All the dear faces (2 page)

“
Will tha' never learn sense, girl? Can tha' not see tha' load's too big? Tek some out an' put 'em in a pile then shift what's left down to t' barn. Then come back for t'others. Think girl, think! I don't know why the Good Lord made women so half-witted. Tryin' to lift a bloody basket it'd tek me half me time to get off t' ground. Lighten it, girl, an' look lively."

“
Yes, Faither."

“
An' tell thi' mother I'm waitin' on me dinner whilst tha's down there. I've never known a woman so feckless as she is. Bugger it, it's gone noon an' I'm parched. An' I don't want no cold tea, neither. A jug of ale'd go down nicely."

“
Yes, Faither." Annie had obediently emptied half the potatoes, piling them neatly on the ground.

“
Off tha' go then an' don't tha' drop that swill or I'll 'ave summat ter say ter thi'. Them potatoes is money an' we've none o' that ter be chuckin' about an' don't come back empty-handed. Fetch me some o' that manure in tha' empty swill."

“
Yes, Faither.
”

The neat rows of healthily blooming plants stretched out at the backs of the man and child in the walled field behind the farmhouse, each row exactly twenty-seven inches from its neighbour, each set, or plant, twelve inches from the next. They were erect, tall, branching, their tops crowded in a spreading confusion. The stems had a pink tinge and the flowers were a lovely red-purple but Joshua Abbott was not concerned with their appearance, except in so much as it was a healthy one, only with the smooth, oval-shaped harvest which grew at their root. He and the girl had planted them in late March. They had been well fertilised with the manure from his farmyard, the child's job again since it was within her capabilities and now they were to be lifted and those not needed for the family's winter requirements would go to market
.

She was back within five minutes and behind her, carrying a basket which was so heavy it caused her to shuffle lop-sidedly, was Lizzie Abbott. She was obviously pregnant. Though both she and the child who staggered beneath the weight of the swill basket and its stinking, steaming contents were making heavy weather of their loads Joshua Abbott made no effort to help them. He was digging. Glancing round as they approached he threw down his spade, took off his battered and stained felt hat, wiped his sweating face with his forearm, replaced his hat and sat down, his back to the drystone wall which surrounded the field.

“
An' about time too," was all he said, his tone peevish.

“
I'm sorry, Joshua. I got took badly." Lizzie Abbott put her hand to her distended belly. Her thin, worn face was vastly apologetic just as though she had been caught junketing about the yard with Natty Varty who sometimes gave Joshua a hand at harvest or lambing. "I can't seem ter get over this sickness . . ."

“
Aye, well, set basket down, woman." Joshua was not in the least concerned with his wife's pregnancy, nor with the details of its progress, only with its outcome. Married eighteen years and nothing to show for it but this one girl, though by God, he'd done his best. A bairn every year he'd given her and a few times she'd gone full term but always it seemed, again as though the blame was hers, contrary madam that she was, bringing forth some sickly infant, three of them boys, who had not lasted a month. One girl! A fine girl, strong and biddable, cheerful too, and if only she'd been a boy which was all he asked for, one boy, Joshua would have been content. It wasn't too much to expect, was it, out of eighteen pregnancies? But no, soon as it was in her belly where surely it was not too difficult to hang on to, she'd let it go, time after time, except for the girl. Other men had sons. Look at Jem Mounsey from Upfell Farm. Two daughters certainly but a fine lad going on twelve years now and so big and strapping, like Jem, he could do the work of a grown man. Upfell was small, like his own farm, not in the class of
Alistair Macauley's place up at Long Beck, but between them Jem and Davy Mounsey managed it nicely with no need of paid help like Natty Varty, or at least only in the most dire of emergencies. Of course at ploughing or harvesting, lambing or clipping time, every farmer and his family helped every other. A 'boon' clip, or 'boon' ploughing, when a day would be set aside and neighbours would come with a plough or a horse or their shears when there were sheep to be sheared and at the end of it there would be a tatie-pot supper, with dancing in the barn, the fiddle played by Dobby Hawkins who was odd-job man at Long Beck. A 'merry-fleet' right enough but what had Joshua Abbott to be merry about with no son to take over when he himself was six feet under? If only the girl had .. . well, brightening a little as he studied his wife's thickening figure . . . 'appen it wasn't too late. He was only thirty-nine himself and had many good years in him to pass on to a lad all that he himself had learned from his father
.

The
farmhouse and its surrounding acres had been in his family for generations, he was not awfully sure how many. Unlike many small farmers who had been forced off the common land with the Enclosure movement, his grandfather, or was it his great-grandfather, had managed by dint of great hardship to himself and his family to buy the land which had been freely held by the Abbotts, or so they had imagined, from time immemorial. Not a great deal by the standards of the wealthy landowners such as the Macauleys but still theirs, and though they had never managed to do more than 'hang on' from harvest to harvest and from lambing to lambing, it was still theirs. Still Abbott land. Joshua Abbott's land and if he could just get himself a son to pass it on to he'd die a happy man
.

The girl sat down beside him and Joshua's sheepdog crept up to her, leaning fondly on her shoulder, eyeing the oatcake she had taken from the basket.

“
An' don't let me see tha' feedin' that dog."

“
No, Faither."

“
Ruined he is an' all because of tha' mollycoddlin' ways
.

See, woman, tek 'im down wi' thi' an' fasten 'im to t' chain in t' yard. I don't know what comes over the two o' you, pettin' 'im like he was some lap dog. A workin' dog he is an' when he's not workin' he stays in t' yard. Is that clear?"

“
Yes, Faither."

“
Yes, Joshua."

“
Did tha' fetch me ale, woman?"

“
Yes, Joshua, 'tis in t' basket."

“
Well, then, there's no need for thi' to hang about here, is there. There's bound ter be summat for thi' ter do in tha' kitchen."

“
Yes, Joshua," and, obedient as a trained animal, his wife moved off in the direction of the farmhouse which stood slightly lower down the sloping field so that its roof was on a level with where the man and the child laboured.

“
Don't forget bloody dog, woman.
”

His wife turned in a flurry, her face anguished at her own foolishness. What was she thinking of ? Daydreaming, he'd say, though her dreams were not dreams at all but galloping worries on how she was to manage the next four months with the burden she carried . . . oh, please God, don't let me lose this one . . . I must not give way to despair . . . but a boy, a healthy boy so that he will leave me alone. So that he will cast off the bitterness and harshness he shows to the girl, smile a little . . . all that work the child does and her not twelve yet .. . all that I do ..
.

It was hard to believe that she had once been pretty Lizzie Bowman from Cockermouth since those who had known her then could not remember it and her own child had never seen her other than timid, hard-working, patient, dumb, thin and anxious of face, her skin and hair a uniform greyish-brown. She was thirty-four years old. Her life and that of her daughter was one of unremitting labour from early dawn until they fell into their beds at dark. A hard life which was restricted not just to herself and Annie but was the lot of farm women everywhere in Cumberland. There was the clapbread to be baked, the ale to be brewed, pickling and bottling, baking, cooking
and cleaning, rush making, cheese and butter making, the pickling of beef and mutton, the drying of the meat in the smoke of the chimney. There was washday when water must be brought from the spring ready for boiling. There was the vegetable garden, the herb garden and when all that was done there was the spinning of the yarn from the fleece of Joshua Abbott's Herdwick sheep and the weaving of it into the hodden-grey wool from which most of their serviceable clothing was made. She and her daughter milked cows and collected eggs, killed the pig, salted the meat and wrung the necks of chickens. They fed the cattle wintering in the cow shed. In the light of the rush lamps they themselves had made they all three knitted hosiery, fashioned birch-twig besoms and swill baskets to be sold at the next market. They both worked like men at lambing time, cut peat and stacked it for drying, helped at the 'boon clip' and at backend, as winter approached, helped to bring down the flock from the high fells and the moors to the lower 'inlands' which were fenced by dry-stone walls
.

Between the three of them, with the occasional help of Natty Varty who hired himself out as casual labour, they ran the farm of Browhead and now, with the growing child within her, already she was beginning to tire before the day was half-way through. She needed to rest, put her feet up now and again with a nice hot cup of tea to steady her but how was she to manage that with the hundred and one jobs that were to be done every day on the farm? You'd think with him being so desperate to have a living son he'd find some way to get her a bit of help but no, she must work just the same, just as hard and just as long and if anything happened to the unborn child it would be her fault
.

The dog, she musn't forget the dog, but in her effort to appease her husband, to keep him from venting his spleen on the child, from becoming more irritable than he already was, she lunged awkwardly, tripping on the long skirt of her grey woollen dress. She righted herself but in doing so she knew she was going to step heavily on
Joshua's sturdy potato plants and though it would do them no harm since the potatoes ready for lifting were still deep in the soil, she had a horror of arousing his uncertain temper. The child in her womb fluttered feebly and, unbalanced, with her hand on her belly, she fell heavily. She was up again at once, as light as a feather rises, smiling to let him see there was no harm done, though the awful, familiar sinking in her womb told her it was too late.

“
Tha's a clumsy beggar," he said, the ale he was slurping down his long, muscular throat making him good humoured.

“
I know, Joshua, that's me. Well, I'll get meself home then," turning, desperate to get to her kitchen, to sit down, to lie down in an effort to hold on to what she carried.

“
Tha's goin' wi'out dog now, woman. Bloody hell, it beats me how tha' manages ter get through t'day. Tha's in a maze half the time."

“
Tha's right, Joshua." She had the dog now, leading him by the scruff of his neck until she reached the gate which led into the yard, flapping at the anxious animal with her apron until he was through. She chained him to the wall, even managing to tell him to 'be a good boy, then' whilst all the while the liquid flowed down her leg and into her wooden-soled clogs as the child she carried drained away from her on a tide of blood.

“
I'm sorry, lass," she said later to her daughter who, being a child brought up on a farm, though she was only eleven years old, knew exactly what had happened to her mother five months ago when she had conceived in the bedroom next to hers, and understood the miscarriage she had just suffered in the very same bed.

“
It's all right, Mother. Me an' Faither'll manage," Annie answered stoically.

“
But how's tha' to do that, child, wi' me stuck up here in me bed? Tha' can't do milkin' an' butter an' cheese an' tha' faither'll want them ter go ter market at week's end."

“
Mrs Mounsey'll help me."

“
Aye, " sighing weakly. "An' 'appen I'll be up afore long.
”

And so she was, for Joshua was not a man to sit with his knife and fork in his hands waiting for his supper and the girl was too busy in the fields and the dairy to be of much use in the kitchen. He said nothing, not even in recrimination, when it became apparent he was not to have his son, at least this time, and when in the next eighteen months his wife, despite his nightly assault on her, failed to conceive he began to realise, and to accept that Annie was to be all that he would have. His bitterness was intense and he eyed Jem Mounsey's lad with a jealous loathing he found hard to contain
.

It was the day before Annie Abbott's twelfth birthday that he dropped his bombshell, though he gave no reason for his decision since that was not his way. He knew why he was taking this course of action and that was enough
.

Annie and her mother, their fingers busy with the rushlights they were making in readiness for the long winter nights ahead, froze in their seats when he spoke, their mouths falling open in astoundment.

“
Tha's ter go ter school, girl. Next week. Mornings. Jem Mounsey's lasses go so you might as well an' all.
”

Annabelle Abbott, Joshua and Lizzie Abbott's fifth child, stood up and the rushes she was coating with mutton fat fell to the floor as Joshua, slinging his hat to his head, set off for The Bull in Gillthrop without another word
.