadn’t put an end to the disgusting business of the night hours as she had hoped; she had had to wait until after Ruth’s birth for that. At least her children were both females. It wasn’t the first time she had thought it, and now her bony chin came down into her neck as she inclined her head as though nodding to something spoken. She wouldn’t have been able to bear the thought of producing something formed in her husband’s image.
She hadn’t meant to listen. Polly leaned against the door of her bedroom, and she was trembling from head to foot. She hadn’t, she hadn’t meant to listen, although her mother wouldn’t have believed that if her da had found her outside their bedroom door, which had been open just a crack. Thank goodness she had nipped in here just in time. She glanced at the mug of tea in her hand she had been intending to give to her mother, some of which had sloshed over her pinafore in the hasty flight to her room. And as she continued to stare at the mug, she was aware of something strange happening deep inside where the muddled feelings concerning her mother lay.
She had brought her mam the tea because – when they had all been outside saying goodbye to Uncle Frederick, and then Aunt Eva and the lads, and she had heard a mistle thrush singing its heart out in the fresh, sweet air – she had felt sorry for her. She had always felt sorry for her mam if she thought about it. Oh, she knew, secretly, that her mam wasn’t as poorly as she made out, but nevertheless, to stay in that little room all the time and never to run and jump in the fields and hills, or hear the chattering of the birds as they settled down for the night or the fox barking in the twilight ... well, it must be awful. She wouldn’t be able to bear it.