by Norah Lofts
‘Mother, please say that you forgive me.’
The words came from her like liquid from an upturned bottle,
‘I do, Walter, I do. I shouldn’t have said what I did. Of course they liked your playing.’
‘Now mark this,’ Master Reed said, ‘when you lose your temper and say things like “Devil take your tongue” that is a plain invitation for the same ill wish to fall on you. You be mindful of what you say.’
I admit that on the face of it it was no more than any man might say to any child, a mere paraphrase of the old adage about ill wishes coming home to roost; but the way he said it gave it weight and importance. It was almost as though he believed that Walter’s angry words had affected his mother’s speech; as though the grandfather believed that the boy had a power to ill-wish, and wanted to warn him, privily, against inflicting hurt.
Rubbish, I told myself, superstitious nonsense. The one power which Walter Reed possessed was the one of making people think that he played better than he did. In the main he was secretive about his music, shutting himself away in the solar and playing for hours alone. On these occasions when he would say, rather pompously, ‘Now I will play for you,’ I always reminded myself that I had been schooled at Norwich where the choir is famous, and had twice heard Blind Hob of Lincoln play for the Leather Merchants’ Guild in that same city. But always, before the end, Walter would have me, and with all judgment suspended I would fall under the spell, too.
During the time immediately after Maude’s departure, whenever I heard Walter play I would ask myself whether both these children hadn’t been born with a curious power to charm, Walter by his music, Maude by just being. Walter’s charm ended when his lute was silent, but Maude’s could survive her absence. I thought of her, not always sentimentally, sometimes critically, at almost every moment during the day when my mind was not actually engaged upon some immediate business. I would try to recall her face and succeed only partially, making a picture in my mind of a blur dominated by one over-prominent feature, the way one does when someone tries to describe a person unknown. ‘He has a big nose’ they say, and you see just a nose. So I would think, in turn of her blue, deep set eyes, the hollow in her cheek, the turn of her lip or the way her hair grew. Then, at another, unexpected time, I could recall the whole of her, down to the nails on her fingers. I thought of her, at such times, much as a man on short commons would think of some favourite, flavoursome dish. I craved to see her, and when, one day early in December, Martin Reed said, ‘I take it Maude will come home for Christmas,’ I wanted to jump up and shake him by the hand, slap him on the back, give loud and obvious evidence of my approval.
‘I take it Maude will come home for Christmas,’ he said.
Mistress Reed said in a doubtful voice,
‘I don’t know about that. Nobody mentioned it. Would it be allowed?’
Forgetful of my place I said, ‘Of course it would. Who could prevent it? She isn’t a novice, or even a school-child. She can come home when she wishes.’
‘So I should think,’ Master Reed said.
‘I’m not so sure.’ Mistress Reed looked me in the eye and said, ‘You were schooled by monks; did you go home for Christmas?’
She’d heard me say – the cunning bitch – that I did not.
‘My home was thirty miles from my school, Madam; and in return for my lessons I sang in the Choir. I could not miss the Christmas Masses. The cases are hardly comparable.’ I almost added and it would have been true – except that my brothers didn’t want me home, any more than you want Maude.
‘It shouldn’t be too difficult to find out,’ Master Reed said in his dry way. ‘Nicholas can write a letter, which I will sign.’
‘But are you sure that it is wise to unsettle her so soon–?’
‘Holy Virgin, you talk as though we wanted her there, Anne. She took this whim to go, but if she’s outlived it there’s nothing I’d like better than to unsettle her. Unsettle, that’s fool’s talk.’
Mistress Reed said with cold dignity,
‘I’m remembering my own childhood, always on the move and longing for some settled place. That was all.’
‘Well, if you can’t see the difference,’ he said angrily and snatched up his mug, drank from it and set it down with a clang.
Later, in the office, he stamped about, bringing his good leg down heavily.
‘I’m the customer, ain’t I?’ he demanded of me. ‘I pay five pounds a year for her to be there when I’d pay four times the amount to keep her at home. You can tell them that if you like. The whole thing was a mistake from beginning to end. She should never have gone to Beauclaire. Beware of women, my boy. Yon don’t have to be in love with one for her to lead you by the nose and you don’t notice till too late. Get your things and write. How do you address a Prioress? You should know. Now I’ll say what I want to say, and you wrap it up so she’ll not think she’s dealing with an ignorant old fellow.’
My former visits to the nunnery had been made after the shearing season, when the sun was warm and the fields green; even then I had been struck by the dreariness of the place, set all alone, far from the highway behind a barrier of trees. The House and the Chapel were both shaped like haystacks built of dark, dressed flint, the least cheerful of all building materials. They were linked by a kind of cloister, begun in stone and finished in wood; some of the pillars retaining their bark. Immediately in front of the cloister was a little herb garden, at this season bleached and depleted, but as neat as a piece of embroidery. Everything at Clevely was as neat as it was bleak.
The only door in the House opened directly upon the kitchen, and there was no portress here. My old acquaintance, Dame Clarice, answered my knocking, told me that the Prioress was ill in her bed, and without ceremony opened the letter.
‘This is for Maude to decide. You may ask her. Let me see, Tuesday. You’ll find her in the dairy.’ She indicated a door immediately opposite the one at which we stood, and said, ‘At the end of the passage.’
I stepped in, aware at once of the smell of a religious house. Ordinary people on their way home from church shake the incense odour off into the air; professed religious on their short cloistered walk carry it with them to mingle with the scent of boiled onions and stockfish and the porridge that burned, very slightly in the pan. With this smell of my schooldays in my nose and my heart jumping because I was, in a moment, going to see Maude again, I walked along the cold dim passage, feeling suddenly young and unsure of myself.
I could hear, before I reached the dairy door, the sound of girlish chatter, once a merry laugh, mingled with the clatter of pans and the swish of a scrubbing brush. Perhaps she was happy here, I thought, and perversely took no joy in the thought.
There were three of them in the cold dairy, all wearing coarse sacking smocks over their clothes, wooden clogs on their feet and linen hoods covering their hair. One was engaged in scrubbing the shelves, one, on her knees, was scrubbing the floor, the other was scouring a bucket. The three faces turned to me with looks of surprise, then the one who was kneeling scrambled to her feet and said,
‘Oh, Master Freeman, is anything wrong?’
Even as I assured her I was thinking to myself, Name of God, yes! Wrong that she who had never been full-fleshed, should have grown so much thinner; wrong that her hands should be so red and swollen, the nails broken short and grimed from the dirty water. I told her my errand and for one unguarded moment pure pleasure lightened her face, only to go out again like a blown candle. She said in a wooden way,
‘I thank my grandfather for so kind a thought; but I had best stay here.’
‘He is counting upon your presence. Would you ruin his Christmas, when in the course of nature he can have few more? Remember what I said to you about selfishness.’
‘And you remember what I said about Owd Scrat!’
I longed to pick her up in my arms and run with her, out of the place; to shake the obstinacy out of her. I could only use words, and I w
as choosing, out of my own hurt, the most wounding ones I could muster, when the bucket scourer came to my aid.
‘Oh Maude,’ she said, ‘please go home and bring us back some Christmas fare. Raisins,’ she said, in an ecstatic voice.
‘Ham,’ said the other, and I swear that her teeth shone for a second like a hungry dog’s. ‘Ham for me, Maude. Please. We’ll do your work. You go home and bring us back some goodies.’
‘A fine impression we shall make upon Master Freeman,’ Maude said. ‘He’ll think us entirely governed by our appetites.’
I took note of the conventual ‘we’. I said,
‘You see, demoiselle, at the cost of a very slight sacrifice of your own self-esteem you could mightily please three people – these and your grandfather.’
‘Four,’ she said. ‘I should myself be pleased.’
‘Five then, for I also should be … delighted.’
‘I should have to ask leave.’
‘It is already given. Dame Clarice said that it was for you to decide.’
‘The words must have choked her,’ cried the girl who had asked for ham. She giggled and put her hand to her mouth.
‘Not for twelve days, then. Four.’
‘Good Maude. Kind Maude. The sooner I shall have my raisins.’
Maude made a gesture of impatience, and moved towards me and the door. We went out together and she pulled the door closed and leaned against it.
‘You must not misjudge,’ she said. ‘They are both orphans and have lived here for four years. We have enough to eat.’
‘That I beg leave to doubt. You’ve grown very thin.’
‘We eat with the nuns and they work far harder than we do.’
‘You and they, in there, are growing,’ I protested.
‘Which we shouldn’t do if we lacked sufficient nourishment.’
‘There’s no arguing with you. Shall I fetch you on Christmas Eve?’
‘If you have time to spare.’ She smiled at me and I saw that her odd little face which so easily assumed an expression of melancholy could just as easily shape itself to merriment. Martin had mentioned that she was a merry, hoydenish little girl. I cursed once again the bad management, the ignorance and false values that had brought her to this.
Yet there was no denying that six months at Clevely had done a good deal to lighten her misery of spirit. During those four days of Christmas when my eyes, whenever possible were upon her, as though they could never look their fill, I noticed that the old haunted look of desperate unhappiness had gone, and been replaced by a serenity which had a beauty of its own. Life at Clevely might be harsh and comfortless – some of the things Maude let slip shocked even her mother – but it seemed to be spiritually satisfactory and I, watching every blown straw that betrayed the wind’s direction, saw several ominous signs.
Mistress Reed, as before, grumbled about her daughter’s clothing. Why was this one dress so much worn, had Maude donned it every day, and why, where were the others? She was little pleased to hear that Jill was wearing one and Avice the other. Even I, doting as I was, detected a certain priggishness in the way Maude said,
‘At Clevely we have all things in common. Except shoes. Feet vary so much. But’, she added as though in extenuation, ‘we share the clogs.’
Mistress Reed said, with a tartness which I understood,
‘That calls up the three-legged race which children run.’
Maude laughed,
‘So it does! I should have said that we wear any clogs which come to hand, or to foot.’
I recalled how teachable she was; in six months she had mastered the art of Christian imperturbability as one of my teachers had called it.
Then again, at the well-spread table, the question of convent food arose.
‘When you go back,’ Master Reed said, ‘that is if you insist upon going back, I shall send some hams and salt beef, and good wheat flour.’
Maude said, and hate the word as any man of sense must, there is no other, demurely,
‘That would be very much appreciated. Dame Winifred Challis, who often has sick poor people in the guest room, is mostly at her wits’ end to find them tasty dishes.’
‘You mean you wouldn’t eat what I sent?’
‘Oh no. We all eat from the same dish. Even the Prioress.’
‘Going hungry is no virtue,’ Master Reed said. ‘Thousands of people live their whole lives without knowing the feel of a full belly. You’re enjoying what you’re eating now, aren’t you?’
‘Oh yes. Very much. But to eat like this every day would be gluttony.’
How well I knew it, this prate about the deadly sins! It could have only two effects. Hearing it often enough the young must give in, accept that to enjoy a comfortable bed was sloth, to eat a good meal was gluttony, to think one independent thought was pride, and on and on, until in one day of ordinary living you could commit the whole seven, twice over. (Whoever named them, did so cunningly, murder, which comparatively few people are tempted to, is not among them, anger, which every man must feel, is.) The only other way for the young to take is plain rebellion, bouncing away in the other direction, as I myself had done. Was Maude capable of it? That only time could tell.
In the privacy of the office Master Reed loosed his complaints.
‘I’ve worked very hard, and at times been ruthless to see my family secure and comfortable, now the one I care most for might as well be a scullion. Better. Scullions grow fat on the dripping.’ He scowled at me. ‘I always thought food was plentiful in such places. They hand it out. When I was first lamed I lived on what was given me at the Abbey Alms Gate.’
‘It varies,’ I said. ‘All religious are supposed to be vowed to poverty. Their interpretation of it varies, and some merely disregard it. I believe Clevely is genuinely poor. They never managed to replace their sheep and so lost what piteous income their wool brought in.’
His scowl lifted.
‘I’ll give them some sheep. How many could they look after properly without unduly adding to their labours? Three dozen? Fifty?’
‘They had eight, if I remember rightly, before. I don’t know how much pasture they have.’
‘Ask when you take Maude back. I’ll give them what they can take, of my good Cotswolds from Minsham. And I’ll buy every handful of wool at top price. That should help them to feed those poor girls a bit better.’
‘It wouldn’t benefit Maude in any way, sir. The sick poor might fatten. And you’d be putting the gyves on Maude tighter than ever. Once make Maude a supply line between you and Clevely and next time you see her she’ll be in novice garb. I know my monks, and nuns differ from them only in ways that have no effect on greed.’
He said, ‘I think you’re wrong, Nicholas. Oh, right about the persuasion, possibly, but wrong as to the result. My family is naturally perverse. I believe if they tried to coax her into a habit she’d run home and turn Lollard.’
‘You say that because she resisted our persuasions.’ I saw one of his eyebrows twitch when I said ‘our’. ‘Yes, I tried to talk her into waiting, at least. But we were arguing against something that she felt she should do; and we were only using words. They – if they do try to persuade her – will be arguing for what she feels she should do, and words will be the least of it. Inside every community there is an atmosphere, a kind of mental climate which is very difficult to withstand.’
He gave one of his enormous sighs, and said, as he had once said when Walter was under discussion,
‘People do what they must, I suppose. But in this case,’ he scowled as he sought for the words he needed, ‘I never can feel that this is something that was in Maude and must out. It’s been brought on from outside. If you knew what drove her to religion you’d understand what I mean.
‘She told me the whole story, once. And sorry hearing I found it. One person had been kind to her in her loneliness, so she fixed on her the whole affection of a young and tender heart. And then the only word of real comfort she wa
s given came from a priest. The result was inevitable.’
There was a pause and I thought he was finished with the subject, but he said,
‘I failed her, too, perhaps. I thought of my own griefs – over which by this time, God knows, the grass should have grown. I envied her the certainty of her faith. I said as much. And I was wrong.’
‘As to that,’ I said, ‘I answered her with no faith, only with logic. It was a waste of breath.’
He gave me one of his sharp looks.
‘You seem to have a …’ I thought by the way his lips shaped he was going to say ‘a fondness’, he amended it, ‘an interest in the girl.’
I said boldly, ‘I am very fond of her, sir. Who could help it? Her looks are charming, her mind is lively, and even her obstinacy shows a good spirit.’
He was pleased; it showed in the softening of his harsh old face. Then his eyes narrowed, as though he were regarding a bale of wool, assessing its weight and value.
‘Her mother’, he said slowly, ‘is often somewhat harsh towards her. You notice that?’
‘Too often. I am tempted at times to forget my place and speak up in defence.’
‘Ah,’ he said, as though some question had been asked – not in words – and answered in the same fashion. ‘And you are now, how old?’
‘Twenty-four.’
‘You know the business; you are trustworthy and healthy, as handsome as a man needs to be. And twenty-four. Are your affections or interests engaged elsewhere?’
I told him, no, which was near enough to the truth as mattered.
‘Then I’ll tell you, Nicholas; if I could wish one wish it would be that in two years’ time, or three, you and Maude would marry. I could die easy then.’
I muttered some deprecating words about time being young yet, and being honoured by this proof of his confidence and liking. Never again did the matter come into the open; but the words had been said; and if justification of my action was needed, later on, there it lay.
III