The Country Child

by Alison Uttley

  ‘Where’s the spoon?’ asked Dan, holding out his hands.

  ‘Look all round the room,’ they cried gleefully.

  ‘Can’t see it,’ exclaimed Dan as he twisted his neck round to the shuttered windows, up to the kissing-bunch, and down to the floor.

  ‘Look on top of All Saints’ Church,’ they sang.

  Dan turned his mask up to the ceiling.

  ‘Lump of lead,’ he solemnly replied.

  ‘Then catch them all by the hair of the head!’ they shrieked, running and shouting with laughter.

  Dan chased after them, tumbling over stools, catching the clock, hitting the row of coloured lanterns, pricking his neck, and walking into doors, cupboards and dressers.

  Susan ran, half afraid, but wholly happy, except when the pink mask came too near and the sightless eyes turned towards her, when she couldn’t help giving a scream. Joshua warded him away from the flames, and Tom kept him from upsetting the brass and copper vessels which gleamed like fires under the ceiling.

  Susan was caught by her hair and she became Jack. Now she put on the strange-smelling mask, and with it she became another person, bold, bad, fearless.

  So it went on, the old country game, whilst Margaret kept stopping to peep in the oven at the mince pies and roast potatoes.

  Next came ‘Turn the Trencher’, but Dan couldn’t stop to play, for he had to be off a-guisering. He blacked his face with burnt cork and whitened his eyebrows. He borrowed Becky’s black straw hat and wrapped her shawl round his shoulders. Then off he went to join a party of farm lads who were visiting the scattered farms.

  He had not long been gone, and Tom was spinning the trencher between finger and thumb in the middle of the floor, when the dog barked as if someone were coming.

  ‘Whist, whist,’ cried old Joshua.

  ‘Hark,’ cried Tom, stopping the whirling board, ‘there’s something doing.’

  They heard muffled steps coming down the path to the door.

  ‘It’s the guisers coming here,’ cried Tom, and they all stood up expectantly with eager faces and excited whispers.

  Here we come a-wassailing

  Among the leaves so green,

  Here we come a-wandering,

  So fair to be seen.

  We are not daily beggars

  That beg from door to door,

  But we are neighbours’ children,

  Whom you have seen before.

  Call up the butler of this house,

  Put on his golden ring,

  Let him bring us up a glass of beer,

  And better we shall sing.

  Here they pushed open the door and half entered.

  God bless the master of this house,

  And bless the mistress, too,

  And all the little children

  That round the table go.

  And all your kin and kinsfolk,

  That dwell both far and near,

  I wish you a Merry Christmas,

  And a happy New Year.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ shouted Tom, with his broad face wreathed in smiles. Half a dozen young men and a woman stamped their feet and entered, bringing clots of snow and gusts of the sweet icy air. Their faces were masked and they disguised their voices, speaking in gruff tones or high falsettos, which caused much gay laughter.

  They stood in a row in front of the dresser, and asked riddles of one another.

  ‘How many sticks go to the building of a crow’s nest?’

  ‘None, for they are all carried.’

  ‘When is a man thinner than a lath?’

  ‘When he’s a-shaving.’

  ‘Who was the first whistler, and what tune did he whistle?’

  ‘The wind, and he whistled “Over the hills and far away”.’

  ‘What is that which a coach cannot move without, and yet it’s no use to it?’

  ‘A noise.’

  Tom and Joshua knew the answers and kept mum, but Becky and Susan were busy guessing, Margaret too.

  Then Tom said, ‘Now I’ll give you one.

  ‘In a garden there strayed

  A beautiful maid, as fair as the flowers of the morn;

  The first hour of her life she was made a wife,

  And she died before she was born.’

  The guisers made wild guesses and Tom sat back, smiling and gleeful.

  ‘No, you’re wrong, it’s Eve,’ he said at last in a tone of triumph.

  ‘And here’s another,’ he continued:

  ‘There is a thing was three weeks old,

  When Adam was no more;

  This thing it was but four weeks old,

  When Adam was four score.’

  The guisers gave it up, and Susan, who had heard it many a time, could scarcely keep the word within her mouth, but Tom frowned and nudged her to be quiet.

  ‘’Tis the moon,’ he cried, and they all nodded their masks.

  ‘Here’s one,’ said Joshua:

  ‘I’ve seen you where you never were,

  And where you ne’er will be;

  And yet within that very place,

  You shall be seen by me.’

  When they couldn’t guess it and had murmured, ‘You’ve seen me where I never was’ many times, he told them, ‘In a looking glass.’

  ‘Eh, Mester Taberner,’ cried one. ‘You’ve never seed me in a looking glass,’ and they all guffawed.

  ‘And I know that voice,’ returned Joshua, ‘’tis Jim Hodges from Over Wood way.’

  ‘You’re right, Mester Taberner,’ said Jim, as he removed his mask and disclosed his red cheeks.

  So the guessing went on, until all the mummers were unmasked, Dick Jolly, Tom Snow, Bob Bird, Sam Roper, and Miriam Webster.

  They drew up chairs to the fire and Susan got plates and big china mugs, and the two-handled posset cups. Margaret piled the mince pies, as big as saucers, on a fluted dish and handed them round.

  ‘Help yourselves, help yourselves, “Christmas comes but once a year, and when it comes it brings good cheer,”’ said Tom, and he poured out the spiced hot ale for the men, and the women ate posset with nutmeg and sugar.

  When the guisers had eaten and drunk, old Joshua rose to his feet to give them all his Christmas piece, ‘The Mistletoe Bough’.

  Susan listened to the poem she knew so well, repeating it after him under her breath. She knew that poor bride would get in the oak chest, there was no stopping her, but she felt thankful that when she herself went to bed it would be in the Little Chamber, and not alongside the fatal chest in the attic. But she loved to hear Joshua tell the story in his old cracked voice, which quavered when he was excited.

  The guisers stamped in applause, and clapped their hands. They put on their masks, saying, ‘He’s got a rare memory,’ and stood up to sing a last song.

  Then, calling good wishes, greetings, blessings, tags of wit, they left the farm, and stumbled with lanterns and sticks across the fields to Oak Meadow.

  ‘That Miriam should not go a-guisering with those men,’ said Becky indignantly, when the door was shut, and they returned to the fire. ‘She should think shame of herself.’

  She flounced off to her own chair, by the dresser, for she and Dan never sat in the family circle.

  ‘’Tis an old custom, that,’ observed Tom, as he leaned back against the comfortable cushions of the settle, ‘but when my father was young and his father before him, they did a play, a mumming play, with no words.’

  Then he told stories of his childhood, which Susan enjoyed more than anything, of Windystone in far-away days, when the dead-and-gone lived there. He told how they brewed their own beer in the brewhouse, and made their tallow-dips. His grandmother sat in the chimney corner with a spinning-wheel, and made the very same cloth they had on the table. He told of the horse thief who stole the mare out of the orchard, and how he would have been hanged if they had caught him. He told of the mesmerists who gave entertainments in Raddle and Dangle, hypnotizing the people with passes of their hand
s so that they did whatever they were told. He told of the ghost his father met by the gate in the meadow, which never answered but brought death to the house. Strange, grim stories, which Susan would never forget.

  ‘Tell the funny tale of the man who sold his wife,’ she implored when Tom paused.

  ‘There was a man, lived at Leadington, he went by the name of Abraham Maze. He couldn’t get on with his wife.’

  ‘Don’t tell that tale before Susan,’ interrupted Margaret indignantly.

  ‘Why, what’s the matter with it? There’s no harm in it! It’s a warning to cacklers,’ and Tom looked round the company as if he accused them all.

  ‘Well, as I was saying, he couldn’t get on with his wife. She had such a tongue, it went nineteen to the dozen, never still a moment, clatter, clatter, clatter all day and night too. They led a regular cat-and-dog life, and she drove him to drink, although he was a steady fellow.

  ‘Well, he was talking about her one night at the Pig with Two Faces, that’s the name of the inn at Leadington, it’s a farmhouse too. There’s a sign of a pig with half its face laughing, as it might be, and half scowling.’

  ‘Yes, I knows it,’ said Joshua. ‘I’ve been there many a time to lend a mare for their muck-carting. They were short of a horse.’

  ‘Well,’ continued Tom patiently, ‘he told the folk about his wife, and everybody was right sorry for him, although they couldn’t help laughing at him for being so hen-pecked. Then a stranger asks, “Will you sell her?”

  ‘So he says, “Right willing I will, if anyone wants to buy such truck.”’

  ‘Then it was very rude and wicked of him,’ cried Margaret, ‘to talk about his wife like that.’

  ‘Will you be quiet!’ Tom was exasperated, ‘How can I tell a tale if you will keep interrupting? “How much do you want, Master?” asked the man.

  ‘“Sixpence,” shouts Maze, banging his fist on the table. “You can have her for sixpence, that’s all she’s worth.”

  ‘“Done,” shouts the other fellow, “sixpence I’ll give.”

  ‘So he paid the sixpence right there, and went home with Maze. She went away with the other man that very night. I forget his name, he was a Frenchy that bought her.’

  ‘And what happened then?’ asked Susan, wondering in her heart if anyone would sell her when she was grown up.

  ‘She lived with him for a few weeks, and then she ran away and went back to her first husband. And the funny thing was, he was glad to have her back again, to mend his stockings and cook.’

  ‘Matrimony’s a terrible queer thing,’ said Joshua, and he shook his shoulders and felt in his pocket for his snuffbox, to clear his head.

  ‘Matrimony and sorrow begins,’ said Susan dreamily, ‘matrimony and sorrow begins.’ She did not know what the words meant, but she lifted up her young face to gaze into Joshua’s deeply furrowed old cheeks, his thick white hair, and his tender mouth. He was thinking of his dead wife and the trouble he had had.

  ‘Do you know what that is, Joshua?’ she asked, putting her hand on his knee to wake him from his dream.

  ‘I ought to know, Susan,’ he replied.

  ‘It’s bread and butter, Joshua, with a piece of cake between. The bread and butter is sorrow, you know, and the cake is matrimony. I have it for tea when I’m good,’ she explained.

  ‘I used always to call it “Matrimony and Solla beggins”,’ she laughed.

  ‘We’ve had both,’ said Margaret, stroking her husband’s hand, ‘but we’ve not had the sorrow many people have had. We’ve a lot to be thankful for.’

  The clock rattled its chain and took a deep loud breath as it drew itself up ready to strike. Then slowly, loudly, brooking no interfering conversation, it chimed nine o’clock, the last stroke singing on as if it were loath to leave the warm comfort of the dark cobwebbed interior, to venture out into the brightness of the kitchen and away through the keyhole and chimney, into the great lonely world beyond.

  ‘In three hours it will be Christmas Day,’ continued Margaret. ‘The shepherds are out on the hillside, minding the sheep, and the star is shining in the sky. Get me the Bible, Susan, and I will read the chapter.’

  Susan took the old brown leather Bible from the dresser where it lay ready for use by the spoon box, and laid it on the table in front of her mother, who searched among the little texts which lay within for the place.

  Joshua and Tom sat up straight to listen, Susan drew her low chair to the fire, and Becky sat down in her correct place as servant at the bottom of the table.

  The wind thumped at the door, so that the latch rattled, and cried sadly as it tried to get in to listen to the tale. The flames licked round the bars and held their breath as the old words dropped peacefully in the room.

  ‘And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.’

  Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem on a dark night to pay their tax, and there was no room for them at the inn. How cold it was, snow everywhere, and perhaps wolves prowling round, thought Susan, as the wind howled under the kitchen door. They walked up and down, up and down, till they found a stable, and she thought of them walking across the fields stumbling against rocks and trees, in deep snow, to the stable in the cobbled yard underneath the weathercock.

  There Jesus was born and put in the manger. The ox and the ass stood watching and Joseph had a lantern to look at the little Baby Boy. But afar in a field some shepherds were minding their sheep and they saw a star. Susan knew which one it was, it shone through the fir tree across the lawn.

  The star moved, just as the moon moved when it brought her home through the wood in winter, and the shepherds left their sheep and followed it.

  The sheep were not lonely that night because it was like day with that big bright star in the sky, and a host of angels floated in the air, singing, ‘Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.’ The sheep stopped eating to look up at the angels, but they were not afraid.

  The shepherds followed the star till it came above the stable, and there it stopped, in the branches of the elm tree. The stable door was open, and the little horseshoe in the upper door shone in the starlight, and the brighter light from within came streaming out to meet them. It was warm inside, with hay and the animals’ breath, so the Baby and Mary sat cosily in the manger. Mary’s feet were tucked up so that she could get in with the Holy Child, and bits of hay and straw were sticking to her blue dress.

  Susan could scarcely keep the tears from her eyes, she was so excited over the story she knew so well. If only she had been there too, a little girl with those shepherds, she would have seen the Wise Men ride up on their camels, through the gate into the yard. They carried gold and frankincense and myrrh, yellow gold as big as a lump of coal, and myrrh like leaves, smelling sweeter than lavender or mignonette, and frankincense, something, she didn’t know what, something in a blue and gold box with red stones on it.

  Then Mrs Garland put a little embroidered cross in the Bible and closed its pages reverently. She took off her spectacles and laid them on the table, and they all knelt down to pray.

  They prayed for the Queen and Country, for the three doves, Peace, Wisdom, and Understanding, and they thanked God for all the blessings of this life.

  But Susan’s head began to nod, and she rested it on the hard chair. When the others arose, she still knelt there, fast asleep.

  So her mother roused her, and she said ‘Goodnight, God bless you,’ for anyone might disappear in the night, and they went upstairs together to the Little Chamber, where a fire burned in the grate, and shadows jumped up and down the ceiling, fire-shadows the best of all.

  She hung up her stocking at the foot of the bed and fell asleep. But soon singing roused her, and she sat up, bewildered. Yes, it was the carol singers.

  Margaret came running upstairs and wrapped her in a blanket. She took her across the landing to her own room, and pulled up the linen blind.<
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  Outside under the stars she could see the group of men and women with lanterns throwing beams across the paths and on to the stable door. One man stood apart beating time, another played a fiddle, and another had a flute. The rest sang in four parts the Christmas hymns, ‘While Shepherds watched’, ‘Come all ye Faithful’, and ‘Hark, the herald angels sing’.

  There was the star, Susan could see it twinkling and bright in the dark boughs with their white frosted layers, and there was the stable. She watched the faces half lit by the lanterns, top-coats pulled up to their necks. The music of the violin came thin and squeaky, like a singing icicle, blue and cold, but magic, and the flute was warm like the voices.

  They stopped and waited a moment. Tom’s deep voice came from the darkness. They trooped, chattering and puffing out their cheeks, and clapping their arms round their bodies to the front door. They were going into the parlour for elderberry wine and their collection money. A bright light flickered across the snow as the door was flung wide open. Then a bang, and Susan went back to bed.

  Christmas Eve was nearly over, but tomorrow was Christmas Day, the best day in all the year. She shut her eyes and fell asleep.

  12

  Christmas Day

  Susan awoke in the dark of Christmas morning. A weight lay on her feet, and she moved her toes up and down. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. It was Christmas Day. She stretched out her hands and found the knobby little stocking, which she brought into bed with her and clasped tightly in her arms as she fell asleep again.

  She awoke later and lay holding her happiness, enjoying the moment. The light was dim, but the heavy mass of the chest of drawers stood out against the pale walls, all blue like the snow shadows outside. She drew her curtains and looked out at the starry sky. She listened for the bells of the sleigh, but no sound came through the stillness except the screech owl’s call.

  Again she hadn’t caught Santa Claus. Of course she knew he wasn’t real, but also she knew he was. It was the same with everything. People said things were not alive but you knew in your heart they were: statues which would catch you if you turned your back were made of stone; Santa Claus was your own father and mother; the stuffed fox died long ago.