All the dear faces Read online

“Cat, where is't tha', come to Phoebe, lambkin," for whatever it was that had set the dogs to making such a din it must surely be frightful, and might it not be threatening the child?

  “Cat . . . where is't tha', Cat?" she quavered but she was not there and Blackie and Bonnie were acting in the strangest way, crouched and quivering, their tails between their legs, their ears flat on their heads as they both stared up towards the line of fire on the fell.

  “Tha' should've asked Jackie Ingham and Willy North to give us a hand, lass," Natty said as he struck the tinder.

  “We can manage, Natty. I'll beat at this flank and you keep to the other. It's not a long line and we can easily hold it in check between us. I can't afford any more wages, you know that. Not after paying you," for she had kept her promise, giving him the full labourer's wage of £8 a half year plus his food and room over the loft.

  The burning went well. The flames advanced in a long, sizzling, crackling, smoking line, leaving behind a charred dark blue mass of pungent-smelling ash. The lusty growth in front of the line of fire contrasted sharply with the charred remains it left at the back, where next year the new green shoots would show. The rotational burning of the heather was to help both sheep and grouse but it must be done before the bird nesting season began. If the spring was wet, chances to burn were few and Annie pressed ahead, allowing the line to get longer and longer, the distance between herself and Natty growing until there was a great swathe of fire in the middle which was unsupervised.

  Neither of them, frantically beating to control their end of the line of leaping flames saw the small figure of Cat Abbott, nor heard her excited child's voice as she called to her mother, for the noise the flames made was loud and angry. She ran towards them up the slope, the breeze blowing into her laughing face, exactly in the centre of the line of fire which was galloping in her direction, greedily devouring everything in its dry path. She wore her hoddengrey dress and jacket, the outfit already becoming too short for her. In her hand she carried a sheet of paper, upon which was a painting of Blackie, Bonnie and Dandy and which she had finished during the past week. She had a talent for it, Miss Mossop had told Annie in one of her polite reports and she hoped Mrs Abbott would not mind if it was encouraged.

  Cat Abbott stopped when she saw the line of flames leaping towards her, paralysed by the sight and the speed with which it approached. The laughing anticipation with which she had run to meet her mother was quenched in total, panic-stricken terror. Her clever brain which at the age of six and a half could cope easily with the mathematical problems Miss Mossop set her, became blank, senseless, without thought or reason as the fire flew across the dry heather towards her.

  It was her mother's agonised scream and the hoarse shout which tore from Natty Varty's throat which moved her, turned her, set her little legs to running away from the conflagration but it was too late by then. She tripped at the last moment, her face pressed into the heather as the flames swept over her.

  *

  Phoebe's hand went to her mouth as the most appalling sense of dread trickled icily through her veins. When the screams began, high and demented, leaping from fell to fell and rock to rock, echoing and echoing so that women in their farm kitchens cowered and covered their ears, Phoebe began to run, the three dogs close at her heels. She was already weeping, the breath rasping painfully in her chest as her legs propelled her across the beck behind the farmhouse and up the grassy slope of the intakes and beyond to where the heather began. She could see the line of fire, badly out of control, coming towards her, but guided by the instincts of the dogs she veered off, following them round it and across the smoking, pungent-smelling carpet of burnt heather. For some reason Natty Varty was running like a hare, away from her, going across and up the slope of Cockup in the direction of Dash Beck but it was not to him her eyes were drawn but to the kneeling, rocking, moaning figure of Annie Abbott who cradled something in her arms. Phoebe could not immediately recognise it but when she did her cries echoed Annie's, causing the women who had come to their kitchen doors to stare, eyes shielded, up the hill, to cower back again inside, drawing their children with them. One was Sally Garnett.

  It was Reed Macauley who took charge, brought from Long Beck by the grey-faced trembling old man who had once been the phlegmatic and unruffled Natty Varty. He could not speak at first, so deep was the shock he was in and Reed had to shake him roughly to bring him from the appalled and appalling state into which the sight of Cat Abbott and her deranged mother had sent him. It was Reed Macauley who had sent him to Browhead in the first place but it was Annie Abbott who kept him there. He had developed to his own astonishment, a growing admiration for the woman who employed him. For her steadfast refusal to be browbeaten, for her spirit which snapped its fingers at those who tried it, for her courage and faith and hope, her humour and loyalty and her tenacious determination and belief that she and her family, which it seemed included not just Phoebe but himself, would find success. She was so proud of her child, and rightly so. She worked the work of ten men, she was beautiful and, he had discovered, she was honourable.

  There were men, those who worked for Reed Macauley and who had followed him, for surely something of a shocking nature had occurred. Natty Varty had been incoherent but when they saw what it was they covered their eyes and their mouths with shaking hands and one, Jake Singleton, who was Mr Macauley's yardman with a snug little cottage at the back of the farm with a wife in it, sent for her and any other woman who would help, for surely Mr Macauley would need it.

  Reed brought them down from the hill, Annie and Cat and Phoebe. Annie was so deep in shock as she stumbled after Reed Macauley she was no trouble to anyone. The women took her and her child and Mr Macauley stood in the farmyard his arms still curved in the gentle cradle in which he had carried down the burned body of Catriona Abbott. Tears streamed across his blanched face and his lean figure trembled as Natty's had done but when his men, awkward with sympathy would have drawn him towards his home since there was nothing else he could do here, was there? he turned on them snarling.

  “Leave me be, you fools. For the love of God, don't touch me or I swear I'll kill the first man who does. I must stay here. She might need me.”

  It was then he noticed Phoebe. The women, Maggie Singleton, Jake's wife, Nell Tyson and Lily Gill, whose husbands all worked for him in his yard and stable and on the fells herding his flocks, had disappeared into the farmhouse, but nobody seemed to consider the strange and silent behaviour of the young woman who worked for Annie Abbott. She was not family, merely a servant at Browhead and so worthy of no particular attention, they had assumed, but Reed knew better.

  She was pegging out the small undergarments she had boiled and scrubbed and rinsed only an hour ago. The dogs, bewildered and frightened by the death and chaoswhich had entered their lives, slunk about her as though the normality of her task reassured them and hovering at her back was Natty Varty as though he felt the same.

  Reed moved slowly towards her, his body bent and ancient in his furious grief. His face was still wet with tears, the furrows deep in it and his mouth worked painfully as though he could not come to terms with this frightful and surely mortally wounding blow which had come to strike his love.

  “Phoebe," he said gently, "will you come inside?" "Nay, ah've things of t' child's ter see to."

  “But surely one of the women will . . . see . . . here is someone." For running headlong down the path was Sally Garnett, her plump figure all over the place, her hair streaming out behind her with the force of her speed. "She will help you . . ."

  “Nay, ah must see to it. Cat'll need them . . ." "Phoebe," his voice was anguished. "Leave them .. . please."

  “Ah've work to do 'ere, Mr Macauley and I'll thank thee to let me ger on wi' it.”

  He took her arm, or tried to but she shook him off, turning on him like a spitting cat but still he tried to draw her away.

  “Leave me be. Cat'll need . . ."

  “No she won't, Phoebe
. Cat . . . is gone. She doesn't need . . ."

  “So she's to be put in her coffin in them . . . in them things she 'as on then? Well, I'll not let my lambkin go off to Heaven in stinking clothes . . . all . . . black . . . an' . . . No! . . . let me be, Mr Macauley. I want this lot dry an' ironed before dark so that . . . so that . . . oh, sweet, sweet Jesus, so that she is . . . tidy an' clean. Now, get out of me way fer ah've things ter do. . . .”

  It was traditional to 'bid' two people from each farm in the area in which a funeral was to take place but no such custom was carried out for the funeral of Annie Abbott's child. The small coffin was watched constantly until the day of the funeral by the women of Reed Macauley's household, taking it in turns with Sally Garnett, who, with a fierce bravery furnaced by her sympathy for Annie Abbott had defied her husband's rage and left her four children – she was still nursing Aggie – and him to fend for themselves. Phoebe had dressed Cat in her sweet-smelling, freshly ironed undergarments and with only her unmarked face showing above the white, lace-trimmed cover which lay over her, the child seemed to sleep. Phoebe had baked the 'arvel bread' which would be served to the men and women who would walk the 'corpse way' with the coffin. She had put herself and the silently distant figure of Annie Abbott into the black dresses Mr Macauley had produced from somewhere, Annie making no demur, as she made none about anything but her absolute refusal to leave her child's side where she stayed for two days and nights. She had not shed a tear since they had brought her down from the fell. Her eyes burned fanatically in their sockets and when anyone spoke to her she turned them on the speaker with what seemed to be hatred. She addressed not a word to anyone, not even Mr Macauley who was there day and night, going home only to bathe and shave and change his shirt. There was hatred in her, bitter and venomous and it could be felt in the farmhouse, in the air they breathed and the food Phoebe cooked and which they ate. She hated. She hated the gods or God who had done this to her. She hated the world which had forced her into the life she had led. She hated the men and women who peopled it, even those who now helped her. Where was Cat?

  They took her to the church of St Bridget's by the lake, over the corpse way, for any departure from the recognised route would have been regarded as an ill omen. In certain parts of the district it was necessary to remove fencing so that a funeral procession might pass along the traditional route and all along the way there were 'resting stones' so that those carrying the coffin, often containing a large corpse, might rest the coffin and themselves. No such rests were required for Cat Abbott. Reed Macauley was one of the bearers. Jake Singleton was the other andbehind him walked Annie Abbott and her maidservant Phoebe, side by side but not touching. Natty was there and Sally and several members of Reed's household. Will Twentyman came with Eliza for they remembered Annie Abbott's cheerful, willing labour in The Bull three years ago and the placidly silent child who was being buried today. There was a quiet woman dressed all in black who turned out to be Miss Mossop. No one else. Not a woman nor a man from Gillthrop or Hause for it was their belief that the sins of the fathers were visited on the sons, and surely mothers and daughters came into the same category.

  They all went back to their homes after the funeral, leaving Annie and Phoebe beside the grave, with Natty a respectful distance behind, and lying quietly at his back were his dog, Blackie and Bonnie. Reed stood at the church gate, waiting, waiting for her to speak, to turn to him, to acknowledge his presence which, as yet, she had not done since Cat died, but when she and Phoebe went by him, neither looked in his direction. He might not have existed.

  “Let me know if anything is needed, Natty," he said as the old man made to follow them. "Anything, no matter what it is. If she needs me . . . speaks of me at all . . ." since he was beyond caring now about anything but the withdrawn, hating grief which corroded inside Annie Abbott. The neighbourhood was agog with speculation, gossiping about him and the woman from Browhead, for surely his behaviour over the death of her daughter, his constant presence in the farmhouse, his purchase of mourning dresses and the bonnets – which she had not worn, it was said, though the maid had perched one on her dark head – his attendance as pall-bearer, meant that he was deeply involved with Annie Abbott. It had been enough when he sent the child to school and paid for her tuition but since then he had not been over the fell to Browhead himself, sending his carriage and coachman each week, when the weather allowed, to take and bring back Annie Abbott's daughter from Grasmere. The gossip had foundered and the speculation died down since it had nothing to feed on, but now, with the death of her daughter, tragic as it was, the conjecture had sprung up again. They felt so sorry for his wife, poor thing, sitting there all alone in her drawing room whilst her husband, not to mention half her women servants, spent days and nights under Annie Abbott's impure roof.

  Reed Macauley shrugged his shoulders and ignored them. Not that anyone had the nerve to speak directly to him, or even, in his presence, make an out-of-place remark. They would not dare, for his temper was uncertain at the best of times. He seemed not to care at all that his reputation was finally and irrevocably in tatters.

  Not a man, or woman, in the district would have found fault with him, nor thought it out of place if he had carried on an illicit affair with the 'woman from Browhead' as she was increasingly called, providing he had been discreet about it. But he had not. He had made it very obvious where his affections and loyalty lay. He had flown in the face of convention, flaunting his misdemeanours and they did not care for it.

  Reed Macauley no longer even noticed their averted faces. He would stay away from her, for a while, he told himself as he watched her walk gracefully away from him as he had watched her on that first day, over three years ago at Penrith, but not because of them and what they said about him and Annie behind his back, but to give her time to steady herself. To do her grieving, come out of the shocked state into which Cat's death had impelled her; to recover a little, to accept. Natty would watch out for her and Maggie Singleton, who had turned out to be a dependable woman. Report on her progress, her health, her farm, her household. If help was needed, with her flock, her crops, he would provide it. She would want for nothing he could give her. He would wait, he loved her and his love made him patient, a characteristic he had never before known.

  He turned then, striding off towards the lower slope of Ullock Pike and Longside Edge. He would walk back to Long Beck – he would not say 'home' since his home was where Annie Abbott was – climbing over Bassenthwaite Common and Broad End and down past Dead Crags to White Water Dash waterfall. Long Beck was just beyond it. Long Beck and Esmé.

  Chapter28

  Edmund Hamilton-Brown did not like to see his little girl in tears. He never had done and if there was anything he could do to prevent tears from sliding down her cheeks in that heart-rending way they had he would do it. From being an astonishingly beautiful baby, pink and white, silver gold and blue, he had adored her. She was the most treasured of his possessions, and he owned a great many of those. He had been reluctant to part with her at the age of seventeen, even into the wealthy, important and competent hands of Reed Macauley. Of course, girls were married in his society from the age of sixteen, transferred from one man's care to another, always advantageously, and he knew Esmé must do the same, but it had been the most difficult thing he had had to do in his life. She was his only living child, and she, and the fortune she would inherit when he had gone, must be put in the charge of a man who could look after both, but his house would be empty without her. Her childish, lilting laughter, her bobbing ringleted embrace, her kisses when she badly wanted something she thought he might consider foolish, the way she had of snuggling on his knee and telling him of what she had done whilst he had been at the mill, her fragrance, her schoolgirl giggles in a corner with her friends, her flounces of satin, her extravagance, her innocence, her loveliness. She was the light of his life, though his gruff Yorkshire heart would not have admitted it had he been put to the torture. He had given
her, from the moment she could talk, everything she had ever asked for, delighting in her delight, besotted and extravagantly indulgent. She was a lady, in his eyes, from being a small girl, surveying the world with a cool, charming stare, her cloudy blue eyes, which were sometimes, depending on the light, a clear turquoise, delighting in what her Papa made it for her. She knew she was beautiful and saw no reason to learn her letters and add up a sum or two for her Papa's household made a fuss of her whatever she did, and he was inclined to agree for what did a lady need of these things? She would marry well, present him with grandchildren, preferably boys who would go into his mills, and his old age would be pleasantly spent introducing them into the world of yardage and quality, of profit and loss, of expansion and gain.

  He had been considerably put out when she had confided to him that his dinner guest from way up in the wilds of Cumberland, a man with whom he had done business on several occasions since the quality of his fleeces had been of the best, had taken her fancy, and could Papa please get him for her? Not in those words, of course, since Esmé was gently reared, a well brought up young lady with no knowledge of the world, of men or of business and was not even aware that Cumberland was a great deal further away from Bradford than Shipley, or even Halifax. He was not at all prepared to let her go so far away though he did not say so, putting forward the charms of this young man and that, sons of nearby business associates and personal friends, but it had not done at all. She had cried, great fat crystal tears which had wrenched at his heart. Mr Macauley's affections might be engaged elsewhere, he had said desperately, and her tears had flowed the harder.

  When, with what he thought was great tact and delicacy, he had approached Reed Macauley, amazingly the man had been willing, saying that he had been looking for a young, well brought up wife, and, it seemed his Esmé was exactly what he wanted.

  He himself had wept in the privacy of his room when Esmé drove off in the carriage with her new husband, waving and smiling, exquisite in her happiness and he had turned away from the harrowing pictures of what Reed Macauley would do to her that night. Instead he began to look ahead to those grandchildren he would have and the visits they and their mother would pay him. Long loving visits when the house would be filled again with her high excited laughter, the pretty parcels she would have brought in from the carriage, parties, dances, dinner guests. It would all come alive again. The nursery would be filled again. With the advent of the railways, all the way from Carlisle right down into Yorkshire, Cumberland was not so far away, was it? he asked his passive wife, who counted for nothing in his life except for the bounteous gift she had given him in his Esmé. Isabel Crowther was twenty when they married and himself thirty-five and Esmé had been the last fruit of his loins, born when he was forty-six years old. There were half a dozen before Esmé lying in the graveyard. So far none of his dreams had materialised. Two years his Esmé and Reed Macauley had been wed and her still not a mother. It was hard to understand for what he had seen of Reed Macauley he would have said he was a lusty man, not a man to waste time in the getting of a family, though the image this conjured up was not one he dwelled on. Esmé's tear-soaked letter came as a bombshell in the middle of the silent breakfast he shared with his wife of thirty years. His roar of rage rattled the coffee-cups and shook the chandeliers and in her chair at the foot of the table Isabel dropped her spoon into the bowl of creamy porridge she ate each morning. It splattered up and over the bodice of her dark brown morning dress but it went unnoticed as she gaped in terrified amazement at her snarling husband. The maidservants — Edmund did not care for butlers and footmen and such fiddle faddle, the only men he employed working in the yard, the garden and the stables — cowered back against the sideboard, clutching coffee-pots and cream jugs to their palpitating breasts.