The Country Child

by Alison Uttley

  In the middle of the table was a Christmas tree, alive and growing, looking very much surprised at itself, for had not Tom dug it up from the plantation whilst they were at church, and brought it in with real snow on its branches? The rosiest of apples and the nicest yellow oranges were strung to its boughs, and some sugar biscuits with pink icing and a few humbugs from Tom’s pocket lay on the snow, with a couple of gaily coloured texts and a sugar elephant. On the top of the tree shone a silver bird, a most astonishing silver glass peacock with a tail of fine feathers, which might have flown in at the window, he wouldn’t say Nay and he wouldn’t say Yea.

  Susan was amazed. If an angel from heaven had sat on the table she would have been less surprised. She ran to hug everybody, her heart was full.

  They had been so busy getting ready, for Tom only thought of it when Dan was telling him the station gossip of Mrs Drayton’s Christmas tree, they had neglected the dinner.

  ‘Dang it,’ Tom had said, ‘we will have a Christmas tree, too. Go and get the spade, Dan.’

  The ground had been like iron, the tree had spreading roots, but they had not harmed the little thing, and it was going back again to the plantation when Christmas was over.

  The turkey was not basted, and the bread sauce was forgotten, but everyone worked with a will and soon all was ready and piping hot.

  The potatoes were balls of snow, the sprouts green as if they had just come from the garden, as indeed they had, for they too had been dug out of the snow not long before. The turkey was brown and crisp, it had been Susan’s enemy for many a day, chasing her from the poultry yard, and now it was brought low; the stuffing smelled of summer and the herb garden in the heat of the sun.

  As for the plum pudding with its spray of red berries and shiny leaves and its hidden sixpence, which would fall out, and land on Susan’s plate, it was the best they had ever tasted. There was no dessert, nor did they need it, for they sipped elderberry wine mixed with sugar and hot water in the old pointed wine glasses, and cracked the walnuts damp from the trees.

  Mrs Garland, with an air of mystery, brought out her surprise which had lain in the parlour bedroom a few days. It was a parcel from Susan’s godmother, Miss Susanna Dickory.

  Tom and Susan stooped over as Mrs Garland untied the string and put it carefully in the string bag. It didn’t do to be impatient, there was plenty of time.

  There was a red shawl which Miss Dickory’s old fingers had knitted for Margaret, and a grey woollen muffler and gloves to match for Tom, also knitted by Miss Dickory, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin for Susan.

  ‘Well, she is kind,’ said Margaret, ‘she must have worked for weeks at those things. How useful! Mind you wear those gloves, Tom. I am glad I sent her that ham. You see I was right, Tom.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Tom, ‘but you need not have sent a ham to Aunt Harriet, too. She never sends anything to us. It takes all our profit.’

  ‘Cast your bread upon the water,’ replied Margaret, and Susan looked up from the book which would soon entwine itself in her life and in her dreams. She pondered what it might mean. She never dare throw bread away, and her mother was the last person in the world to send loaves and ham floating down the river. Then she returned to the book in which she lost herself, lying before the parlour fire, until the dusk crept into the room and the firelight was insufficient even when she leaned into the fireplace.

  Outside the world was amazingly blue, light blue snow, indigo trees, deep blue sky, misty blue farm and haystacks, and men with lanterns and bundles of hay on their backs for the horses and cows, or yokes across their shoulders as they went milking. Susan could hear Joshua breaking the ice on the trough by the edge of the lawn, and Duchess stood by his side waiting to drink. She lowered her great head, drank, looked around and savoured the delicious spring water on her tongue, then drank again, with snorts and soft grunts. She lifted her head and shook her mane, sending the loose drops from her muzzle in a shower round her.

  Then she whinnied contentedly and walked halterless back to the stable, lowering her head as she went under the doorway, stepping carefully up the sill. The sounds of the rope and stone weight which tethered her could be heard, as Joshua fastened her up, and then he brought out Fanny, clattering her hoofs on the floor before they were silenced in the snow.

  Yellow stars like lamps, blue stars like icicles, twinkled up above and far away across the valley. A running star showed a cart or gig travelling along the coach road to Mistchester, where the cathedral stood, and the big cattle market and fine shops.

  Susan pressed her nose to the cold windowpane until it became a flat white button, and her breath froze into feathery crystals. ‘This is Christmas Day, it’s Christmas Day, it won’t come again for a whole year. It’s Christmas,’ she murmured.

  The blue deepened and Becky came in to set the tea.

  ‘Shut the shutters, Susan, and keep out the cold. You’ll be fair starved by that window. They’ll soon be back from milking, and I’m going to chapel tonight. I’ve not been for many a long bit.’

  Susan climbed on the leather-seated chairs and drew the folded shutters out of their niches in the depths of the walls. She racketed them across the windows, with a last long look at the deepening blue, and dropped the iron bars into the clamps.

  Then she ran to the other rooms, sending out the deep clang through the shadows, which always meant cosiness and home and fireside to those within.

  But outside was the wonderful Christmas night with all its mysteries, its angels busy under the stars, and seraphs singing up in Paradise.

  The men rattled through the kitchen with foaming pails, for the milk did not take long to cool in the biting air which froze the drops of moisture on Joshua’s whiskers, and left Tom’s hands stiff and white. They stamped their feet and left great paddocks of snow on the mats by the doors and in the passage.

  The mare whinnied outside the shuttered windows, as Joshua led her out, with the thick yellow and red rug across her loins. Roger barked as the churns were silently rolled through thick snow, and lifted on the cart. Joshua cried, ‘Coom up, lass,’ and led her forward, and Tom fastened the pins in the hinged back. Susan made the milk tickets, Becky polished the lamp, and Dan drank a brimming mug of tea, and hurried out into the cold night, down the deep snowy hill. He led the mare and carried a small axe in his hand with which he knocked out the great clumps of clinging snow and ice which collected in her hoofs, causing her to stumble and slip. One fall and the milk would be upset, which had happened before now.

  Becky had her tea alone in the kitchen before the fire, but old Joshua was invited to the parlour, to the feast.

  There was Christmas cake, iced and sprinkled over with red and blue ‘hundreds and thousands’, with a paper flag in the middle, on one side of which was the Union Jack and on the other a clown with red nose and pointed hat, like the ones at the circus.

  There was a fragrant ham, brother to those hanging in the kitchen corner, smoked and delicately flavoured, under its coat of brown raspings, and its paper frill which Susan had cut the night before.

  There was a pie stuffed with veal, ham and eggs, potted meats in china dishes with butter on the top, brown boiled eggs in the silver egg-stand which stood like a castle with eight stalwart egg-cups and eight curling spoons round the tall handle, white bread and butter on the Minton china plates with their tiny green leaves and gold edges, a pot of honey and strawberry jam, and an old Staffordshire dish of little tarts containing golden curds made of beastings, mixed with currants.

  The green and white china cups which had belonged to Mrs Garland’s grandmother were ranged at one end, beside the large teapot with its four little legs, the china sugar basin with its lid over real crystal lumps, not brown demerara as it was Christmas, the milk jug to match, and an ancient worn silver cream jug, the ‘Queen Annie jug’, full of thick cream which would scarcely pour out.

  In the middle of the table were four silver candlesticks which were used on festal days instead of th
e lamp, holding four tall wax candles.

  The delicate cups were passed up and down the table, the tiny plates heaped with food, Becky ran in and out with clean plates, knives and forks, with familiar jokes and smiles, as she filled up the dishes. Old Joshua ate enough for three, and then asked for more. The Christmas tree shone in the corner, and on the fire blazed a log which Becky could hardly lift when she carried it in.

  The room was filled with brightness and laughter, even the shadows danced and flitted across the ceiling, four at a time, in country bobs and jigs.

  They heard the sound outside of the returning cart just as the feast finished and Susan had said Grace. A piled plate with a little of everything was put ready for Dan, and Becky cleared away. Tom Garland stretched himself in the grandfather chair at one side of the fire, with his feet on the brass fender, and Joshua went out to help with the mare.

  Becky washed up and cleared away before she got ready for chapel and Margaret wiped her precious china tenderly, with loving fingers and little reminiscences of when it had been used, weddings, funerals, birthdays and Christmasses.

  Then Tom roused himself from his contemplation of the fire and came out to reach down the best lantern and get it ready. It hung between the old pointed horn lantern and Susan’s little school lantern, a black shining case with cut-glass sides and a clean fine window at the front. He opened the back and put in a fresh piece of candle from the candle bark, and lit it.

  The three set out with muffs, cloaks, walking-sticks, Prayer Books and Bibles, hymn books, lozenges, clean handkerchiefs folded neatly, the lantern and three pairs of old woollen stocking legs which they pulled over their boots to keep themselves from slipping. And even then Susan had to run back for the matches.

  Becky walked in front with the lantern and a stick, Susan came next, and Mrs Garland last.

  There was a great conversation and warnings of snowdrifts, for the snow had fallen again in the afternoon, and the path fell away on either side so that a false step would mean a drop into the cutting down which the horse and cart had fumbled their way in deeper snow.

  The lantern gave a wavering light, for Becky shook and waddled in her walk, and shadows danced about on every side. The gorse bushes which had disappeared under the drifts lay in wait for legs and ankles, and snow cluttered the uplifted skirts and petticoats.

  Susan loved every moment, but Margaret and Becky were thankful when at last they reached the bottom of the long slippery hill and they had the level road in front of them.

  Becky flashed her lamp over the wall, fingers of light pointing to the dark river running on its secret business, talking incessantly to itself, aloof and incomprehensible. They trudged along the turnpike, which was empty and lonely, past the milestones and the water mill, by wall and hedge, alike in the covering of snow. The church bells rang triumphantly, clear and pulsating in the stillness, racing, tumbling over one another, echoing in the hills, and then almost silent as they turned a corner and the bending river drowned the notes, or a mass of rock deflected it away. Sometimes they even caught a few notes of the bells at Brue-on-the-Water, a village far away across the hills in another valley.

  In the woods above them they heard the bark of a fox. ‘A heathen he is,’ said Becky. ‘He should know better than to be abroad tonight,’ but Margaret told her foxes couldn’t know, they had no souls.

  The lights streamed from the church windows, straight across the graveyard, and in reds and blues the crucified Christ hung there.

  ‘But He doesn’t know about that yet,’ thought Susan. ‘He’s only just born, a Baby a day old. I know more than He knows. I know He will be crucified and He doesn’t know yet.’

  It was a disturbing thought, which shattered her as she crunched the snow under her feet and stumbled along under the church walls. She wondered if she could warn Him, tell Him to go back to Heaven, quick, before He was caught by Judas. But of course she couldn’t!

  It was like Charles I. She always wanted to stop him, to save him from doing the fatal things which would surely lead him, which did lead him, to the block. She was caught up in time, the present slipped behind the past. But the bells were going ting tong, ting tong, in a great hurry, as if they wanted to be quick so that they could have a Christmas mystery of their own in the sky, to count the prayers floating out of the roof and watch the cherubim catch them in their nets and carry them off to Heaven.

  Becky turned away at the lychgate, and went on to chapel where there was no jumping up and down all the time like an ill-sitting hen, but folks could lean forward with their faces in their hands and have done with it.

  They blew out the lantern and took the stockings off their boots, and hid them under the stone seat in the porch.

  Susan took deep sniffs, as she stood for a moment by the red baize door, of hair oil, lavender, comfortable warm stuffs, leather leggings, paraffin and peppermint, homely smells which welcomed her in.

  The lights dazzled their eyes as they walked up the aisle, Margaret gliding quietly to her place, Susan tiptoeing behind her. Lamps hung from the walls and every dark holly leaf was a candle, every scarlet berry a farthing dip. The windows alone had lost their radiance, and stood black behind the colour and warmth which filled the church, almost visible to the child’s eyes searching the air for invisible things, for God on the altar, and angels floating above the choir, for music beating its wings in the high dark beams of the roof, and for goodness and mercy running hand-in-hand down the chancel.

  The service was different from the morning service, too. Everybody sang mightily, the deep voices of the old men and the tiny piping voices of children overpowering the organ and compelling it to a slow grandeur in ‘While Shepherds watched’, and ‘Hark! the herald angels sing’, and ‘Lead, kindly light’. They wouldn’t be hurried for anyone, and Samuel Robinson must slacken his pace, going on as if he wanted to catch a train!

  The old words rang out bravely, and the scent of bear’s grease and peppermint balls filled the air like incense.

  Susan was squeezed against her mother, close to that silky muff and the warm hand within it, by portly Mrs Chubb, who smiled and nodded and tinkled the bugles on her mantle, and shone like a crystal chandelier, besides smelling most deliciously of pear drops, which she passed to Susan when she knelt down to pray.

  But the end was coming, they sang a carol, and knelt a few minutes in silence. Margaret poured out her heart to God, asking His help in the thousand anxieties which lay before her, the winter and its dangers, spring and the births, the harvest, and Susan knelt wrapped in the beauty of the season, thinking of the Christ Child.

  Then the villagers rose to their feet and passed out of church, to greet each other in the porch and find their mufflers, sticks and pattens. Margaret lighted the lantern and they pulled their stockings over their shoes in the confusion of the crowd. Becky waited for them at the gate, and they called, ‘Goodnight, goodnight. A happy Christmas and many of them. A happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year when it comes. Same to you and many of them’, as they turned away to the darkness.

  The snow-covered hedges, the low walls, the masses of the trees, the little paths turning to right and left, all brought a message and tried to speak to the two women and the child who walked among them, shining their lantern over them, awed by the presence of unseen things, the arch of stars above, their thoughts on God.

  Susan’s lips moved as she passed old friends, shrouded in white, yet intensely alive and quivering. When they reached the oak tree in the midst of the field up which they climbed, they stopped with one accord to rest.

  ‘I was ready for my wind,’ said Becky, puffing.

  ‘Stars are grand tonight,’ she continued. ‘They are candles lit by God, and however He does it I don’t know.’

  They looked up to the light of the Milky Way, stretching across the vault of the sky, from hill to hill, from Wild Boar Head to the wood by Archer’s Brow. The stars seemed alive, the air was full of movement as they twinkled, and thr
ew a shooting star down to the earth.

  Margaret picked out the constellations, a snake with pointed head, a chair, a jewelled crown. They lost stars and found them, they put their heads together to see the same one, and pointed and cried as if they watched a show of fireworks.

  But their feet were cold and they turned their eyes to the earth, and walked on up the hill towards the dark mass of buildings at the top.

  ‘The teacher says they are other worlds,’ said Susan.

  ‘We shall all know in good time,’ answered Margaret philosophically, ‘worlds or angels’ eyes, or visions of heaven,’ and Susan decided the teacher was wrong, they were the guardian angels watching over the flocks and people who were out at night, and beyond were the golden streets and jasper walls of Heaven.

  They passed under the giant beech trees, which stood very quiet with their burden of snow, by fields and hedges, to the orchard and the big gate. Roger barked and the doors flew open. They could see the square of light down the path, the radiance spread across the lawn and gilded the white laden trees.

  They stamped the snow off their boots and removed the woollen coverings. Then they entered the warm firelit house, which looked like Aladdin’s cave with its rows of shining brass candlesticks, its dishcovers, lustre jugs, guns, the warming pan, and the gay decorations of holly, ivy, and flags.

  The parlour table was laid for supper, Tom had been busy while they were away. There were mince pies, the green marbled cheese, and elderberry wine in the cut-glass decanter which had belonged to Tom’s mother.

  Afterwards Tom got out the concertina from its octagonal box and he dusted the tiny ivory keys and the flowered and berried sides with his silk handkerchief, gently, as if it were a child’s face he was touching. Becky in great excitement gave out the hymn books, for she dearly loved a bit of music, and she was to be invited into the room. He played his favourites of Moody and Sankey, with sweet trebles and droning basses, as they sang, in soft sad voices, tired yet happy. They knelt on the worn rose-covered carpet with their faces against the chairs, and said their prayers, putting their lives and their hopes, their seedtime and harvest, their cattle and crops in the hands of their Father.