He gives a nod and a shrug, all at the same time, eyeing the broad back of his father, who looms behind his mother, still facing the street. He is, despite himself, despite the fact that he is clutching the hand of the woman he has vowed to marry, despite everything, working out which way he will have to duck to avoid the inevitable fist, to feint, to parry, and to shield Agnes from the blows he knows will come. Such a thing has no precedent in their family. He can only imagine what his father will do, what is fermenting in that balding, lumpen head of his. And then he realises, with a deep undertow of shame, Agnes will see how matters stand between him and his father; she will see the tumult and struggle of it all; she will see him for what he is, a man with his leg caught in the jaws of a trap; she will see and know all, in only a moment.
‘Is it?’ his mother says, her face white, stretched.
‘Is it what?’ he says, feeling skittish and a little mad, therefore unable to keep himself from lapsing into verbal sparring.
‘Yours.’
‘Is what mine?’ he returns, almost gleefully.
Mary presses her lips together. ‘Did you put it there?’
‘Did I put what where?’
At this point he is aware of Agnes turning her head to look at him – he can imagine her dark eyes on him, assessing, gathering information, like a spool gathers thread – but he still can’t stop. He wants whatever is coming his way to come soon: he wants to goad, to tip his father into action; he wants to have done with it, once and for all. Enough creeping around the matter. Let the truth of who his father is come out. Let Agnes see.
‘The child.’ Mary speaks in a slow, loud voice, as if to someone simple-headed. ‘In her belly. Did you put it there?’
He feels his face curling into a smile. A child. Made by him and Agnes, among the apples in the storehouse. How can they not be married now? Nothing can be done to stop it, in such circumstances. It will be, just as she said it would. They will be married. He will be a husband and a father, and his life will begin and he can leave behind this, all of this, this house, this father, this mother, the workshop, the gloves, this life as their son, the drudgery and tedium of working in the business. What a thought, what a thing. This child, in Agnes’s belly, will change everything for him, will free him from the life he hates, from the father he cannot live with, from the house he can no longer bear. He and Agnes will take flight: to another house, another town, another life.
‘I did,’ he says, feeling a smile broaden across his face.
Several things happen at once. His mother launches herself from her seat, towards him, peppering him with her fists; he feels the blows make contact with his chest and shoulders, like taps on a drum. He hears Agnes’s voice, saying, Enough, stop, and another voice, his own, saying that they are handfasted, that there is no sin in it, they will wed, they must. His mother is shrieking that he is not of age, that he will need their consent and they will never give it, something about how he has been bewitched, what ruination this is, she will send him away, she would rather he went to sea than marry this wench, what a catastrophe. Behind him, he is aware of the bird shifting uneasily on its chair, shrugging its feathers, the flap and flutter of its open wings, the jangling of its bell. And then the dark broad shape of his father is near, and where is Agnes in all this chaos, is she behind him, is she safely out of his father’s reach because, by God, he will kill him, he will, if the man so much as lays a finger on her.
His father is stretching out an arm and he is ready, muscles tensed, but the meaty hand doesn’t strike him, doesn’t curl into a ball, doesn’t injure him. Instead, it lands on his shoulder. He can feel all five fingertips denting his flesh, through the cloth of his shirt, can catch the familiar whiff of leather, of whittawing – acrid, smarting, uric – off them.
There is the unfamiliar sensation of his father’s hand pressing him down, into a chair. ‘Sit,’ his father says, his voice even. He gestures to Agnes, who is behind them, soothing her bird. ‘Sit down, lass.’
After a moment, he complies. Agnes comes to stand beside him, smoothing the feathers on the kestrel’s neck with the back of her fingers. He sees his mother examining her with an expression of disbelief, of naked amazement. It makes him want to laugh, again. Then his father speaks and his attention is pulled back.
‘I’m in no doubt,’ his father is saying, ‘we can . . . come to an arrangement.’
The expression on his father’s face is an odd one. He stares at it, struck by its peculiarity. John’s lips are pulled back from his teeth, his eyes strangely alight. It takes him several seconds to realise that John is, in fact, smiling.