A Bugle For The New Day

Chapter One, Part Six.

“Sore your own backside would be,” she found herself saying, “if out of it I had just pulled a thistle.”

He stared at her, his mouth open again. Before he could say a word, she was babbling: “Something to put on….for the soreness…wait now…” and she was gone in a flurry, the birds scattering, the gate now protesting behind her.

He stood motionless, as though she had turned him into a statue, until the cob neighed and seemed to call her back and the spell was broken. Startled into reality, the befuddled young man let his eyes focus on the cottage where the disturbing girl lived, and he noted the roughness of the stone walls contrasting with the geometric neatness of the tiled roof, and the parade of clothes on the washing line drawing his attention to their impoverished state. She returned and caught him staring absently at the female underwear and he quickly averted his eyes, focusing on the small bottle she was carrying.

“To take the sting away,” she said. “A bit of this, a bit of that.”

She took a piece of rag from her pocket, dabbed it with the solution from the bottle, and approached the horse with a renewal of the mystical conversation. As before, the cob listened with a cocked ear and glistening eye as she stroked him with her  dulcifying touch, but he flinched and snorted as she found the injured flesh with the curious concoction. Apparently satisfied, she corked the bottle and unhitched the reins from the tethering bush and proceeded to walk the horse a few tentative steps tp the accompaniment of murmured encouragement.

When she turned to the rider and handed him the reins, he could see that the promising light had gone from her eyes and the curtain had come down again. Had he been able to surmise from the signs available to him, he would have discovered that her armour was in place again and the resolution that had deserted her for an unguarded moment was as strong and impregnable as ever, a barrier against him and all he stood for.

“Take him now.”she said tersely. “And that leg-see to it. A dose of weed and really lame he will be.” He climbed gingerly into the saddle, fully expecting to be thrown over the wall, but the horse accepted him and he had no doubt that this was due to the girl intervening on his behalf.

He could linger no longer; she was already moving towards the cottage. “Your name,” he called out to her. “I do not know your name.”

At the gate she paused and turned to him slowly. “Rowena,” she said simply, with a lift to her chin, and with that she went inside.

Realising that he had been dismissed, he cried out: “Sultan, he thanks you, too,” and hesitating for a moment as though expecting an answer, he turned the horse and began a gentle trot down the lane in the opposite direction to that taken by the quarrymen, soon becoming lost amid the huddle of houses.

Rowena put up a hand to test her washing and listened to the hoof-beats retreating into the distance. Sultan, she thought, suits him that.

“Keeping company at last, is it?” Her Mam was beside her, flour up to her elbows, curiosity twitching her ears.

“A horse…gone lame,” said Rowena, innocently.

“On it’s own, was it?”

“Had an eyeful, eh, Mam?”

“Some eyeful. Know who that was, girl?”

“No. A stranger to me.”

The breath went out of Mam and the flour on her hands gave a puff of exasperation with her. “Haden Ragway-that is who it was. No Less!”

Rowena showed only a disdainful curl of her lip. ” A curtsy I should have dropped then?” Another feel of her washing, strangling it this time. “And and how would you be knowing it was he-Mister High and Mighty?”

“Saw him with my own eyes did I not? When he came home from that university. With his Mother he was.”

Rowena gave a scornful laugh and went into the house, her Mother following her with little urgent steps. “Despair I do with you,” panted Megan. “Tell gentry, you can do that surely?”

“So, Richard Ragway is his Father.” Rowena turned on her Mother with her cheeks flaming. “And it is he who owns the quarry where my family sweat their lives away. That gives him the right to be heartless, does it now? Well, it’s sorry I am. For the horse-for having that jumped up-popinjay on his back.”

“Told him that did you? No doubt you did, knowing you. Forgetting it is his Father who puts the bread on our table, and can take it off again.” Megan’s lips were as tight as her principles.

Rowena’s eyes had grown large and wild, fire scorching through the mists, but cutting no ice with Megan, who was accustomed to her daughter’s fancies.

“It is my own Da who puts the food on our table,” stormed Rowena. Forgotten that have you, Mam? Up there he is now, in that God-forsaken hole in the ground. Breaking his back, and my brothers with him. And another taken this day.”

Tears were coming down now and she hurried from the house, anxious that the weakness should not be seen, pausing only to cry over her shoulder: “A jumped-up-popinjay he is. I say it again. That is what I think of him and that old goat he can tell.”

Dearie me, thought Mam, touched something that boy has….

© Mark Pearson 2007.

Home    Previous    Next