13
January
The New Year hung in the air, hovering with wings outstretched above the farm, carrying joy and sorrow in its feathers, waiting, waiting for the big clock to strike twelve. Dan stood outside with his coat-collar up, shivering in the steely air, staring up at the sky and across the vast dark to the hills.
The New Year shook and swooped down as the clock began to strike. Dan opened the door and entered as the last stroke died away, and the year flew in, filling the house at once, from the empty attics to the dairy where the milk froze in the pans.
Susan sat up in bed listening to the rush of wings, Becky wished for a sweetheart, and Margaret said a prayer. All the bells began to ring, Mellow Church pealed out a chime of bells, and the lone bell of Brue-on-the-Water called softly, or faded to nothing through the woods.
Dan hurried out again to Oak Meadow Farm. He had promised for a shilling to bring in the New Year for them, and it waited up above the oak trees whilst he took his lantern across the fields and waded through the snowdrifts, for the path had entirely gone. Mrs Wolff’s hair was grey as ashes and so was her husband’s, and their daughter, Mary, was a fair woman. They had had so much ill-luck in the past through their own red-headed Sandy coming in first, they now sent for dark Dan.
A mug of ale and a pie waited for him, and he ate it as he stood in the low-raftered doorway, before he turned through the stretch of fields and lanes home again.
Susan had snuggled down in bed and fallen asleep, but Margaret lay wondering what the year would bring forth. Tom was tired, he had a lot to do the next day, and he turned over and snored, but Margaret lay awake half the night wrestling with the angel of Fortune.
School began with snowballing and slides down the long roads. The big boys put stones inside their snowballs, which hurt, and poured water down the slides, so that the roads were like glass and all the little girls fell down. Susan came home, plunging through the snow in the wood, proud of the black rows of bruises on her legs. She took out her doll’s wagon, a sturdy box with heavy wheels, which her father had made for her, and ran down a little cosy field by the house, perched on the top.
Then Tom made her a real toboggan, and she skimmed like a swallow on Saturday afternoon down the long hills under the blue shadows till dusk fell, and the rattle of cans on the wall told her milking was beginning.
She played alone, as always, but she shouted to the trees as she flew past them, and talked to the young moon in the sky as she dragged the sleigh up the long steep slopes.
Bright beams poured from the kitchen window, and fell over the hill up which she trudged, a little red-shantered figure, with a muffler round her neck and a brown coat wrapped round her body. Margaret came to the door and waved to the little speck she could see in the middle of the great white slope, and Susan came home with wet rosy cheeks and damp hair, snow sticking to her gloves and caked in ice over her back and side where she had fallen off when the sledge turned turtle.
From the oven came the smell of roast apples, the great brown teapot stood steaming on the table, and stacks of buttered toast, and enormous round teacakes piping hot, were piled on the plates.
‘Roast apples and cream,’ cried Susan, and she tore off her soaking boots and left them in their puddle on the sanded hearthstone.
Then Tom came in and joined them, with eyes sparkling like the frosty stars, and later Becky came in, her hands chapped and red, her eyes bright, and hung her milking bonnet behind the servants’ door. Dan ate his tea whilst Joshua and Becky harnessed Diamond and Tom got up to help them scye and measure the milk.
Then he returned to his tea, and Dan walked down the hill in plenty of time for the train, for the mare could only go slowly, and every minute he had to stop to clear her hoofs, and lead her through the dangerous parts. In his hand he carried a lantern to guide her feet through the drifts.
Those dark nights were detested by the farm hands, the wind was like a carving-knife and it cut their hands and cheeks till they bled. They wrapped mufflers round their necks when they crossed the fields, and Joshua wore mittens so that his fingers were free, but they were frozen like boards, and caked with ice.
But wall mending, milking, cattle feeding, and watering had to go on, the cow-houses and stables were cleaned, the hens, calves, pigs and sheep had to be fed. Turnips must be chopped, and slices of dry clean hay cut as neatly from the stack as a slice of bread from the loaf, with no slattering or waste.
Tom cut the hay, for Dan was a slatterer and Joshua’s head could not stand the height of the ladder, nor was his hand steady enough to hold the cutting-knife. So Tom cut and Dan trussed the hay and carried it to the barns ready for foddering, a walking haystack as he staggered across the snowy field with only his two legs showing.
But sometimes the snow was so deep that all work was stopped except the most essential, and Susan could no longer go to school with her little lantern through the fairy woods. That was bliss indeed, happiness for which she nightly prayed as she knelt by the bedroom fire.
Then they lived as remote and self-contained as the Swiss Family Robinson, on a white island, cut off from everything, the post, and the station news. For the milk had to be kept at home, the mare could not get down the hill, through the deep drifts, and Margaret and Becky made butter instead. In the dairy lay dishes of golden pats, round and oblong, with the corn sheaves and cows imprinted upon them, or criss-cross and diamonds. Butter was salted and stored in brown crocks to preserve it.
Winter laid siege, but they were well garrisoned and provisioned, with barn and larder full.
When the door was opened the walls, steps and the dog kennel had disappeared, and against the door itself leaned a great wall of snow. The windows were dark and a strange silence spread over everything, filling the house and its dim rooms.
Then Dan and Tom and Joshua shovelled their way to the nearest barn and brought out spades and a barrow. They dug out a path to each cow-house door, the stables, the pig-cotes, the water troughs and various buildings. All day they dug, making solid walls on either side their paths, silently shovelling, and all day the snow softly fell. Each day they worked, feeding the stock, held up in everything except the continual digging.
Susan was filled with the most intense happiness. It was marvellous, this shut-off world, this whiteness and stillness. She wondered joyfully if it would last for a month, as she sprinkled crumbs on the doorsteps and walls.
But Tom was anxious about the sheep which were in the fold across the fields, and Becky grumbled at the extra work with a house full of men, stamping the snow on the floors, and the butter-making to do, and her fingers stiff and cramped.
The thick ice on the troughs had to be broken every day to fill the kettles and to water the cattle.
Susan walked through the narrow paths with the high snow walls to look at the fields with their hidden walls and trees with branches sweeping the ground. She froze little bottles of water to make a burst, she collected icicles to eat, and built a snow man by the door. But her father waded across the wild fields, falling and floundering to the buildings where the sheep and stirks waited for food.
It was a world of air like daggers, stabbing the thin human skin, freezing the heart on that high hillside. Little birds dropped numb, and Tom picked them up with his gentle fingers and brought them into the house to see if there was any life in them. Susan nursed them in a basket and let them loose in the barn if they recovered. The great doors of one barn were left open for birds to take shelter, and Joshua chopped the wood with little wings fluttering and tiny eyes of robin and tit watching him. They slept on the hooks and beams of the walls, on the pile of forks and rakes, and ate the grains of corn fallen from the bins.
‘The north wind doth blow and we shall have snow,
And what will the robin do then, poor thing?
He will sit in the barn and keep himself warm,
And hide his head under his wing, poor thing,’
sang Susan, who thought t
hat every nursery rhyme originated at Windystone.
Rain came and the whiteness became transparent, before it disappeared in torrents which swept down the lanes. The floods made the wild little river a spate, which rose over its banks, and covered the roads so that the carts splashed through with unwilling horses, shying at the flickering lights.
Still the rain fell and Susan could not go to school. She wondered if it was the coming of the end of the world. The river would rise, higher and higher, covering Mellow and Dangle, and joyfully drowning the school. At Windystone they would be safe on their hill, no flood could ever rise so high. The water would fill the valleys all round, and boats would rescue the people from their bedrooms and the cattle from their stalls. They would sail up the hills to the farmland which would poke out like an island with Noah’s Ark in the middle.
She stood at the window watching the rain pouring from the leaden skies down the fields, and waiting for the flood to begin. A pigeon flew to shelter in the open cart shed, and Becky fed it with corn. It should be the dove she would send through her bedroom window, flying over the watery waste till it found a leaf, a holly leaf it must be, for there was nothing else.
But if the floods rose higher and the farm were covered they would go to the top of Arrow Hill, and stand waiting for death, cows and horses, pigs and sheep, rabbits and foxes, and people all squeezed on the top of the hill, watching the water mount to drown them. But that couldn’t be, the rainbow was the sign.
The rain ceased at last and Tom sent for Abel Fern, the hedger and ditcher. He was a strong leather-faced man, with six or seven children, one of whom met him each night to help to carry the scraps Margaret had given him and the rabbits he had hidden in the hedges as he brashed. He worked with a sack thrown over his shoulders, tied round his neck with a piece of thatching twine, and his leggings and middle too were encased in sacks, so that he looked like an Ancient Briton as he slung his bill-hook over his shoulder.
He trimmed the hedges which ran round most of the fields and cut short the straggling wild rose and gorse in the lanes. He opened out the ditches which were filled with last year’s leaves, and made channels and soughs so that the spring water would run clear into the stone troughs, and the waterlogged, low-lying hollows would drain. He cleared the weed from the pond in Dewy Pasture, and cut new slits in the grass.
At night Margaret and Becky sat with the heavy rug across their knees, and a pile of strips on the floor, which they pegged in a design of reds and greys. Joshua cut spelds and Tom played little tunes on the concertina. Or they went into the parlour where the piano stood with frozen keys, and a fire burned unheeded most days, and listened while Susan played her hymns.
Every night Margaret read aloud for some hours, too, Bleak House, The Old Curiosity Shop and East Lynne, and this she continued throughout the winter, to Susan’s terror and delight. She played some little game to herself, but her ears were listening, and her mother never suspected it interested her until she found her crying over the death of Little Willie. Then she was sent off to bed before the reading began.
The work of the year went on and the men were busy every day, manuring the mowing fields, chain-harrowing with the rippling steel harrow, and then rolling. Bonny drew the stone roller up and down the meadows for days, on the level patches where the crops were heavier.
One Saturday the shooters came, and Sir Harry Vane brought a party to lunch at Windystone. Early in the morning the beaters spread out into the woods, and the sound of firing came all the day to the farm. The men prepared forms and trestle tables in the cart-shed for the beaters’ lunch. Later, smart yellow carts drove up with Sir Harry’s crest on their sides, and footmen and cooks invaded the house.
They carried luncheon baskets to the kitchen and outer kitchen, and took out beautiful copper saucepans filled with savoury messes which they put on the stove. They unwrapped cheeses, rich strange cheeses with foreign smells, and white crisp celery, brown rolls like balls, and bottles of wine in straw jackets. They had sirloins of beef and tongues, cold chickens and galantines, all white-frilled and furbelowed, with silver skewers stabbing their middles.
They had rosy apples and golden pears, bunches of bloomy grapes, melons and nuts, just like the fruits in a fairy tale.
Susan sat like a mouse out of the way of the bustle, on the settle, watching the cook with his white cap and the footmen unpack the things. Mrs Garland and Becky set the big table with the extra leaf in the parlour, and a table in the south parlour for the guests. They got out the best damask cloths, and polished all the silver for the tables. They carried chairs from upstairs, quaint old bedroom chairs and ancient oak stools.
Then the party arrived, and the noise and excitement grew intense. Susan ran upstairs to look through the bedroom windows. On the green grassy bank were ranged rows of rabbits, all fastened in couples. Gamekeepers in cloth leggings, with black dogs snuffling round, put the pheasants in braces, the brilliant long-tailed male and his little brown wife, for Susan never doubted they knew which hen belonged to each cock, all still and dead.
But it was not sorrowful, it was wonderful and fine, the soft fur and bright peacock-coloured feathers, the smell of gunpowder, the pile of cartridge-cases, the crowd of men, the ladies in tweeds, the moving dogs, the beaters, old men and young thronging the yard, overflowing on the grass plot and lawn, jumping the low walls, walking in and out of stables and barns as if they lived there, yet with deference to her father who laughed and joked with everybody.
They recalled other shoots in past years, and recounted the scores of rabbits and the long lines of pheasants. Tom wondered what he would do with them all if he were Sir Harry. He would certainly give many to the farmers upon whose lands they fed.
Then the clatter of knives and forks began, and the sound of voices and laughter from the house. Susan ran downstairs to her corner again. The cook gave her a taste of the spicy jugged hare, and a slip of toast with minced chicken, a sugary mince pie, and a pear, a feast from Eve’s Court.
Then the heavy smell of wines and cigars floated out, and the talk became louder. The door opened and the shooters went away. But while the smooth-voiced servants sat down in the kitchen for their meal, Susan, who was shy, escaped and went into the parlours. She sniffed in the wine glasses and drank the dregs and tasted the broken rolls. She ran round like a dog in a strange room, with her nose poking into corners, enjoying the whiffs of blue smoke which stayed in the air. Bunches of grapes and some pears lay on the sideboard, but she knew better than to touch them, God was watching her.
Outside, the beaters had finished their bread and cheese in the cart-sheds, and were starting off with sticks in their hands to draw the next woods. The guns walked across the fields, and the bright chestnut horses were harnessed to the yellow carts. The hampers were repacked, but the fragments were left behind. The stews and half-cut chickens, the hares and pieces of beef, the celery and the exotic cheese all graced the Garlands’ board, but the cheese ended in the mouse trap.
Sir Harry was fond of Farmer Garland and repaid him well for his trouble. He left two brace of pheasants, and pressed gold sovereigns in Margaret’s hand. Even Becky and old Joshua had their golden bit.
The house dropped back to its old quiet, the clock ticking as if it had watched every movement, and enjoyed the stir and to-do as much as anybody.
After the mild interval the weather changed again, and wild days followed. The wind shrieked round the house, and howled at the door. Margaret read aloud a story of Canadian wolves which was more suitable to Susan than East Lynne, and Susan was petrified with fear, but dare not say anything lest the story should stop.
She could hear them snuffling outside the door, and when her father unlatched it to go out, and the wind snarled and flung it out of his hand, she sprang up expecting a pack of gaunt, fierce-eyed wolves would fill the house and devour them all. It required all her courage to go into the hall and walk across through the shadows, upstairs with the tiny light of the flickering
candle which blew out as often as not and left her cut off from the bright, happy room, alone with the wolves who might have slipped in unseen.
An oak tree on one of the hills crashed down in the night, and a branch of a sycamore across the grass plot fell. Little boughs were smashed off the apple trees, and one tree was uprooted. The pear tree was half torn from the side of the house, and piles of timber were blown down. But the house and farm were safe, never a tile was moved or a chimney touched, for it had weathered fiercer gales than this, when even men had been blown over and no one could go out except to crawl close to the ground.
The wood was strewn with branches as Susan battled her way through. The trees creaked and groaned so loudly they drowned the roar of the wind. She was swept from her path, flung against one tree, butted into another, slapped, smacked, and buffeted, but she fought doggedly on. When the wind was behind her she felt she could sit on it, and be carried along like a happy feather. She skimmed over the road, pretending to fly.
At night she could not light her lantern, and she was scratched and bruised as she panted along in the dark, falling over the broken boughs which lay in her path, swept by dipping boughs, with raging packs of wolves hot on her track, before she reached the blessed haven of the house.
‘Let us pray for the poor folk without a home tonight,’ said Margaret, and they knelt down round the fire before Susan went upstairs to her bedroom.
14
The Easter Egg
One morning Susan looked out of her window and saw that spring had really come. She could smell it and she put her head far out, until she could touch the budding elm twigs. She pressed her hands on the rough stone of the windowsill to keep herself from falling as she took in deep draughts of the wine-filled air.
The Country Child Page 14