The Wilding (13 page)
The patient disappointment of my parents touched me as deeply as if I were the tender father and they my little ones. This was the first time, I think, that I ever experienced that particular grief, which was doubled by knowing my own part in it.
I could not think of recent events without shame, and with Tamar and Joan to point the comparison I was more than ever struck by the honest and open respectability of the home in which God had placed me. More: I was ready to don sackcloth and ashes, and to become as prompt, obedient and humble a son as anyone could wish for, to abide by their wishes in the matter of marriage (excepting only Ann Huxtable). I would give them no more pain. I would marry and bring forth children. All the labour of my breeding would then be crowned with success and my mother and father could rest content. So I thought, and I began immediately to put aside my own wishes and fit myself to theirs.
This was not altogether well judged. The fact (I may say it plainly, without vanity) was that I had always been a good son, leaving aside my reluctance to wed and my recent overlong stays at End House. The first effect of my resolve, therefore, was a show of fanatical virtue that (as my father later told me) rendered them both uneasy, suspecting as they did that only a severe singeing in the fires of wickedness could have brought it on.
I was not virtuous to the point of madness, however. I had settled in advance that I would permit myself a measure of deceit in everything relating to my stay at the inn. As yet my father had asked nothing about my time away from home. He was the last man to let such things go; I therefore kept my lies ready and polished up, for at some point I was sure to need them.
So I passed the holiday time, in waiting, and most uncomfortable it made me. On New Year’s Eve we stood at the front door, wrapped up against the frost, and watched the burning bushes being taken over the fields. We had done this as long as I could remember, from the time when I had to be hoisted on Father’s shoulders before I could see the lights. At last, far away but high and clear, came the cry of ‘
Auld Ciderrrrrr … !
’ We went back to our blazing fire, smiling at one another, but somehow the thing had fallen flat. It was the same at Twelfth Night: a lad with toast and cider was hoisted into our oldest tree, the guns were fired off and everyone drank deeply before the Wassailers passed to the next orchard. It had been my joy to drink as deep as any and to bawl out each verse of the songs. As it was, I felt as if someone else, not me, were singing, and when the men trudged away under the trees and their farewells faded down the lane I felt a Puritan’s relief that all was done with for another year. I wondered much at myself, and could only think that my secret wrongdoing had bled these honest, neighbourly customs of the pleasure they had once given me.
On the seventh of January (having scrupulously waited until the end of the feast) Father called on me to account for the time spent away from home. I told him that I had gone at once before the constable, given evidence, seen the girl released and set off home (thus despatching all that part of the business in a single sentence). Becoming ill on the journey, however, I had pulled in to the side of the road where, overpowered by weariness, I had fallen asleep at the reins. (Note that I did not say I fell from the cart: I had given due thought even to bruises.) I had a vague remembrance of shouting, and of a dark man bending over me, before waking in the house of some excellent Christian people, the very type of the Good Samaritan. It seemed that the dark man I remembered on the road was not of their persuasion, for they had found him in the act of picking my pocket. He had been seized on, however, and deprived of his spoils. My rescuers then looked after me until I was ready to continue my journey.
This farrago seemed to me impregnable until my father looked hard at me and asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell us before?’
I said it would have been a pity to frighten my mother and spoil the festival, particularly when the affair was past and no harne.
‘So you think, I daresay!’ Father said. ‘But young men exposed to viciousness may receive great harm without knowing it. In your place, son, I should shun that road.’
His face showed plainly that he guessed something close to the truth, and I felt I had disappointed him all over again.
* * *
I had yet to decide what to do with that other history, Joan’s. I was at first disinclined to read it; I had turned my back on these tricksy people.
Had I been as honest, or as strong, as I believed myself, I would have thrown the paper away, or given it into my father’s keeping so that one day I might return it to her unread. Instead, like the weak, divided creature I was, I put it under my mattress, too far in to be detected by Alice’s busy hands. After that, it was the old story. A few days after Twelfth Night the itch started up: I grew curious and I must needs be reading. Excuses are never lacking in these cases. I told myself it was wrong, and cruel, to take away something that had given an old woman so much labour if I would not read it as promised, and thus talked myself by degrees into what I wanted to do.
My parents must not catch me at my studies, but I soon found a way: the orchards in Brimming had late cider-apples that I usually pressed about this time. I would take Joan’s writing with me, reading it while I was there. I could easily burn it before I returned home, and then it would be as if the thing had never existed.
* * *
The day after that I was in Brimming. Their apples were not of the best, but my labours went smoothly enough. I was permitted to sleep in the barn of one of the wealthier inhabitants, one whose own press was in use but who would help out his neighbours if asked.
‘You’ll not sleep with it next to you,’ the wife said, handing me a lantern.
I was grateful for the allowance and swore I would not. Faithful to this promise, when I retired to rest I hung the lantern on a nail and stood beside it in order to open Joan’s letter. It was as I had thought, a single sheet folded over and sealed. Weariness, cold and the faint light made it hard to decipher her cramped writing, but I was determined. I wiped my tired eyes and read on.
You will remember, Sir, how I left off: I was in a wretched
condition, infatuated with my brother-
in-
law, and the soldiers
on their way to us. I come shortly to a most terrible part
of my tale, and I warn you, you must have a strong stomach
to read it, but first you must learn how we were discovered,
for we were, as wickedness always comes out, or so they say
.My sister, as I told you, went on living with us day by day,
watchful and patient as a spider. I cannot say how many times
she netted us without our knowing it, and let us go again; but
she hauled in her web at last, and was mistress of all
.Do you wonder at my hard-heartedness, Master Jon?
Surely you must. Yet I was full of remorse, and not only
through fear of my sister. Pray remember that our father, who
in our youth had guided and taught us, was a God-fearing
man. I knew full well that I had taken what was not mine,
and was a trespasser in my sister’s bed. I had but one excuse,
a bad one, for beginning, namely that I had thought my sister
as good as dead, and I had another (a worse) for continuing,
which was that I could not leave off. My heart seemed pierced
by a cord, and the end of the cord in my brother-
in-
law’s
hand, so that he could pull me along with him wherever he
chose. With all this, I was yet sorry for what I had done, and
often cried myself to sleep for very hopelessness, and came to
breakfast with eyes as sore as if they had been poxed, and still
my sister said nothing
.I have not cried for my sin these many years, and never
will again. My heart is like hers now, a stone
.In a few weeks my sister was restored to health. No sooner
could she walk about than she developed a trick of losing
handkerchiefs and gloves. She would send one servant to seek
through the house, another to search the outbuildings and a
third, the orchard, while she herself prowled about scattering
more trifles, that she might cry out upon their loss later. Thus
was I thrown into a constant terror, afraid not only to
exchange loving words or touches with him, but also to speak
of the most innocent matters, or even to be observed close by
where he was. I was brought near screaming at this but hid it,
telling myself the work was as disagreeable for her as for us,
and full as wearying, and that the servants must in time be
sent about their duties, and her gathering of intelligence
cease
.We had one sweet day when my sister was laid low with a
painful vomit. My brother-
in-
law at once played her at her
own game. He sent our manservant for the physician, for (he
said) nobody else could be trusted with such an important
task, bidding him wait if Doctor Tanner was not there. At the
same time he set my sister’s maid to remain by her side, and
ordered all the rest of them to their duties. Then he and I went
to my chamber. It astonishes me that we ran the risk, but we
were desperate and not a little mad. In any event, it was our
last time together. The next day my sister, having questioned
the servants, rose from her bed in a savage humour
.Things having reached this pass, the arrival of the King’s
troops was at first a blessed distraction. That is, it was to us;
the poorer villagers obliged to provide billets were soon
singing to another tune, but my brother-
in-
law had his paper
signed by the quartermaster and none could gainsay it. And
when I heard about their antics, such as smashing all the
crockery in a widow’s house and throwing her harp into the
pond, I concluded that my brother-
in-
law had shown great
foresight in this, if not in other matter
s.Now, however, I had troubles of my own to be thinking of,
since a few days after the arrival of the men I began to fear
that I was with child. My woman’s bleeding was not come
and one morning I was sick in my chamber upon rising. As
soon as I understood what this might be, I fainted dead away
from terror. Luckily I was resting on my bed at the time, but I
came to in such a trembling that going down to breakfast I
stumbled and almost fell on the stairs
.My sister was sitting at table. I said I was sickly and could
not eat; she took one look at me and her eyes seemed to blaze
up. And: ‘You must try this, you must have that,’ says she, and
she had the maid bring fried meat, and eggs in butter, and I
could not touch a thing; though I tasted some broth I could
not swallow it. My brother-
in-
law, who was ignorant of her
meaning, said I was bilious and should not be forced, but my
sister had the whip-hand now and she had blood-sausage
brought, and grilled tripe, until my brother-
in-
law (still at a
loss) sat astonished at the tyranny and waste, and I broke
down crying
.‘Now,’ she says, ‘now we see your wickedness, you little
whore!’At this my brother-
in-
law leaped up. ‘What?’ said he, ‘For
shame, your own sister,’ and she turned on him, screaming ‘I
see you defend her, will you own her bastard too?’ and my
brother-
in-
law dropped back into his chair as if his legs had
failed him. Then we all fell silent, I snivelling like the fool I
was and the husband and wife glaring hatred at each other,
and I thought it was as though Satan had put his fist through
the world and rent it
.From that time she was wild to be rid of me, Master Jon,
and I will tell you what she did. But I must first tell you
something else. You have perhaps wondered why, while
unveiling offences, I should veil the offenders. The answer is,
had I given you names at first, you would not have read the
rest – and now you know that, you can surely guess my secret.
This gentlewoman who behaved so inhumanly to her own
flesh and blood – this weak man who could not hold off from
his wife’s sister – are no strangers to you. They are your near
kin: your uncle, Robin Dymond, and his wife, Harriet
.
I cried out and threw the paper to the ground. Guessed her secret? We were not accustomed to such foul and disgusting secrets in our family – and here I shook, actually shook, for it came to me that ‘we’ and ‘family’ no longer meant what they had. If this dreadful tale were the truth, Joan was my aunt’s sister, and Tamar – God have mercy on us, had I only known it at the inn! – was my bastard cousin, my father’s brother’s child.