A Man of his Time

‘A woman waits for a man to propose. Only I can’t. I’m promised.’ He might or might not be, though going by the glances he had got from Mary Ann he could claim to be. Lying was against his pride, but he wondered whether he would get the warmth from Mary Ann as now came from Minnie Dyslin.

‘If you’re promised, there’s nothing I can say.’

‘It can’t be that bad,’ he said at her tears. ‘What would your parson think of you marrying a blacksmith? I’m a journeyman still, and go everywhere to find work. I never know where I’ll be from one year’s end to the next.’ The space in her would have to be filled by the child.

She pulled him close. ‘See me as often as you can while you’re here. That’s all I ask.’

‘I’ll do that.’ It wouldn’t put him out. ‘You’re the finest woman I’ve known. There’s never been anyone I wanted more.’

She followed his long back into the bracken, noting where he trod. He turned: ‘Come on, Minnie. And don’t lose your muff.’

He sometimes wondered when he would go back to Nottingham, though homesickness was no part of him. Sooner or later he would go because that was what you did after a stint in a strange place. You did what mattered, not what you thought. He would be sorry to leave a girl in Tredegar Town, as well as Minnie, whose child he’d see into the world and get a look at, feeling such curiosity about the matter it was necessary to fix on his work with more than ordinary attention: hammer and tongs weren’t playmates, nor the anvil a silent partner. A blow at the glowing iron with the wrong weight behind might cause a spark and blind you. They mostly went wide, and looked pretty enough in their angles, but the odd little murderous fly, all metal and fire, could stop your sight forever before you even saw it, the one-eyed blacksmith not such a rare bird in the trade.

It didn’t do to think and work at the same time, no matter what pleasant features flashed to mind, best to save it for when the beer was going down your throat, or on your way to Pontllanfraith in the evening.

‘You’ve got something on your mind,’ George said while they were eating their bread and polony in the forge.

Ernest wouldn’t sit outside for his dinner, not wanting strangers to gawp while he ate. Anyway, it was raining. ‘That’s nothing to do with you.’

‘Your head’s full of it. Not that you’ll say much.’

Ernest grunted in the way of their father. ‘Not more than usual I wouldn’t.’ When the boy came back with their beer jug from the Mason’s Arms he fixed him with a gaze. ‘You’ve had a swallow or two out of this.’

The boy was shoeless, stunted and half-starved, barely worth the half-crown a week George paid him for fetching and carrying. He reared at the accusation, an arm over his face to hold off blows, not so rare when he irritated George, who only took him on to have a body for knocking around. ‘I didn’t,’ he cried. ‘I would never do such a thing, Mr Burton.’

He’d be daft if he didn’t. Ernest had always taken a good sup as a child when sent to get ale. He passed the boy a large part of his sandwich, saw it find a good home in his mouth, then drank his share of the pot.

Standing at the door, warm and gentle rain giving a smell he had grown to like, he wondered how much higher Minnie’s belly would be on next seeing her, nobody able to tell what was in his mind, and whoever stared trying to find out would come up against a wall no nosiness could break.

Let George tap all he liked, he’d get no answers, though you had to watch it. The less somebody knew about your business the better for them but most of all for you, the only trouble being that you had no control over what people said about you between themselves.

The weather was too bleak to go in the wood so they stayed outside, such December cold as if blankets of snow were on their way. He wore his suit and light raincoat, since it was Saturday afternoon and he had a young woman to see at Tredegar in the evening.

Close to her confinement, Minnie said that their last meeting had been spoken about in the village, and if one person knew, they all did. Luckily it was a day when she hadn’t cared to be touched in the way he wanted, being too far gone with the baby, but her brother-in-law asked who the man was. ‘So I told him about you.’

Such tongue-wagging was an attack on his inviolability which he could well have done without. Even Leah the shunter’s wife hadn’t blabbed, and maybe he’d got her in the pod as well, though she was a more knowing piece than Minnie, who seemed less familiar with the ways of the world. ‘Couldn’t you have made up another story?’

‘I’m not capable of telling a falsehood,’ she said firmly. ‘All lies are wicked. The Lord never forgives a liar.’

She’d certainly been got at. ‘You told him everything?’

His annoyance was hard to understand. ‘There was no other way.’

She might be a few years older, but age had made her no wiser. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t chuck you on the street.’

‘He’s a Christian man.’

‘One of them, is he?’ – an ironic turn of the lips.

‘He would never do such a thing.’

‘Did he torment you?’

‘He asked, so I had to tell him. He said God would forgive my transgressions, as he hoped God would forgive yours.’

‘That’s cold.’

‘We prayed together. Then he said he would forget what I had told him. And he will. He’s a man of his word.’

He stiffened to his full height. ‘What else did he say?’

‘That I wasn’t to think of marrying you.’

‘Not the right sort for you, I suppose.’

‘He would never say that.’

‘No, but he would think it.’ As far as he was concerned he was too good to be related to a preacher’s family.

‘He said I must stay the rest of my life with him and my sister, who would see that the child had a Christian upbringing, and a good education.’

His laugh was dry, at not too outlandish a notion that the child would get on in a world of hypocrites. ‘He’s got some sense. But I’ll never forget you, Minnie.’

‘Nor I you.’

He kissed her lips in haste, aware that every tree had eyes and ears, not caring to get her into more trouble. ‘What shall we call it?’

She smiled. ‘David, if it’s a boy.’

He’d wanted Ernest, but the choice had to be hers, or her brother-in-law’s. ‘It could well be a boy.’

‘But a girl I’ll call Abigail, though my sister would prefer Martha.’

‘Abigail’s prettier.’

The trees darkened and a mist was forming, bleak country compared to that on the outskirts of Nottingham. ‘I’m happy talking to you,’ she said, ‘even if only for a few minutes.’

‘It’s the same for me, my darling.’ He wondered what she was thinking, and whether there was any good in it for him, but didn’t care because he couldn’t be bothered to find out whether she was saying what she really thought. None of it mattered. You only knew what was in someone’s mind by the words that came from their mouths, and had to be satisfied with that, believing it if you cared to. ‘When the child’s grown up will you tell him how he came to be born?’

‘That will be for me to decide, if the Lord spares me to live that long. Nobody knows the future. When I found out I was going to have a baby I was in despair, but now I’m glad.’

Her stiffening tone made him indifferent to what she would do. All that mattered with women was that you didn’t catch the pox, and that they didn’t get it from you. If they became pregnant it was their lookout, though if that happened to Mary Ann he would marry her and no mistake. You couldn’t do any such thing to a girl who lived across the street, and she was too closely looked after by Mrs Lewin – who seemed to know all the tricks – and he was glad she was, because when he got home, all dressed up and gold jingling in his pockets, he would go into the White Hart and ask her to marry him, before he got into any more scrapes.

‘I shall never forget you,’ she said, which he liked to hear.

‘And I’ll remember you for the rest of my life. When I look over the wall of the parson’s house in a couple of months, perhaps you’ll give me a glance at the child before I go back to Nottingham.’

‘It’s your right,’ she said. ‘I don’t think my brother-in-law will disagree.’