The Country Child Page 3

  Mrs Garland was too busy to give much time to Susan, except to instruct her in religion. She was as intent on her house as a bird on its nest building.

  Everything was scrubbed and rubbed, washed and cleaned, and no one could make even a dirty fingermark without being found out.

  Farmer Garland could not abide the scrubbing and rubbing, and when things were at their worst he retired to his workshop up a stone stairway, and locked himself in with half-made hen coops and besoms. Susan was drawn into the fray to dust and polish, to fetch and carry, to clean the brass and wash the cans, but she, too, escaped whenever she could, to the fields and garden in the summer, where she hid among the currant bushes, or to the dark warm barns in the winter. She stayed her hunger with cow cake and pieces of swedes, and crunched the indian corn, but at last she had to go home, compelled by darkness and rats and a keen appetite. Her ears were boxed and she was given a bowl of bread and milk for supper instead of bread and dripping or hot roast potatoes and butter, and sent to bed without a candle.

  She sobbed, but when she said her prayers she asked for God’s forgiveness and lay down happy. That was the best of prayers, she could sin quite a lot in the day, knowing that when she prayed she would be forgiven. She heard that at church, where she prayed every Sunday, ‘We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us.’ Whether she had been good or bad she prayed the same words, and got the same forgiveness.

  3

  Idols

  Every Sunday Mrs Garland and Susan hurried down the hill and along the white road to church, listening to the clanging bells, which bade them be quick. Ting tong, ting tong, they went, echoing against the hills, now clear, now so faint, as the rush of the river and the curves of the road carried away the sound, that Susan thought they had stopped. Mrs Garland walked, but Susan ran at a jog-trot, dropping behind and then catching up, until she had a stitch in her side, for no one could keep up with her mother when she was late for church. They raced along by the lovely river and had no time to look at flowers or birds, at the treecreeper running up the sycamore tree, and the kingfisher flashing under the alders. Shafts of sunlight fell on their faces, but they panted on. They passed the weir and the ivy-covered mill house with never a glance at the purling water.

  The slow bell began, tong, tong, tong, and Susan’s stitch nearly made her cry; but being late was worse, with the staring congregation saying:

  ‘There go Mrs Garland and Susan, late again. I should think shame if I was them.’

  Yet it was the same every Sunday, for one reason or another. Susan forgot her prayer book, Mrs Garland turned back to remind Becky to baste the sirloin, Susan tumbled and dirtied her silk gloves, Mrs Garland stopped behind to make a pudding.

  On this Sunday, just as they crossed the bridge over the river and climbed the steep hill to the church the bell stopped. They followed after the choir and in the confusion and rustle of standing up they slipped into their seats near the front, breathless and scarlet, Mrs Garland’s velvet bonnet tilted on one side, Susan’s hat shamelessly perched on the back of her head. It might have been worse; sometimes they were at the Psalms when they entered.

  Susan knelt down on the red baize hassock beside her mother with her eyes just peeping over the edge of the old pew. She could see the altar and the flowers, and the bright light of God shining on the candlesticks. He was everywhere, He filled the church, but especially the chancel, where He hovered like an invisible angel, all misty with shining edges, the sun behind the cloud, listening to the prayers.

  She shut her eyes and joined fervently in the service. Even the vicar had noticed Susan Garland in church. She never turned round, she sang all the hymns, she fixed her eyes on him during the sermon in a disquieting way, as if she searched his soul. But today her attention wandered, some wonderful smell on a lady’s dress disturbed her, a heavy, rich, intoxicating scent, unlike anything in the garden, not lavender, or roses, honeysuckle, or violets. She opened her eyes a crack, hoping God would not mind. It came from behind, so she could not find out its source.

  By her side was her mother’s best silk umbrella, with its handle an ivory dog’s head, tiny eyes, and little straight-back ears, its minute dog collar and chain winding round the slim neck. Susan stroked it with one finger and softly rubbed it against her cheek. So clean, so cold, and all made of ivory. Africa, green parrots, crocodiles, tigers, black men with assegais hunting the great-eared monstrous elephants pounding through the jungle on legs like beech trunks. And then to be just a little umbrella in church, listening to ‘Our Father, which art in heaven’.

  Her mother nudged her and she shut her eyes again and prayed hard. Her conscience began to prick, she was not quite sure of so much forgiveness.

  ‘Thou shalt have none other gods but me,’ said the vicar. ‘Lord, have mercy upon us,’ began the congregation. A god was an idol, made of wood or stone. Her doll must be an idol, her legless wooden doll. A disconcerting thought which she pushed into the background.

  ‘Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image.’ There it was again; she loved Rose better than anything, and she was a graven image.

  ‘Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain,’ and only that morning she had said, ‘Goodness gracious’, which Becky said was swearing God be gracious. Nobody swore at Windystone, only her father sometimes said ‘Dang’ when he was very angry. She began to feel miserable.

  ‘Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath Day.’ Of course the manservant and maidservant had to milk the cows and fodder the horses, that was necessary work. Susan had early learned the distinction. Nobody ever read a newspaper or whistled a tune, except hymns, at Windystone on Sundays. For a moment she felt superior.

  ‘Honour thy father and thy mother.’ She was safe again.

  ‘Thou shalt do no murder.’ Oh, horrible word, haunting word! Charles Peace and Jack the Ripper! Why was everyone so calm when they said it? It struck terror in her heart.

  ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’

  That meant kissing anyone with a moustache. Never again should the miller kiss her when she called at the mill with her father.

  ‘Thou shalt not steal.’

  Susan’s conscience was getting out of control, swelling up into her throat till she thought she would be sick.

  She had stolen a lucky-bag, long ago, from the little shop at Raddle, when she waited and waited and nobody came. She never had a penny to spend, and there the paper bag lay, ‘Monster Lucky Bag’, with some others in a pile on the counter, asking her to open it.

  She hid it under her pinafore and when cross Old Mother Siddal at last came in, wiping the soapsuds off her hands, she had innocently asked for the pound of rice her mother wanted.

  Her face went so red she was afraid that Old Mother Siddal would guess and send her off to prison at once. But for once she smiled a vinegary smile at Susan and asked the price of eggs at Windystone.

  She felt sorry she had deceived the old woman, but it was too late, and she hurried off to open the surprise bag, feeling uncomfortable and hot. Everybody seemed to look at her that day.

  When Susan passed the policeman, whom she very seldom saw, for he had three villages to look after, he stared back at her wide, frightened eyes, and she thought he must know. She had opened the bag in the field by the wood and found a riddle, a spinning top and a box of lemon kali. But she had no heart to touch the things and burnt them when she got home. She thought God had forgiven her, but evidently He hadn’t, although she had prayed, and had even hidden a penny in the shop some weeks later when she had one. Tears came into Susan’s eyes and began to trickle down her face. She dare not wipe them away, and they fell plop! on her prayer book. She quickly rubbed her gloved finger over them, but her mother had seen.

  ‘What’s the matter, Susan?’ she whispered.

  Susan did not reply.

  ‘Have you a pain, my dear?’

  Susan nodded, the pain was in her heart.

>   Mrs Garland slipped half a chlorodyne lozenge from her bag into Susan’s hand, and the child sucked it with a consciousness of sin and misery.

  In the sermon she felt better; it was about the Prodigal Son. The vicar told the old story, but Susan’s thoughts embellished it and raced all round it like a puppy running up and down the field as his master plods faithfully on the footpath. She always liked the son, he had such an adventurous life. But husks were not nice, she felt sorry for him then. She had tasted bran mash and found it quite delicious, but the husks were dry and choked her as they must have choked the young man.

  Then he had returned to his father, wondering if he would be at home. But the old man had seen him a long way off and waved his handkerchief, and had run down by the orchard, through the field with the brambles and gorse bushes, unheeding the prickles, till he met him at the corner of the lane, where the holly bush stood guard. He flung his arms round his son and kissed and hugged him. The servants had killed the fatted calf, stuffed it with forcemeat, thyme and parsley from the garden, and served it with thick gravy. What a feast! How the young man had enjoyed it after the husks! And the ring on his finger too! Once Susan had worn a ring; it was from a cracker, a brass one her mother said, but she was sure it was gold because there was a ruby in it. But the ring stuck! Oh, the horrible feeling! She got quite hot as she thought of how she tried to pull it off, and Becky had said it would have to be cut off; she knew someone who had her finger cut off to remove a stuck ring. She pulled and pulled till the ruby fell out, but the ring would not move, and her finger became red and swollen.

  Susan’s horrified eyes gazed at the clergyman.

  Her mother held her hand in the cold water trough, in the icy water, and wonderful, off came the ring. Now it lay in cotton wool, in a pillbox, with the stone fastened in with pincers, but nothing, nothing would induce her to wear a ring again. She hoped the Prodigal Son knew about the cold water trough.

  What was he saying? ‘Now to God the Father.’ He had finished. Susan loved the hymn that followed, ‘Rock of ages, cleft for me’, and she sang with all her might, for she knew it by heart. Her eyes were fixed on the blues and purples in the stained-glass windows over the altar, but her thoughts were of a great rock in the middle of a raging sea, to which she clung with her fingers in a crack, like the picture of the lovely girl in the blue nightgown which came with the groceries at Christmas. She had asked her mother to have it framed, but it was still waiting for ‘Some rainy day when it’s fine’.

  Slowly the congregation filed out of church, and the organ rolled and thundered. Susan could now look at the gentry and admire their haughty stares. She wondered why they had such big noses and thick hair. She listened to the swish, swish of their skirts as they walked in front of her up the aisle, and she sniffed at the lovely smells coming from their clothes. She found the exotic smell in the dress of a strange young lady with lips like roses, and eyes as bold as brass, staring round the church.

  Susan sighed her admiration of this foreigner. Behind Sir Harry Vane sat two pews full of maids, demurely dressed in black, with small neat bonnets on their parted hair. They hurried out of church before the family, like a company of mice before a cat. Sir Harry Vane, as the Squire, the owner of many farms and most of the villages and land, had the right to turn round in church and to go up first at Holy Communion. Susan’s glance never ventured higher than his gold watch-chain and seals.

  There was Mrs Stone, the vicar’s wife, in a dress of mauve silk which swept singing over the flat tombstones in the aisle, tombstones which Susan scarcely dared tread upon lest she should insult the dead. Little ruches trimmed the edge, like furry violets. Long jet earrings hung from her small pointed ears. In front of the bodice at the top of the row of purple buttons she wore a brooch, a twist of hair behind a glass, like a picture with a gold frame. Susan tried to peep round at it, but the cold eyes of Mrs Stone kept her in her place.

  There were the girls from Dial Grange, with their hooked noses and long hair, thick as a horse’s tail. They wore blue coats all alike, and each had a little gold brooch, with her initials in pearls, at her throat. They walked out with their governess, each carrying twin prayer and hymn-books in red morocco cases.

  Then came Sir Harry’s housekeeper, a stout comfortable woman with a high bosom. She walked slowly and sedately as befitted her rank. The beads in her bonnet nodded and her silk crackled and shone. Susan and Mrs Garland walked down the hill among the graves with her. The little girl felt shy before such an important person and never spoke, but Mrs Garland chattered until they parted at the lodge gates.

  There were whirlpools in the River Seale, and if you fell in you would go down, down, twisting in a circle, caught fast by the water, and your body would never be found. Susan never went near the edge, even to gather the purple foam of wild geraniums in the hot summer days, or the tall spikes of loosestrife in the spring. She looked at the glittering water from the dusty lane and kept away, for Becky said water attracts you like a tree draws lightning, or a red rag a bull.

  Beauty spread its arms before her. The little waves rippled and danced with their leaf-boats sailing like the nautilus. Elms dipped their branches to kiss the water as it bubbled past, and threw their yellowing leaves across it like a shawl, but Susan kept her distance.

  She dawdled along behind her mother, picking a fern, a scrap of scarlet-leaved robin-run-in-the-hedge, a piece of moss with drinking cups for elves, stooping for a little stone which she rubbed on her stocking to see if the flecks were pure gold. All these she put in her capacious pocket, in the folds of her cashmere dress.

  A robin stammered out his little note, and then trilled into a cascade of song, as he watched her from a stump. A brown bird sang like water dropping, twinkling into a bowl from a tap, or into the stone trough at the back door.

  Flat clouds swam in the sky, and arrows of birds shot across. But Susan’s mind was full of foreboding, she was still distressed about her sins, and felt that, like Abraham, she must make a sacrifice, but whereas Abraham was stopped at the last moment she saw no chance of escape.

  She put away her prayer book and Sunday gloves in the carved and wreathed bureau in the hall, and hung her best hat and coat in the wardrobe. Then she sat down between her father and mother at the big table in the kitchen. Tom Garland, in his best suit of broadcloth, his broad silk tie and gold and pearl tiepin, sat at one end of the table, watching every movement, keeping an eye on Susan, and savouring the joint. He liked his food exactly and correctly done. The smoking sirloin of beef lay on a large willow-pattern dish in front of Mrs Garland. As she cut each slice Becky carried the plate to the stove, and added a large helping of potatoes, greens, and Yorkshire pudding from the black saucepans and dish, squatting on the hob like broody hens.

  At the bottom of the table were seats for Becky and the old man Joshua. Dan sat at the dresser on a high stool, squeezed next to the whips and guns. He had a square of oilcloth in front of him, and an ancient pewter saltcellar, a two-pronged fork and a bone-handled knife with a pointed tip, on which he dexterously carried peas, gravy and all small things, with the abandon and skill of a juggler.

  He sat staring at the lustre mugs and the satyrs on the jugs, waiting for his turn.

  ‘Say Grace, Susan,’ commanded Mrs Garland.

  ‘For what we are going to receive the Lord make us truly thankful,’ said Susan, shutting her eyes and holding up her two small hands over the tablecloth.

  ‘What sort of sermon did you have today, Margaret?’ asked Tom, as he attacked his piled-up plate and helped himself to horseradish sauce.

  ‘A very good one, about the Prodigal Son,’ answered Margaret. ‘But what do you think? He told us again how poor he is, and what a poor living it is. And there was Mrs Stone in a beautiful mauve dress. He said he had only four hundred pounds a year, and the vicarage. That’s all.’

  ‘Eh! That’s all, is it?’ said Tom Garland with a dry laugh. ‘That’s all.’

  Old Joshua, D
an, and Becky laughed too, and Susan joined in the merriment. Dan put down his knife and fork and guffawed so heartily he began to choke, and had to retire to the yard under Tom’s displeased stare.

  ‘I wish I had four hundred pounds a year coming in and all I had to do was to preach a sermon every Sunday,’ said Tom.

  ‘He does more than that,’ Margaret rebuked him. ‘He visits, you know, he goes to see the poor.’

  ‘And the rich too,’ said Tom coldly.

  ‘Yes, he’s going to dine at the Court today, Mrs Bunch told me.’

  ‘How many pheasants and partridges does he get a year from the Squire, I wonder? How many bunches of grapes? Eh, those parsons, they’re never content, they deserve to want.’

  Old Joshua joined in. ‘The Son of Man had not where to lay His head, and they grumble at four hundred pounds a year and a fine house free of rent, and all their coal found too!’

  Susan sat thinking of her doll. She loved it very much, and she told it everything, but it was a creature of wood. ‘Cast out every idol,’ said a voice inside her.

  Even the damson tart and cream did not raise her spirits.

  ‘What’s the matter, Susan? Where’s your tongue? Count your stones and see who you’ll marry.’

  ‘Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggarman.’

  ‘A beggarman,’ said Susan, so dolefully they all laughed, and she thought of the old man who came to the door with a sack on his back for rabbit skins. It wasn’t a cheerful prospect and she felt more unhappy than ever.

  When Becky was washing up, and Margaret had gone in the parlour with Sunday at Home, and Tom had lain down on the settle for his Sunday nap beside the hot fire, Susan crept quietly to the pantry where the doll lay in a wooden toy box, under the stone bench. She knelt on the sanded floor among the candles and jars of lard, and lifted it out.