As Meat Loves Salt

  ‘I love you, I love you! But what does it prove? Words are easily said.’

  ‘So they are.’

  ‘This says I love you.’ Ferris pulled back the covers to show himself. ‘And it never lies.’

  ‘That can love thousands. What counts is the heart.’

  ‘But why should you doubt my heart?’ he cried. ‘After all I’ve just said?’

  ‘Only tell me this!’ I paced up and down the room. ‘Did you love Nathan?’

  Ferris appeared to consider. He patted the mattress. ‘Come in. A man can talk just as well warm as cold.’

  I got into bed and lay without touching him. He propped himself on one elbow, and observed me through cautious grey eyes.

  ‘Did I love Nathan. How, love him?’

  ‘I know you fucked him,’ I shouted.

  Ferris flinched and put his hand on my arm. ‘Keep your voice down.’

  ‘Did you love him?’ I moved my arm away. ‘From the heart, the place that counts.’ I was bleeding within; until that moment, I had not known how much I still hoped he would deny the thing.

  He rolled onto his back and glared at the ceiling. I recognised the withdrawal, the refusal to be held in my stare. When he turned to me again it was with the warning look he had given me in the army, when he felt I kept off his friends.

  ‘Do I order you to tell me how you lived before?’ he demanded. ‘Do I put you on the rack to know who you love more, me or your wife?’

  ‘Why will you not tell—’

  ‘Have you told me all your past doings? The truth, now.’

  My heart thumped. What had Zeb said to him in the tavern?

  He went on, ‘It was never a secret that I liked Nat. Now forget him, he’s past.’

  ‘Loved him.’

  ‘Aye, then, loved him!’

  ‘But you left him behind.’

  He looked at me with sudden understanding. ‘Have you really forgotten? I had to choose between him and you.’

  ‘We were friends only.’

  He sighed at my stupidity. ‘If you say so. We already belonged to each other.’ He lay back on the pillow and put his hand on my chest, stroking me. ‘Very well, I loved Nat. But I belong to you.’

  At these last words my blood came up very hot. I pulled him tight into me and took possession of what was mine.

  The next day we finally got the canvas tent up in the courtyard. It stood only slightly crooked. Ferris explained it was for storing our grain and other gear; for our own protection from the elements we were to make little dwellings something like a charcoal-burner’s hut. I wondered at him, so wise and so foolish, to have lived with me all these months and not know that the worst storms break inside a man.

  In the evening we had a visit from the Tunstalls, come to inform us they had received permission to take away drag-rakes, spades, and other tools. Being orderly people, they had written down on a paper all their treasure and now handed the list to Ferris. He embraced both of them, which (I laughed to see) made them jump, but when they came into the sitting room and saw the wine jug they understood. We were celebrating the tent, that is, we were drinking off our fears. Aunt rose to greet them from the corner where she sat looking over a soiled coat of Ferris’s, brushing at the mud spots.

  ‘Pray let it alone, Aunt,’ my friend begged. ‘We will be all over mud, there’s no help for it. Be seated, friends.’

  They needed no more encouragement. I saw the eagerness with which they eyed the wine jug and thought that most likely they got little wine at home, for it seemed the appetite of novelty rather than intemperance. Ferris fetched glasses from the sideboard, purchased new the week before as a farewell gift to Aunt, though he had not called it that.

  ‘Where is the little one tonight?’ I asked.

  ‘My sister has him. She has no babe of her own,’ said Hepsibah. Like her husband, she drank slowly, setting the glass down as if to feel the effect of each mouthful before going on. ‘We thought to leave him with her until we have a place fit.’

  Ferris wanted to know when they could leave. Jonathan said there would be no difficulty. The young man being gone to the wars and the girl recently married, there were fewer servitors wanted. Their Master and Mistress would certainly be glad that here were two who would go willingly, leaving places for the rest. Again I noted how healthy and solid they were, and how alike, as if brother and sister. On my saying so they laughed.

  ‘We are cousins,’ explained Hepsibah.

  They were brown people, brown of eye, skin and hair, made like sparrows to blend with the soil. There was none of the swarthy glitter of Zeb or myself, but a much quieter style of physiognomy. They might have been carved from wood, like a doll the Mistress at Beaurepair showed Caro once: it was her own in childhood, and afterwards saved for the daughter she never had.

  ‘You don’t speak like Londoners,’ said Ferris.

  ‘Indeed we’re not: we came from the West with the family when they sold up and moved here.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’ he asked.

  ‘The times,’ said Jonathan. ‘They are Parliament people, and most of the neighbours Royalists. Then there was free quarter for this army, free quarter for that, and the last lot of soldiers used us so barbarously, the Master was afraid for his wife and daughter.’

  ‘They have connections here,’ added Hepsibah. ‘As good sell, as leave it to be stripped bare.’

  ‘Why bring drag-rakes to London?’ I asked. ‘To farm the streets?’

  They laughed politely.

  ‘Pay no mind to Jacob’s airs,’ my friend advised. ‘He arrived here a few months back knowing as much of the city as a cow.’

  ‘Mister Ferris,’ I informed the visitors in awed tones, ‘has seen cows in pictures.’

  ‘Most of the tools were packed up by mistake,’ said the wife, turning the conversation. ‘They were left out of the lots to be sold. Yet now, how clear, the hand of God! Praise the Lord.’

  ‘Praise the Lord,’ Ferris responded promptly. He went round again with the wine jug.

  ‘I have got your coat clear, Christopher,’ came his aunt’s voice.

  ‘God bless you, my dear! Though I wish you would rest.’

  ‘’Twere a shame to let it be spoilt. You are handsome in it.’

  ‘Nay, Aunt, my vanity!’ He bent and kissed her, taking the coat on his arm. ‘Here, I’ll lay it in the chest.’

  When he went out Hepsibah turned to me. ‘So, Mister Cullen, you are come from the country to be with your relatives here?’

  ‘Not so, I am a friend of Ferris. We met in the New Model. Before that I served in a big house, like you.’

  They looked at me with fresh interest. ‘Were they a great family?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘Of noble birth, but the men were clowns, sots.’

  ‘And the Mistress? Was the Mistress still alive?’

  ‘Yes. A sad life,’ I said piously.

  ‘So you fought and never returned home,’ said Hepsibah. Aunt watched me curiously. I wished Ferris would hurry back from laying away his coat.

  ‘I did not wish to continue as a serving-man, and Ferris would have me come back with him to London.’

  ‘Are you married?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘I – I lost my wife.’

  ‘Poor man!’ exclaimed Hepsibah.

  Aunt could not restrain herself. ‘He’s not a widower. Are you, Jacob?’

  I shook my head. ‘She left our home under my protection, but we were separated, and I can come by no news of her since. I pray she escaped insult from the soldiers.’

  Jonathan said to Hepsibah, ‘Show them what was done to you.’

  ‘O, no, Husband! They won’t want to see that!’

  Aunt said, ‘I had rather – that is, I—’

  ‘I mean nothing indecent,’ Jonathan urged. ‘Go on, Hepsibah.’

  Hepsibah lifted off her cap and for the first time I noticed that her hair was cropped beneath it, shorter than mine and almost as short as Ferris?
??s. I had never seen a woman’s head in such a condition. Aunt’s eyes were wide with pity and horror.

  ‘Was that apprentices?’ I asked, fascinated to find that we shared a misfortune.

  ‘Cavaliers,’ her husband answered. ‘Because she couldn’t get them the wine cellar key. Did you ever see such senseless – such—!’ He shook his head.

  ‘Thank Providence it was no worse,’ his wife reproached him. ‘They debauch women for a joke. Maid, mother, no odds.’

  ‘She’s right,’ I said. ‘That would have come after the wine cellar.’

  Ferris entered the room and found us all staring at the woman’s despoiled head.

  ‘The Cavaliers did to Hepsibah what the prentice lads did to me,’ I told him.

  Almost proudly, Hepsibah put back her cap.

  ‘Your hair was cut?’ Jonathan asked me.

  ‘He can’t remember it,’ said Ferris. ‘We – the New Model – found him on the road, half dead, and some of the young lads cut his hair off.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Jonathan. ‘How had he offended?’

  ‘Do such fools as that need a reason? They said he was Samson to the Devil and must be shorn or he would rise and slay the camp. A good thing for them the corporal didn’t hear their blasphemy.’

  ‘You never told me this before,’ I said.

  ‘I wanted no revenges. What does it matter what they said? They cut your hair because it was black and shiny.’

  I glowed within to know he had measured their envy.

  ‘It will grow again, my dear,’ said Aunt. I looked round eagerly but she was talking to Hepsibah.

  ‘Let me see the list,’ I said. Ferris passed it over. The Tunstalls had put down sickles, flails, seedlips, all the usual stuff; also a breast plough. This last made me sigh. There was no need for it, since we had oxen, but I suspected that once carried to the common, sooner or later it would be put into someone’s hands. The thing took a strong worker and I had a good idea who that worker would be. With a man’s sweat to oil it, it might take a week to turn as much earth as an ox team could plough in a day. I laid down the paper. ‘Have we need of a breast plough?’

  ‘It is a gift,’ said Ferris. He turned to the Tunstalls. ‘Will you bring these and put them on the cart?’

  ‘When will you depart?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘We thought the tenth of April. High time to be sowing,’ said Ferris.

  We thought. I had not heard the date before.

  ‘That’s late. The ploughing should have been done in the winter,’ said Jonathan, voicing one of the very doubts which tormented me also.

  ‘And next year we will,’ I answered, obediently singing Ferris’s tune. ‘But there we are, it is all unbroken. Not much manuring to do; we have that on our side.’

  They agreed to bring round their implements a couple of days before the time, and to walk with us to the common on the tenth. Ferris went downstairs with them, clapping them on the back and calling out to them as they walked down the street. I stayed behind, looking over the hated list, aware of Aunt’s inquisitive gaze on my face.

  I was finding myself more and more in this position, promoting what I feared. Sometimes, in my sleep, I heard myself offering explanations to the Devil, who listened in mocking silence and then for answer turned to our precious crops, his fiery laughter scorching them up to withered gourds.

  I should have been like the dead after all the packing and stacking that had gone on, but I was sleepless on the eve of departure, lonely even in beloved company. Ferris rolled about in bed; he muttered and laughed and once said, Joanna, but still he slept. Dreading wakefulness, I had left the candle burning and brought another up with me. I passed my time in watching him, the candlelight being too dim for the Bible which still lived by the side of his bed. Besides, all such reading now frightened me, ever since I had opened the book at random and my eyes had at once fallen on: If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Later it came to me that most likely Ferris – or Nathan – had halted at Leviticus before, and pressed the page open; but then it seemed an omen to strike terror into my soul.

  The Judas cry of hundreds of birds told me the sun was coming up outside. I turned down the sheets to gaze on Ferris, to commit him and the room to heart. He lay on his back, arms flung wide, as if in welcome: he was slender as a boy, only his scarred cheek to show he had borne arms. I stored up his grace, and his sleeping innocence, for old age.

  Feeling the cold, he frowned and rolled towards me. I pulled the cover over us both. Every delight I ever tasted with him pierced me like a knife. I locked my arms about him, caught him between my thighs, burrowed my face into his neck. He struggled and woke. I saw that he knew what day it was, for he said nothing but at once put his arms round me. We lay pressed together, unmoving.

  Our loving neighbours were out to see the fanatics depart for their field. Some looked on with a discreet – very discreet – admiration, but on most faces I saw that hard completeness which has no time for newfangled notions. Mister Cooper need not have sold up after all, said their eyes, for the young madman has quit. Good riddance to him and his bulking ill-mannered friend.

  Our companions were come and the fellow had brought round the oxen as promised. We all waited in the courtyard in the flat light as Harry fitted the yokes. The beasts stood quiet.

  ‘This one is Reuben, and that Pharoah,’ said the man.

  Elizabeth patted his snout. ‘Pharoah, Pharoah.’ Thomas, the eldest of the three Beste children, stared in awe at his hooves. The other two were called Diamond and Blackboy.

  ‘Have we overloaded the cart?’ Ferris asked nervously.

  Harry made an inspection: it was hard, indeed, to see how more could go on there, or even how we had fitted on all that there was: rice, cheese, salted butter and beef, bacon, poor-john, dried beans, oil and beer, not to mention clothing, grain, seeds and implements. A plough lay on top of the pile, handles projecting from the back. Jonathan, Harry and the Domremys had smaller carts of their own, while the other colonists carried bulging packs.

  When everything had been checked several times the terrible moment came. Aunt was still in the house, weeping. I hesitated, then realised that everyone apart from Ferris and myself had gone through this already. I looked round to see how well they had survived it. Botts seemed happy as a man just sat down to a roast goose. The women all had swollen eyes, but each smiled at me, while the men stood quietly acknowledging that it was a blow, a blow indeed. I knew too well how the married couples must have kissed and clung earlier on.

  ‘Go say your farewells indoors,’ I suggested to Ferris.

  ‘You go first, then.’

  At that moment Aunt came out, looking so pinched and old that I would not have known her. A dreary pleasure passed through the gaping neighbours, and one woman came and took her hand in sympathy. Aunt wrenched it away and threw both her arms violently about Ferris. I was reminded of our arrival in London; she heaved and moaned. He sent me a look of helpless misery over her shoulder, then buried his face in her neck. I looked away, surprised to find myself so pained. The woman who had offered her hand stood stiffly to one side.

  Someone touched my sleeve. Becs. She jerked her head towards the house and I followed, oppressed by a faint dread. Once in the kitchen she stopped and turned to face me. I could find nothing to say or do but wait.

  She had on her best gown, dark and close-fitting; her wet cheeks showed very fresh over the brilliant white collar. It was a shame, after all, for her not to have had the man she wanted. I was about to beg forgiveness, when the girl rapped out in a strange, fierce voice:

  ‘She’ll never know what I saw.’

  ‘O—!’ That was my breath going out, the breath I had not known I was holding. My thanks were still unspoken when she went on, ‘Take care of him, he’s her life.’

  ‘He’s mine also.’

  We stared at one another. Then s
he stepped up to me and raised her face, imperious, as if I were the servant. Very well, a truce. I touched my mouth to hers. It was a dry, brotherly kiss and we did not cease staring. I made to raise my head, when suddenly her arms coiled round my neck, pulling me down; she closed her eyes and the tip of her tongue pushed between my lips, soft, coaxing. I held back, refusing to join her in it, but then came a treacherous excitement. Panicking, I again tried to raise my head and she at once hung with all her weight on me, pushing right into my mouth, her blind, wilful eyelids shutting out my fear. To my horror, I felt a springing in the loins. She must be stopped at once. Praying Ferris would not come back into the house, I slowly but firmly prised her arms from my neck.

  She bit me, and as I pulled away she hit me a ringing blow in the face. I was too shocked even to strike back. There was a taste of blood and I knew she had split my lip. We stood quivering, Becs with clenched fists, I fingering my mouth. I almost said, ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ but instead I bowed to her – bowed! – and stumbled out of the room, closing the door on her violent crying.

  At the door I met Aunt, who did not look me in the eyes but seized my hands and muttered, ‘May God take you to His care. This house is always open,’ and then pushed past me, staggering, on her way upstairs. I stepped out into the sun to see our company waiting for me, Ferris very white.

  ‘You’ve cut your lip,’ said Hepsibah.

  I wiped it on the back of my hand and took up my bundle. Harry, bearing Thomas on his shoulders, passed the handles of his cart to Jeremiah, then jerked the reins and clicked to Pharoah. Elizabeth carried the baby in her arms; her middle child, who looked to be about a year old, was held by Susannah Domremy. The carts squeaked on the cobbles and the onlookers parted to let us through. At the end of the street Ferris and I turned round, as one, to look back at the house. There was the window of his chamber, with the two women in it, waving. We waved back. I wondered if Becs could taste my blood. The neighbours stood motionless, watching us go.