The Silver Darlings (13 page)

Like the arrow sped Roy, with Catrine on the wind
behind
. Bel made a valiant endeavour to get her tongue round as much of the cornfield as it could encompass even with Roy leaping at her throat. Roots and all came tearing out, drenching Roy with the good earth as she swung her head to give him a toss. Whereupon, angered, he nipped her flank; and at that down went her head and up went her heels, and with the great mouthful swinging from her jaws she, too, began to run, kicking and dancing, like a two-year-old in spring, with her full and aged udder
walloping
from side to side and spilling its treasure on the air.

“Come in, ye fool!” roared Kirsty at the dog. She was now on the trot, with a stick in her hand.

“Roy!” yelled Catrine. Finn followed his mother with a bliss that was near to terror. Down went the stick across the slap in the stone enclosure and out came the stirk and heifer to join the two calves in the chase after Bel. In his stall, the garron whinnied, while, evening though it was, the old cock crew and clearly felt the better for it, if a little self-conscious.

Breathless, Catrine at last managed to grab the tether and hang on while Bel pulled and Roy yapped. “Roy!” she called in desperation, for Bel swept her careering along. “Roy!” croaked Kirsty. “Roy!” yelled Finn. And Roy, feeling the consensus of opinion against him, drew off. Kirsty addressed him with the lather on her lips and then added, “Come here!” He came near enough to tempt his mistress to hit him a blow, but permitted the earth to take the actual impact and Kirsty’s arm the jarring discord. With a harsh imprecation (which was the only thing Finn properly heard), she hurled the stick at the brute. But long experience had taught Roy that anything thrown by a woman would hit him only if he tried to dodge it. So he created a diversion by rounding up the stirk and heifer in
expert fashion, while Catrine hammered home the stake of Bel’s tether.

“Ye old fool, you!” said Kirsty, approaching Bel with the stick behind her back, while Jean, a few yards off, looked on with profound impassivity. “Take that!” she cried. “And that! And that!” Bel took them, sinking her quarters to the impact and glancing round with the white of a guilty eye. “And that—ye ill-faured wicked old bitch! At your time of life you ought to have more sense.”

It had been a very exciting ten minutes, enjoyed by all, and not least by Bel, who swung her barrel-shaped belly, as she licked a haunch, with some of the abandon more natural, perhaps, to youth. But she had grace still and her heart was young. To Jean she directed her hind quarters and when that canny beast could no longer restrain a muffled deep-throated “Hoo!” Bel responded in a natural way with nonchalance.

Meantime, Kirsty was inspecting the damage done, her whole body glowing with righteous wrath. Cultivation of the soil in all these parts was in long narrow strips or lazy beds, with hollows or rigs between. Three women cutting with the small hand-hook could take the broadest strip before them and leave nothing standing. The men came in behind to gather and bind and stook. Though, for that matter, folk worked according to the labour available, and to a great degree communally or by mutual assistance.

Bel had cropped the ears from about a couple of square yards. “You couldn’t have driven that stake in hard enough,” Kirsty accused Catrine, who now had a wooden bucket in one hand and the smallest three-legged stool in the other.

“It was yourself who did it,” said Catrine. “You shifted her just before you went out.”

“Did I? In that case, she’s been up to her tricks again,” and she nodded grimly. “We’ll put her to the market, that’s what we’ll do with her.” Nodding even more grimly, she entered the house.

“How does Bel pull the stake out, Mama?”

“We don’t know. But perhaps she pulls first from one side and then from the other and in that way loosens it.”

“Perhaps she kicks it with her foot, the way Granny does with her heel when the stone is over at Jean?”

“I shouldn’t wonder.”

“If I lay in wait for a long, long time watching, and Bel couldn’t see me, then I might find out. Mightn’t I, Mama?”

“You might, indeed.”

“Yes, and I’ll see, and then I’ll tell you, and then
everyone
will know. I’ll get up early in the morning and watch and watch …”

Catrine starting humming her milking song, and black Jean stood quietly. With the pitcher half full, they went towards Bel.

“Why don’t you take the cows in at night, Mama?”

“Because it’s healthy for them to be outside when the weather is good.”

“And the byre doesn’t need cleaning then?”

“That’s so. And they start eating in the early morning.”

“Yes. And they’ll have more milk. Tell me, Mama …”

Bel acknowledged their arrival with a sulky “Moo”.

“What way was that to carry on?” Catrine demanded, clapping her flank gently.

Bel knew all about such blandishments and was not
disposed
to give in easily. When Catrine had to move her stool after the restless beast, Finn said in a commanding tone, “Stand still, you wicked old bitch.”

Catrine’s face opened. In a hushed voice she asked, “What words are these?”

After a glance at her wide eyes, Finn turned away,
pivoting
on one heel, growing ever more embarrassed and beginning to laugh.

“Finn, come here.”

His laughter gurgled out of him in the merriest way, his face flushed. He was very embarrassed, and when she called
him again, he hopped away one step, two, and then ran, his laughter strung behind him in bubbles.

Catrine was very shocked, and pressed her forehead against the cow’s side. She tried to hum, but a wild inward mirth surged up. She closed her eyes and softly shook.

For what she had really heard was the sound of his laughter, that infectious gurgling sound, so innocent, so natural, gone all self-conscious and merry and entrancing.

There were passages of communion between them when she felt the very texture and essence of this little boy, who was her son, in moments of indescribable ecstasy.
Sometimes
, of course, he was wicked and bad-tempered, and more than once had so far forgotten himself as to assault Granny. But to anyone who really understood him (felt Catrine) that was—that was … After all, he was only four and a half and you couldn’t expect him to be a little saint, even if you wanted him to be. And those times when he wept, feeling he had been unjustly wronged, and his eyes … that brightness in his eyes, and the poor little fellow crying as if his heart would break. Yet if you sympathized with him then, he would hit you a wallop and get angrier than ever. But when he was really good, gold wasn’t in it. Though, for the most part, he was just happy and
companionable
and full of endless questions…. The running of his living body ran through her blood, and she got up and patted Bel with a gentle hand, murmuring, “Poor old lass!” with bright gleams of suppressed humour. “Did you get your whackings?” she asked. “Was it sore then?” “Moo,” said Bel, who knew all about these soft tactics, yet swinging her head in a half-mollified way. Jean tore up a mouthful of grass and looked across at this touching scene with no more than an exaggerated out-thrust of neck.

Then Catrine smoothed her features to an innocent solemnity and returned to the house.

It was longer than the average croft house, with two doors. Through the bottom door one entered to the
animals
’ stalls; through the top door to the kitchen. Above the
kitchen were two rooms; the first, little more than a closet, was where Kirsty now slept, and the second or farthest-up room was the guest chamber, where Kirsty had all her special furniture and ornaments.

From the surplus of summer milk were made the butter and cheese, of which they sold or traded some, retaining enough to last them through most of the dry period before calving-time. While the various evening duties were being performed, Catrine ignored Finn or regarded him with a cool, remote look. On his part, Finn ignored her, being busy about invisible affairs of his own, though pausing occasionally to look round his shoulder with a solemn but knowing countenance. His worst moment was when sleep overcame him and he was put to bed while Kirsty, in the calm that had come upon the house with the summer
twilight
, took up the thread of her story. He was defeated the moment she began, because he knew her voice would go on and on for ever, and so he hated her and grew petulant and, finally, to the shattering of his dignity (not to mention the hope of re-establishing relations with his mother), he had to be forcibly undressed. But he held out against saying his prayer, and Catrine had to threaten him with God’s displeasure.

“You’re running on a thrashing, my young man,” declared Kirsty. “No, I’m not!” he shouted, weeping. “You’d better give him one or two, Catrine,” said Kirsty. “No! no!” he screamed. “Now, Finn,” said Catrine
quietly
but raising her eyebrows in conspiracy, and soundlessly forming “hush!” on her lips. For an instant he looked into her great brown eyes with their solemn appeal, then waggled his head in rebellion. But, in the end, he stuttered the words after her, and sleep did not take long to defeat him. Catrine had known quite well what he had
passionately
wished. He had wished Kirsty to go away to her bed so that he could say his prayer to Catrine alone. Not that he always wanted to do this: but he wanted to do it then to save his dignity.

And perhaps, for less obvious reasons, too, because one
night, a week later, with Kirsty gone earlier than usual to her bed—it had been a heavy, sultry day—he said to his mother, with the firelight still playing on the walls as he lay on his back in the hushed hour, the queer hour of stories and strange things:

“Mama?”

“Well? … What is it?”

“Why is a word bad?”

To save her face she did not look at him, but regarded the problem thoughtfully, and out of her wisdom answered, “Just because it’s a bad word.”

Though he recognized the logic of this as irrefutable, yet he was not quite satisfied.

“But what makes it bad?”

“What,” responded Catrine, “makes you bad
sometimes
?”

The question was personal and hardly fair, but he strove to be objective and simply asked, “What?”

What, indeed?

“I don’t know,” said Catrine. “All I know is that we mustn’t be bad and that we mustn’t use bad words.”

“Who made them bad?”

“The Bad Man,” answered Catrine.

His eyes opened. “Mama,” he whispered, “where does the Bad Man live?”

“You know where he lives.”

“In the Bad Place?”

“Yes.”

At that moment something fell outside with a clatter and the door shook. Little Finn cried in fear to his mother.

“It’s only the wind getting up,” said Catrine.

The gust caught the house and shook it with a snarl. A small eddy ran along the floor and met another one over the fire in a spiral of smoke and ash. Then the gust passed away to the moor in a high-pitched whine. As they listened, another one came. Catrine went to the door and swung the wooden bar into its slot and this stopped the door from
rattling. Very rarely was a door barred at night, for only a suspicious or frightened nature would shut out anyone who had need to call.

Finn had his own little bed, but she decided to take him in beside her until he went to sleep. This she did, holding him in her arms and murmuring to him, until he fell off. The wind had now a continuous rise and fall in its whine. Sometimes it was sustained for long seconds at its highest pitch. She thought of the little ricks of bog hay that Kirsty and herself had cut and left down on the flat ground. They would be tossed away, though the low birch bushes would catch great wisps. The wind came from the sea….

She thought of all the local boats at sea, and was touched by fear. She had seen the fury of a winter storm in Dale, had seen it smash and send its spume hundreds of feet high over the cliff walls. She thought of Roddie and his crew. She liked Roddie very much, but now the horror of what might happen to them all was more than the thought of any individual or of herself. Her hatred of the sea had gone deep as an instinct.

In the grey hours of that morning all Dunster came awake, and men and women buttoned and wrapped
themselves
firmly and made for the cliffs. The gale was blowing fair in on the beach, the very worst airt for boats any
distance
along the coast. But by great good luck the herring signs had been off the bay, and the boats had been shot a mile or so out, between the Head and the cliffs to the west. The real danger now lay not in the force of the wind but in the seas the wind would whip up and smash on the beach before they could reach it.

The smaller boats hauled their few nets as swiftly as they could and were soon on their sweeps, coming with the wind at a great pace. The seas were rising rapidly, having the whole weight of an ocean, east by north, behind them. The tide was half in and the worst of the boulders covered. As a boat grounded, the crew leapt into the surf and heaved.

Soon there were sufficient men on shore to give
newcomers
immediate help. The beach in that morning gloom became a scene of extraordinary activity, with dark bodies rushing and voices crying above the seething waters and the high whining of the gale.

From the cliff-tops the women of the crofts could see the boats coming, and struggled down to the beach, and watched their menfolk advancing and retreating, grasping and hauling, on the edge of the mounting surf as in a wild, infernal dance.

The larger boats, with drifts of twenty nets, lay on a back-rope and found it a dead weight, hard and unyielding under the great pressure of the storm. Many cut clear; others that hung on too long in a desperate effort to save all they could, had to face a beach where high waves were curling over, smashing, and sucking down the shingle in a white roar.

But all boats made the beach, and the bulk of them were hauled clear without any damage done. Indeed, beyond the starting of a few planks and the abandonment of some nets, the Dunster fleet was intact and its fishermen, apart from a minor bruise here and there, unharmed.