Lark Rise to Candleford (42 page)

Neither story-telling, singing, nor talking could go on for
ever. The time always came, and always came too soon for them, when their
mother would whisk them off to bed, 'For your father cannot be much longer
now,' and stay to hear them say their prayers, 'Our Father' and 'Gentle Jesus',
then 'Gawbless dear Mammy an' Daddy an' dear little brother [or sister] an' all
kind friends an' alations… .'

Laura was not sure who the friends were, but she knew that
the relations included the Candleford aunts, her father's sisters, who sent
them nice parcels at Christmas, and the cousins whose wardrobes she inherited.
The aunts were kind—she knew that, for when she opened the parcels her mother
would say, 'It's very kind of Edith, I'm sure,' or, more warmly, although the
parcel might not be as exciting, 'If ever there was a good kind soul in this
world, it's your Aunt Ann.'

Candleford was a wonderful place. Her mother said there were
rows of shops there, simply stuffed with toys and sweets and furs and muffs and
watches and chains and other delightful things. 'You should see them at
Christmas,' she said, 'all lit up like a fair. All you want then is a purseful
of money!' The Candleford people had pursefuls of money, for wages were higher
there, and they had gas to light them to bed and drew their water out of taps,
instead of up from a well. She had heard her parents say so. 'What he wants is
a job at some place such as Candleford,' her father would say of some promising
boy. 'He'd do himself some good there. Here, there's nothing.' This surprised
Laura, for she had thought there were many exciting things about the hamlet.
'Is there a brook there?' she asked, rather hoping there was not, and she was
told there was a river, which was wider than any brook and had a stone bridge,
instead of a rickety old plank to cross by. A magnificent place, indeed, and
she hoped soon to see it. 'Come the summer' her father had said, but the summer
had come and gone again and nothing more had been said about borrowing Polly
and the spring cart. Then, always, something or other happened to push the idea
of Candleford to the back of her mind. One dreary November the pigs were ill.
They refused to eat and became so weak they had to lean against the rails of
their sties for support. Some of them died and were buried in quicklime, which
was said to burn up their bodies in no time. Horrible thought to be dead and
buried in quicklime and soon nothing left of what had been so much alive! Her
mother said it was a far worse thought that the poor people had lost their pigs,
after paying for their food all those months, too, and when their own pigs were
killed—both had escaped—she was more than usually generous with the plates of
liver and fat and other oddments always sent to neighbours as a compliment.
Many of the people who had lost their pigs still owed for the food. They had
depended upon being able to pay for that in kind when the animal was fattened.
One man took to poaching and was caught and sent to prison, then every one had
to take half loaves and small screws of tea and sugar to help his wife to keep
the home going, until the whisper went round that she had three different lots
of butter in the house, given by different people to whom she had pleaded
poverty, and that the J.P. himself had sent a sovereign. People looked sourly
upon her after that was known, and said, 'Crime seems to pay nowadays.'

Sometimes, instead of saying, 'Here there's nothing,' her
father would say, 'Here there's nobody,' meaning nobody he thought worth
considering. But Laura never tired of considering the hamlet neighbours, and,
as she grew older, would listen to, and piece together, the things they said
until she had learned quite a lot from them. She liked the older women best,
such as Old Queenie, Old Sally, and Old Mrs. Prout, old countrywomen who still
wore sun-bonnets and stayed in their own homes and gardens and cared not at all
about what was in fashion and very little for gossip. They said they did not
hold with gadding about from house to house. Queenie had her lacemaking and her
beehives to watch; Old Sally her brewing and her bacon to cure; if anybody
wanted to see them, they knew where to find them. 'Crusty old dames', some of
the younger women called them, especially when one of them had refused to lend
them something. To Laura they seemed like rocks, keeping firm in their places,
while those about them drifted around, always on the look-out for some new
sensation. But only a few were left who kept to the old country ways, and the
other women were interesting, too. Although they wore much the same kind of
clothes and lived in similar houses, no two of them were really alike.

In theory all the hamlet women were on friendly terms with
each other, at least as far as 'passing the time of day' when they met, for they
had an almost morbid dread of giving offence and would go out of their way to
be pleasant to other women they would rather not have seen. As Laura's mother
said: 'You can't
afford
to be on bad terms with anybody in a small place
like this.' But in that, as in more sophisticated societies, there was a
tendency to form sets. The members of the slightly more prosperous of these,
consisting mostly of the newly married and those of the older women whose
children were grown up and off their hands, would change into a clean apron in
the afternoon and stay quietly at home, sewing or ironing, or put on their hats
and go out to call upon their friends, carefully knocking at the door before
they lifted the latch. The commoner kind burst hatless into their neighbour's
houses to borrow something or to relate some breathless item of news, or they
would spend the afternoon shouting it across gardens or from doorsteps, or hold
long, bantering conversations with the baker, or the oilman, or any one else
who happened to call and found themselves unable to get away without downright
rudeness.

Laura's mother belonged to the first category and those who
came to her house were mostly her own special friends. They had a few other
callers, however, and those Laura thought far more interesting than young Mrs.
Massey, who was always making baby's clothes, although at that time she had no
baby (Laura thought afterwards, when a baby arrived for her, it was a lucky
coincidence), or Mrs. Hadley, who was always talking about her daughter in
service, or Mrs. Finch, who was 'not too strong' and had to be given the best
seat, nearest the fire. The only interesting thing about her was the little
blue bottle of smelling-salts she carried, and that ceased to interest after
she had handed it to Laura, telling her to give a good sniff, then laughed when
the tears ran down her cheeks. Not at all Laura's idea of a joke!

She liked Rachel much better. Although never invited, she
would drift in sometimes, 'just to have a tell', as she expressed it. Her
'tells' were worth hearing, for she knew everything that happened, 'and a good
lot more, too', her enemies said. 'Ask Rachel,' some one would say with a shrug
if the whole of the facts of a happening were not known, and Rachel, when
appealed to, if she, too, were not quite sure, would say in her loud, hearty
voice, 'Well to tell the truth, I haven't ever quite got to the bottom of that
business. But I 'ull know, that I 'ull, for I'll go to th' fountain-head and
ax.' And off she would march with all the good-natured effrontery imaginable to
ask Mrs. Beaby if it was 'a fac' that her young Em was leaving her place before
her year was up, or Charley's mother if it was true that he and Nell had
quarrelled coming home from church last Sunday, and had they made it up, or
were they still 'off at hooks', as they called an estrangement.

When Rachel dropped in for a tell, others were sure to
follow. Laura, lying on her stomach on the hearthrug with a picture book
propped up before her, or cutting out patterns from paper in a corner, would
hear their voices rising and falling or dropping to a whisper when some item
they were discussing was not considered suitable for children's ears. She would
sometimes long to ask questions, but dare not, for it was a strict rule there that
children should be seen, but not heard. It was better not even to laugh when
something funny was said, for that might call attention to oneself and some one
might say: 'That child's gettin' too knowin'. I hope she ain't goin' to turn
out one of them forrard sort, for I can't abide 'em.' At that her mother would
bridle and say that, far from being forward, she was rather young for her age,
and as to being knowing, she didn't suppose she had heard what was said, but
had laughed because they were laughing. At the same time, she took care to send
Laura upstairs, or out into the garden for something, when she thought the
conversation was taking an unsuitable turn.

Sometimes one of them would let fall a remark about the vague
far-distant days before the children were born. 'My ole gran-fer used to say
that all the land between here and the church wer' left by will to th' poor o'
th' parish in the old times; all common land of turf and fuzz 'twas then; but
'twer' all stole away an' cut up into fields,' and another would agree, 'Yes,
so I've allus heard.'

Sometimes one of them would bring out some surprising saying,
as Patty Wardup did when the rest of the company were discussing Mrs. Eames's
fur cape: she couldn't have bought it and it certainly did not grow upon her
back, yet she had appeared in it last Sunday at church, and not so much as a
word to anybody as to how she had got it. True, as Mrs. Baker suggested, it did
look something like a coachman's shoulder tippet—dark, thick fur, bearskin,
they called it—and she had once said she had a brother who was a coachman
somewhere up country. Then Patty, who had been pensively twisting her doorkey
between her fingers and taking no part in the conversation, said quietly: 'The
golden ball rolls to everybody's feet once in a lifetime. That's what my Uncle
Jarvis used to say and I've seen it myself, over and over.'

What golden ball? And who was her Uncle Jarvis? And what had
a golden ball to do with Mrs. Eames's fur tippet? No wonder they all laughed
and said, 'She's dreaming as usual!'

Patty was not a native of those parts, but had come there
only a few years before as housekeeper to an elderly man whose wife had died.
As was the custom when no relative was available, he had applied to the Board
of Guardians for a housekeeper and Patty had been selected as the most suitable
inmate of the workhouse at the time. She was a plump little woman with pale
brown, satin-sleek hair and mild blue eyes, well set off on her arrival by the
bunch of forget-me-nots in her bonnet. How she had come to be in the workhouse
was a mystery, for she was still in the forties, able-bodied, and evidently
belonging to a slightly higher stratum of society than her new employer. She
told her story to no one and no one asked her for it. 'Ax no questions and
you'll be told no lies, although you may hear a few without axing' was the
hamlet motto. But she was generally acknowledged to be 'superior', for did she
not plait her hair in fives every day, instead of in threes all the week and in
fives on Sunday, and exchange her white apron after dinner for a small black
satin one with beaded trimming? She was a good cook, too. Amos was lucky. On
the very first Sunday after she arrived she made a meat pudding with a crust so
light a puff of wind would have blown it away and with thick, rich gravy that
gushed out in a stream when the knife was stuck into it. Old Amos said the very
smell made his mouth water and began inquiring how soon after his wife's death
it would be decent to put up the banns. It was tacitly understood that such
engagements would lead to marriage.

But she did not marry Old Amos. He had a son—Old Amos and
Young Amos to the hamlet—and Young Amos got in his proposal first and was
accepted. The hamlet women did not hold, as they said, with the wife being
older than the husband and Patty was a good ten years older than her intended;
but they thought Young Amos had done well for himself, especially when,
immediately before the wedding, a cartload of furniture arrived, together with
a trunk of clothes which Patty had somehow managed to save from the wreck of
her fortunes and hide up somewhere.

They had already thought Patty was superior and they were
sure of it when it became known that the furniture included a feather-bed, a
leather-covered couch with chairs to match and a stuffed owl in a glass case.
Somehow they learned, or perhaps Young Amos told them, for he was inclined to
be boastful, that Patty had been married before—to a publican, if you please!
And then to come down to the workhouse, poor thing! But what a mercy she'd had
the wit to hide up her good things. If she hadn't, the Guardians would have had
them.

Patty and Amos were a model couple when they went to the
market town to shop on a Saturday night, Patty in her black silk with flounces,
her good Paisley shawl and her ivory-handled umbrella, rolled up in its shiny
black macintosh case to preserve the silk cover. But, gradually, another side
of the picture emerged. Patty was fond of her glass of stout. Nobody blamed her
for that, for it was well known she could afford it and she must have been used
to it in her public-house days. Presently it was noticed that on their
marketing nights Amos and Patty came later and later from town, and then, one
sad night, somebody passed them on the road and reported that Patty had had so
many glasses of stout, or of something stronger, that it was as much as Amos
could do to coax her along. Some said he was carrying her. That accounted for
the workhouse, they said, and they waited for Amos to begin beating her. But he
never did, nor did he ever mention her weakness or complain about her to
anybody.

Her lapses occurred only at week-ends and she was not noisy
or quarrelsome, only helpless. The hamlet would be in darkness and most of the
people in bed when they stole home silently and Amos carried Patty upstairs. He
may even have thought that none of the neighbours knew of his wife's failing.
If so, it was a vain hope. It sometimes seemed as if the very hedges had eyes
and the roadway ears, for, next morning, the whisper ran round as to which
public-house Patty had favoured, the nature and number of her drinks, and how
far she had got on her homeward way before her potations overcame her. But if
Amos did not mind, why should other folks? 'Twas not as if she'd made a beast
of herself in public. So Patty and Amos, with that one reservation, were still
looked upon as a model couple.