Bella and the Angel - part 2

http://www.abctales.com/story/philipsidneynoo/bella-and-angel-part-1

Gone for a Soldier

Blizzard is dead.  Broke his leg up on the hill and couldn’t drag his sorry old bones back down again.  He lay up on that cold hill all night, the heartless moon watching him draw his last breath.   Funny no one went to look for him.  Reckon that’s what he thought would happen.  That someone would search the fields for him and find him, lay him down on straw in the cart, and that he would be hauled back by the steady old steaming horse, the only one left in the stalls now.

But that didn’t happen.  I had sneaked into the Blizzard’s out-house later than usual the morning we found out.   I was so tired but didn’t want the Blizzard’s to think I was skiving.  I’d lit the stove ready to heat water when I heard all this wailing.  Mrs Blizzard is not one to show emotion but she was crying like a good-un.  Ernie wasn’t old enough to join up, so I knew she hadn’t got one of those dreaded telegrams from the war front.

All hell broke out, crying and the horse clattering on the cobbles as they got it ready to collect the body, people coming and going.  I heard the parson’s voice at one point.  I stayed in the laundry by the fire.  I didn’t scrub a thing that day.

The next day was different, everything was still and quiet.  Mrs Blizzard’s face was as white as the sheets flapping on the line.

‘Have you no respect,’ she’d screeched at me, ‘washing and singing as if it was an ordinary day.  You’re nothing but a heathen.’

I thought I was helping, carrying on as usual; the work still had to be done after all.  I expect it was the sticky tar of hate bubbling up.

Now she could never say to him, ‘I know what you did.  I know what you did with that skivvy, Ida Limb.  I know what you did with her skinny, heathen daughter too.  I know you and all your cruel and evil ways.’

All she could do now was screech at me and stare at my belly; there was no hiding that now.  Ernie came out and just put an arm around his mother and led her back into the house.  He had changed overnight.  He was standing straighter, the look in his eyes was clearer, he was taking charge; at seventeen he was the man of the house and had decisions to make.

Turned out I was one of them.  Later that day Ernie came to me, looked me in the eyes and took one of my cracked and raw hands in his.

‘Bella, I have decided that we should be married.’

That fair took the wind out of my sails.  Married!  I couldn’t help laughing, it sounded like one of Ernie’s wicked little jokes.  But he didn’t smile, he was serious.

For just the briefest of moments I saw a change in my circumstances.  Me in the big house all chummy with Mrs B, me Mrs B too.  Swanning around in new clothes and boots and being respectable-like.

Ernie didn’t smile and he didn’t wait for an answer, he was just issuing instructions, just as he might say, ‘My mother requires you to make up the fires in the bedrooms.’

I watched his back as he walked away from me and back to his mother.  What will be must be.

I went walking on the hills.  Climbed to a peak and looked at the world stretching out.  It was a familiar scene but I was tired of looking at it.  I wanted to be in it.  The smoking chimneys of the city were not so far away, surely there was another way to be.

I wandered through the trees, stroking the bark of their trunks as I passed.  So much more simple to be a tree.  Some of these trees had lived for hundreds of years.  Their roots running deep into the ground, sucking up water from underground streams, that secret world beneath.  They stood and watched and took everything in.  The history of everything is in the trees.

Of course Ernie’s mother had something to say about our sudden engagement; and it was off as quickly as it had been on.

It made think differently about Ernie though, some good in there somewhere.

We were all called together into the kitchen to hear some important announcements.  Not that Ernie and I were to be married, but that a quiet funeral was to take place the next day and that Ernie had joined up and would be leaving immediately after the funeral.  Ernie did not meet my eyes, nor anyone else’s.  He stared ahead, his mind already somewhere else.

I’m standing at the back, it’s a new parson but he’s like all the others, I saw his eyes take in my belly. Yes it is round, yes that is a surprise given how little I get to eat and how hard I have to work.   Yes I am unmarried, any other questions?  I silently and insolently look him in the eyes.

Of course I am here; me who never goes to church.  I need to be sure that old bastard is safely put under the ground and that his bones will lie a reasonable distance from those of my father and my mother.  Of course their graves are unmarked, only I remember where they were put.  Nowhere near the Blizzard plot, no headstone or pretty angel to stand over them; but they are deep enough beneath the earth that their bones will not be pulled to the surface by some hungry animal.  I have never heard their voices since they were gone.  They have really gone, far away.  I want that for Blizzard too.

The congregation sing ‘Abide with Me’; and I realise that rag I had tied to the clootie tree a few months earlier has worked.   I got what I wished for.   The old bastard is dead.   I think that makes us even.

Mother’s Ruin

Such a pretty little one, my little one.  New to the air, if only he could breathe it.

No bed or clean sheets for us.  I had to lean against a tree trunk, pain taking me to a different place, who knows what sounds I made, how long it took.  I lay in death’s lap, his fingers stroked my forehead; his hot rasping breath filled my nostrils.  My little one had no chance with death playing midwife.

He came too early, my pretty boy.

It had been raining hard for days and the fields had turned to mud.  The sort of mud that grips your legs and holds you fast.  The sort of mud that forms hands and fingers that cling to you and try to drag you down into their dark world beneath the ground.   The last place a girl in my condition should have been was in that mud.  But that’s where I went, so full of my own want, so determined to keep my baby for myself that I lost him all together.  I don’t know what else I could have done.  Gone along with what they wanted I suppose, but you know deep inside yourself when something is wrong.

I held him in my hands and he lived for a moment, his eyes were open and he was looking at me.  I’m glad for that cause now he’ll have a picture of me with him, wherever he has gone.

Plans had been made for me and my little one.  Kind Mrs Field was to have my baby.  There had not been a baby in the village for some time, not with the men toing and froing to war, not with the sickness and hunger and struggle to keep things running here.  Women did not look at me with disapproval, but with longing.

Mrs Field had lost her boy in the early days of the war.  Her husband had returned, but was missing a leg and seemed to be living in a different space to the rest of us.  He was an old man before the age of forty.  Mrs Field longed for a new life in the house.

Of course Mrs Blizzard wanted me out of hers, especially while there was still a chance that Ernie might return with his senses shaken up and make me the new Mrs Blizzard; that would never do.  But she was a charitable woman and had found an opening for me in a munitions factory in Birmingham.  There was plenty of work in the city for a strong, hardworking girl and I was bound to get my strength back before much longer.

I was not consulted in any of this and I had no energy to think, I didn’t know what else I could do, I knew that things rolled along one way or another and soon enough I’d be on the other side of it all.

Then it began.  I had felt a deep discomfort right from the start of the day.  I felt the first twinge when I was cleaning the downstairs grates.  It’s usually a task I quite like, poking the soft ash through the metal grill, scooping it all up and pouring it into the ash pail, then a quick sweep around all the corners of the hearth with the soft brush.  But this morning my belly felt so weighty and tight, every movement I made filled me with exhaustion.  By the time I was stood in the rain slinging the contents of the ash pail onto the rubbish pile, I knew that something was happening.  I also knew that if I didn’t leave the Blizzard’s farm fast it would be too late.  They laid claim to anything they found on their land.  It was time to be gone. So I just upped and left, there and then.

My plan was to go to St Kenelm’s well.  Trees shelter it and no one would be there in this weather.  I thought the magic might be there too; the clootie tree had helped me before, after all.

I took the direct route, only one big field and a small copse to get there.   I’ve always been good at overestimating myself.

I can’t really say how I got through that field.  There were several times that I thought I had stuck fast and all I could do was lie down to change the way the ground was sucking at my feet and calves.  All that effort seemed to move the baby along faster and by the time I had got to firmer land, hours later, I was in a constant state of pain.

I stumbled into the copse and eased myself to the ground, my back against a firm tree trunk and things got worse.

We sat together beneath the tree, me and my boy who would never be.  He was perfect, like an angel carved in white marble.  He grew colder and colder and I knew that he would not be coming back.  I never got to hear his voice.  I sat and thought what he might have been if he had lived.  I saw his acorn coloured eyes, his thick curly brown hair, elfin faced, straight backed, straight talking; my little man.

***

I feel frozen to the ground and to the tree, I’ve become stone.  The mud and blood that covers me is drying to a crust, a new, thicker skin made from the earth.  I have to move, but I don’t know if I can.  My legs are wobbly, like jelly. I need to find a resting place for my little one, before the others come and make their decisions for us.  I’d like him to be near Mam.  I know she’s not there anymore, not for me anyway, but it might be different for him.  It’s not far, surely I can get there.  I can visit him then.

What am I thinking?  They’d never let me keep him there.  They’ll steal him away from me and put him where they think he should go.

I’ll leave him here, dig a hole beneath the trees, they’ll stand over him for years to come, wrap their twiggy arms together to keep the others out.

I’ll scratch at the ground all night to make a sweet soft bed of mud for him to lie in.  They’ll not have him.

All the Sweet Dead Things

I cried when I read it.  Don’t know why, I suppose it just brought everything back.  A grand house in the hills where I used to live burnt down.  Not the Blizzard’s place, that’s still there for all I know.  No I mean that stately home.  All their stuff burnt up, shame, I suppose, only stuff though.

It made me think of the time I lived around there and everyone I left behind.  Not Ernie, I didn’t leave him in the village.  He died, but they never found his body.  He’ll be lying deep in a muddy field in France.  They carved his name on a great stone in the village so he won’t be forgotten.  Who will read that name and know that he was a little boy who liked to tease?  Who will know that he wanted to marry me?  It’s just a name on a stone, but I’d like to trace the letters of it with my fingers, like saying hello.  No markers for Dad, Mam, or my pretty one though, only in my head.  No one else but me ever saw my baby and when I’m gone that picture will be gone too.

Bleed’n hell, I’m a right misery aint I?  The past’s the past and you’ve got to get on with it.  I ain’t done so bad.  Always find work, find a corner to stay in, have a laugh.  Which is not easy I can tell you.  The war ended seven years ago, a childhood ago, but it still hangs like a great weight around people’s necks.

I ain’t never had a real sweetheart, plenty of men, but the ones my age are too haunted and broken to care about me, need all of their feeling for themselves.  That’s alright, we have a few drinks and some laughs; a bit of dancing does the world of good.  It can get messy though.

Then I start crying, for no good reason, just a fire that didn’t kill anyone, just a lot of stuff I’ve never seen, gone.  Happens like that though, I’m going along fine then something of nothing will set me off.

I fancy a breath of fresh air though.  Think I’ll take a little holiday and walk out on the hills, not back to St Kenelm, that’s a wound that hasn’t healed.  No, I’ll go and take a look at Hagley Hall, the place that got burnt.

***

Like a bit of rain when I’m walking, can’t notice if I’m crying or not then, a mix of fresh and salt water runs down my face, I can taste it when I slip my tongue in and out at the side of my mouth, like a lop-sided lizard.  I like the wind when you’re up high too.  You catch odd bits of sound, like you can hear the breathing of long ago souls.  A daft fancy, but you can’t help it here, you can feel how old it is, lives spinning back to ancient times, all long gone and no trace of them.   When you’re up here you can’t help but think of all the dead things, all those sweet dead ones, and how you’ll be one too, one day.

There are monuments and things all round here, but life goes back further than them.  I found a tree, I could tell it was hundreds of years old, maybe much older.  It had a friendly face, wise and knowing, welcoming-like.   Its heart seemed to have been eaten away as it had a hollow centre.  I poked my head into it.  It felt safe in there.  I stroked the tree’s bark and it seemed pleased.  Haven’t had those daft thoughts for so many years.  I’ll remember that tree though, it knew me.

Bone Tree

I like a drink, me.  I like the way all the hard edges soften, nothing seems so bad or serious after a few drinks.   I work hard so why shouldn’t I have a bit of fun when I can?

I’m loud, so what?  I’m no lady, ha!  Thank god, I never wanted to be a bleed’n lady.  If you don’t like me, that’s your problem.

Some of the pubs round here won’t let me in, say I’m a trouble-maker.  I say the trouble’s already there, I just point it out.

I keep a bottle in my room, just to top myself up.  Helps before I go out, a bit of Dutch courage, then I’m queen of the night.

Funny that, Dutch courage.  One of the blokes I’m seeing tonight is Dutch, seems nice, I like the way he talks. The other one is full of shite.  Full of how he was a war hero and how he’s doing secret work for the government now, what a bleed’n fool.  He’s got a nasty streak, I reckon.  Ought to watch myself with him, but what the hell, life’s short and I’ve been with worse.

He’s a talker anyway, loves a story, loves the sound of his own voice.

Well, that’s me ready, not bad for an old-un.

***

What a bleed’n night.  So now I’m smashed to mush and stuck in a bleed’n tree.  Told them about the hollow tree, didn’t I?  Why can I never shut my mouth?  So we drove out here, we’d been drinking, then fighting, then allsorts, arguing about angels and death and mud…I can’t remember it all.  Can’t remember anything much.  They were talking about wars, Ernie’s one and this new one.  Always a war; had a few of my own.  Could tell they were looking to hate me, they’d made their minds up and I knew what they were thinking, no one will miss this one.

I doubt if anyone will, miss me that is.

I can feel life turning into something else; I can feel myself leaking out floating away.  Don’t much care if I’m remembered or not, they always get the story wrong anyway, mix things up; make up the rest.   I’ll just be some old bones in a tree, like my boy, somewhere under a tree, like Ernie, somewhere under the mud, like Kenelm, just a story, a story that might have been true once.

That’s all right; you don’t need to remember us.  Just listen to the wind every now and again, stroke the bark of a tree, taste the air, know that you’ll be with us soon.