He struck her fiercely across the shoulders: “Let that teach you, you cheeky young bitch.”
“I wish you was dead,” she moaned. “I wish everybody was dead.” The dogs outside whined at the noise, a pitying tune to her fit of dereliction. Silence between the last frantic rustling of leaves and the first onset of rain went unnoticed, and raindrops swept the yard like a square-mile sweeping brush.
I’ll run away, was her first thought, as Merton threw down the stick and went up in his stockinged feet to bed. But how can I? I’ve got no money. But I must do summat because I can’t stand this. I’m nearly twenty-three and wain’t put up with the old man’s bullyin’ any more. If I can’t run away I might as well chuck myself in the cut or under a train as go on puttin’ up with a dog’s life like this, because it’ll go on and on, I know for a fact, if I stay here. I’ll never be able to go out to the Empire and come in late after it. I’ve stood on the canal bank before, trying to chuck myself in the deep locks, but I never could do it; and I’ve waited for a train on the embankment to come fast out of Radford Station but I’ve allus been frightened at the noise as it gets closer, and before it comes near me I run away, down the bank and back through the field because I was frightened to death. But then, I don’t see why I should kill myself just for the old man, because I’m sure it wouldn’t bother him a deal if I did. No, why should I? though it would be nice one day if I did get killed by a bus or tram so’s he’d happen be sorry and think of all the times he’s been a rotten bogger to me.
Looking around the too familiar room — a whitewashed cottage kitchen with a Sandeman sherry mirror by the door, a large homemade rug by the hearth, chairs and table under the window — she saw his case of horseshoes on the wall, brass and chromium-plated prizes that kept the girls polishing and cleaning all Saturday morning as if they were silver and gold. Supported behind glass on especially wrought nails, these horseshoes had been accumulated by Merton from apprenticeship to his becoming one of the finest craftsmen in the county. She took down a big shoe and held it, feeling its weight and knowing it would slip easily from her fingers if a fair grip wasn’t kept on the bend. Two prongs pointed upwards and the grooved, smoothly polished side — meant to tread the soil on more workaday productions — was held facing her. A ray of red paint had been spilled into the groove from pronged tip around bulging curve to pronged tip — red because blood from the horse’s foot wouldn’t be noticed when the nails went in, she had always thought. On the left side were four holes and on the right side three. Beginning from left to right she muttered: Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday; and then looked at the three remaining holes on the right, completing the week: Friday Saturday Sunday. The first four were to be said quickly because you wanted them to go as fast as possible, thus bringing you sooner on to the last three, which you spoke more slowly because they were enjoyable days — looking at the seven holes through blood-red paint and holding the prongs upwards so that no luck would run out.
She remembered Merton singing rhymes when they were children, holding each child on his knees in turn and chanting the words to them, again and again, as rain poured down and thunder boomed. When they were afraid of black Sunday evenings in summer, the sing-song chant had gone in and stayed, seven nails for a nursery rhyme rough-edged into them who were disturbed at being so close and not knowing with what amount of ease to take his momentary kindness and good nature, so that the jingled forgeries had stayed there for good.
She saw herself taking a basket from the pantry, opening the door so that Merton would not hear, and returning up the steps to fill it with all thirty horseshoes. Then the outer door would open and into the choking rain she’d go, hatless and without a coat, between the pigeon coop and the house-side, her skirt soaking on long nettles and grass, shoes sogged and distorted on stones until she turned into the open and went towards the well. How would she find it? As easily as if it were a birth wart in the centre of her hand. And then I’ll throw the horseshoes one by one into it, hear each splash as it hits bottom and sinks, and laugh to think the old man will never see them again.
The impossible dream faded; her hand covered her ear and cheek, was hidden by long hair; leaning on her elbow, she went on looking at the case of horseshoes until she grew too sleepy to stay awake.
She was just back from Engine Town with a box of buttons to sew on her blouse, dodging mud-puddles under the railway bridge and negotiating ice-ruts in the lane so as not to wet her shoes in the piled snow. Looking out of the bedroom window, her desire to solve any problem was killed by the hard winter. Perhaps the year would break through. A long thick layer of cloud spearheading towards the Pennines was ghost-green on top and turning pink below, indicating a half-beaten-to-death sun lurking somewhere, licking its wounds after an agonizing Armageddon of autumn. Lines of snow lay in the furrows of the next field, and in the garden it gathered in uprooted cabbage hollows like deserted pools of unpalatable milk. Winter’s juggernaut crushed everything except people, who still went to work, quarrelled, played football, got married, and died.
She walked up the lane on Sunday afternoon when her father was sleeping off his dinner and beer, noticing black withered beads of elderberries clinging still to twigs contorted by icy cold. Three greyhounds flashed through a hedge into a hollow of Cherry Orchard, back legs skidding on frost-flowers when they tried to ascend and breach level ground. Off they went under the heavy lead of afternoon sky, across treeless humps and dips, each growl heard low from the distance they were suddenly at, the only sound from them as if caught in cupped hands and placed just outside her ears. And also Seaton’s ears: he put two fingers into his mouth and knifed the dead man of silence, so that the three greyhounds came racing back, front legs and back legs machine-gunning the turf.
“Hello, duck,” he said, seeing her for the first time.
She asked a question: “Are them whippets yourn?”
“They aren’t whippets,” he told her, putting her right, “they’re greyhounds and they belong to my feyther.” He untangled the chain-leash. “I bring ’em out every Sunday for a run.”
“They go fast.” They approached in line ahead, and she moved out of their way. “You’ll be all right, duck,” he said in a kind voice. “I’ll tie ’em up soon an’ tek ’em back ’ome. This sort o’ dog likes a good run, you know,” he explained, by way of breaking the silence when she showed no sign of speaking.
A further whistle sent the dogs across the mile-long roughs. “They ain’t had enough yet,” young dark-haired Seaton with the leash said. She gazed vacantly towards the three dogs, watching their mad mechanical legs careering almost out of sight, then bend head to tail by the wood and bear round again towards them. Framed by green hollows and a dark pack of jellied trees, they broke formation often, one to manœuvre its long whippet head towards another, each in turn failing on the same trick, and devouring only the too vulnerable gap of much coveted dank air between the end of its muzzle and the flank of the one attacked. The best defence was to get slightly ahead, swing the head outwards and outflank the outflanker, showing a fierce growl and shine of teeth, make the other afraid to resist effectively by increasing the fierceness, which would then be outdone by the other dog, and to surmount it still again until a final pure competitive speed would remain. They turned their elongated, gracefully swinging bodies about in the frolic, drum-tight pelts stretched over distinguishable ribs and bones, sometimes rolling in the grass so that the pursuer, unable to pull up for its victory, thundered by to return only when the fallen dog was back on its four legs belting away in another direction.