All Among the Barley

by Melissa Harrison

  When I was very young – young enough not to be an annoyance – he would sometimes take me with him when he walked the fields on a Sunday afternoon. I’ve sometimes wondered if it caused Mary or Frank any jealousy to see him setting out with me on his shoulders, his two hands holding my little feet in their Sunday shoes, mine on the rough wool of his cap.

  I don’t remember much about those walks, excepting the last one he ever took me on. It was spring: the blackthorn hedges were white with blossom, and the air was just beginning to be warm. In the elms by the house the rookery was busy, and clutches of buttery primroses lined the hedge-banks in the lane.

  As we crossed from The Lottens into Broad Field he swung me down from his shoulders and made me walk; probably I had been holding his ears, which always provoked him. I ran ahead, laughing to see two hares stop their boxing and race one another for the field’s edge.

  When I turned to tell him about the hares, I saw him sitting on the ground at the field margin, his arms around his knees. I ran back to him, and he smiled and sat me between his legs and said that we would sit awhile in the sunshine so that he could think. But after a few moments I felt his chest heave, like hiccups, and when I wriggled around in his arms I saw that he was crying, his lips drawn back in a rictus and his cheeks streaked with tears.

  ‘Dadda! Dadda!’ I cried in fear, and flung my arms around his neck; but though I begged him not to cry, he didn’t stop, and so I wept too, his hand on my hot back no comfort and only the mechanical notes of hedge-sparrows and chiff-chaffs to break the sound of our sobs.

  It can’t have been more than a minute or two, although it felt – it still feels to me now – as though it went on for a long time. But at last he pushed me away, and took his handkerchief and wiped his face; and then he fished in his waistcoat pocket for his tobacco and began, with shaking hands, to fill his pipe.

  ‘Go on, now, child,’ he said gruffly. ‘You know the way back to the house.’

  ‘But are you still sad, Dadda?’ I asked.

  ‘Sad? What’s there to be sad about? Go and tell your mother to make some tea; I’ll be there directly. And Edie?’

  ‘Yes, Dadda?’

  He looked away from me, his mouth hardening to a line. ‘Don’t – don’t you ever –’

  ‘I won’t – cross my heart,’ I said; and I felt proud then to have been taken into his confidence, to know something about my father that nobody else in the world knew.

  Of course, I was too young to have any real understanding of the secret I was keeping, and could not know how much better it would have been had Mother known of his distress.

  After church, Mother and Mrs Godbold drew away from the rest of the people milling around the lych-gate and stood talking in low voices by the yew. Frank had gone off for a walk with Sally Godbold, and Alf and Sidney Rose were showing John the new motor-cycle and sidecar they’d driven over in. Doble had decided to walk back; on days when his rheumatics were bad he said the hard seats of the trap played havoc with what he called his ‘natomy’.

  At last Mother was ready. John and Father sat at the front and she and I climbed in behind, then John clicked his tongue to Meg and we started back.

  ‘What did Ivy Godbold want with you, Ada?’ Father asked over his shoulder. ‘I hope you weren’t gossiping about family matters.’

  ‘No, George. Just some advice. She found an old bottle when they were taking up the flags in their kitchen to lay some linoleum, and when she lifted it the neck broke.’

  ‘A witch-bottle?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re just good-luck charms, Edie,’ said Mother. ‘From a long time ago – back in the olden days.’

  ‘They’re women’s foolishness,’ said Father. ‘What did you tell her to do with it?’

  ‘I thought I might walk over there this afternoon,’ Mother said. ‘That is, unless you’ve any objection, George.’

  No farm work was done on Sundays, of course, but after dinner Father liked to spend the afternoon walking the fields with John and Doble, checking the field drains and snares and discussing the progress of the crops. Not long after they’d set out that day, Mother left to walk over to Back Lane, leaving me and Frank in the parlour, where we were supposed to sit reading improving books. Frank had wanted to go with her to the Godbolds’, but we were told in no uncertain terms that we were to remain behind.

  ‘Shall we walk over to Hullets?’ I asked the moment Mother had disappeared up the lane.

  ‘Ed!’ said Frank. ‘You know we can’t. We’d get in a world of trouble if anyone found out.’

  ‘Just to see if she’s there – Connie, I mean. Or if we see her leaving we could see if she wants to come here for – for some tea.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll see her in the week, Ed. We can ask her about everything then.’

  We read in silence for a while. I had a large, illustrated copy of Christie’s Old Organ in my lap with The Jungle Book concealed inside. We had four O. F. Walton books, all given to me as school prizes, and they were without exception insufferably dull. I scanned the pages for a line of seven words, and, finding one, shut the book with a snap.

  ‘Did you know Connie was an atheist, Frank?’

  ‘No, but it doesn’t wholly surprise me. She’s contrary to a fault, or so I hear.’

  ‘But how can you not believe in God, if you used to?’

  ‘I don’t know, Ed. Perhaps something terrible happened to her in the War, and she lost her faith. I wouldn’t let it concern you, though; a person’s religion is their own affair.’

  I sighed.

  ‘Sally told me about the bottle earlier,’ Frank said after a while. ‘She said her mother was taken bad about it.’

  ‘Why, what happened?’

  ‘Well, you’re not supposed to break them in case you let the witchcraft out. Now she doesn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Who put it there in the first place?’

  ‘No way of knowing. It was probably there ever since the place was built; lots of the old houses have them. People find all manner of things, you know: dried-up cats, horse skulls, shoes hundreds of years old.’

  ‘Do we have anything magical, do you think?’

  ‘Most likely. There’s those circle patterns by the hearth, look – and that one on the big beam above your bed.’

  This was true, for every night without fail I traced the daisy-shaped mark on the old wood above me to keep me safe while I slept, a silly ritual I knew I should break myself of but which I continued nevertheless to perform. But some of the pews at church had the same marks, too, so while their meaning was mysterious, they still felt rather everyday. But witch-bottles were fascinating: some were said to contain hair or nail parings, or sheep’s urine, or even blood.

  ‘If we did have a witch-bottle, where do you think it would be? Under the hearth, or in one of the walls, perhaps?’

  ‘Don’t you dare go picking off the plaster, Ed. Mother’ll have a blue fit.’

  ‘Why’s she gone over to the Godbolds’, anyway? Can’t they decide what to do with it themselves?’

  ‘Why d’you think, dimwit? Because she’s a witch, and Granny is too, that’s why – and it’s about time you knew it.’

  Dumbly I stared at him, but he just folded his arms. I couldn’t tell if he was pulling my leg.

  ‘She is not,’ I said uncertainly.

  ‘Is too. And you would be, if you weren’t quite so slow-witted. They do say it runs in the blood.’

  ‘Frank!’

  ‘All right, I’m joking, I’m joking!’ he said, laughing. ‘Blimey, Ed, don’t lose your rag.’

  From outside the window then came a sudden and unmistakeable crex-crex, crex-crex.

  ‘Oh Lord,’ I said. ‘The landrail’s back.’

  We both got up and went outside to find it pecking around boldly near the pigs. Frank was still laughing.

  ‘You should name it, Ed,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be daft. It’s not a pet.’

  ‘Oh, come on
– there’s no getting rid of it now, unless the cats get it. You might as well get used to it.’

  Hearing my voice, it had run to me and was inspecting my feet in their Sunday sandals. ‘Well . . . is it a boy or a girl, would you say?’

  ‘It’s singing, after a fashion, so I suppose it must be male.’

  ‘I name it Frank, then.’

  ‘Oh no you don’t. I’m not having it flapping around my ankles every time someone says my name.’

  He had a point. ‘All right, then. Edmund.’

  ‘That’s decided, then. It’ll come to your call in no time, I’ll wager – which will be helpful, seeing as you’ll have to teach it to fly.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. The truth was I had never, to my knowledge, actually seen a landrail fly; they always ran along the ground.

  ‘It’ll want to be off on its travels when the weather turns. And anyway, it might need to escape the cats.’

  ‘I can’t teach a bird to fly, Frank!’

  But again, he was ribbing me, and I saw it by his sudden grin.

  ‘Oh, give over, will you. It’ll work it out itself.’

  I knelt down, and immediately it hopped up onto my lap. ‘Hello, Edmund,’ I said.

  Frank, who had been disappointed not to be asked to inspect the fields with the men, wandered off to the barn to discover how many sulphur cartridges Doble had laid in to deal with the rabbits. Snaring or ferretting them was preferable, of course, for that way the meat wasn’t spoiled, but when numbers were high we gassed them in their burrows, as all our neighbours did. It was a task Frank always helped with since, for reasons connected with the War, John refused to take part.

  I wandered along the boundary of Great Ley and Middle Ley, roughly in the direction of Hullets – though I didn’t plan to cross the road. If I happened to see Connie pass by on her bicycle, so be it; but Frank was right, we’d find out more soon enough. Edmund followed after me, and I let him, slowing every so often if I saw that he had stopped to peck at something, or fallen behind.

  At the circle of oaks I ducked into their dappled shade and greeted them all individually with a pat of my hand; it was much cooler there than in the sunlit fields around. I sat cross-legged, my back against one of the trunks, and as Edmund settled contentedly in my lap I looked out through half-closed eyes at Crossways’ rippling acres of gold.

  I wondered if I should tell Connie the stories of the six oaks for her book, or whether bringing her here might be wrong in some way, as Mary kissing Clive here had surely been. Above me, lost in foliage, a robin was singing quietly to itself under its breath; not in full-throated song, but as though practising, working out the notes as a man might hum a tune he aims to learn. In a few months, I reflected, it would be the only bird singing in the valley; the throstle would call out a few phrases in midwinter, but for the most part there’d be little music between harvest-time and spring. But spring would come, and the ground would warm again, as it always did, and all the summer birds, including Edmund, would one by one return to mate and build their nests. The bluebells would come out in Hulver Wood and our bees would wake and begin to forage; the grass would grow tall in the hay meadows and be mown, the peas would blossom once more and smell sweet. And the cornfields would be green, then grow tall and turn golden; and so would pass the next year, and the next.

  I closed my eyes and let myself sink into sleep, and I dreamed about the horse-pond. Not the one near the house, which had once been part of a moat – so Grandfather said – and was now colonised by garrulous ducks; the other one in the middle of Greenleaze, which we used on hot days now and then if the team was too far from the house. From the margin of the field it just looked like a clump of alders, but the trees hid a pond whose water was shaded and brackish and black.

  I dreamed I was inside the pool, deep down under the water – but I wasn’t drowning; in fact I felt calm and safe. There with me was Grandma’s gold-rimmed tea service, which I knew I must somehow bring up or it would spoil. But I didn’t want to leave the water for the loud, hot world above, and then it was not teacups I was holding but dead frogs, pale and bloated and rotten, and I fought my way up through the lassitude of sleep to surface, gasping, among the roots of the oaks.

  We had a cold collation for supper on Sundays, then we generally sat in the parlour, where Mother and I would read or do some mending, Father would smoke a pipe or play cards with Frank, and Grandfather would sit and listen to the four of us talk. John and Doble, meanwhile, withdrew to their separate quarters, or on summer evenings they sometimes had a game of quoits in the yard. Mother couldn’t abide the sound of iron horseshoes repeatedly striking the cobbles, but ‘For God’s sake, woman, let the men have their fun,’ Father said.

  As I hoped she might, that evening Mother brought my dress down and turned up the wick of the lamp. The collar was hand-work, but she’d used her Singer to do the seams, darts and hems. I had darning to do; Frank’s socks were holed at the heel again, testament to my poor skills as a seamstress. Mother’s darning, I knew, would without any doubt have held.

  ‘Is that Edie’s dress you’re making, Ada?’ Father asked.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Good. I expect you to make sure she’s nicely turned out for the fete.’

  I looked up at him and smiled; it was kind of him to bother about me having a new dress, especially with money being so tight. I loved him ever so much just then.

  ‘Where’s that bird of yours, then, girl?’

  ‘I don’t know; I could have sworn he came back with me earlier, but I looked around and he wasn’t there.’

  ‘Just as well, if you ask me,’ said Frank. ‘Though I do wonder where it sleeps. Off the ground, if it has any sense.’

  ‘Mother,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, Edie?’

  ‘What happened at the Godbolds’ to-day?’

  ‘We drank tea and gossiped like two old crones. Did you know, Mrs Prettyman – you remember, she used to have the sweet shop – well, she took ill from drinking bad water and nearly died? Poor old dear; she couldn’t manage the pump with her arthritics, and rather than bother her neighbours she was fetching water from the stream. We shan’t see her come out of the workhouse infirmary, I expect.’

  ‘But the witch-bottle. . .’

  ‘Oh, that. Ivy just threw it out.’

  Grandfather rapped his stick upon the floor. ‘A very bad business,’ he said.

  I went out before bed to see that the hens were safely locked up. Moses, Meg and Malachi had been turned out into Horse Leasow, and although I could not see them I could sense their breathing presence somewhere out there in the dark. To the north-west blazed the Plough, and there was a quarter-moon rising, very low and bright.

  I thought about the picture Miss Carter once showed our class of a cornfield by moonlight, by a painter from a neighbouring county whose name I could no longer recall. The moon-shadow, or perhaps just the artful way he had painted it, made the stooks seem mysterious rather than ordinary; or perhaps it was just that anything you made into a picture would seem significant, because you’d chosen it and not something else.

  I suppose, now, that Miss Carter had shown us the painting of the cornfield because she thought it would be familiar to us country children, and might interest us more than, say, a classical sculpture, or a Toulouse-Lautrec. But either of those would have been better: they would have let us look out at the world, rather than in. I had liked the picture well enough, but now, reminded of it by the moon over Home Field, all I could think about was the old-fashioned way in which the stooks in it were tied.

  I used the privy, then stood by the barn for a few moments before going back in, moths thronging my lamp and a midsummer dor – Doble called them ‘old witches’ – flying mazily around my head. There were crickets calling, some very near me in the farmyard, others in the orchard or the meadows or the lane, and from above me came the wet-glass squeaks of hunting bats. From the fields carried the buzz of landrails, and driftin
g down from over the stable came the comfortable sound of John whistling quietly through his teeth as he readied himself for sleep.

  For a moment I thought of going to find the horses, just to hear their soft breathing and see their black eyes glint under long lashes in the dark. But I knew they must have their rest, just as we did, and so I turned and went in and left the farm to the night.

  X

  The barometer fell, and I felt the weather change as I slept. A wind got up and made the house creak, and it sighed and blustered in the fireplaces all night. In the morning the sky was overcast, and the late-July air felt cooler than it had in weeks.

  I dreaded Mondays, because Monday meant wash-day. It hadn’t been so bad when Mary was at home to help; now, though, it was just Mother and me, and even in summer it took us all day. In winter the lane and yard became wet and slubby; John would wear his old army puttees, and Doble would go about swathed in sacks, but still mud caked our clothes and all the clean linen had to be hung inside to dry, making wash-day even worse.

  ‘I don’t know how I’ll manage the wash when you’re gone, Edie,’ Mother would sometimes sigh. ‘I just don’t know how I’ll get through it all myself.’

  First we lit the fire under the copper; Mother would usually put some porridge on the stove while it got going, and I’d make a pot of tea. Then we’d strip the beds and put the top sheets on the bottom until next week, and bring everything to the scullery and sort it into piles. John and Doble brought their working clothes to Mother to wash on Mondays, of course, but we were fortunate in that they did their underthings themselves.

  Once we’d eaten some breakfast and the water in the copper was hot, we’d bale some out into a tub for the coloured linen, then put the sheets and shirts and tablecloths in the copper to boil. We’d spend the morning with our sleeves rolled up, working the wet cloth in the tubs with the wooden dolly or rubbing it against the washboard, our hair stringy from steam and our hands red and sore from carbolic soap. We didn’t talk a great deal on wash-days, but ‘Give it some gumption, girl. It won’t wash itself,’ Mother often said.