All the dear faces Page 13

  He had done it again. Just as she was at the edge of despair and disaster he had thrown her a lifeline to pull her back from it. She had not seen him since the day he had dug the path through the snow and glad she was of it for it made it easier for her to go on without any .. . complications. Oh, God . . . oh, dear God, let there not be complications, meaning, of course, don't let my weak and foolish woman's heart dictate to my wise and farseeing mind, for even as she allowed him into her thoughts her pulse started to race in the most alarming way. Her stomach lurched, refusing to be still. Her eyes were full of him again and just because he had brought her two damned puppies, and she couldn't allow it. Dear God, she couldn't allow it. Not now when she had just been fired from her job and somehow must get herself and Cat through the days and nights, weeks, even months before she found another one. The bark peeling could not take place until April. Oak poles must be felled and she must `speak' for Natty Varty who must be paid for his labour.

  She must have work, but where? She could not even knock on some farmwife's kitchen door and ask for it as her mother had done, for unlike her mother whose reputation had been beyond reproach she was known from one end of the parish to the other as a 'fallen woman'.

  Then you must look elsewhere, her uncompromising and logical mind coolly told her. You are strong and — so you told Reed Macauley — afraid of no one, of nothing, and certainly not of walking from here to Keswick where you are unknown to find work. There was an inn on every street corner in Keswick. When the snow had gone and it was possible to get there, and without Cat, who could then be left in the company of the two puppies, she could be in Keswick and back again in no time at all. Working her six hours and — if she could get it — at fourpence an hour, with tips and the always acceptable bonus of left-over food she and Cat would hold off that wolf from the door whilst she saved her wage for her ewes. She might pick up some bargains at the Sheep Fair, since she knew a good sheep when she saw it, but she must have them by September and the Annual Tup Fair when the rams were hired out or sold for breeding purposes. Soon the farmers would be bringing their sheep down from the fells for dipping which took place in February, to guard against lice and keds which could badly weaken a strain. The ageless cycle of gathering, lambing, dipping and clipping, of putting the tups to the ewes would begin and she must be ready to place herself in its moving orbit since its pattern must follow the course nature had planned. Each section of that course could take place only at a certain time of the year. Miss one section of it and a whole year would be wasted.

  The child squealed with laughter and the puppies yelped with excitement, pulling with their sharp little teeth at the hem of her already frail skirt, digging their claws, uselessly as it happened, into the slate slabs of the floor as they hung on. They could not get a purchase, slipping and sliding with great good humour, growling in mock ferociousness, for the game they played was to their, and the child's liking.

  Annie smiled and rose to her feet. She picked up both squirming bundles and deposited them firmly in a high-sided basket from which they could not climb.

  “Fetch some of that dry bracken from by the side door, my lamb, and we'll line the basket for them. They can sleep in here tonight."

  “And . . . tomorrow, Mother? You're not going to send them back, are you?" Cat's eyes were desperate in their pleading.

  “I wouldn't know where to send them, sweetheart, so. .

  “We can keep them, can we, can we . . " jumping up and down in a way Annie had never seen her do before. "We'll see, my darling."

  “Please, Mother . . . please?"

  “Well . . ."

  “Please, Mother, I will look after them and feed them and . . "

  “Clean up after them?" smiling at a suspicious pool by the hearth.

  “Oh yes . . . yes . . "

  “And what would you call them, that is if we kept them?" She drew the child to her knee and sat down beside the basket where the pups, like the babies they still were, had fallen instantly asleep.

  “Blackie and Bonnie, like the song." Cat did not even have to think.

  “But they are both boys."

  “I don't care." And after all, Annie thought as her daughter nodded against her shoulder, where else would her lovely child find inspiration for names for her puppies? Annie had not, in her three years, read a story to her, nor even told her one since she had never had time in her desperate fight to simply keep them both alive. 'The Charcoal Black and Bonnie Grey' was the only song her little girl knew.

  It was appropriate too, she mused, almost asleep herself in the warmth of the fire. He it was who had sung it with them and brought the dogs to her. Helping her but, she was sure, ready to deny it if she should accuse him of it. Not that they would be likely to meet again, she and Reed Macauley, for neither would wish to be caught in the violence of need which had trapped them for an enchanting moment several weeks ago. They must keep well apart for she knew with every quickened heartbeat and every racing pulse in her woman's body that there would be nothing more wonderful in the world than for it to be possessed by his.

  Chapter9

  The snow had gone from all but the highest peaks. Blackie and Bonnie had been with them for over seven weeks and were probably four months old, perhaps a bit more, she had no way of telling, when she walked to Keswick to look for work.

  It was almost the end of March and in all that time she had seen only Sally, brave Sally who had defied her mother and her sister Mim, who were convinced in their bigoted ignorance that Sally would not only be the talk of Bassenthwaite parish, consorting with a woman like Annie Abbott, but would bring home some dreadful disease, the kind of disease women of her sort were bound to have. Sally's husband Bert had threatened her with a 'clip round t' lug' if she as much as looked in Annie's direction, she told Annie imperturbably, let alone entered her kitchen, but as she had to pass along the track at the back of Annie's farm, crossing Annie's land, in fact, which had been common practice for generations by those who lived further up the valley, and as Upfell was more than a mile away and hidden behind a fold in the hill, they'd not know she'd 'popped in', she said loftily.

  She had her new baby under her shawl, another girl whom she'd called Emma, already shortened to Emm, but she'd left Sammy and Janie at home with their grandmother since their Sammy'd be bound to say `summat' out of turn.

  “Come in, oh, come in, Sally." Annie was pathetically glad to see her, ready to sweep the good-natured girl into her arms, for she had spoken to no one but Cat since she had left The Bull.

  “Well, I can't stay long. Ma looked at me a mite peculiar when I said I fancied a walk down to t' smithy. Seth Armstrong's mendin' some 'arness an' chains fer Bert so I made the excuse that I'd see if they was ready. Save Bert a walk, I said, which sat well wi' 'im, lazy sod. But I wanted ter see 'ow thi' were. We 'eard as 'ow you were workin' at T'Bull. Good fer 'er, I ses ter meself, right pleased tha'd got summat, though Ma an' Mim pulled their faces an' said what were the world comin' to when the likes of Annie Abbott were allowed ter mix wi' decent folk . . . Oh, sorry, Annie, I didn't mean ter ... "

  “I know, Sally, and for pity's sake don't be afraid of offending me. I'm used to them all staring and pointing and whispering behind my back and sometimes they don't even do that but say it out loud as I pass by. The woman from Browhead, they call me . . ."

  “Aye, I know, tha's bin the talk o't' valley ever since tha' come home an' now tha's got sack, so Bert tells me. Pleased as punch, he were, just as though tha'd done summat to 'im personal, daft bugger. So what'll tha' do now, lass?" sitting down in the chair before Annie's hearth with a cup of Annie's tea, the last from Reed Macauley's hamper, in her grateful hand. She opened her bodice, more from habit than any need on the part of the infant who was, in fact, fast asleep, threading her distended nipple into its partly open rose-bud mouth and instinctively it began to suck. Cat stared, open-mouthed, distracted from Blackie and Bonnie who had been told to 'sit' and had done so at once. They too
, it seemed, were fascinated by the sound the suckling infant made. Into the lady's mouth the tea went, Cat observed, and came out of her fat chest where the baby drank it which clearly was some kind of magic about which she would question her mother at the first opportunity. She and the two dogs surveyed the amazing spectacle with great interest.

  Annie was silent, the snuffling sound of the baby, the hissing sigh of the peat fire, the panting of the dogs, both of whom thumped the floor with their tails every time anyone's glance fell on them, whispered about the warm room. It had been miraculously transformed from the hollow, dust-coated barrenness which had been its condition last November. Everything winked and sparkled, the light from the fire touching polished surfaces to a glowing smoothness. The door to the parlour was kept closed since Annie could not afford to warm two rooms but even though she and Cat did not use it the parlour was kept achingly clean and was as tidy as the neat kitchen. In the weeks since she had lost her job at The Bull she had gone through the whole farmhouse from the slate roof to the slate floors of the downstairs rooms. It was a tradition in Lakeland that spring cleaning must be done by Easter and Annie, with nothing else to do, had emptied drawers and scrubbed them, taken out the two beds and brushed and beaten them. She had boiled all the baking tins, scoured the milking cans and calf buckets with silver sand and scrubbed the butter boxes until they were as white as the snow which still capped Skiddaw and Broad End. The dairy itself and the cow house had been given a coat of the whitewash she had found in the barn and, having some left over she had carried outside as much of the furniture as she could from the kitchen and the parlour, and painted the walls of those two rooms as well.

  All this had taken place, of course, after she had done what planting she could manage: some bigg, vegetables and black oat, which would see her and Cat through until next winter. Her father's barn, untouched since he died and where over a year ago he had carefully stored them ready for his planting season, had revealed a sack of seed potatoes, some gone mouldy but the rest worth a try. There were corn and parsnip seeds, turnip and carrot, onion bulbs and all of them had been sown and planted in neat, well-tended rows as soon as the frozen ground allowed.

  She could do no ploughing, naturally, since her father's wooden 'stitching' plough needed a horse to pull it, but she had trimmed her hedges with his bill hook and set his traps in the hope that, now that spring was almost here she might catch a fine rabbit to go in the pot with her vegetables.

  She had gone with Cat and the dogs to cut peat on the fells, pulling it home on the sledge which, as those on the fells knew, was easier to drag about on the grassy slopes than any wheeled cart. The peat had been stacked to dry since what her father had left before he died was almost gone. She had cleaned his tools, sharpening the scythe and the sickle and the shears and even polished the leather horse-collar and harness in readiness for the day when her horse would wear them.

  So, she had done what she could. Her house was in order. Her garden tended, her home sweet-smelling and well ordered, welcoming and warm. The sunlight which crept in through the small windows painted a golden haze about the domesticated simplicity of the mothers and their children, and in an old jug, chipped about its rim and therefore useless for its purpose of holding milk, Annie had arranged a great nodding bunch of golden catkins cut from the pussy-willow which grew on the edge of the lake. There was a serenity, an ageless peace in the room, a simple comfort which warmed the senses. In this house generations of Abbotts had been born, had laboured and died, none of them achieving even the status of 'small statesmen'. When other men had prospered they had been dogged by ill-luck, disease, bad harvests, the land which was theirs remaining theirs, but only just. They seemed to crowd at Annie's back, shaking their heads and wringing their hands at her foolhardiness. Sell, they seemed to be telling her. Sell and start a new life where you are unknown but she pushed them away, raising her head to stare about her defiantly as though to scatter them.

  “So what'll yer do now, Annie?" Sally asked sympathetically. She pulled her nipple from the baby's mouth, the sound it made like that of a cork from a bottle.

  “I'm off to Keswick but don't tell anyone, will you?"

  "Eeh no, love, but what are thi' ter do there?" "Get a job, I hope."

  “What sort?"

  “Barmaid, what else?" Annie's voice was calm, strong, sure. She was sitting on the sconce and she leaned forward to pull out a stout piece of wood from beneath it, throwing it to the back of the fire. The sudden flaring of the flames heightened the signs of strain on her face which seemed to Sally to be thinner than when they last met, but Annie's eyes were clear and steady.

  “I wish there were summat I could do for thi', Annie," Sally sighed, changing the baby to her other enormous breast. The child suckled obligingly, its plump face as ripe and rosy as its mother's.

  They chatted for half an hour, of the days when they were children, of their schoolteacher who had smelled of mothballs, of the girls in their class, most of them, like Sally, now young wives and mothers, of Lizzie and Joshua, of Mim who was courting Ben Postlethwaite, a young local farmer with a fair flock of Herdwicks up Binsey way. Mim, because of Annie's close proximity to Upfell, and her and Sally's past connection with her, was terrified that her chances of a good marriage might be dashed, particularly if Sally continued to visit Browhead.

  “Silly cow," Sally added mildly as she lumbered to her feet. "Now I'll try and get down again, love, when I can," hitching the sleeping baby beneath her shawl, "but God knows when that'll be. I'll be expected to 'elp wi' dippin' which is any day now. Bert's fetchin' sheep down right now. Natty Varty's bin tekken on ter give a. . . "

  “Natty Varty?"

  “Aye, tha' knows Natty. Work fer anyone, 'e will."

  “I know. I was hoping to get him to come and cut some of my timber. It'll be ready for peeling and riving by May. How long will he be working for Bert?"

  “Nay, don't ask me, chuck. All summer I 'eard tell. We've a fairish-sized flock, tha' knows. Natty's a good worker an' can turn 'is 'and to owt.”

  Annie groaned. "I know, that's why I wanted him." "Can thi' not get anyone else?"

  “Who? Nobody would work for me, that's if I could pay them which I can't until I get work of my own. Do you know, Sal, I feel as though I'm going round in circles getting absolutely nowhere. I do my best to get over these obstacles which will keep looming up in front of me but the minute I clamber over one another one appears. I suppose I'll have to try and cut the timber myself if Natty's spoken for. I know all the procedures. I learned them from my father and I have the tools, but he did all the heavy work. There was a decent stack of birch in the barn which he must have cut before he died and put there to mature but most of it's been used by now. Cat and I have made a fair amount of besoms ready to take to market, and I want to start on the swill baskets but I can't get going until the oak's cut. I need to save cash to buy sheep and I can't get cash until I work. . . ."

  “Eeh love, tha's in a right pickle. I only wish I 'ad a few bob ter lend thi'." Sally's blue eyes clouded solicitously and she bit her lip as though in anxious contemplation of her own pitiful resources. Of which she had none.

  “I know, Sally, but don't worry. It takes a lot to get Annie Abbott down and I'll manage this. I've been in sorrier states, I can tell you.”

  Sally was torn between an avid eagerness to hear what sort of 'sorry state' Annie had been in and the certain knowledge that if she didn't get home soon she'd be in for it', from her Ma, or her husband, or more than likely both. The life her friend had known had the fascination of the mysteriously wicked for her.

  It was with great reluctance that she took her leave.

  In the end Annie took Cat. She had explained to her that she would be gone all day; that Cat would be perfectly safe with the growing dogs to guard her and keep her company. That she must bolt the door and watch that the fire did not go out. That there was 'tatie-pot', sadly without meat, in the oven for her dinner and that Mother w
ould be home before dark. She knew that Cat was a careful, sensible child, clear-headed and reliable since she had had to be all of these things in her short life. She would do exactly what Annie told her to do and really there was no need of concern but she was only just three years old last December and her eyes, though steadfast and trusting, doing their best to reassure her mother that she would be as good as gold and as safe as houses, had a small shadow of uncertainty in them. Blackie and Bonnie stood, one on either side of her, their heads cocked, their ears pricked as though they too understood the seriousness of what must be done and were well prepared for their part in it. Annie had been training them in the field at the front of the farmhouse, doing her best to remember the series of whistles and commands her father had used when he had dogs of his own. A young Border Collie will often have an inborn herding instinct at an early age and both Blackie and Bonnie did their best to 'round up' Cat and bring her back to the safety of the farmhouse door. Annie had already taught them the verbal commands of lie down' and 'stay' and they were accustomed to walking on a leash made of rope. She and Cat had spent many patient hours in their training but it was difficult, she told herself wryly, to train a dog to herd sheep, without the sheep!

  Still, they were obedient to those commands she had taught them and would obey Cat if the necessity arose. What necessity would that be? she wondered anxiously as she stood in the doorway, three pairs of eyes looking uneasily into hers. The day was fine. Already in the valley 'inlands' the first lambs were clinging to their mother's sides, their heads lost from view beneath her heavy fleece, their tails going mad behind them as they suckled, their plaintive bleat as mother moved to find her own dinner, filling the warming air. The first purple flowers of the self-heal plant, related to the deadnettle family, had appeared on the edge of the rough, tussocky grass at the back of the farmhouse. Blue and white bugle, the red of hedge-wound wort and the creamy pink of wood sage was revealed as the early morning mists rolled away. Annie had found purple mountain saxifrage among the damp rocks when she and Cat had taken the dogs up towards Dead Crags, moving through the heather which was almost ready to burgeon into life. Spring would be here soon. It was all about her, the life, the colour, the readiness to burst forth in its annual exhilaration; the land, the animals it supported, the sustenance which supported them, and the men who relied on and laboured over it all.