Feathers in the Fire (8 page)

Yet as she berated the girl in her mind she knew the situation wasn’t of her making; although she had become a party to it she would never, in the first place, have dared to approach McBain.

As another pain seized her she wondered why she was trying to hide the fact that the child was about to be born. What would it avail her now? She brought up her knees to her chest and groaned; then she cried aloud as the whole of her inside slipped into a flaming hell of pain, and now with her eyes screwed up tight, she groaned, ‘Girl! Girl!’

When the spasm eased for a second and she opened her eyes there was no-one by her side. She could not see the girl through the mirror now because her vision was blurred with sweat. Again her body was shot into pain, so excruciating this time that she lost consciousness. When she came to herself she was lying on her back, her legs wide apart, and the child’s head had thrust itself into life. When the shoulders followed she screamed a thin, high piercing scream, and to her own voice was joined another, and she knew the girl was with her. She heard her yelling, ‘Master! Master!’ There followed another pain . . . and then another . . . and then great ease.

Her eyes closed, everything was quiet. She felt that she herself had stopped breathing. In the peace she lifted her lids and saw McBain standing halfway down the bed. He had on his long nightshirt and he was staring downwards, as was the girl standing by his side. Slowly she allowed her limbs to relax, and now she lifted her head slightly and looked down along her deflated body, and there, lying between her legs on the bloodstained sheet and still attached to her, was her child – or part of her child. There was something wrong with it, something missing. She looked upwards to her husband’s face, and God in His wrath could never have looked like this. She took refuge against it in unconsciousness . . .

The turmoil in McBain’s brain was something beyond even his own understanding, for the feelings of revulsion, anger and disappointment were so deep, so desolate that they combined to a torture, and when he looked back he knew that for a space of time his brain had been turned, and that, like any madman, he might have committed a crime, except that Molly had torn his hands from his wife’s neck, then had dragged him into the dressing room, pleading with him while she repeated just one word, ‘Master! Master!’

Not until she had managed to thrust him down into the chair, saying, ‘Stay, stay, Master, for God’s sake, while I get Winnie,’ did a little of his sanity return, and he checked her with his hand gripping her arm. Then he wiped the sweat from his face while he gulped air into his lungs, and he continued to hold her until he had the power to speak, when he said, ‘Take . . . take it out and bury it.’

‘MASTER!’

‘Do as I bid you.’

‘B . . . but, Master.’

‘Go on, do what I say. And quickly.’

She backed from him and slowly went into the bedroom, and as if approaching a lion’s cage she went towards the bed. And there she separated the mother and child. The cutting of the umbilical cord was not new to her, she had helped her mother on several occasions. And she knew what to do with a newborn child; if it didn’t yell straight away you took it by the legs and held it upside down.

Frantically she looked about her for something to put round the child. Her eyes alighting on the mistress’s cashmere shawl, she grabbed it and put it over the infant, then rolled it on to its face so that she could lift it up without touching it. As she straightened her back it gave a thin cry, and at this her eyes and mouth sprang wide and her terrified glance went towards the dressing-room door, then returned to the wrinkled face peeping out from the fold of the shawl, and she muttered, ‘Oh, God Almighty!’ Placing the child on the day couch at the foot of the bed, she ran into the dressing room and, standing before McBain, she spluttered, ‘I, I can’t. I c . . . can’t Master, ’tis alive, breathin’.’

McBain had been sitting with his head deep on his chest, almost as if he was asleep; and now his whole body jerked upwards and he grasped her again, by both arms this time, and slowly he said, ‘Listen to me, girl. It’s for the best. You have seen it; imagine if it were allowed to live. Each time I looked on it I would see it as God’s hand on me in retribution . . . you understand?’ He stared into her red sweating face. He knew she was a simple girl and here he was asking her to understand something he was only dimly comprehending himself. It was all bound up with the saying that God is not mocked. Delia had been right, but he felt the retribution wasn’t because he had lusted with this young girl so much as that he had done it while praising God. Jesus Christ’s one abhorrence was a hypocrite, and the thing in there was God’s answer to hypocrisy . . . and in this moment he hated God for it.

‘No, Master, no.’ She was whimpering like a hurt animal.‘Molly, you love me?’

‘Aye, Master.’

‘Then do as I bid you. Look.’ He got to his feet, still holding her. ‘Take it to the copse and drop it into the pool, the bog part.’

Her head was back on her shoulders wagging in desperation. ‘But what’ll you say, Master, what’ll you tell them? Dead or alive, Winnie and Miss Jane, they’ll expect to see it.’

He shook her impatiently now, then whispered, ‘It came away in bits. Tell them that, it came away in bits and you put it in the muck cart. When you come back you can take the afterbirth and dump it there. Go now, go on.’

He thrust her towards the bedroom door, and like someone drunk she staggered into the room again. Stopping for a moment she looked over the foot of the bed at the inert, distorted, unsightly figure of her mistress; then she grabbed the small bundle in the shawl and crept out of the room.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs and heard a door above her open with a squeak, she knew that Miss Jane had woken up, and at this she took to her heels and flew through the kitchen, out into the yard, and along the road towards the copse.

Davie sat on the side of his bed looking out of the low attic window. The rain had stopped, the moon was shining and seeming to be wafted from one scud of clouds to another by the high wind that was blowing. There were only the clouds and the noise in the chimney breast behind him to indicate the strength of the wind; as far as he could see the land was treeless and fell, to rise again sharply to the hills beyond. His vision did not take in the copse that lay to the right of him, for his head was resting against the wooden shutter that barred the window from the inside and kept out the weather in the winter.

This was to be the last night he would sleep in this room for a long time to come. He didn’t know how long, years perhaps, or never again. He felt sad, depressed, yet at the same time he was experiencing an odd kind of elation, for whatever lay before him he knew would be strange and exciting. He gave no thought to a hungry belly, or hardship, he was young and strong, and, as he told himself, he had his wits about him; what was more, he had advantage over the majority of his kind for he could read and write and, if it was required of him, talk with the best of them, at least so he told himself. But nevertheless, he was sad, deeply sad. He was going to miss his mother, and he would even miss his father; but most of all, aye, most of all, he’d miss his granda.

It was odd, he thought, but if the events of yesterday had not taken place he might in the end, in fact he knew he would, have married Molly Geary and remained for the rest of his life on this farm, in this hollow in the hills, and might never have got even as far as Alnwick. He had promised himself for the last two or three years that one day he would go to Alnwick and see the castle, the stronghold of the Percys. Parson Hedley had told him quite a bit about the Percys, great fighting men the Percys, men it was an honour to serve. He wished now he could go back down the centuries and ride by young Hotspur’s side, even if he was but a lad of twelve, and with him retake Berwick and kill every damn Scot in it, his master included, for it was McBain’s boast that his forebears went back to the fourteenth century. He had a sword hanging in the hall that he was forever pointing out was used at Duns when the Scots routed the English, but he said nought about the defeat of 50,000 of the hairy-legged galoots being beaten by half their number at Neville’s Cross. Why, when he came to think of it, what was McBain compared with men like the Percys? Midden muck, that’s all, midden muck.

Two days ago he wouldn’t have thought of the comparison, but now it seemed apt, not because he had found out about the master whoring, nor that he hid his escapades under a cloak of piety. No, his animosity was derived from the personal insult McBain had directed towards his manhood. ‘Marry Molly,’ he said, ‘and cover up for my fly-blow.’ Like hell he would. If he was to father a child he would know the beginnings of it as well as the end. Oh aye . . . By, she was a rampant cow, that Molly. You found them here and there among the stock; not for them, waiting for their turn, right at the front they were, almost putting the bull to shame . . .

As if his thoughts had conjured up their substance into form he saw her. She came running into a patch of moonlight opposite Curran’s back gate. She was on the grass bank raised above the lane and was carrying something in her arms. He bent forward, his face close to a small pane. What was she up to at this time of night, or mornin’ as it was? Where could she be making for running along the bank? It was a dead end, the railing shut off the copse.

A cloud distorted her shape for a moment. The wind was lifting her skirt into a half circle behind her legs, and she looked as if she were flying.

He stood up but still stooped and moved his head to the other side of the window. He saw that she had reached the railings, and he watched her drop the bundle on to the ground, climb over; and then she was lost in the low scrub, all except her hands that came out and pulled the bundle under the bottom rail.

He stepped three paces back from the window to where the ceiling allowed him to stand straight and he looked from one corner of the little room to the other as if he would find the answer to his thoughts. What was she taking into the copse at this time of night? It was dangerous in there in the daytime; there was bog all round the waterhole. Whatever she had with her was meant for the waterhole. But what?

He did not wait any longer for an answer but pulled open the door and ran down the stairs; and as he rushed out of the back door he heard his mother’s voice crying, ‘Is that you, Davie, you awake?’ Within seconds he had reached the railing and was over it and into the copse. He paused for a moment and listened; but the wind covered all sound but its own thrashing. There were two narrow paths not more than twenty feet apart and both leading to the waterhole. They had been made many years ago before the springs had started to divert and make the place a danger to man and cattle.

Before he reached the end of the path he had taken he saw her. She was standing on the edge of the bog looking down at the thing she was holding in her hands. The moon was full on her and she was rigid, but she was evidently going to throw whatever she was carrying into the pool, and once in there it would be lost forever – it was said to be bottomless. He had never tried to prove this; even his adventurous boyish spirit hadn’t been brave enough to test the depth of this awesome place, not after he had seen a cow sink like a stone in the mud at its edge.

‘What you up to?’ He thought for a moment she was going to fall backwards into the bog and he rushed forward and gripped her arms, that were in turn gripping the bundle to her.

‘What you up to? What’s this?’ He had to hold on to her to keep her steady for her whole body was now shaking like a cart going over a rutted road. He took one hand from her arm and touched the top of the bundle; then he pulled the blanket back and gazed downwards.

‘Aw, my God! YOU! YOU! YOU WICKED HUSSY YOU!’

‘No, no, Davie, no, no, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t have.’

‘What did you come in here for then?’

‘The master. But . . . but I couldn’t.’

‘You would if I hadn’t stopped you, an’ it breathing an’ all.’

He pulled the shawl farther away from the face; then he said in a deep tone that might have been used by Pastor Wainwright, ‘If there’s a hell you’ll go to it for this.’

‘Davie! Davie!’ She was crying now and loudly. ‘I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t.’

‘Shut up! an’ get back.’ He gripped her by the shoulders and pushed her forward, and she tried to turn to him as she spluttered, ‘You don’t know, you don’t know, Davie.’

‘Go on, out of it.’ He thrust her along the path until they reached the railings, and there he let go of her and she pushed the bundle under the bottom rail, and when she tried to climb over she almost fell on to the other side. She did not stoop immediately and pick up the bundle, but stood leaning against the rails gasping as she looked up at him. The tears were raining from her eyes, her mouth was wide; she tried to speak but the words were choked in her throat.

He bent down to her.

‘Get!’ He pointed, and at this she stooped and picked up the child again. And once more he was pushing her forward and towards the figure that was standing in the road outside the front door.

Winnie, a coat over her calico nightgown, came towards them, saying under her breath, ‘What in the name of God is it? What’s happened?’

‘Get inside.’

Her eyes flashed from him to Molly; then she hurried back into the cottage and he followed her, still thrusting Molly before him.

Although there was a candle burning on the kitchen table the light in the cottage was dim compared with that outside. Davie peered towards the stairs, where his father was descending with his granda behind him. His granda was saying, ‘What’s up? What’s up, lad?’

For answer he turned to Molly saying, ‘You tell them.’

Molly now placed the bundle on the table and leaned over it, her shoulders shaking, her sobbing uncontrolled, and Winnie, going to her, said, ‘What is it, girl, what is it?’

But all Molly could say was, ‘I wouldn’t have, I couldn’t, I couldn’t.’

Winnie put her hand out tentatively towards the bundle, asking now, ‘What have you in there?’ and before Molly could answer Davie cried, ‘Go on, tell her. Tell her what you’ve got in there, an’ what you were aimin’ to do with it.’

They were all surprised at Molly’s next reaction for, turning from the table and gulping on each word, she bawled at him, ‘You! You! God you are, aren’t you! God. Well, I wouldn’t have, no matter what you think, I wouldn’t have. I couldn’t, I was just wonderin’ what to do. Even though the master bade me.’