All the dear faces (68 page)

*

The farming year was almost at its end. The hay was in, the reaping and binding done, her stock sold and new ewes bought, the salving and marking of the sheep over with, and Clover and her growing calf housed in the byre for the winter to be fed on hay and straw. The tup was up on the fells with Annie's flock doing his joyful duty by them and the casual Irish labourers she had hired to settle her in for the winter, paid off and gone on their way. Without Charlie, she and Phoebe had managed but it had been a cheerless time of hard work, stoically borne. Her money, which Royal had dragged to Keswick in its tin box, hedged about on the sledge with trussed chickens and eggs, swills and besom brushes had been deposited with the speechless bank manager in Keswick. Yes, he could invest it safely for her, he had managed to stammer, his eyes unable to look away from the mountain of coins on his desk, astounded by her casual reference to her `savings', and when she and Phoebe had purchased the provisions they needed for the winter, amongst which were several dress lengths of soft woollen fabric, cambric and lace, they had settled in at Browhead at the end of November to wait for spring and lambing time and what she intended would be the start of her new business. There were enough quartered logs in the barn, ready to be rived into strips to keep her and Phoebe busy making swill baskets during the winter months
.

She had grieved badly for Reed during the two months since she had last seen him. He was still at Long Beck, or so Maggie Singleton innocently told them when she came down to visit Phoebe and proudly display her sturdy son and, equally innocently, to share the hope that she
and Jake might be allowed to take over the farm at Upfell
.

It was going to waste since the Garnetts left, she said, and Jake, who had never actually run a farm, was nevertheless a good all-round man outside and could turn his hand to anything, sheep, cattle or crops, and as for herself, she couldn't wait to get her hands on some real dairy work again. Jonty was thriving and she and Jake were no strangers to hard work. Nobody could have been more surprised than them, she confided over a cup of tea, to Phoebe, when it was discovered that it was Mr Macauley who had bought it and not some farmer from Lancashire as had, at first, been believed. Why he had kept it to himself for so long, no one could imagine, but then she supposed they should have guessed when he left instructions for Dobby Hawkins to go down to milk the cows and feed the pigs and hens, but then they had thought at the time he had been doing it as a favour to the farmer from Lancashire who must be an acquaintance of his. But no, Upfell was his, though why he had bought it and then done nothing with it was still a mystery. Anyway, somebody had to run it and why not her and Jake? She herself had a fair head for business and with her and Jake's farming knowledge she reckoned they'd do right well
.

Annie had listened when Phoebe told her, saying nothing, for what was there to say? Although she went about her days with the same thoroughness and diligence to her farm's welfare that she had always applied, she felt as though there was no heart in her. As though she was a machine which functioned with the precision and power for which it has been fashioned, but a machine, though it works faultlessly, has no life of its own, no vital spark, no joy nor hope for the future. Her life had reduced itself to the level of what must be done each day to keep her farm and her animals alive, each one to be endured and got through until the time came, which she hoped to God would be soon, when she would know, if not rapture, then peace, if not love, then friendship. She had drawn away from Phoebe and Maggie with their simple and contented capacity to enjoy life, glad of the tasks which must beattended to before the long winter set in. Her eyes burned with unshed tears, her bones ached and her body felt hollow, her female body which had, for a few short weeks, been so rapturously filled with Reed Macauley's. She was haunted by the hatred she had seen in his eyes, dreaming of them, dreaming of him, existing from one dragging day which did not have him in it, to the next. She lay on her bed at night, sleepless, longing to fall into an oblivion which did not have Reed's deep blue eyes smiling in it, the reluctant but humorous quirk of his mouth, the steady strength of his arms about her for when she woke and they were gone, her heart broke again and again as it had done on the day they had last confronted one another. Was this all there was to be for her, her wounded heart pleaded? Aril Ito be no more than a woman who has loved and become lost because of it? Sad-eyed, sad-faced, empty-hearted, with no meaning in my days but that which can be achieved through hard work to be followed by empty nights without love
.

It was Jake Singleton who brought Charlie back to them. December the first it was and her twenty-fourth birthday although no one knew of it. She and Phoebe were in the barn sorting the coppice timber into suitable lengths for splitting when they heard the dogs barking.

“
Now what?" Phoebe said, clicking her tongue with every sign of the utmost annoyance, though with things the way they were at the moment any visitor was welcome if perhaps it would cheer Annie up. God knows she'd suffered these last eighteen months but without Charlie's cheerful humour to support them, Phoebe was having a hard time of it trying to keep Annie from plunging deeper into the melancholy that devil up at Long Beck had flung her in. Nearly two months now and Phoebe was worried out of her mind, really she was, watching Annie get thinner and more grim-faced with every passing day.

“
Who is it, Phoebe?" Annie asked without much interest, carefully stacking the quartered logs into piles of the same size.

“
Tis Jake Singleton. He's comin' up track on't cart. Now
what's he want d'you think, an' why's he fetched cart?"

“
I really couldn't say, Phoebe. Perhaps you'd best go and find out," for does it really matter, her attitude asked. She continued to sort and stack the wood, her mind working methodically, despite her total lack of concern with what it was doing
.

Phoebe's voice dragged her from the grey gloom, the world of shadows which still allowed her to do what was necessary but at the same time, mercifully dulled the pain her grieving brought.

“
Annie, come quick . . ." Phoebe's shriek exhorted her and she turned, the shriek slicing through her apathy and quickening her step as she moved to the door of the barn.

“
What is it?"

“
For God's sake, Annie . . . come quick . . .
”

The man was lying in the bottom of the cart, some rough sacking tucked about him, his head supported on several others folded beneath it. He was asleep, or so it seemed, for his eyes were closed in the sunken greyness of his face and his mouth was partly open as he snored, if that was what he was doing. His breath whistled in his throat and rasped hoarsely in his chest and across his unshaven face, a slick of sweat was filmed. His hair was dusty and uncombed, snarled about his head, long and uncut, and from him came the unsavoury smell of unwashed flesh
.

Charlie? It was Charlie, wasn't it? . . . no, it couldn't be Charlie, not this crumple of old bones and foetid clothing, this stinking, gin-raddled heap of rotting human skin and sinew. Not their Charlie, whom they had loved and laughed with, shared their lives with, who had brought them through storm and trouble and sorrow, who. . .

“
Ah' found 'im in Penrith, Miss Abbott. Ah'd tekken some stuff for Mr Macauley an' ah' were just ready ter set off 'ome when he fell down right in front o't cart. Good job I were only goin' slow on account o' t' traffic. Ah don't know why Jed didn't step on him but he's a good sensible animal an' .. ."

“
Yes, yes Jake, but how .. ?" Annie was eager to get Jake off his rambling description of how the horse had avoided trampling on Charlie.
”

. . well, ah' climbed down, thinking Jed 'd stamped on 'im, but he seemed all right, though ah' can't say ah' fancied touchin' 'im, ter tell truth, not the state 'e's in. Course, I didn't know it were Charlie Lucas, not then. Well, you wouldn't, would you?" eyeing the appalling condition of the man in the bottom of his clean cart. "Drunk as a bloody lord an' swearin' like a trooper 'e was. Ah don't know 'ow I recognised him really.
”

No, and neither did Annie and Phoebe who stared at Charlie in appalled, frozen silence.

“
Well, " Jake said, fidgeting about at the cart tail, "wheer d'yer want 'im put?" for the two women seemed incapable of thought and he had to get back to Long Beck before dark. He'd come out of his way to bring Charlie Lucas back to Browhead since, being a decent sort of a chap himself, he couldn't just leave a man he knew lying in the gutter could he
?

It was Phoebe who took charge.

“
In t' kitchen Jake, lay 'im on t' floor," which Jake did, and really, Charlie Lucas being no heavier than a half-grown lad, he could have been managed by the women themselves. Not that he minded helping, of course, for it was fair flummoxing to see what had become of the fine fellow who had once been Annie Abbott's . . . well, no one quite knew what his role was in her life but you couldn't deny he'd been anything else but well set up and likeable
.

They stripped him down to the filth-ingrained, hollow-textured, bony, six-foot skeleton that was beneath his stinking clothing, which they tossed outside the door ready for burning. He muttered feverishly, fretfully, shrugging their hands away, his breath appalling as he wheezed into their faces. The smell of cheap gin clung to his skin as though it oozed from his pores and when, struggling with him, since it seemed he did not care to be heaved into the tub of hot water Phoebe had placed before the fire, he fell
into a state of insensibility which frightened them, at least it meant he was easier to handle
.

They emptied and re-filled the tub several times before he was clean. There were many things skulking in his hair and hiding on his body which, when disturbed, jumped and scurried and floated in the thick scum of the first dousings, and both women began to scratch vigorously at themselves before they finally hauled him naked up the stairs and tumbled him into the warmed bed which had been his since Cat died. They wrapped him about in half a dozen blankets for he had begun to sweat again, shivering and mumbling about being cold, his limbs trembling, his teeth chattering, the sweat turning icy on his body, a ferocious shaking which moved the bed beneath him. They could get him to take neither a sip of the broth Phoebe had simmering on the fire, nor of the milk which had come only that morning from the placid Clover.

“
Oh, God, what are we to do, Phoebe? I don't like the sound of his chest. I wish Mrs Mounsey was still at Upfell for she'd know what to give him for a fever. He's not just drunk, you know."

“
Ah can see that, lass, but don't thee fret, us'll get 'im right. He needs to sleep now and then when he wakes an' he's sober, a good feed."

“
What's he been doin', d'you think, since he left here?" Annie agonised.

“
Drownin' in gin by t'smell of 'im, an' starvin' whilst he's bin at it. Nowt but skin an' bone an' all I can say is thank God it weren't winter for he'd not 'ave survived.
”

Annie knelt beside the bed, smoothing back Charlie's long wet hair from his forehead. His face was bony, the flesh sunk into the skull, his eyes set in deep black circles of bruised skin, the dark straggle of his beard hiding his chin. His eyelashes, long and fine, were like those of a child and his eyebrows still quirked, one slightly higher than the other as though in humour. His mouth in the depth of his beard was vulnerable in his insensibility and on an impulse she bent down and laid her own gently against it.

“
Oh, Charlie, dear Charlie, what have I done to you,"she whispered, kneeling at his side, her arm cradling his head to her breast.

“
Don't, Annie . . " Phoebe's voice was sharp, "unless tha' means it. Unless tha' really means to give 'im what he's always wanted from thi', don't do this to 'im."

“
But he's asleep, Phoebe, or dead drunk, he doesn't know . . ."

“
It mekks no difference. Don't let 'im think there's 'ope, if there isn't. Even the state he's in he might know what tha's ... "

“
I'm only comforting a friend . . "

“
No, tha's not. Tha's comfortin' thissen because tha' feels guilty. Nurse 'im by all means, mek him better, or do thi' best, as I will, but don't go . . . puttin' tha' arms about 'im. Treat 'im as I do, fer if tha' break his heart all over again, ah'll not forgive thi'. "

“
Phoebe!"

“
Tha's jittered about for the past four years between this lad an 'im up at Long Beck, leadin' them both on a bit o'string, not able to mek tha' mind up which one tha' wants, hurtin' them both an' thissen. Ah don't know what 'appened between you an' Reed Macauley at backend, and ah don't want ter know. Tha' let 'im go, so let this one go an all, or tek him for thy . . . well . . . but leave 'im alone ter . . . ter recover as best he can.
”

Annie stood up slowly, looking down into the thin face on the pillow, the thin face of the frail and defenceless man who was in this state because of her. What Phoebe said was true. Her own guilt at what she had done to him, her own compassion which wanted to do anything, anything to heal him, to make up to him for all that he had suffered at her hands, must not influence her, nor encourage Charlie, when he was himself again, to think that there could ever be a relationship between them that was anything other than that of friends. She had almost destroyed him in her weakness. Now she must do her best to rebuild his fragile strength, his endearing humour, his engaging, warmhearted understanding, his clever, nimble mind, his peace, his life.