The Country Child

by Alison Uttley

  It was dressed in flowered muslin, gathered round its thick neck, and fastened round the waist with a ribbon. It had neither legs nor arms, hair nor eyes, it was carved in one piece, with sightless eye-balls and open lips, but its head was smooth with the caress of hands and its cheeks were soft and sweet to the child’s lips.

  Susan examined it critically, as she sat on the cold floor. Yes, it must be an idol, it looked like one, it was far, far older than she was, for it was at Windystone Hall before she was born or even her father was born. It was no ordinary doll, like Laura, waxen and golden-haired, or Rosamund who could open and shut her eyes. They had hands and feet but no understanding. Rose knew everything, she knew now what was in Susan’s thoughts, and she looked at her pitifully with her blind all-seeing eyes.

  She must go, she must either be drowned or burned. Burning was too horrible, Susan could not bear the thought of it. It was like the Christian martyrs, and suppose Rose cried out in the flames? Drowning was best.

  She kissed the dark wooden face and held her tightly against her breast, with her cheek against the top of the smooth round head. She sidled through the back door to the water troughs. She undressed her, for Susan was economical, and prayed a little prayer. Then she plunged her down into the water.

  Like a live thing Rose sprang up and lay floating, a brown Ophelia among the oval damson leaves and the yellow elm in the green reflection of the ferns. Sunlight dappled her wet face with golden flecks. Never had Rose looked so alluring. Was this Abraham’s miracle? No, she was made of wood, Susan had forgotten that, and she tenderly lifted her out and dried her on her petticoat.

  ‘Susan, Susan,’ cried a voice from the apple chamber. ‘Whatever are you doing at the water trough? Get up at once, do you hear? And in your Sunday dress, too. You mustn’t play with your doll on Sundays,’ and her mother withdrew her head.

  Susan walked off down the flagged path to the pig-cote and leaned against the wall. She would have to bury Rose. It was quite the best thing to do, and then she wouldn’t be really gone. ‘I can’t worship her, yet I shall always know where she is. Perhaps some day a man will dig her up, and think she was buried by the Romans.’

  This cheered her so much she began to sing, ‘There is a happy land, far, far away,’ as she skipped into the kitchen for a knife.

  Under a great ash tree which stood solitary in the middle of Whitewell field, spreading out its branches in a roof under which all the cattle could shelter at the same time, Susan dug the grave. She removed little patches of earth and scrabbled with her fingers among the roots until she had a hole big enough. Ants ran by, carrying tiny sticks, and a pair of wood pigeons moaned softly, oblivious of the small figure struggling so far beneath their leafy floor. Jays screamed on Arrow Head, and a magpie flew out of Druid’s Wood and flirted his tail on the oak trees bordering the field.

  Susan ran back for a bunch of clean-smelling camomile which grew in silvery tuffets under the yew trees. She lined the grave with this, and laid Rose with her face upwards to the sky. She shut her eyes and put her hands together, as she crouched on her heels. ‘Please God help me not to worship idols, and take care of Rose’, she prayed, and then she covered up the wooden figure with the sod.

  Her conscience was satisfied and pride filled her. She felt she had done rather a noble self-sacrificing deed. But when night came and she lay in her chamber alone, tossing under the heavy quilt, she could not sleep. She stared out at the stars among the branches of the elm tree, and the Great Bear hanging over the quiet fields. A shooting star fled across the sky, and faded out near the branches of the ash tree. It was the soul of someone who had died, going to God.

  A fox barked in the woods and Roger rattled his chain. A light danced across the path, and long beams streamed over the grass. It was Joshua going to see the sick cow in the byre. A rabbit squealed in the misty copse and then was silent. An owl hooted suddenly overhead and a noiseless shadow drifted by. Susan thought of Rose lying out in the field with hedgehogs walking over her grave, and perhaps worms crawling on her face. It was too much, a big tear ran down her cheek, and then another and another.

  A mouse scrit-scratched in a corner of the room and scampered across with horribly loud feet. Susan longed for the feel of that smooth head to protect her. Rose was a weapon as well as a companion, she had frightened away many a venturesome mouse by bumping her head on the floor. Wearied out she fell asleep, and only awoke when Becky shook her.

  It was Monday morning, and seven o’clock, a pearl of a day, an opalescent creamy autumn morning. For a moment something worried her as she sat up in bed, and then the thought rushed out from behind the screen of warmth and comfort. Rose was buried under the ash tree.

  She washed and dressed quickly, from her calico chemise and soft grey stays to her white garibaldi, blue skirt and clean pinafore. Mrs Garland was pouring out tea from the big brown teapot as she entered the kitchen. She took a slice of toast and dripping and sat down to the table.

  Tom Garland, Joshua and Dan came to the back door with cans of foaming milk and slung them on the iron pole over the water troughs to cool. The house was full of the sounds of morning: the rattle of the chains, the trot-trot of the horse’s hoofs along the drive as he went to the stable to be harnessed, the slithering clatter as he was backed into the loading place, waiting for the milkchurns, the wheeling of churns, Roger’s excited barks as he ran up and down, the banging of doors, and the stamping of many feet.

  ‘Come along, Susan, and stir the milk,’ called Tom, as he walked through the house and went out at the front. Dan and Joshua had gone back to the cow-house for more milk, whilst Becky ran to and fro helping everyone.

  Susan snatched a cup from the table as she went out, and dipped it in a can. It came out white with a thick cream, covered with a froth which gave her a milk moustache. She sipped as she stirred with the hazel stick first one and then another of the row of cans hanging deeply in the water of the troughs. The largest trough was used for drinking purposes only. Into this a spring sent its clear icy water, jutting out from the cool earth, gurgling, crystal, never dry in the worst droughts, and from it the water overflowed through holes cut in the thick stone to the series of milk-troughs.

  When the milk was cool and Dan had swallowed a basin of scalding tea and eaten a round of toast, the cans were all lifted from the troughs and carried round the house to the cobbled yard for measuring. This was Susan’s chance, and she ran off down the path, past rose bushes and pear trees, to Whitewell.

  ‘Are you there, Rose?’ she called anxiously, as she went across the broad field. Rabbits sat up and watched her, nibbled a blade of grass and sat up again, deeply interested. She clapped her hands, and they ran on a few steps. Jays quarrelled, thrushes and blackbirds fluted in the woods all round.

  ‘Are you there, Rose?’ she called again. ‘There, Rose,’ answered the echo. She started; she never knew an echo lived in the field. One dwelt at the Wishing Gate, under the biggest beeches in the world. It was a friend of Susan’s, a comforter in loneliness, a mystery she had never solved, which she accepted as she accepted life and death, the stars and springtime. Many hours had she spent standing by the gate calling across the field with her face toward the big cart-shed, calling to see if it would say anything different. Three words at a time was all it would say, so she split up her sentences and tried to catch it tripping.

  ‘Hello, Echo,’ she began.

  ‘Lo, Echo,’ replied the echo.

  ‘How are you?’ asked Susan.

  ‘How are you?’ answered the echo.

  So the conversation went on and she delighted to bring a stranger to be amazed at its clarity, as it sang high and low, soft and loud, from the merest whisper to a shout.

  Now here was a sister echo, not so talkative, but quite delightful. Certainly Rose had great power. She ran to the tree and hastily removed the soil. There lay Rose, faintly smiling, calm and mysterious, none the worse for her burial. She rubbed her with her pinafore and exa
mined her face tenderly. Then she kissed her and held her against her thin chest.

  ‘I won’t do what God wants,’ she cried. ‘I won’t, Rose.’ Seven rooks flapped across the golden sky, a lucky number. Birds sang wildly, rapturously, and the sun streamed across the misty valleys and laid long fingers on Susan’s head. Her child conscience slept again, she laughed and skipped along the broad path, through the tall stile, under the yews and damson trees to the house.

  ‘Susan, where have you been? Your breakfast is all cold. Come and write the milk tickets at once. Dan is ready, and the milk is scyed.’

  Susan put her doll in the pantry box, climbed on a chair and lifted down the box of milk notes and torn envelopes from the high shelf of the tallboy. She took out a slip of paper for each churn and wrote the number of gallons. Becky put them in the little cups in the lids, and clamped the bright outer lids with their polished brass plates. Dan and Joshua came shouting and stamping down the cobbles, and, seizing the churns, rolled them along on their rims, down the narrow paved path to the loading place and into the cart.

  Then Dan jumped in after them, cracked his whip, and away he went, down the fields and tree-lined lanes, all shining with gossamer, white in the mist, brushing his cap against the nut trees and beeches, catching the wheels on the arcs of reddening brambles and late blackberries.

  It was the most romantic moment of the day, and Susan and her father stood on the high bank watching the cart get smaller and smaller as it rumbled with tossing churns down the rough stony path in the distance.

  ‘He drives a bit random,’ said Tom, shaking his head. ‘He needn’t go in all that bluster, he’s plenty of time,’ and they turned again to their disturbed breakfasts and Susan got ready for school.

  4

  School

  When Susan Garland was seven years old her mother sent her to the village school near Dangle, four miles away, for education was a serious problem in the out-of-the-way farms. It was a good way for the child to go alone, but Mrs Garland prayed long and earnestly for protection, and then left Susan in God’s charge.

  Susan was delighted, for she knew no children; the farm was too remote from others, except beautiful Oak Meadow Farm where old Mr and Mrs Wolff lived with their middle-aged daughter, Mary. So Susan had never a friend except the farm men and Becky. Margaret was glad she would mix with others, for the child was fanciful, and too fond of talking to herself and imaginary people. Her mind was full of fairies, goblins, and grown-up religious talk which she had overheard in the kitchen at home.

  She had been taught to read, she was familiar with the Bible, and had read Pilgrim’s Progress, the unabridged Robinson Crusoe, complete with the sermons, Æsop’s Fables, and many religious stories and poems with morals attached. She was quick at figures and she had already made a sampler with cross-stitch men and trees. Susan looked forward to being someone of importance, when her mother took her to see the headmistress, but her hopes were soon dashed to the ground. Mrs Garland had found in an oak chest a dress which had belonged to a girl of a bygone age. It lay among blue silk-fringed crinolines and soft coloured Paisley shawls: a brown checked woollen frock with ruches of cut material trimming the tight bodice, and edging the high neck and the flounced skirt. It was buttoned from chin to foot with large cream bone buttons with steel centres. It was a godsend to Mrs Garland, warm as a blanket, strong as a horse-cloth, and thick. With a little alteration it made a new frock. Susan protested in vain, she wept, she hated its ugliness and the horrible buttons. So, a quaint old-fashioned little figure, her feet peeping out of the bottom frill which went nearly to her ankles, her chin almost lost in the top, she went for her first day at school.

  Her short hair was strained back from her forehead and threaded through a round black comb which encircled her head like a coronet, with the hairs sticking up in a fringe at the back, ‘being trained’.

  She kept near her mother whilst she explained her hopes and fears for Susan to the sharp-eyed, thin-faced headmistress, and watched with alarm the horde of children playing round the big door. Then Mrs Garland smiled benignly at all the little ruffians, kissed Susan ‘God bless you, child’, and left her.

  The village children laughed and pointed at her.

  ‘What’s your name?’ they shouted.

  ‘Susanna Catherine Mary Garland,’ replied Susan, with her dark eyes wide and startled.

  ‘What’s your father?” they sang, swaying and swinging in a row, and pushing against her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Susan, hesitating. It was the first time she had thought of this. In her little world there were no trades.

  ‘Where do you come from?’ they jeered, louder and louder, as they rocked with laughter at her simplicity.

  Susan was on safe ground now. Had she not written it on the milk tickets each morning?

  ‘From Windystone Hall, near Mellow,’ she replied with a shy pride, as she thought of her domain, the wide fields and woods, the rambling house and buildings, and compared it with the tiny rose-filled gardens and thatched cottages of the village.

  ‘Windy stone, rain stone, who went down the lane alone?’ mocked a wit, and the children shook back their hair and yelled with glee.

  ‘Aye. What a figure of fun. Where did you get that frock?’ they jibed.

  She had loathed her dress, but now she held it tightly with one hand. It came from her own home, and was part of her. She had been called ‘a figure of fun’. She stood with her back against the wall and a crowd of jeering girls jostled her. One pulled her hair with a mischievous tug, one opened her satchel and looked at her sandwiches, and one, the most shameless, put her tongue out at her. A little boy her own age ran up rudely and kissed her. He rushed away screaming with laughter, and Susan took out her handkerchief and rubbed her cheek as the cries and jibes rose higher. She stood like a frightened rabbit, her face white, her eyes big with horror. ‘Mother,’ she whispered to her heart, and the school bell rang.

  The rabble dropped away and lined up in the playground. Susan went to the end of the row and followed them into a large room with pictures on the painted wall of Daniel in the lion’s den, and a cocoa tree in flower. The lessons passed over her head. She could neither understand the strange accent and high voice of the town-bred teacher, nor grasp why she had to thread coloured strips through paper mats, with care and precision, and then pull them all out again. It was all working for nothing.

  The sums were too easy, and the children round copied off her slate.

  Books were given out for reading, and Susan’s eye flitted rapidly down the pages. She was told not to turn over, so she sat dull and tired, waiting whilst the infants stumbled and fell over the little words. She was called on to read, and she read with expression as her mother had taught her. The children all turned round and stared, tittering and nudging one another. Susan’s white cheeks became scarlet, her only wish was to be unnoticed. Covered with confusion she sat down, and her hair was sharply pulled from behind. She gave a short stifled cry, and Miss Hilda turned to her.

  ‘What’s the matter, Susan?’ she asked kindly.

  Susan whispered, ‘Someone pulled my hair.’

  Miss Hilda sent the naughty boy to a corner, but as he passed he hissed:

  ‘Tell Tale Tit,

  Your tongue shall be slit

  And every dog in England

  Shall have a little bit.’

  Susan sat half stifled. Dan had once told her that he slit a starnel’s tongue to make it talk. The story had sickened her, and now her tongue was to be slit. She determined to fight to death before they should get it from her.

  Other children read in a monotonous sing-song, and so the weary time dragged on.

  At playtime she went out with the others as a lamb to the slaughter. There were more questions and laughter, but Susan noticed some nice little girls whom she hadn’t seen before standing in a group and smiling shyly at her. The horrible little boy came up. Susan stood, with lips firmly shut and her tongue safe in
side her red mouth, ready for the struggle, but he only punched her arm and ran off crying, ‘Tell Tale Tit’.

  Then one of the girls asked Susan if she would like a drink, and took her to a tap in the wall with an iron mug hanging by a chain. The water was metallic and flat, it was the first tap water Susan had ever tasted, but she was grateful.

  ‘Take no notice of them,’ said her new friend. ‘They don’t mean anything,’ and Susan was comforted. A weight was lifted off her heart, and as she walked into school again she felt she had been there for years. She could raise her head now and look at Elijah ascending into heaven in the chariot of fire, drawn by two prancing ponies, and the picture of a peacock hanging ready for a lesson, and the closed black stove which stood all alone in the middle of the floor with a pipe going out of its head. It was the strangest thing she had ever seen.

  She was moved up, and took her place in the grammar class. Grammar was a nice-sounding word, she thought, like mother, or hammer, a comfortable homely word, but the lesson was incomprehensible. It was all about owls, or so it seemed to Susan. Miss Dahlia, who came from London, was treated with great respect as if she had come from heaven itself. Miss Dahlia began by informing the class that an owl was the name of anything.

  ‘A table is an owl,’ said Miss Dahlia, and nobody disagreed. Indeed nobody ever disputed anything Miss Dahlia said. The children vied with one another in calling everything an owl – chairs, horses, desks and elephants. They had heard it all before, and joined in when she told them of common and proper owls.

  Now Susan, too, knew about owls. Her mind left the close stuffy room, with the smell of dust and children, and the high-pitched voice of Miss Dahlia. She saw the great tawny barn owl which called over the house roof and hunted in the stackyard and among the barns and cowsheds. At evening, when the stars first appeared in the green sky, he sat in the fir tree at the corner of the garden. Susan had watched his dark shape against the starry sky. He sat on a branch just below Orion’s belt, and cried to the great hunter in the sky. Then he spread his wings and flew noiselessly to the sycamore tree.