The Town House (25 page)

‘You ain’t his master.’

‘Let me try.’

‘Get outa the way,’ said Tom.

Shortly after that Christmas Richard began asking Martin for a whistle, and Martin remembered another little boy who had never asked for anything, had his pang of guilt, and provided the whistle.

The thing in itself was enough for Richard for a long time. He blew and a shrill level noise emerged. By accident he put a finger over one of the holes and a different noise resulted. Bit by bit, untaught, by a process of trial and error he learned to play a tune, one of those sung in the woolshed at Christmas, ‘The Holly and the Ivy’. Once he could do that he plagued Uncle Tom to teach him
his
tunes. Tom said, ‘One day’ and ‘Some time’ and ‘Don’t bother me now’, but in the end he succumbed and after an hour or two with the child, said to Martin,

‘He’ve got a true ear, and come to the point he’s teachable. He’d got
Gathering Pescods
and
Granny’s Bonnet
in nearly no time at all. If I’d had him on the road, with Owd Muscovy, I’d have made a fortune.’

The two tunes were all Richard wanted to learn. He played them over and over until he was sure and when he was he set out to test them on Owd Muscovy.

The shed was never locked for the simple reason that no one except Pert Tom was ever likely to open it. Except for that one Christmas outing the door had never opened save when the bear was fed or the shed cleaned, and when Richard opened it the bear ambled forward, expecting to be fed. Richard pushed past and went to where the extreme end of the chain was hooked over the slanting nail. Even on tip-toe he could not reach it, so he turned back, and exerting all his strength, pressed the hook which held the other end of the chain to a ring in the bear’s collar. The chain fell free, into the soiled straw on the floor, and Richard realized that now he had no means of leading the animal up to the kitchen door as he intended, to cry, ‘Come and watch, Uncle Tom,’ and demonstrate his disproof of the old man’s statement, ‘He wouldn’t do it for you.’ But he was undismayed; so long as the bear stayed on all fours – which he would do until the whistle sounded – his collar was within reach of Richard’s hand; he could be hauled along by the collar.

Owd Muscovy had never before, since his remote forgotten cub days been free of both chain and muzzle at the same time. Without them he felt, not liberated, but strangely vulnerable. Children he knew and hated, they tweaked and pinched and poked. Against them Pert Tom was his defence, and now here he was, stripped of his appurtenances, at close quarters with a child, and no Pert Tom in sight. When Richard attempted to take his collar,
he backed away nervously but with a warning growl and when Richard hung on, tugging determinedly, it was nervousness rather than vice that made him bite. His teeth closed on the child’s forearm and through the sound woollen stuff of his sleeve, inflicted only two incised wounds. But the blood sprang and the yell which Richard let out was a yell of pain as well as wrath. He loosed his hold on the bear’s collar and ran to find Nancy. Owd Muscovy made no move to pursue him, nor, though the door stood open, did he immediately leave the shed, he emerged a little later, just as one of the pack teams was coming into the yard. The ponies, though weary, were capable of being thrown into a stampede, one of the pack-whackers was caught between a frightened pony and a wall and had his ribs crushed and added his cries to the general pandemonium. Dummy’s eldest boy was in the loft, pushing hay over the edge of it into the mangers, ready for the incoming team; he heard the shouts and the cries. The Bear! The Bear’s on the rampage’ and with a heroism never given its rightful due, jumped into the manger, fork in hand, jumped from the manger to the stable floor and ran out into the yard, where Owd Muscovy, by this time in a state of panic had risen on to his hind legs and was doing his dance in an attempt to placate. Dummy’s Jack charged and drove the pitchfork home into the hairy chest thus exposed; one prong must have penetrated to the heart, for within a few minutes Owd Muscovy was dead.

If Richard could have controlled his temper and his tongue he would have emerged blameless, a victim of the escaped bear, like the clawed pack pony and the man with the crushed ribs; but, his wound smeared tar and his pain deadened by a dose of laudanum, he was furious to hear that Owd Muscovy was dead.

‘Now he’ll never dance for me. And me going to all the trouble to learn the right tunes.’

Pert Tom, inconsolable at the loss of his bear, which he had hated, exploited, cherished and loved, all at once, said,

‘You! Thass it. You let him out, you little hellion!’

Martin said, ‘Tom. Mind your tongue!’

‘Bugger my tongue! You let him out, didn’t you? You opened the shed door.’

‘Bugger my tongue,’ said Richard, enjoying the sound of a new, attractive phrase. ‘I wanted him to dance for me, but he bit me instead.’

‘There you are,’ said Pert Tom. ‘Straight from his own mouth. He opened that door. So Owd Muscovy, the one thing I ever owned is dead, just a lump of stinking carrion. Go on, sit there making your Goddamn
faces at me. Look what you’ve got, a great flourishing business, ships on the sea and who knows what. Where’d it all come from? Something so dark and dishonest you never could say where. Had to pretend it was my savings. My bitch had to be bedded here and there, out on the hard ground mostly, yours gets a wedding and is called Mistress, and finely she served you. But you get this.…’ He flung his hand in Richard’s direction, ‘and he go and let out my bear. So he’s dead, my Owd Muscovy.’

‘Nancy, take Richard to bed,’ Martin said.

‘I don’t want to go to bed.’

‘You see,’ said Pert Tom. ‘Thass like the Bible say – If these things be done in the green leaf, what shall be done in the dry? You see how he hev the upper hand of everybody here. You mind what his mother was. You’re making a fine rod for your own back and I only hope I live to see it beat you.’

And so, in the end, Martin had realized that Richard must be tamed. And so, here he was, having put Peter Priest through his paces, saying,

‘What I want is for you to teach my boy.’

Peter Priest’s vision of a quiet, clerkly life vanished, leaving behind it a sense of loss so sharp that it hurt.

He said sourly, ‘I couldn’t teach him. Nobody could. To teach a child you must be his master.’

‘That’, said Martin, ‘is what you would be.’

‘And the first time I punished, or even chided him, he would run to you, wailing, and you would turn yourself inside out to make things right for him.’ He rose from his seat, ‘Thank you, no! Three hundred days a year in this part of the country the wind blows from the east, but I would rather walk into the teeth of it, running the ponies who can be beaten if needs be.’

‘Richard can be beaten – if needs be, but not over the head.’

‘Beaten! The young master of the Old Vine?’

‘How else could he learn?’

‘How else indeed? Well, well. Even you, in the end, come to the end of your indulgence and hand over! What do you wish him to learn?’

‘To read what is written and write what can be read. To reckon, as you now did, in his head, and write down his reckonings in figures Roman or Arabic.’ Without intending it his voice, as he said those words, took on a sardonic note.

‘You see,’ said Peter Priest, ‘already you are against me. And what the parent is against how shall the children learn? The figuring, Roman or Arabic, are not terms of mockery, as you in your ignorance make them
sound. I can slave out my guts teaching him, and you, with a few mocking words over the supper dish can undo all I have taught him. I will stick to the ponies. You send him to school. From school he can’t come running to cry and show his stripes.’

Martin said, with a black look,

‘Sit down. Stick to the ponies, you say. Whose? Not mine. I can go to the town gates tomorrow morning and find a dozen pack-whackers. And, maybe not tomorrow morning, but some morning, not so far away I can find Richard a teacher. You have your choice, teach him, or take your foot in your hand and leave the Old Vine. If you teach him, I promise that so long as you do not hit him over the head, what you do will be right with me.’

‘Why so shrewd about hitting over the head?’

‘Once, long ago, when I was young, I had some lessons. And to be hit on the head made me more stupid.’

‘What would you pay me?’

‘Twice your present wage. And you would live in the house, in comfort. I planned to build two rooms above the solar.’ He remembered the way in which Peter had asked about the figuring and added, solemnly, ‘Meanwhile you would have time to renew your learning and get the dirt out of your hands. Also you should have some garment more suited to your new position.’

Peter Priest gave him a look of unadulterated hatred and said,

‘That could be seen to.’

From that day onwards Peter Priest did no manual work at all; he would not even help with the building of the new rooms above the solar or the stairway that led up to them. He told Martin, arrogantly, that he would need books, and to buy books cost money. Martin asked how much he required and Peter named a sum which made Martin gasp.

‘By that reckoning a book costs as much as a pack pony.’

‘Why not? Ponies breed their young. A new book may mean a year’s hard work for a scribe.’

‘The priest who once taught me carried his learning in his head,’ Martin protested, less from meanness than from his dislike of Peter Priest’s tone.

‘And he taught you so well that when it comes to passing on what you learned you hire another man to do it for you.’

‘Buy what you need,’ Martin said.

On the day when lessons were to start he was careful to be absent; he would be away four days, he said. Nancy had her instructions and at the given time called Richard in from the yard, smoothed his hair with
her hand, gave him a handful of currants and told him to go up the new stairs to Peter Priest’s room.

‘What for?’

‘You’ll see when you get there, my poor lamb.’

Munching the currants and licking his fingers Richard marched up the stairs. The door of Peter’s room stood open and just by the window was a table spread with unfamiliar objects. Peter had sent for him to show him something, just as the men about the yard would call and say, ‘Master Richard, look, I’ve found a young owl’, or ‘Master Richard, Peg’s dropped her foal, like to see it?’

Richard walked over to the table without noticing that behind him Peter closed the door and shot the top bolt.

‘What’s this?’ he demanded.

‘Don’t touch anything. Come here and wash your hands. And in future always come to me with clean hands,’

Richard looked at the bowl of water.

‘Nancy washed me this morning.’

‘Nancy washed me this morning,’ repeated Peter in a cruel mockery of the childish treble voice. ‘A great boy almost seven years old. Wash your hands and dry them thoroughly.’

‘I shan’t. I didn’t come here to wash!’ He swung round and made for the door.

‘You come here to take lessons. And the very first lesson is unquestioning obedience.’

‘Open this door,’ yelled Richard, having found the door bolted and the bolt just out of reach. ‘Peter’ do you hear me?
Open this door!
’

Peter Priest walked up behind him, encircled him with his left arm, hoisted him from his feet and brought his right hand down on the little backside thus exposed, once, twice, thrice, with a will.

‘That’, he said calmly, ‘is for saying “shan’t” to me.’

Richard roared from pain and insult.

‘Stop that. Stop it at once,’ said Peter Priest and shook him until from sheer breathlessness, he hushed the noise.

‘Now come here and sit down.’ He pushed the boy towards the table and down into a chair. Richard jumped up at once.

‘I don’t want to. I’m going to Nancy. She’s making me some gingerbread men and I …’

‘You will have no gingerbread men, nor any other goody until you know your letters, so you’d better listen carefully.’

When he could repeat all the letters of the alphabet without prompting and recognize ten of them without hesitation, Peter Priest said,

‘That will do for today,’ and opened the door and let him go.

For today! There would never be another day like this! Never again would he enter old Peter Priest’s horrible room.

Next morning, well before lesson time, he went towards the stables, intending to take his pony and be miles away before Nancy could even wonder where he was.

Peter was waiting for him in the dim stable.

‘I anticipated some such trick,’ he said, and took Richard, not by the hand, or the arm, but by the ear. It really hurt, and pulling away, jumping about and trying to kick at Peter’s shins only made it hurt worse.

Upstairs in the hated room, Peter Priest said,

‘I am now going to beat you for putting me to so much bother. You will have six stripes today. Tomorrow, if you repeat this idiotic performance, it will be eight and the next day ten.’

He laid on the stripes dispassionately, enough to hurt, not hard enough to cause injury, and then, putting aside the little cane, asked in a conversational tone,

‘I wonder how much you remember of yesterday’s lesson. Let us see.’

Richard snuffling, said,

‘You just
wait
till my father comes home!’

‘We will wait. Meanwhile let us see how much you remember.’

When Martin rode into the yard Richard was waiting for him, and he was hardly out of the saddle before the tale of woe began. The child had already witnessed the collapse of one small world. Mary and Nancy, though they petted him and spoke pityingly, had put up no real defence against Peter, and Peter had managed, at every turn to out-wit him. Even when he had rushed straight out the house before breakfast and hidden himself at the very back of the woolshed, Peter had found him – and that was ten strokes with the cane. The one thing that had sustained him was the certainty that when his father came home and heard of all this mistreatment, he would take full vengeance.

His father actually asked only one question,

‘Were you beaten over the head?’