the maltese angel (54 page)

He, too, now felt in need of the physical support of the barn wall, and he stood there for a full minute, his head back against the overlapping slats, his eyes tightly closed. And then he actually jumped as a voice to his side said quietly, "Carl."

"Oh! Miss Jessie. You startled me."

"Carl, is ... is it true? I heard ... I heard it all. I was just at the corner coming round." She could have added, 'as clearly as I heard you and Patsy through the slats of what was the old barn years ago. "

But when he bowed his head and made no answer, she muttered, "Oh dear Lord! What next? This house is indeed doomed. But ... but Carl' she clutched his arm 'about you leaving and going to Lady Lydia's.

Oh, please! Please, don't do that. Never leave . I mean, I just

couldn't bear it. " Her voice was breaking now and she didn't say why she really couldn't bear it, but she added, " To be left here with him alone. No! No! I would have no-one. Janie, I have lost her. I know I've lost her already. I lost her years ago, first to . to that man in the Hall, and now to his mother. And if you went .. "

"There, there. There, there." He patted her hand where it still lay on his arm and as he looked into her tear-stained face he felt an ache in his heart for her, for he well knew of her feelings and her

awareness of the hopelessness of them. And so by way of comfort he said, "I'll . I'll not go as ... as long as I can stick it out. And anyway' he forced himself to smile 'where would I find anyone to help Patsy as you have. You've been wonderful with her and she appreciates it. As for me, I'll never be able to thank you enough."

"Thank me enough?" She turned away now from him, her lips rubbing one over the other.

"You to thank me when, as you said, Patsy's accident was due entirely to Father?" Turning slowly about and facing him again, she asked, "Has this ever been a happy house, Carl? Can you remember?"

He seemed to consider for a moment, then said, "It was a long time ago, shortly after your mother came, before things began to happen from the village. But when she died ... well, I think all happiness went with her, at least for him. And yet there were times in your early

childhood when you and Angela romped and played with him."

"I ... I can never remember romping or playing with him. Angela used to, but not me. All I can remember of my childhood is feeling lost.

Needing someone, wanting someone to love me. " She brought her eyes fully on to his now, and in a very low voice, she ended, " But you know all about that, don't you? "

She turned away and walked briskly along by the barn and retraced her steps to the cottage, and there, to her surprise, she found Janie. And she expressed her surprise by saying, "Well! that was a short visit."

Janie was bending down warming her hands at the fire when she said,

"Lady Lydia was away. She won't be back until tomorrow. She's gone to see Mr. Gerald."

"I thought she only went once a month, and she visited him last week, didn't she?"

"Yes. Yes, she did." She straightened up now and turned and looked directly at Jessie as she said, "Perhaps they've sent for her to bring him home. Perhaps he's well enough." She stopped herself from adding,

"And you wouldn't like that, would you, Auntie Jessie?" Why, she was always asking herself, did her Auntie Jessie not like Mr. Gerald? She knew that she had been disturbed when she heard that he was being

brought back from France. She also knew that she had been relieved when she found out he was to be kept in a hospital, not for wounded men, but for those that were sick in the head. She herself could never imagine Mr. Gerald going sick in the head. To her, he had always

appeared so sensible and wise.

Jessie said now, "I'll have to go over shortly and help Patsy with the meal; Mrs. McNabb has gone to the Victory Tea in the Hollow." Then she added in a querulous tone, "They've all gone mad with their Victory Tea. I'll leave your meal out for you."

"I can see to it myself. Auntie Jessie. You know I can."

"Very well, very well, see to it yourself." She half turned away, then paused a moment before she said, "By the way, what's this talk about Lady Lydia turning the place into a farm?"

As this was absolute news to Janie, she just stared at Jessie, which only made her aunt snap, "All right! All right! If you've been told not to say anything. But don't tell me you don't know anything about it, when Carl says he's been approached. I think it's very bad of her ladyship, anyway, to try to take another person's men ... staff. And I would tell her that if I met up with her." And on this she flounced round and went into the kitchen.

Lady Lydia starting a farm, and asking Carl to go and man it? Lady Lydia hasn't got any money. They had talked about it only yesterday.

She herself had suggested how good it would be if they could engage two or three

men to get the land back into shape for when Mr. Gerald came home, and what had Lady Lydia said? Her income was just enough to keep the house going, pay its rates and Nancy. What money she had received from the military for housing them she had put away for Mr. Gerald, because he had been given no actual pay, no money for the work he had done during the war years, which had struck her as being very odd, because even the wounded men in the Hollow got some kind of a pension. And in a way Mr. Gerald had been wounded. She must get to the bottom of

this. She must see Carl.

She waited until she knew that Jessie would have reached the house, then she bundled herself into her coat and woolly hat and went out.

She found Carl in the cow shed and now, leaning towards him where he was lifting a pail of milk away from a cow, she whispered, "Can I speak to you?"

Laughing at her, he whispered back, "Any time, any time. But it'll cost you." Then straightening up, he said, "Come on into the dairy.

What is it? "

She didn't answer him until he had finished pouring the milk into the cooler, and then she said, "Auntie Jessie has just said something very odd to me. It is that you have been approached by Lady Lydia to start a farm."

She watched him now take his broad hat and pull it slowly down over his face; and then he said, "Oh dear me!"

"Is it true?"

"No, my dear, it isn't true' he was bending down to her and whispering

'you see, I got so mad with your ... grandfather' he always hesitated when naming the man's relationship to her 'that I threatened him I would walk out. And when he pooh-pooh ed the idea that I could ever make a living outside this place, I thought of you and your chatter about the small holding and what could be done there when Mr. Gerald came back ... that was before he well, went into hospital. And it just came out. I said I had been approached. And you

know something? " He wagged his finger at her.

"They've got enough land there and facilities to start a little farm of their own. I've thought that time and time again. A few men and a bit of money behind them and I wouldn't mind doing it."

"It's a pity Lady Lydia hasn't got that kind of money, for then you could start. But ... but then what would become of this place?

Everyone knows it's really your farm. "

"Oh, no, no. I've kept it going. I give myself that much credit. But it isn't my farm. And as you know, I'm supposed to have a half-share in it when he goes. But I'd give that up tomorrow if ... if I could work, if we could all work under happier conditions. You know what I mean?"

She stared at him for a moment before she nodded her head, saying,

"Yes, Carl. Yes, I know what you mean."

He shook his head and then said softly, "Of course, of course. I know, lass. Yes, I know. Your years here have been tough going too. You

know, when I look at you I can't believe you're still only fourteen.

You've got a head on your shoulders that many a one hasn't at twenty.

It isn't fair. " He put his hand on her cheek now, then patted it as he added, " And it isn't fair either, no, it isn't, that you've had no childhood, no girlhood. "

"I don't mind not having any childhood. As for girlhood, I don't feel like a girl, Carl." She turned her head away now as she said, "I passed some girls on the road a while back. They were chatting and talking and laughing before they came up to me. Apparently they had left school; they looked fourteen, but they sounded so silly. They were like ... well, I really hadn't anyone to compare them with, but I knew they weren't like me, or me like them. And ... and as I passed them they all stopped and stared at me as if I was something strange."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I suppose I am. Yes, I suppose I am."

"Don't say that, dear, don't say that. Now don't say that. You're a normal, lovely-looking girl, and, with another few years on you you'll be a spanker."

She smiled at him now, saying, "You know what I did when they stood like stocks? I stepped past them and then turned quickly and went, "

Boo! boo! " And they scattered like frightened rabbits. And you know--' Both her expression and her tone now altered: I should have laughed, but I couldn't. I just felt sad, like I did, you know, when I told you last year about that old man whom I'd seen standing by a stile a number of times. And ... and when he came up to me he looked as if he was about to cry; then he said, " Hello, dear. " You remember?"

"Yes. Yes, I remember."

"You still don't know who it was?"

His tongue moved in and out of his mouth before he said, "No. No. I never found out. And anyway, he wasn't there any more, was he?"

"No, I never saw him again."

No. No, you wouldn't, he thought. Poor old Mr. Mason, the man whose family had been torn asunder by this child's grandfather. His daughter was still in the asylum, his eldest son was God knows where, and his wife had died of a broken heart, and he was left with one son on a farm that had once been prosperous. The old man had likely wanted to see the child who could be his granddaughter: it was more likely that his son, not one of the others, would have been the first to take her

mother, for his feelings for Ward Gibson had been those of real hate.

He said now, "Is there any news of Mr. Gerald coming home?"

Shaking her head, she said, "Not this year anyway. Perhaps next, Lady Lydia says."

"Do you know what is really wrong with him?"

"No; only that he is not wounded; he won't talk. And you know, that's very odd because he used to like to

talk, as I do. " She smiled at him now.

"I always want to jabber, but I never really do until I get to the Hall."

"And you jabber a lot there?" He was smiling widely at her.

"Oh yes. Lady Lydia seems to like me to jabber. But--' Her tone altered, as did her expression, as she said soberly, " But I like to jabber sensibly. You know what I mean? When I once said that to Lady Lydia she laughed until the tears ran down her face, and she said,

"Never stop; never stop jabbering sensibly." I . I like Lady Lydia,"

and she immediately added emphatically, " More than like her. " And on this she turned and walked away.

And again Carl stood thinking, Yes, the girl had to more than like someone, and someone to more than like her in return. Jessie

undoubtedly loved her but she couldn't like her because she didn't really know whom she was liking; in fact, whom she was loving: to her, the child must always have been a triplet of evil.

"How's the pain, love?"

"Oh, I hardly feel it when I'm lying down. My chest's worse than any other part of me."

"Well, that's your own fault. You're stuck in that draughty

kitchen."

"Don't be silly." She slapped at his hand.

"Draughty kitchen indeed!

What about the draughty dairy. That's where I got it in the first

place. " Then, drawing in a painful breath, she said, " It's going to be some Christmas. "

"Never mind about Christmas. Mrs. McNabb has everything in hand in that quarter, and Miss Jessie will see to the rest."

"There's another one that should be in bed. She looks utterly tired."

"Well," said Carl, 'it isn't with work so much as with worry. "

"Do you think there's any truth in what Rob says, that he's sure he saw Pete Mason?"

"I don't know, but I don't think so. Anyway, would he recognise him after nearly fifteen years? There'll always be rumours about him and his whereabouts. Remember, he was supposed to have been killed in the war a good way of getting rid of him. Then, just a few months ago, that he had absconded from the Army. Anyway, from what Mike said, Rob was tight on the night he was supposed to have seen him."

"It's a terrifying thought. I can understand Miss Jessie worrying because of janie

"Oh, I couldn't see him doing anything to her ... well, you know--' He lifted his hand expressively; then changing his tone, he said, " Never mind them; it's

you that's worrying me. Now you've got to make up your mind to stay there, not for a few days but, as Doctor Patten said, for a couple of weeks or more. " Then bending over her, he added, " Why don't you do what he says, love, and go to one of those hospitals. They do

wonders.

Well, the war has given them practice. They've got fellas walking who thought it would never be possible to put their feet on the ground again. And anyway, they could rig you up with one of these corsets,"

he said.

"Yes. Yes, dear, I've heard of them, and what I've heard I don't think I'll bother. Now listen to me. I'm all right. I'll ... I'll do what I'm told." She gasped again, saying now, "I have no other choice.

Anyway, I was managing fine on my wooden legs until this hit me. " She stabbed her chest.

"I've had bronchitis before but never as bad as this. Now get about your business, Mr. McQueen, and leave me to mine, which is reading the paper. By!" She flicked the newspaper that was lying on top of the counterpane, saying, "The way they're preparing for Christmas in some places, you'd think there had never been a war.

They seem to have forgotten half the houses will have no man to play Santa Claus, or to see in the New Year. Oh yes; it'll be merry and bright, but just for some. "