The Country Child Read online

  She lay in the attic with the moonlight pouring in at the uncurtained window, making a pattern of elm leaves on the beamed ceiling, whilst the owls hunted overhead crying like babies, and the mice cowered in their holes.

  Once one flew through the window of the parlour bedroom which had been left open and forgotten. He broke a blue Wedgwood jug and swept a white-patterned bowl off the mantelpiece. Her father caught him the next morning as he sat sulkily on the old lavender wash-hand jug, his eyes blinking and his funny eyebrows upraised. What a mercy he had not broken that, her mother said, holding up her hands in consternation at the mess!

  They put him in the summerhouse. That was an exciting day for Susan. She felt as if he were a captive Golden Eagle who would carry off a lamb, when she looked at him through the little panes of glass, and he stared back at her.

  They took him bread and milk and a dead mouse in the mousetrap. But at night she heard his call Too-whoo-oo-oo and his mate answered from the wood. The calls grew more frequent, nearer, and she sat up in bed, listening, excited. She wondered if the wife had her round eyes glued to the window. Then the cries became faint and ceased, but the next morning there was no owl, only broken panes of glass.

  Still she heard him cry Too-whoo-oo when an arm shook her, and a voice cried in her ear, ‘Susan Garland. What did I say? Wake up, you naughty little girl.’

  Susan awoke in a fright. Strange faces were round her, people were laughing, she wasn’t in her own bed.

  ‘Stand on the form,’ said Miss Dahlia sternly, and Susan climbed up, disgraced utterly on her first day. She was tired, bewildered, and confused when the afternoon ended.

  The mistress held up a pin. ‘I must hear this pin drop before anyone goes home.’ Everybody held their breath, and the shuffles of little heavy boots ceased. The pin dramatically dropped with a tiny tinkle. School was surprisingly over and Susan was free.

  Her gloves were taken from her and her hat thrown in the road. She picked it up and dusted it, overwhelmed by the manners of rude little boys. If they came to her house she would set the dog on them she comforted herself. Her mother met her in the wood, but Susan was years older, secretive, puzzled by life, determined to escape from school at all costs.

  The next day she played truant. She stayed in the wood, hiding, and crept home after a few hours with a tale of a holiday. She pretended to be ill, and was kept at home and dosed with camomile and wormwood tea. She doubled back when she got beyond the orchard and slipped upstairs to her bedroom, where the sympathetic Becky fed her like a fugitive Royalist. She hid in a barn all day, braving the rats and darkness, sitting on a stone step with her skirts drawn tightly round her, a little ghost with no friend. They began to watch her enter the Dark Wood, but still she eluded them. Her desire was to find a hollow oak in which she could live during school hours, but although she searched and searched the big trees, like a woodpecker seeking a home, she never found a hole large enough to shelter her.

  But gradually she became used to school life. She made friends among the little girls, and adored Miss Jessie, as the custom was. The brown dress got shorter as she shot up, and at last it wore out with the rough treatment it received, and she was promoted to last year’s Sunday frock.

  So she learnt to sing-song like the other children, and to recite the Creed and the collects and Gray’s Elegy. She spent sunny afternoons learning ‘The Motherless Boy’, ‘The Blind Girl’, and ‘Casabianca’. She sewed little seams in pink cotton and blue, and knitted gloves and stockings. At playtime she danced round with other girls, singing:

  ‘There was a farmer had a dog,

  And his name was Bobby Bingo.

  B-i-n-g-o.

  B-i-n-g-o.

  B-i-n-g-o.

  And his name was Bobby Bingo.’

  and

  ‘I wrote a letter to my love

  And on the way I lost it.

  One of you has picked it up,

  And put it in your pocket,

  It isn’t you, it isn’t you, it isn’t you, it is you.’

  and

  ‘Oats and beans and barley grows,

  Neither you nor anyone knows,

  Neither you nor anyone knows,

  Where oats and beans and barley grows.

  As the farmer sows his seed,

  As he stands and takes his heed,

  He stamps his foot and claps his hand,

  And round he goes to view the land.

  Waiting for a partner, waiting for a partner,

  Waiting for a partner, so open the ring and take one in.

  Now you’re married you must obey,

  You must be true in all you say,

  You must be kind, you must be good,

  And help your wife to chop the wood.’

  She played ‘Here we come gathering nuts in May’, and ‘Oranges and Lemons’, and ‘I had a little Moppet’.

  She was warned against going near the pretty mill pond, covered with water buttercups, for Jinny Green-teeth lived there, just under the bright green scum, and she dragged little children down to the bottom who so much as dipped a finger among her flowers.

  She was told of the little boy who drank water from a trough at the side of the road, and swallowed a frog. It grew and grew in his inside, till he swelled like a balloon, and the frog hopped out of his mouth.

  She actually saw the little girl who was squinting when the wind changed, and her eyes got stuck, a strange cross-eyed infant.

  A dwarf went to school, a poor hunchbacked child who would never grow any bigger, but to Susan he was romantically associated with a princess in a glass coffin. She boasted of him at home and was proud to know him.

  She learned to wear an oak leaf on Royal Oak Day, lest she should be beaten with stinging nettles.

  She ran from the old witch, bent and muttering, who could put a spell over her with a glance of her evil eye, but she smiled and nodded to the poor idiot boy who walked along the roads singing a vague song and waving his arm in the air.

  Every day she became happier, every season brought its games: whips and tops, and marbles, blood-alleys and alley-taws, skipping ropes, and shuttlecocks and battledores, five stones, hopscotch and hoops, but every night she had the same anxious walk among boggarts and ghosties and giants and dwarfs.

  So her school education went on, but her true learning was at home, in the fields and woods, or in the kitchen after tea, when her mother recited ‘The Wind and the Sun’, ‘John Gilpin’ and ballads of Robin Hood and Dick Turpin, and Susan read her fourfold library.

  One evening she went out into the fields with her rope. The sun had dipped behind the far-away hill and it was too late to run up the fields to catch another glimpse of him. How often she had caught another minute of his red light and then another by racing up the steep hills after he had set, and finding him again. So she had climbed till she could go no higher, and watched his face slowly move below Boar Ridge. Then down she ran, long legs leaping, arms outstretched and the cold air filled her blood and blew through her body to the wraith inside.

  But now indigo shadows had crept up the valley from the river, up past the little hills, past the crag on which the farm stood, to the highest peaks, and the mysterious warm dusk filled the vast cup. From the fir trees came the cries of owls, and late rooks flapped across the pale green sky.

  Susan skipped slowly across the broad field path, smooth and worn by the constant passing of men to the far barns. The rope dropped from her fingers and dragged through the grass. She stood very still, with her head thrown back, searching the pale sky for the first star.

  She could feel the earth moving, a great majestic motion, the fields and farm, the woods and hills were sailing away through that limpid sky. She held her breath in wonder, she felt as if she floated up and up into that silvery dome above her. Then she saw her first star, a pinpoint deep in that sea of space. She lost it and found it again. Then another came out, and another, from nowhere. She stared at the roof of the world, and behold,
a star appeared. She began to count. They were all round her, the green sky had become radiantly darkly blue, the trees were black, the earth flew like a great bird.

  She counted till she was mazed, and a beam of light shone across the field from the house. It was the lamp in the kitchen. She turned and walked home.

  In bed she lay counting, hundreds and hundreds, every night more hundreds till she slept. Each day she went on, more and more, but the number never ended. They were more than the stars. So she got her first glimpse of infinity.

  5

  Serving Men

  The earth will not yield her riches without labour in those hilly districts where the soil is so thin that the bare bones of the world stick out like the ribs in a worn body. The spade strikes rock when it drives deep in the soil, and, after a storm, the lanes are beds of mountain streams, with no foothold for the scrambling, sweating horses.

  The air is fresh as a drink of spring water, cupped in the hand as it jets out of the earth in the fields and runs away to fill a stone trough. The grass is sweet and clean for the cattle, but the crops are light, they need constant care and the work is hard.

  Years go by, some with increase, but more with decrease, in wealth. There are bad years which break the farmer’s heart, times when Nature seems to oppose his every effort, and to thwart his will at every turn. Storms destroy the crops, late frosts kill the fruit, lightning strikes the cattle sheltering under the trees, long-continued rain spoils the hay and corn harvests, droughts burn up the fields, and disease lies in wait for the beasts.

  There are accidents, too, on these precipitous hillsides. A broken wall or a gap may mean death, and an open gate may bring mutilation. Cows lose their footing and fall down the rocky woods, a young colt gets kicked and spoilt by another horse, cattle stray and are poisoned by deadly weeds.

  But with unwearying patience the farmer starts again; mending, doctoring, bringing life out of death, sowing and reaping, he struggles with Nature.

  Such a man was Tom Garland. Born at Windystone, all his days spent under the sky, he was as much a part of the hillside as the trees and grass. He knew when a storm was brewing and sent the men to shut up the young things which could not look after themselves. He could smell rain afar, and knew the movements of the winds. He could build a wall with the great blocks of rough sandstone so that it was firm to stand the buffets of the mighty gales, and evenly regular to the eye.

  His animals were sleek and well fed, for they were always put first; no beast was kept waiting for its food and drink. His own movements were slow, his walk was that of a sailor who has to fight through the storms, his eyes were sailor’s eyes, too, blue and fixed on far horizons.

  He never hurried a beast, for he said, ‘Dumb creatures don’t always want to be in a swither and sweat like humans.’ His eyes darkened and his underlip stuck out ominously when he found a horse in a lather, or a cow laboured and panting.

  Joshua Taberner who helped him was an old farmer who had seen better days. He had been too simple, too trusting, too easy-going, so he had been cheated and robbed. Men had borrowed from him and never repaid, dealers had swindled him over sales, until he had to sell everything and leave his rose-bowered farm. Now he lived with relatives and friends, asking for nothing but a small wage and a bedroom. He preferred to stay at Windystone where he was independent, and he spent most of his time there.

  Susan greeted his clean rosy old face with a cry of happy welcome. His teeth had gone and his sunken mouth gave him a womanly look, a dimpled soft expression, which the child loved. He had a store of little jokes and old tales, and a fund of good humour and laughter. He sat next to Becky at the bottom of the table, below the big glass salt cellar, and he amused her and Susan with his anecdotes, all of which he began by clearing his throat, twinkling his eyes and saying, ‘I’ve heeard tell as how’.

  He loved flowers and trees and all animals. He knew the uses of herbs as well as Tom himself, and could make an excellent green salve for bruises, and tansy tea for Susan in the spring. He made an ointment for his own eyes from the white flowers of eyebright which Susan picked in the deserted quarries, and elderflower tea for Becky’s freckled face.

  He was a good gardener, too, and he and Tom made the three-cornered kitchen garden a wealth of fruit and flowers. He helped Tom in the veterinary work, for he was more reliable than Dan.

  But his hands trembled and each year he became more feeble. He walked along the fields Come-day, Go-day, gazing across the folds of the hills to where his own little farm with the roses and marigolds was now under the direction of a stranger. He was as slow as a funeral. Then there was his tongue which must be chattering all the time when Tom wanted peace and quietness. So after some months he went off for a visit to one of his daughters, a shrew who drove him back to the farm, which had missed him and welcomed him again.

  There were other helpers who came with the seasons. Eli Bunting, the rat-catcher, visited them twice a year, and brought a load of excitement with him. Work was suspended when he walked through the stile by the big spiked gate into the yard, and stood waiting with his little terrier Jack at his heels for the frantic barking to bring someone out.

  He opened his bag and held up three ferrets, the colour of old ivory. They shot their long flat heads sideways and stared with their pink eyes at the little crowd that gathered. Then he put them back again, solemnly protesting they had had no dinner for three days and were ravenous for rats and rabbits. He tied them up, and threw down the bag to squirm and wriggle on the grass.

  Tom Garland got his double-barrelled gun, old Joshua and Dan took heavy sticks and off they went to the stackyard and barns, where they waited whilst the pink-eyed beauties chased rats and rabbits out of staddles and piles of wood, from behind the rows of ladders and the golden haystacks and the cornrick, and the great bins in the shadowy barns.

  Sometimes Susan stood on a gate for safety, but Becky always kept out of the way.

  ‘I can’t abide a rat!’ she said, shivering, as she drew her full gathered skirts round her hips. ‘I wouldn’t go near not if it was ever so.’

  Eli brought his dinner in his pocket and ate it on the garden wall with a brimming mug of hot tea which Becky gave him. He admired the girl with her rosy cheeks and quick blushes, and she liked his fresh complexion, his nose beaked like an owl, and his gay, clear eyes, but he bantered until she returned to the house ‘fair mad with him’.

  Sometimes a ferret was lost and he waited till dusk. They fetched some spades from the barn and dug out the missing one, who was gorging at a blood feast in the earth. Sometimes it stayed away for days and Eli hung about waiting, but sometimes it never returned, and they knew that in the underground struggle the little tiger had been overcome.

  Ralph Swingler, the mole-catcher, was an older man, a nomad, roaming over many counties. It was said he slept under the hedges, for he walked many miles each day and turned up at dawn, when the men were milking and the fields were bathed in mist. He wore a moleskin waistcoat and a round pork-pie moleskin cap on his straight black hair. His high boots, leather leggings, and bright green handkerchief added to his outlandish strange appearance, so that he looked like a man from foreign parts.

  ‘The Moody-wap Man’, as they called him, carried a bunch of knobbly iron traps and a half-moon spade with which he dug out the varmints. He walked over the ground and set the traps with cunning, both in fields and garden, for the moles were everywhere, spoiling the grass for the cattle with their red-brown hills, undermining the garden’s vegetables and flowers.

  The next day he returned to dig out the little soft-furred moody-waps with their long pig-like snouts, lying dead in the tracks. There was something very appealing in the pink hands and half-closed fingers of the little beasts, as they lay in a pile waiting for him to carry them away. Susan and her father leaned over them, touching the skins with a finger, pondering their silkiness, but despising them as fur – as well have a cap made of rat skin, they thought. Abel Fern, the hedge
r and ditcher, had made a weskit of moleskin from skins he cured himself, but nobody at Windystone would touch the stuff.

  Every two months a tall grey-haired pedlar came to the door, bearing a basket of tinware on his head, bright nutmeg graters, kettles and dishes, scissors and colanders. Besides this he had a pack on his back containing coloured ribbons and cottons, combs, tapes, and all the odds and ends of the truckster.

  ‘The truckster’s here, the truckster’s here, missus,’ cried Becky, running upstairs to the bedrooms, or outside to the brewhouse to bring Margaret to look at his stock.

  The two women stood in the doorway fingering the contents of his pack, and Margaret always bought things she didn’t want for the sake of the old man. Becky fetched her worn leather purse and counted the pennies. She had no days off to go spending money in the villages, and here was her shop. She bargained for a new comb and a little looking-glass, a red ribbon – she was partial to red – and a bordered cotton handkerchief, which she intended to keep by her for her master’s birthday.

  Margaret made him a fresh brew of tea and spread slices of cold bacon on home-made bread for him to eat.

  ‘And how’s your wife?’ she asked, ‘and your children?’ and as often as not she gave him a few apples or pears, or a jam pasty to take for his family, who were grown-up and married, if she had considered. But she was sorry for the old man, walking the countryside, in all weathers, rheumatism and all, over the hills and along the endless roads, through lanes ankle-deep in mud, to the scattered cottages and homesteads, where perhaps he was turned away with no sale.

  Becky went to the barn for rabbit skins which hung, curing, on the warm walls. He turned them over and handed a fine bright sieve, or a strainer, in exchange.