Undersong

by Kathleen Winter

  And I never saw her again after that ’til I was seventeen because me and my mam tried moving to Hawkshead but then the bad things happened with Mam like, with me and Penny having to go and live in the workhouse. And Rotha and her brother and his wife Mary moved around a lot an’ all. Aye, Rotha kept living with her beloved William even after he married Mary. Their whole lives. And they moved all over the place and so did I.

  It was my uncle Jim who knew the odd little Wordsworth fam’ly and their whereabouts more than I did because he had them as customers. Him and his best pal Tommy Thistlethwaite sold them hares and coal and fresh crab. A few times when I left the workhouse to try and stay with Uncle Jim, I tagged along selling his wares. The Wordsworths lived at the old rectory then, but I never saw inside. That rectory was a forlorn place. William and Mary had a baby who died there, Baby Catherine. And their little lad an’ all, young Thomas. Both died and Uncle Jim said the house was damp, it rested in a bog and filled with smoke if they lit a fire, so anyone living there got bad lungs and that’s what the bairns died of. He saw all that but I never got another glimpse of Rotha or her brother until I was older.

  But I never forgot Rotha in Lady Wood. I did not forget her hands or her eyes that were dark as coal but bright as flame.

  Are ye lot feeling sorry for my tears?

  Look, don’t feel sad on my account. I am heartbroken but ye know as well as I do that before the day is out I’ll be all right. I’ll be singing my song again on my own. I’ve got hare broth simmering in my hut as we speak and I’m looking forward to dropping an onion and sage in it and drinking it with the big cooking spoon. Ye know me and my aloneness and my hut and my song.

  Flax, chicory oats ’n’ corn

  Grains for all ye know and thine

  Flour, sugar and barley sown

  Ring around the old Oak shine…

  two

  it’s funny, you know, the way I came to the little fam’ly was really through a bit of subterfuge and smuggling.

  That year I turned seventeen, the year I came to the Wordsworths’, I barely knew what to do with myself for I was thinking about very hard things I had seen and done at Waterloo only the summer before. And I started doing an awful lot of walking on the coffin trail to try and work it all out. Backwards and forwards all winter through the start of that very cold spring.

  That trail as ye know goes right behind Rydal Mount. William was often out raking stones in them days and sometimes Rotha was with him cutting back shrubs or checking to see how herbs had overwintered for their kitchen, sage and chives, and I glimpsed the two from afar, white and black glimmering through the trees and sometimes the hubbub of their voices. I still felt very shy of her. I hardly knew if I was afraid to startle her or if she herself startled something in me.

  But this one time her brother was all alone.

  He was bent over. I nearly didn’t see him but then he unfolded like a raven waking up and he says to me he says, Hello James—it’s young James Dixon, is it not?

  Yes, I says. It’s me.

  He says I’ve seen you with your uncle—then we exchanged words, y’know about a few gardening things, and he had a perplexed look. And I said are you searching for something?

  And he said well, I desperately want to try a plant I have read about, and I can’t find it anywhere. You wouldn’t happen to know—and then he asked if I knew about something called an Egyptian onion.

  And he says I want to try it like mad because it reproduces by an onion growing on a stem, a top stem and then its own weight bends it over—and it’s a cluster by then, a little cluster of onions—and it roots by gravity.

  Oh, I says?

  Yes, he says, getting excited. It lowers by gravity to the soil again and then that little cluster of onions, the ones you haven’t harvested, for you can harvest some of them—that’s how you harvest them is partially, and you let the other part of the cluster bend down and root itself magically again, so you’ve got—it’s like an Egyptian dance with the connected arms bending and reaching and bending and reaching and it goes on into perpetuity! he says. You’ve hardly got to ever think about them again once you’ve planted them. And I wish I could find some. But do you know, I cannot find any. I’ve read about them but I cannot find one to propagate.

  And I says well, I don’t know, but if anybody has an Egyptian onion it’s the experimental garden behind the rectory of Durham Cathedral. Because I’d been there to that garden on my way home from all that had happened at Waterloo and by then I didn’t care a bit about churches or their custodians or what anybody would think of me, and I’d already pilfered a few things out of that garden and stuck ’em in my cap and planted them myself.

  So William said, Aye, he says, I wouldn’t mind…d’you think you could take me there and I might have a look?

  And I says to him—it was dawning on me he wanted to pilfer a few for himself—and I says all right, we’ll go. Next time you’re going to Newcastle let me know and I’ll come and I’ll show you where they’d be. Because everyone knew the Wordsworths had cousins in Newcastle. But I says it’s got to be soon like, before Easter, or in the autumn. You can’t pilfer the plant in summer when it’s in its full glory.

  And he says aye that makes sense. And he says, The only thing is, we won’t say a word to my sister Dorothy, because—well she might not approve of our uprooting a plant from a place where it rightfully belongs.

  And that was the first inkling I had that William kept things from his sister.

  Can you really be her brother, I wondered, yet not know her habit of uprooting a plant ever so tenderly and easing it into a new place to belong?

  I was thinking of her blue gentians and wondering where they were by then. I glanced around the yard for any sign she had transplanted them from house to house whenever the little fam’ly had moved. Those gentians cannot stand any kind of glare. So I knew they were not out in the open and in any case they wouldn’t bloom until well after Easter. I was looking for their old spikes that show over the frost in a particular shape.

  William had a furtive look on his face as he stuttered about the onions. It dawned on me that he felt guilty over his plan of stealing them from Durham Cathedral. Aye, that was the truth of it. The way he’d said their rightful place. It wasn’t the plants’ own discomfort he minded so much as stealing from the important folks at the cathedral rectory. He looked around us now as if half afraid someone might be listening. He cupped a hand to one ear and seemed a bit dazed.

  I sensed then something that would become even plainer with time: on his own without his sister near, the brother was hard of hearing when it came to the natural world. He heard human voices, but found flower or wind or trees inaudible, even bird messages or your own voices here, buzzing now round your sycamore. While for Rotha it was the other way around. She heard a faint speech of the flowers or of yourselves far more plainly than any speech from people.

  And it was the very same with their two sets of eyes. William had bad eyes but Rotha saw for miles.

  Anyway, in the end it turned out I went to Durham by myself the very next week, and I pulled a few early scallions for William of the variety he had mentioned, and he planted them and…did Rotha ever enjoy eating them! She craved them. She’d lay them on bread and butter with salt and eat them whole. So that was the very start of things I contributed around this place. After that I did more and more for William in the garden.

  William fancied himself a garden designer when he was not being a poet. What’s more, he admitted to me right at the start that his poetry situation had deteriorated. He was getting a little bit famous for his poems and people came to visit because of them, and he didn’t mind that. He liked the attention. But he let on to me that he was privately feeling as if the poems were leaving him.

  Maybe it’s because I’m getting a few grey hairs, he said. I’m not sure of the reason, but my writing is gett
ing away from me. The precision of it. It still comes to Dorothy and always did and I hope always will, because if anything comes to me in the way of inspiration it comes to my sister first of all. She is and has always been the first one to whom inspiration comes.

  He had laid out a few instruments on and around a chopping block where we sat by the moss shed and he told me what was expected of me. On the block sat a strange little mahogany box whose function I did not at first understand. Against the block leaned two mallets and several hatchets and a couple of wire brushes as well as spades and hoes inherited from the previous tenant, the handles needing to be tightened or in some cases removed and whittled and then refitted. He was attempting that very thing now, fitting the handle into a spade laid on his knees, but without much progress as I could make out.

  There’s nothing worse, says he, than trying to dig with a wobbly spade.

  As far, he says, as outside work goes, I need someone I can rely on to help me with the steps and the terraces we have begun, so there’ll necessarily be a fair bit of stonework and lifting and levelling of stairs, then the planting and weeding and clearing dead-fallen twigs. But those last are things an old fellow like me can still do, if slowly. I’m afraid it’s the brutal grunt work I’m after from you, but you’re young—how old are you?

  Nearly twenty, I said. I had added a couple of years on so they would let me fight at Waterloo and I kept them tacked on now.

  That is less than half my age, he said, though I feel as if I were twenty yesterday. And I can see how fit you are…

  He was only forty-six himself at this time and in truth he was a bit bandy-legged but I knew he could still walk for miles and miles, for days on end and uphill as well, all the way over Kirkstone Pass. Everyone knew that. Him and his sister the both of them could walk for what seemed like endless time. So I said, Sir, you’ll be able to do anything I can do for a good few years yet, and he laughed at that, he liked it. And while he was laughing I figured it was as good a time as any to let him know the kinds of things I like doing best.

  I can do the stonework for you, I says to him, any time you want. And as you already know I’m always looking for ways to increase the health and yield of any garden, whether flowers or vegetables…people say I’m a bit enchanted that way but the truth is I have one very old book and I study it. But really…I was about to tell him the work I most loved when he interrupted me.

  Dixon, he says, it’s certain indoor tasks I wanted to mention to you while we’re by ourselves out here.

  He stopped and looked at the grass that had coltsfoot beginning to open, and I waited, but then he looked like he wanted someone to help him out of a confused spot, so I said, By indoor tasks, do you mean helping with the firewood and things like fixing the broken banisters and having a look inside the fireplace as regards all that smoke coming into the house?

  Well yes, says he, there is always smoke in every house we’ve lived in. We can’t seem to get clear of it and it has driven us all nearly mad. He still looked uneasy as if there was some other task he meant for me to do. I thought surely he is not talking about paperwork because he has John Carter for all that. I was not overly fond of John Carter but people said he was good with any kind of clerical duties. So I says, trying not to sound incredulous, It isn’t serving dinner to your guests that you need help with indoors?

  And right away at that he swipes his hand in the air and gives a dark shake of his very longish hair and says, No!

  His hair flopped in his eyes and I took it as a sign of the perfect moment to tell him about my particular talent…

  Or if you don’t mind my saying it Sir, that hair of yours, I am pretty good with any task requiring the use of any kind of small blade. These scissors, for instance—I showed him the small pair I keep in my top pocket, stuck in a bit of cork—women all over Rydal ask me to keep their husbands’ hair tidy and their eyebrows an’ all, and even the hairs coming out of their ears and sometimes their noses. And some women even let me cut their hair.

  You think I need a haircut?

  Sir, whenever you’re ready for one I can do it. I’ve cut the hair of all hands near me ever since I was nine or ten. I have a knack, like I said, for anything requiring the use of a small blade.

  In fact I had learned precise cutting in the oakum cellar at the workhouse, but I did not tell him that.

  Scissors, I says to him. Awl. Knife. Any finicky cut or carving or scratch you might need done.

  And that’s when I took my latest Pace egg out of my jacket and handed it to him.

  This one had a swan on it, etched in green, with willow leaves all around, hanging like, as if the swan were just now appearing in a clearing in the fronds. I’d scratched it the night before with my Waterloo knife. I was getting a few dozen ready for Easter. I had painted some green and some black and a few were blue though blue paint is very hard to come by.

  This exquisite little goose needs a much closer view, he said.

  His eyes were pretty bad even then. He opened the little mahogany box and took out a magnifying glass. While he was examining my swan through the glass I saw that inside the box had popped up two bone circles on slender brass legs, and one of the circles had a lens set in it. Up rose the rings as he opened the lid. What on earth was the thing?

  Oh, he said, this is a swan! But this is the loveliest Pace egg I’ve seen in all my days—how do you do it?

  I noticed that one of the brass legs holding the lens inside the mahogany box was loose. There was a tiny hinge on each of the others but a third was missing…

  Surely, he says, this isn’t white ink on top of green paint? Can it be the eggshell shining through?

  Like I said, Sir, I am pretty good with anything requiring the use of a very small blade. I’ve scratched the swan into the green paint. It’s a question of being precise and not being in a hurry. And it helps me not worry about anything that might otherwise keep me from sleeping at night. I find it calms me down before bed.

  Can you draw a swan like this with a pen?

  No, Sir, with a pen I am useless. It has to be a needle or a knife or a tiny metal tool. I notice for instance in your interesting little wooden box, there—if you want me to fix that missing hinge I have a mustard tin full of tiny spare parts, all sorts of bits and pieces I’ve saved for mending things, and I’m sure one of them…

  He looked at me anew. I thought, he says, I was going to have to send that box back to London.

  What is it? I normally restrain my curiosity when talking to an employer but I couldn’t bear not knowing the purpose of the little box only four inches long with such intricate insides.

  This goes with it—he waved his magnifying glass—but the lens on legs, see the small disc under it? You put any flower on that and you look through the lens above it and you can see the flower as if you are looking into a cathedral. The spans, the struts, the stained-glass light, its whole architecture appears and you can kneel before it in wonder. Better than a Sunday service!

  I was a bit surprised as William often went to church and I had not heard anyone like himself profess that nature was better than religion, although I felt it to be so myself and have kneeled, as ye know, before the gold-lit chambers of many a bonny lily. Not only kneeled but laid down and fallen asleep under the spell…

  But this equipment, he said, belongs to Dorothy and I’m afraid she hasn’t been able to use it for months…can you really fix it?

  Yes, Sir, I think I can. May I just…I went to lean over the thing to get a better look, when out of my shirt pocket tumbled a little shower of objects that clattered on the wood block like tiny dice and I gave a start.

  I was embarrassed and I am sure I turned crimson as I tried to scoop them up again with my hand before he could get a good look at them.

  There have been many instances since that day when I have been glad of William’s poor eyesight, but this time he,
in his helpfulness, grabbed one of the little dice as it rolled upon the block, and straight away he felt more than saw exactly what it was.

  He looked at me with his mouth agog.

  I felt ashamed, but what could I do?

  He knew that I had soldiered at Waterloo. So he understood what was in my pocket. When you are on the battlefield and you are prying the mouths of the dead open and extracting teeth it seems normal. All the lads are doing it. I learned before I ever got to Belgium that I should take a sharp pocket knife for that very purpose and that is the pocket knife I own yet. It is the knife I still use to scratch my swans and all the birds and patterns in the Pace eggs. I want to make something beautiful out of my old knife after all the harm it has seen and done.

  At home in England you could get a good price for a single Waterloo tooth, but for a whole set, you could live on that for a month, and that is just what I had been doing since I returned. There were several buyers right around here. Cora Freetorch was one. She lived by Paterdale so to get to her I had to face climbing Kirkstone Pass but Cora would buy any teeth I cared to sell her to make full sets of Waterloo teeth for her many customers and she could fix old sets as well. She’d pay for singles or any combination you could supply. People thought she was poor in that hut with no more than a stove and a lambskin on the floor, but Cora Freetorch was never short of a pocketful of gold when I knew her. One reason I was eager for the job at the Wordsworths’ in the first place was that I had sold Cora nearly all my supply. The ones in my pocket weren’t even part of my inventory but were the teeth I had kept as memorial to a friend of mine who had been killed: Joseph Bell.

  Now William Wordsworth rolled one of Joseph’s beautiful teeth in his hand. I was ashamed. I was mortified and the sadness came upon me very fast. I didn’t know what to say. I cared what Wordsworth must think of me and at the same time all I cared about was getting that white shard of my friend’s life back safe in my pocket away from the light and away from anyone, the way I myself sometimes wanted to get away from anyone so I could be quiet and listen to a stream or a waterfall or the wind here in your sycamore.