A Traveller in Time

by Alison Uttley

  There was Betty to go back to Bramble Hall and Uncle Barnabas said I should take her. I rode her up the long grassy lane which was a highroad in olden days. Strings of packhorses laden with “pigs” of lead from the mines in the hills once ambled down this winding lane, and country women rode to market over the crest, with pannier baskets filled with butter and eggs and fat hens hanging by their legs. Further back in history the shaggy British ponies came there with Roman lead from those ancient workings. Now all was grass-covered, rabbits scuttered along the path between the black walls, and pheasants cried cuck-cuck as they flew over from the woods. I rode past the little witch-wood, where the rowantrees flourished and bilberries grew, to the hamlet of farms and cottages. I trotted up to Bramble Hall and drew rein for a moment to look through the gateway at the old doorway. People were walking on the lawn, two men were playing bowls, another admired a monkey which a girl carried. The girl was handsome and petulant, and she tossed back her red-gold hair and impatiently teased the little cowering creature in her arms. She turned away to meet a lady with wide skirts of vivid blue who came slowly down the rounded steps from the open door of the house. At the same moment I saw the farmer come out from the side door and walk across the lawn to put a chicken-coop out in the sunshine. Each set of figures kept distinct, neither was aware of the other, and the farmer walked through them as if they were films of smoke.

  “Good morning, Penelope,” he cried, as he saw me sitting on Betty’s back, staring wide-eyed through the gate. “Come to look at the old place? Tie Betty to the ring there by the mounting-block, and come right in.”

  I obeyed him, and every one vanished. Neither the lady nor the red-haired girl nor the men were there. The shaven lawn was rough, the front door was barred, and moss and ivy grew on the green steps.

  “We never use the front door,” explained the farmer as I paused before it. “It’s rusted up, but sometimes Americans come and want to buy it. To buy my front door! They say it’s genuine Elizabethan, days of Queen Bess you know, her as got shuttance of the Armada. Maybe they’d like to take the whole house, for it’s an ancient place. But come along in and have a taste of gingerbread. The missis has been baking and she’s a rare hand at gingerbread.”

  I followed him to the side door and through an arched passage to the kitchen. His wife dusted a speckless chair for me to sit down and went to the dairy for a glass of milk.

  “Thor cake we calls it,” said she cutting the fragrant, hot gingerbread. “And so you’ve brought Betty back to us? Have you liked her? Has she been good? Ah, she will never forget you. Horses have long memories, better memories than people I sometimes think.”

  I said good-bye to these kind friends and saw Betty turned into the field to graze. She raised her head and whinnied as I passed by, and my heart was sad to leave them all.

  Our bags were packed, there was nothing more to be done and I wandered into the church. The door was wide open and I could hear the sounds of cleaning inside. Mrs. Appleyard was there with her pail and brush, and Aunt Tissie was polishing the brass. I helped her for a while, but when she had finished and Mrs. Appleyard had left all spotless I stayed there. It was very quiet, and I went to the crested pew, the square oak seat where the Babington family had sat so many years before. The clock ticked with a loud insistent voice, like somebody talking, and little echoes of its iron tongue came from the corners of the church. “The belles, the clocke, and the challis of silver I bequeath to my sonne.” Anthony’s grandfather had left it thus in 1558, but the chalice and the bells had gone.

  “Tick, tick, tick,” went the clock, and the wheels whirred in the tower. There was a flutter of wings as a hen came to the church door, and a scurry of mice in the woodwork. I knelt down to pray for Master Anthony and for Francis, for their happiness wherever they were, and I prayed for Mary Stuart, free at last in another kingdom above that blue sky which I saw from the windows. But I could not think of her as dead, her face came before me flushed with life, her lips slightly parted, her eyes dazzling me so that I had to lower mine as if I faced a light.

  I knelt there for a long time, or perhaps it was only a few minutes, but my mind recalled all that I had seen or heard, and the memories of those hidden days came vividly before me. As I crouched in the old pew, kneeling on the moth-eaten carpet, I was so still that a mouse came out of a hole in the corner and sat upright, watching me with beady eyes. Then I forgot all about Anthony Babington, as the little creature played with a crumb it had found. I made a sudden movement and away it went, like a flashing shadow out of the pew and away. I took out my penknife and pushed it down the hole, but I could not reach the bottom. Then I fetched a twig from the yew-tree and scrabbled in the small cavity. The wood was rotten and I broke off pieces until I could get my finger down. Very hot and red, I fumbled in the hole, half afraid I should touch a mouse’s nest. I brought out first a threepenny-bit which somebody had lost from their collection money. Then I found another object, thick and heavy, coated with dust and mould. I carried it off to the water-trough, hoping for wealth, but as the dirt encrusted upon it was washed away a looped edge came to view, and I saw it wasn’t a coin at all. I rubbed it with sand, and scrubbed it with a brush, and gradually the thick layer of verdigris and dirt came away and I saw it was a thin case with hinges. Even then I did not realize what I had found. I opened it with a knife and stared at the little painted picture sealed under the glass. It was the lost locket, the miniature of the queen, kept intact in its freshness, in the dry boards of the church. Mary Queen of Scots looked out at me, with her carnation held in her white fingers, and she smiled her enigmatic smile, triumphant as if she were newly risen from the dead.

  I ran indoors, calling for my aunt and Alison. I rushed to the stable to find Uncle Barnabas. I shouted across the fields for Ian. Nobody else was excited. Uncle Barnabas said it had no value, it was only silver-gilt. Aunt Tissie said I could keep it to hang round my neck in memory of Thackers. Maybe a visitor had dropped it some time. It was only the picture of a lady.

  “It’s Mary Queen of Scots,” I exclaimed, angry at their stupidity. “Can’t you recognize her?”

  They laughed. “How do you know?” they said. “This is an old-fashioned lady, and no great beauty. You’re too romantic, Penelope.”

  “It is! It is!” I cried. “Look at the carnation in her hand. Look at the initials M.R. on the outside.”

  “Dear girl. Call it what you like,” said Aunt Tissie patiently. “Queen of Sheba, if you like. I’ll give you a ribbon for it, a green one to match your dress.”

  “I must give it back to Master Anthony,” I told myself. I waited on the landing, I called: “Francis, Francis Babington.” I walked up and down the rooms, carrying the locket on its green ribbon, looking for a shadow, listening for a faint reply. All was silent, and in no manner could I get over there.

  “I will leave it with you, Aunt Tissie,” I said that night, and I hung it from a nail on my bedroom wall. “I want to leave it, for it belongs to Thackers.”

  “As you like, my dear,” said Aunt Tissie amiably. “It will be here waiting for you when you come back, pray God.”

  The next morning we were up at six o’clock and started for the train at seven. Jess brought out our bulging suitcases which had expanded to twice their original sizes. Aunt Tissie filled a basket with pasties and cakes for the journey, besides packing a hamper of farm produce.

  “I’m going to be a farmer when I leave school,” proclaimed Ian. “Keep the job open for me, Uncle Barnabas,” and Uncle Barny promised he would.

  I loitered upstairs at the last minute, seeking the doorway.

  “Master Anthony,” I whispered. “She’s here. I have found your jewel. I promised you should have it and I can’t get to you. I can’t open the door to that other time where you are.”

  There was no answer, and I went downstairs. They were calling me, the horse was stamping restlessly. Uncle Barny sat in the cart, and my own stool was close to his warm milky-smelling
knee. I climbed in the cart, Uncle Barny flicked his whip in a curl over the horse, Aunt Tissie raised her apron and began to wave it up and down like a flag.

  “Good-bye. Good-bye,” we called, and Aunt Tissie replied: “God be with you, my dears.”

  Away we jolted, along the white roads, past the woods and farms alongside the talking brook. We looked back and for a few minutes we could see the white apron tossing in the farmyard against the walls of the old house. Then the church tower with its broken emblems embowered in its clump of elms was all that remained and soon we turned the corner and we left it behind. “With a bit of my heart,” I thought.

  “It has been the best holiday we’ve ever had,” Ian told Mother, when she met us at St. Pancras and bundled us into a cab. Our luggage had surprisingly grown, like ourselves, she told us.

  “I fed the pigs every day and mixed the swill and looked after the hens,” I said proudly as the cab rumbled out of the station. “We’ve brought some of our eggs for you.”

  “I carted the muck, and I shot a couple of rabbits clean dead, Mother. They’re in the hamper for you. I was going to shoot a pheasant too, but Uncle said I had no game license. Can I have one for my birthday?”

  “I made the butter for Aunt Tissie,” said Alison. “She said it was the most beautiful butter she had ever tasted. There’s a pat in the hamper. Do you know how to make butter? You put the cream in the churn.... Did you know butter was made from cream, and not from milk, Mother?”

  “Of course I know,” laughed Mother, and she interrupted Alison’s description of churning and pressing and weighing, of salting and tasting, to turn to me.

  “You look much better, child. You have changed so much I hardly know you. Such rosy cheeks and such bright eyes. What have you been doing?”

  “I told you, Mother,” I replied impatiently. “I fed the pigs—”

  “Penelope was fey, Mother. She spent her time thinking of the Babington family and asking Aunt Tissie questions,” laughed Alison.

  “It was such an old historical house,” I excused myself, blushing, and that was all, for there was our own Chelsea street, with the great Thames flowing near us instead of the wild little brook and Chelsea Church instead of Thackers with its tower and haystacks and elms.

  We settled down to the life of every day, with school on weekdays and the parks on Sundays. We fed the sea-gulls, and did the shopping in the King’s Road. And Thackers went on with its secret life. Sometimes I thought of them all, Aunt Tissie and Uncle Barnabas and Jess sitting in the farm kitchen, and the aristocratic family living their own troubled existence alongside, walking in the same fields, sitting under the oak-tree, fishing in the river. I wondered whether Anthony found the queen’s jewel before he went to Paris, and I hoped Francis had not forgotten me. Sometimes they were more real than the people round me, and then they became phantoms, swirling in dim motion, disappearing like the summer mists.

  8. I Ride to the Fair

  It was a couple of years later, in June, that we returned to Thackers. I had overgrown my strength and it was arranged I should remain at the beloved farm, free to roam over the fields and breathe the life-giving air, to climb the hills and gather new health from their rocky fastnesses. I had a trouble-some cough which doctor’s medicine wouldn’t cure and only the smell of a farmyard could take it away. Ian and Alison accompanied me for a short holiday and then I was left to my own company.

  I packed my trunk this time, for I was determined that I would spend Christmas at Thackers. At the top of it lay my new green dress with hanging sleeves the colour of the grass. I had grown out of my favourite frock and Mother had been surprised at my insistence on the same colour, but I secretly hoped to wear it in the shadowed dream-life, if I could enter its enchanted doors.

  Uncle Barnabas met us at the station as before, with the glossy black mare, Sally, who turned her head to welcome us when she heard our voices. The spring-cart was polished up for the occasion, the wheels glittered and the splash-board was speckless. The best rug lay on the seat and the fine whip in the socket. Uncle Barnabas wore his Sunday coat, but when I kissed his red cheek I could smell the same delicious odour of cowcake and meal and hayseeds that I liked so much. He pushed his top-hat back from the forehead and looked keenly at us. Ian was quite a man, old enough to leave school he was sure, and the job of farm-hand was waiting for him. Alison was grown-up, a bonny young lady, her school days were over. I was unchanged, but taller, and more serious, he thought.

  “You won’t want to suckle the calves and ride Betty, I’m sure. You’ve all growed up like Jack Beanstalks.” We assured him that underneath we had not changed at all; we were the three who always loved the farm.

  Ian sat on the side of the cart, balanced like Jess when he had a full load of churns, and we two girls squeezed ourselves by Uncle Barnabas. There was no room for the trunk, we must manage without it for that night, said Uncle Barnabas, and Jess would bring it up in the milk-cart the next morning. Maybe Cicely Anne could lend us a couple of nightgowns. Alison looked dubious as she thought of Aunt Tissie’s high-necked calico garments. Then: “Our tooth brushes,” she wailed. “We must clean our teeth.”

  “I’ve never cleaned my teeth,” said Uncle Barny. “Never once in my life, and I’ve never been to the dentist either. Every tooth left is as sound as a bell, and do you know for why? Hard crusses and apples does it. You eat hard, knobby crusses and apples and you’ll need no toothbrush.” So Alison had to be content.

  We drove away from the little station down the yard where the hotel bus waited and the motor-car from the castle, but we went along the valley among the woods. I was filled with such elation I wanted to shout and sing, and as usual when I was excited I kept very quiet. It was like being on a high swing, or riding a galloping horse, to drive behind a little fast-trotting mare which knew me, to listen to a singing river which sang a song I loved, to hear the birds in the hedges, and to see the white roses foaming over the walls.

  “We’re in the middle of haymaking,” Uncle Barnabas told us. “You’re just in time to help. Three more haymakers are what I want, for harvesters are scarce nowadays. Once on a time we had a crowd of Irishmen; for many a year they came, but now we have only three or four, so we are glad of all the help we can get.”

  “We adore haymaking,” said Alison.

  “That’s more nor I do,” grunted Uncle Barnabas. “I don’t adore it. No, I don’t.”

  “Can I lead the horses and go on the stack?” asked Ian.

  “We’ll see,” replied Uncle Barnabas. That was his favourite expression which Alison said was noncommittal and very useful at all times.

  The sun was shining when we sighted Thackers, with its tower and half-made haystack, like a scented heap of dried flowers among the heavy, green trees, but the smell of Thackers was everywhere, in the lanes and woods and fields. It was a smell compounded of new-mown hay, roses, lavender, and old age, all mingled together to form a pot-pourri sweeter than that I bought in London for my mother’s Christmas present. If only I could collect it and pack it in jars I should have dog-roses and haystacks all the year round.

  Alison and Ian were pointing out familiar objects, calling the horse which ran whinnying alongside us in the field, whistling the dogs which raced to meet us. I noticed the little things; a stone I had left for a seat under a wall was still there, a tree shaped like a witch waved her boughs to me, the ferns were growing in the crumbled archway and under their shadow I saw a bird’s-nest.

  Jess came out of the stable, and opened the gate at the bottom of the drive. We left Uncle riding in the cart and took a short cut through the stackyard and behind the church to meet Aunt Tissie, who stood waiting for us at the open door with sunshine gathered in her white apron, and firelight behind her making a halo of her white hair.

  Even as I went across the cobbled yard to her outstretched arms, I had time to glance up at the windows. Yes, they were the four I knew, and not the row of lovely old mullions I had once seen deep in
the gable which was not there, in a house that once had been. Suppose all had faded away, and I never saw that household again!

  Aunt Tissie held me in her arms, looking up to me, for now I was taller than she, kissing me as if I were her own daughter. She took us into the bright kitchen where the tea-things sparkled by the fire, and the grandfather clock cleared its throat and struck loudly as if to welcome us, and the canary burst into song. All the room seemed to speak as we entered, and I imagined that the dishes on the dresser, the jugs on the hooks, the guns and brass candlesticks whispered and chuckled to one another, saying: “Here is that family from London City, and Penelope who knows our language.” So I nodded back to all the things as my eyes wandered round the room.

  “You know the way to your rooms?” asked Aunt Tissie. “I’ll wet the tea and you must be quick, for I’m sure you’re all clemmed.”

  There was one thought as I mounted the winding stairs, and that was to see if my jewel had gone. It was still there, shining in the oblong of sunlight on the white wall. I was half disappointed it had not been taken by its rightful owner, and half glad that I could see the queen’s picture.

  We opened and shut the drawers, and breathed the sweet musty air of the old room. Through the windows nodded musk-scented roses and down in the garden the borders were snowy with pinks. Beyond I could see the lavender hedge and the shadow of the church tower falling over the grass, and white ducks waddling to the brook.