Mrs Fytton's Country Life

by Mavis Cheek

  She took one more critical look at the bare soil and noticed a large lump. How had a lump appeared when she had dug it to the texture of Christmas pud? She went over to kick it in with her heel, but it was hard. She bent down. The earth was wet and cold and the lump slithered in her fingers. It was less of a lump, more a long lumpish rectangle. She picked it up gingerly - it did not feel like a dead rat, but it could be. It was uneven and rough to her touch, surrounded by some kind of material, as if someone had wrapped something up in newspaper. She carried it in and put it under the tap. As the water ran, some of the outer wrapping fell away. Sacking or hessian of some kind. Oily to the touch. She dried it with kitchen towel and took it back to the table. Very gradually she peeled away the covering. And the lump revealed itself to not be a lump at all but a long, thin, angular object, much rusted.

  As the last piece of wrapping fell away what looked like three rusty knitting needles fell out. The rest of the find was shaped like a pair of giant tweezers or small tongs. The rust clung to the surfaces but the shape was well defined: three pronged legs - or, if inverted, arms - and a scissor-like top. About ten inches long. Whatever all of these objects were, they had been carefully wrapped before being thrown away.

  Odd. She stared at them. Incomprehensible.

  Through the window she could see the dim light of the church. If she found these pieces incomprehensible, there was someone who would not. She went back out into the night. This, she felt, might be an important find. Perhaps some ritual object. Maybe even Roman. She ran towards St Hilary's.

  Daphne's Afghan nose went up. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I've put this lot away.'

  Good, she said excitedly. Good. And, running back, she could only think, Mrs Fytton, draped becomingly across her Celtic well, holds her important Roman discoveries in her hand...

  She waited at the table, touching the finds, feeling the sense of a thousand years beneath her fingertips.

  'Well?' she asked, as the Afghan nose came twitching round the door. 'Is it Roman?'

  'Roman?' Daphne smiled as she scrutinized the angular object carefully. 'Oh, nothing like that old - a hundred years, maybe two hundred, somewhere in between probably. It's difficult to date because they were still used at the turn of this century. Maybe even later. Where did you find them?'

  Angela told her.

  Daphne nodded and touched the discarded outer wrappings.

  'They've been very well preserved. This was probably oiled hemp they were wrapped in. And these are interesting too.' She held up the rusty knitting needles.

  Angela felt disappointed. Deeply disappointed. ‘I thought it might be important’ she said.

  Daphne looked indignant. 'Important? Of course it's important. It's a bit of history. Women's history.'

  Angela looked at it. A terrible feeling of faintness came over her and the muscles of her feminine parts shrank. 'It's not to do with childbirth, is it?'

  Daphne laughed. 'God, no. This is a rush-light holder. In poorer homes people made their candles from rushes dipped in mutton fat. Women and children gathered the rushes, which were stripped to their pith, then dipped, allowed to harden and dipped again and again. They were held in holders like this and lit.' She balanced it on its tripod legs. 'Only the well off could afford proper candles.'

  'It wouldn't give much light.'

  'Oh, they'd have two or three on the go. It was the women and children's job to tend the lights’ said Daphne. 'They burned through very quickly.'

  Angela could almost see the women, sunlight dancing in their hair, skirts tucked up as they waded out to collect the rushes. 'How quaint’ she said.

  'Not quaint at all. Bloody hard work as a matter of fact.'

  But Angela was off again, imagining her very own rush lights lying in a picturesque pile next to the honey in the pantry. Home industries. Much more interesting than beeswax candles. That'd be one in the eye for Wanda.

  Daphne picked up the three loose sticks. 'Part of a small muckle wheel’ she said, 'for spinning. In which case this holder might be as much as two hundred years old. It looks to me as if these were wrapped up waiting for mending.'

  Angela yawned. It was late and these things weren't Roman. She touched the inconsequential, broken thing. 'Do you think whoever lived here once did spinning?'

  She was quite unprepared for the Afghan's bark. 'Of course they did spinning’ she yapped. Angela jumped.

  Daphne did not apologize, which Angela took rather hard.

  'Spinning’ she said, 'was like breathing to women. The earlier generations of women who lived here wouldn't have had any clothes to stand up in or sheets to lie down on if they hadn't spun. Medieval women could walk up to twenty miles a day without leaving their homes with distaff spinning. Even fine ladies. They were probably a good deal fitter than those wet-looking creatures in the Books of Devotions would have you think. As for cottage women, they spun all the time whether or not they were doing anything else. No John Lewis fabric department or Shepton market stalls around then, Angela.'

  Angela wanted to smack her. 'I realize that, Daphne’ she said, through set teeth.

  Daphne was quite impervious. 'We may mock the word spinster now, but for most families it was either spin or go naked. You think of the value of cloth in their lives, and then how they had to make it, not buy it, and you begin to see the importance of the spinster. Morning, noon and night, women sat at their spindles, rocking the cradle with their foot, directing the household to its various duties -'

  'Changing the rush lights...'

  'Changing the rush lights’ agreed Daphne. '"When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" And all the while spinning, spinning, spinning. So this broken muckle wheel might well have been a tragedy. I tell you, Angela, marriage was a duty of drudgery - unless you were wealthy. If love happened it was an unlooked-for bonus. And the only safe way then was to become a rich man's mistress. You had a degree of autonomy and within certain confines you could come and go as you pleased.' She lifted up her long nose and smiled, very wickedly. 'With the emphasis on the former, of course.'

  Angela blinked. She had never thought of Daphne as coarse.

  The nose went up even further. 'Personally’ she said, 'I always thought Nell Gwynn had it made. A little of what you fancied now and then with Charlie boy, of whom she was genuinely fond, and the rest of the time was her own ... No rush lights and muckle wheels for her. Honestly, Angela, you do put the past into a chocolate box sometimes’

  How had she got to this point? The history of women used to be high on her agenda. Ah well. Life took you over, she supposed. If she wasn't careful she could end up just like Basingstoke. All present, no past. She touched the rusty object thoughtfully. 'What shall I do with it?' she asked.

  'Give it to me and I'll clean it up for you.'

  Angela suddenly felt very possessive. Mine, she wanted to say.

  'And then you can decide,' said Daphne.

  Angela made tea. Ordinary tea, as the Afghan tended to turn up her nose at herbal. While the kettle boiled she desperately tried to clear her mind of the picture of Daphne Blunt, mistress to a king, romping on a four-poster with a spaniel-wigged Charles of England. She rather envied the idea.

  Daphne touched the Harvest Grain label on the table, looking at it longingly. 'You haven't got a bit of bread, have you? All mine has gone off.'

  'So's mine’ said Angela. 'That's just a label I found blowing about. You know what home-baked bread is ... So fresh it doesn't last.'

  They looked at each other peculiarly, not quite sure what was wrong about the statement. Then they resumed looking longingly at the label and its fantasy picture of rolling hills against pure-blue skies and a landscape scattered with perfect, fresh loaves of bread of the manufactured variety.

  After Daphne had gone, Angela sat thinking about the rushlight holder and imagining the cosy scene in some distant cottage as the little tapers were put into place and lit. How harmonious. How pleasing. How sweet to be a f
amily once more. She wondered, couldn't

  help herself, what Ian was doing at that precise moment. Very probably, she thought, screwing the fragrant Belinda. Well, so what? she thought. I've got all this.

  She took herself off to bed. The trouble with living in the country and getting on with things was that by the time she got into bed at night there was no time to toss and turn and plan and worry about anything, because she was far too tired and fell asleep instantly. Just as well really, with her back. She hoped Wanda would not be too long in the making of the rub.

  In his Wimbledon bed Ian tossed and turned. Moneypenny was arranging the trip for the children. And even assuming they did it all on the cheap, it was going to cost a huge sum. He would have to pull himself together and get out there and earn it. It was very, very unfair that he should have all the organizational burden, as well as the financial one. And why didn't their mother make a contribution? If she would only get a proper job. After all, she'd been cushioned by him for all those years. Surely she could make a bit of a financial contribution now?

  The image of her floated into his mind, surrounded by an aura of contented insanity that caused him immense irritation. He saw her standing in a garden full of blossom and bees and hens and trees, with an apron full of flowers, a pot of honey in one hand and the Glastonbury thorn fulfilling its mythology and sprouting fresh green leaves in the other, and a wide, happy, welcoming - not entirely unsexy - smile. He had a bloody good mind to go down there and give her a piece of his mind, considering all the trouble she had caused. And it was deliberate. No doubt about it. He had been a good husband, while he was her husband, and it seemed very unfair of her to turn on him like this. Very.

  He looked at his little Binnie, sleeping like an angel, fast, fast asleep. He reached out to touch her but thought better of it. Life never worked out the way you wanted it to...

  And by the way, he wondered, just what was this Sammy so wonderful at?

  19

  November

  Real solemn history I cannot be interested in... The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing and hardly any women at all.

  jane austen

  I haven't got the figure for jeans.

  margaret thatcher

  Despite the shortening days and the dampness of the weather, Angela Fytton of Church Ale House in the county Somerset was in fine fettle as she got on with the business of home and hearth. In her kitchen and with no one to hear her or complain, she sang con bravura, she was so happy and busy. The hens tended to stay away during the louder operatic arias, but Sammy Lee said they went a bit down in the jib at this time of year. Not me, though, she thought. Not me. And she belted out a chunk of Traviata while attending to her tasks.

  A good brewer will take delight in a well-ordered cellar. Attention must be paid to cleanliness, both in the person and in the business. Observe, all cellars in the winter cannot be kept too warm, or too close or too clean. Without attention to this point the beers and liquors cannot thrive.

  Wanda was in no mood for singing. Or for pouting or acting provocatively, come to that. She might have been what one sweet critic described as the worst St Joan in Christendom, never mind Huddersfield, but she thought she had got this role down here sewn up. And now this. She had just returned home from spying through the kitchen window of Church Ale House and had seen her new adversary bent over some kind of olde worlde production unit. And she was scared.

  'I can't do it any more’ she said flatly. 'Not if that bloody woman up the road is going to keep coming after me like this. And she's beginning to learn all about it herself - herbs and medicines and old wives' tales - and sooner or later she'll find me out. ..' She tapped the book open in front of her on the table: British Herbs by Horence Ransom. She tapped it thoughtfully and went back to reading.

  Dave was in serious need of Wanda pouting and acting provocatively, because he too was seriously under threat. 'She's been asking me how to make bread - and those Somerset biscuits’ he said. 'Offering to swap recipes with her fruit ones - two hundred years old or something. I told her mine were a special handed-down mixture and she said so were hers.'

  'Oh, give her the ingredients they list on the packet and let her get on with it.'

  'Can't do that. She's asked me to show her.'

  They both looked at each other glumly.

  'She'll be wanting to do weaving next.'

  'In a Miss Marple mystery someone would knock her off...'

  They looked at each other glumly again. Wanda turned the pages of the book, wondering. Later she picked up a basket and went out. Later still, returning to Tally-Ho, she met Mrs Fytton of Church Ale House in the lane. And for once Wanda was as welcoming as she knew how.

  'Lovely day’ she said, smiling broadly.

  Since it was yellow, damp and raw, Angela let the bogus pleasantry pass. She peered at the basket contents. 'What are all those for?'

  'Aha’ said Wanda, with thrilling mystery.

  'Oh, go on. Tell me. Tell me, do.'

  Wanda, taking a leaf out of yet another pantomime performance as the wicked stepmother in Snow White, removed a now desiccated plant from among the pile in her basket and held it up. It was tall with thick, rounded, once-fleshy stems, pale, downy leaves and yellowy-green dried flowers with faint purple stripes.

  'Ooh’ said Angela. 'What's it for?'

  'Hangovers’ said Wanda promptly.

  She held up another tall, much more elegant-looking plant with a slender, smooth stem, reddish-purple spots, feathery leaves and umbels of seeds. 'Slimming potions’ she said quickly. 'Known since Egyptian times. And we all know how skinny they were... apart from Elizabeth Taylor.'

  Angela was far too engrossed to point out the anachronistic, not to say entirely inappropriate, nature of the remark. Her eyes were fixed on the reddish-purple spotted plant. 'Ooh’ she said.

  Wanda selected a third variety: tall and showy, with withered broad leaves and a prickly pod, half split to reveal dense-packed tiny seeds.

  'Any guesses?'

  'Aphrodisiac?'

  'Got it in one.'

  Angela preened herself. She really was getting the hang of this country life rather well.

  Wanda, on the other hand, would have agreed if Angela had said 'Lumbago' or 'Halitosis'. It was all part of the psychology. She had read it in a library book the previous day. If you wait, people will tell you what it is they want from you. As a matter of fact, Wanda was beginning to think it might have been a whole lot easier if she had done things properly from the beginning. Being bogus, it seemed to her now, was just as difficult as being the genuine article. More so, since the genuine article has no cause to feel afraid of discovery. Which she most certainly did. Hence peddling this basket of nasties.

  'Names?' Angela brought out her little notebook to jot down details of the fascinating threesome.

  Wanda held up the thorn apple (Datura stramonium, Solanaceae: highly poisonous. Otherwise known as devil's apple or devil's trumpet and inclined to kill, quite literally, rather than cure a hangover). 'Boosebuck’ she said very firmly.

  Angela wrote it down.

  Wanda held up the hemlock (Conium maculatum, Umbelliferae: a plant of evil omen, having the reputation in ancient times of being the official executioner of kings and philosophers. The only likelihood of its being useful in a weight-reducing diet, frankly, would be after being taken - well, after...). Wanda said, 'Thinlock.'

  Angela wrote it down.

  Wanda held up the henbane (Hyoscyamus niger, Solanaceae: reputedly the source of the 'soporiphic sponge' so beloved of Roman soldiers with time and spears on their hands and cru-cifees to deal with. Unlikely to be sexy unless shuffling off the mortal was your erotic bag). Wanda, looking anywhere but in her victim's eyes, said, 'Sweetbane.'

  'Bane usually means poison, doesn't it?' asked Angela.

  'Not in this case,' said Wanda very firmly once more.

  'You should kno
w,' said Angela, and wrote it down. 'How clever you are.'

  Wanda rolled her eyes. She had never had anything to do with murder, beyond a review that said 'If Macbeth doth murder sleep, this Lady Macbeth murders everything else...' Nevertheless, she felt resolute. Her very lifestyle was being threatened. And she was sure it would be over very, very quickly.

  'I'll remember those,' said Angela. 'How do you decoct them?' Wanda told her.

  She wrote it down. 'Will you help me look for them?' Wanda nodded.

  Angela thought, At last she has accepted me.