On Beulah Height

TEN

BETSY ALLGOOD [PA/WW/18.6.88]

TRANSCRIPT 3

№ 2 of 2 copies

Like I said, I thought everything were going to be all right forever.

If things worked out, sheep would have gumboots, my dad used to say.

But they don’t. And Dad didn’t get Stirps End either.

When we heard that Mr Hardcastle had got it, Dad wanted to rush off and speak to Mr Pontifex straight off. But Mam got in front of the door and wouldn’t let him pass. She didn’t often stand up to him when he were ireful, but this time she did, and told him he’d best sleep on it, and she knew it weren’t right and Stirps End had been good as promised, but she reckoned Mr Pontifex had given it to Cedric Hardcastle out of guilt.

‘Guilt over what?’ yelled my dad.

‘’Cos he thinks it were him selling land to the Water Board that set things off back there in Dendale, so he’s given Ced the farm ’cos they lost Madge, which makes us the lucky ones, ’cos we might not have Stirps End but we’ve still got our Betsy!’

And when she said this, I saw my dad’s eyes turn to me, and they were black as grate-lead, and I knew he were thinking he’d rather have the farm.

Well, he held off seeing Mr Pontifex till next morn, but it didn’t do much good from all accounts, and he came back saying we’d best pack as he’d told Mr Pontifex to stuff his job, andlikely the old sod would be coming with the bum-bailiffs to turns us out of our cottage afore nightfall.

Mr Pontifex did turn up later that day, but he were on his lone and he talked a long while with my mam first, ’cos Dad went out into the back yard when he came through front door, then he talked to them both together, and upshot was, Dad stayed on as his sheep man with a bit more brass besides and the promise of first refusal on the next farm to come up. But that would be like waiting for a drink from a methodee, said Dad, seeing as all the farms on the Pontifex estate were let to families who’d got sons to carry on the tenancies. And though he didn’t look at me this time, I knew he were thinking of me again.

So everything were spoilt now. I thought for a bit after we left Dendale that it was all going to be all right, but now it were back to what it had been before only worse, with Mam taken badly again and Dad walking round like he had come to the end of things but just couldn’t stop moving.

That’s how it were, you see, for all of us, I mean. It’s funny how you can know inside that everything’s knackered, that there’s no point in owt, but outside you just carry on living like nothing was different, like it made some sense to be going to school and doing your lessons and learning stuff by heart to help you for the future.

I don’t know how long this went on. It could have gone on forever, I suppose. Some folk have been dead forty years before they get buried, Dad used to say. I know I were in the top class and next year I’d be moving on to the secondary. I remember thinking mebbe that would change things somehow for me. They gave us a lot of stuff about it at school one day and I went home with it to show Mam.

And I found her dead.

No, I don’t want to talk about it. What’s to talk about? She’d lived, now she were dead. End of story.

Which left me and Dad.

They wanted to take me away and put me with someone. They wanted to write to Aunt Chloe straight off and see if she could help.

But I said no, I were going to stay at home and look after Dad. Someone had to look after him now, didn’t they? And what with Mam being so ill for such a long time, I’d been doing most things round the house anyway, so where was the difference? They said we’d need to have someone from Social who’d come in to help and I said that would be OK even though I didn’t want them, ’cos I could see this was the only way they were going to agree.

So that’s what we did and it was OK for a bit, and it would have been OK forever if only Dad could have got his farm and if only Mam hadn’t died like she did and if only …

Any road, he went off one morning and I never saw him again. They said he went up over the Corpse Road and down into Dendale, and over to the far side of the reservoir closest to where Low Beulah used to be. Then he filled his pockets with rocks and walked into the watter so that when the divers found him, he were lying close by the pile of rubble which they’d made out of the old house.

I said it weren’t so, he weren’t dead, he’d just gone away and he’d come back for me one day. They wanted me to look at his face afore they closed up the coffin and buried him, but I wouldn’t. Of course, I know that he’s dead, but that’s not the same as knowing for sure, is it? That’s what Dad used to say. There’s knowing and there’s knowing for sure and there’s space between the two of them for a man to get lost in. That’s where he is for me, in that space. Lost.

And after that? After I came to live down here with Auntie Chloe? I had to do something, you can see that. Things don’t just stop and start again, like nothing had happened before. But things can be changed. I read in this book about yon singer called Callas, how she changed herself from being plain and glorrfat, so that’s what I was aimed at, changing myself; that’show come I burned my head and all. To be like Mary? Oh yes, I wanted to be like Mary. And Madge. And Jenny. I wanted to be like any of them as were wanted and missed …

That’s all. You said I just had to talk about the old days, I needn’t talk about now if I didn’t want. Well, I don’t. And I don’t want Aunt Chloe to hear this, that’s definite. But him, oh aye, you can show it to him if you like, let him hear what it’s like to be me, I’d like him to understand, that’s for sure. Because who else is left in the world to understand?