The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [150]
“That won’t do, Tom,” she said in a dangerous tone. “Look at Jack’s face, then look at Alfred’s. That’s not the result of a childish fight. That’s a vicious attack by a grown man on a small boy.”
Tom resented her attitude. Alfred was not perfect, he knew, but neither was Jack. Tom did not want Jack to become the pampered favorite in this family. “Alfred’s not a grown man, he’s fourteen years old. But he is working. He’s making a contribution to the support of the family, and Jack isn’t. Jack plays all day, like a child. In my book that means Jack ought to show Alfred respect. He does no such thing, as you will have noticed.”
“I don’t care!” Ellen flared. “You can say what you like, but my son is badly bruised, and might have been seriously injured, and I will not allow it!” She began to cry. In a quieter voice, but still angry, she said: “He’s my child and I can’t bear to see him like that.”
Tom sympathized with her, and he was tempted to comfort her, but he was afraid to give in. He had a feeling that this conversation might be a turning point. Living with his mother and no one else, Jack had always been overprotected. Tom did not want to concede that Jack ought to be cushioned against the normal knocks of everyday life. That would set a precedent that could cause endless trouble in years to come. Tom knew, in truth, that Alfred had gone too far this time, and he was secretly resolved to make the boy leave Jack alone; but it would be a bad thing to say so. “Beatings are a part of life,” he said to Ellen. “Jack must learn to take them or avoid them. I can’t spend my life protecting him.”
“You could protect him from that bullying son of yours!”
Tom winced. He hated to hear her call Alfred a bully. “I might, but I shan’t,” he said angrily. “Jack must learn to protect himself.”
“Oh, go to hell!” Ellen said, and she turned and walked away.
Tom entered the refectory. The wooden hut where the lay workers normally ate had been damaged by the fall of the southwest tower, so they took their meals in the refectory after the monks had finished and gone. Tom sat apart from everyone else, feeling unsociable. A kitchen hand brought him a jug of ale and some slices of bread in a basket. He dipped a piece of bread in the ale to soften it and began to eat.
Alfred was a big lad with too much energy, Tom thought fondly. He sighed into his beer. The boy was something of a bully, Tom knew in his heart; but he would calm down in time. Meanwhile, Tom was not going to make his own children give special treatment to a newcomer. They had had too much to put up with already. They had lost their mother, they had been forced to tramp the roads, they had come near to starving to death. He was not going to impose any more burdens on them if he could help it. They were due for a little indulgence. Jack would just have to keep out of Alfred’s way. It would not kill him.
A disagreement with Ellen always left Tom heavyhearted. They had quarreled several times, usually about the children, although this was their worst dispute so far. When she was hard-faced and hostile he could not remember what it had been like, just a little while earlier, to feel passionately in love with her: she seemed like an angry stranger who had intruded into his peaceful life.
He had never had such furious, bitter quarrels with his first wife. Looking back, it seemed to him that he and Agnes had agreed about everything important, and that when they disagreed it had not made them angry. That was how it should be between man and wife, and Ellen would have to realize that she could not be part of a family and yet have all her own way.
Even when Ellen was at her most infuriating he never quite wished that she would go away, but all the same he often thought of Agnes with regret. Agnes had been with him for most of his adult life, and now he had a constant sense of there being something missing. While she was alive he had never thought that he was particularly fortunate to have her,