The Dwelling Place, page 19
The man who opened the door to her was grandly dressed in brown knee-breeched livery. He stared at her for a moment, then stood aside. He did not speak either, and she entered the Hall, thinking, I’m dreaming. It’s like me dream of the white house; I’ll wake up in a minute and everything will be all right.
The dream was emphasised by the grandeur of the place. There were life-sized iron men standing at each side of a great staircase; there were glass lights hanging from the ceiling and animals’ heads sticking out from the walls, and beneath her feet was a carpet so thick that she couldn’t hear herself walk. She was in a dim corridor now and staring at the back of the grandly dressed man. After he had knocked on a door, he opened it and stood aside to allow her to pass him. And now she was in a room that seemed to hold nothing but books…and him.
When the door closed behind her, he rose from his seat behind the desk and came towards her, and she wasn’t to know that this was a most unusual procedure, nor the fact that he should turn a chair around for her to sit on. She wasn’t to know that this lord, this great man, was finding this moment one of the most exciting in his life, nor yet that he felt in his heart a kind of sorrow for her.
Cunningham’s reports on the girl had been of a person of extraordinary strength of character, loyalty and kindliness, characteristics not usually found in one so young and placed as she was. He had wondered, when listening to these reports, why it was that a girl of the common people should outshine his own blood in moral qualities.
In his position it was usual for him to speak first, especially when in contact with menials, but now he found it most difficult to open the conversation; also more difficult still to keep his eyes from the child in her arms. He thought afterwards, by way of excuse for himself, that the best and most glib people are reduced to inanities now and again, for he broke the silence by saying, ‘It’s a wild day.’
When she made no answer to this, simply continued to stare at him, he turned from her and, going round the desk, sat down, hoping that from here he would feel more in charge of the situation. He took up a pen and wrote the date at the head of a piece of paper: Saturday, December 5th, 1833. Then, his eyes still cast down, he said, ‘I understand that your sister is in trouble?’
‘Yes, sir.’ She heard her voice coming as if from a long distance away.
‘She was in the employ of Mr Braithwaite of Pinewood Place, Westoe?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, you have no need to worry any further about the unfortunate business. I have already been in touch with Mr Braithwaite and he is willing to drop the charge against her.’
She did not say ‘Thank you, sir’ now; she just stared at him across the desk and held the child more tightly to her. Perhaps she held it too tightly for it began to whimper, and this brought His Lordship to his feet again and, coming slowly round the desk and looking down at her, he said, ‘May I see him?’
She pulled the lawn shawl back from the child’s face, and then the undershawl; and now he struggled to free his hands, and when he had pushed one up over the edge of the shawl he lay still, gazing at the face looking down on him; and then he smiled at it.
There was a slight constriction in His Lordship’s throat. He moved his thin blue lips one over the other; then dragging his eyes from his grandson’s face he looked at the mother and said gently, ‘You need have no more worry concerning him, except for his loss and I wish you to believe me when I say I understand how you feel about this matter. But he is my grandson and it is my wish that he be brought up as such.’ He paused, then went on, ‘The agreement was that you should have an allowance of twenty-five shillings per week; this will be paid to you in advance every month starting as from today. Is there anything you would like to ask me?’
Although she wanted to say, ‘Will I be able to see him?’ she shook her head, for she knew that this was a fruitless question; once they took him from her arms she would never see him again; he’d be in this house surrounded by scores of people, all making sure that she never saw him again.
Lord Fischel stared down at her. He had been prepared to ask her to put her cross to a paper that he had roughly drawn up, but he saw that she was in great distress and emphasising such a finality might make her cause a scene, even attempt to go back on her word. The best thing to do was to get the child away from her. Once this was done, the business would be ended. He stretched out his hand and rang the bell, and when Hatton answered the summons he said, ‘Fetch Mrs Hatton to me, please.’
Mrs Hatton came into the room within seconds and his Lordship with a small wave of his hand indicated that she should take the child.
When the woman stooped down, her hands outstretched, she paused, for the look in the girl’s eyes was like a knife cutting into her, and when she put her hands under the child she had to give a slight tug before the girl released her hold on it.
As the housekeeper walked towards the door Cissie now asked in a whisper, ‘Can I have his shawl?’ and His Lordship, again with a motion of his hand, indicated that the housekeeper should remove his shawl, thinking at the same time that it would be one less article to be burned.
Impatient now that she should be gone and that he could go and see the child, hold the child, His Lordship rang the bell again, saying, ‘You must have some refreshment before you return. Hatton will take you to the kitchen.’
A moment later Hatton came into the room and received the order from his master; and Cissie, hugging the shawl to her, rose to her feet, but once she was standing upright she had the strange idea that she was about to sink into the earth. And then she knew she was going to do just that, for a great void appeared in the floor and as she fell forward into it she grabbed at His Lordship and tried to take him with her while shouting at him, ‘All for two lawn hankies!…You got him for two lawn hankies.’
Two hours later, the general coach, used for luggage and such work, drew up on the path below the habitation, and Cunningham, getting out, assisted her down on to the muddy road; then with his hand on her elbow helped her over the fell and into the dwelling. After sitting her down he spoke to the tallest girl, saying, ‘Look after your sister, she needs to rest, she’s not feeling well.’ Then patting Cissie on the shoulder, he stared at her in deep compassion for a moment before turning away.
When the door had closed on him the children gathered round her, the older ones not asking where Richard was, but Annie, with no inhibitions and not old enough to sense the tragedy, demanded, ‘Where’s our Richard, our Cissie? Where’ve you left him?’ And Cissie, the muscles of her white face twitching, looked down at Annie but didn’t answer her; then after a further moment of gazing at her closed fist, she slowly opened it and there on her palm lay five golden sovereigns, and as they all stared at them in unbelievable wonder, for this was real money, a great, great deal of real money, her mind lifted her back to the day when Jimmy said, ‘I’ll teach our Joe to set a trap an’ you’ll never want more.’
Eight
Matthew heard about Cissie Brodie handing her baby over to the big house when Straker, the miller’s carrier man, returned from delivering the weekly flour and oats to the Hall. He could barely wait to get William out of the mill on an errand so he could tell his master the gossip.
Matthew was loading sacks on to a low dray cart; he was walking from the scale bench to the cart, the sack on his shoulder, then at one and the same time he saw Rose pause just within the wheelhouse. She had a can in her hand full of steaming tea for Straker and William at their break, and she was brought to a stop, as he himself was, when he heard Straker say excitedly, ‘Place is agog with it. Took the child up yesterday mornin’ an’ handed it over, then, they tell me, fell flat on her face, dead out at His Lordship’s feet. They say it’s been goin’ on for months. The valet’s been the go-between. His Lordship got the place all ready for the bairn weeks ago, then nothin’ happened. Nobody knows as yet what brought it to a head. They say she seemed chary, but was only likely waitin’ for him to raise the price. They say she went out with a handful and she was sent home in the coach. Think of that now. A drab from the fells being sent home in the coach.’
Matthew flung the sack off his back with such a vehement toss that the heavy cart bounced beneath it and it brought Rose’s eyes round to him, and she stared hard at him for a moment before walking to the bench and putting down the can. Then going to her father who was making no laughing retort this morning to Straker’s tale, she said, ‘How do you be now?’ and he answered dully, ‘So-so. I think I want a good dose of physic.’
As she left him and came across the mill floor again, she passed behind Matthew and said, ‘Your drink’s waiting.’
He did not answer her, not even to incline his head, but went on loading the dray, because when this was finished he’d be able to go. It was the arrangement that he would work until half past nine in the morning at the mill. This meant he had done a good three hours’ labour before he returned to the shop and started on his own work. His three hours’ labour was his means of buying a share in the mill. Miller Watson, for all his laughter and joviality, had a business head on his shoulders.
Matthew scraped the slush off his boots on a grating in the wall, then wiped them hard on a mat inside the door before entering the kitchen.
Rose was standing at the table buttering a large brown bannock. She did not look at him until after she had been to the hob and brought the teapot and poured out his mug of tea; then pushing the mug and the plate across the table to where he was sitting she said, ‘She sold her bairn then?’
When he didn’t reply, just stared at her, a hard, cold look in his eyes, she leant over the table towards him, her voice low but her words grating, and repeated, ‘I said, she sold her bairn then? Didn’t you hear me? An’ got a tidy sum for it, I understand.’ When still he didn’t speak she went on, ‘Why look so thunderstruck if what you said was true. You said ’twasn’t yours…You don’t know whose it was, do you, yours, his, or anybody else’s…?’
She didn’t finish, for the hot mug of tea went spinning across the table and the contents over one of her hands, and as she cried out and held her hand tightly under her other he stood gripping the edge of the table. His shoulders hunched, he cried with deep bitterness, ‘I tell you again it wasn’t mine, but God, if I’d known what I know now it would have been! Do you hear? It would have been!’
She was still holding her scalded hand under her armpit as she hissed at him, ‘I’ll tell me father you’re not doing your duty by me. I will, I will.’
‘You do that. You do that.’ He made to go towards the door, when she now demanded, ‘Where you goin’?’
Turning slowly, he looked at her, saying. ‘It’s me time for going, isn’t it? I’ve done me stint.’
‘You know what I mean, Matthew Turnbull. You know what I mean.’
Yes he knew what she meant. He stared at her. She was his wife, and he knew what she meant. Her skin was blotched blue with anger. Aye, and frustration. That was his fault, he supposed, but, God above, he couldn’t help it. He had tried; no man had tried more, but he just couldn’t give her what she wanted; as much as his own body cried out for satisfaction he just couldn’t take it from hers. After that first week he had been sickened to the soul of him. If he had continued to take her it would have been as an animal did, and he was no animal. Even the sight of her face on the pillow beside him turned his stomach. But he wasn’t crying out loud about anything, he had only himself to blame for the pickle he was in…Aye, and his folks, and young William, and young Jimmy, and the other seven of them back there.
She said now, ‘If I was to tell me father he would cut you out, I know he would. There’s no written agreement; he could do it an’ you’d be back in your little tinpot shop. And what’s more, he’d make you support me; besides which he’d send William packin’. Aye, he would that.’
He gave a mirthless, derisive laugh now as he said, ‘Well, if he did, that would be no hardship to her now, would it, for it she’s sold her bairn and been well paid for it; she can afford to keep the lot of them. Funny, isn’t it…?’ His bitterness now making him cruel, he poked his head forward and ended, ‘And to think it was because she couldn’t afford to keep them that I married you.’
He turned from her vicious yet deeply hurt look and went out; and, going into the open barn, he lifted his coat from the rack, put it on, donned his tall hat which he pulled down well over his brow, mounted the cart and, crying briskly, ‘Gee up there!’ took the horse out of the yard at a trot. He hadn’t spoken to the miller, which wasn’t unusual; but the miller hadn’t spoken a word to him, and that was unusual.
He did not make for home but took the fell road. Twice he had to dismount and get behind the cart and, yelling at the horse to pull harder, ease the wheels out of mud-filled potholes. The farther he went on the fells the more grey and desolate the scene became. There was a deadly body-chilling bleakness everywhere that matched the feeling inside him.
As he mounted the slope he saw Joe and Sarah carrying armsful of wood into the dwelling. In the noise of the wind they hadn’t heard the cart draw up, nor had they observed him mounting the slope, so they closed the door after them. He hesitated before knocking and it was Cissie herself who opened it, and he read on her expression surprise and what he could only translate as disappointment, and this latter emotion was borne home to him by the sudden drooping of her shoulders.
‘Hello,’ he said.
She did not speak, but bowed her head and stood aside so that he could enter. Then the children were around him, all but Bella and Sarah; Sarah because she didn’t like Matthew Turnbull as she once had done—she hadn’t liked him since he had married the woman from the mill instead of their Cissie—and Bella because she was still in a state of shock and dread, and she couldn’t as yet take in the fact that she wasn’t going to the House of Correction.
As the children scampered about asking him questions about William and the mill, Cissie knelt before the fire and thrust potatoes into the hot ashes. Her heart was beating rapidly. This was the first time she had seen him since his marriage. He looked older, grey in the face, but that could be the bleakness of the weather. When the knock had come on the door she had thought it was the man and he had come to ask her to go back to the Hall because they couldn’t get the child to stop crying. All night she had prayed that it would cry and wail its loss of her, as she was crying and wailing inside because of her empty arms, her empty life. She had six of them here to look after but without the child they no longer seemed her kin, her flesh. She prayed that this feeling would pass and she would love them again as she had done before she had gone through the Lodge gates and over that park; she prayed that she would not hate Bella, that she would be able to keep her hand off her when she did stupid things.
Although her heart was beating painfully there was no joy in her at seeing Matthew. He was standing to the side of her now; she could see his feet out of the corner of her eye and when he said, ‘Can you step outside a minute?’ she sat back on her haunches, dusted the ashes from her hands and replied simply, ‘No.’
There came a quietness on the room for a moment; then Sarah began to bustle, pushing at one and then another. Saying, ‘Come on, youse,’ she shepherded them out of the room and into the cave, Annie protesting loudly the while, ‘No, our Sarah! I want near the fire.’
Matthew, dropping on his hunkers and his voice low pitched, said, ‘I just heard; I’m sorry.’
At this she put the palms of her hands together and nipped them between her knees and rocked her body gently backwards and forwards.
‘What made you do it? If you were that hard up you should have told William to tell me on the quiet; you know I would have come up with something.’
Her body still rocked.
‘Cissie!’ His arm flashed in front of her and gripped her shoulders and swung her round to him; and now, his face close to hers, he whispered, ‘Don’t hold it against me, girl. I had to do what I had to do. I told you, I warned you, an’ if it’s any satisfaction to you I’m paying the price for it. Hell couldn’t be worse. Look at me.’ His voice was a thin, hard whisper, and when she raised her eyes to his he saw they were glazed with tears and when slowly they spilled over her lids and down her cheeks he wagged his head from side to side and gritted his teeth. After a moment he swung off his hunkers and dropped on to his knees in front of her, and his hands slid down from her arms and brought her hands into his, and he asked gently, ‘Couldn’t you get him back?’ And when she shook her head, he said, ‘What straits were you in to let him go then?’
Her voice a low mutter, her head still bent, she said, ‘’Twas Bella; she stole. She was due to go before the justice on Monday. They would have sent her to the House of Correction. She…she was terrified out of her wits, an’…an’ then him in the Hall. He’d been after the child for weeks but I wouldn’t let him go. Then…then I was told that he could get Bella off, and would do, but only if I let him have the bairn.’
She looked at him now. His jaws were tight clenched, his brows meeting low over his nose, but he said nothing, and she turned towards the fire again and, reaching out, turned one of the potatoes, and when she sat back on her haunches she said on a deep sigh, ‘If he hadn’t of got him that way he would have some other. He was going to take it to Court to claim him.’ She lifted up her eyes to his again and, not knowing that her words were like knives being thrown at him, she said, ‘I loved him so, an’ I miss him. I don’t feel I’d just had him five months. It’s funny, but it’s as if I’d had him all my life. And now there’s nothing more to live for.’
