The Ballad of John Clare
Read The Ballad of John Clare Online
Authors: Hugh Lupton
The Ballad of John Clare
For thirty years Hugh Lupton has been a central figure in the British storytelling revival. He tells myths, legends and folk-tales from many cultures but his particular passion is for the hidden layers of the English landscape and the stories and ballads that give voice to them. He has written several collections of folk-tales for children.
The Ballad of John Clare
is his first novel.
For Elizabeth McGowan, with love.
Dedalus Original Fiction in Paperback
…While the mice in the field are listening to the Universe, and moving in the body of nature, where every living cell is sacred to every other, and all are interdependent, the Developer is peering at the field through a visor, and behind him stands the whole army of madmen’s ideas, and shareholders, impatient to cash in on the world.
Ted Hughes
Rogation Sunday 1811
There is nothing of the parish of Helpston that I cannot see and hear. Like the bees whose skeps nestle against the churchyard wall and who have been busy in the April sun, I scatter myself across the parish and return at dusk burdened with happenstance.
And so it must be until he who keeps me from sleep joins his loam to mine.
At eight o’clock this morning the bells swung and filled the air with such sound as sundered the people of the parish from breakfast or kitchen or stable or yard and out to Butter Cross where Parson Mossop waited upon their coming. Almost every soul was there, for who among the hungry would not tread a few miles for the promise of meat and ale? And who among the prosperous would not gloat upon their charity?
The Turnills were there, the Crowsons, Closes, Wrights, Dolbys, Bains, Wormstalls, Bullimores, Royces, Samsons, Bellars, Farrars, Clares, Burbridges, Billings, Turners, Dyballs …every one of them buttoned up tight against the damp. The air was racked with sounds of coughing, of scolding mothers, murmured talk and stamping feet. There was a thin drizzle and the air was chill.
On the steps of the cross Jonathan Burbridge and Samuel Billings waited. Jonathan sat with his bass-viol enclosed entire in its canvas sack between his knees, only the spike jutting out beneath and stirring the wet turf at his feet. A few wood shavings, that any wife would have brushed away, clung to his beard, betraying that he had been at work upon the Sabbath. Sam Billings, who is as fat as Jonathan is lean, hammered wedges beneath the cords of the great bass drum that had grown slack with the dampness of the air. He looked up from time to time at the gathering crowd, his eyes shrewd and blue as corn-flowers.
Then Dick Turnill pushed forward from the crowd and sat between them, screwing together the three parts of his flute and blowing it clear.
Parson Mossop pulled the watch from his pocket, studied it, shook his head and slipped it back. He whispered to Sam:
“You promised me the full village band Mr Billings, and there are but three of you.”
Sam turned his pink face to the parson, frank as the full moon:
“They’ll come sir, I give you my word, they’ll come.”
The clock was creeping upon the quarter hour when they came, all three at once.
“Here are your fiddles, sir.”
“Ah,” said Parson Mossop. “Three sheep that have wandered from the fold. But no doubt they can bleat as well as any.”
Leading the way came Old Otter, his white beard spread square as a spade across his horn-buttoned jerkin, bright-eyed as a robin. He had the smell of an old ham that has been long smoked in the chimney. He stepped down the street jaunty as a jackanape, his fiddle tucked under his arm. Behind him trailed the other two who had tried to match him pot for pot the night before. John Clare and Wisdom Boswell dragged their feet up Woodgate, past the Bluebell towards the waiting congregation.
The curled crown of John’s head, lowered as though a little heavy for its neck, fell short of Wisdom’s shoulder. Broad shouldered, high of forehead, shaped a little as a circus dwarf though with legs that are in proportion and comely, John stands dimute and small, being some five feet tall from head to foot. His mouth is full and red and wet as though he would lift the rim of the world to his lips and gulp it down. Few in the village can get the measure of him. He is bookish and solitary and cannot seem to set his hand to any trade. One minute he will be muttering to himself and crouching beneath a hedge or inside a hollow dotterel scribbling onto a scrap that he holds against the crown of his hat, the next he will be picking a quarrel with some village Hickathrift. Around his neck he was wearing a scarf as yellow as gorse.
Wisdom Boswell cut a very different figure. Dark where John is fair, thin where John is stocky, tall where John is squat. He has the restless, hungry, gangling stance of an unbroken colt. His sharp, high cheek-bones are softened by a dark down that has never known a razor. He is one of the Boswell crew that camps on Emmonsales Heath, and as close a friend as John has got. Though he’s seen no more than seventeen winters there’s more he could tell of the roads and lanes that snake beyond the parish bound than most who have lived here a lifetime. But such knowledge counts for little. He and his kind are considered little better than vermin by most in the village, for even the poorest of the poor know their place and must find some soul to hold in greater contempt. Wisdom, though, because he can scrape such a reel from his fiddle as’d set the dead to cutting capers, has won a place in the village band.
John and Wisdom stepped gingerly up to Butter Cross, their bedraggled coats drawn across their shoulders, their fiddles held beneath. They were greeted with a tutting and a muttering and a shaking of heads from the waiting crowd.
Bob Turnill whispered to his wife:
“There’s Parker’s boy going to the devil again, and keeping company with tinkers.”
Parson Mossop nodded to the churchwardens, who tapped the stone of Butter Cross with the foot of the processional cross. Sam Billings began to beat a steady measure from his drum. The bells fell silent and the congregation made its way along West Street following parson and churchwardens towards the open fields. Each kept to his own. Farmers walked ahead with their wives or aged parents on their arms. Tradesmen walked with their families. Apprentices and housemaids bantered and gave each other the eye. There were babes in arms and toddlers clutching mothers’ skirts. There were children squabbling and laughing and weaving in and out of the crowd, some bare-footed and others with shoes to their feet. Labourers and their families came next. Those with a few farthings to spare had brightened their working smocks with ribbons or printed cotton scarves to their bonnets or throats.
Last of all came the parish paupers, the old and sick, some with their feet bound with rags, eager for the promise of food. They clicked and clacked their sticks and crutches, they coughed and cursed and called upon the rest to slow down. When the village houses were left behind they broke from the procession and turned away from the crowd. They made their hobbling, shuffling way straight to Snow Common to wait upon the Rogation feast.
The rest of the procession followed the road westwards, with Heath Field lands all fallow to the south and speckled with sheep and cattle. To the north the long furlongs of Lolham Bridge Field, with their new growth of wheat and barley, made a patchwork of dark and paler greens.
When King Street came into view the children - all at once - surged forwards with a sudden shout and raced towards the meer-stone that marks the parish bound. The first of them to beat the bound and strike head to stone receives some sweet token. They ran full tilt, their heads back, gasping at the air. The little ones were quickly left behind. It was Tom Dolby who first butted the stone and he will not forget it, for he was rubbing his head still when Mrs Bullimore caught up with him and popped the sugar plum between his lips that made all well again.
The churchwardens tapped their cross against the stone and Parson Mossop lifted his Bible and read from the book of Joel:
“Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field: for the pastures of the wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit …and the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with wine and oil … and ye shall eat in plenty and be satisfied.”
“Ay,” whispered Parker Clare, “Ay, if you be a parson.”
“Shush.” Ann Clare put her hand across his mouth.
“We will sing psalm one hundred and four.”
High above the parson’s head a lark spilled its melody out upon the air. The band, all but Wisdom Boswell who knows nothing of hymns or psalms, lifted their instruments and played the opening phrase. The crowd broke into song.
A little apart from the rest of the congregation stood a cluster of farmers with the breakfasted look of those that keep a well-stocked larder. There was John Close, churchwarden, and his wife and daughters. There were Mr and Mrs Bull, Ralph Wormstall, churchwarden also, with his wizened mother. And there was the recently widowed Mrs Elizabeth Wright and her brother Will Bloodworth. All sang with heads thrown back as though each word might bring profit pushing up from the quickening earth. Will Bloodworth, though, is no farmer. He is a keeper of the game at the Milton estate, visiting his sister this Sabbath, and dressed in the livery of the Earl of Fitzwilliam, a claret-coloured frock coat with crimson lining. He stood in contrast to the brown and lawn jackets of the farmers with their cocked hats. His clear tenor rang out above the other voices with the easy confidence of one who believes the world to be in his thrall and pliable to his will, though he was by far the poorer member of the company.
Wisdom Boswell had settled himself on a stile. He pulled a lump of yellow rosin from his pocket and set to rubbing it up and down his fiddle bow. A cluster of children gathered round him, a little shy for they had been told over and over to steer clear of gypsies. He looked down at them and grinned. Tom Dolby took courage, he came closer and reached out his arm, he uncurled his fingers. He was holding a stone with a hole clean through the heart of it. He offered it to Wisdom and whispered:
“Riddy Riddy Wry Rump.”
Wisdom took it. He knew the game.
“Have you got any string?”
“Ay.”
Tom handed him a piece of twine. Wisdom threaded it through the stone and tied it tight. He winked at Tom:
“Who?”
Tom Dolby turned back to his friends. They stood in a circle their arms about each other’s shoulders whispering fiercely. Then Tom broke away. He pointed with his finger.
“Him!”
Will Bloodworth was standing a few paces from them, his back towards the stile. He was holding the hymnal high for his sister to read.
Wisdom Boswell knotted the end of the twine into a loop. The children watched as he crept behind Will as quiet and subtle as a cat. He knelt on the grass and gently drew the loop over the two tin buttons at the back of Will’s jacket. Then slowly he lowered the stone so that the weight of it would not be suddenly felt. The children smothered their laughter with the backs of their hands. The twine was hanging like a tail, the stone just behind Will Bloodworth’s knees. Wisdom edged away from him and back to the stile.