All the dear faces Page 12

  'Come all of you cockers far and near,' it began and they had got as far as the last verse, 'Now the black cock he has lost their brass, And the Gillthrop lads did swear and curse .

  when a deep-throated masculine voice joined in, roaring out the remainder of the song with a dash and musical gusto which, though it silenced them in surprise for a moment, they took up again and finished with him.

  . . and wished they'd never come that day, To Bassenthwaite to see the play.' They looked at one another, she and Reed Macauley, vivid blue eyes locking with golden brown, bewitched by the sensation of pure joy, the feeling of exhilarating pleasure, of sheer, childlike enjoyment of the song they had shared. It lit up their faces and in that moment, for that moment, broke the fetters which adult human beings bind about themselves and which children have not yet learned. That guarded restraint which is erected to protect dignity and hide from view that innermost vulnerable core of one's self. They looked at one another and, quite simply, fell deep in love and for the space of five seconds their eyes admitted it. She relaxed, ready to sigh over the perfection of it. Soft, her eyes became, and so did his, dazed with awe at this emotion neither had known before and certainly not expected, dazzled with the wonderment and confusion since it had come on them so blindingly, so suddenly, so amazingly. But scarcely before they had acknowledged its sweetness, as though a warning voice had whispered inside them both, at exactly the same time they became business-like, brisk, turning away to fumble with something, she with her spade, he with the sledge he pulled behind him and with the implement he had devised to push away the snow in front of him.

  “I knew damn well you'd not stay home like any sensible woman, Annie Abbott. " His voice was top heavy with something he did his best to hide from her. "No, not you. Up to our necks in bloody snow and more to come, no doubt . . ." heedless of the sky which showed not a suspect cloud from horizon to horizon, from high peak to high peak, ". . . and where are you and this poor child you drag around with you? Not by your own hearth where a woman with sense would keep herself but out on the damn fell digging like some damn ten-year-old making his first snowman. Could you not for once remain where you are safe from danger? A woman from these parts who is familiar with its weather should know when discretion comes before bravado.”

  And the strange thing was, though it incensed her beyond measure, she knew exactly why he was speaking to her in such a menacing, furious tone. The snow had stopped falling no more than two hours since and yet here he was dragging a sledge – on which there was yet another hamper – just as though he was a boy about to play the wild games boys who had nothing better to do often play. Pretending he was 'passing by' no doubt, on his way to some important and not to be postponed meeting but in reality slipping and sliding down the long, snow-drifted track, hazardous and uncertain at the best of times, as soon as he could from Long Beck to Browhead to see that she and Cat were in good condition. This was not the first time he had come to her rescue and not the first time he had done his best to give her a hand over the rough path life had put her on, but it wouldn't do. It wouldn't do! He was Reed Macauley, wealthy farmer and businessman, son of a prosperous and successful 'statesman' family and she was Annie Abbott with an illegitimate child and a derelict farm, and a way to make in the world for both of them. It would be hard enough to make it without him to muddy the already unclear waters of her life. To interfere because he had a fancy, she told herself, to play the gallant knight to her damsel in distress.

  “What's it to you, Mister Macauley, what I do?" She had to screech like this. She had to let him see, make him see that he must leave her alone. She had to fight with him since it seemed it was the only way to get rid of him. The last few minutes had frightened her badly. She was in one of the most desperate situations of her life, ready to fall over the brink of disaster and into a heaving pit of despair. She was holding on by a whisker, by the fragile tips of her fingers and one false move, one tiny movement that was unbalanced would tip her over into it and she could not, could not afford to – she would not even think it, let alone say the word 'love' – look at any man, not now, not at this precarious moment in her life and certainly not one like Reed Macauley. It had been no longer than the time it takes to blink an eye, that gladness, that meeting, that astonishing meeting of their senses and really, no harm had been done, not yet, and she must fight to make sure that that tiny fraction of time in which tenderness, concern and passion had been revealed, was not repeated. She could only do it with harshness.

  “It's none of your damned business, as I've told you before," she shrieked. "Lord, every time I turn round there you are at my back demanding to know what I'm doing and why. I've only been home a few weeks but already you've had something to say about the state of my looks," – referring to the day he had knocked on her door and found her coated in soot – "the condition of my daughter, my fitness for my work," – which was not strictly true but she did not care in her furious attempt at true rage – "and now my state of mind in trying to get to it. I have a job to do and if I don't get down to it I won't get paid, besides which I'll not have those crows down in the village say that Annie Abbott hasn't the guts to fight her way through a bit of snow to . . ."

  “So that's it, is it? You'd chance this child's health so that you can prove to a stupid gaggle of women that . . ."

  “Don't you speak to me of my child's health since I'm the one who has worked her fingers down to the bone, and in any way I can, to put good food in her belly and warm . . ."

  “In any way you can?" He towered over her, his eyes slitted with his own rage, his mouth suddenly hard and cruel. "Yes, I suppose you would do that since it's an easy way to earn a living, I would say, and you look like the kind of woman who would enjoy her work. Tell me, are you still employed in that profession for if you are I might be persuaded to avail myself of . . .”

  He was quick and strong. Had he not been she would have opened his head with the force of the blow she levelled at him. The spade was vicious and her swing true but he caught the handle and twisted it from her and from both the killing fury drained away leaving them trembling and sick.

  “I beg your pardon," he said, his voice as cold as the air they breathed. "That was unforgivable. Allow me to help you with your . . . digging," and as though his life depended on it, and perhaps his sanity, he began, turning his back on her and Cat, biting into the snow with the spade, throwing it wildly from him, much further than he need.

  She moved away without a word and took Cat's cold hand in hers, hurrying the bewildered little girl back into the farmhouse. She did not look outside again and when, at half past five, she lit a rushlight and prepared herself and Cat for their journey down to Gillthrop there was a clear, well packed path from the sledge which still stood where he had left it, to the first cottage in the village street.

  “By gum, lass, we'd not expected thee this night." Mr Twentyman and his Eliza were the only ones in the bar-parlour and though one or two more adventurous men crept in later, stamping their feet and blowing on their hands, those who lived in the village, as Mr Twentyman remarked, there had really been no need for her to have bothered herself. Mind, she'd got gumption had Josh Abbott's girl and if this was an example of what determination could do, she'd go far that one would. He was inclined to like her. A liking which had nothing to do with the way she looked. Not that he wouldn't have said no to a kiss and a cuddle and a little feel of those ripe and lovely breasts but his Eliza had eyes in the back of her head so there was no chance of that, sadly.

  And she'd certainly brought in custom, even in the week she worked in the bar, smiling warmly at anyone who addressed her and yet not too familiarly so that none of them could get the idea that what they saw could be theirs. She had added something to the atmosphere which he was at a loss to understand but which nevertheless he was grateful for, though Eliza Twentyman could have told him, had he asked. Annie was polite, pleasant, cheerful, interested in the men who crowded at the bar, getting
to know their names, enquiring after their families, sharing a joke but there was an innocence about her which she had never lost despite the life she had led and her own motherhood, and the men liked it, and her.

  Their womenfolk did not, and said so, to each other, to their men and to Eliza Twentyman and though she kept it to herself for as long as she could for, like her husband, she had taken to Annie Abbott and the little slip of a thing who was her daughter, she knew the day must come when they could no longer keep her. Eliza had to live with these women who were beginning to cold-shoulder her. The folk who lived in the Lakeland communities, often isolated for weeks on end, relied upon one another. They were close-knit, open-handed with those of whom they approved, intensely loyal to one another. Her husband depended on their husbands for his livelihood and though The Bull was the only inn for miles, should they turn against her and her Will they would be hard pressed to survive.

  It snowed several times in January, which was the worst snow month, but again Annie Abbott got down from Brow-head to Gillthrop. The snow melted partially, thawing down to a manageable level where it was possible to get about more easily. Then it froze, a cruel frost which set the world into a hard, timeless beauty. There were deep, crackling snow ruts, crusted just enough to cover the tussocks of heather on the slopes behind the farmhouse, scintillating in the brilliance of the winter sunshine. The sheep had moved down from the high fells and as they drifted in small groups towards the 'intakes' the ice which had formed on their fleeces tinkled musically. The snow buntings were picking seeds from the bent, a stiff-stemmed, rush-like grass. Grey geese flew south and the crows cruised up and down the rushing streams on the look-out for trout. Foxes, thin, nervous-eyed, starving, crept close to human habitation as they waited for spring and on February 2nd, Will Twentyman reluctantly told Annie that he no longer required her services.

  She was devastated. She had worked for five weeks and, with the help of Reed Macauley's second hamper which she had seen as foolish to refuse, particularly as she could not leave it sitting on the sledge on the track up to Dash Beck, she had managed to save £2.14s.Od. but that would not buy her a flock of sheep. She had hoped to save more money from her work as barmaid and when the first market took place in Keswick and she sold the besoms she and Cat had made, the amount realised might buy her half a dozen young ewes. Put to a good ram which she would hire, they would, by next year, bring her the start of her flock. She would make swill baskets when Natty Varty had cut and peeled her poles for her at the end of April; these also would be sold at the summer markets.

  Now, with a few awkward and apologetic words Will Twentyman had knocked down her precarious house of cards and brought her face to face with ruin. She needed her ewes in the spring. She could not afford to wait until her besoms or her swills were made and sold at the summer fairs she meant to tramp. She had a sledge, the one her father had made years ago. Two, in fact, for the one Reed Macauley had used to haul down the hamper still stood in her barn and short of dragging the thing up to Long Beck, which would cause even more talk, there it would stay. She needed new clogs for herself and Cat. She could cobble together clothing for her daughter from the few bits and pieces left by her mother but something for herself she could not manage, nor the clogs, not with the best will in the world. Her own garments, even her mother's wedding-dress which she still kept in the chest, were threadbare and falling apart at the seams and the only clothing in the place of any substance was that once worn by her father.

  “Why, Mr Twentyman?" she asked passionately, in exactly the same way she had asked Polly Pearsall over two years ago. "I'm a good worker and have caused you no trouble" — despite the men who had done their best to engage her in it. "I've not once let you down even when the snow was as high as my shoulders.”

  Will Twentyman watched her mouth form the words and was fascinated by the sound which came from it. Where had she learned to speak as she did, almost like a lady? It was still possible to detect the rhythmic sound of the Cumberland dialect on her tongue, but she had lost what some might consider the ugly glottal stop of East Cumberland. She did not pronounce 'face' as 'fee-ass' or 'butter' as 'boother' and she had taught her child to speak as she did. And that was one of the reasons, he supposed, but not the main one, of course, why she was not liked, at least by the women. She was 'different'. She had 'got above herself' and though it fascinated their men-folk, it segregated her from the women of the village as sharply as though she had come from another land and spoke a foreign language.

  “What is it, Mr Twentyman? Why am I not allowed to build a life for myself and my child? Why do they hate me so? Oh, yes, I know why it is you are forced to get rid of me. What is it I have done to them that turns them against me to the point where they will not be satisfied until they have driven me from the parish? I've done nothing to hurt them. Nothing to hurt anyone except myself and Cat and I'm doing my best to put that right. I only want to work, that's all. To work as men do . . .”

  Aye, that was probably it. As men do, which was not the way of things in these parts . . .

  “. . . to earn an honest penny, to get back on my feet and be dependent on no one. I don't want to interfere with them or their men . . ." since she was well aware of what the nub of their resentment was, ". . . and I want no one interfering with me. Why are they so . . . so cruel, Mr Twentyman?”

  And Will Twentyman had to admit, sadly, that he had no answer. He could only slip an extra sixpence in her hand and some left-over suet pudding his wife had made in readiness for the travellers who would, now that the snows had melted and the turnpikes were clear again, be staying overnight at The Bull.

  There was an enormous winter moon, full and mysteriously beautiful hanging in the dark blue velvet sky, its light paling the intense colour about it to a silvery lavender. It illuminated the track up to the farmhouse so that every frost-spiked blade of grass could be seen as though it was noon. The great barrier of High Pike and Knott and Great Calva loomed to her left and before her was the majestic splendour of snow-capped Skiddaw. The path of the moon fell across the silken lake to her right, broad and completely still and from somewhere higher up the intakes a dog fox howled in hungry misery. The sound was taken up by another set of barking, closer and somehow different, a frantic sound in which she could detect fear and she wondered who would have their dogs, and young ones at that by the sound of it, out on a night like this.

  “What is it, Mother?" Cat huddled closer to her skirts and clung to her hand as they panted up the steep track towards home, and all the while the frenzied noise of the dogs grew louder.

  “It's only a couple of dogs, lambkin. They won't hurt us."

  “But why are they barking so much?"

  “They've probably scented the fox and are doing their duty protecting the chicken coop."

  “Whose coop, Mother?" fearfully, and indeed whose coop could it be since the only dwelling between here and Upfell where the Mounseys lived was her own farm?

  They were tied to the latch of her door, two puppies whose breeding, even in the light from the moon, was very evident. Black-and-white Border Collies of the sort used by shepherds and farmers for centuries in the care of their flocks. Silky of coat and lively of eye and so pleased to see Annie and Cat that it was hard to know where one puppy ended and the other began. An incredible squirming tangle of limbs, sharp baby claws and cold noses, long bushy tails whipping against Annie's and Cat's laughing, delighted faces, four bright saucy eyes, ready to love with enormous hearts these two humans who had come to rescue them.

  “Where have they come from, Mother, and can we keep them? Please, Mother, see, they are so good . . " which was not true for the moment they were let inside the house they had knocked over a stool, spilt a jug of milk brought up yesterday from The Bull and had begun to worry between them one of Cat's clogs which she had kicked off as she stepped over the threshwood.

  “Sweetheart, they are not ours to keep . . ."

  “Then whose are they, Mothe
r? They were tied to our door . . . Oh, Mother, don't send them away. I love them so much and they will be no trouble . . . I will let them share my food . . ." for even in the midst of so much joy the practical matter of food and the money to buy it was not overlooked by the child. "They can sleep in my room and they will be such fun." Cat was down on the slate floor with them now. She lay on her back whilst one pup flopped on her chest and licked her face with the slavish devotion of one who knows exactly which side his bread is buttered whilst the other fondly chewed her bare toes, pricking his ears and casting his bright, intelligent eye in the direction of Annie since it seemed to him she might be the provider of food. He and his companion had already demolished the spilled milk but that did not mean he could not manage any other delicacy which might come his way.

  Annie sat down, smiling in a way she had not thought possible an hour ago. She had never seen her grave young daughter laugh, even giggle, as she was doing now. A child she was, a young child playing, giddy with laughter and simple fun, her excited cries filling the room with her joy, her childish normal pleasure. And of course, who would have left the puppies here but Reed Macauley? There was not a soul in this dale or up on the higher fell farms who would give her the time of day, let alone two well-bred dogs such as these. A good sheepdog, well trained to his work, was worth his weight in gold, much prized by the farmers who would part with their wives before their dogs and these two, when she had her flock, would be invaluable to her. They would be loyal and steadfast, as good as two men, true friends and companions for Cat, and when they were grown would enable her to leave her child alone whilst she herself worked since they would guard anything they thought of as theirs with their lives.