Far From My Father's House (8 page)

Nine

‘I want to go away,’ Blake said.

It was early morning and he and Jack were by themselves outside and he didn’t want to go away, he never wanted to leave. He had spent the night thinking about how much he never wanted to go and about how he would never speak to Annie again because he hated her and now he had to say it.

Mr Lowe turned around in surprise as well he might, Blake thought, that he should find such ingratitude.

‘Go away,’ he repeated. ‘Where to?’

‘I don’t know where to, just somewhere else, that’s all.’

‘But why?’

‘I need to make my way. I know that you’ve been kind to me but I can’t stop here. Tommy will get the farm and the girls will get married.’

‘That’s a long way off. I need you here, Blake, I can’t manage without you.’

Blake didn’t know what to say to that.

‘I’ll start and pay you a little—’

‘It’s not that.’

‘What is it then?’

Mrs Lowe called them in to breakfast just then. In the big kitchen there was nobody but the three of them.

‘Blake wants to leave, he’s not happy here.’

‘That’s not true,’ Blake objected.

‘It must be true, you don’t want to stay here with us.’

‘I do,’ Blake managed.

‘I thought you were content—’

‘Jack. Eat your breakfast,’ Rose said.

He looked up and she returned the look just as Blake got up from the table, scraping back his chair and saying, ‘I don’t want any,’ before he bolted from the room.

Rose waited until he had gone and then she said, ‘Let him go.’

‘You mean let him leave? Rose, I can’t afford to pay a man to do what he does and I can’t manage without him.’

‘I think you’re going to have to.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if he stays here we’re going to have problems with Annie.’

Jack frowned.

‘You what?’ he said. ‘What, with him? God Almighty, Rose. He’s a nice enough lad but . . . You don’t think he’s—’

‘No, I don’t but I think it would be a good idea if he went away.’

That afternoon Blake was mending a wall between Grayswell and Western Isle and he was in the field at the far side when Charles Vane strolled down.

‘What the hell are you doing on my land?’ he said gruffly. ‘Isn’t Grayswell big enough for you?’

‘I’m just trying to keep your sheep out of the field. If you rebuilt your walls occasionally I wouldn’t be on your land.’

‘You cheeky young bastard. Who taught you to speak to your betters like that?’ Charles looked up as Jack reached them. ‘The lad needs a good hiding,’ Charles Vane said. He went off and Jack and Blake finished rebuilding the wall. As they walked back up the field Blake said, ‘Is he my father?’

‘What?’ Jack stared at him. ‘Whatever made you think that?’

‘I just wondered. Is he?’

‘As far as I know you haven’t got a father.’

‘I must have somewhere. You knew my mother. Surely—’

‘I know nothing about it.’

‘She was very young. She can’t have known that many men.’

‘She could have had half the dale for all I know.’

Blake turned on him.

‘Don’t you say things like that about my mother!’

‘I didn’t mean it like that, lad. I just meant that I never heard of her being with anybody.’

Blake asked Rose too when they got back.

‘Did you know my mother?’

‘Not very well. I wasn’t here that long before I married Jack. I used to be in the post office then. I lived with the Harrisons. Mrs Harrison was a friend of my mother’s.’

‘Is Charles Vane my father?’

Rose looked sharply at him.

‘Not that I know of,’ she said. ‘Whoever told you such a thing? Charles Vane was married when . . . when your mother died. He married Iris years before you were born. What made you ask that?’

‘Frank says Charles Vane is my father.’

‘And how would he know?’

‘He overheard his father say so when he was drunk.’

‘When men are drunk you can’t trust anything they say. Sometimes you can’t when they’re sober. I don’t know anything for certain. I don’t think anybody does but there was nothing wrong with your mother. Everybody makes mistakes.’

‘Except that around here you aren’t ever allowed to forget them.’

‘Your mother was a good respectable girl. She wouldn’t have had anything to with a married man, especially a nasty piece of work like Charles Vane.’

‘If she was so good and respectable how come she became pregnant and nobody knew about it?’

‘I don’t know. I never saw her with a man or a lad either. She hardly ever went out.’

It occurred to Blake later that if his mother had taken up with a man she wasn’t married to people would have known, unless it was just that Mr and Mrs Lowe didn’t like to talk about such a disgraceful thing, but then he thought also would his grandparents have loved him quite so much if he had been the product of a disgraceful
affaire
?

He went to bed that night and tortured himself with the idea that Charles Vane might actually have forced his mother. What other explanation could there be?

Tommy walked in to his room when it was very late.

‘You’re not really going away?’ he said.

‘I have to.’

‘And what are Dad and I supposed to do without you? I’ll have to give up the post and work all the time here now and we need the money.’

‘I can’t help it. You’ll get the farm.’

‘I suppose you think you’re entitled to a share in it?’

‘No, I don’t think that.’

‘Then what?’

‘I don’t have any choice.’

He hoped there would be. He hoped that a morning would come and there would be an event or a letter which would prevent his going away, that Annie would say she had not meant it, she cared for him, she didn’t want him to go but none of this happened. He had never felt selfish before but he did now. He saw the worried look on Mrs Lowe’s face because they couldn’t afford to have anyone else to help on the farm.

The next morning after breakfast she called him back. The others had scattered and she was about to begin the clearing away.

‘What would you think to going over to the coast where my family lives? You could stay with them to begin with and there might be work. I could write to my mother and see. What do you think?’

Blake had not had a single good idea since declaring that he was going away and this seemed to him feasible except for one thing. He did not know how he could ever go away from here. He had never been away and now it seemed like too much somehow. All of a sudden he wanted to be here like he had never wanted to before, he couldn’t leave. There was Elsie with her ginger curls and bonny laugh, Madge dreamy and quiet and Tommy playing awful tunes on his cornet with the cows gathered around him in the low pasture and most of all there was Annie. Blake couldn’t get past Annie, he thought that he never would.

She came to him when he had gone away down by the river so that he didn’t have to be with anybody. It was the middle of Sunday afternoon, a bright warm day. She came upon him suddenly on soft feet and Blake was surprised and sat up and didn’t know what to say. The leaves on the trees had changed colour by now and the days were short but warm.

‘I thought we might have taken the horses out,’ she said.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You don’t have to be like this,’ Annie said.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘I didn’t mean what I said. I didn’t think you’d go.’

‘You thought I’d stay here and watch you marry Paul Monmouth or somebody else who has good table manners?’

‘That’s not fair, Blake.’

‘No, it isn’t, is it?’ he said and he got up and would have gone away from her out of her sight to have her out of his except that she got hold of him. It wasn’t a good hold, she wasn’t that big. He could have torn himself from her physically except that he couldn’t because they had barely touched, and it was that not touching that came to Blake in the ungodly hours of the night when it seemed to him that the chaos they talked of in church had a hold on everything. In those hours he thought of Annie so close, just through the wall. Sometimes he put his fingertips to the wall thinking that it made him closer to her because it was the nearest he would ever get. If he listened hard he could hear her breathing, at least he thought it was her, her warm constant breath. It had never occurred to him that they might be married, just as it had never occurred to him that they might be parted. He just wanted to go on like this, being young and working on the farm and going out riding the horses with Annie, sitting across the table from her and listening to her talk and her laughter and knowing that she cared. It was enough. He didn’t even have to touch her, but it was too hard to know that he would never be able to touch her, that he could not go on sitting over the table from her, that everything would change, that he could not hold on to this part of his life which had become so dear. He was afraid each second of it altering and it brought him to the kind of rage he had never experienced until lately. So when she stopped him there down by the river he wanted to throw her off like he had never done, to throw her off and go away and be invisible and for her to know that it was all her fault. The trouble was that he knew it was not her fault. Finding nobody to blame made him want to shout and throw things and hit people. Nobody was to blame that he had got up in the early mornings as a small child and known that his grandmother would be weeping at the loss of his mother and her dreams. Nobody was to blame that he loved Annie so much. He couldn’t hurt her now even though he wanted to because her father and mother had given him a life here. Nobody was to blame that he had to leave this place he loved so much and the girl that he wanted. He could never come back here like this because if he did then he might find somebody to blame and then he would know that he had been mistaken about himself and he was worth nothing. He shrugged her off as gently as he could considering how he felt and walked back to the farm with her following, crying, and that was the worst part of all, he thought afterwards when he had gone. He thought that nothing in his life would ever be that hard again.

Ten

Blake had always thought that he was at home in the country, that he would be content always to stay there and he would have been. It seemed to him that things went on there as they ought to and that he would hate life anywhere else but the minute that he stepped on to the beach at Seaton Town he knew a different kind of homecoming.

It was late autumn by then and there was a stiff breeze. The waves were flinging themselves over the harbour walls, the limestone cliffs were high, the beach was sandy away from the town, the water moved with the wind on it and he felt a kind of exhilaration, an excitement which he had never known before. There were ships in the harbour too and he had discovered that he liked to potter about down there, seeing the comings and goings at the coal staithes, hearing the accents and the languages which were new. The men had different-coloured skins and different kinds of clothes and he felt the excitement. He loved the noise and the people and all the buildings and seeing the ships away over on the horizon.

He was by himself, had gone for a walk away from the house where Annie’s grandmother and step-grandfather had been so kind. Blake had not expected to be so well-received, he was nothing to them, but they seemed so pleased to see him. He did not feel at a loss, that had passed and this was as different as it could be with the cars and railways and shops. It was so busy and Blake had thought that he would find it overwhelming and too strange but he didn’t. Already after only a few days he felt as though he had lived there for quite a long time.

Ralph and Blake had tramped the streets in search of work. Blake had said that he didn’t want to go down the pit and Ralph had laughed. He worked in the pit office now.

‘You’d never stand it,’ he said. ‘Not that there’s work to be had. There isn’t.’

Blake had not been surprised to find that there was nothing for him to do. From the beginning he had not been hopeful, only of getting away and it was easier being away from Annie altogether than seeing her every day, especially watching her go out with Paul Monmouth. He didn’t think about her any less but the ache eased when there were other things to think about and other people to see. Also, although Ralph and Mary Ann had a much smaller house than he was used to, there was now nobody but them in it. Their family all had their own houses, they had married and gone. At first it occurred to Blake that it could be like his life alone with his grandparents but it was not like that at all.

In the first place the pit town was as different as it could be from the countryside and it took him weeks to get used to the dirt and the smell and all the people, the close way that everybody lived and the way that there was never silence. He couldn’t sleep to begin with and he even hated it for the first few days, but Ralph and Mary Ann were so kind and the people around him all spoke to him even when they had no idea who he was. The pit people, introduced to him by Ralph, took him to them in a way in which Blake had not expected just because he was living there. He thought they were the kindest people he had ever met and that this was because the work was so hard and so dangerous, they were all for each other and caring.

He had his own room but he was not required to get up at daybreak and work until dark and that felt strangely free at first. He had his money from the post office so he could afford to take a holiday and still pay Mary Ann and Ralph for keeping him. He took long walks on the beach and through the town and looked for work but jobs were impossible to find and Blake was discouraged and saw himself having to go back to the farm without a future.

In the end he decided to go to classes and get himself some kind of an education, this having been one thing which Annie had taunted him about, so for the first year that he was away he studied and was encouraged because he worked hard and the teachers liked him.

The job situation was no better in Sunderland. Ralph had told him that many skilled and younger men had left the area because things in the shipyards were so bad and Blake thought hard about leaving the area altogether. The town seemed to him so noisy but Ralph disabused him of this idea. The clatter and bang of work from the shipyards was absent and after going to the employment exchanges the men hung around the streets. Some of the shipyards were closed. Grass grew up around the gates.

But to Blake Sunderland was exciting and it was where he went when the money ran out and he could no longer afford to do nothing but study. He lingered there in the East End enjoying the mass of people and the crowded streets. He spent a little money that he had on him, crossing the river by ferry for a ha’penny, buying ice-cream in Grey Street and sitting in a pub in Villiers Street when a customer who had been put out threw a brick through the window. Those sitting near complained of the brick in their beer.

At night he wandered there, watching the people, the streets filled with bars and when it was late the young men, worse for beer, took to fighting in Villiers and Coronation Streets. He didn’t go into the tempting cinemas or the shops or public houses from which in the early evenings a lot of noise and laughter came. He knew no one but he liked being there and one night as he was passing the Market Tavern there was a sudden commotion. The door opened and a young man was visibly thrown out. Blake didn’t have time to get out of the way, instead he put up both hands and was able to stop the young man from falling full length upon the pavement which he would otherwise have done. He was, Blake estimated, holding up his weight, very drunk indeed.

‘I am most awfully sorry,’ he said, ‘you must allow me to apologise and forgive me.’

He had a posh accent, something Blake thought odd in that area.

He would have slid on to the pavement but for Blake’s hold on him. The young man, about the same age as he was, smiled unsteadily into his eyes and Blake was reminded of Tommy and how much he missed everyone.

‘Can you drive me home?’

‘No, I don’t think I can,’ Blake said.

‘Why ever not?’

‘I haven’t a car. Don’t you have any friends?’ Blake looked vaguely in the direction of the pub.

‘I came here to forget my so-called friends, in particular a lady. She was called Winifred Carlton. Perhaps you know her?’

‘I can’t say I do,’ Blake said. ‘Do you live in the town?’

‘Ashbrooke.’

Blake got him to what the young man assured him was the correct tram stop but when the tram came the conductor said, ‘He’s not getting on here. Not like that.’

‘Can he if I get on with him?’

‘I suppose,’ the conductor conceded and off they went.

It was an unusual experience for Blake to be in the company of someone most happily drunk. Tommy usually ended up crying. And in spite of having to hold up the young man who swayed as they went, Blake enjoyed it. They went through streets he did not know and into the better part of the town and when the young man indicated they got off and walked a short way.

It was dark so when they stopped outside an impressive set of gates Blake was sure that he must be mistaken.

‘You think I don’t know my own house? I’m not that drunk,’ he said.

Blake would have left him there but the fresh air seemed to make him worse, so he helped him through the gates and up the long drive which had trees at either side, to an impressive and unusual-looking house of great size. In several places the roof came to points with arched windows beneath and there were jutting windows with great stone surrounds. Blake thought it was too big for anyone to live in, bigger even than the Hall where the Harlingtons lived. Blake found the main door and knocked hard but nothing happened and then he saw a bell and pushed that and after a short while the door opened and a girl stood there. She was the prettiest girl that Blake had ever seen, not conventionally beautiful like Annie but sparkling somehow. He put it down to her fine expensive clothes which were stunning on her. She wore cream in varying shades, totally impractical, and she had brown eyes and copper-coloured hair and she wore lipstick.

‘Oh, he hasn’t done it again?’ she said, and turning away slightly she shouted, ‘Daddy, Simon’s drunk.’

‘You pig,’ her brother said steadily, for Blake knew that only a sister would give you away like that and where he came from even sisters didn’t always, but when the biggest man he had ever seen came out of some room further along the hall Blake could see why she had not hesitated. He must have been about six foot four and towered above everyone. He was heavily-built and wore a suit and he had a beard and a lot of thick white hair.

‘You scoundrel, when are you going to learn?’ he admonished Simon and then he turned on Blake a pair of warm smiling brown eyes, like velvet. ‘Well, young man,’ he said, ‘and are you drunk too?’

The girl closed the front door behind Blake.

‘I don’t drink,’ Blake said.

‘Not a drop? Not one of these Methodists, are you?’

‘No. Church of England.’

The big man threw back his head and roared with laughter for some reason.

‘In that case you’d better bring some tea to the sitting-room, Irene.’

Blake protested. Simon staggered off upstairs but Blake was ushered into a big room which was cosy with a fire and after a short while Irene came in with a tea tray herself which Blake had not expected. Didn’t rich people have servants? He had always thought that they would, like Harlingtons and Vanes. On the tray were small sandwiches and a large fruit cake and since he had eaten nothing since early that morning Blake had several sandwiches and two pieces of fruit cake before he remembered his manners.

Having explained hesitantly that he didn’t know their son even before the tea tray arrived, Blake was surprised to be the receiver of such hospitality. Also from the beginning he felt a sympathy for the family because the mother did not appear and Blake assumed from then that there was no mother and he knew all about that.

‘I am Sylvester Richmond,’ the man said, ‘and what is your name?’

‘Blake. David Blake. People don’t call me by my first name.’

‘Don’t they? Why not?’

‘I don’t know. Most of them just don’t.’

‘It seems a perfectly good name. Perhaps you don’t like it?’

Blake had never thought about this.

‘You’re not from here?’ Mr Richmond said.

‘No. I come from a farm in the country. I’m staying with a family in Seaton Town while I look for work.’

‘That could be difficult.’

‘It is.’

After Irene came back with the tea Blake sneaked several looks at her. She really was very pretty but nothing like Annie. Annie would never have sat around pouring tea like that into red and gold cups with saucers but it suited Irene. He thought that she was the first real lady he had ever met and though there were women in the dale who thought they were ladies none of them had Irene’s combination of looks, grace, soft voice and gentle smile. The firelight made her skin glow and the cream colours of her clothes were pleasing. That she was so different from Annie only made him want Annie more somehow and for the first time then in the comfort of the biggest room he had ever seen, Blake was unbearably homesick for the farm and would have given much to hear Annie’s voice as she came in from the yard. The thought of Black Boy made him more miserable than ever. He wondered who was riding the big black horse he had been so fond of. Blake excused himself as soon as he could. It was a long walk home now that he no longer had any money but before he went Mr Richmond said to him, ‘Come to dinner on Sunday.’

‘Dinner?’

‘Yes, you know, that wonderful meal in the middle of the day with Yorkshire puddings. One o’clock and don’t be late.’

*  *  *

Blake would have given much to have stayed at home. He didn’t understand why he was invited and to his dismay there were other people, men in expensive suits and women in clothes like the ones Irene wore and they were all dressed up. He felt out of place even though Irene greeted him warmly at the door and Mr Richmond smiled on him.

Over dinner, in the huge dining-room where the cloth was starched white linen, the cutlery was silver, the plates all matched and the chandelier glittered horribly somehow in the early summer sunshine, the woman sitting opposite who was about the same age as Mrs Lowe watched him for a long time in a way that made him feel very uncomfortable and then she smiled and said, ‘And so, David, I understand that you come from the country, that your people are farmers.’

Every instinct shrieked at Blake to lie.

‘No.’

‘I understood that they were.’

‘I don’t have any family.’

‘Orphaned? Oh, my dear, how perfectly dreadful for you,’ and she leaned across the table and patted his hand.

‘I’d watch it if I were you,’ Simon said a bit later, ‘or Marjorie Philips will have her hands down your trousers.’

‘What?’

‘If she invites you to tea say no unless you like middle-aged women.’

‘You must come to tea,’ Marjorie said, moving towards him with her coffee cup but Irene was too fast for her.

‘Come and see the conservatory,’ she said, pulling at his sleeve.

It was too hot in the conservatory. They left their coffee cups and retreated to the shade in the gardens where there was a seat which went all the way round a huge oak tree.

‘I’m sorry about Marjorie. We have to invite her sometimes. Her husband is in shipping. You must come to lunch again. I won’t ask her next time.’

Later there was tea and cake and more talk. Blake was about to leave when Mr Richmond invited him into the library. It overlooked generous lawns and had big bookshelves, comfortable-looking leather chairs and a desk. The room was warm. Evening sun glowed in at the window.

‘I come in here for peace and tell everybody I’m working,’ Sylvester said. ‘Brandy?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Port?’

‘No.’

‘You really must learn how to drink, David. Gentlemen ought to know how.’

‘I’m not a gentleman.’

Mr Richmond looked carefully at him.

‘That’s an interesting point. Do you think a man has to be born a gentleman or do you think he can become one?’