Under a wall a bed of horseradish spread its long leaves, and under these grew white violets, dark velvety pansies, and rich red polyanthus. ‘Red cowslips’ they called them, for Tom said he grew them by planting roots of wild cowslips upside down.
Susan watched him do it once, and certainly the long-stalked lovely flowers which were in such request at school grew from that topsy-turvy root. Susan felt anything might happen in that garden, and she had planted pennies and date stones, and upside down buttercups. Her mother ripened cream-cheeses in the soil, buried deep in their little muslin cloths, the place marked with a stick. Often Susan had been sent to dig them up after the correct two or three days. Once the stick was lost and Dan spent half an hour digging for the missing cheese.
There were pink and red carnations, mignonette and musk, all growing among the fruit bushes. The rest of the flowers, the stocks and ‘gillivers’, the love-lies-bleeding and cock’s comb, grannie’s bonnets, and larkspur, grew on the beds enclosed by the house wall, round the monkey tree, among the box and ‘rosy dandrums’, under the windows of the parlours and stone room.
The garden itself was filled with rows of peas and beans, oblong beds of onion and carrot, lettuce and radish, celery and rhubarb. It was full to overflowing with fruit and vegetables, for however poor the fields might be, the garden was rich and prosperous.
Lilac hung over the gate, and nut trees swept the walls. There were scarecrows, traps, and nets, but the pheasants and rabbits came every day to take their toll.
Waves of wormwood, rue and fennel spread round her, sharpening her senses, clearing her head with their bitter smells. Marjoram and sage were homely kitchen scents, but these others cast a chill over her as she looked at their dull leaves.
She thought of the trees she loved, the ancient yews, guarding the house, which she had never ventured to climb, for they were sacred and poison, and not to be trifled with. There were the ash trees, knee-deep in buttercups, delicate, unearthly, soft-moving, and the friendly beech trees with swings in their low boughs, and the hard-working apple trees in the orchard, which carried the clothes lines full of fluttering white sheets, and held their blossom for the bees in spring, and were laden with green and yellow fruit in the autumn.
She thought of the fierce unfriendly trees in the wood, whispering and muttering. The ash trees there were cold and cruel, the elms were deformed, the oaks full of sinister things, secret, dark. Even the beeches concealed eyes and long-nailed fingers behind their trunks.
Then she wondered about animals talking. She could make everything understand, but not always could she get her answer. Animals’ talk was silent, it came from their eyes, but the talk of things, of rooms and trees and fields came when she was very, very quiet and listened until they seemed to come alive. She was very happy to have all these friends.
Then she thought of enemies – the fox, one of the cows, an armchair, and Old Mother Besom, the witch.
‘Susan! Susan! Susan!’
Margaret’s voice thrilled all the garden and broke the silence into little pieces like splintering glass. Susan made an involuntary movement of obedience and repressed it.
‘Susan! Susan! Come and peel the potatoes.’
Steps were approaching across the grass, the garden gate banged and Mrs Garland hurried down the path. She stooped to pick some thyme and a bunch of parsley bordering the stones. Then she sighed deeply and went out again.
Susan sat very still. She looked up at the sky. The morning air was sweet with the smell of the great woods which were only a few yards away, over the wall and across a dell. Little clouds looked like the petals of one of the roses on the house.
And did God live up there? But He was here too, in the garden, and she was sinning. God had seen her, His eye saw everything. Then He would know she didn’t want to peel the potatoes, not today. She would go to hell if she died now, but if she lived till she had said her prayers tonight she would be safe once more. Suppose God struck her dead for her sin, and she dropped down among the rue and fennel. She looked down at her buttoned boots and wondered if she would have time to tuck them under her. Boots didn’t look nice, sticking out like the cow’s legs. But no one would ever find her here, no one came to the end of the garden unless they were having roast pork. It would be a long time to wait, she had better say a prayer now.
She closed her eyes, put her hands together, and sat with the sun beating in hot waves on her eyelids.
One year, when Mr and Mrs Garland had gone for their seaside holiday they asked a dour good woman named Deborah to take charge of the house and look after Susan. Debby had been converted and she spent the evenings trying to turn Dan and Becky in the right way. Becky was quickly persuaded, but Dan was more obstinate and curious.
Susan sat in the kitchen one night, playing with her doll, drawing crooked houses and long horses on backs of envelopes, and cutting out the fashions in a journal. Becky was out and Debby took the chance to describe hell and all its torments to Dan, who sat open-mouthed with his arms on the table.
‘Gypsy Bill says the world will come to an end before another year’s out,’ she continued. ‘Old Moore prophesies the same, it’s in his almanack.’ She went to the dresser drawer and took out Old Moore to find the very passage. Susan gave all her attention to the conversation; books were true, Old Moore was Bible truth.
‘They say Queen Victoria believes the end is near, too. There are all the signs – drinking, evil living, war – and there’s been a bright star seen, what they call a comet. It will strike the earth and burn it up. Then the dead will rise, and the good will go up to Life Everlasting, but the wicked will go down to Everlasting Fire.’
‘Is there a trough in hell?’ asked Susan.
Deborah started. ‘You go off to bed. I didn’t notice you were sitting up so late,’ she said sternly, and reaching a candlestick she lighted it and hurried Susan through the door and upstairs to her crib. But as she shut the door she said, ‘Little girls had better prepare their souls’, and Susan had never spoken of her fears. She had lain awake – she was only six – afraid for hours, expecting the bedroom floor to collapse and the house to fall like the walls of Jericho.
Susan had never forgotten that night, nor the following days when she waited for the end of the world, and listened for the great trump sounding through the woods, across the fields, frightening the cattle who would fall into deep pits in the earth. The soft grass, the flowers, the trees, covered a frightful hell, all raging and burning in the ground, halfway to Australia.
When the New Year had passed and the world was still alive she found that Deborah and Queen Victoria had made a mistake in the date. But any time it might come, and she was still expecting it.
‘Wherever have you been, Susan?’ exclaimed her mother when she entered the house. ‘Come and peel the potatoes at once. I called you long ago. It’s very wrong and wicked to be disobedient.’
So the potatoes were still waiting. She fetched clean water from the trough and stood over the slop-stone. Potato peeling was no fun when people were near, but when she was alone she talked to each one. She heard the little potato voices calling, ‘Me next, me next,’ as they pushed to get into her hands, to have their brown coats removed. Today neither she nor the potatoes spoke, but she gave them a nod of recognition so that they would know who peeled them.
There was an uncomfortable feeling in the house, nobody spoke, and disasters and sorrows hung in the air. Susan felt it was her naughtiness, and prepared for a punishment.
Tom came downstairs in his best clothes, and Margaret brushed his large square hat. Dan came in to say the trap was ready, and Becky got the whip.
‘Where is Father going?’ asked Susan.
‘To the milkman,’ answered Margaret, with a sigh. ‘He hasn’t paid for months, and we heard this morning he’s gone bankrupt.’
Bankruptcy! The same thing had happened before. Susan didn’t know what it meant, except that it took the sweetness from her mother’s life.
It was a quiet unhappy day. Susan went off, stone-picking with Joshua all the afternoon. They roamed the fields, up and down, with baskets on their arms, weaving patterns as they picked up stones which might injure the scythes when the grass was cut.
Where they all came from no one knew. Joshua said they grew, for he had cleared grass year after year for nigh on sixty years, and still there were stones. Perhaps they were the spawn of the black stone, the strange menhir by the house, he wouldn’t be surprised.
They poured them in heaps, and Joshua gathered all together and carried them away to fill up the holes in the cart roads. It would take days to clear all the fields, but Dan and Becky would help.
The fields looked cold and grey. Sadness like a dove brooded over them. The sun went down and a chill wind came from behind the northern hills, sweeping the trees aside, making white tracks on the grass as it blew past the farm to the valley.
Dan and Joshua went milking, and Susan collected the eggs, and counted them into the great brown market baskets ready for the next day. Becky scalded the wooden churn ready for butter-making if the rumour were true, and the milk had to be kept at home. Margaret sat sewing, turning and mending, with deep sighs and troubled glances at the clock.
At night they sat by the fire, Joshua and Dan cutting spelds, Becky making doormats from pieces of heavy cloth, Margaret finishing a patchwork quilt for Joshua’s bed, a pattern of prints, lavenders and pinks, cut into little squares and joined together. Eight o’clock struck, Dan harnessed the pony and went down to the station. Susan wanted to sit up to hear what had happened, but she was sent quickly to bed.
The dog barked, the gate banged with a loud clamour, and the pony and the trap drove up to the house.
Margaret ran out.
‘What news, Tom? What does he say?’
‘Nothing. It’s domino,’ replied Tom heavily, as he climbed down and walked into the house with rug and whip. ‘We must find a new milkman and begin again, but honest ones are as hard to find as roses in winter.’
The noise and din of the town still ringing in his ears, the laughter and bitter words, died away in the night, the peace of the hills and open fields soothed and quietened him as he lay awake in the oak chamber.
No churns rattled along the paved paths the next day, nor for a few weeks, and the milk train left without its load from Windystone Hall. But Windystone was not the only farm caught in the bankruptcy. Snow of Bluebell End Farm, and Jonathan Wild of Inglenook lost their money too. Jonathan was already in deep water, and he sold up and went to America, but Snow, like Tom Garland, sold some cattle to keep going, and made butter till he found a new dealer.
18
The Oatcake Man
Becky was a good hand at butter-making. She turned the handle of the churn, and coaxed the fine yellow grains together to make the solid lump, with a murmur of magic words. Susan hovered near, but she was not allowed to touch, for sometimes an elfish spirit gets in the churn and only those with the charm can get the butter to come. So she muttered and mumbled alone, and sure enough the sound of the swish, swish altered, little animal thuds were heard, and the miracle happened.
Then came the patting and moulding, the squeezing and pressing, and the cool clean smell, as Margaret deftly shaped the butter with the wooden prints which had floated in the trough all day. The squares and rounds with bold solid English designs were packed in green leaves and sent to the shops, and Becky began the next batch.
She was a hardy, weather-beaten, good-tempered girl, with cheeks as firm and red as apples, and eyes brown as ripe hazel nuts. She was as strong as a man, and could carry a young calf in her arms, or two brimming cans of milk with anybody. She could wash, bake, brew herb beer, harness the horses, milk the cows, and take a turn in the fields.
Dan was for ever teasing her, but she bore it all with cheerful grins. He told her that the farm lads were in love with her, that the barber had asked for a lock of her hair, and that the road mender was waiting down on the road, sitting on a heap of stones for a glimpse of her.
She shook her head and repeated:
‘Nobody doesna want me, I reckon, but Mr Right will come some day,’ and she washed up the milkcans and scalded the churns, and polished the little brass labels, planning in the meantime a new ribbon for her neck to wear the next time she went out.
She rubbed the great copper pan, filled it with clean water and set it on the stove. She gave the dog his breakfast and patted him as he fed from the bowl. She dipped into the deep painted bin for ‘Indy corn’ and threw the grain to the flock of hens and cocks, clustering in reds and browns and gold on the cobbled stones before the barn door. Always she kept an eye open for the hen with a drooping wing, the sad-eyed white hen which always fed alone, and the speckled hen which limped, the strays and outcasts of the poultry yard.
She treated the cows as friendly human beings, slapping them on the back, joking with them, singing to them, scolding them if they were rough or unmannerly, full of praise when they were in a good humour. Only the bull she avoided, since she had been chased through the cattle yard. His smouldering red eyes and deep breathing remained in her memory.
She suckled the young calves, the jostling crowd of big-eyed youngsters. There was a new cow-calf, a little red beauty, a daughter of the pedigree Maiden of Minn. All night Susan had heard the dull moaning and lowing of a cow in pain. It disturbed her sleep, and her mother came up to her.
‘It’s the red cow calving, it’s Maiden. She’s very poorly, and Father and Joshua are sitting up all night with her. Now go to sleep. There’ll be a Suckey Mull in the morning, please God.’
She hurried downstairs to make up a bed for one of the men on the settle, and Becky made gruel for the cow, and got the drinking-horn from the stone chamber, and the medicines. She put the teapot on the hob and left a big fire ready for the night’s vigil.
In the morning Susan awoke to see cloud shadows chasing across the fields. She tried to remember what the exciting thing was. She dressed hastily and jumped downstairs two at a time in a new way she had discovered.
‘Is there a Suckey Mull?’ she asked as she ran to her mother.
‘Yes, a cow-calf, thank God, a good one, strong and big,’ replied Margaret, kissing her. Tom Garland came in to make a red drink for Maiden whose life had hung in the balance.
When Susan went to the calf place, there in a nest of hay in the stall, lay a small, damp, red, curly-haired little calf, with shapely head and white face and body like a fawn’s.
Susan climbed up the door and leaned over to look at the sweet-smelling, slobbering, astonished creature. She held out her fingers and the calf struggled to its feet, bumping its head against the wooden walls of the stall.
‘Coom up, coom up, Suckey Mull,’ crooned the child, as she slipped her fingers into its warm mouth. As it sucked she scratched its knobby head with the little horns hidden under the curls, and talked to the unsteady animal.
Becky would teach it to drink from the can, the rich milk of its mother. She had a way with animals and they trusted her completely. She mothered the cade lamb which was left an orphan at birth in the early spring. She carried it to the kitchen, with endearing talk, and gave it warm milk from the suckling-can as it lay a helpless curly-haired baby, with black knobbly legs and soft mouth. It nuzzled up to her and baaed piteously when she put it out in the barn. For weeks it stayed a Peter Pan lamb, and Susan spent many hours feeding the little one in the orchard, racing with it, butting it. Its tail wagged like a crazy pendulum as it drained the can, pushing Susan against the apple trees as it endeavoured to get more than the last drop.
Little pigs, the Anthonys, left out in the cold by a callous mother, chickens which had been trodden on by a careless hen, ducklings and young turkeys, all came to the kitchen and lay on the rug in front of the fire, or in flannel-lined baskets, as they struggled to get a hold on life. Becky coaxed life back into them, holding them in her warm hand, when they lay with eyes closed, twitchin
g feet, and tiny hearts scarcely beating.
‘Little tiddly things,’ she said. ‘I feel that sorry for them. Their mothers are like a woman I once knowed, thinking of nothing but pleasuring herself, and leaving her childer to get on as best they could.’
She wiped her hands on her apron and looked down on the yellow balls straddling unsteadily in the basket. She clattered down the wet paths with her iron pattens over her shoes, among rose trees and ferns which drenched her with raindrops, carrying pails of swill and hot meal for the sows and their litters, through the yellow gate and into the thicket of purpling lilac and white-flowered elderberry. As soon as they heard her step the pigs started to squeal with greediness and excitement. She poured the food through the openings in the wall with its roof of stonecrop and houseleek, down into the ancient troughs.
‘You’re a bad thing,’ she scolded the sow, ‘to leave your Anthony out in the cold. Just take care of him now he’s well again.’
One day Becky was alone in the house, busy with a dozen things at once. A couple of chicks chirped in the basket on the hearth, and a blackbird with a broken wing set with a little splint pecked from a saucer of sop. The smell of baking came in waves from the oven where Becky crouched, with her oven cloth, putting in a fresh batch. She took out the brown loaves and turned them upside down out of their tins. She tapped on the bottoms listening with her head on one side, as if she expected a little bread man to open the door of the loaf and walk out to her.
The Country Child Page 18