Ulverton Page 2

  They would come to some arrangement. It was the property that was the issue as much as the sin of two husbands. Anne had been that keen to marry, the old parson had done something clever with the parchments. Gabby was dead or as good as, we all agreed. Anne had wanted kiddies like food and drink. The farm was no good to anyone. Thomas Walters had happened along and helped her out on both accounts, it seemed. Although she had lost each babby as it came.

  I held the shutter hard against my cheek so it would not flap about and stir them. I was afraid of Thomas Walters. He was a big man with a big nose and drank. His bottom teeth closed over his top. His hat covered his forehead. He had five brothers. He laughed at the Execution when we heard of it. There’s still respect.

  But no one spoke, that was true. It was like they were listening for the right way, like in church over the rustle of skirts and a child’s coughing and the babbies. Listening for the Word that would tell them the right way. As I was listening with the wood of the shutter dark with soot against my cheek. And I think now that over the cold and the wind came the voice that told them, but it was not God’s voice, and Gabby never heard it.

  My page was on nightwatch but Ruth was asleep when I came back. We slept apart. She had it in her head that it was a sin to sleep together after child-bearing was over. Even in winter. I am a pious man and nodded when she told me. That night I cried. That was twenty years before I spied on the day Gabby came back.

  Why I say this is that my thoughts then were running on marriage, and how it is only for child-bearing in the eyes of God, but in my mind it is working out a love that is caught like a ram in brambles and must be cut free only by the hand of Death. Or it will tear something from you.

  And while I lay rustling around in my wakefulness staring at the thatch or my dreams (to close my eyes is always to see the same as when they are open on the downland) I thought how Gabby was paying for his tearing away into soldiering, despite the fact of its love for God, and fighting for the kingdom of God on earth.

  But I was lonely as Gabby. I cried that night, too. Ruth breathed through her nose in her sleep and I thought she didn’t care for me save to bring the master’s coins and have a roof over our heads. I thought of all the times we tried to make children together and I could remember each time, and how it was good.

  She was afeared of bearing. I delivered our girl when old Win Oadam called out to me and it came out legs first like a lamb but not with the head between the legs so I was worrited but the babby was a good one. Ruth on all fours like a ewe and my hand warm inside her. Our girl lived three years.

  I was not like some men and agreed to touch her no more and turned my thoughts stronger to God and to the flock and lambing and so on. The fashion began about then to breed new types and my master made me observe the fashion. His sheep, I might say, are some of the strongest in the county.

  I remembered how warm she was in the nakedness of Eve. Would Gabby be thinking now of Anne in the same way and her under the same roof with Thomas Walters next to her flesh? Would she be praying for forgiveness? Would Gabby claim the farm for his own? Would Thomas Walters leave as he ought in the eyes of God, that always watch from the clouds or the stars?

  No wonder I never slept that night!

  Now it happened that a shepherd belonging to the Hall had an accident and was laid up all that week and a boy ran up to ask if I could go over and see to a ewe who had slinked and was in trouble, the first lamb of that year and dead. I left my page to watch the flock with one of the dogs and took the upper road to the fold that was a little past Gabby’s farm (as I thought of it). The road across Frum took me in sight of the place I had spied into two days back. No one had seen Gabby, though everyone in the village knew he had returned. Gabby’s farm was far enough out that no one dared have a look lest bad things were afoot and they would be party to it. Some said Anne had taken both men into her bed because after the third bearing she would not be churched until the magistrates fined her into it, and then she entered in her farm boots that stank the place out. Others said that all this proved she was sickly in her mind after the babby died.

  I pulled the lamb out but the ewe was torn and I used a knife on her windpipe and they gave me a side of pork for my trouble. On the way back I stopped on the crest where the upper road runs between the sarsens and gives a good view of the farm. It was bitter up there, and the ewe’s blood was still under my nails. The smoke from the farm swung across the coomb over the five elms that seemed to be hiding the thatch like a secret. Then I thought, why not go in and call on Gabby.

  Why I thought this was because I would not be out that way for a long time and I could say in honesty I was passing. I could even share a slice of pork as I knew for a fact that two mouths to feed were two too many on that farm and three were famine, as Thomas Walters had lost his ploughing at Stiff’s.

  My heart beat bad as I walked down and the tussocks were hard with frost. The snowdrops were half-closed, I remember, so it was well after noon, but not yet dark.

  The dogs fretted at their chains. They were thin as empty sacks and slavered terrible. The yard was hard as rock. Anne was at the door looking out with a face in a storm. I tapped my hat with my crook at some distance and said how I was passing on the way back from lambing for the Hall. She said nothing but tightened her shawl and nodded me inside.

  It was hardly warmer in there as I remember. The wood was damp I suppose and it was all smoke. At first I saw nothing but the window with the sacking over it but then I made out the trestle and behind the trestle Thomas Walters, chewing bread.

  He was always a lazy man.

  I swung the pork onto a stool and stood in front of the fire, such as it was. I could see then the parlour window and wondered if I had moved the wheel and prayed for forgiveness in my thoughts.

  ‘Pork?’ said Thomas Walters.

  Anne was patting butter so the cows feed well, I thought. She patted and put her hair back as it swung down from under her shawl. She was a handsome woman, even then.

  ‘Been up at the Hall. Ewe were slinking. I thought as you would like some.’

  No sign of Gabby.

  ‘Spirit of the Commonwealth, shepherd?’ said Thomas Walters, chewing his bread like a cud. You could hear his top teeth hitting the back of his bottom teeth, like fire-irons.

  ‘Don’t know as it’s that,’ I said, smiling all the way.

  Thomas Walters grunted, and mopped his bowl.

  Anne spoke.

  ‘We have enough,’ she said. ‘Thank’ee.’

  As more of the room lightened with accustoming it felt as if Gabby had never been there. No red tunic, no laugh, no smell of powder. No bag.

  ‘I thought as you had more now to feed, perhaps,’ I said, as best I could.

  Anne looked up smartly. Thomas Walters stopped his bread at his mouth and it stayed there.

  The fire went on coughing like a sick child.

  ‘How do you mean?’ Anne said.

  ‘He met me coming down. When was it … two days, first light. Hadn’t seen a fighting man since they cleared our church of idolatry last spring. Don’t seem a year ago do it? You can smoke that pork like they did the Virgin. Didn’t see no wrong in her.’

  The teeth began clacking again, but slowly.

  ‘Seems you be talking about deserters,’ said Thomas Walters.

  Pat, pat went the butter, but faster.

  ‘Wars are over,’ I said. ‘The kingdom of God on earth is at hand. Though it can’t save an early lamb or its mother. Bitter, bitter.’

  ‘William,’ she said, ‘you are taking the heat.’

  I shifted myself to the side and sat on a log, which was indeed damp, with all the cold of the woods still in it.

  Thomas Walters looked at the log as if it were the very throne of Charles.

  ‘Look sharpish, Thomas, and get the man a cup,’ Anne said.

  Thomas Walters was not happy.

  ‘He’s here on prying business,’ he said.

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sp; I sniffed hard, and rubbed my hands with the blood still under the nails, and the gloves frayed at the big knuckles, that now hang from a nail by my hearth as a remembrance of those times and my work. I can see them now, about the cup in that cold mean place, after Thomas Walters had tipped the pot of ale and handed one to me.

  It was well nigh water, in fact. But warm.

  ‘He’s gone,’ she said.

  Thomas Walters’s hand shook so as the pot rattled on the hook as he put it back over the smoke.

  I wiped my mouth and thought a bit.

  ‘That’s as I thought,’ I said. Though it wasn’t.

  ‘Indeed?’ said Thomas Walters.

  He stood in front of the fire picking his teeth.

  ‘Poor lad,’ I said, and drank.

  ‘Well, he’s gone, and that’s an end on it,’ said Anne. I thought the butter might be patted to nothing, she went at it so quick.

  ‘We were friends once,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed?’ said Thomas Walters. ‘Then you might have knocked the sense out of him p’raps. You shepherds.’

  ‘I knew your father,’ said I.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Droving the flock with that great stick of his. Great hazel stick he’d near poke your eye out with.’

  Thomas Walters smiled, without his eyes. He was the spit of his father. But his father had decent eyes, saving the drink swilling around in them. Neglect, as I reckon, made the son Thomas Walters was. The man that stood there, smiling.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you won’t be needing so much pork then.’

  ‘I know what you’re about, shepherd. You’ll go get chilblains sitting where you oughtn’t. He had no right to assume.’

  Anne looked at him as one claps up a dog that’s growling out on the steal.

  The question is, was I the deer or the keeper?

  I chuckled to myself at the thought, and both looked fit to hang me.

  Well, I wasn’t staying. Gabby had gone and that was a fact. He might never have returned. I stood up and wiped my mouth and lifted the pork onto my shoulder.

  ‘Thank’ee for the ale,’ I said. ‘These are mean times. Maybe we’ll have a bit more sharing out of things now the church is whitewashed and the King in his coffin. Though I’ll miss the dancing myself. Keeps a man warm.’

  Thomas Walters nodded the smallest nod I have ever seen. Anne bit her lip fit to bleed. Some said she was growing to be a witch. Well, since Maud had gone head first into the chalk by the north yew they had to have someone to blame all on.

  At the door I said:

  ‘With them rings from Ireland he’ll set hisself up alright, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Rings?’ said Thomas Walters, sharpish.

  I knew that would hook him. I turned to look at the yard. The thatch was touching the cows’ backs off the shelter, it was that sagged.

  ‘That’s what he counted his love with. Pillaging. He shook the General’s hand. We all took him for dead. And all the time he were thinking of us waiting, and how he’d afford new thatch for the shelter, and the barn. But he’ll set hisself up alright, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  I left then as one leaves a night on the downs full of its silence, that is pushing something terrible at your back which you don’t turn round to for fear of seeing it.

  I heard steps behind me and I was halfway across the yard.

  It was Anne. She was panting. The cows followed her, nudging. She held herself tight and looked up at me, fierce but frighted.

  ‘What rings?’ she said.

  Thomas Walters was in the door, in the shadows.

  I shrugged as a man does when he is at the fair and offered a low price.

  ‘What rings?’ she said, real fierce.

  The poor cows were nudging her but she was stone, like.

  ‘I’d say he brought them back for you and the farm. He’ll be a sad man but it’s no one’s doing. He was a boy. He fought for the kingdom of God on earth, and shook General Cromwell’s hand. He’ll set hisself up.’

  ‘He had nothing,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing. And he never did. He was never good for anything but what he went and done. He left me,’ she said, and she was shivering.

  ‘He did,’ I said. I made to move but she held my arm like a jaw round a bone.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, between her teeth, that were half of them gone already, and she only thirty or so.

  She was nevertheless a handsome woman.

  I thought of telling Ruth but I didn’t. She would only grumble that it was none of my business and there would be trouble. So I watched her go to sleep that night after prayers without talking, as we sometimes did, both staring at the thatch above our beds and wondering in between the words how we would fare when the other went under and there was only the rats rustling, not a body you had touched. We never talked that night and I didn’t tell her.

  Then the lambing started and I were sleeping out, but I thought of Gabby all through the lambing. He had left a silence where I heard my own whispering, that was many things going round and round in my head. I took up a Bible and heard the parson’s words as I read because I couldn’t read the letters, but always the whispering came on the wind and the taste of bitterness like the smoke that would blow sometimes out of the coomb across my scarp. And I shook my head but the whispering grew louder. I thought I might be going mad like half the old shepherds went up there all on their own.

  I thought of how he had shook hands with General Cromwell in all the smoke and all the women and children of Drogheda spilled like empty sacks that Gabby had helped empty. And I saw Ruth among them, I don’t know why. She had her legs wide open like the times we made a babby or like a ewe ready for a ram. And there was General Cromwell shaking hands with Gabby and both smiling while Thomas Walters clacked his teeth together next to them and turned round and saw me looking on my damp log, and shot me.

  These were dreams but I was awake. I shook my head free of them and took to making dolls out of straw but always they had their legs wide open and they smiled like General Cromwell or Thomas Walters. And sometimes as I was lifting out a lamb I thought of Anne with my hand inside her which was really Ruth and the ewe kicking out its legs as the lamb came out in a slither, all new.

  It was on account of guilt, I reckoned, and one day in April I went to the church and left the boy with the flock and the church was empty. It still smelt of whitewash where all the old paintings had been covered over by the soldiers and the parson looking on nodding all the time, though he cried that night as I remember. I must say that I could remember all the paintings and when I looked at the white walls they were there anyway, particularly Noah and the funny old sheep that were clambering up in a pair to the only ship I had ever seen, rocking on those little blue waves that was the beginnings of the Flood, I suppose.

  I stood in the middle of the church and looked round slowly at the walls and saw all the paintings from Creation to Judgement Day, and in my mind heard the parson’s words, and the rim on my hat was fair crumpled up I was that nervous of talking with God in His house.

  But I knelt and the stone was cold and I thought of Gabby with my coat on him, shivering, I don’t know why. And I told God of my thoughts and fears and that if I was going mad to spare me with a quick dying. And I asked God if He could whitewash all my thoughts like the soldiers had covered over the old paintings that I had known as a boy and a man. But thoughts were not on walls but ran like deer and the smell of whitewash mocked me.

  The church whispered back my mumblings, and I was afraid lest someone might hear, and looked all about me. But it was deathly empty. I wished idolatrously for the statues and pictures still to be there, and the coloured glass they had broken through with poles and stones and their guns.

  All in one day, with the parson and some of the village cheering in the graveyard. But my thoughts would not be smashed and covered so easy. They were deer running through the forest, and I prayed hard t
hat God might save me.

  For I never thought of Gabby as leaving that farm. In all my thoughts I could not see him crossing the yard and knocking the noses of the cattle and striding up the hill with his rings sewn into his pocket, jingling. To set hisself up. I could not see that, however hard I furrowed my brows and bit my lip and sat silent with the bells and the wind all round me out on the scarp. And even in the empty church with its whitewash smell like old rivers I could not see him leaving the farm.

  And when I saw him there it was only through the parlour door with me shaky on a broken wheel and his arm shining with buttons in its red cloth. And the cloth would always run with blood as the arms did on that field after the business at Newberry when to walk across it was to lift clouds of flies from the arms.

  And there was Anne and Thomas Walters in the shadows, and Anne’s crumbling teeth round my arm like a dog’s that is mad, that was really her hand.

  So I shook my head and said that if there was blood that it should come out so as I could know my guilt in sending him down there into his judgement. And the church whispered back exactly my own words that I had said loud when there was a footstep behind me at the door and it was Anne, staring at me turned round to look at her.

  I shook my head but she didn’t go. There was mud on her boots from the rains. She walked into the middle and I stood with my heart swallowing itself.

  She was like the Virgin statue, with the hair all about her neck, and her hair crow-black and wet from the rains.

  She stood as still.

  ‘I’ll be going,’ I said, as best I could.

  ‘Not on account of me,’ she said. ‘You called me, did you know that?’

  She was a witch.

  ‘I was talking to God,’ I said, and made the sign of the cross.

  ‘Talk to me,’ she said, and she held my arm, but softly.

  ‘This is the house of God,’ I said, but didn’t take my arm away. I was afraid, and a little mad. She was panting and her coat was open.

  ‘William,’ she said.

  She began to cry.

  Frankly, she had a smell about her that was not healthy.