All the dear faces Read online

  “She's used to it and if she wasn't she'd soon have to learn. I had to."

  “Who are you, for God's sake? Can you not even tell me your name since you seem to know mine?"

  “Why? You and I won't be moving in the same circles, Reed Macauley. We didn't in the past and I can see no reason why we should in the future." She tossed her bonneted head and a stray curl escaped at the nape of her exposed white neck, the last rays of the weak sun setting it alight with bright copper tints. It was the same colour as the child's.

  “Is she yours?" His voice was brusque and she turned to look at him. There was no animosity in her glance, only a cool indifference and once more he felt that disconcerting flush of warm blood run in his veins accompanied by the menace of his own quick temper.

  “Yes." Again the proud lift of her head, the indignant flush of rose at her cheek-bone informing him that it was really none of his concern, but for some curious reason he could not let it go.

  “And your . . . husband?"

  “Aah . . . !" Her breath drifted from between her parted lips and hung in the cold air like smoke before disappearing.

  “Does that mean you have none?"

  “It does.”

  The leap of gladness in him was apparent only to himself. "Dead?”

  She came to an angry stop in the middle of the road and the child stopped with her, patiently waiting for whatever was to happen next. She showed no strain except in the heaving of her narrow chest which rose and fell rapidly, due no doubt to the pace she had been forced to keep.

  The woman spoke coldly. "I cannot imagine why you think you have the right to question me, Reed Macauley, nor to form judgements on . . . my behaviour which it seems to me is none of your business. I am not interfering with you in any way, nor impeding your progress. I would be obliged if you would do the same for me.”

  He studied her vivid face with increasing interest, wondering for the tenth time in as many minutes who the devil she was. She was dressed poorly. Clean and neat and the obvious tears in her and the child's clothing had been decently mended but the material of her skirt was rough and drab, her bonnet was old and of a style fashionable ten years ago. Her shawl, which was thin and shabby, was faded from much washing and on her feet, and on the child's, were worn, wooden-soled clogs. Had it not been for her exceptional beauty and easy, upright carriage which thrust forward the soft swell of her full breast, no man would have given her a second glance.

  And where the devil had she learned to speak so well? There was a clicking vestige of the glottal Cumberland dialect in her voice but it was clear, modulated and articulate. She was no lady but her manner of speaking seemed to indicate that she did not come from the lower classes either.

  “Believe me, madam." His own voice was cool and stilted. "I do not presume to judge you." For a moment he was tempted to grin since he was the last person in the world to condemn another's morals but his irritability with this stubborn female, and with his own strange reluctance to leave her here where there was so much to harm her, sent his amusement spinning away. "How could I? 1 do not know you."

  “Precisely, so perhaps it would be as well if you got on that beast of yours since she seems likely to trample us all if you don't, and went on your way. My daughter and I are perfectly well able to look after ourselves."

  “I doubt it."

  “Well, that remains to be seen."

  “Where are you heading?" As he spoke he glanced up at the low grey clouds which were beginning to tumble away to the west over the high peak of Blencathra and the wild fells of Skiddaw Forest. Coming out of Penrith as they had done they were still in the Vale of Eden but up ahead were vistas of wild and rugged splendour, of range after range of mountains, of cascading cataracts and deep, dark-eyed tarns, of wooded dales and windswept moors, of nature's raw and unremitting challenge. Even so, it seemed this woman meant to challenge it with as little concern as though she was to take a walk along the path of his dead mother's rose garden.

  “Gillthrop," she answered casually.

  “Gillthrop!" He was appalled. "But that's nearly twenty miles. You cannot possibly make that by nightfall."

  “I'm aware of that and I don't intend to try." She had begun to stride on as though she hadn't a moment to spare, especially to stand gossiping with the likes of him and again the whip of anger moved in him. His eyes snapped the brilliant blue his mother would have recognised and his voice was steely.

  “Are you quite out of your mind?"

  “Really, can it be anything to do with you if I was?" She relented a little. "Anyway, Cat and I will find shelter in a barn at Penruddock or some farm along the way. I have money to buy food." She raised her head even higher to indicate that she begged charity from no one, evidently finding great satisfaction in the statement. "We'll start afresh in the morning."

  “Even so, it's a long walk for a child."

  “She's strong, aren't you, my lamb?" Her eyes were warm and glowing for a moment as she looked down into those of the child and he noticed with a part of his mind which was not seething with frustration over this bloody woman's stubbornness that they were exactly the same colour as her mother's.

  “Besides," she went on, "I shall go by the old pack route round the back of Blencathra and across Mungrisdale Common. I shall follow the track from Skiddaw Forest down to Gillthrop. It is but a stone's throw to . . . where I am going. I shall cut the journey by several miles."

  “It's extremely wild up there and . . ."

  “Yes, yes, I know, very dangerous. You have told me so before and I cannot help but wonder, Reed Macauley, why you're taking such an unusual interest in me and my child. We are nought to you."

  “True, and I can assure you that my concern is no more than any decent man would show for the safety of a lone, defenceless woman and child," but he knew as he spoke the stiff and rather pompous words that it was not true.

  “There is no need."

  “So you keep telling me."

  “Then why don't you ride on?"

  “God's teeth, woman, I've a good mind to and leave the pair of you to your own devices. If it were not for the child . . ."

  “Why should you bother about her? You and your sort are not in the habit of concerning yourselves with me and mine."

  “My sort . . . ?"

  “Aye. My mother worked for yours years ago and though she was not deliberately cruel she did not concern herself overmuch with my mother's feelings. And she got her money's worth, and more, from my mother's labours. From dawn to dusk and later she worked in your mother's dairy and kitchen at Long Beck and when she stopped for no more than a minute to rest, being old even then, your mother gave her a right clip round t' lug. Heavy-handed she was . . ."

  “You don't have to tell me, madam. I felt it myself a time or two," and he could not help but smile at the memory as he rubbed his ear.

  “'Tis no laughing matter, Reed Macauley. 'Tis one thing to clout a growing boy especially if he's your son and no doubt deserved it but to lift your hand to another woman is not to be tolerated. I'd not have tolerated it . . ."

  “No, I can see that."

  “And so I'll thank you to get on your way and leave me to get on mine."

  “And where is that to be? Does your family live in Gillthrop?"

  “Just up along, or at least they did. My mother and father are dead." A spasm of what might have been pain shattered the composure of her face. "I'm going home“

  “Yes?”

  She drew a deep breath and in the last fading haze of daylight which was almost gone he saw the flash of bright anger in her eyes and the deep rose of it stain her creamy skin.

  “'Tis nowt ter do wi' yoo, Reed Macauley." The dialect of her childhood returned to her tongue in her fury, "so climb up on tha' mare an' get thi' gone. Me an' Cat've walked best part o't'way from Leicestershire ower past few weeks an' we'm still alive an' lively an' all, so don't thi' go tellin' me we need tha' protection."

  “Damnation . . ."r />
  “Don't you damnation with me .. ."

  “Christ Almighty, could any man do anything with you, woman? I've yet to meet a more obstinate, self-willed . ."

  “. . . and I a more persistent nuisance . . .”

  In his rage which the animal sensed, it took him a good three or four minutes of mad circling to quieten the mare long enough to mount her, and when he had done so the woman was almost out of sight along the dusky road. He put his heels to the animal's side, driving her at once into a wild gallop, her hooves thundering on the road. The woman did not even look round.

  He did not know why he said it and she did not know why she answered for they were both in a surprising state of wild anger.

  “You never told me your name," he shouted over his shoulder.

  “Annie Abbott, not that it's anything to do with you.”

  Chapter5

  She and Cat spent the night in a barn, wrapped about in hay and the old blanket the brusque farmer's wife, taking pity on them since the night was cold, had lent them. In the morning she had sold Annie some bread and cheese and, at the last minute, given them both a long draught of warm cow's milk to sustain them. It was almost noon and she was half-way across Mungrisdale Common when she thought about Reed Macauley again. She had known him at once, of course, though he had not recognised her. She had been no more than a child of eleven or twelve and he a grown man of twenty-two or so during that dreadful winter when, besides the work she did at home in her own kitchen, Lizzie Abbott had been forced to labour in that of Mrs Macauley. It had been either that or starve for Joshua Abbott's flock had perished in the scourge of murrain which had attacked his sheep. His crops of oats and barley had failed and they had lived for nearly a month on turnip bread.

  Mungrisdale Common was high, over two thousand feet above sea level and the short November day had not improved on the previous one. In the summer the walk from where she had left the road was pleasant and easy, cossing the Glenderamackin River, coming through the bracken of Mousethwaite Combe, going up and up until she and Cat were looking across the rolling upland summit. Bent tufts of cotton grass inhabited in the summer by sheep, and at this time of the year by only the occasional wandering herd of wild fell ponies. She did not know it as well as the fells at the back of her own home, the remote and lonely High Pike, Knott, and the affable and friendly giant of Skiddaw, but the pack routes were clearly marked, for it was not long since they had been used by the men who had walked these mountains. Monks going from grange to grange, drovers plodding behind herds and flocks on their way to market or new grazing. Men with ponies carrying goods to outlying farms and hamlets. They said that if you listened carefully you could still hear the tinkle of the bells which warned of the approach of the pack trains. They had carried salt and wool, hides and charcoal, coal, lead, silver and iron, moving along the complex network of narrow green tracks which lay on the lower slopes or ran between the dales like the veins on a leaf.

  But today was not summer and though she knew Cat was almost at the end of her child's endeavour they dare not stop to rest. It was too cold for sitting about. To the right and behind them were the rough crags of Bannerdale and ahead was the climb to the summit of the common but here was peace and tranquillity. The ground, though boggy since it was a watershed and covered by tussocky grass, made for easy walking.

  “Come sweetheart, mother will carry you," Annie said to the silent child who was beginning to look strangely pale about the mouth. "Eat this, my lambkin," she added, as she picked her up, thrusting a thick piece of bread and cheese into the little girl's hand, the last of their food. "It will make you feel better.”

  The child did as she was told, then immediately fell asleep, her head lolling on Annie's shoulder, her white face gaining a little colour as she slept.

  Annie strode on, her skirts swinging about her ankles, not at all weighted down by the basket in which everything she and her daughter possessed was carried, nor by the small girl who slept in her arms. Her bonnet had fallen to the small of her back, bouncing as she walked, and her clogged feet made a strange sucking sound each time she lifted them from the squelchy ground but she did not falter.

  It was dark and beginning to drizzle when she reached the end of the pack route which ran beside Dale Beck and led down to the farm gate of Browhead Farm. Pitch black dark and had she not known every step of the way, every blade of grass, every rough and broken stone she would have lost herself and Cat a dozen times. She was no longer striding for she had been walking for nearly twelve hours this day and the wicker basket had become heavier with every long, cold mile, as had the child and now, just as she really could go no further, she was home. She was here to claim her inheritance. Browhead.

  Her strong, working fingers, on which there was no wedding ring, searched for the enormous iron key where it was always hidden, where the lawyer in Lancaster had told her it would be and for the first time in four years Annie Abbott bent her head and stepped over the threshwood of the farmhouse from which her father had despatched her.

  She and her child were asleep in his bed five minutes after she had locked the door behind them.

  She awoke to greyness, greyness and a chill so riveting she huddled up against Cat who was still asleep. They were both deep in the - she realised it now, damp - feather mattress, only the tips of their noses exposed to the biting cold and they were still fully dressed except for their clogs which she remembered had clattered to the bedroom floor as she and Cat fell into bed. It was the last thing she remembered.

  The pale morning light, dim and hazed as it did its best to gain entrance through the small and filthy oak-mullioned windows of her parents' bedroom, revealed the shadowed shapes on the wall of the samplers she and her mother had worked - when had they had the time, she wondered idly? - all four of them beautifully framed by her father.

  'Glory be to God' one said and beneath it, 'Elizabeth Bowman is my name' and the year 1810. Another had every letter of the alphabet stitched on it, her own name and the date 1840. The third and fourth, though she could not see the words in the poor light, were embroidered with lines from the twenty-third psalm and the Lord's Prayer. The samplers were worked on plain white linen with hundreds and hundreds of tiny cross stitches in bright thread and she could quite clearly remember how her eyes had ached as she stitched diligently in the light from the rush lamp. To this day she could sew a fine seam and given the materials could have made garments of a good quality and style for herself and Cat.

  The carved oak press which her mother had brought from Cockermouth as a bride and in which she kept her clothing stood against the whitewashed wall and still hanging on plain wooden pegs fixed beside the window were a jacket of her father's and her mother's hodden-grey winter cloak. On one side of the bed was a small, gate-legged table, again part of her mother's dower and on it stood a plain earthenware ewer and basin. The floor was bare, the wood of it once so highly polished you could see your face in it. She herself had had the polishing of it.

  She wondered what time it was. Well into the morning by the look of the light. She must have slept for over twelve hours but was it to be wondered at, the walking she and Cat had done in the past four weeks? Whenever they could which meant when the distance they must travel was too great for the child to walk - and she could afford the fare, she and Cat had taken the railway train but they must have tramped well over a hundred and fifty miles on their journey from Market Harborough to Lancaster.

  And now, here she was, lying in the bed her mother and father had shared for over twenty years and where they had both died within a few days of one another from a virulent fever of the lungs. The lawyer in Lancaster had been none too sure of the details and none too concerned with them either. His duty was done when he handed over to Joshua Abbott's legal heir, this amazingly lovely young woman who stood before him with no sign of nervousness, the deeds to Browhead Farm.

  There was no money, unfortunately, the lawyer told her, and, not that he was aware, any
livestock, and with his words ringing in her ears, those which told her that in his opinion she would be wise to sell, she had boarded the Lancaster-to-Carlisle train using the money he had given her to purchase a ticket, getting off at Penrith, and here ;he was.

  Lord, but it was cold and it would not get any warmer ying here next to Cat, tempting though the idea was. A fire first on the hearth of the deep inglenook, that's if there was anything to make it with. Peat was what they had burned four years ago, dug by herself and her mother, and she hoped anxiously that there would be a Supply in the barn cut by Lizzie before she died a year last October, ready for the winter ahead. The fire had never, winter or summer, been allowed to go out. Well, it was but now and there was only one person to get it going The floor was so cold it hurt her bare feet and she linched, drawing in her breath sharply. Tucking the heavy, hand-made quilt more cosily about her daughter who had not yet stirred, she did a hasty little dash across the floor, reaching for the cloak her mother had once worn. She threw it about her shoulders, hunching it more closely to her and from its heavy folds came the smells which had always lingered about her mother and which brought back sharply the patient, pale-faced, anxiously kindly woman who had done her best, Annie could see it now, to take some of the overwhelming load which her father had leaped on her own young shoulders.

  “See, let me do that, sweetheart." Annie could still hear the words her mother spoke when Joshua had stumped nit of the house. "'Tis more than you can manage, so off you go and play with Sally an' Mim for half an hour. But no more, mind . . ." for if he came back and found his laughter off on some frivolous tack it would be woe betide the pair of them.

  Annie lifted the durable wool to her nose and sniffed he mixture of herbs, the smell of hay and buttermilk, fresh bread and clean linen flapping in the wind, of lavender and linseed and all the dozens of aromas linked to the tasks with which her mother had occupied her days and though ;he had barely – to her shame – given her a thought in the past four years since she had been too busy thinking of her own and Cat's survival, she thought of Lizzie now and wanted to weep.