As Meat Loves Salt (62 page)

'I myself,' said Ferris. 'You were dead drunk and I took the bottle from you.'

Botts stood a moment puzzling it out. He put me in mind of a bull trying to think, so that I had to hold in my laughter. At last he said, 'Mayhap it
was
a drop too many. But you'll do the Christian thing and give it back.'

'No. It's all gone, Brother. No use asking for it.'

'You've
never drunk it.' Botts was incredulous. "There was half a bottle left. It'd overset a pinch of a thing like you.'

'I've turned it to profit,' said Ferris. He stood quietly and gave Botts a steady look. 'There it goes,' and he gestured at the two birds scratching along one of the furrows. Jonathan jammed his knuckles into his mouth, near choked with baffled laughter.

Botts stepped towards Ferris. I saw he was about to do what he had long wanted, get a grip on the piece of insolence who had snubbed his professional aid, and I was afraid for my friend's tender back and shoulders. However, before I was obliged to give Botts a drubbing, he became aware of me closing in, and stopped dead, staring at Ferris. I watched entranced as his skin seemed to boil on his bones; he could have been flayed, so crimson did he become. Ferris seemingly shared my fascination, for he regarded Botts with sympathetic horror rather than the tense wariness of a man who anticipates a tussle. He even craned forward a little. Jonathan was frozen, still holding his hand to his mouth, but no longer laughing.

'You are not well,' I said to the gasping surgeon, for it had struck me that he might suffer a paroxysm or even die, leaving us to dig his grave. 'Pray go and lie down. We can talk of this later.'

'That's a light-fingered whoreson nobody,' he burst out, still glaring at Ferris.

'Come, we'll discuss it later.’ I caught hold of his shoulder, as gently as my vexation would let me; he looked up dazed into my eyes and

his lips contorted to a bitter smile. He was, however, come a little to himself, and allowed me to lead him to his own hut. There he dropped onto his evil-smelling blanket and straight fell to snoring.

I dawdled back to the field. Ferris stood close to Jonathan, holding himself more upright than was common with him and laughing from time to time, as if he felt himself watched. As I drew near methought he eyed me stealthily. Jonathan, distressed at the way the thing had ended, stopped his talk as I came up to them and turned his eyes on me.

'Is he well?' he asked.

'Asleep.' I waited for Ferris to say something; he smiled, shuffled his feet and feigned to be looking for the hens.

Jonathan glanced from one of us to the other. 'I shall bind up the plants, if I can,' he offered and walked off across the furrow. Ferris lifted his face and flashed me an admiring smile. 'Well, Jacob! You save me a drowning, and now a beating.'

And if one day I left you to your folly?'

His smile died at once. 'Folly? I said that Botts must not carouse here. Should I not have stopped it? He would else be quite mad by now.'

'You've put another madness in him,' I answered. 'He wants revenge, and that will last longer than a sore head. What possessed you to bandy his drink for chickens?'

'We need chickens,' Ferris insisted.

'I heard none begging for them.'

We stood silent a while, until my friend said more softly, 'Maybe not. But do you think he will come right?'

'He'll never come right, Ferris. He must go.'

'But we need him.' He caught hold of my arm with one hand, waving the other in the air. 'I can persuade—'

'Oh, you think he's another Hathersage?' My voice came out like spiked metal. I was straightway sorry for it, but too late.

Ferris dropped my arm and glared at me. 'Could you sweeten him?'

'I've no call to. I need no protection from any man.'

I walked away towards my hut, thinking I would lie for a while

until I could compose my thoughts. Before I reached the door I heard Ferris huffing after me. He ran in front and turned to face me as I once saw him run in front of Cooper.

'Let's not quarrel,' he panted. 'I'll send him away.'

I stood looking at him.
'You
will send him away? How will you do that?'

He spread his hands imploringly.

'I see. Jacob twists his arm.' Bitterness filled me. 'I thought I was to keep my fists by my sides? But you will tell him, Ferris. Either the order comes from you, or you shift him yourself

'I'll tell him tomorrow.'

'In front of the others,’ I insisted.

'In front of the others.' His head drooped; he was humbled and my indignation cooled as I looked on him. He added, 'You are right. It could never have come good.'

I sighed. 'You meant well by him.'

There was now no need to go to the hut, so I walked away to the field and rejoined Jonathan. Ferris did not walk with me. When I looked back, he stood defeated, no longer the man who had so jauntily announced the exchange of the brandy-wine. I shivered as I bent over the crushed green shoots. His false step in dealing with Botts was not like him, he who could play a man as an angler plays a fish. Then I found myself smiling, grimly, as it came to me that he might have foul-hooked the surgeon but he had lost none of his touch with me, for I had agreed to rid him of his unwholesome catch, without recompense.

Botts departed the next morning. Ferris was as good as his word and bade him leave us, speaking out in front of the whole community, as soon as prayers were ended. The Domremys' faces were so blank that they could only be glad, and while some of the others looked surprised, none spoke in his defence.

Botts heard Ferris out in silence, and then said, 'You took what was mine and disposed of it; in my book that makes you a thief. I sold up to come here, and have laboured without pay. You might have let

me drink, I troubled none.' He was paler than usual, and evidently afflicted with the headache; his looks were actually improved thereby.

'Come, let us not part enemies,' said Ferris. 'Your ways will not fit here, but I bear you no ill will.' He spoke as tenderly as he had to Hathersage. 'Will you forgive me, Brother Ben?'

'No,' said Botts. He trudged away to his hut, and as I watched the forlorn, graceless figure duck under the doorway I felt a sudden stab in me. We all stood round waiting for him to come out with his pack.

'Could we not give him another chance?' Harry asked Ferris.

'He was destroying the crops,' my friend replied.

'Won't you speak for him, Jacob?' Harry persisted.

'Me?'

'We let you off Roger Rowly.'

At last Botts came out of his hut, a bundle tied across one shoulder. I hoped he would go straight off, but he came back towards us, searching our faces as he approached.

'Farewell, Brothers and Sisters. Not one with a word to say for me?'

The other colonists contemplated the grass, all save Harry who regarded the surgeon with frank sympathy. Botts went on, 'You've a strange notion of brotherhood, Mister Ferris.'

My friend frowned; the two of them locked eyes and I saw a dogged nobility I had never before remarked in Botts, in the straight opposition of his ugly head to Ferris's fine one. Seconds passed, and he did not look away. Ferris glanced in my direction; I edged closer.

Botts laughed and turned to me. 'Are you going to drive me off?'

'Not unless you make me.'

And who would you say was the stronger, me or you?'

'Leave now,' I said, 'and you can go off believing 'tis you.'

Ferris lowered his gaze, as if to say this was between me and Botts, and none of his choosing.

'I'll go directly,’ the man replied. He bent forward to me, breathing foulness into my nostrils. 'Weak I may be, Brother Jacob, but no man masters
me
with a look.'

Ferris's eyes flicked wide open.

'Who'd look at you?' I asked Botts. He turned away. My throat stiffened, and the stab I had felt earlier, when he went into his hut, pierced me again. It was a familiar feeling, but not one I had ever felt for Botts; I could not quite place it. I stared at his thickset back, trying to read the answer there.

'What did he mean, master him with a look?' asked Hepsibah.

'Not to be stared down,' said Ferris.

The others were silent, awkward; I kept my face turned away from Harry. We watched Botts diminish as he crossed the fields, and it was not until he disappeared altogether that I knew the stabbing in my guts for what it was: envy.

I passed the next few hours degraded, wretched. Despite my repeated warnings that the new growth was too fresh and the penny-grass still moist, Ferris had decreed that we should try for an early hay crop, so we were all of us slashing at that part of the meadow with the fewest buttercups, showing our skill, or lack of it. I tried to quieten myself by getting in more grass than anyone else, but my spirits were further oppressed by the fear that our hay would be damp. The rest glanced round at me from time to time and kept their distance.

At noon Ferris brought me a piece of bread and some black-smeared cheese.

'Here, thundercloud.'

I looked up but did not cease working.

'You look set to kill me. You don't regret Botts, surely?'

'No.'

He sat down by my side. 'Rest a while.'

I went on with my sickle.

'Jacob? Don't you want to eat?'

'Not at your command.'

He looked round hastily; none was near enough to hear us. 'That was no command! I thought you might be hungry.'

'I'm thirsty.' I straightened and rubbed my shoulders. 'Get me some beer.'

Ferris hesitated.

'What keeps you?' I snapped. 'Must you always be the one to give orders?'

He stood up, staring at me and wiping his hands on his shirt, then walked off. I continued to cut the grass. After several minutes he appeared again, jug in hand. This he held out to me without further speech.

I laid down the sickle and sat down to drink. The beer was cool; I looked at him.

'I put it in the spring,' he said, lowering himself to sit cross-legged opposite me. I drank again, and snorted, and choked.

'You're—'

'No.' I finished the beer. 'I've cried too much already.'

'Are you so unhappy?'

I looked at him, at his face formed for gentleness, and knew that should I speak, he would say,
I am sorry for your suffering but, but, but.

'This is to do with Botts,' Ferris said.

There was a strickle in my bag. I pressed sand into it and then scoured my sickle, cleaning off the sap and setting a new edge.

He watched the blade clear into brightness. 'Could you handle a scythe?'

'Not on this uneven ground.' I took up the sickle again, held the coarse grass and cropped it in one move.

Ferris smiled. 'You're a good reaper.'

'I'm your dancing bear, that's what I am.' I cut again, more clumsily. 'Botts knew it.'

My friend waited while I got his harvest in for him.

'We will not visit Cheapside,' I went on. 'Come the season, there'll be urgent business in hand. I begin to know you.'

'You've known me some time,' said Ferris. 'We never agreed I would give up my life to you.'

The others were all far away in the field.

'I gave you mine,' I said. 'You will say, you never asked it.' He nodded, and I laid down the sickle. 'Ferris. You said you belonged to me.'

'You know what that meant.' He touched my foot. 'It still holds, I want none other.’ Then, with a flash of anger, 'You talk as if it were me pulling away from you, and not the other way round. Be straight with me, Jacob. If you want to leave I'll give you half the money chest. Or you can stay with Aunt until—'

'Until I marry Becs?' The grass stalks blurred beneath my eyes.

'I might be her husband now, only you wrote to me begging — begging—'

I could not go on.

'I did, I begged you to come to my bed,' he said gently. 'But not to direct my life.'

'Once I came to you my life
was —
directed. Your aunt's offer was all I had.'

'I don't wish you to leave!' he cried. 'All I say is, I will give you money if
you
wish. Should you want to go back and marry Becs, well, I would make it worth her while.'

'You wouldn't care?' I stopped cutting and sat down the better to see his face.

'I would suffer crucifixion, Jacob,' he said slowly and emphatically, 'but I wouldn't keep you from her if that was what you wanted.'

We were silent a while. He took my hand, and after glancing round him bent his head to kiss the palm. I began to feel better.

'Shall we go to the field tonight?’ he asked.

I nodded.

He went on, more hesitantly, 'When we lie together - then - you know, then, how I love you?'

'I know.' It was as he said, he belonged to me. I wished I could share his vision of the future, for it must be a dazzling one, to curb such hunger.