The Dwelling Place, page 16
She was a strange girl, he considered, yet very pleasing. In an odd way over the past weeks he had become attached to her, concerned for her—so much so that the reports he had given his master were a little larger than life, but all to her credit.
They were in sight of the dwelling when Joe came running out of the doorway and Cissie stopped and cried, ‘Where you been? Oh, you are a bad ’un!’ And when he dashed to her, his face bright and laughing, she encircled him with her arms and held him tightly to her. Then suddenly with a drawn-out groan she fell on to her knees, her body doubled in two.
‘Our Cissie! Our Cissie! What’s the matter with you?’ Joe wasn’t laughing now, and after a moment she looked from the man who was bending over her to Joe and, gripping his arm, said, ‘Run…run to Rosier’s village, you know, where Mrs Bellamy lives. Tell her…tell her I think me time’s come. Bring her back with you. You understand?’
Joe nodded, but as he made off she checked him and after drawing in a long breath she gasped, ‘And mind, don’t, don’t talk to anybody on the road. If you see that man, run; do you hear?’
‘Aye, Cissie. Aye, I’ll run.’
‘Go on.’ She pushed him forward, and he went skipping and bounding over the wet ground like a hare itself.
‘Let me help you.’ Cunningham now took her arm and led her into the dwelling and when he had sat her on the chair, she said, ‘Thank you. Thank you.’
‘Hadn’t you better go to bed?’
‘Yes. Yes, I’ll do that.’ After a moment she got to her feet, saying, ‘I’m all right. Thank you. Thank you very much.’
The ‘thank you’ was a form of dismissal but he still stood in the room and watched her go through the opening into the cave; and after about ten minutes, when he thought he had given her time enough to get undressed and into bed, he called, ‘Are you all right?’ and she answered, ‘Yes, yes, I’m all right.’
Slowly he went and stood in the opening and looked down towards the floor where she was lying on a wooden structure on top of a straw mattress that had a patched quilt over it. She was still fully dressed, and as he was about to speak again he was checked by the sight of her knees suddenly coming upwards while at the same time her head was bent forward as it to meet them.
After a moment when she put her legs down and adjusted her clothes he asked softly, ‘Is it possible for me to get you something?’ And to this she only shook her head. Looking about him he thought, What could he get her anyway in this place? He was surprised that he should find himself so deeply moved and distressed; this assignment, as it were, had turned out quite differently from what he had expected.
Over the years, taking the tone from his master, he had come to look on those who worked outside the precincts of the Hall as a form of species only a little above the animal level. Rosier’s village for example was a case in point. They worked and drank and fought and bred amid stench and filth that even some animals wouldn’t tolerate. A badger, for example, always kept a clean house.
‘O-h! G-God! O-h M-a! M-a!’
Her body was doubled up tighter now. He could see her bare thighs. He turned away in embarrassment, also in deep distress, because the sight of the girl was reviving memories that he had buried long ago for his own peace of mind.
After a while there was no sound from the room, and, seeing a bucket of water standing on a chest with a mug near, he examined it to find it was clear, and dipped the mug into the water. He now went slowly into the cave and to her side, and, bending down, said, ‘Have this drink of water.’
She raised herself on her elbow and took the mug from his hand and drained it. Then, muttering, ‘Ta. Thanks,’ she lay back and closed her eyes.
The sweat was pouring down her face. Her hair he noticed, as he had done before, was beautiful. Her skin, too, was beautiful. He took out a very white handkerchief and, assuming the position he took up when he pulled off his master’s boots, he drew his handkerchief gently around her face, and she opened her eyes and gazed at him; very much, he thought, like a wild doe in agony…And he had seen a wild doe in agony—some huntsmen were very bad shots…
Two hours later he was still with her, but looking now from the door towards the track along which he imagined the woman and the boy would come. In the last half-hour her pains had been tumbling one on top of the other and he knew that the birth of the child was imminent.
The cry that pierced his head turned him quickly about, and he went back into the cave and stopped just within the doorway to be dumbfounded by the sight before him. The girl was clutching the sides of the bed, her body arched and heaving; her knees were up and wide apart; her clothes, a mere skirt and a petticoat, were tumbled back about her thighs, and from her womb was poking the head of a child.
It must have been that her groans and cries overlaid the entrance of the woman and the boy, for he found himself thrust aside by a big creature in a black shawl who cried at him, ‘Who you? What ya doin’ here? Get out of it!’
When he stared at her speechless, she yelled at him, ‘Go on. Bugger off! No place for you. What you want in here anyway?’
He didn’t immediately obey this creature’s commands but stood and watched her bend over the bed and place her big dirty hands under the child that was sliding into the world, and as he watched he became filled with bitterness and anger, for it was just such a woman, big, dirty and alcohol-filled as this one was, who had killed his own wife and child, his wife to die in agony, having been poisoned through dirt. He had been twenty-two when that happened and life had ceased for him for a while, until one day, carrying on his work of assistant tailor, he had gone to measure a young man, son of a lord, whose name was Fischel.
He was brought back from the past by the sound of the boy crying, and he put his hand on his head and turned him about and took him outside. Then, as he was about to take his leave, he remembered that he didn’t know the sex of the child and he went back into the cave to hear the woman giving the explanation of why she had been drinking. ‘At the mill for boxings I was,’ she was saying, ‘and the weddin’ in full swing. Daughter marryin’ the wheelwright from Benham. He’s on to a good thing there. But she’s not everybody’s cup of tea. Still, there was no cheese-parin’, not only mead but gin they had, an’ the hard stuff, an’ it all flowin’ to each an’ every body.’
He called softly to the woman. ‘What is it?’
She had just cut the cord with a knife and, taking the yelling child in her hands, she thrust it towards him, pushing its buttocks up and crying, ‘There! That satisfy ya? Who the hell are ya, anyway? You’ve no right in here.’
He ignored the woman and glanced from the child to the girl on the bed. She was lying quite still now. She looked dead, but her breast was moving up and down. He turned and went out.
Six
Lord Fischel thought that if the child had been born a fortnight after the specified date from conception he would have allowed it, but it had been born a fortnight before, which could mean that she had conceived before; people in her position started very young. In his grandfather’s time, looking as she did, she would doubtless have been brought to the House when she was fourteen, if not before. Yet in spite of this reasoning, the thought persisted that the date of birth could veer from the nine months, especially in the case of the first child, and with her falling.
As the weeks went by this thought kept recurring, until one day he reopened the subject with Cunningham by saying, ‘You may take a stroll over the fells, Cunnings, and see that person again with a view to looking at the child. I want to know if it carries any resemblance.’
Cunningham stood looking at his master’s back, and he didn’t make any response until His Lordship turned on him and said sharply, ‘Well?’
‘There is a strong resemblance, m’Lord, I have taken the liberty of visiting the person once or twice since the birth. The…the resemblance is most noticeable in…in the nose, m’Lord. Children’s features are apt to alter, m’Lord, but the bone structure I would say is that of your father. The child’s face, although plump with baby fat, is long, and the head large towards the back.’
After a moment His Lordship turned away and he was sitting down before the long mirror, with Cunningham dressing his hair, before he spoke again; and then he asked, ‘Would it be possible for you to bring the child here, say at night?’
Cunningham’s hands became still on his master’s head. His eyes looked through the mirror into the cold grey ones and he so far forgot himself as to omit the appendix as he said bluntly, ‘No.’ Then hastily he added, ‘Well, you see, m’Lord, she’s a good mother and seems very taken with the child.’
His Lordship now made a sound in his throat and after a moment he asked, ‘Well, how do you suggest I could see it?’
‘Well, m’Lord.’ Cunningham paused to consider, then said, ‘You could be out shooting, m’Lord, and happen to be passing the habitation.’
‘You know that I wouldn’t be shooting on the open fells.’ His voice was impatient. ‘And I would never be passing the habitation on foot.’ The whole tone dismissed the idea as paltry, and now he went on, command in his voice, ‘Tell her that I wish to see the child. She is to bring him to the North Lodge tomorrow afternoon, say at four o’clock.’
The ‘but’ was stilled on Cunningham’s tongue. All he could do was to answer quietly, ‘Very well, m’Lord.’
Up to this moment Cunningham had always been proud of his position as valet to Lord Fischel, but now, explaining it to this girl, he felt as if he were confessing to some shameful thing, and his whole manner bore this out. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I came at His Lordship’s behest. I am his valet and, being so, he gave me an order and I had to obey. You understand?’
She had drawn back from him, her face expressing her fear. She had liked this man; she had thought he was kind; he had been the only one with her in that awful travail before the child was born; she had sensed his pity and concern for her, but now she saw him as nothing more than a spy, a lackey at best, obeying orders. She answered him over the distance, saying, ‘I don’t care who you are, or what you are, I’m not taking him to the Lodge, he’s mine. I didn’t want him, I had no part in him, but now he’s mine and I’m keepin’ him.’
‘Please, please listen to me.’ Cunningham bent deferentially towards her. ‘First of all, will you believe me when I say that during the weeks I have known you I have come to respect you, and I would not willingly do anything to add to your burden? It is my hope that I might be able to lighten it.’
‘By havin’ him taken away?…No.’
‘Just think for a moment.’ He now joined his hands together in front of his narrow chest, and again she was reminded of Parson Hedley. ‘They are powerful, I mean lords and all people who live in great mansions.’ He was speaking as it he were aligning himself with her against them, the gentry. He went on, his voice just above a whisper now, ‘They have ways and means to get what they want, and a position such as yours offers them numerous ways and means…You understand me?’
Yes, yes, she understood him; and with understanding her fear grew. He was right, they had power. For one thing they could tear her dwelling place down and turn her off the fells. They could make out she was a bad woman and take the child from her. As her fear increased her defiance ebbed.
Seeing this, he put in soothingly, ‘It will only be for a moment, you needn’t let him out of your arms. And there’ll be no-one else there but His Lordship, I promise you.’
She said now, piteously, ‘He won’t try to take it away from me, will he, I mean, do something so that I won’t be able to keep it?’
‘No; His Lordship is a good man, a man of principle. Just think what he did when…’ His voice trailed away before beginning again, ‘He sent his son and daughter away, you know that. You have nothing to fear from His Lordship. Although’—he moved his head slightly—‘he does not like to be crossed.’
She was staring at him now unblinking; and then she asked, ‘What time?’
‘Four o’clock. It is barely three yet, you have time to get the baby dressed, and…and yourself.’ He hesitated on the last words, and she said, ‘I am dressed.’
He looked at the patched bodice, the serge skirt, and the hessian apron, and he remembered that these were the clothes she wore when the child was born and he said, ‘I’m sorry.’
She saw he was sorry, and to ease his embarrassment she turned from him and went into the dwelling and picked the child up from the basket and washed him, and put on a clean binder and an odd-looking nightgown that she had made out of the piece of linen Rose Watson had wrapped the cheese and bread in on the one and only time she had visited the mill, and some grey lining that she had taken from one of the old dresses; she had used the lining for the back part of the nightgown. Going to the box, she took out the fawn shawl with the pink fringe and she held it in her hand for a moment and looked down on it before she wrapped it around the child, then laid him in the basket again.
Now she washed her face and hands in the bowl, smoothed down her hair, took off her hessian apron and, going to the door, looked past the man, where he was standing patiently waiting, and called to Joe who was chopping wood, saying, ‘Come and get yourself clean.’ And when he came into the room she said, ‘Wash your face and hands, we’re going for a walk.’
‘A walk?’ He screwed up his bright eyes at her. ‘What have I got to wash me hands an’ face to go for a walk for?’
‘Do as you’re bid, and be quick.’ Then going to the door again, she said, ‘I must take him along ’cos the girls are out pickin’.’ And he nodded at her, saying, ‘That will be quite in order.’
Five minutes later they set out for the North Lodge. The lodgekeeper was expecting them. He was waiting by the small gate and he opened it at their approach and stared at them, but he didn’t speak until he had closed it after them; then in a grave undertone he murmured to Cunningham, ‘His Lordship’s inside.’ And his manner suggested that God had descended into his house.
Cunningham motioned Cissie to go forward while putting a restraining hand on Joe, and when she walked towards the cottage door the lodgekeeper darted before her, knocked hastily on the panel, then pushed the door open; and when she had passed over the threshold, he closed the door behind her.
She was standing in a small room, not half as clean as her habitation and smelling of musk and onions; she took in these impressions on the side, but her eyes looked straight towards the finely dressed man standing with his back to the little window. The first time she had seen his face was when she was lying prone on the ground, and she saw it again now as if it were coming at her from a distant and vague dream.
Lord Fischel took the handkerchief from his nose—the odour of the room offended him—and he, in turn, stared at the girl, ignoring for the moment the bundle in her arms. And he, too, remembered her from that distant time, but thought now, as he hadn’t thought then, that she was beautiful; and he was amazed afresh that such as she could be thrown up from the dregs of the earth. She appeared clean—her clothes, although threadbare as they were, weren’t befouled—but what impressed him most at this moment was the expression in her eyes. Not one of his servants would have dared to look at him like this, for her look was telling him that she could read his mind and her answer was ‘No.’
Perhaps it was this knowledge that tempered his manner, for he did an unusual thing—he asked her to be seated.
Her back straight, the child held tightly against her breast, she sat down on a wooden seat near the table, and he, his voice still moderated to a low pitch, said, ‘The child, is he well?’
‘Yes, sir, very well.’
Her mistaken form of address brought no sharp reprimand from him; instead, moving slightly from the window and still keeping his eyes on her, he said, ‘Had you associated with men of your own kind before my son so far forgot himself as to take you?’
Her chin trembled, her head moved backwards and forwards in small movements and she had to force herself to swallow before she could answer him. Then, in no injured tone such as he expected from her, but her voice clear and level and her bearing dignified, she said, ‘I had been with no man, or wished to. My father, he was different, he could read and write, he brought us up respectable.’
Their eyes held until His Lordship found he had to take his gaze from her, stopping himself from looking downwards only by directing his eyes to the low, smoke-begrimed ceiling. Then, his clean-cut lips working one against the other, he pursed them for a moment before saying abruptly, ‘I would like to see the child.’
She did not get to her feet but she opened the fawn shawl and waited, and he was forced to step forward.
The moment his eyes beheld the child he experienced a pain. It was as if his ribs had been pierced by a sharp instrument. The child was awake and was looking up at him with eyes set in deep sockets. The nose was straight and large for the face, the mouth was his father’s mouth; in fact so uncanny was the likeness, that he imagined for a moment that he was looking at the shrunken head of his father. And this impression held even when the child suddenly gurgled and, pushing out its lips, made a bubble with its saliva. Still looking down on it, he asked quietly, ‘What have you named it?’
‘Richard; it was me da’s second name.’
His head jerked so quickly that a bone cracked audibly in his neck. This was more than coincidence surely, for his father’s second name had been Richard.
His conviction now that he was being led towards taking certain steps with regard to this child was stronger than ever.
He walked away from her and to the window and with his back to her he asked, ‘Will you part with the child?’
‘No, no, I’ll not.’ Her reply came quick and from deep within her throat. ‘Not for anything.’
