turned to Phillip.
Come now, lad, Pa said. Tell him good-day, no more than that.
Phillip coughed, rubbed his neck as if it was bothering him.
Damn your eyes, Pa shouted. What does a man have to do!
Sorry Mr Thornhill, Phillip said. Begging your pardon.
The steam went out of Pa quick as it had come.
Never mind, lad, he said. Never you mind. Take the girls back now, and Star along with you.
Up on the horse, it might of been the first time I was ever taller than my Pa.
No, Pa, I called, it’s too far! Come with us!
Get along, lass, Pa called. Get away off home now. I’ll be along directly.
As we left the clearing I looked back. Pa standing by the fire, the man on the other side. I watched the man turn and bend, showing his skinny backside in the sad old trousers, and get himself into the humpy. Last I saw, Pa was alone, with the smoke swirling round him and the victuals lying on the ground.
What’s that, Jingles, I said. What’s that he give them?
Jingles didn’t turn, didn’t answer.
Few victuals, Miss, Phillip said from behind me.
Yes, I said. But why’d he bring it?
That was the wrong question. You didn’t need to ask why you’d bring bread and beef for those skinny folk.
Who are they, I said. They kin to you?
Kin to Jingles, Phillip said, but not in his usual bouncy way. Through his auntie up the Branch.
Oh, I said.
Your pa takes victuals regular, he said. Or sends them along of us. Rain or shine.
Just to give, like, I said.
That’s it, Phillip said. Just to give.
Part of Christian duty, I supposed. Never known Pa bother with anything churchy before, but what else could it be?
Why’d they leave it on the ground? I said.
That was only the start of the questions I had, but Phillip come in like he hadn’t heard me.
Poor old things, your pa don’t like to see them wanting, he said. Told me once, knows what an empty belly’s like. Reckon you young ladies never been hungry, eh? Reckon you’ll be having a nice leg of mutton today?
Turning the subject, of course, and Mary chimed in then about the crown of lamb she was going to help Mrs Devlin with. The rosemary and the onions and the new potatoes.
When we got back I sat in the yard on the woodchop stump, waited for Pa. He trudged up as if he was tired, bent to scrape the mud off his boots without seeing me, his face so heavy I thought better of saying anything. He went to the back door and took his boots off so he was just in his socks. Made to go in, but saw me.
You been a long time, Pa, I said.
He walked over across the flagstones, crouched down in front of me.
They’re poor souls, Dolly, he said. Poor helpless souls. Dying out like all their race.
That blue stare of his.
I’d give, Dolly, he said. Ease their passing. Only they won’t take. Oh, they take when I’m gone. Take and eat. If not they’d of starved long since. Only not from me. Not from my hand.
Something twisted his face out of shape and I thought he was laughing, but he caught his breath in a sob.
Your mother took their part, Dolly, he said. Made me promise. Why you seen me down there. Why I’ll stand there and beg them.
His voice was strangling round the words. He’d gone an old man suddenly, eyes blank and dark.
Stand and beg them, he said. Come again the week after, do it again. Because of your mother.
On the last word I could hear the feeling come up his throat and stop him.
By God Dolly, he said, voice just a raspy whisper. By God but I wish that day back again, and have it come out different.
What day? I thought. What different?
Is it cadging, Pa? I said. When you give them? Or Christian duty?
He cleared his throat with a great cough. Took a breath I could hear going all the way down. Stood up and touched the top of my head, a brush of his fingers.
Yes, well, he said. Your ma’s of a different view, you know, Dolly.
His voice was ordinary again.
If you wasn’t here in them days you wouldn’t know, he said. Your ma weren’t here, she don’t know. In this one thing I got to go against her.
Stood up, lifted a foot to see the bottom of his sock, where he’d walked on the stones.
Your ma wouldn’t like it, he said. You girls being down there. Shouldn’t of taken you. No need to say where you was today, Dolly. I’ll tell Jingles, take you down the other track when you go out on the ponies.
Went over to the back door, took his socks off and laid them on his boots, walked into the house with his big white feet bare.
What he’d told me was nothing more than commonsense. You couldn’t see people go hungry.
So what was that terrible twisting across his face? That thing that was like an animal eating away at him from the inside?
MA WAS a great one for visiting. Not gentry, we wasn’t on visiting terms with the quality. Not the folk from along the Branch either, scrabblers with not a boot to their name. The ones we visited with were the better families. Folk on the up-and-up like we were, mostly emancipists. Cobbs from Milkmaid Reach, and the Lewises from Ebenezer, Fletchers from Portland Head. Old Mr Loveday if he was sober. The Langlands. They’d row down of a Sunday afternoon, the river a highway for the families along it. Mrs Devlin would cook up a big batch of cakes and scones, Anne busy all afternoon keeping the cake-stand full.
Ma knew everyone’s stories, which ones were come free and which ones was sent out, and if they was sent out, what they’d done. Different from Mrs Herring, she didn’t mind telling what she knew. Mr Chapman stole a sheep at Burleigh Fair, lucky not to of hanged. Mr Fletcher knocked a man down, took his watch and two half-crowns out of his pocket.
What about Mrs Fletcher, I said.
Can you keep a secret, Dolly? she said, and before I’d said yes she told me. Mrs Fletcher was one of those women sells themselves to men, she said. Got caught when she stole the purse of a man come to take his pleasure.
How did she know all the secrets, I wondered.
Langlands come often, Ma and Mrs Langland out of the same mould, very genteel in their view of themselves. She was a stout woman bursting out of her clothes but dainty in her ways like a doll. Had a shawl, paisley pattern, soft and light as duck down. She’d leave it on the back of a chair and then ask you to give it to her. Be waiting for you to say, goodness that’s soft, and so light! because then she could tell you it was Indian kashmir, a bit unusual, which was her way of saying it was better than anyone else’s.
No secrets stood behind Mrs Langland. From a good family back Home, if you believed what she said. Not too high up to marry an emancipist, mind. Long as he’d made good. My people were in a comfortable situation, she’d say, and settle the shawl on her shoulders. My people. After she said it, I noticed Ma started saying it too, about her people in Brixton Rise.
She liked to lord it over everyone, Mrs Langland. Very pleased with herself, and thought it was all her own cleverness.
Old Mr Langland, he’d worked for a silk-weaver in Spitalfields, Ma told me. Caught running off with twenty-seven silk handkerchiefs under his coat. He was in