The Girl Now Leaving

by Betty Burton

  Lu looks at Bar, hoping to discover whether this might be a pet or something else. It is obvious that Bar doesn’t know. ‘I don’t know… what is it?’

  ‘It is a kind of diary, a book in which a person writes down, perhaps each day, or week, the happenings of the day, or week.’

  Bar says enthusiastically, ‘Like today she could write she found a white stone with a hole and it was a loom-weight.’

  ‘Yes, and more than that. A daybook is a private thing in which the keeper may write their thoughts. For instance, Louise might write down what her feelings are about finding something that is so very old… and about Martin and the others and the things they found… in fact, anything at all. Perhaps even recording your dreams, and things that you dream of doing when you grow up, or promises you make yourself.’

  ‘Like New Year resolutions?’ Lu suggests.

  ‘Like that and anything else that comes to mind to put down. I have kept a journal since I was your age. I call it my daybook,’ he laughs, ‘though it’s not just one book; over the years I have filled a good many.’

  Bar, never shy, asks, ‘What did you put down first go?’

  ‘I remember word-for-word, I’ve read it many times. “Went to Wickham Fair. Rode on merry-go-round. Watched the gypsies trading horses. Won coconut, had cloves and humbugs, spent sixpence. Saw a fair fight. It was a very merry occasion.”’ He turns in Duke’s direction. ‘Much the same today, eh, Duke?’

  ‘No fair fights, Master Strawbridge, only dirty ones outside the pubs. I knocked off three coconuts last year… one was dry, I took him back, they didn’t want to swap it, but I made them.’

  ‘I won’t ask how, Duke.’

  ‘You can ask. I promised to upend their crate of wooden balls. And I would’ve.’

  Turning back to the girls, Gabriel Strawbridge says, ‘If it takes your fancy to do so, I dare say I could find a couple of notebooks and a few pencils.’

  Bar says, ‘It wouldn’t be no good me taking it home, our little’ns would only just tear it up, they tears up everything. You could keep it for me, couldn’t you?’

  ‘All right. How about Lu?’

  ‘I’d like to write it all down, then I shan’t forget anything, and I could give it to Mum and Ray and they could read everything I done in the country.’ Her eyes are bright with anticipation.

  Back at Roman’s Fields, Lu runs ahead of Mr Strawbridge and Bar. As she reaches the house, the smell of frying bacon greets her, and for the first time in many weeks, her mouth is awash at the anticipation of eating. She feels marvellously hungry. She races into the house, breathless with eagerness to tell Aunty May everything, then, as she reaches the kitchen door, is stopped in her tracks.

  ‘Ray!’ she flings herself at him. ‘Oh Ray, Ray, you said if you came it would be on a Sunday. I never expected you.’

  Ralph pressed his face against hers, rubbing her with his bristly chin as he sometimes did when he came home from work. ‘Well now, and who is this bold miss flinging herself at me? I’m sorry, but I been spoken for. Only last week my sister said as how she would a liked to marry me.’ Picking her up under her arms, he swings her round. ‘Lord love me, Lu, whatever’s Aunty May been feeding you, you’re a ton weight.’

  Bar, one foot tucked behind the other knee, stands by the dresser watching the animated Lu hugging her brother, ruffling his hair and laughing. Bar laps up every detail of him. She has heard enough about Ray, but had expected that he would resemble Lu, but he does not. His eyes are bright blue like chicory flowers, his teeth are nice, one of the front ones just crosses the other, but that seems to make him even better looking, and although he has shaved close, you can see where his beard grew.

  She imagines him with a dark curly beard, like the one her father wears: he would look lovely. His dark hair is all little waves like Mr Wilmott’s, but it is short and shines and, where Lu has ruffled it, a wavy lock hangs over his forehead. She can smell the lemony smell of his hair-oil. He has on a proper suit, blue with a fine stripe, the jacket is hanging behind the door, his white shirt hasn’t got a crease in it, he has red armbands which hold up his sleeves which are puffed up above the elbow, most impressive are his stiff white shiny collar and red tie. Bar would love to know him well enough to jump into his arms as Lu did. Yet when Lu says, ‘Look, Ray, this is Bar, we’re best friends,’ Bar can only say, ‘Hello.’ He shakes her hand and beams his lovely smile at her. Ray… the sound of his name has changed now that she has seen who Ray is. Bar had imagined he would be as uninteresting as Duke. He isn’t; he is the loveliest man she has ever seen.

  May, standing at the range turning bacon, watches the scene between brother and sister with pleasure, for she has never seen Lu in such an exuberant mood, or so rosy-cheeked. And look at Bar, she’s blushing… she’s growing up and I’ve hardly noticed, thought May. She says, ‘Looks as though somebody had a good morning,’ and as they all sit round eating bacon and eggs, Lu launches into a report on the expedition to Howton’s Ford. Ted says that she seems to have lost her appetite and found a lion’s. Gabriel praises Lu and Bar and says what grand helpers they’ve been, and how well the field-walkers’ group thought of them.

  * * *

  They went out into the garden to have a cup of tea, and Lu dropped off to sleep. Ray said, ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘She’s fine. She takes a lot of cat-naps, which is good for her. That way she don’t out-run her strength.’

  Ray said, ‘I think she wants to stop on. I’m glad, and I’m grateful to you and Ted. I can’t believe how quick she’s picking up. I think I’ll tell her about Mum, not that I know what to say – she’s sure to ask what’s up with her.’

  ‘I’ll tell her later on if you like. She’s not a little girl any more, she’s coming twelve. Girls that age are a lot more knowledgeable than people give them credit for. I never liked people to keep me out of what was going on in the family, it don’t matter what you’re told after, you can’t forget that there were things going on and you were treated as though your feelings weren’t important.’

  Ralph said, ‘I never thought of it that way. If she asks, I’d be grateful if you’d tell her.’

  When Lu awoke, her extended stay was settled. ‘If you can manage without me, I would like to see what it’s like in summer. I can’t hardly tell you how nice everything is. And now me and Bar are going to start writing books about it. It’s going to be Wickham Fair in May… do you think I could stop on that long?’

  They spent the next few hours looking at the strawberries already forming, and the piles of sticks being delivered for the stick beans, and the goat, and the bees and Cowslip. Bar went everywhere with them, her impishness and giggling and her usual chattering stilled, her eyes darting away from Ray every time there was a danger of him catching her watching him.

  ‘If they’ll have you, seems a shame not to use that nice room now that she’s put all the work into it. Tell you what, I’ll leave half a crown with Aunty May for you to go to the fair, then you and Barbara will have enough to ride the dodgems.’ He smiled at Bar but had no idea that it was the smile that would set the seal on her ideal of masculine desirability.

  She felt almost as though she was trancing into a spinning spell. In future, the elation which she summoned while dervishing, she would not see in her mind’s eye as an amorphous white light, but it would have form: male, potent and white-collared. Her first entry in the journal Gabriel Strawbridge started her on read, ‘I was going to write about Lu’s brother coming to see her. Only when I thought what to say about it, I didn’t want to. Writing it would only spoil the pictures in my head and the feelings. But I like to write his name which is Ralph Wilmott.’

  When Ralph reached Portsmouth that night, he celebrated his good mood, his nice Wilmott relations, with a night on the town with Chick and the boys.

  * * *

  April melded into May, the good weather held up and improved, drawing out June butterflies – the meadow browns and small heaths �
� ahead of time to join the flittery, black-dotted garden whites. Woodland trees – plane, beech and oak – flowered profusely, with tiny fluffy tassels that floured the air with pollen, and from the miles and miles of hedgerows, a delicious scent of vanilla drifted from the may-blossom.

  Bar had to go to school, but she still came in before and after school and at weekends. She stopped going to Mrs Catermole’s; her dad said she didn’t have to put up with anybody, least of all vicars and high-hat old faggots. They wrote their daybooks. Bar’s was more sparsely entered than Lu’s because nothing happened at school, but Lu’s filled because there was so much going on. She described her first attempt at milking Cowslip; her fear at watching bees swarming; the size of the yellow slugs that invaded the garden at night; collecting eggs from the hen-house; and, matter-of-factly, the strange courting and coupling of the one cock and several hens. And she wrote in great detail about Bar taking her to see where she lived. This account took her most of one showery afternoon.

  ‘Do you want to come over our place?’

  ‘Is it all right?’

  ‘Ma says why don’t you come?’

  It was easy to see that when Ann Carter and Eli Barney had set up together, their two cultures had either clashed or collided, for they lived in a kind of encampment surrounding a very cottagey-looking ‘house’ made from a reconstructed stone stable. In good weather, all their food was prepared over a brick-built open-air fire.

  Ann Carter must certainly have shocked the village when she took up with a gypsy for, if there is such a thing as an average young village woman, then – except that she wore a heavy gold ring threaded through one ear – she was it. She was short-haired, pixie-faced, heavily bosomed, broad-footed, and she wore a cotton dress with a cardigan and a cross-over flowery overall. Her arms were deep in a tub of soapy water when Bar led Lu in through a gap in the hedge. When she turned to greet them, Lu saw that she was expecting, and was surprised that Bar hadn’t even mentioned it. ‘Well then… so you’re the visitor. We heard a lot about you… sit on that stool if you like. Bar, fetch the tea-caddy and some sugar. I dare say Lu could do with a cup, couldn’t you, love?’

  ‘Ma will tell your future, won’t you, Ma?’

  ‘Don’t you be so pushy, miss. It’s not everybody wants their future.’

  ‘I do, Mrs Barney. My mum had her teacup told once, and it was all true she said… There was a sailor in the bottom, and that’s who she married.’

  ‘Well, there you are then. Do you want to marry a sailor?’

  Lu shook her head.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Somebody important. Somebody they’ll say, “Look, that’s her.”’

  ‘Rich then?’

  ‘I suppose you have to if you’re going to be important.’

  ‘I’ll have a look at your cup when you’ve finished. You don’t have to call me Mrs Barney, I’m Ann.’ She smiled and nodded in a general direction. ‘Their name’s Barney, mine isn’t. I’m still the same Ann Carter I always was, always will be. Nobody tell you that?’

  Lu shook her head.

  ‘That’s because you haven’t been down the village yet.’ Although her scandalous act had taken place seventeen years ago, and the Carter family’s shame had become mere occasional embarrassment, Ann was convinced that she was still the hottest subject of village gossip, when in fact these days it only caused comment when she went there with Eli, or when the gypsy clans spent their three days trading at the time of Wickham Fair. What still lingered was not that she had taken up with a gypsy, nor that she had never married in church; what lingered was indignation that they had not taken themselves off to another country, and that they kept breeding children who were expected to be taught alongside proper folks’ children in a church school.

  There were two other children: Ephraim, who Lu had already seen riding double with Duke, and a baby, Harry, Ann had named for her father, who wasn’t as pleased as he might have been. Harry, all eyes and with dark curls down to his ears, was a two-year-old replica of Duke.

  ‘This one’s another boy,’ Bar said, patting her mother’s mound.

  The stone walls of the old stable gave the Barney family’s house a grim look, but Lu thought the inside was very cosy. There wasn’t much furniture, but then neither was there in Lampeter Street. Mattresses were rolled up and put back against the walls, seats by day, beds by night.

  It seemed to Lu to be a really easy way to live. There were only two cooking pots, one for stewing and one for hot water. The whitewashed walls were full of ledges and cubby-holes from the days of the horses; on every ledge was a marvellous display of china ornaments, cups, jugs, and plates in rows. There were pretty things everywhere.

  Ann Carter picked up a teapot covered in gold and flowers and dusted it gently with her overall. ‘You like my things, Lu?’

  ‘They’re beautiful, I’ve never seen so many plates.’

  ‘Aren’t they? No two the same. They’re all antiques, mostly rare.’

  ‘That means old.’

  ‘Old and priceless.’

  ‘That’s why we have to drink out of mugs,’ Bar said. ‘Ah yes… what about that tea then?’

  Mr Barney was out with Duke. ‘Coppicing,’ Ann explained. ‘Getting bean-sticks for Strawbridges next door,’ and the two young children were playing with a box on home-made wooden wheels. ‘Just us women then,’ she said as they sat at a wooden table on heavy stools, drinking tea stewed over the fire. It was the strongest, hottest tea Lu had ever drunk, black and clear. At first drinking it in little sips, she gradually began to like its strange taste of smoke.

  ‘When you finished, Mum will tell your future… oh, go on, Mum, please.’

  ‘I’ll tell your hand if you like.’

  ‘Can you do that?’

  ‘In the lines, Ma tells the lines,’ Bar said. ‘She won’t tell mine. She looked at it once but she wouldn’t say. I expect I’m going to die, that’s why.’ She peered at her own left hand, running her fingernail down the crease that ran around her thumb.

  ‘Don’t talk silly, Bar. I just looked to see how many grandchildren you are going to give me; the rest can be a surprise.’ She picked up Lu’s hand and ran her own palm over Lu’s, as though brushing away dust. ‘If you’re one of those who don’t believe, or are scared to know, then I won’t do it.’

  ‘Oh, please. I want to learn about things they don’t teach you in school.’

  ‘What things is that?’

  ‘Different things… like I learnt since I been here.’

  Bar giggles. ‘Like that strawberries don’t grow on trees and bushes.’

  ‘That was because I just never thought about it before… Like how to aim right when you pull to get the milk in the pail, and the sort of things Mr Strawbridge told us when I found that old stone. And I’d like to know about telling lines.’

  ‘There are people who think it’s wrong to read hands, so I say that’s all right, nobody’s going to make them. Look, this one’s your life-line, it’s a real good strong one, only there’s a little crack right here at the beginning… see? That’s over and done with. It was your diphtheria, and now it goes on very strong. You’ll live to be a hundred. Well now, this here’s interesting… see this one’s your heart-line.’ She looked up and into Lu’s eyes, peering right into them as though she was looking through a keyhole, then back at the hand. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘I’ll be twelve next month.’

  ‘Ah, that’s a good month. I’m a September, too, and here’s another.’ She patted the unborn baby.

  ‘No, my birthday’s in June.’

  Bar said, ‘Ma means you was got in September. Your dad must have got you on your mum in September, so you could be born in June. They planted me in March, so I had to come out a her when it was cold winter, din’t I, Ma?’

  Her mother smiled and tucked a stray lock of hair behind Bar’s ear. ‘March was good enough for the Holy Virgin, and December was good enough for t
he Christ child, wasn’t it? And I was so glad you was a girl I kept you cosy as a duckling, you never knew you was born. I carried you about next to my heart till it was spring. So no complaints. Now shut up and let’s look at this interesting line here.’

  Mrs Barney wasn’t like any mother Lu had ever known. She talked to them as though they were grown up.

  ‘It don’t look to me that you will be thinking of getting wed. Not that there isn’t men in your life, my dear Lord no… there’s a deal of loving here, but remember love isn’t always a primrose path, real love… I mean real, real love can go hand in hand with hurt. A long life and a lot of men to love you, that isn’t bad for a start, is it?’

  ‘What about babies?’ Bar asked. ‘Look, fold your hand over.’

  ‘Get off, Bar. Who’s doing this, me or you?’

  ‘Well, you wanted to look at my babies lines.’

  ‘Have you got your flowers yet?’

  Lu had never heard the word. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Your monthlies.’

  That was not a question Lu ever expected to be asked. Last year, those girls in their eleventh year had been given one talk by a visiting school nurse; it had sounded like a warning. The rest, the truths, half-truths and inventions had been learned in the playground. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘that. The Curse. No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, I reckon you soon will. Before you do, you just get that word out of your head. It’s not a curse. To my mind it’s more a thing to feel pleased about. It’s us women in our prime gets it. It’s what makes us women, makes us special; nobody else gets it, only us. There was a time when women were made into goddesses because of its mystery, so don’t never mind it, and if you don’t mind it you won’t ever get any aches and pains.’ She gave Lu’s hand a brief squeeze. ‘Bein’ a woman is just fine. Anyhow, enough of that… let’s get this done. You have a lot of men here, but your babies won’t show up until you start getting your flowers. And see this here?’ She prodded the cushion at the base of Lu’s thumb and smiled with satisfaction. ‘It’s Venus’s Mount and, according to how plump it is, that’s how much you can enjoy being loved. It’s something you have to wait for. It’s a good thing to have a high Venus’s Mount.’ She slapped Lu’s hand playfully. ‘Now off you go, or May will want to know what you’ve been up to all this time.’