Читать книгу Land Of The Leal - James Barke - Страница 12

At the age of seven, Jean Gibson was a sturdy child well used to working in the fields of Craigdaroch, whether at singling turnips in summer or cutting the shaws from the turnips in early winter. In the winter of her seventh year the frosts were severe and the shawing of the turnips was a painful task.

Jean had inherited her father’s tremendous capacity for hard work. Old Jacob Scanlon, the field ganger, considered her by far the best worker in his gang of child labourers. As she was always willing and conscientious and worked as hard when he was looking as when he was not he had reason to be well pleased with her.

But Jean did not like old Jacob. He was sly and cunning and as crafty as an old dog. He was continually mumbling prayers and quoting Biblical texts. Jean, quick and alert, was not deceived by old Jacob’s holy pretences. She knew most of his tricks. He would come upon them quietly, sit down at the end of the drills, and, slowly filling his pipe, watch them from under his grey bushy eyebrows. At last he would light his pipe. But he did not throw away the match: he would quietly and surreptitiously stick it into a drill so that he might know exactly how much progress had been made when he came back.

It hadn’t taken long for Jean to discover this practice and, having discovered it, immediately to nullify its results. Coming to the end of a drill that Jacob had marked, she would pick out the match and throw it away. When Jacob came back she would quietly enjoy his obvious discomfort at failing to locate the match. He would become extremely irritable and mumble and pray and mutter about the wicked flourishing like the green bay tree. For old Jacob Scanlon who had lived as wicked and dissolute a life as his limited means and more limited time had allowed him in the prime days of his manhood had, towards his later days, become ‘converted’ while listening one market day to an evangelical service in Stranraer.

Jacob’s declining years were lonely. The doctrine of salvation came as a great comfort to him especially as it allowed him to dwell on the wickedness and sin in the world. The greatest sin was to fail to work hard enough for his master, Ned MacWhirrie. Jacob realised that as his years and the effectiveness of his labour were sadly declining, his master might well dispense with his services at any term day. As the term months, May and November, drew near he became especially anxious and worried day and night whether his master would engage him for another term or dispense with his services.

Undoubtedly Jacob had his worries at those periods. His mumbling and praying would become almost incessant while he drove the harder the children under his supervision.

It was on a morning of early November frost that he first realised to what extent Jean Gibson was a true child of her father’s loins.

He was on the second round that morning, about nine o’clock, when he got his eye on John MacMime. John was an illegitimate orphan. His mother, a milker on Cardow farm, had died with childbed fever and he had been brought up by his grandmother who, also widowed and childless, was still employed as a milker on Craigdaroch farm – not from any sentiment but since she was still, despite her years, one of the best milkers in the byre. As she had no family of her own to support, Craigdaroch paid her little enough: it was all the woman could do to keep her own body and soul together without considering her grandson’s.

John MacMime was regarded as a pitiful object of starvation and neglect. Had he been given sufficient nourishment he would have been of a health and strength above average: both his parents had been strong and healthy. The struggle between his frame and his flesh became dreadfully accentuated. He was pathetically and shamefully emaciated. On his pinched white face there was stamped a look of dumb and perplexed misery. It was a face that had never smiled. His heart had never known joy and his stomach had never been wholly free from the gnawing pangs of hunger.

He had just passed his fifth birthday and this winter was his first experience of the fields. But his three pence reward for a day’s work was sorely needed.

When Jacob Scanlon’s attention was first drawn to him he was wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his cold-blae hand. Immediately Jacob’s teeth were set on edge. A child cannot wipe away his tears with his hands and shaw turnips at the same time. Already the children were well advanced on their drills. Jean Gibson was actually coming down her second drill while he had completed no more than a quarter of his first.

Jean had also seen John MacMime crying. She knew the cause. He was the only child working in his bare feet. Every one else had some sort of foot protection – a pair of old boots or a pair of wooden clogs. The ground was iron bound with the frost. It took all the strength of her arm to wrest the turnips from the earth and the shaws with their frozen dew were like cut glass to the hand. Whereas she could pull her turnip out at the first wrench and cleave the shaw from the root with one blow from her iron snedder, John MacMime had to tug and tear till he freed his root and hack and slash with his knife till he separated the root from the shaw. The task was plainly beyond his under-nourished strength.

But John MacMime suffered most from his feet. The frost burned them dreadfully. There were hacks between his toes and the hacks bled. The backs of his hands were crisscrossed with small chaps and they too bled and smarted, while the turned-up cuffs of an old green-black adult’s jacket chafed painfully on them.

But this did not concern Jacob Scanlon. The boy was shirking his work, had actually stopped working to cry. Jacob counted on his presence driving him to activity. He would wait and watch and note how the boy responded.

As soon as the boy became conscious of the ganger’s presence he did make an attempt to overcome his pain and weakness.

The alert Jean was equally conscious that Jacob had got his eye on John MacMime and she feared for the boy. She had meant to forge ahead with her own drills so that she could lend a hand and bring him up in line with the others before the midday break. But she was apprehensive of the evil look that had settled on the ganger’s face.

The pain in John MacMime’s feet became terrible to bear. The frozen earth became an agony. In despair he took off his bonnet and placed it under his feet, not so much in hope of warmth as for protection from the sharp ground.

But this was too much for the ganger. The shirking wretch was actually trying to coddle himself. He moved stealthily up the drill behind him.

Jean Gibson was coming down her drill and was facing them. She suppressed a desire to call to John MacMime – to warn him of the danger from behind. But she was afraid this would have been construed as an act of open and defiant rebellion.

As Jacob Scanlon came up on the boy his anger turned to a cold fury. He seized him by the collar and shook him like a rat. The boy screamed in terror. The rest of the children straightened their backs and turned round apprehensively. Jean Gibson dropped her iron knife and her small fists clenched and unclenched while her arms tautened at her sides.

The jacket with which John MacMime was clad was many sizes too large for him. It reached well below his knees and even the shoulders of it reached half-way down his arms. He dangled in the air for a moment and then slid out of the coat to the ground.

There escaped from his workmates an audible gasp of horror as he did so. Now it was revealed that save for his patched and torn trousers, the boy had no other clothes. He picked himself up and stood cowering before the ganger. Two dirty pieces of tape crossed his bare shoulders and supported his trousers. His emaciated body was revealed in all its pathetic nakedness.

The spectacle was too much for Jean Gibson. She found herself hammering at the ganger with her bunched fists. So furious and unexpected was her attack that before he had time to ward her off she had knocked him off his balance and flung him to the ground.

She cried at that, in rage and in fear, for she had done a terrible thing. She feared the consequences would be terrible. But she experienced a fierce joy at having knocked the ganger down.

Jacob Scanlon picked himself up. He too was trembling with fear and rage. Never before had his authority been so violently challenged. But, worst of all, his morality had been outraged. He, a ganger and a man of such years as to command the utmost respect, had been cast to the ground in the execution of his duty by a rebellious child. His voice trembled as he spoke.

‘Go home! Leave this field! At once, do ye hear! I will not deal with you as ye deserve, ye infernal limb of Satan! I’ll speak to your father about you. The rest of you – get back to your work before I lay hands on you …’

Jean watched him as he spoke, his clenched fist raised above his head. His hat had been knocked off in his fall. She was intrigued, for all her fear, at the sight of his bald head: it was the first time she had ever seen his head uncovered.

Jacob Scanlon was a sight to arrest the eye. He wore an ancient mourning coat above his corduroy trousers. The lapels and top button were hidden under his straggling grey beard. Long wisps of dirty grey hair hung down from above his ears. The bald skin on the top of his head was a dirty grey colour and it had the appearance of wrinkling.

To Jean there was something about him in his bareheaded, arm-raised wrath, that suggested God. She turned and ran from the field.

Her mother listened to her and shook her head. The enormity of her offence could hardly be lessened. It would probably make things worse to intercede, on Jean’s behalf, with her husband. What basis could she find for an appeal? She had attacked Old Jacob: She had knocked him down and that not for what he had done to her but in defence of another. There was no case for appeal: no mitigating circumstances.

Yet Agnes Gibson was proud of her child. Jacob Scanlon deserved no pity. John MacMime was a fatherless boy and Jacob Scanlon should not have lifted his hand against him.

Tom Gibson came in for his dinner and it was plain that Jacob Scanlon had spoken to him. He had a look about him that bespoke a concentration upon serious things. His wife served the broth, however, as if there was nothing of an untoward nature portending.

Tom Gibson sat down at the head of the table and lifted his spoon. He knew that his soup was still on the warm side and that he could afford to let it cool. He raised his hand and beckoned to Jean, whose eyes, though now dry, bore clear evidence of recent tears.

Her father had the calm and judicial air of one presiding at a high court. He always prided himself on his justice – never condemning until he was satisfied of the exact nature of the offence.

‘Old Jacob tells me he had occasion to send ye home from the turnip field this morning – is that right?’

‘Yes, father.’

‘And what for, may I ask?’

‘I struck him.’

‘So ye admit ye struck him, do ye?’

Jean nodded.

‘Ah well, my lass, ye’d better begin at the beginning and give a full account of yourself.’

It was remarkable how clear and circumstantial an account she gave of that morning’s events. But she faltered when she came to the point when the ganger had shaken John MacMime from his coat.

‘Come on, now – the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Ye say old Jacob shook John MacMime out o’ his coat – it was an old one o ‘mine – but that’s beside the point.’

Tears came to Jean’s eyes.

‘He’d nae shirt on – oh, faither–’

‘Stop that, will ye! Stop that! I’m no’ finished with ye. So – John MacMime was naked, was he?’

‘Aye.’

‘And what then?’

‘I don’t know— I – I just ran at him— I didn’t mean to knock him down – he must have tripped – I’ll never do it again, faither—’

The wooden spoon was almost crushed in Tom Gibson’s hand. He saw the boy standing there in his bare feet, naked from the waist up, thin and pathetic in the bitter cold of the morning. He knew the boy well, knew his antecedents and his circmstances. The thought of Jacob Scanlon, the converted prayer mumbler, lifting his hand against the defenceless orphan enraged him as few things could have enraged him. He was glad that a child of his had gone to the defence of the defenceless. He would deal with Jacob Scanlon – by God! He would deal with Jacob Scanlon in such a manner that he would never raise his hand against a defenceless bastard in the parish for the rest of his days.

But for all that his daughter’s offence – the open rebellion against authority – could not be condoned.

‘Ye did wrong to lay hands on Jacob Scanlon. If I ever hear of the like happening I’ll flay the skin off your bones. But – and let this be a lesson to ye – just take the afternoon and the Bible into the corner and learn the 118th psalm and if ye haven’t it off by the time I come home ye can prepare yourself for the consequences.’

Relieved beyond expression that she had escaped severe corporal punishment, Jean turned and ran from the house.

Tom Gibson relaxed his grip on the spoon and passed it through the soup. He looked up to his wife.

‘Ye couldna blame her.’

‘No, Tom: I don’t think you could. It’s a pity to think of that puir unfortunate Johnny MacMime.’

‘Aye … if ye could look out anything for the laddie and take it down the night when it’s dark …’

‘I’ll see to that, Tom. God help a bairn in this world when he has neither father nor mother to look after him.’

‘Aye … but Jacob Scanlon should have known better than lay hands on that boy and that I’ll teach him this afternoon.’

He met old Jacob coming into the steading. Tom Gibson laid his immense hand on the ganger’s shoulder, causing him to wince.

‘Aye, Mr. Gibson – ye spoke to your lassie then?’

‘What passes between me and my lassie, Jacob Scanlon, is my business. But you’ve done something to-day that’ll never be forgiven ye.’

‘Me, Mr. Gibson? Whatever may that have been?’

‘For taking advantage of a fatherless bairn.’

The grip tightened painfully on the old ganger’s shoulder.

‘It’ll take a damned lot o’ praying to pray that away. Ye may be an old man, Jacob, and deserving some respect for your grey hairs – but, lift your hand to that bairn again and I’ll break your bloody back with my own hands – grey hairs or no grey hairs.’

‘But Mr. Gibson–’

‘That’s enough.’

Tom Gibson released his grip from the ganger’s shoulder: he recoiled as if he had been struck. The grieve turned in his step and strode off towards the stables.

Jacob Scanlon rubbed his aching shoulder. Under his bushy grey eyebrows his eyes burned black with hatred. A stream of scarcely audible but filthy curses poured from his grey whiskered lips.