Lark Rise to Candleford (37 page)
The local gentlepeople promenaded the ground in parties:
stout, red-faced squires, raising their straw hats to mop their foreheads; hunting
ladies, incongruously garbed in silks and ostrich-feather boas; young girls in
embroidered white muslin and boys in Eton suits. They had kind words for
everybody, especially for the poor and lonely, and, from time to time, they
would pause before some sight and try to enter into the spirit of the other beholders;
but everywhere their arrival hushed the mirth, and there was a sigh of relief
when they moved on. After dancing the first dance they disappeared, and 'now we
can have some fun', the people said.
All this time Edmund and Laura, with about two hundred other
children, had been let loose in the crowd to spend their pennies and watch the fun.
They rode on the wooden horses, swung in the swing-boats, pried around coconut
shies and shooting booths munching coconut or rock or long strips of black
liquorice, until their hands were sticky and their faces grimed.
Laura, who hated crowds and noise, was soon tired of it and
looked longingly at the shady trees and woods and spinneys around the big open space
where the fair was held. But before she escaped a new and wonderful experience
awaited her. Before one of the booths a man was beating a drum and before him
two girls were posturing and pirouetting. 'Walk up! Walk up!' he was shouting.
'Walk up and see the tightrope dancing! Only one penny admission. Walk up! Walk
up!' Laura paid her penny and walked up, as did about a dozen others, the man
and girls came inside, the flap of the tent was drawn, and the show began.
Laura had never heard of tightrope dancing before and she was
not sure she was not dreaming it then. The outer tumult beat against the frail walls
of the tent, but within was a magic circle of quiet. As she crossed to take her
place with the other spectators, her feet sank deep into sawdust; and, in the
subdued light which filtered through the canvas, the broad, white, pock-marked
face of the man in his faded red satin and the tinsel crowns and tights of the
girls seemed as unreal as a dream.
The girl who did the tightrope dancing was a fair,
delicate-looking child with grey eyes and fat, pale-brown ringlets, a great
contrast to her dark, bouncing gipsy-looking sister, and when she mounted to
the rope stretched between two poles and did a few dance steps as she swayed gracefully
along it, Laura gazed and gazed, speechless with admiration. To the simple
country-bred child the performance was marvellous. It came to an end all too
soon for her; for not much could be done to entertain a house which only
brought a shilling or so to the box office; but the impression remained with
her as a glimpse into a new and fascinating world. There were few five-barred
gates in the vicinity of Laura's home on which she did not attempt a little
pirouetting along the top bar during the next year or two.
The tightrope dancing was her outstanding memory of the great
Queen's Jubilee; but the merrymaking went on for hours after that. All the way home
in the twilight, the end house party could hear the popping of fireworks behind
them and, turning, see rockets and showers of golden rain above the dark
tree-tops. At last, standing at their own garden gate, they heard the roaring
of cheers from hundreds of throats and the band playing 'God save the Queen'.
They were first home and the hamlet was in darkness, but the
twilight was luminous over the fields and the sky right round to the north was still
faintly pink. A cat rubbed itself against their legs and mewed; the pig in the
sty woke and grunted a protest against the long day's neglect. A light breeze
rustled through the green corn and shivered the garden bushes, releasing the
scent of stocks and roses and sunbaked grass and the grosser smells of cabbage
beds and pigsties. It had been a great day—the greatest day they were ever
likely to see, however long they lived, they were told; but it was over and
they were home and home was best.
After the jubilee nothing ever seemed quite the same. The old
Rector died and the farmer, who had seemed immovable excepting by death, had to
retire to make way for the heir of the landowning nobleman who intended to farm
the family estates himself. He brought with him the new self-binding reaping
machine and women were no longer required in the harvest field. At the hamlet
several new brides took possession of houses previously occupied by elderly
people and brought new ideas into the place. The last of the bustles
disappeared and leg-o'-mutton sleeves were 'all the go'. The new Rector's wife
took her Mothers' Meeting women for a trip to London. Babies were christened
new names; Wanda was one, Gwendolin another. The innkeeper's wife got in cases
of tinned salmon and Australian rabbit. The Sanitary Inspector appeared for the
first time at the hamlet and shook his head over the pigsties and privies. Wages
rose, prices soared, and new needs multiplied. People began to speak of 'before
the jubilee' much as we in the nineteen-twenties spoke of 'before the war',
either as a golden time or as one of exploded ideas, according to the age of
the speaker.
And all the time boys were being born or growing up in the
parish, expecting to follow the plough all their lives, or, at most, to do a little
mild soldiering or go to work in a town. Gallipoli? Kut? Vimy Ridge? Ypres?
What did they know of such places? But they were to know them, and when the
time came they did not flinch. Eleven out of that tiny community never came
back again. A brass plate on the wall of the church immediately over the old
end house seat is engraved with their names. A double column, five names long,
then, last and alone, the name of Edmund.
OVER TO CANDLEFORD
Part Two of the trilogy "Lark Rise to
Candleford"
FLORA THOMPSON
First published 1941
XXII Kind Friends
and Relations
'Come the summer, we'll borrow old Polly and the spring cart
from the "Wagon and Horses" and all go over to Candleford', their
father said, for the ten-millionth time, thought Laura. Although he had said it
so often they had never been. They had not been anywhere farther than the
market town for the Saturday shopping.
Once, when some one asked them how long they had lived in
their cottage, Laura had replied, 'Oh, for years and years,' and Edmund had
said 'Always'; but his always was only five years and her years and years were
barely seven. That was why, when their mother told them that the greatest
mistake in life is to be born poor, they did not realize that they themselves
had made that initial blunder. They were too young and had no means of comparison.
Their home was one of a group of small cottages surrounded by
fields, three miles from the nearest small town and fifty from a city. All
around was rich, flat farming country, which, at the end of a lifetime,
remained obstinately in the memory as stretch after stretch of brown-ribbed
ploughland patterned with quickset hedges and hedgerow elms. That picture was
permanent; others could be called up at will, of acres of young green wheat
swept by chasing cloud-shadows; of the gold of harvest fields, or the billowing
whiteness of snow upon which the spoor of hares and foxes could be traced from
hedgerow to hedgerow.
On a slight rise in the midst of this brown or green or
whiteness stood the hamlet, a huddle of grey stone walls and pale slated roofs
with only the bushiness of a fruit-tree or the dark line of a yew hedge to
relieve its colourlessness. To a passer-by on the main road a mile away it must
often have appeared a lone and desolate place; but it had a warmth of its own,
and a closer observer would have found it as seething with interest and
activity as a molehill.
All the cottages in the group were occupied by poor families.
Some, through old age, or the possession of a larger family than ordinary, had
a little less, and two or three in more favourable circumstances had a little
more comfort than their neighbours, but in every house money was scarce.
If any one wanted to borrow, they knew better than to ask for
more than sixpence, and if the expression with which their request was received
was discouraging they would add hurriedly: 'If you can't manage it, I think
tuppence'd see me through.' The children were given halfpennies or even
farthings to spend on sweets when the travelling grocer's van called. For even
the smaller sum they got enough hardbake or peppermint rock to distend their
cheeks for hours. It took the parents months to save up to buy a young pig for
the sty or a few score of faggots for the winter. Apart from the prudent, who
had these small hoards, people were penniless for days towards the end of the
week.
But, as they were fond of saying, money isn't everything.
Poor as they were, every one of the small cottages, so much alike when seen
from the outside, had for its inmates the unique distinction of being 'our
place' or 'ho-um'. After working in the pure cold air of the fields all day,
the men found it comforting to be met by, and wrapped round in, an atmosphere
of chimney-smoke and bacon and cabbage-cooking; to sink into 'feyther's chair'
by the hearth, draw off heavy, mud-caked boots, take the latest baby on their
knee and sip strong, sweet tea while 'our Mum' dished up the tea-supper.
The elder children were either at school all day or lived out
of doors in fine weather; but, as their mothers said, they knew which house to
go to when they felt hungry, and towards dusk they made for their supper and
bed like homing pigeons, or rabbits scurrying to their burrow.
To the women, home was home in a special sense, for
nine-tenths of their lives were spent indoors. There they washed and cooked and
cleaned and mended for their teeming families; there they enjoyed their
precious half-hour's peace with a cup of tea before the fire in the afternoon,
and there they bore their troubles as best they could and cherished their few
joys. At times when things did not press too heavily upon them they found pleasure
in re-arranging their few poor articles of furniture, in re-papering the walls
and making quilts and cushions of scraps of old cloth to adorn their dwelling
and add to its comfort, and few were so poor that they had not some treasure to
exhibit, some article that had been in the family since 'I dunno when', or had
been bought at a sale of furniture at such-and-such a great house, or had been
given them when in service.
Such treasures in time gained a reputation of fabulous value.
Bill's grandfather had refused an offer of twenty pounds for that corner
cupboard, or grandfather's clock, said one; another that a mysterious gentleman
had once told her that the immense rubies and emeralds which studded a shabby
old metal photograph frame were real stones. She was always saying that she
would take it to a jeweller at Sherton and get it valued, 'come Fair time', but
she never did. Like the rest of us, she knew better than to put her favourite
illusion to the test.
None of the listeners cast doubt upon the value of such
treasures. It would not have been 'manners', and, besides, nearly everybody had
got some article with a similar legend. At home, the children's father laughed
and said that as none of the Braby family had ever had more than twenty
shillings at one time in their lives an offer of twenty pounds would soon have
been snapped at; and as to Mrs. Gaskin's rubies and emeralds, anybody with half
an eye could see that they came from the same mine as the stuff used to make
penny tumblers.
'What's the odds, if thinking so makes them happy?' asked his
wife.
They were a hardworking, self-reliant, passably honest
people. 'Providence helps them as has got the sense to look out for
theirselves' was a motto often quoted. They had not much original wit, but had
inherited a stock of cheerful sayings which passed as such. A neighbour called
in to help move a heavy piece of furniture would arrive spitting on his palms
and saying, 'Here I be, ready an' willin' to do as much for half a crown as I
'ud for a shillin'.' Which mild joke, besides the jumbled arithmetic, had the
added point of the fantastic sum suggested as a reward. A glass of beer, or the
price of one, was the current payment for that and some more considerable
services.