Theirs Was The Kingdom (30 page)

2

She identified the acrid stink before she had topped the long, tree-sown ridge that was the watershed between their own river and its little tributary, the Linney, beyond which, in a cutaway beside the stream, lay Dewponds, the Fawcett place, a neat if sprawling farmhouse, as old as Tryst but hedged around with a gimcrack assortment of barns, sheds, and huts, enclosing the midden yard on three sides.

The smell was that of burning timber, distinct from the autumn bonfire smell that hung over most hollows at this time of year but tinged with something else, a smell that called to mind burning fat or overcooked meat, the smell of a joint a careless cook had popped in the oven and forgotten.

She thought it curious, but her mind was far too occupied to do more than record it until. As she crested the rise, she could look down into the horseshoe curve of the Linney and see the great cloud of smoke that hung over the dell, a cloud drifting her way, so that it made her nostrils twitch and her eyes smart. She understood then that something was sadly amiss down there, possibly a rick fire, for the summer had been a dry one and already several local ricks had gone up, one as near as Button’s Farm, between Tryst and Twyforde Green. She gave the cob a flick with her crop and trotted on down the hill, heading straight into the dense, grey-blue smoke and as she neared the first of the barns she was aware of a harsh, crackling sound and a confused scurrying to and fro near the farmhouse, together with a continuous hum of voices broken by sharp, isolated shouts and the clank of a pump handle screaming for a drop of oil.

She pulled up fifty yards short of the place, hitching the cob to a gate and hurrying forward into the smoke cloud. What she saw there drove all thoughts of Stella out of her mind.

Dewponds farmhouse, and its adjoining cow byres, were ablaze from end to end, blue and crimson flames licking the full length of the thatched and gabled roof, with a shower of blazing straw drifting down on to the thatched roof of an adjoining building, part stable, part hay loft. Even as she watched, the byre roof took fire with a soft, sustained puff and people about her began to shout and run across one another’s paths with clanking buckets and ladders and firebrooms that were obviously inadequate to deal with an outbreak of this extent.

Then, milling about outside the byre, she saw another group, including two women whom she recognised as the wife and elder daughter of Fawcett, and this party were surrounding a hurdle supporting something shrouded in folds of sacking.

The outcry around her was continuous now, swelled by the scream of horses and the bellow of cows, with here a farm dog yapping and scampering and there a terrified hen fluttering madly about the feet of a queue of men prancing around the pump.

She ran across to Mrs. Fawcett and reached out to touch her shoulder, but then she saw the woman was hysterical, and being forcibly held back by her daughter Ruth, a girl about a year younger than Denzil, who seemed determined to prevent her mother from approaching the hurdle. At one end of the litter was Denzil, his heavy features drawn and in his eyes an expression of despair. At the other was a farmhand, crying, “Get her clear! Tak’ her out o’ here, for Christ’s sake!” and the desperate appeal in his voice caused Henrietta to glance down at the stretcher and recognise Stephen Fawcett, the skin on his face oddly bleached and taut where the beard and whiskers had been and every hair gone from his head. Denzil saw her then, just as Ruth succeeded in heaving her mother clear, and called, “You got your gig, Mrs. Swann? The doctor! We got to get him to the doctor…”

She pointed down the road to the spot where she had tethered the cob and he nodded, shouting something to the farmhand who shifted his grasp on the hurdle and fell in behind him, with Henrietta following until they were clear of the smoke, although they could still hear the frightful clamour of the firefighters and the steady creak of the pump handle.

She said, as they lifted the shrivelled thing into the gig, “He’s dead, Denzil… you must realise he’s dead.” The boy said, “Yes, ma’am, I know. It was mother who didden. I tried me best to stop him but he would go into the byre. His herd was tethered there and he’s bin half a lifetime raisin’ ’em. But what’s the good of it now, with him burned to a cinder in front o’ my eyes and hers?”

The farmhand took charge then, settling the dead man on his back and making shift to straighten the limbs. Fawcett’s heavy boots protruded from the open door of the little vehicle, so the man took a horse-blanket from the seat and covered the face and the upper part of the body. He said, with a curse, “Happened in a flash. One minnit I see a trailer o’ smoke, nex’ the whole buddy roof’s ablaze. Will you bide with him, lad, while I go after the animals, if there’s more to be got out?” The young man nodded and then shook his head violently, as though to deny the finality of death. Slowly and absently he rubbed the back of his hand where a wisp of blazing thatch had settled, inflicting a small, wedge-shaped burn.

He said, woodenly, “You think of this happening. You know it does happen from time to time. But then it happens to you an’ somehow you can’t… can’t think what to do first, where to run, who to look to! I better get back. Dick’s right. Maybe there’s time to get the rest o’ the herd clear. That well’s so low on account o’ the drought…” Then, looking at her with a kind of baffled anger, “He
is
dead, isn’t he? I mean, it’d be no use rushing him over to Doctor Birtles?”

“I’m sure he’s dead, Denzil. But you’d best check. Or I will… if you wish it.”

“God, no, ma’am, I’ll do it!” He was himself again, and she had time to appraise his strength and the tremendous effort he brought to controlling himself as he turned the blanket down, peeled away the charred remains of the flannel shirt, and laid a hand on his father’s heart. He said, replacing the blanket, “I’ll fetch Ruth then…”

“No, Denzil. Your mother needs Ruth. Where will they go, tonight? Would they like to come to Tryst? They’d be very welcome and she’ll need looking after.”

“Maisie’s here,” he said, “and Art Wilkins, her husband, who’s got the place over at Nine Oaks. It’s nearer and I reckon she’d feel better among her own folks.”

He hesitated a moment longer, torn between staying with his father and making the attempt to save more of his stock. Filial obligations won. He said, slowly, “Lookit, Mrs. Swann… would you go back and tell mother and Ruth, and ask her to tell Art to take charge. I can’t leave him. Someone has to bide with him and I reckon it should be me, seeing I’m eldest. Will you do that, while I find a place to lay him? Somewhere well clear of it?”

She nodded, walking back towards the yard and thinking how trivial her own troubles were compared with the desolation that had engulfed the Fawcetts in a moment of time. She had another thought then, as she hurried past the string of firefighters, and heard that Mrs. Fawcett and her daughter Ruth had gone into the copse behind the farm. It was how Denzil Fawcett had looked as he had made his decision and how much, in some ways, he reminded her of Adam. Especially Adam in a moment of peril.

She did what she had to do and came down into the yard again. Other people had gathered now and two groups were using the water in the horse trough and the duckpond to fight the flames. The roof beams of the farmhouse had crashed down, thousands of sparks shooting into the pall of smoke that overhung the entire dell. Some of the horses must have been saved, for she saw men blinding them with sacks and trying to quieten them over by the hen house.

The extent of the desolation staggered her, with two sides of the group of buildings in smouldering ruins and the animals setting up an unceasing din. There was nothing more she could do, however, so she went out through the gate and down the path beside the river, looking for Denzil and the gig but not seeing him anywhere. She thought, briefly, “I’ll walk back. He’ll need the gig and the cob for his mother…” and tackled the ascent that led up to the chestnut wood where she paused, looking down into the clearing now completely obscured by two great columns of smoke, but lit on the underside by the pulsing glow of flames.

She found Stella in the hall, listlessly tidying some of the litter the children had left there and said, shortly, “Come into the sewing room, Stella. I’ve something to tell you. Something very important!” and the girl looked at her wide-eyed, her glance travelling from smutted face to her ash-stained skirt and dust-coated boots. She said nothing, however, but followed her mother into the room that gave on to the hall, one hand lifting the folds of her grey skirt, the other raised distractedly to her mass of coppery hair. Henrietta said, “I was over at Dewponds. They’ve had a dreadful disaster there. A fire has destroyed the house and killed poor Mr. Fawcett,” and she saw the girl catch her breath, thinking “She’s not so far gone that she can’t be shocked by someone else’s troubles…” and waited.

Stella said, after a pause, “
Dead
, you say?” and then, “Just… just
Mr.
Fawcett?” And the query told Henrietta what she wanted to know, that Denzil’s grief would be hers and that this, in a way, was important.

“Just Mr. Fawcett. I left the gig and cob with Denzil. His mother and sisters are going to the son-in-law’s place at Nine Oaks. But he’ll be staying on to see what he can do with all that’s left of the place. I’m exhausted and had to come away. Tell Stillman to harness up the waggonette and then drive on over there, with blankets, food, and some of Alexander’s clothes. Denzil’s clothes are in tatters.”

“You mean me? Me go to Dewponds?”

“Why not? He was kind to you once. I don’t know how you would have managed without him. Besides, we’re neighbours, and what are neighbours for?”

She watched the girl narrowly, trying to assess the impact the news had made on her, and it looked as though something in Stella’s mind had surfaced and was floundering about seeking an anchorage. Stella said, at length, “I’ll see to the waggonette. You and Phoebe sort out some things. Shall I take Stillman with me?”

“No, go by yourself. Denzil won’t want all and sundry intruding on his grief. I know I wouldn’t. Stay there as long as he wants you. I’ll wait up until midnight, and the rest of us will go over and give a hand in the morning. I don’t want to alarm the children.”

She went out then before Stella could change her mind, and ten minutes later she was helping Phoebe to load the waggonette with things Denzil might need: a kettle and a tureen full of cold stew, a jacket and trousers that Alex had left behind, and a pile of blankets. Stella climbed on the box and drove off without a word, and Henrietta watched the vehicle jolt down the drive and turn right in the direction of the wood. Seeing it disappearing behind the fir coppice, she thought, “Who knows? It might work. Something wholesome might come out of that stinking ruin over the hill…” and turned back into the house, too tired and shocked to eat the cold supper the girl laid for her.

3

Stella saw Denzil crossing the deserted, rubble-strewn yard with big, ponderous strides, his smudged and scorched shirt sticking to his shoulder, chin lowered, eyes on the cobbles under his feet. She called, “Denzil!” and he looked up sharply, staring at her as though he doubted her presence, but then he changed direction and looked from her to the back of the waggonette piled with replacements, then back again.

“You! Is your mother back, Miss Stella?”

“No, I’m alone. Mother said I was to bring things you might need. Where is everyone? Surely they didn’t leave you…?”

“Mother and the girls have gone to Nine Oaks. The hands are seeing to the animals, those we managed to save. We’ve put them all in the big pound behind the wood. There’s water an’ feed there, enough until morning.”

“Your father…?”

“He’s in the sawmill down the road. He’ll bide there until they come for him,” and suddenly his face crumpled like a child’s, tears began to course down his filthy cheeks, and his body slumped so that he had to steady himself against the shafts. She was beside him in seconds and her arm went round his shoulders. She said, passionately, “Don’t mind, Denzil! Don’t mind me! Who wouldn’t weep for it all… your father—everything you’ve worked for burned and spoiled and ruined!”

He braced himself then and looked down at her with a kind of wonder, his hand uplifted to his cheek where the tears had driven two furrows in a thick film of ash. He looked, she thought, no older than young Hugo, her brother, after a storm of tears and temper following a rebuke or disappointment.

“Listen,” she said, “listen to me, just a moment, Denzil. You’ll build it up again, all of it, and you’ll restock too, sooner than you think. Everyone about here will help, the way your people always helped others when they needed it. And I’ll help too if you want me, in any way I can. You can’t do anything more tonight. Let me get the stove going in the piggery. That’s not burned, is it? You need to wash and change and by the time you’ve done that I’ll have the stew ready. No… no, don’t argue! I came here to help and God knows you need help, don’t you? Just as I did, the night I found you in the lambing hut.”

She led the horse through the gate and round behind the only wing of the farm left standing, a long, slate-roofed building, housing pigpens and nesting-boxes, with a little store at the far end fitted with a copper they used for boiling pig-feed and hen-mash in winter. He followed her wordlessly, watching her gather scraps of paper and sticks to light the fire, after putting the stewpot inside the copper that was well scoured and hadn’t been used since the spring. She noted how clean everything was, even in here, an old shed adjoining a piggery, and thought bitterly, “It would have to happen to him. He and his father tended this holding like a couple of fussy old maids,” but then, seeing the fire blaze up, she told him to fetch Alexander’s clothes, throw away his half-burned shirt and corduroys, and wash himself under the pump while she foraged around at the back of the caved-in scullery and rescued an enamel dish, a tin bowl, and one pewter spoon.