Jim Crace - The Pesthouse

Only four more days to reach the salt? The Boses did not seem to know whether this was good news or bad, nor did Margaret. At this rate it was possible that they might make it onto one of the last boats before the sea packed in for the winter. Exactly what they’d wished for. But four days was too soon to abandon any hope of finding Acton and Franklin, of just discarding them like cornhusks and getting on with life as if they’d never been born. How could they go aboard a ship and say their farewells to America without first knowing what had happened to their men? asked Margaret as they progressed among the little fearful farms toward a skyline that seemed to promise larger habitations.

“What other choice is there for us?” asked Andrew Bose. “We can hardly ask the sailors to wait around to watch the sea block up with ice while we stay on shore hoping for a miracle. There never is a miracle, in my experience.”

In Andrew’s view, the country was too wide and long for them to be able to pick out a single group of horsemen. And even then, even if they ran the rustlers to ground, they’d need another miracle to free their men, if they were still alive. “No, Melody and I have already thought it through. If Acton were still a child, then maybe things would be different. You have a responsibility to a child. But he’s a man. A married man, or was. He’s taller than me. He’s got more years ahead of him…”

“Let’s hope that’s true,” said Margaret.

“Let’s hope it’s true, sure. But also let’s be sensible. Acton could be anywhere. Your Franklin could be anywhere. They could be two days to the south by now. They could be on a ship already, as far as we know. You think they’d be squandering their chances for us? You think they’d hang around for us?”

“Your son could be fifty paces down the road and looking for his daughter.”

“Don’t argue, Andrew, not with her,” said Melody, and then went on to justify herself. Whatever choice they made would be a cause of misery, so maybe it was wiser that they made the choice that took them to a better place. “That’s what Acton would want us to do, if he was here. We’ve got the girl to think of, haven’t we? It’s not a selfish thing. It’s you that’s selfish in my eyes, just thinking of yourself and disregarding us.”

Margaret would not express an opinion yet. She listened to the Boses but would neither nod nor shake her head. They were not at the coast. They couldn’t see the ocean. They couldn’t guarantee passage on a ship. They couldn’t even guarantee a ship. So it was premature to punish themselves with cruel and difficult decisions. Anything might happen between here and there. She adopted her bullying voice again. “Come on,” she said. “There’s walking to be done. Let’s get on with it.”

So the subject of Acton and Franklin was dropped from their conversation (not to mention the subject of the unfortunate Joeys: the potman’s wife was probably at that very moment cracking jugs and water ewers on their behalf with no suspicion that her husband and her son had been picked out of their lives as easily as berries from a bush). Margaret and the Boses simply pushed ahead, keen to discover if there was any truth in the big man’s promises that the salt water was only four days distant.

That afternoon they almost reached the market town that he had mentioned. They could see its pall of smoke and what appeared to be a log tower, with a banner flying from it. But the days were rapidly shortening, and so, too early in the afternoon, they had to hunt for shelter. Their quarters for the night — a sheep pen — were cramped, no room for lying down, no room for lovemaking. They had to eat and then sleep with their chins on their knees. Margaret did her best to hold a cheerful conversation. She retold the story that she had been reminded of that day, with her grandpa and the stolen chicken and the sheep with three green bars. But the Boses — how could this be the same couple who had made love so noisily just one night previously? — seemed preoccupied and unamused. They thought the trapper’s hospitality had been foolish and unbusinesslike. “I’d take three sheep for a single hen anytime,” said Andrew. “Any fool would.” He did not understand why Margaret laughed and why his wife, after a moment’s reflection, joined her.

Margaret had recovered from her illness now, but she was exhausted and roughened by the journey and by the trauma of losing both Franklin and her family. Was she thinking only of herself and disregarding others, as Melody had claimed? What the Boses had said about taking passage on the first available boat might seem callous, she thought, but they were probably right. Franklin might have been taken in any of a thousand directions. He might already have met any of a thousand fates. If she had a duty now, it was only to herself and possibly, in the short term, to little Bella. Obtaining goat’s milk for the child that day had been immensely pleasing, especially when the girl had settled afterward and slept so contentedly. Carrying her had been easy.

Tomorrow Margaret would do the same — identify the safest house that had a cow or goat and use her wiles to procure more milk for her charge. She could not imagine parting from the child. She had nothing else, and there was no one to value. Bella was her only friendly flesh. So maybe she was now obliged to bite her tongue and stay on with the Boses, whatever they might decide to do, just to make sure that their granddaughter was given the attention — and the future — she deserved. It was strange, was it not, that a man whom she had scarcely known for seven days and a child whom she had known for only three should hold her thoughts, and perhaps her prospects, in their grip?

The rain outside the sheepfold was thickening and sleety. Margaret set her back against the corner of two walls and twisted her body so that Bella could lie across her lap and they could share the scarf, the blanket, and the tarp. It would be the coldest night so far. She offered her little finger to the girl’s hard gums. But Bella pushed the hand away. Her lips were chapped and sore from the salty food she’d had and from the cold, so Margaret dug for wax in her own ears and applied the honey-colored secretion as a lubricant. The child licked her lips, stopped crying for some moments when she tasted sweetness, and then cried out for more wax, tugging at Margaret’s fingers with her tough and tiny hands.

Margaret needed to bully for milk three more times before her fortunes changed. For the better and for the worse. She valued these trips away from Andrew and Melody, and she knew they were glad to be free of her for a while. It was their chance to rest and recover their strength, as well as an opportunity to talk and complain freely behind her back. Having Bella entirely to herself, helping the baby to stand for a moment, rolling stones for her to crawl after, allowing her to explore her mouth, ears, and nose, tickling her — all that mothering was a joy.

Margaret had promised to reward the girl with milk, so over those few days, by trial and error, her begging and beseeching skills improved. She’d tie her scarf, put Bella on her hip, and head for anyone with goats or cows. She was ready to exploit the twin forces of a hungry and appealing child and what could be taken by the fainthearted as a diseased skull to get her way and get her milk and any other food that might be going spare.

The least neglected habitations were the best for begging. Untidy homes, she found, and homes with little to boast of were unlikely to part with anything as prized as milk unless someone was holding a blade at the owners’ throats. But tidiness suggested composure and respectability. Tidy people were more easily coerced. They had more to lose. They evidently had more to prove. Why else the public display of houseplants or painted fences or trimmed hedges on their land?