‘Scott’s Emulsion – large. Marmite – large. Horlicks Powder – large. Cod-liver oil and malt – the one in the red tin. Slippery Elm. Arrowroot.’
‘Ted’s niece arrived then?’ He knew of course that she had arrived almost as soon as Hector Wilmott and Charlie Barrit had rolled the first barrel down the chute at The Star. The family up at Roman’s Fields had always been of interest to the village proper – not that the Strawbridges were ever anything but villagers, but, being that bit further out, away from the huddle of dwellings and shops that made up the ancient village, their goings on were not always capable of interpretation and discussion. Also, Gabriel the elder had been a religious but unorthodox preacher, and the present Gabriel was a known Liberal (even a radical, some said) in his time; young May Strawbridge had married the help with a withered arm who had suddenly appeared one day and was a good few years older. And as well as all that they didn’t mind gyppos camping on their land.
The Strawbridges had always kept themselves to themselves; not hoity-toity, but just wasn’t interested in fermenting village life with a bit of gossip now and then. The Strawbridges taking in a convalescent child was interesting; one snatched from the jaws of death was better. The fact that May and Ted had neither chick nor child was of speculative interest to those who said that a child in the house could beget other children. May’s waistline would be observed for the next year. Old wives’ tales they might be, but they had been proved to be true time and again.
Gabriel Strawbridge knew that his purchases here this morning would be of interest, the fact that he had come down for them himself worth five minutes’ mulling over. ‘I can’t say that any of the rest of us is in need of oil and malt or Horlicks drinks.’
‘Only too right, Mr Strawbridge: you all always look pictures of health.’
Farnsworth junior collected the purchases, wrapped them in white glossy paper, each packet separately tied with fine string, then placed them in a large brown bag. ‘Want me to send this up for you, Mr Strawbridge?’
‘No, I got the governess cart outside.’
Farnsworth junior peered through the several notices on his shop door and saw Duke Barney holding the head of one of the Barneys’ little horses.
‘I hope the little child is soon back to health and fitness. I think you might find that a siphon of soda-water and a fresh orange squeezed with a good spoon of glucose is very good when there’s been sickness in a child.’
‘Is that so, Mr Farnsworth? I’ll take note of that and see if I can’t find a bag of oranges.’
Farnsworth junior opened the clanging door. ‘There’s a little step up, Mr Strawbridge.’
‘I remember,’ and raising his hat said, ‘I see my carriage awaits. My regards to your father and mother. I shall remember the oranges and soda.’
Farnsworth the chemist deposited the bag of purchases in the little box at the rear of the cart and watched as the elderly gentleman stepped with the assurance of a fully-sighted man on to the running board and the seat. ‘Just walk on, Duke. The sweetshop and then the grocer’s.’
Hopefully, Duke made their first stop at the sweetshop.
‘Go inside and ask Mrs Southey if she would oblige me by coming out,’ confiding, ‘it’s years since I was in there, and I can’t remember whether it is one steep step and then a low one, or the other way.’ Securing Pixie’s reins around a streetlamp he disappeared inside, quickly returning with Mrs Southey senior.
‘Lord above, Gabriel Strawbridge, it seems half a lifetime since I last saw you.’
Gabriel Strawbridge raised his hat. ‘I might say just the same thing, Beth Southey, but don’t tell me you thought I was house-bound or I shall feel that we are both past it.’
‘Well, ’tis not all that long. Wasn’t it at the last Harvest Supper we sat close by together?’
‘Harvest of ’27. May came on her own last year; Ted was laid up with a gash in his foot and we said she should go and I would see to Ted.’
‘Oh, you missed a good supper last year, Gabriel. You just see to it you all comes down this year. I really think that’s the highlight of my year – unless it’s Fair Day. I always liked Fair Day.’
‘And it always sees you trotting to the bank next day, Beth, I’ll be bound.’
‘Can’t say we does badly, Gabriel. Now, what is it I can do for you? I’m not in the shop so often now, Dick’s wife runs it mostly now, but she’s lying-in. Did you hear she and Dick had a son?’
‘I did, Beth, and congratulations.’
‘Dick’s pleased as a dog with two tails. Mary and me didn’t mind what it was, just as long as it had everything it’s supposed to have. And my word this one has – nine pound twelve, and a tooth at birth. Keith. They don’t go for the good old names these days.’
‘True, I can’t see any woman agreeing to give her pride and joy a name like Gabriel.’
‘Ah, you can’t never tell. When the time comes, your May might want to see a fine name carried on. I hope and pray it comes to you.’
‘Thank you, Beth. But if it doesn’t it will be the way of things, and it is no good fretting for what you can’t have.’ Long ago, long, long ago now, Gabriel and Beth had had a summer romance that had faded, but had left them with an affection and respect for one another, and a friendship that was too long-standing for either of them to say anything that was not meant. ‘I’ll tell you what I came for. You no doubt heard that Ted’s niece has come to stay with us – we hope for the rest of the summer, but we shall have to see. She has had diphtheria and she’s like a little walking skeleton, but it isn’t that, May’s got the feeding-up department all sewn up… but I thought I’d come down and get a few extras – some Scott’s and such from Farnsworth’s. But I wondered what sort of a little treat a girl of that age might just like.’
‘In the sweet line, do you mean?’
‘That would be nice, but if there’s anything else. You know all Ted’s brothers and their families have a hard time of it, I don’t suppose the child’s had a treat in her life. Her mother bought her a toothbrush of her own because she was coming to us – I tell you, Beth, I could have wept for her and all children like her.’
‘Oh, Gabriel, you don’t change, do you? You been weeping over people since the time when you should have been out enjoying yourself without a care in the world.’
‘I’ve been a very fortunate man, Beth, and I don’t ever forget it.’
‘What about slippers?’
‘For the girl? What a good idea. How would I know her size?’
‘I reckon if you tell Joycey how old and how tall, Joycey won’t be far out, and she will always change them.’
‘I’d rather get it right.’
‘Then get a larger size and some of them fleecy insoles in case they are loose. Do you want me to come with you?’
‘Would you, Beth? Just put a few licorice straps in a bag for Duke, I know he likes them. And something special for Louise, that’s her name. And young Bar Barney as well. May’s appointed her nurse at the moment.’
‘I wouldn’t have any of the Barney family running loose in my house.’
‘Ah, well, Beth, you’d be missing a lot. They are decent people. Ann’s no different now than when she was a girl living in the village, and Eli knows more about the country than you and I put together. They’re as good neighbours as you could wish for. The fact that they’ve chosen to suit themselves instead of the village is nobody’s affair except theirs, now is it?’
‘Ann Carter might as well have run off with a blackskinned Moor as to take up with a didecoi.’
‘Beth Southey, that’s not you talking, that’s the gossips that stand around in your shop. You know very well that Eli isn’t a didecoi. The gypsies are purer-bred than the likes of us. I make no apologies for having them stop on my land. And I do like having young Bar and Duke around; they’ve got some fine old-fashioned manners, and they aren’t afraid of hard work. Not many can say that of youngsters these days.’
‘You think you can make silk purses out of pigs’ ears?’
‘I’d rather leave the pigs to make what they will out of their own ears.’
‘And Gabriel Strawbridge would have no use for a silk purse anyhow, would he? You haven’t changed over these umpteen years.’
‘And you, Beth Southey, are still as bright as you were when your name was Possett.’
With ‘Southey’s Village Sweetshop’ latched, a ‘Back in ten minutes’ sign on the door, and Duke contentedly leaning and sucking black-strap, as he went to the greengrocer’s for some ‘best juicy Jaffa oranges for Mr Strawbridge’, Gabriel, with Beth unobtrusively guiding, walked slowly along the pavement to the shop that held a prime corner site. ‘Clothiers, Haberdashery, Shoes, Linen, Fabrics’ in letters of gold eighteen inches high stretched the full length of the shop-front.
Beth told Joycey what was wanted, and soon six pairs of slippers were set out for Gabriel’s consideration. With his large magnifying glass he inspected closely. ‘What do you think, Beth. What would you have chose when you were a young girl?’
‘Why the pink of course, girls always like pink.’
‘What about a kind of peachy colour – May has done the room out that colour.’
Joycey said there was no call for peach.
Beth Southey said, ‘Well, hasn’t she been busy then? Making quite a fuss over the girl.’
Not expanding on May’s improvements, he said, ‘You reckon pink? All right then. And the insoles.’
Joycey asked, ‘Felt or fleece?’
‘Fleece, I reckon,’ Gabriel said.
‘More than twice the price,’ Joycey warned.
‘It isn’t every day I buy pink slippers,’ he said, causing Joycey and Beth to flash one another a look of satisfaction. They had all thought they had seen the last of him calling in at the village shops.
Back in the governess cart, Gabriel Strawbridge told Duke, ‘Go down Bridge Street, and home along the Alton Road.’
‘It’s a main long way, Maaster.’
The use by Duke of the word ‘Master’, pronounced in all its rural breadth, did not indicate any subservience, but arose from the fact that Duke’s education had been imposed by tradition rather than by the state. He had been around horses since the time he could sit up, and when selling he had learned from his father the tricks of breeding and trading in horses. One being to flatter the buyer into believing that it is he who is making the running. By the simple use of ‘master’ as a form of address, the horse-trader puts himself in an apparently subservient position. If the master is not fly enough to see the true situation (which is that the trader has had a lot more time in which to know his horse), and lays out good money because he believes himself the expert, well, is the trader to blame? Hence Duke’s instinctive use of the word, even though Duke was as independent as his forefathers and worked for the Strawbridges on his own terms.
Gabriel Strawbridge and Eli Barney each accepted and admired the independence of the other. They had a working relationship that acknowledged the freedom of both. The Barneys occupied a corner of Roman’s Fields, for which they paid a peppercorn rent of a silver threepenny-bit a year. If Eli chose to disappear overnight, there were no ties. The Barneys were the ‘gyppos’ whom the villagers disapproved of and distrusted, but against whom they would lay no complaint other than that they did not ‘fit in’.
Gabriel, who had always believed that without tribalism, nationalism and religious differences, the human condition would be vastly improved, had become involved with Eli Barney years ago. The same emotion that had brought Ted Wilmott to his notice had also brought Eli Barney, for Eli Barney had taken up with Ann Carter. That had put her beyond the pale, but Eli and Ann were strong enough to withstand the pressures put upon them. Gabriel had offered them a small corner of Roman’s Fields on which there was a bit of stabling left unused since the days when horticulture superseded farming. Eli and Ann repaired the buildings, part of which they lived in, part of which they used when a mare was foaling. The breed, being as hardy as wild horses, lived out as wild horses do; to a great extent Eli, Ann and their four children lived likewise.
‘A main long way or not, Duke, if you aren’t wanted by your father, then I should like to make the most of it.’
‘He knows I’m with you.’Twas he who told me the flag was up and said to take Pixie. He’s going to take her down to Wickham Fair, and he wants her main used to highways by then.’
For the Barneys, Wickham Fair was always a testing ground, for this was the annual local fair when both their families would be on common ground. For Eli to take his horses there was to run the gauntlet, at least of fierce resentment and ostracization, at worst violence. But every year Eli stood his ground. He had the same rights to run his horses there as anyone.
As they went under the railway at the end of Bridge Street, a train rumbled over, but Pixie continued to pick up her dainty hooves and trot on up the incline without concern. ‘Not a twitch, eh, Duke?’
‘She’s a good little mare. I reckon we should keep her to breed out of, but Father says we need to sell her. He knows I’m right, but he’s just pig-headed. I reckon I might talk him round. Else I shall have to make him an offer and buy her meself.’
They were now clear of the village, and Gabriel could smell the spring in the hawthorn and fresh grass. Although his eyesight was not good, he still had the experience of scores of earlier springs to draw on. Morning light filtering greenly through translucent leaves, and tufts of new larch, catching the many yellow flowers growing in the new grass; primroses springing from rosettes of beautifully-veined leaves; coltsfoot flowers golden and tuft-headed on stems like green ropes; on the sallow-willow male flowers heavily yellow with pollen-grains, and in the ditches kingcups. It is the evocative smell of the warming earth that brings to mind those sights he had so delighted in, especially when he had Clara to enjoy them with.
‘Tell me what you can see about you, Duke. I hear a hedgeful of nestlings and I reckon I can smell the hawthorn main strong.’ Duke turns and sees that the old man is smiling.
‘You don’t catch me.’Tis the blackthorn is full out, and there’s thrushes and blackbirds with young hatchlings. There was a couple of brimstones about up this morning, you know that old buckthorn? It was by there.’
‘It’s where the brimstone caterpillars always feed.’
‘I know, well enough. All I was saying is that it’s early. The season’s too far on: we shall suffer for it later.’
Gabriel was inclined to agree with him. ‘Come on, my eyes, what’s about in the hedge-bottom?’
Pixie trit-trotted, and the wheels of the cart crunched on accumulated road-grit at the verge of the main road. ‘Celandines… garlic …’
‘Which?’
‘Garlic mustard.’
‘No primroses?’
‘A course there’s primmies, what d’you think – there’s always primmies this time a year, the bank’s as covered as it ever was, you don’t catch me like that neither, Master. I know you can smell them primmies… creeping ivy… cuckoo-flowers.’
‘I thought I heard one this morning.’
‘Nah, they won’t have hardly arrived yet.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t back money on it. You said yourself, Duke, the season’s far on.’
‘It probably wasn’t no cuckoo-call. Anybody can be fooled by a young pigeon this time of year.’ Duke liked to be the first to hear the cuckoo-call, but he knew the old man with his acute hearing was a strong competitor to be first. ‘I’ll tell you first time I hears him.’
They journeyed on like this for a couple of miles, taking the long way home, then Pixie, of her own accord, turned into the Roman’s Fields yard. ‘I’ll take the packages, and you see to the cart, Duke. A florin see you all right?’
Duke made to take the coin, but drew back. ‘Father said I wasn’t to ask anything, he owes you for the straw bales; anyway, you give me the black-strap at Southey’s.’
&nbs
p; ‘Tell your father, you didn’t ask, I offered. It isn’t long to Wickham Fair, you’ll be able to shy at coconuts all morning with a florin. I haven’t enjoyed myself like this for many a day. I’m obliged to you, Duke.’
Spitting on the coin for luck, Duke said, ‘And I’m main obliged to you, Master Strawbridge.’
Cheeky young devil. The grin on his face was audible in his voice. He was a decent lad, more Eli than Ann in him, missing out on so much schooling that the beadle had trodden a path to the Barneys’ camp. But it hadn’t seemed to have done much harm to Duke’s ability to turn sixpence into a shilling.
* * *
Back in Portsmouth, when Ralph came off his shift, the air was as heavy and warm as summer. He wondered whether there would be a card from Lu by second post, but realized that, as she had only been away for a day, that was unlikely. It seemed longer than that.
Chick Manners caught him up. ‘Where you going at a rate of knots? You look as though you got a right ’ump on you.’
‘Not really. I was thinking of Mum, she didn’t look too good when I went off this morning.’
‘What’s up then?’
‘Women’s trouble.’
‘How about coming down on The Common this evening. We got a scratch game of footy, and we thought we might try a dip afterwards… water’s still cold as a witch’s tit but first dip of the year always is.’
‘I’ll see. If Mum’s OK I’ll see you down there.’
‘Good, kiddo, we’ll have a couple of halves in The Wheelbarrow and home to bed like good boys.’
‘That’ll be the day when you go home like a good boy.’ Chick was the gay Lothario of a fivesome of young men who had stuck to one another since their days at Lampeter Road Boys’ School. They felt themselves to be special because, in the face of growing unemployment, they had all got taken on either in the docks or on the railway. Chick and Ray were the two who wore collars and ties to work, and were inclined to stick together because of that. Ray had a good many ‘oppos’ but Chick was the only one to whom he would have said anything about his mother’s ailments.
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