The Borrowed Child

Susannah had been mending the hem of Mary's winter petticoat when Hannah Bell came to the door with a bowl held against her stomach. The bowl was empty, which Susannah noticed before she noticed the woman's face. 'Have you any more of the barley?' Hannah asked. 'The fine-ground sort. The little one kept the last down.' 'I have some.' Susannah set the needle into the cloth. 'Come in. You're shaking.' 'I walked quickly.' Hannah came as far as the threshold and stopped. She had been the first person to bring bread after Nathaniel died, and for years she had entered this house without waiting to be invited. Now she inspected the floorboards as though she had been warned of a loose one. Mary was sitting by the hearth, making an unsuccessful attempt to wind a length of yarn around a wooden spool. At the sight of Hannah she pushed the spool beneath her skirt. She was nine and capable of believing almost anything could be repaired if she concealed the evidence long enough. 'How is Ruth?' Susannah asked. 'She slept from dawn till the bell.' 'And the fever?' 'Lower, I think. She wanted her father to fetch the cat. Then she didn't want it when it came.' 'That's promising.' Hannah's mouth moved in what might once have been a smile. 'He says not to ask you again.' Susannah stood. 'If you have been told not to come here, you mustn't get yourself into difficulty on my account.' 'He doesn't know I'm here.' 'I see.' 'Only the meal, Susannah. If you've enough.' She took down the sack from its shelf and measured out what Hannah needed, adding a little beyond the rim of the bowl. The grain had been ground two days earlier. She had been saving it for Mary's breakfasts, because the coarser meal sometimes upset the child's stomach, but Ruth Bell had taken almost nothing for the better part of a week. 'Boil it thin at first,' she said. 'If she keeps that down, make it thicker. And don't give her the bitter tea again. It will do her no good.' Hannah looked up sharply. 'How did you know about the tea?' 'You told me on Tuesday.' 'Yes. Of course I did.' She gathered the bowl against her. 'Good day to you.' Mary waited until the door closed. 'She didn't say good day to me.' 'Perhaps she's tired.' 'She saw me.' 'Then you'll have to forgive her for being ill-mannered.' Susannah retrieved the petticoat from the bench. 'And you can stop hiding that spool. I heard it fall twice.' Mary produced the spool, which had accumulated a tight clot of yarn at one end and an untidy length trailing behind. 'It's Father's fault. He made this side too big.' 'Your father made that for me before you were born.' 'He should have known I would want to use it.' Susannah laughed despite herself and held out her hand. Mary passed it over reluctantly. The child's fingers were reddened from trying to pull the knot loose, and she had wound the thread in the wrong direction. They unravelled it together, Mary asserting throughout that she had understood perfectly well how it was meant to work. The house had once contained four people and a good deal more noise. Nathaniel had filled it with opinions about the quality of timber and the scandalous sums charged for nails. Joseph, even when he was small, had contrived to overturn whatever stood within reach. He had died six years earlier, before Mary was old enough to remember him properly; Nathaniel had followed three winters afterwards. Their things had not all gone. A narrow shelf Nathaniel had fixed beside the hearth remained crooked because he had insisted the wall was crooked instead. Joseph's wooden cup lay at the back of a cupboard. Susannah never used it, nor could she have said why she kept it. She had enough work to occupy her without dwelling on any of that. There were stockings to mend for the meetinghouse families, onions to hang, a patch of turnips to lift before frost and, if the weather held, another day's washing. She had accepted the mending because it brought a little money and offended no one, although even that simple arrangement had become more complicated lately. People sometimes sent their work through somebody else. A small payment might arrive folded into a cloth, without a message. Others who had formerly sat to talk while she stitched now stayed outside. Mary leaned across her lap. 'May I take the clean linen to Mistress Dyer?' 'After you finish the yarn.' 'What if she needs it before then?' 'Mistress Dyer has been waiting three days. She can manage another quarter hour.' 'Her baby leaks on everything.' 'So did you.' Mary considered that. 'I was smaller.' 'You were louder.' She was pleased when Mary resumed her work without further bargaining. Whatever uneasiness had settled over the adults in the settlement had not yet made the child cautious. Mary argued over chores, disliked parsnips and took pleasure in discovering that somebody important had dirt on his coat. Last Sunday she had asked the minister why angels were always shown with clean feet when they travelled so much. Susannah had been obliged to suppress a smile while the man attempted an answer. Outside, the settlement went about its business. Through the opened shutter Susannah could hear a saw working steadily somewhere beyond the common, and the two heavy blows that meant the cooper was seating a hoop. The houses stood far enough apart for their gardens and pig pens, close enough that smoke from one hearth could make its way through a neighbour's washing. Beyond them the fields gave way to wooded ground, the narrow track climbing north towards the older clearings on the ridge. Her mother lived on the far side. There had been a time when the journey took less than an hour and Susannah made it without thinking. She had carried baskets of eggs to Abigail Marden and returned with late apples, roots for winter and the sharp advice her mother offered on every subject from childbirth to the preservation of butter. Then Joseph grew ill, and Susannah, exhausted by two nights of fever, had sent for her. Abigail had come through the rain carrying a parcel under her cloak. Inside were things Susannah had no wish to name. Her mother had sent Nathaniel to fetch water and cleared the little table by the bed. What followed had been quick, quiet and unmistakable. A candle burned in the cold draught without moving. Water lifted from a wooden cup as though a hand beneath its surface had pushed it upwards. Abigail had murmured over Joseph until the boy's breathing eased, and Susannah, who had never once doubted the reality of her mother's gifts, had allowed herself a terrible hope. By morning the fever had returned. Joseph died that afternoon with Nathaniel holding him. Abigail had gone home before the burial. Two days later somebody mentioned seeing her enter the Bickford house at night, and Susannah discovered how far a small story could travel among people who had nothing better to explain their misfortunes. She had not allowed her mother back since. Abigail sent gifts occasionally by travellers willing to carry them. Susannah accepted the apples and left the more curious parcels unopened. She wrote once in spring and again at Christmas, saying Mary was well and asking after her mother's health. The replies were brief and sometimes affectionate, sometimes angry. Susannah understood both kinds. 'Susannah?' Mary had finished the spool and was watching her. 'You haven't listened.' 'What did you say?' 'I said could I take the linen now.' 'Yes. And thank Mistress Dyer properly for the eggs.' 'Even though there was a crack in one?' 'Especially then.' Mary stood, gathered the parcel and went to find her bonnet. From the back room came the scrape of the box where she kept her shoes, followed by a bang which suggested she had attempted to shut the lid with her foot. Susannah laid aside her sewing and went to help before the child broke the hinge. They set out together because Susannah had business at the storehouse. The afternoon was bright and dry, the sort of day on which everybody spoke of the fine weather while thinking how little of it remained. Near the meetinghouse a pair of boys were hauling kindling from a cart. Mary paused to watch one of them lose his grip and send a scattering of sticks across the path. She grinned when he bent to collect them. 'You could help,' Susannah said. 'He told me girls can't lift wood.' 'Then you should be pleased he's discovered otherwise.' Mary made no move to help, but she did take care to step over the scattered pieces rather than tread on them. Mistress Dyer accepted the linen with evident relief, examined two seams and handed Susannah the promised eggs. She was not unkind. She was also anxious to be finished with the exchange. When Mary asked whether the Dyer baby was sleeping better, the woman said he was, thanked her for asking and closed the door before Susannah had settled her basket on her arm. At the storehouse she learned that the salt expected from the coast had not arrived. Mr. Pritchard blamed a damaged bridge; his assistant blamed the driver and said privately that the bridge had been damaged for years without preventing anyone from crossing it. Susannah had to calculate how much could be spared from her own stores for the winter meat. The assistant offered an alternative that would cost nearly twice as much. She declined and bought lamp oil instead, while Mary inspected a row of small iron hooks as if each might conceal a more exciting purpose than hanging utensils. They emerged to find a knot of people gathered near the well. At first Susannah thought there had been an accident. A woman was crying. She recognised Hannah Bell's grey shawl and quick, uneven movements as Hannah tried to explain something to the minister, who stood with a hand on his hat. Her husband, Matthew, remained a little apart. He was a tall man with the permanently reddened hands of somebody who spent much of his day among hides and tanning liquor. Several neighbours had stopped to listen. 'Let us come home,' Susannah said to Mary, but Hannah had already seen them. 'Mistress Bickford.' The minister turned. His name was Josiah Wren, and until this autumn he had been an undramatic presence in Susannah's life: a voice on Sundays, an occasional visitor when her husband was ill, a man she had once lent a bowl and never asked to have back. He looked as if he would rather have met her anywhere else. 'Good afternoon, Mistress Bickford,' he said. 'We were speaking of the Bell child.' 'She was better this morning, I understood.' 'Better?' Hannah's voice rose. 'You told me to stop the tea. By noon she was throwing her arms about. She made a noise I've never heard from a child.' 'She did that on Monday as well.' 'That was different.' Matthew took two steps towards his wife. 'Hannah, come away.' 'Why should I? She knows everything before anyone tells her. She said Ruth would improve, and when I came back with the barley—' 'You came to my house for barley because she was improving,' Susannah said. She kept her voice low. 'I gave it to you. What are you trying to say?' Hannah's face showed a miserable confusion of gratitude, terror and anger. She had spent days sitting beside an ill child, judging every choice she made by whether Ruth lived another hour. Susannah knew something of that exhaustion. 'My husband says your mother kept company with wicked things.' Someone near the well shifted his feet. Mary moved closer to Susannah's skirt and took hold of the cloth, pulling at the seam she had finished that morning. 'You have known my mother for years,' Susannah said. 'I haven't seen her for years.' 'Neither have I.' Matthew spoke at last. 'You sent for her when Joseph was sick.' 'My son was dying.' 'And she came with her charms.' 'She came because I asked her to.' The minister raised his hand to quiet them. 'We ought not speak of such matters in front of children.' 'Then stop speaking of them,' Susannah said. She regretted the sharpness before he had even answered. Wren's expression closed. He had been prepared to soothe an ugly exchange, perhaps to send everybody home with a warning against gossip. Now he appeared to regard her as one of its causes. 'We will speak in the proper place, then,' he said. 'I should be glad if you would attend the meetinghouse tomorrow after the morning duties. There are questions to be answered.' 'What questions?' 'I have no wish to pursue them here.' Hannah wiped her face with the edge of her shawl. Her husband placed a hand at her elbow, and this time she allowed him to lead her away. Nobody asked about the barley. The children who had been playing near the storehouse had gathered at a safe distance, attracted by adult voices and the prospect of being told to go elsewhere. 'You may tell me what I'm accused of,' Susannah said, feeling Mary's fingers clutch at the seam of her skirt. The minister looked towards the people around them. 'No one has accused you of anything. We must establish the truth of the matter before opinions take hold.' Mistress Dyer, who had shut her door so briskly half an hour before, was among those watching. The assistant from the storehouse had come out carrying a sack he seemed in no hurry to deliver. A boy from the cooper's yard was standing on the trough to see above the crowd. 'Come along, Mary.' They walked home by the lane behind the gardens, although it was muddier and added half a mile. Mary said very little until they reached the place where the path crossed the brook. There she stopped to scrape the worst of the mud from one shoe against a stone. 'Is Ruth going to die?' she asked. 'I hope not.' 'What did Mistress Bell mean about Grandmother?' Susannah set her basket down beside the path. There were two eggs wrapped in linen at the bottom, and she wished she had remembered to put the parcel somewhere they could not break. 'She was frightened,' she said. 'Frightened people sometimes talk foolishly.' 'You said frightened people should be kind to each other.' 'I did. They should.' Mary bent to her other shoe. 'Will you go tomorrow?' 'Yes.' 'Can I come?' 'No. You'll stay with Mistress Dyer, if she'll have you.' 'I don't want to.' 'We'll decide about that in the morning.' They continued home. Susannah gave Mary an apple from the store and watched her eat it all the way down to the seeds, carrying the core until a pig rooted along the fence and persuaded her to surrender it. There was washing still on the line and a pot to set over the fire. They brought the clothes in together. Mary dropped a clean shirt in the dirt and made such an elaborate attempt to hide it that Susannah could not decide whether to scold her or laugh. After supper, with Mary occupied by her sewing and the house settled around them, Susannah took paper from the box beneath her bed. She had not written to Abigail in almost a year. The pen needed trimming, and the ink had thickened. She worked it loose, then sat for a long while with the blank page before her. At length she wrote that Mary had grown two inches, that she still disliked onions and had lately learned to read passages from the Scriptures without prompting. She included the news that the garden had done well, and that a neighbour's child was seriously ill. She began another sentence about the meetinghouse, read the first few words and struck them out. If she asked her mother to come, Abigail would come. There was no doubt of it. Susannah remembered the candle burning straight in a room where every loose scrap of cloth was moving, and the terrible hope she had felt beside Joseph's bed. She folded the letter before the ink was completely dry and put it away rather than seal it. Tomorrow she would attend the minister, explain what she had done for Ruth Bell and come home. There was nothing else she could reasonably do that night. Mary wanted a story before bed, and the loose board near the doorway had caught the hem of her dress twice that week. Susannah fetched the small hammer Nathaniel had kept under the bench, set a fresh peg into the wood and drove it home while her daughter held the candle. 'Will it stay?' Mary asked. 'It ought to.' 'You said that last time.' 'And look how long it lasted.' 'Most of the summer.' 'Well, then.' Mary was not impressed, but she lay down contentedly enough after Susannah told her the familiar story of the farmer who had tried to teach his goose to keep watch over the orchard. Halfway through, Mary corrected a detail about the farmer's boots. She had heard the story so often that Susannah sometimes suspected the child knew it better than she did. When Mary was asleep, Susannah checked the bolt and placed the hammer back beneath the bench. The road outside remained quiet. She considered the meetinghouse invitation, then went to work on the petticoat hem again because it would need to be finished before winter, whatever foolishness people chose to discuss in the morning.