All the dear faces Page 14

  She stood for several long minutes, biting her lip, then, "Get your shawl and clogs and the dogs' leashes . . ." laughing as Cat's face lit up and her eyes blazed in joy. For five minutes it was bedlam, her own face, still only that of a girl, as merry and excited as her child's, the dogs barking and whirling about, knowing of course, that great things were about to happen.

  She took the lake road for though it was longer than going up and over the top of Skiddaw Forest, dropping down by Mallen Dodd and into Keswick, it was flat and easy walking for Cat. They took a short cut through the inbye fields at the front of Browhead, clambering from one field to the next over drystone walls and skirting others which were hedged with ha wthorne. In a few weeks the hedges would be in blossom, a white fragrant border about each lush stretch of green, but as yet they were straggly and unkempt, still waiting for their own brief moment of glory. Annie and Cat, as they stepped out, were flanking the lower slopes of Ullock Pike, Longside and Dodd with the breathtaking splendour of Skiddaw rising up on their left and the still, gentle beauty of Lake Bassenthwaite falling away to their right. The sky was high, blue, empty, innocent and though Annie and indeed anyone born in these parts well knew it could change ferociously within an hour, today its loveliness cast a magic spell of peace and anticipation on the woman and child. The young dogs were still unleashed, ready to run wild should they be allowed, for the smell of sheep was in the air. Their nostrils contained a memory inherited from countless generations of their forbears and they were eager to be away to investigate it. Annie called them to her, looping the rope about their necks, holding them firmly to her right side since the last thing she wanted was to send Bert Garnett's flock of Herdwicks galloping mindlessly about the fields with her two enthusiastic dogs at their heels.

  A man knelt by a drystone wail painstakingly fitting exactly the right size of stone, first one then another, trying each piece until he had found what was needed in the repairing of the wall. He stacked them carefully on edge, laying them at the same angle, snug and neat, with nothing to hold them in place, or together, but his own skill. The 'Cap' stones lay in vertical symmetry along the top and he had left a 'hogg-hole' about two feet square at its base to allow yearling sheep to pass through from one field to the next. The hole, when no longer needed would have a slab of stone rolled across it.

  He looked up as Annie and Cat approached, ready to nod briefly which was all anyone would get from him even his closest friend, but when he saw who it was his face darkened and he resumed his task without a greeting.

  “A lovely day," Annie called, undiminished by his hostility, stepping out along the turnpike road which they had now reached, passing St Bridget's Church by the lake, moving towards the close-knit greenery of Dodd Wood where the ravens were nesting and telling the whole world about it with harsh voices. In a field contained in the narrow strip of fertile land alongside the lake several men were sowing corn seed and in another others were putting in a crop of 'early' potatoes. Wherever there was a farm, sheep, dairy, arable or mixed, the annual task of beginning the year was swinging into its enduring cycle and for a moment or two Annie felt her step falter on the hard, stony path she had set herself. There was so much to do before she even began to think of farming, of actually planting her crops — apart from the pitiful few she had so far managed — of building her flock of sheep and other livestock, pigs and poultry, she intended to have. It was so overwhelmingly daunting in that savage black moment she almost turned back to Browhead where she would gather their few belongings together and use her pitiful savings for a railway ticket to Lancaster.

  'Sell it,' she would say to the lawyer, 'and good riddance' but the black moment passed as quickly as it had come. Her natural resilience gathered inside her with a surge which carried her forward excitedly. Glory be, she had been back no more than four months and here she was ready to give it all up. She had managed to stay alive in that time, thanks to Reed Macauley, the honest part of her mind whispered, but she resolutely turned away from it. She had not touched one penny of the wages she had earned at The Bull. They, she and Cat, had lived through the worst of the winter. They had a few vegetables to look forward to and the good part, the best part, was yet to come. She had a friend in Sally, she had her child and a warm place to lay their heads at night. She had a beginning and she meant to cling to it, to add to it, to shape it into a bright and wonderful thing.

  She began to sing as she stepped out and Cat joined in. "Come all of you cockers far and near . . .”

  The sun burnished the two copper heads to a vivid, startling warmth and two pairs of golden, transparent eyes gleamed in exact replica of one another, their joy lovely to behold. Hands clasped, the woman's long stride adjusted to the child's, and beside them the young dogs padded silently, watchfully, for they did not know this part of the world and their two 'sheep' needed careful guarding.

  It was just gone noon when they reached Keswick. It was market day and crowds swarmed along the length of Market Place. There were stalls laden with squares of exquisitely patterned butter, wrapped in muslin and straw, cheeses, eggs, trussed chickens, the produce of industrious farmwives whose only reward for their labours, in and out of the farmhouse, was their 'butter money', if they were allowed to keep it by their thrifty husbands. There were skinned rabbits, gingerbread and ginger ale, a stall where baked potatoes were pulled, black and smoking, from the hot coals. There were pedlars, 'scotchmen' they were called though they did not hail from over the border, calling out to passers-by to inspect their printed calico and cotton cloth, their needles, their sewing thread and bootlaces with which they tramped the pack routes, going from farmhouse to farmhouse, from village to village.

  The crowds milled about them, moving on up the street between the stalls, some stopping to tap their feet and clap their hands to the rhythmic sound of the organ grinder and to smile at the antics of his grinning monkey. A cheerful racket which, after the peace and quiet of Browhead and the surrounding fells, brought excited roses to the cheeks of Annie and her daughter. They moved along with the crowds, the dogs keeping close to Annie's skirt, their eyes darting in some unease in the thicket of moving trousered legs and full swishing skirts of the country folk. Their noses wrinkled in an effort to identify the mass of smells which surrounded them and their confusion showed in the droop of their ears and tails.

  She got work in the first inn she tried. Leaving Cat to one side of the busy, low doorway through which dozens of men continually moved, the dogs tied to an iron ring in the wall beside her, meant for the tethering of horses, Annie walked purposefully across the bar-parlour and spoke directly to the man she recognised at once as the landlord.

  “I'm looking for work," she said, doing her best to smile her pert, barmaid's smile.

  As in every room she was to enter, whatever its station in life, conversation dwindled and died to a murmur, the only men still conversing in normal tones those who had not yet seen her. She held her head high though her heart pounded against her ribs. Despite her spirited appearance she was always apprehensive when confronted by a wall of male faces, for on every one was that unconscious predatory look of speculation she knew so well.

  “Oh aye, an' what can tha' do?" he asked, looking about him at the sea of interested faces and winking suggestively.

  “Whatever you like, sir, in your bar, that is.”

  The crowd were hanging on to every word and this last caused a great deal of nudging and guffawing but she did not look round. Her expression was steady, neither one thing nor the other, neither cringing nor bold and the landlord relented. This was no raucous pot-house full of navvies and fist-fighters and where round the back on a moonless night an illegal cock-fight might be held, which was why she had chosen it. It was full of men, true. Decent working men, fanners and farm hands, scotch pedlars and such come to market and having a pint of ale whilst they settled a deal, respectable for the most part, but willing, if it could be found, or offered, to have a 'bit of sport' at the expense of a
woman who was no better than she should be, a judgement they made on her looks and the job she was seeking.

  “You look busy, sir. It seems to me you could do with a bit of help," she said hopefully.

  “Does it indeed?" but it was true since the girl he employed already was gathering empty pots and filling them again with the speed and violence which verged on the hysterical. Another woman brought a tray of steaming meat pies through a door behind the bar which evidently led from the kitchen, her face red and sweated, her greasy hair hanging limply from beneath her white frilled cap. The pies were gone in a minute and muttering that she'd fetch another lot she clattered back from where she had come.

  With a last desperate image of Cat who stood outside the door of the inn, Annie smiled.

  “Tell you what," she said saucily. "I'll give you a hand now if you like. Just for an hour, no wages except one of those pies . . ." which would do for Cat's dinner. ". . . and see what you think. If I don't suit I'll try elsewhere. If I do and we can agree a wage I'll start tomorrow night." It had to be evening employment since, with any luck, she would be too busy working her farm during the day.

  Somewhat taken aback, not sure how his customers, who mostly spoke in the Cumberland dialect of these parts, would shape with the way she talked, the landlord hesitated but what had he got to lose? Only one of Aggie Holme's succulent meat pies. And he was run off his feet, as anyone could see.

  She smiled and something in him lurched, astonishingly, since in his trade he considered he'd seen everything, none of it moving him to more than mild interest. Her richly burnished hair, which she had deliberately left loose, hung below her waist in a mass of tangled curls, tipping her head to an angle which could only be called haughty. Her pale golden eyes, the brown in them less noticeable in the dim light, narrowed provocatively until the long dark lashes which surrounded them almost meshed together. Her skin, as rich as the cream which floated at the top of the milk, glowed, and her mouth, too wide and full for classical beauty, nevertheless reminded him of the strawberries which had grown in his mother's garden when he was a boy. She was startlingly lovely and there was a gaiety about her which he knew his male customers would like. He was not a man clever with words, or indeed with expressing emotion but by God, this one was . . . bugger him . . . the only word he could think of was . . . unusual.

  She worked her hour, tirelessly, cheerfully, fending off with laughing good humour the hands which reached for her, the knowing smiles, the winks, the invitations and at the end of it, having agreed on fourpence an hour, he told her she was to start at six the following evening.

  She moved on light feet to the door of the inn, waving and smiling at those men who had promised her they would be there the next evening, the tips they had given her amounting to threepence three farthings, jingling in her pocket. Added to what she had brought with her she meant to buy some raw wool from one of the stalls and begin the process of spinning and weaving, ready to knit the stockings she and Cat would need, and to fashion the hodden grey cloth to replace their sadly lacking wardrobe.

  Her daughter was exactly where she had been left and, resting for no more than five minutes whilst Cat shared her pie with Blackie and Bonnie, Annie took her hand and set off along Market Place and towards the road which led out of Keswick.

  They had five miles to walk and already the afternoon was beginning to darken. The sun had gone and the dreaded 'messenger clouds' had begun to gather above the rise of Black Combe, foretelling the arrival of rain very soon and they would not be home for at least three hours. She knew she would have to carry her daughter before long for the little girl had already walked five miles and had stood or strolled about the market stalls for most of the afternoon. She was visibly tired though she stepped out bravely in her ill-fitting clogs. She was growing rapidly and before the month was out must have some new ones, was Annie's worried thought.

  The sound of horses' hooves on the road behind them was faint at first, growing louder as it gained on them. A wheel squeaked as though in need of a drop of oil and a man's voice `giddupped' a couple of times to the animal. Annie stood to one side, drawing Cat and the dogs to her for the road was narrow, letting the farm cart pass her but as it drew level the man sitting hunched on the plank of wood which served as a seat, pulled at the reins, changing his 'giddups' to 'whoas'.

  It was Bert Garnett. He glanced about him in the gathering gloom as though to make sure there was no one to see him, then turned to look down at her. She could see the whites of his eyes in his weatherbeaten face but no more since the light was going fast. Already the trees in Dodd Wood had run together into an almost solid impermeability, no more than a dark mass against the sky which would soon be of the same density. The height of Skiddaw Forest shaped itself menacingly above the trees and Bert Garnett fastened his eyes on the glorious, forbidden wonder of Annie Abbott. He liked what he saw. He licked his lips.

  “I'll give thi' a lift if tha' like, Annie. 'Op up, an' t' nipper. Stick them dogs in t'back.”

  She could not have been more surprised if the Prince Consort himself had invited her to share his carriage but quickly, before he could change his mind, she 'hopped up', lifting Cat up beside her and dragging the two reluctant dogs by their ropes until they lay in the back of the cart.

  “Thanks Bert," she said gratefully, wondering if Sally had mistaken her husband's antipathy towards 'fallen women' though her woman's instinct which had been fine-honed during the last four years, did not believe it.

  “'Tis nowt, Annie, only neighbourly," he said, running his smile over her, a smile she knew well, a smile she had seen on many men's faces and though he made no move towards her – well, he wouldn't, would he, not with Cat on her knee and the two young dogs in the back – she was quite sure that, had it been broad daylight, Bert Garnett would not have given her the time of day and she was even more certain that she had just come up against another of those obstacles she had mentioned to this man's wife only the other day.

  Chapter 10

  The Merle Collie ran silently at the heels of the black mare, so close it seemed in imminent danger of being struck on its nose as the lethal iron-shod hooves lifted in the gallop. The path on which they travelled was stony and well defined, snaking between the beck on one side and the growing bracken and heathery upland on the other. The horse's coat rippled like black satin across its muscled flanks and straining neck, the sunlight giving it a gloss even the hard work of its groom could not improve on and the two animals, each well bred, moved with that special grace only the thoroughbred can achieve.

  The man on the mare's back was of the same breed, sitting so easily and naturally in his saddle he might have been part of the animal, his head high, his back straight and supple, his strong horseman's legs which gripped the mare's side well muscled in the thigh. He was soberly dressed in a dark grey riding coat and breeches. He wore a tall black beaver hat. At his throat was a snowy white cravat, beautifully laundered and impeccably knotted, and in its folds glittered a gold and diamond pin. It seemed to say that though he was a man dressed for the work at hand, whatever that might be in his well-cut, beautifully tailored coat and trousers, he was also a man of wealth and style.

  The sound of the horse's hooves on the steep and stony path was barely discernible, obliterated by the roar of the magnificent waterfalls which pounded down the precipitous wooded ravine at the base of the Bakestall plateau from where the mare had just come. Dash Beck, issuing from the vast waste of Skiddaw Forest, leaped exultantly over the lip of the escarpment towards the gentler pastures below, plunging in a series of falls to a mighty torrent of roaring thrashing waters. Whitewater Dash, it was called. A great inferno whose thunder could be heard many miles away down the valley and whose spray shimmered like the diamond at Reed Macauley's neck in a myriad sparkling droplets over horse, rider and dog.

  The track became more pronounced as the silent trio dropped down towards the valley, still desolate and lonely but showing signs of the hand of
man in the appearance of a well-tended drystone wall running away from the beck and meandering through the bracken until it began to climb up the rolling slope of the opposite fell. There was a farmhouse, small and grey, surrounded by a grove of larches, with outbuildings and a yard in which pecked dozens of hens and a showy cock. A couple of dogs barked lustily on the end of chains and a man looked up from some harness he was tinkering with, nodding dourly in Reed Macauley's direction. A cart stood by the gate which led out of the yard and a small boy sat on the plank which served as a seat, flapping imaginary reins and 'gidduping' to an imaginary horse. Fresh white washing strained at the washing line to the side of the house and grey smoke was wisped in torn shreds from the circular chimney. A well-built Lakeland farm, Upfell Farm, belonging to the Mounseys and since he had married Sally Mounsey, Bert Garnett. It was as old as the fells in which it was set, or so it seemed, with its thick walls and heavy roof, its interior like so many Lakeland farms crammed with crooked doors and tilted floors and odd little staircases up and down. There were hundreds of them scattered in sheltered crannies against the fells of Cumberland, the one to which Reed Macauley was drawn but which he had no intention of visiting, none at all, even though he happened to be passing, a mile or so away towards Gillthrop. He could not get her out of his mind – that was his trouble. Three months now since he had last seen her nearly up to her waist in the snow and still, at some part of the day, perhaps for only a flashing second, she came to haunt him. She was always laughing. Though she might be imperious, her head held in that haughty, stiff-necked way she had, her grandness would dissolve into warm and lovely laughter, into the glowing love which she showed her child. Eyes long and brown and clear would narrow and melt with her emotion, her mouth wide and smiling over her perfect teeth, all brilliance and warmth, an enchantment which brought him time and again down the track alongside Dash Beck and on to the lower slopes of Great Cockup where her farm lay.