Jim Crace - The Pesthouse

Next day, Margaret was up and walking by dawn, feeling slightly drunk on tiredness and hunger but also exhilarated by the beauty of the snow-neatened land and the sharp cold light that gave clear views of where she had to head. It was mostly easy going, but wading through the deeper drifts was fun.

Once she reached the familiar open ground a little farther out from where she and the baby had earthed themselves the day before last, she did not even bother to keep to the shadows. She could not see any men, and she would hear if there were mounted horses. The little cottage looked asleep as she walked past. Two horses were tethered at the front, breathing steam and already sweating under their cover of blankets. The shutters were closed, and so the three men — she included the small man she had spotted from the choke of rocks — must be sleeping, she thought. The dog was sleeping, too, out of sight on the far side of the house — or, if it was not asleep, it was ignoring her. Her scent was now familiar.

If she wanted, she could probably stop to milk a cow. If she wanted, come to think of it, she could find a good-sized stick and give those men a beating in their beds and be gone before any one of them could lift a finger to defend himself. If she wanted, she could help herself to the two horses, to punish the men for their repulsiveness, and make her journey to the coast a little speedier. But Franklin had explained to her an age ago how horses were an expensive complication for a traveler.

“What, worse than a barrow?” she had asked.

And he’d replied, “When did you last see a barrow stabled? When did you last see a barrow eating hay? When did you last see a barrow rear up, or run off, or nip its owner?”

So Margaret just walked by, within sight of the cottage, leaving her deep footprints in the snow for anyone to follow, being reckless in the interests of speed, but keeping quiet. She was still afraid. It was wise to be afraid. But as she passed she saw an opportunity too good to miss. Only men could be so careless with their food. There was a cold larder on the veranda at the front of the house, with snow swept up by the wind against it. In a moment she was opening it. In the next moment she had helped herself to milk in a jug, a damp wrap of sour cheese, and, joy beyond joy, three hen’s eggs, already boiled hard and just a crack away from eating.

No one caught her stealing food, and no one heard her stealing away. Soon she had left the little fields behind and was back on home territory. There was the tree that marked the place where she had left the Boses. They would have spent the last two nights somewhere close, just waiting. Quite soon they would be reunited with their granddaughter. They would be angry. They would be shaking with anxiety. They had a right to be. But Margaret had a tale to tell. And there were eggs and cheese to feast upon.

Andrew and Melody Bose had left the meeting point only at first light that morning. They had spent two almost sleepless nights in a makeshift tent that they had rigged up, using Franklin’s tarp and Margaret’s thin blanket as weather shields and their own finer blankets as bedding. There had been nothing they could do except eat and wait and argue, once Andrew had returned from his expedition with no news of their granddaughter or “that diseased woman” to whom they had recklessly entrusted her. They’d finished Margaret’s taffies and the last gobbets of Ferrytown honey. They’d used up too much of their own salt fish, hoping to placate their nervous stomachs by constant feeding.

Once in a while Andrew had ventured out, armed with Franklin’s knife, which was larger than his own net maker’s knife, to see if anyone or anything was moving. All he had seen the previous day had been the three cows, pressing up close to the cottage walls for warmth. Then, once the snow had begun to fall, the only sign of any living things other than themselves had been a distant curl of smoke from a chimney that was out of sight.

They made up their minds, talking in whispers through the night. If the child was not returned by first light, they would be coldly sensible. They could presume the worst had happened. Waiting any longer would be pointless. It made no sense to sacrifice themselves to whatever horrors had befallen Margaret and Bella during the past two days and that had previously befallen Acton and the other men. Wise people do not stay, as the valley floods, to witness for themselves how high the waters will reach. They get away. The Boses, then, would do the same.

Margaret found her sodden blanket and the tarp immediately. She didn’t have to look around or call out any names to guess what had happened or what their reasoning had been. She could tell that the Boses had left only that morning. There were footprints in the snow, recent enough not yet to have lost their unambiguous shape. Later — indeed, for the rest of her life — she would wonder how easy it would have been to have caught up with them if she’d set her mind to it. If she had left immediately, then probably within just a few moments she would have been able to see them from the slight brow of the path. They would not have moved very quickly, especially without the fitter, younger Margaret to urge them on.

Margaret, though — could she ever admit it to herself? — was not inclined to hurry after Bella’s grandparents. To catch up with them was to relinquish the child, and that was something she was not impatient to do. It might have crossed her mind during the previous few days how joyful it would be to have a child of her own — this child. The thought of stealing Bella away might have stained her daydreams briefly. But Margaret would never actually have done it. It would have been wicked. She would have felt guilty to her grave. No matter that the immediate parents were dead or missing, or that the grandparents were selfish and uncaring, or that Margaret would provide the girl with a kinder future. The theft of a child was unforgivable, even though the ties of every family in the land were already hanging loose.

But for the moment, now that Bella seemed to have been delivered freely to her by the adversities of travel, Margaret did not feel wicked in the least. Or even compromised. She was not stealing a child. She was merely being slow. Anyway, she told herself, the grandparents had made their own decisions — good ones, possibly — and they had willingly abandoned Bella, or at the very least relinquished her. Margaret had kept to the rendezvous. Margaret had returned the child to the promised place. It was the Boses who had walked away, heartbroken, no doubt, but of their own free will. They probably had not believed that their son’s daughter would show up again after such a prolonged and baffling absence. They would have shed tears. They would have argued about what was best to do. But in the end they must have felt that they had little choice but to protect themselves and press on with their journey. Already they would be getting used to the loss of their granddaughter. They were not to blame. Hard times make stones of us all.

So Margaret did not hurry on to catch up with the grandparents. She dawdled. She persuaded herself that her first duty was to feed Bella with some stolen milk and mashed white of egg. Then she had to feed herself with cheese and Bella’s yolk. Then there was her blanket to be wrung out and her possessions to pack.

She realized at once, when she lifted up her back sack, that it was emptier than it ought to be. There was a water bag inside. There was the died-back mint, still in its pot. Her comb and hairbrush had not been touched. There was the spark stone and the fishing net, which Andrew Bose had dismissed as “the work of ten thumbs.” But her taffies and her scraps of food were missing. So was Franklin’s knife. Margaret dug into her clothes and checked each item, getting increasingly annoyed and upset when she could not find what she was looking for. The green-and-orange woven top that her sister had made for her and that she loved and wore only for best was not inside. Margaret hissed to herself. She could imagine Melody Bose wearing it as if it were her own. She muttered out loud a thought she knew was hollow, but because the theft of her clothes had come before the keeping of the child, it allowed her to feel that what she was about to do was justified, if only thinly — that her top was payment for the girl, a fair exchange. So now, in Margaret’s readjusted view, the Boses were not innocent. They were to blame, after all. They had brought this loss, this separation, on themselves. They’d crept away like thieves, abandoning their blood.