Feathers in the Fire (32 page)

For years he had denied that she meant anything to him. Inside himself he had scorned her, yet all the while he had known he was hiding something, feeling that if he let it see the light he’d be less of a man, for men, real men, didn’t love trollops; they used them for their needs but they didn’t love them.

For years he had thought of her as a trollop, but today, when that real trollop had come on the scene she had, in some strange way, wiped Molly’s slate clean; she had certainly made him face the truth that had been buried for so long, and part of that truth was that he had even used Jane to help smother the undying feeling. Yet he had cared for Jane. Oh yes, yes, he had cared for Jane. But had he loved her? For long after she died the words that were almost her last had burnt him. ‘You’ve never said you love me, Davie.’ If only by way of thanks for all she had done for him, all she had given him, he should have made the effort and said those words to her without being prompted. But he never had.

‘You’re not eating,’ he said.

‘I’m not very hungry.’

‘You’re tired,’ he said.

‘Aye.’ She looked at him, ‘I think that’s it. I’m tired.’

‘I’ve worked you too hard; I haven’t been thinking.’

She lifted her head and looked at him. The kindness, the consideration, even the tenderness in his tone was too much. For twenty years she had longed for it. She had not supplemented the want of his tenderness with another man, or men; yet it wasn’tfor want of the chance. Over the years she had scourged her body into submission; from where had come the strength she couldn’t tell, for she knew herself to be of a loving nature, wanting to give everything, aye everything. During his long absence at sea she had asked herself what was she waiting for, was she barmy, for even when he came back he wouldn’t look the side she was on. But she reckoned that it would be just her luck that if she committed some indiscretion he would turn up, and then her chance with him would be gone forever. She had seen him looking at her with those eyes of his, and they would say, ‘You trollop.’

She tried to quell the flood of emotion that was rising in her. She looked into his eyes through a haze of tears, and with the contradictoriness of human nature proving itself to her, she cried inwardly, ‘It’s come too late, too late. I can’t stand no more. I’m finished.’ On top of this thought tumbled another that brought her fighting instincts to the fore again. Was he just soft-soaping her because he had his eye on the rider this afternoon, and knowing that that piece wouldn’t want to soil her hands he would still want someone to do the donkey work?

He was saying to her, ‘I don’t expect you to help with the house, I’ll see to that meself. And you were saying that Mickey would like to come back when I get on me feet. Well, I see no reason . . . ’

The storm broke. Twenty years of agony of both body and mind erupted; the pain of all the nights she had lain in her bed with her hands on the wall that divided them. Even during these past months she had lain like that. If there was no wind and the night was still she could hear the creaking of his bed springs, and their movement mangled her heart.

She had reckoned on a certain time for him to recover completely from Jane’s loss, six months, but a year perhaps would be more decent; she didn’t mind as long as he gave her a sign. She had waited so long, what were a few more months? But then today the arrival of the horse and rider and the knowledge that he could, and would, take a wife was more than she could endure.

‘What is it? What is it? Don’t cry like that.’ He was standing over her, his hand on her shoulder. He recognised that she had reached the end of her tether; something had happened today that had been too much. He looked back to the only difference in this day from any other, the visit from that Reed trollop . . . THAT WAS IT. She must have thought . . . God! She couldn’t have thought him capable of doing that to her? He had been a bit of a swine to her over the years; more than a bit at that. He had made her pay a whole lifetime for something that could happen to any lass, that did happen to half the young lasses in her position; human nature being what it was, how could they resist the advances of the master who had power over their very livelihood, their right to eat?

There might have been an excuse for his retaliation in the early days; he was hot-headed, hurt, the power of his own manhood had received an insult. But there had been no excuse when he had come back, well, perhaps still a bit, on his first visit; but not when he had taken up the job on the farm, for he had seen then she was different. She had changed; and yet she hadn’t, she was still the Molly he had known, the girl who had bothered him. Yet not even the fact that she had been respected by all those who had been against her, his own family in particular, had carried any weight with him. And why? Because deep inside him he had known that she held him in the hollow of her hand, and even as a grown man he wasn’t big enough to admit it.

His hand went under her oxters and he lifted her from the table and turned her towards him. Her head was hanging, her whole body was shaking with her emotion.

‘Molly!’

She took no heed. She was consumed with an anguish that had to flow out of her.

‘Molly! look at me. Give over.’ He became concerned and shook her by the shoulders, saying sternly now, ‘Come on, come on. Enough is enough.’ He had never seen anyone give way like this; even Jane’s crying on the night Amos had first gone for her had been nothing like this; and Jane with her finer calibre was the more likely to give way to hysteria . . . At this point he bludgeoned himself mentally for his thick-skulled thinking. This woman here had suffered through him as Jane had never done through Amos, for he had deprived her of bodily satisfaction for years while mentally attacking her. He knew in this moment that he wouldn’t live long enough to make it up to her.

When he drew her into his arms her emotions shook his body; and now he made no effort to check it, but stroked her hair.

The fire crackled and fell in with a plomp. The lamp flickered, the child stirred in its sleep, and still they stood in the middle of the kitchen until, her sobbing easing, she lay against him spent.

Still he stood quiet, uttering no word.

When at last she raised her head from his breast and looked at him he pressed her slightly from him and, stooping and taking the bottom of her apron, a clean one, which from habit she donned before serving the meal, he passed it gently round her face; then turning her about he pressed her into a chair, saying thickly, ‘Stay put.’ Then swiftly he lifted up the basket and the child and took them upstairs. He was down within a minute and, standing before her, he held out his hand to her and, looking into her eyes, he said, ‘Come on, Molly love.’ And as Jane had once said to him, he added, ‘It’s been a long time.’

Through still streaming eyes she gazed up at him; then slowly she placed her hand in his and as he led her to the stairs he put out his other hand and shot the bolt home. It stuck at first for it was many a day since it had been used.

They had to go up the stairs in single file but he still held on to her hand, and each step took her from her mundane, work-weary, body-scourged life, right back to the beginning when Davie Armstrong had filled her sky from one end of the moors to the other. Yet there was no ecstatic feeling swamping her, she was numb, twenty years numb. The thawing would take time. Life was funny, crazy.

‘Come on, Molly love; it’s been a long time.’

The End