Free The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald Page A

always slightly out of place among his own … and yet, when he came into sight, striding down into his home village, his coarse-weave navy greatcoat sweeping the cobblestones, spattered with mud to the pockets, he seemed like the truest expression of what came best from that northern English farming soil, a disdainful servant of livestock’s hard-worked perfection, where nothing worthwhile was gained without independent scorn. You would have to say — a Yorkshireman complete, despite his Frenchified start.
    Cribb was raised in wool’s greasy service from lambing days to the plate of boiled mutton with blue potatoes, representing a feastly goodbye to a life lived out, whether of ram or ewe, while a collie dog loyalled at his feet or gnawed at a bone and Cribb sank pots of dark beer in the Inn of the Four Bound Sheaves before rolling home insensible.
    It rained on Cribb emotionally that he was a blot on the name Rankine as he returned on many black nights up a byway path, to his stepbrother’s farm. Ugly Tom Rankine’s farm, as Cribb only half accurately called it, seeing as how the captain had no working part in it, being thankfully abroad, and Cribb lessee at a peppercorn rental through overdone consideration on Rankine’s part — how dare he condescend so!
    Needing no lantern, Cribb was drawn by a glow in his brain, to stumble around drunk and fuming, getting up hate for the moss on stones that once was his delight to peel, in a study of patterns of lace and continents, with faces of men in the moon.
    Oak Farm was where Blaise Cribb had galloped a shaggy pony, roamed with flocks enjoying a childhood more carefree than any he knew except Tom Rankine’s who took his place and favour. Ignorant of love’s calculations Cribb had loved that boy six years his junior, carried him on his shoulders, shown him willingness and strength unmitigated by guile, had gone to work early on behalf of them all and learned breeding lore from the man who knew asmuch as anyone needed to know, his stepfather — the natural father of Ugly Tom, Sir Hugh Rankine.
    A good acreage was promised — in a conversation Cribb never forgot, conducted with the stepfather at a high corner of a turnip field and a neighbour as witness — sworn indeed to be the youth Cribb’s, upon old Sir Hugh’s death; and later again, over a brimming glass, was pledged by the venerable liar to be where Cribb would raise his own boys (when he had them) under the moors and upon them, where they would learn something from their step-grandsire about flocks and heath, game and hawks, speckled fish, rich pastures and purplish turnips jumping from soil of dark crumbs scientifically rotated. So it had been intended, at least, if charity colours interpretation, but never does — through perfidy of will and testament. Something had gnawed in the old man’s brain about the breeding of Cribb’s own son being deficient.
    Blaise Cribb in his early twenties had fathered a son on the distaff side, named Jonathan. The woman Cribb generated Jonathan upon, Peg Johnstone, was a deficient slut by country designation — seeing that all Johnstones were tinkers, thieves, and coin in the mouth jingling whores. It anyway justified theft of Cribb’s inheritance as down the knife blade of desire came his legacy denied. He kept the boy for himself, since a baby — would not have him stolen by tinkers or anyone else. Nor did ardent uncaring Peggy’s death soften Sir Hugh Rankine’s antipathy. When Blaise Cribb, hostility alight, rampaged wilder, he was well cut out.
    Cribb tried not thinking too much about his benefited stepbrother, Ugly Tom, but was not always fortunate in putting him out of mind. He spoke Rankine’s name as odious when reeling drunk; tried to avoid putting himself in any situation where he might bedrawn into conversation about life in Botany Bay. But Cribb was born at a fated location —