‘I meant something more in the personal way. Some help with the cottage, possibly, or some plants for your garden.’

  ‘No, there’s nothing. Except that you might give Nenna a message.’

  ‘Oh? What is it?’

  ‘Tell her the bear was still dancing when I went to Kevelport Fair that day. Spry as a two-year-old he was, tell her, and the old chap with him in pretty good shape too.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘All right. I’ll tell her.’

  ‘Ah, and tell her there’s six or seven apricots on that little tree she planted. ‒ They ought to be eaten. They’ve been ripe a good while now. Tell her she ought to come and pick ’em.’

  ‘Yes. Very well. I’ll give her your message, certainly.’

  The apricots, however, fell to the ground and were eaten by birds, and no Nenna came to the cottage. The sweet williams and wallflowers she had planted in the border under the windows had withered now and gone to seed. Jack pulled them up and burnt them on the bonfire, and dug in the seedlings that had sprung up like mustard-and-cress all around. Nenna, he thought, had probably never been given his message.

  On wet evenings now, he sat in his chair beside the fire, his feet on a log inside the hearth. The dresser he was making in the far recess remained half-finished, and his tools lay about there, thrown down anyhow among the shavings.

  His injured knee was badly swollen. It was always at its worst when the cold wet weather first set in. So he did nothing; only sat and smoked, enclosed in a kind of obstinate stillness; alone with the pain, as if listening to it.

  He got up one evening and hurled his clay pipe into the fire-place. He made the fire safe in a mound of ashes and walked out, putting on his cap and jacket as he went and drawing his collar up to his ears. He told himself he was going to The Bay Tree. He wanted the cheerfulness and the company and he needed to buy a few new pipes. But somehow his feet took him up through the orchard and across the fields towards the farmhouse.

  The rain had turned to sleet. It struck hard and cold out of the east. The house was in darkness on every side, no flicker of life even in the kitchen window. So he trudged on into Felpy Lane, and met the trap coming up from Niddup. Miss Philippa was driving and Nenna was with her, the two of them huddled beneath an umbrella. Jack stepped back into the hedgerow, leaning against the trunk of an oak tree, and watched the trap go slowly past him. A little while later a light went on in the kitchen window and glimmered wetly through the night. Then the curtains were drawn and the place became dark again, as before.

  He began walking towards Niddup. He got as far as Maryhope Farm. Then he changed his mind and returned to the cottage, and there he found Nenna, sitting on the staddle-stone, waiting for him.

  ‘I saw you,’ she said. ‘I saw you up in Felpy Lane, skulking under the old oak tree.’

  He led the way indoors and blew the fire to life with the bellows. He put on more wood and got it burning. Nenna wandered about the room, noting the work he had done in her absence: the two oak stools beside the table; the tall corner cupboard; the basketwork chair; the unfinished dresser. She shed her wet cloak and came to the fire-place, shivering a little as she spread her hands before the blaze.

  ‘I feel I’ve come home when I come here,’ she said, and looked up at him with the fire reflected in her eyes, her face and throat warmly lit by the flames. ‘Don’t ever send me away again, will you?’ she said to him in a quiet voice.

  He moved towards her clumsily, and she came to him without any fuss, giving herself up to him, small in his arms.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Nenna, are you mad?’ Miss Philippa demanded. ‘A man twice your age! One of the labourers off the farm! A tramp who came here from God knows where, with nothing but the clothes he wore on his back!’

  Nenna was silent, standing with her hand inside Jack’s arm. She was smiling to herself as if nothing her sister said could hurt her.

  ‘Have you no pride, girl, with your upbringing? You could marry any one of a dozen gentleman farmers’ sons in the district or into one of the professional families ‒’

  ‘How could I, when I’ve never met them?’

  ‘Is that the trouble? You never said so. That’s quite easily remedied, I assure you.’

  ‘It’s a bit late now,’ Jack said. ‘She’s settled for me.’

  ‘You! Oh, yes! You’ve wormed your way in very cleverly, haven’t you, winning my trust and enticing Nenna away from me? A girl of eighteen! Scarcely more than an ignorant child! But if you hope to get your hands on this property you’re going to be very disappointed, for it’s all mine, ‒ every stick and stone on every acre ‒ and Nenna hasn’t got so much as a penny piece to call her own!’

  ‘Good. You’ll know I’m not marrying her for gain, then, won’t you?’

  ‘What are you marrying her for, pray?’

  ‘I love her, that’s why. What other reason would there be?’

  His simple answer seemed to take Miss Philippa by surprise. She stood looking at him for a long time, with frowning eyes, her anger apparently melting away, and when she spoke it was with a tired sigh, as though she admitted herself defeated.

  ‘I was afraid something like this would happen,’ she said. ‘I ought to have done something more about it.’

  She did not ask if Nenna loved him. She merely approached the girl and kissed her, rather formally, sorrowfully, as one who believed in doing her duty. Then she shook Jack’s hand.

  ‘You mustn’t mind the harsh things I said. It’s only because I’m anxious for Nenna. I stand in place of both her parents.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’d just as soon you spoke your mind.’

  ‘You’ll be married from here, of course. I will make the arrangements.’

  ‘Well, ‒’

  ‘This is Nenna’s home, you must remember.’

  ‘Right you are. Just as you say.’

  He left the house feeling rather suspicious. He had expected more difficulties. But Miss Philippa, it seemed, having resigned herself to the situation, was determined to improve it as best she could. She had him drive her to market every week and on errands to neighbouring farms, and she made a great point of treating him with marked respect.

  ‘This is Mr Mercybright, my bailiff,’ she would say. ‘He runs things for me at Brown Elms. He is shortly to be married to my half-sister.’

  And she told him, in private, that after the wedding he would receive an increase in wages.

  ‘I’ve been promoted!’ he told Nenna. ‘I’m Mister Mercybright now, mark you, and going to get a bailiff’s wages.’

  ‘I should think so too!’

  ‘Is it your doing? You been speaking on my behalf?’

  ‘No. Not a word. But now that you’re marrying me, you see, family pride requires that she raise you to an acceptable level.’

  ‘Ah. That’s it. She’s making the best of a bad bargain.’

  ‘She’s letting us have a bed, did I tell you? And giving us a brand new kitchen range as a wedding present. Oh, and Mrs Ellenton of Spouts is giving us a lamp with a pretty frosted globe on it, and flowers engraved all over the glass.’

  Nenna was at the cottage every day now, bringing in oddments of china and glass and cutlery unwanted at the farmhouse; screwing cup-hooks into the shelves of the dresser almost before the varnish was dry; measuring for curtains and making thick warm mats for the floors. Miss Philippa talked in vain of the pans standing dirty in the dairy and cheeses that needed turning in the cheese-room. ‒ Nenna had time only for the work that had to be done in the cottage, and when Jack was free, they worked there together. The wedding was set for January the fourth. Sometimes it seemed all too close.

  ‘Shall we be done in time?’ Nenna asked. ‘Shall we? Shall we?’

  ‘Done?’ Jack said. ‘The rate we’re going, we could just as well have been married by Christmas!’

  There came a day when the last window was in and painted, and he stood back to admire his work. He put aside his paint-pot and brush and walked all round outside the cottage. It looked very trim and smart, he thought: the daywork panels a dazzling white; the beams and windowframes painted black; the thatch now thoroughly darkened by weather and the big redbrick chimney neatly re-pointed from top to bottom; and he called Nenna to come and look.

  ‘When the paint on that window is dry,’ he announced, ‘the house is finished!’

  ‘Finished?’ she exclaimed. ‘When there isn’t a door on it, front or back?’

  Jack was speechless. He felt himself gaping. He had grown so used to the curtain of sacks hanging up in the porch that it seemed the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘If you think,’ Nenna said, laughing, ‘that I’m going to live in a house without doors you’re much mistaken, Jack Mercybright!’

  ‘H’mm, some folks is fussy,’ he said, recovering, ‘but I suppose I shall have to do something about it.’

  And he went off to see what timber there was left in the out-house.

  The two doors were made by the end of December; hung and painted on New Year’s Day; and furnished with snecks, locks, and bolts on the morning of the fourth, the day of the wedding.

  ‘A near thing,’ Jack said to Nenna. ‘I reckon I came pretty near being jilted!’

  They were married in Niddup, in the big old church above the river. There was snow on the ground that afternoon and more fell as they drove in the trap to Brown Elms.

  ‘A white wedding,’ Nenna said, and squeezed his arm against her body, looking at him through snow-flecked lashes. She seemed warm enough and very happy, enchanted with everything, especially the snow.

  The wedding party took place at the farmhouse, in the best front parlour, where a huge fire burnt for once in the fire-place, drawing the mustiness out of the furnishings and bringing the perspiration out on the red faces of the wedding guests crowded close together there.

  ‘By golly, ent it hot in here?’ Jack said, in Nenna’s ear. ‘Don’t your sister ever open the windows?’

  ‘Our house will never smell musty,’ she murmured back. ‘I shall see to that!’

  ‘Now, then, you two!’ said Joe Stretton. ‘You’ll have plenty of time for whispering together in the years to come. It’s your guests that ought to be getting your attention now, poor beggars!’

  ‘You know what you are, don’t you, bailiff?’ said John Tuller of Maryhope Farm, pushing Jack and Nenna together. ‘You’re a cradlesnatcher, that’s what you are, marrying this babe beside you here!’

  ‘Ah, you’ll have to watch out with a bride as young as that, Jack,’ said George Ellenton of Spouts Hall. ‘They’re full of mettle when they’re under twenty and pretty soon put years on a man if he doesn’t take good care about it.’

  ‘I hope he knows, that’s all,’ Paul Luppitt remarked to Peter.

  ‘Knows what?’

  ‘How many beans make five.’

  ‘I can tell him that ‒ it’s six!’ said the young boy, Harvey Stretton.

  ‘Drink up, drink up!’ said James Trigg of Goodlands. ‘The nights are long at this time of year.’

  ‘I would drink up,’ said Percy Rugg, ‘if it warnt that my glass didn’t seem to be empty.’

  ‘I daresay Miss Philippa will have gave Miss Nenna some advice worth hearing.’

  ‘She can’t have took it, though, can she, or how come we’ve got a wedding on our hands like this?’

  ‘Lock and key,’ said James Trigg of Goodlands. ‘Lock and key was the sound advice my father gave me when I got married. Keep things under lock and key.’

  ‘How come our wives warnt invited, I wonder?’

  ‘I reckon Miss Philippa better prefers keeping all us big manly chaps to herself, that’s why.’

  ‘And who can blame her?’ Ellenton said.

  Miss Philippa, going about with the jug of ale, turned a deaf ear to these remarks, though the redness in her cheeks showed that she heard them all too plainly, and the way she glared when Peter Luppitt tipped her elbow showed exactly where she laid the blame. The neighbouring farmers from Maryhope and Goodlands and Spouts Hall were respectful enough in the ordinary way, but now, finding themselves in the company of her labourers, they allowed their own coarseness a loose rein and talked as they would in field or cowshed.

  ‘What about you, Miss Philippa?’ George Ellenton said to her. ‘The nights will be long for you, too, now you’ll be all alone in the house, eh?’

  ‘Miss Philippa can call me in,’ said John Tuller, offering his glass for her to fill. ‘I’d have married her years ago, and well she knows it, if I didn’t have a wife already.’

  ‘Maybe Miss P. will follow Miss Nenna’s example,’ said Joe Stretton, ‘and choose a husband from off her own farm.’

  ‘Well, Joe,’ said William Gauntlet, ‘you’re the only single bachelor chap now left here unmarried.’

  ‘I know that. I ent simple nor tenpence short!’ And Stretton, leaning forward in a familiar way, thrust his thick face as close to Miss Philippa’s as he could. ‘How about it, Miss P? You’ve always had rather a soft spot for me, ent you?’

  Miss Philippa bore it all in silence, with the air of one who, though her sufferings were due to others, would always do right by them, come what might. Her sister Nenna had brought this upon her, but she did her duty nevertheless and kept the labourers’ glasses brimming.

  ‘Why don’t you leave her alone?’ Jack said. ‘Instead of baiting her all the time?’

  ‘I’m making the most of things,’ Stretton said. ‘Tomorrow morning she’ll be back in the saddle again and I shall be trampled underfoot!’ He drank his beer and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket. He was looking at Jack with wicked eyes. ‘It makes me laugh. It does, honest. I’m as bucked as a doe about the whole thing. You! One of us! Brother-in-law to Miss High-and-Mighty! And her there, looking as if she’s swallowed a beetle!’

  ‘You can have a lie-in tomorrow, Jack, seeing it’s Sunday,’ said Peter Luppitt. ‘Paul and me will do your share of the early milking.’

  ‘No need,’ Jack said. ‘I shall be there, the same as always.’

  When he and Nenna were ready to leave, there was talk of the party going with them, ‘to see them tucked up’ as Lacey said, but the joints of cold mutton and beef not yet eaten and the second beer-cask not yet broached were a stronger attraction and kept the wedding guests behind. So Jack and Nenna were allowed to leave peacefully and went arm in arm, treading carefully over the crisp bright sparkling snow to the cottage at the laneside.

  The fire was laid in the brand-new shiny kitchen range and while Jack got it going, Nenna went about her wifely duties, filling the kettle ready for the morning and setting the breakfast things out on the table. Then, while he was outside pumping more water, she made porridge and left it in its pan beside the hob.

  A little while later, bringing in an armful of logs for the basket, he found the place empty. His working-boots stood on the hearth; his working-shirt was hung up to air; the candle in its holder was burning ready to light the way upstairs to bed. But Nenna was out in the cold night. He followed her foot-prints in the snow and found her standing out in the lane, looking at the cottage with the firelight flickering in its leaded windows and the smoke rising against the stars.

  ‘I wanted to see what it looked like,’ she said, ‘to anyone passing up the lane.’

  She came closer, and her face in the starlight was a child’s face, the skin clear and pale, the eyes enormous, the cheekbones delicate and frail-looking. He was suddenly frightened, and she sensed it in him.

  ‘Jack? What’s the matter?’

  ‘God, what have I done, marrying such a child!’ he said.

  She was very small, leaning against him, but she reached up with strong, wilful arms until he submitted and bent his head. The wind blew cold. Light snow began falling again. She shivered a little and he took her indoors.

  During the fierce gales that winter, he would sometimes take the lamp from the table and go about inspecting the walls, to see if the rain was driving through them. But the work he had done on the cottage was good. It was proof against every kind of weather.

  ‘Seems the old methods ent so bad after all. That there dobwork is quite as hard as any bricks and a lot more wet-proof into the bargain.’

  ‘Come back with that lamp,’ Nenna said, waiting at the table with her scissors poised above a length of shirting, ‘or I’ll end by cutting your collar crooked.’

  ‘Like you done with the last one? And the one before that?’

  ‘You!’ she said. ‘I’ve half a mind to give you a hair cut!’ And as he set the lamp on the table, she made a threatening move with the scissors, going snip-snip-snip close beside his ear. ‘And your eyebrows too! Great bristly things! I’ve half a mind to trim them!’

  ‘You just get on with making my shirt, so’s I look smart in church next Sunday.’

  ‘Then you are coming after all?’

  ‘I might,’ he said. ‘It all depends what hymns they’re having.’

  ‘You ought to go to church sometimes,’ Nenna said. ‘A man in your position … it’s only seemly.’ She finished cutting out the second collar and placed it carefully aside. ‘Just this once, anyway.’

  ‘Why this once?’ he asked, amused.

  ‘Well … now we know there’s a baby coming … it seems to me it’s only right.’

  ‘Why? Doesn’t the Lord know we’re married? He damned well ought to! We was joined together in his sight, according to what the parson said.’

  ‘Shush!’ Nenna said. ‘That’s blasphemy.’ But she laughed all the same. ‘What would Philippa say if she heard you?’

  ‘If I go to church,’ he said, watching her as he lit his pipe, ‘shall I wear my new worsted suit and my soft boots and my smart new wide-awake hat?’

  ‘Of course! Of course!’

  ‘And the spotted silk stock you got for me, too, and the handsome stick-pin?’

  ‘Yes, of course! Where else would you wear them if not to church?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, waving away a cloud of smoke, ‘that’s why you want me to go, ent it, just to show me off in my smart new clothes?’

 

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