Josephine Cox - Lovers and Liars

When, a moment later, the barn door inched open, she thought she would die of fright. He was coming into the barn and there was no other way out!

She almost laughed aloud when her mammy’s voice called out, ‘Clem! Clem, get back to the house. There’s somebody here to see you.’

Outside, in the yard, Clem Jackson swung round to face the older woman, who was hurrying towards him. ‘What the devil d’yer want?’

Aggie Ramsden was a weathered version of Emily, but with blue eyes and a tiredness about her that told its own tale.

The likeness to her daughter was uncanny, for she had the same confident way of standing, the small, straight nose, full mouth, and that peculiar air of defiance in the face of hardship. Taller than Emily, she had a slight stoop at the shoulders, and though she was only in her thirty-fourth year, her long, dark brown hair was already streaked with grey. Tied tightly back, it made her look severe, when in fact she was a kindly soul at heart.

‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’ she repeated. ‘There’s somebody to see you.’

‘What?’ His mind was still on the girl. ‘Yon Emily’s gone missing again, the little besom!’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, why don’t you leave the lass alone?’ Weariness marbled her voice.

‘And why don’t you bugger off.’ There was the sound of that belt again, threatening, vicious – like himself. With the toe of his heavy work boot, he lashed out at the barn door, which slammed shut. ‘What d’yer mean by fetching me from my work, woman!’

‘Hmh! You should be glad I took the trouble,’ Aggie retaliated. ‘I’ve left my own work to come and find you. Besides, you wouldn’t have been pleased if I’d sent him away without telling you.’

For what seemed an age, he regarded her through daggers of resentment. He recalled how his sister had once been a real beauty, but that was a long time ago. ‘I thought I told you to bugger off.’

‘An’ I told you … there’s somebody as wants to see you.’ Her voice was flat and uncaring. Her spirit seemed broken, when before it was bright and alive.

‘Aye well, happen I don’t want to see them, ’ave yer thought o’ that? ‘

‘I don’t get paid to think. I’m just passing on a message, and I’ve got better things to do than run errands on your account.’

‘You’d best watch yer tongue, woman! Anyway, what are all these “things” yer ’ave to do? You’re two o’ the bloody same, you and your skiving daughter … allus trying to dodge whatever work comes along.’

‘We both do our share and well you know it.’

‘Not so’s you’d bloody notice!’

He had a way of sneering that fired her anger like nothing else, but after six months of his tyrannical rule, she had learned to keep her anger under control, or suffer the consequences.

Yet now, when he belittled Emily’s role in the running of this small farm, she had to put him right. ‘My lass works hard and long on this place. She puts in as much time as anybody else and gets no thanks for it neither! As for me, I tend to the house and them as live in it, including yourself. On top of that, I do what I can when I’m needed outside. In fact, me and my lass are both capable of turning our hands to anything. And we do. Which is more than I can say for some.’

His features hardened. ‘An’ what the devil is that supposed to mean?’

‘It means whatever you want it to mean.’ Pride and anger swelled her voice. ‘Since we lost her daddy, me and my lass have worked as a team. And I don’t mind saying … we’re a damned good team at that!’

Laughing, he mimicked her words. ‘Yer didn’t “lose” her daddy. He just ran off, like the coward he was!’

Returning his probing stare she observed the red leathery face and small, milky-grey eyes. Clem Jackson was a bully of the worst kind, as big and evil as the bulls he had thought to breed here on the farm. Though he was her own brother, Aggie had never really liked him. In fact, he had never been like a brother to her, and never would be.

What was more, she wouldn’t want it. All she wanted was for him to be gone from this place and leave them in peace.

‘Michael Ramsden is no coward!’ she said hotly.

‘Well, o’ course you’d say that, but you’d be wrong, ’cause he’s a coward all right, he’s yeller through and through.’

Drawing herself to her full height, Aggie momentarily lost her fear of him. ‘Mark my words, Clem Jackson, Michael will be back, and when he is, you’ll be gone from here like a cat with a scalded tail. What! You’ll be sent down the road so fast you won’t have time to look back!’

Leaning forward she dared to taunt him. ‘I can tell you one thing an’ all,’ she said. ‘I for one won’t be sorry, and neither will the lass.’

‘You’d best watch yer tongue,’ he cautioned her, trembling with rage. ‘You know what happened the last time yer ’ad the gall to stand up to me!’

She remembered all right, and her courage wavered. ‘I just want you to know that my man is no coward.’

‘Rubbish! What kinda husband and father runs off an’ leaves his family to the wolves?’

‘I already told you – he had a breakdown of sorts. We’d had a real hard winter.’ She remembered it only too well. ‘It came on suddenly and with such a fierceness there was little could be done in time. The sheep froze on the hillside before we could get them to shelter. And if that weren’t enough to contend with, the summer before had been a drought. We suffered our worst-ever crop when we could least afford it.’

Clem burst out, ‘His old man had handed the farm to him on a plate – but that weren’t good enough, were it? Oh no. He were a farmer, for Gawd’s sake! He were allus carping on about what a hard life it were – so why didn’t he either learn to take it in his stride, or give it up altogether? I’ll tell yer why: it’s ’cause he were too much of a coward to leave, an’ too damned useless to stay.’

‘You know that’s not true.’ His sister’s anger faded beneath a measure of sadness. ‘Like his dad afore him, he gave his life to the land. It’s just that everything came at once … one bad thing after another. Like a nightmare, it was.’

She swallowed the emotion that threatened to overwhelm her. ‘His poor mother was tekken by the consumption, and you know what happened after that.’ At the time it had seemed as though the nightmare would never end. ‘It were the last straw,’ she recalled. ‘It were that which pushed him over the edge.’

Clem stared at her downturned face and sorry eyes, and said without pity, ‘Lost yer babby, too, didn’t yer, eh?’

Seeing as how he was angling for a fight, his sister remained silent, but still he goaded her. ‘Two week early and not enough strength to kick itself out, eh? Well, if it were that much of a weakling – just like its father – happen it were best it didn’t survive. I mean, what use is a puny little thing like that? It would be no good at all on a farm, would it, eh? And when all’s said an’ done, the old woman were nowt but a nuisance. Huh! If yer ask me, yer were well shut o’ the pair of ’em!’

When at his spiteful jibe she lifted her hand to strike him, he grabbed her fist, raised it high in the air and held it there, in an iron-tight grasp that had her wincing with pain.

‘You’re treading on dangerous ground, lady!’ His jowls trembled with rage. ‘I can see I’ll have to teach yer a lesson or two afore you know yer place in the scheme o’ things!’

Suddenly, as was his unpredictable way, he was smiling again, his feigned sigh ending in a soft, cruel laugh. ‘Oh, I know all about that lad as yer lost … “born two week early an’ hardly drew a single breath”. I know it all, word for bloody word! Christ! I’ve been told about it so many times by that daft old bugger inside, it’s beginning to turn my guts over. I swear, if he tells me once more, I might wrap my hand round his scraggy old throat and squeeze the life out of him.’