by Jane Gardam
“It means as it means. Think of sounds. Does it ever occur to thee, Bell Teesdale, Harry Bateman, that none of the sounds floating about the world wouldn’t stand chance, stand chance, without ears out ready for ’em? James was talking of it. Sounds need sounding boards of ears. Just think, before there was ears to reverberate off, there was not a sound int’ world—not even from oceans; not as I think a great deal of oceans, twice at Morecambe being very much a disappointment to me. And why not? Because sounds go floating about silent until there’s an ear for ’em to come up against. Same thing with eyes for all I know. Icicles may need eyes to look at ’em.”
“There’s no icicles for eyes to see now,” said Harry, watching the big splashing raindrops that had started to turn the yard below Bell’s bedroom window to a sloppy black and white pudding. “They’re all gone.”
“Who’s to say they’re gone? Think it out. Just think it out. And Harry, come to thy tea. Bell’s to look at the playing cards and have a sleep again—but he’ll be up for Christmas and you’ll be both away on them poor old bikes again.”
“Maybe there won’t be any bikes. If any eyes fell on them. I’d not be surprised if they weren’t there when we go looking for them and nothing to do with magic.”
“Eyes did fall on ’em. A gypsy feller come round with them yesterday wanting reward, which your father gave him and a dozen eggs for luck. He’d had a hard walk through.”
“However did he know they were ours?” said Harry.
“I thowt gypsies were nowt but thieves,” said Bell.
“He knew,” said Old Hewitson, “he knew, and thief or no thief, he fetched ’em back. There’s ways and means, and some folks’ minds catches on in different ways than others. And there’s many a thing you can’t explain.”
THE HOUSEHOLD WORD
If you follow the road on from Light Trees you get to the beck that sometimes runs on top of the ground and sometimes below it. Then you go on up the hill and turn right before the fell gate and away down the deep rough lane to the low water meadows where the herons stand. Then you come to Dukerdale, and standing at its head the farm called Dark Trees where Tatton and Hannah live. They have lived there a long time, often snowed in for up to six weeks in winter, with milk from the one cow tending to freeze in the pail, a fridge full of food if Hannah remembers to fill it, and a television set which quite often works beautifully and which they find a great blessing and wonder however their parents and grandparents did without.
But then at last two or three things brought all to an end. Tatton’s rent went sky-high to nearly double and so did the price of feed and hay. Hannah’s back began to give trouble and Tatton couldn’t dip sheep without her, nor in hay-time could he bale and lift. The terrible winter of ’78 froze the pipes for the first time in memory and they had to break ice on the beck. The new lambs froze, too, and the television aerial. The winter went on so long that the deep freeze emptied, so that they came to within a packet of fish of being helicoptered—which would have been a disgrace.
So they decided to move back to Dentdale where Tatton had been born—“into a railway family” so he said. That winter—though he’d known bad ones before—set him thinking how silly he was ever to have tried farming at all thirty years ago. It was railways he had in his blood, he said, not sheep. His family had been to do with the main line over Shap since the first wild men from Ireland and Timbuctoo with their coloured hats and their own laws and marriage ceremonies had arrived there, with muscles of steel, to build the great fell cut and viaduct a hundred and more years ago.
The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that he had been in the wrong job, and the more he said so, the more depressed he became. He found an old signal box with cottage attached on the single track line over Smardale, with a level-crossing beside it. The signalman was still living in it but as there hadn’t been a train past in fifteen years he was getting mournful. So one mournful man sold to another mournful man and they both cheered up.
What happened to the signalman goodness knows, but Tatton and Hannah were delighted. Arrangements were made for selling the deep freeze—for the signal box was hardly a step from shops. The cow Tatton gave to Bell Teesdale for his own. Such furniture as wouldn’t fit—the old oak settles, the meal chest and the big grandfather clock—Hannah said was so cumbersome that whoever came to Dark Trees next was welcome to it.
So when the London family walked across for eggs to Dark Trees one day, they found a great difference in the air. Tatton was singing a Methodist hymn to the cow and Hannah was writing her will.
“But you’re not dying, Hannah, just moving house.”
“I’m far from dying,” she said. “But I can’t move everything from here to yonder and so I’m giving my bequests in advance. That way some people will be in time for ’em as maybe wouldn’t be, and what’s more, I’ll be here to be thanked, which makes people feel square. I know I’ve times over been shamed when I’ve been left a keepsake and had no one to write to over it. Now then, these are for you, Mrs. Bateman, and this is for young Harry.”
“I couldn’t, I couldn’t,” said Mrs. Bateman.
“Oh thank you,” said Harry.
“Just look,” they both said when they got back, “there was simply no way of saying no. We’ve known them such a short time compared to others. Oh, they are kind!”
Everyone gazed at the red and white patchwork quilts and Harry’s golden lustre teapot.
“We’ll put the quilts on the guests’ beds this weekend,” said Mrs. Bateman. “They don’t smoke, do they?”
“I don’t know. They might.”
“Well, we’ll put them on the beds and then if they start smoking downstairs we’ll go quickly up and take them off again. What about the teapot, Harry? Could I put flowers in it in one of the rooms? Will the guests be the sort to notice, I wonder?”
“Who are they?” asked Harry.
“Television people coming to talk to your father about work. The lady’s famous. Everybody sees her once or twice a week. She’s a household word. To do with the news.”
“Oh, politics,” said Harry. “They’ll not notice quilts and teapots.”
“Then maybe it’s time they had their attention drawn that way,” said Mrs. Bateman, sounding for a minute—it was happening more and more these days—like a countrywoman.
“There’s somebody famous coming,” said Harry to Eileen, Bell’s sister, down in Teesdales’ kitchen. He drew his finger round Eileen’s mixing bowl and licked uncooked gingerbread. “She’s on telly. She’s a household word.”
“Give over,” said Eileen, “eating slather!” and hit him with the wooden spoon.
“Give over hitting Harry,” said Bell. “You did it yourself times. When you were young. I mind.”
“She’s on all the big programmes,” said Harry. “She’s beautiful and clever and she catches them out with questions.”
“Oh her,” said Eileen.
“What—her?” said Mr. Teesdale coming in from sheep. “Well now.” He began to wash himself at the sink, all over his face and his arms and his hair and his hands, rubbing the whole mass of him afterwards with a scrap of hard towel. “Coming up to Light Trees is she? Well, we’ll all be out to see. It’ll be red carpets on Quarry Hill and flags afloat. You’d better tell the village.”
“They seem to know,” said Harry. “And Mother only told the chip shop.”
“That’d be ample,” said Mr. Teesdale.
“Coming with her husband I suppose?”
“No, with her daughter, it turns out,” said James Bateman appearing at the back door, too, also hot and in wellingtons and with black hands from fighting sheep with a bottle of cough mixture. He wasn’t back at college yet and would be helping the Teesdales till
October. He washed himself exactly like Mr. Teesdale and then put his finger round the gingerbread bowl and got a
wallop like his brother. The wallop was part of the recipe.
“She’s coming,” said James, “really just for a talk with Father. Not an interview. He says it’s ‘planning’. She’s on her way south from Scotland so she’s looking in and staying two nights.”
“Daughter has she?” said Mr. Teesdale. “Don’t look more’n a bairn herself.”
“Who’s this?” said Mrs. Teesdale coming in from chickens.
“A household word’s coming to Light Trees,” said Mr. Teesdale, and explained.
“Oh, that one,” said Mrs. Teesdale. “Is she a friend then, Harry?”
“Not exactly. My father’s met her once or twice.”
“Then I’ll speak as I find. I’ve never taken to her. She looks fast.”
“You’ve got to be fast in that trade,” said James. “In television it’s the quick and the dead.”
“She’s going to find us fairly dead then,” said Mrs. Teesdale with a firm mouth.
But the following Friday afternoon when the Household Word’s car stopped outside the Teesdale farm on the village street, it did not appear to be so.
She sat with the face everybody knew so well lifted to the sun, and turned the head which everybody watched so often and knew even to the kink in the parting, and said in the voice which was part of the lives of everybody who just happened to be about at that time in the afternoon—though usually they were all round the back snoozing—“Oh how divine!”
“How d’ye do?” said an old man who lived in a shed by the roadside all day, but today was sitting in front of it in a clean shirt.
“What a beautiful village! What beautiful lupins.”
“Mrs. Teesdale’s,” said the shed-sitter, graciously indicating her as she weeded about.
“Afternoon,” said Mrs. Teesdale.
“I’m looking for a house called Eight Trees.”
“Light Trees, Light Trees,” said Kendal, who wasn’t busy with chimneys or the shop that day but happened to be out for an examination of the dry beck to see if any trout had lost their bearings and needed assistance. “Now that is very interesting. One of the explanations of the name is that it is a mistake by map-makers. Eight Trees it should be, it’s thought by many, but being uncertain of the lettering as many has been before and since, up to and including Shakespeare, two strokes got left off. Light Trees it is—and they called the next and last fell house Dark Trees for company, though most folks round here calls it Ladford. You’re on the track. Straight ahead.”
“Fascinating.”
“Straight ahead,” said old Mr. Hewitson, “and round about. Upsides and over.” He came up to the car and put his gnome head in at the passenger side.
The Household Word looked bewildered. “Straight ahead and round about?” You could hear the hard bit in the voice she used to get clear answers out of famous people who wanted to be mysterious.
“Take no heed of him,” said Kendal. “Just straight ahead and keep going on up. When you’re at the top there’s Light Trees to the left of you.”
“Wonderful,” breathed the Household Word dropping her eyelashes, and a small fierce head beside her bowed over a book suddenly jutted upwards and said, “Oh let’s get on Ma, for goodness’ sake. You know the way. We saw it on the map. You’re just showing off.” And the car whizzed under the Quarry Bridge and left the village gaping.
“What a little vixen!”
“I’d up-end her!”
“Poor young woman with a child of that description.”
“Poor young child,” said Grandad Hewitson, “with a dandy-dee of that sort for its mother.”
When the car reached Light Trees the Household Word and her daughter were both rather set in the face, but soon the Household Word—when Harry’s father had embraced her and guided the car into the fleece shed, where there was just room for it, and taken her indoors—seemed happy again.
The fleeces in the shed were amusing, she said. And oh, wasn’t Light Trees amusing? So dumpy and long and facing all the wrong way from the view. The view was amusing.
“Farmers never like a view,” said Harry’s mother. “They have too much of it all day. At night they want to get indoors and away from it.”
“But don’t their wives want a view? I suppose the poor little things never get asked what they want.”
“The wives wouldn’t wait to be asked,” said Mrs. Bateman. “The wives rule the farmhouse. It’s ‘No boots in here’, ‘Wash yourself after that yard’ and ‘Don’t let the dogs in or you stop out with them’ since the beginning of time. No, they don’t want a view in the evening, they are too tired to look at it. The main thing is that there is only one door to these farmhouses and that faces away from the east wind. They’re the same as Viking houses you know. This one is hundreds of years old.”
“Darling—you sound just like the quaint folk I’ve been talking to in the village street. Oh yes, I’d love some tea, sweetie. What a heavenly rustic lounge! No, don’t bother about Poppet. She wants to stay in the car.”
“In the car? In the fleece shed? She’ll roast. She can’t—”
“She’s fine, lovey, she’s fine. She’s deep in a book. She’ll come round in time.”
“Oh dear—won’t she want some tea?”
“A funny old man in the village dropped some gingerbread on her knee. I don’t suppose for a minute it was clean, but we can’t help it. Just leave her, darling, do come back. She’s one of these clever, difficult ones. She’s eleven. And we all know what that means.”
“What does it mean?” Harry asked Bell later, telling about it over the sheep dips.
“Don’t know,” said Bell. “When I was eleven they’d have killed me if I’d sat in a car in a fleece shed when I’d been asked away on my holidays.”
“Shall we go and get her out?”
They looked through the fleece shed window. The car had all its windows shut and appeared to be empty, but when they went inside there was a bent, small creature beside the driver’s seat trying to read in semi-darkness. Bell knocked at the window.
The creature wound down the window and said “Go away” and wound it up again. Bell opened the door.
“Get out. Get out!” said a violent, furious face covered in gingerbread crumbs.
“You’re all over cake,” said Bell.
The creature kicked him.
“OK—stay,” said Bell.
“I’m reading.”
“I’d have thought you were a bit old for Enid Blytons. Your ma says you’re doing your A levels or something.”
The creature, like a hurtling cat, flung itself on Bell and Harry and all three somehow landed in the roly poly fleeces. Ten or twenty of them came bouncing down on top of them. Harry began to laugh and when he had spluttered out of the heap, laughed more.
“Shut up you kid,” said the Household Word’s daughter.
“You both look so daft—your great eyes flashing in all that wool,” said Harry.
“Gis ’and,” said Bell. Then the two of them pulled out the girl, whose glasses were broken, and who was still looking very dangerous. Bell grabbed her in the small of the back and held her by her T-shirt as the voices of people being polite to each other—talking more loudly than they need and laughing as if they were listening to themselves laughing—approached.
“We’re all going for a walk,” Harry’s father called. “Going to Dark Trees. You children staying here?”
“No, coming,” said Bell with a jaw of iron, and frog-marched the girl forward.
“I don’t want to come,” said Harry with eyes astounded at Bell.
“We’re all going,” said Bell.
“Come my poppet,” called the Household Word and Poppet shook herself free and went and walked beside her mother, speaking to none.
“Why’re we going? I don’t want to go,” said Harry
. “Not with them.”
“She ought to.”
“Well that’s her mother’s affair.”
“Sitting there sulking in fleeces.”
“You’re not her mother. What’s it to you, Bell?”
“She’s a rotten kid.”
“So why’re we going?”
“We’ve got to. Since we’ve made her.”
“Oh I see. So you wouldn’t have gone, wouldn’t you, if she’d not played up? You’re setting an example.”
“I am not.”
“You are. You’re a prig, Bell Teesdale. Hey!”
“Stop it you two,” called Harry’s father.
The party, rather straggly, followed the road from Light Trees to the beck that sometimes runs on top of the ground and sometimes below it, then on up the hill, turning before the fell gate. Before dropping down Dark Trees’ deep lane between its high stone walls, the Household Word and Poppet were shown the view. Hills like grey elephants ambled towards them from the south-west. Hard blue and green peaks thrust down from the north. Direct west ahead, on the far horizon, swung the Saddleback with its patch of snow.
The Household Word, who had been talking about frozen assets and the unions, said, “Oh yes. The Lake District,” and went on talking.
Down at Dark Trees as they approached the yard gate and Tatton’s half-dozen uncontrolled dogs dancing, she was still talking. Chickens pecked about, the cow was happily rubbing its neck along the top of the byre door and snuffling, and Hannah was sitting on the porch quietly making a rag rug for the signal box. The Household Word was saying that England no longer existed and in her job she had learned to trust nobody in this awful country any more.
“Come in and see my cats,” said Hannah to Poppet, holding out her hand. But Poppet turned her back, hanging over the brown beck that ran deep and busy alongside the farm door.
“D’you like our beck?” said Tatton. “That little bridge is old as history. Everyone comes taking photographs of it. D’you know our beck’s never dried up they say in five hundred year? Not like all the rest. There’s some becks around here you don’t know where you are with. Here today and gone tomorrow like the gypsies. There’s some becks, they tell me, that even is called gypsies—and they was called gypsies before there was any gypsies, if you can understand that. I’m not sure I can, but it’s in the dictionaries.”