All the dear faces (33 page)

Charlie took Annie's unresponsive hand between his own. They were sitting side by side on the settle. The animals had fallen into the deep contented sleep which comes with full bellies, warmth and shelter, and he wished it could be as simple as that for Annie Abbott. At that moment he hated Reed Macauley with every fierce and furious beat of his heart. He could feel the loathing creep insidiously through his veins, heating his blood to boiling point, and all he wanted was to rampage up to Long Beck, take the man by the throat and squeeze it until the breath in his body was stopped forever. God, if he could only crash his fists into that bastard's arrogant face, feel theflesh break and the blood flow, but what good would that do the empty-faced, empty-eyed woman who grieved for him?

“
Come Annie, let's get you to bed.
”

She stood up and the quilt about her fell to the floor. Her lovely breasts stood taut and proud beneath the thin stuff of the nightdress and Charlie groaned in real pain. Her hand was warm in his, hot even, and dry, and from her he could feel a wave of warmth emanate. She looked at him listlessly though her bright eyes did not really see him and with a sigh which was heated with the vapour from her body, she fell against him.

“
Oh, Annie, Annie, what has that bastard done to you?" he murmured into her hair as he lifted her into his arms and carried her to her bed
.

He and Phoebe nursed her for a week before she recognised them. Between them they tended to her every need, neither feeling embarrassment as together they stripped her soiled nightgowns from her, bathed her naked body and put her in another. She was burning and freezing in turn, her hands to her head as it was wrenched in two, she muttered deliriously, by an iron claw. There was a knife in her chest she said, looking from one to the other accusingly, not seeing them at all.

“
She's strong, Phoebe, so don't alarm yourself." It was not Phoebe Charlie was reassuring, but himself. "She'll come out of this, you'll see. By morning she'll be sitting up and shouting for her `poddish'."

“
Aye, that's right, Mr Lucas," but Phoebe was watching in horror the smooth roundness of Annie's cheeks as they melted and sank into the bare bones of her face. The fierce, dry heat of her seemed to be swallowing her before their very eyes and though they did their best they could not make her drink.

“
Sweeting ... Annie . . . oh, my dearest heart . . ." he murmured to her when they were alone, for Phoebe was needed elsewhere, attending to Cat who fretted to be with her mother. She was a rock to whom they all clung, himself included, as she quietly went about the business of
cooking hot nourishing meals for them, and washing the piles of soiled linen from Annie and her bed, of caring for the animals and the newly planted vegetables, of doing the cleaning and mending and making sure that the home Annie had given her ran as smoothly as she knew Annie would have liked. There was only one relief in their routine, which moved from sick room to kitchen to the needs of the farm, and that was that the lambing was over and the ploughing done. The planting of oats and barley could wait a day or two until he could get to it, Charlie told Phoebe, as they covered the fretfully tossing body of Annie for the hundredth time
.

They took it in turns to sit with her, dozing fitfully in the chair beside the bed, but when Phoebe, on the third night, fell asleep with Cat on her bed, sliding into a state which was almost that of unconsciousness, Charlie did not waken her. She was barely beyond childhood herself. She had borne stoically the hard task of looking after them all, of nursing Annie whilst he himself had an hour's sleep, of even, he had noticed from Annie's bedroom window, hoeing the vegetables when she had a spare moment. Now she was done in and could she be blamed
?

Annie moaned and tossed, fever glazing her eyes, her lungs wheezing agonisingly in her rapidly rising and falling chest and for the first time Charlie faced the appalling fact that she might not survive. She was thin, her body bare bones and hollows for he had seen it, looking at it not with a lover's eye but with the detached concern almost of a doctor. He had seen men like this on the long marches he had made beside them in the cause of Chartism, through wet and cold nights, men with fever, with the coughing sickness and many had slipped silently away before the cause they espoused could come to fruition
.

He loved Annie Abbott and had done for over six months now. She was an extension of his own body and spirit. Part of himself which no one knew of and now she lay wasting away before his eyes and he could do nothing about it. The full horror of losing her, though he knew he did not have her, was more than his anguished heart could
stand and he leaned over her, putting his face in the curve of her neck beneath her chin. His lips touched the hot flesh of her throat and he murmured her name
.

She seemed to quieten, sighing as she turned towards him.

“
Reed . . .
”

Dear Christ! Reed
!

Again she said that hated name and her arm fumbled beneath the bedclothes which he had just tucked about her, as though searching for something.

“
Annie . . . I'm here . . . I'm here, my darling." Lifting her head gently, he put his arm beneath it, drawing her close to him and though she still fretted and mumbled, her hot and feverish body seemed to strain towards him.

“
Reed . .
“

He wanted to weep. He could not contemplate the world without her bright defiant spirit, her lovely glowing smile which lit her eyes to golden glory, her unshakeable belief that she would win through, her dauntless heart, brave and strong, and yet was he to nurse her back to health only to see her forever yearn for that blackguard up at Long Beck? And if he did . . . Oh, Christ . . . if he did? What was he thinking about, lying here next to the woman he loved, deliberating on what was to happen if she survived. She must survive no matter what she did in the future. The flame of her must not be allowed to go out, not if he could help to keep it flickering
.

Again he lifted her head, replacing it on the pillow, moving away from the bed for a moment or two, and at once she twisted and turned, her breath rasping like a rusty saw through the clogged filth in her chest. When he had removed his outer clothing he climbed into the bed and took her in his arms, holding her burning body close to his.

“
I'm here, sweetheart, I'm here," he murmured, his hands caressing her shoulders and back, stroking her tangled hair away from her face, his kisses sweet on her chin, the arch of her brow, her parched lips.

“
Reed . . . aah . . . Reed." She turned to him, her
fever-racked body not knowing, her senseless mind deep in the loveliness of Reed Macauley's arms
.

He awoke to a great drenching sweat which poured from Annie's body, soaking himself, her nightdress, the bedclothes. She was asleep, a quiet natural sleep which seemed to him to have a healing about it. He held her for a few more minutes, savouring the sweetness of her arm across him, her cheek on his chest, the tumbled mass of her hair in a drift across his face, then quietly lest she wake, he moved from the bed and it was as though his heart tore from his body, the pain of it so unbearable he bent his head, steadying himself for a moment on the back of the chair. She was better, sweating still, but peaceful, her mind and body soothed to that condition by her dream of Reed Macauley
.

He dressed quickly, not taking his eyes from her sleeping face, then knelt beside her to study her, for he knew he would not share Annie Abbott's bed again
.

It was another three days before she was completely herself again, weak as a new-born kitten and skinny as a post, she said ruefully, but yes, she thought she might eat a mouthful of 'poddish' and if her body remembered the night she had spent with Reed Macauley, her mind told her it was dreams and that Charlie and Phoebe had nursed her back to health
.

Charlie watched her from the chair where he sat, one leg thrown carelessly over the arm of it, his usual expression of easy-going smiling insouciance on his thin face. Annie Abbott was not the only one to lose weight that week. The days moved on and she was improved, continuing to do so rapidly, the day at Rosley Hill not mentioned and if sometimes there was a pensive sadness in her eyes and a strain about her soft mouth, she did not allow it to interfere with the plans she had for her farm which she discussed with her good friend Charlie Lucas and the dreams she had for her daughter which she also shared with her good and dearest friend, Charlie Lucas.

“
She's four now, Charlie, in December, which Godforgive me, I let slip by me as though it did not matter. That child has had nothing."

“
She's had you, Annie.
”

Annie turned to smile at him, her hand reaching out to take his. Charlie was always saying things like that. He was such a blessing to her with his mischievous good humour and wit, his wicked, often ribald sense of fun, his easy, shared companionship. He took nothing seriously except the work he did on the farm and even that was done as though he found it all extremely amusing, something which suited him at the moment to perform. He would smile endearingly and raise self-mocking eyebrows before taking himself off to weed the acre of oats and barley he and Phoebe had sown at the end of May, whilst she herself recovered from the illness.

“
Well, I'd best be off to pretend I'm a farmer," he would say, his step jaunty, his hands in his pockets, a whistle on his lips as though for two pins he would throw himself down on the grass and read his book, and yet she knew he did the work of two men though he tried to give the impression he was doing none. She knew very little about him for whenever she tried to question him on his past, he always laughed and said he had known a misspent youth and a wild young manhood.

“
My family despaired of me. I broke every young lady's heart in the neighbourhood and my mother was forever in tears for I showed no inclination to settle down to marry one of them."

“
And where was this, Charlie? Which part of the country do you come from? Certainly not Cumberland."

“
Oh, further south than that. You will not know it."

“
I have been as far as Leicestershire so I'm not exactly untravelled," for by now Charlie had heard of her past since she felt no need to keep it from him.

“
My word, Leicestershire! You have seen the world have you not, Annie Abbott," he teased her.

“
Never mind me, tell me what you have done since you grew to manhood. I know you had a university education but what did you do after that?"

“
Oh, I moved about here and there," he said airily.

“
Here and there, where and doing what? Don't try to play the mystery man with me, Charlie Lucas."

“
That is exactly what I am and mean to stay. A mystery man. Don't you think it makes me more exciting? Look at Phoebe's face. You can see she is wondering what I've been up to and am I a wanted man. Isn't that so, Phoebe?"

“
Nay, not me, Mr Lucas. I mind me own business I do, an' I tell no one mine," which was endearing really for what had Phoebe to tell, or hide?

“
Quite right, Phoebe, that's what I always say.
”

And by means of teasing, making jokes about his reckless past, changing the subject cunningly so that one minute they were discussing him and then something else entirely, they knew barely more about him than on the day he had entered their lives.

“
So what am I to do about Cat, Charlie?"

“
You want her to go to school?"

“
I do, but how will she fare in the village, even if they would take her? It is only a dame school which cost my father a penny or two a week."

“
You certainly benefited from the experience."

“
But Cat is far cleverer than I ever was, Charlie. All I learned there was to read and write and sing hymns."

“
Is there not a 'monitorial system' in the North? In Almondbury, which is close to where I come from, there was a reverend gentleman, a curate and headmaster of the Grammar School there, who opened up his school for use as a Sunday School. Above its doors were inscribed the words of George III: 'May every child in my Kingdom be able to read the Bible,' it said but the Reverend Walter Smith did much more than that. In ten years fifty-one boys and thirty-five girls, each paying threepence a week, were taught by two teachers, but then those who were taught became 'monitors' teaching others. That is the 'monitorial system'. "

“
It sounds a wonderful idea, I would give anything to send Cat to a grammar school where she would learn more than reading and how to add one and one. Already sheknows a little Latin and French that you taught her but a girl has not the chance a boy has."

“
I will willingly teach her all I know, Annie, but is there not a grammar school, perhaps in Keswick or Carlisle, which will admit free pupils of poor means, girls as well as boys?"