Charles Palliser (71 page)

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Further on I passed great hillsides of ashes which were the refuse of nearby lime-kilns.

I was stopped by a small boy scantily clad in rags even on an October night who held out a grubby palm.

“I have nothing,” I said.

“Sister’s sick,” he said, still holding out his hand.

“Where is your mam?” I asked.

“Gorn away,” he said.

“Where do you live?”

He jerked his head.

“Where do you mean?”

He repeated the gesture and I looked at the great mound that rose up beside us. Some flimsy pieces of wood with tarred sacking over them had been placed across a space that had been hollowed out in the hillside. Now that I peered into the gloom I could see several of these makeshift shelters. I hurried on.

Even as night fell I walked forward for I wanted to get clear of that place of desolation, but it went on and on limitlessly. Hunger was making me light-headed and it became difficult to know if the noises I heard and the lights that flashed were inside my head or outside. It grew darker and darker and the sulphurous smell grew worse. I thought I had been walking for hours and could not tell why the dawn had not come. Now I began to have the strangest fancies: that perhaps the dawn would never come for the place I had entered was not on the face of the earth.

At last, I lay down a few paces from the side of the road and slept. It seemed to me that when I awoke it was still night for the same thick pall of smoke hung over the land and I walked on, and either a grudging daylight came at last or the smoke grew clearer.

Then I was walking along a road on the edge of a town — or perhaps it was between two towns, for I could not tell where one ended and another began — and I came to a canal over which the road passed on an iron bridge. I looked down and there was a high, blank and windowless manufactory in pink brick like a boiled lobster with a row of dreary red-bricked cottages beside it and heaps of waste all around. There was a laden barge passing on the canal being drawn by no horse but with a little metal chimney puffing smoke, and there was a man at the tiller who was puffing on a pipe like a smaller imitation of the funnel. The building before me was immense with two high chimneys belching out smoke and long rows of arched windows and a hollow pediment in the centre through whose vast arch-way I could glimpse hundreds of men — black and almost naked — furiously pushing waggons heaped with coal on metal rails up to the very maw of a giant furnace where others fed it into the flames.

Then I was overcome by a sudden terror. What was I doing here in this nameless waste where I knew nothing and nobody and might lie down and die and not even my name be known to record my death? I must hasten on. Yet where was I going to?

Whom, apart from my mother, did I know even in London? My hand was resting on the cold metal surface of the bridge’s parapet and as I looked at the rusted surface it seemed to me that its pattern of stains and scratches was both meaninglessly accidental and yet the only thing that mattered in the world.

I walked on and the next thing I recall is that there was a high wall on one side of the way and that it seemed that I had been walking along that road all my life and would walk along it for ever. Despairing of its ever ending, 324 THE

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I lay down and slept, and then it seemed that I rose and went on and that I watched the most beautiful dawn I had ever seen unfold in the eastern sky, and that the land changed again and I came down into a delightful valley and found myself following a willow-bordered stream that flowed gently through a landscape of neat houses and well-kept fields dotted with clumps of trees like so many pleasure-demesnes. Still following the stream I entered a village by a foot-path that led along the backs of tall old houses, each with a walled sally-garden running down to the water into whose edges tall willows were weeping. Children were splashing about in the stream and their elders watching them from the ancient bridge accosted me with smiles and shook me courteously by the hand and pressed me to stay there. But I walked on. And later I must have lain down to sleep for I awoke and did not know where I was.

I went on again through the sullied landscape thinking about the sweetness of that village and remembering Melthorpe.

Gradually the waste-tips and canals and chimneys ebbed and the countryside came back. There was a smell of winter in the air and the sense of nature closing up and withdrawing made me anxious to quicken my pace. Then suddenly one morning a day or two later I saw on a finger-post a name I knew:
Sutton Valancy 12 mi.
Then Melthorpe could only be a few miles away! The thought gave me new strength for suddenly it came to me that I would go there. Sukey would help me!

On the ninth or tenth day after my escape I reached the well-remembered lane that led from the turnpike-road down Gallow-tree-hill to Melthorpe. It was late afternoon on a fine day and the familiar houses and fields lay in the autumnal sunshine of late October.

How brief a time had passed since I last saw the village, but how much had happened! I made my way down the hill and past the Green, and there were the tumbledown cottages rising from the mud of Silver-street. The door of Sukey’s was open and I went up to it, knocked and went a little way inside. All seemed at peace: a fire burned merrily in the hearth; a knitting-frame stood idle in a corner; some children — two girls and a boy — were sitting on the dirt-floor plaiting straw, and a woman was busied over a cooking-pot that hung over the fire. She turned on hearing my entrance and I saw that it was Sukey,

She stared at me for a moment, then a look of astonishment appeared on her face.

“Yes, Sukey. It’s I.”

With a cry she rushed towards me: “Master Johnnie!”

I felt myself pressed against her and so much of the past flooded back! After all that I had been through her welcome broke something inside me that had been holding firm, and I began to sob.

“For a minute I didn’t know you!” Sukey cried, holding me at arm’s length. “You’re so much taller. And so thin.” At this she hugged me again. “What has happened to you?”

she cried. “And to your sweet mither? Is she in good cue?”

But when I tried to answer she hushed me and insisted that explanations should come later. I was seated before the fire and a bowl of the thick soup in the pot was ladled out and laid before me with a piece of the coarse barley-bread of the northern districts.

Meanwhile Sukey put a skillet over the fire and fried some potatoes and a little bacon-fat which I consumed with relish after the broth.

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When I had eaten this — the first hot food I had had for months — I was permitted to answer one question: “How is your mither?”

“When I left her she was well,” I answered.

She read my meaning in my face.

“Wait while I get the children abed,” she said.

When she had over-seen the washing and preparations for bed of the children — two little girls of about ten and six and a boy of eight — she came back to the fireplace and wearily seated herself beside me.

“How are all of you?” I asked.

Sukey looked down: “My mam died last winter. And Sally was carried off by the fever this Pack-rag Day.”

“I’m sorry. And how are the others?”

“The girls help me with the work. Amos gets what work he can by the day. Jem starves the crows now for Farmer Lubbenham like Harry done.”

“And Harry?”

She glanced down and then said: “He had a place as a farm-servant over towards Mere Bassett but he lost it for his bad ways, and now he’s a roundsman on the paritch, like most of the men in the village. He’s working on the ’Ougham estate right over beyond Stoke Mompesson. Most likely, he’ll not be back till gone late.”

She explained that a roundsman was a parish pauper who was hired out by the Overseer of the Poor each day to whichever farmer bid most for his labour.

Interested though I was, I could not stifle a yawn and Sukey insisted that I should sleep immediately and tell her my story when I awoke. Despite my protests, she laid an old straw palliasse in a corner of the cottage and the sight of it brought an immense yearning for rest upon me. I laid myself down and once I was lying there with a couple of ragged old blankets over me no-one would even have known I was there in the dark corner among the spiders.

I woke up late in the evening at the sound of a man shouting. For a moment, when I had recalled where I was, I wondered sleepily if it could be Sukey’s father until I remembered that he was dead. I looked out from among the straw and blankets and recognised in the tall, brawny-shouldered figure with straw-coloured hair the boy I had known as Harry and who, though only three or four years older than I, was already a man. He flung some coins down on the floor and shouted: “That’s all, so don’t you complain none.”

“Why it’s good of you, Harry,” Sukey said timidly as she stooped for the money.

“Many a young man wouldn’t bring back none at all. But I wish you wouldn’t …”

“If it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t need to. She’ll have to go. I can’t feed her and the young ’uns on my reg’lars.”

“I know, I know,” Sukey said propitiatingly.

What was it Harry was doing? I believed I could guess. I kept hidden while Sukey calmed him down, pulled off his boots, and heated up some food for him. At last he climbed the ladder, threw himself down on the straw near his sleeping siblings, and was soon deeply and stertorously asleep.

I crept out and in a whisper Sukey invited me to sit with her before the dying fire which gave all the light we needed. And now at her request I told her the burden of all that had happened since my mother and I had left the village.

Sukey said nothing until I had finished my account, and then, when she had 326

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expressed her indignation against all things Quiggish, she remarked: “But I can set you straight about what happened here arter you’d gone. It was all down to Mrs Bissett.

What she done was, she sold off your mither’s things to a higgler in Sutton Valancy. Me come over and boughten everything. Sent two carts for it the next day. And many folks hereabouts said they would have paid a deal more if they’d been gave the chance, for your mither had some fine things. Folks saw them sold in Sutton Valancy for a mort 0’

money. Some said Mrs Bissett took a share herself, but I would not go so far.”

“I see,” I said. “So then there was not enough money to pay the creditors?”

“That is so. Mrs Bissett went round to each on ’em and offered ’em a few shillin’ in the pound.”

“But then why did they go to law?”

“Why, do you mind that Mr Barbellion?”

I nodded.

“Well, I believe him and her had an understanding. Mrs Bissett was a three-cunning creatur’ and she got letters and met strangers that you and your mam never knowed nothin’ about. And this Mr Barbellion come down a few-days arter the sale and persuaded all the shop-keepers to club together and go to the magistrate agin her.

Whyever should he do that, Master Johnnie?”

“Because he works for some people who are enemies of my mother and myself, Sukey.”

“They must be indeed,” she replied. “Though why they should choose to make trouble for you when they are so rich themselves and they’re blood-relatives, too, by all accounts — why ’tis past my understanding.”

I was astonished by her words. She seemed so well-informed when I was myself only dimly aware of the identity of these people.

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

“Why, it’s common knowledge hereabouts that Mr Barbellion works for the Mumpseys.”

I smiled for I saw that there was a misunderstanding: “No, Sukey. You’re mistaken.

There is no connexion between them.”

“I’m not wrong, Master Johnnie. For Auntie Twelvetrees saw him often at Mumpsey-park. You remember her, don’t you? Her goodman was lodge-keeper there.”

“Then it is she who is in error. She may have seen the Mompessons’ lawyer at Hougham,” I conceded, “but I don’t see how she could know he was the gentleman who came to see my mother on those two occasions.”

“Why, you can ask her when she gets back for her bed-bit.”

“Is she living here now?”

“She is. Just now she’s sitting up with a neighbour who is thought like to go tonight or you’d have seen her. She had to leave the cottage in ’Ougham and could not go upon the paritch.”

“But surely she must have had a settlement there?”

“Why, that won’t sarve her none in ’Ougham, and she lost her settlement here when she married, so she is not boarded by this paritch, more’s the pity. But at least she has a roof over her head.”

Though not a very sound one, I reflected, looking up.

“She’ll be gived a shillin’ or two for tonight’s watching.” Lowering her voice even more she went on: “But on account of her rheumatiz and her hands being crippled you can’t expeck her to yarn her bread, can you?”

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“I remember the lace-making,” I said.

“That’s finished for the bobbin net-lace has taken away our trade, so now I make up knitted work and take it to the general shop. Auntie helps as she can.”

“Then how do you all live?”

“Why, not badly now at all. Harry gets his reg’lars of the paritch — four shillin’ a week, near enough, whether he’s found work or no. I yarn a few pence for helping the women with their cleaning and washing. And there’s my spinning.” She indicated the wheel. “Though that’s little enough for the hours I work. Me and Auntie go out washing, too. The children work at pea-picking and straw-plaiting and we all go leasing at the end of harvest, and then arterwards we collect the stubble to burn for fuel. But against that, we may no longer gather firing and furze and cut turves on the common, now that’s ’closed. And in course we can’t stint a cow no more.”

“So the enclosure has done you harm?”

“Why, I’d not say that. Not at all. We got gave a piece of land as we sold for three pound. Though Harry was choked off the paritch till we’d spent it.”

“Why are things so much worse?” I cried.