The Ballad of John Clare (2 page)

But though Will had seen nothing, his sister had. Mrs Elizabeth Wright had watched Wisdom from the corner of her eye and seemed to take little pleasure in what she saw.

As soon as the psalm was spent John Clare and Old Otter struck up ‘Jockey to the Fair’. Sam Billings beat his drum in time. Dick Turnill blew his flute, his parents frowning that he should have fallen so far into the clutches of mammon as to know such a tune, let alone blow it upon the Sabbath. Jonathan Burbridge sawed his bass viol. And Wisdom lifted his fiddle to his shoulder and joined them. The churchwardens held up the cross and set off striding towards Lolham Bridge, the congregation trailing behind. The rain had eased and the warm April wind seemed to have blown away all aches and cares.

Will Bloodworth pulled a little clay pipe from his pocket and filled it from his pouch. He took a tinder box and struck flint to iron. Soon he was puffing smoke and smiling, the pipe clenched between his teeth, with that tight drawn smile of a man who enjoys his tobacco. His sister took his arm and they joined the crowd. The children had been waiting for their moment. They began to dance behind him:

“Riddy Riddy Wry Rump

Riddy Riddy Wry Rump!”

Will strode on all innocent that he was the butt of their laughter.

“Riddy Riddy Wry Rump!”

Then his sister tugged his arm. He stopped. She leaned across and whispered into his ear. The children held their breath and watched as he reached behind himself. His fingers closed around the twine. He lifted the stone into his hand. Suddenly they were dancing round him again:

“Riddy Riddy Wry Rump!”

He pulled the pipe from his mouth and turned. There was no easy smile on his features now:

“Which one of you little varmints has made a mock of me?”

The children scattered and threaded through the crowd, soon they were running ahead. There had been something in the measure of those whispered words that had told them their game was over. His sister shook her head:

“’Twas none of them Will.” She said, “’Twas the gypsy whelp. I saw him with my own eyes.”

The band were still playing at the meer-stone. Will looked back towards Wisdom Boswell who drew his bow across the strings of his fiddle mindless of all but the swelling melody that filled the air. A shadow fell across Will Bloodworth’s face. He pushed the stone into his pocket, turned on his heel and strode on in silence.

*******

All morning I followed the village congregation as it circled the bounds of Helpston as though it edged the very rim of the world. Every sod they trod I know as familiar as my own face, more so since flesh has folded into clay. With scripture and song, with tune and meer-stone and sugared plums they came to Lolham Bridge and followed the stream that skirts the fen. Where the stream marks the bound they threw sweets into the water and the children plunged in, for now the sun shone and the air was sweet as the very first morning. Then all of a straggle they came round by Green Dyke and Rhyme Dyke and Woodcroft Field, with Glinton spire pricking the sky beyond, where the furlongs are sprouting with beans whose green leaves break the loam and swallow the sunlight. And as I followed their compass I was at the edge of all knowledge, for beyond the parish the world begins to sink away into reaches and distances that are beyond my naming.

Meer-stone followed meer-stone and the church clock had long struck noon when the crowd reached Snow Common. The parish paupers were standing waiting, shivering by the lane-side. By now there wasn’t a soul that wasn’t bone weary and ready to sit and take its ease. Parson Mossop lifted up his frock coat and rested himself upon a tussock. Churchwardens followed suit and soon all were settled, all but a few children and dogs that ran and shouted and barked as tireless as the first swooping swallows.

The crowd had not been waiting long when there came the sound that all had been straining for. The clattering of a horse’s hooves, the rattling of a cart, the “Whoaa” and “Easy” of the driver and then above the tops of the bushes three heads appeared: Farmer Joyce, his daughter Mary sitting beside him, and the black ears of his mare Bessy. They made their way along the track towards the congregation. Farmer Joyce, who is churchwarden at Glinton, reined in, swung down from his seat and tied the horse to a post.

The waiting crowd cheered and there was a surge towards the cart, as men, women and children clambered forward and would have scrambled up had not the churchwardens moved between the cart and congregation.

“Now, now, stand back! Easy! Bide your time!”

The churchwardens pushed some backwards so that they sat suddenly on the turf at the track’s edge and they stood in a row as sentinels before the cart.

The cart was filled with victuals and small ale and sweetened water that had been paid for by subscription by the people of the parish according to their means. Farmers had thrown in their shillings, tradesmen their thruppences and the rest their thin farthings. There were pies, meats and conserves, there were loaves, nuts and dried fruits, free to all however great or modest their contribution.

The parson opened his Bible to Deuteronomy and tapped the iron shod wheel of the cart with his cane:

“Blessed shall be the fruit of thy ground and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.”

He snapped the Bible shut as the village answered “Amen”.

The parson was the first to tuck a handkerchief under his chin. The churchwardens parted as he poured himself a pot and sank his teeth into a pie. Others followed according to their station. They clustered round the cart, helping themselves and carrying armfuls across to families that were waiting on the tussocked grass. Farmer Joyce and Mary passed and poured and made themselves agreeable to all. When everyone else had taken their fill the churchwardens stood aside and the parish paupers pushed forward and grabbed their share. Charlie Turner pressed bread and pastry with his fingers into his half-wit daughter’s mouth, as though he was some hedge-row bird that has hatched a cuckoo. Like the birds of the field the village paupers filled their crops.

All hearts and minds were on the food except for one. John Clare sat a little apart, upon a stump and so still it was as though its timber had spread through him and he was himself wood from head to foot. No one paid him any mind for he is often considered strange. When Old Otter pressed a pot into his hand he took it but did not sup. He sat like one amazed. His eyes were fixed on Mary Joyce who stood waist deep among ragged children pouring sugared water from a jug.

His eyes were fixed on Mary, who he remembered as a child in Glinton vestry school, as shy and quick then as a wild thing, and bold besides, and as nimble to scramble up onto the church roof and scratch her name upon the lead as any. And now she was become a woman. John’s mind was quick with calculation, if he was seventeen then she was three behind. And she was grown lovely. Her hair was dressed in ringlets and covered with a lace cap, and over it a wide brimmed hat. Her cotton gown was yellow as a cowslip and underneath it the firm shapely rounding of her breasts, and loose over her shoulders a russet cloak …he shook himself from his reverie, supped his ale for courage, straightened, and casting all thought of station aside walked across to the cart.

“Mary.”

She turned to him. He saw that her face still had something of the impishness he remembered as a child, but there were other layers beside, of thought and sorrow, and then a soft kindness about the eyes that was beyond her years. John remembered that she had lost her mother a year since.

“Mary, have you forgot me?”

She broke into a smile and a new light seemed to shine from her face.

“John Clare!”

“Will you come and sit with us Mary?”

He offered his hand and she took it, light as a bird, and sprang down from the cart.

“Of course I’ve never forgot you John.”

They walked across to where the band was gathered on the grass. John unbuttoned his coat and threw it down for her.

“Here’s Sam and Jonathan, Old Otter who the whole world knows, Wisdom who you have not met before, and Dick who you’ve met a thousand times.”

She laughed and kissed Dick Turnill on the cheek, for she had schooled with him too, which made him blush and which in turn made the rest laugh out loud. And she shook hands with Wisdom. Then she sat on the coat and gathered her knees up to her chin.

“’Tis two years since last I saw you John.”

“I’ve been away Mary.”

John suddenly found himself awkward at a divide that seemed to him to have grown between them. She smiled:

“Seeking fame and fortune in the French war?”

He shook his head and said nothing.

“A trade then?”

“Hardly, though my parents would wish it so.”

“Well, here you are, and home again, and I for one am glad of it.”

She broke a piece of twig and flicked it at him. There was quiet between them for a while.

“Do you recall John,” she said, “the time that Mr Merrishaw put a question to the class and I put up my hand to answer and he said ‘Yes Mary’, and I mouthed the words and made no sound. He picked up his ear trumpet, d’you remember, ‘Speak up child’ he said and I did mouth again. And he said ‘I cannot hear thee, is there anyone can give me the answer as can speak up like a man?’ And you put your hand up. ‘Yes John Clare,’ says he. And you mouthed the words as well. And old Merrishaw frowned then and put down his trumpet and made his way out of the church. And we all climbed up to the windows and we could see him among the gravestones poking a rag first into one ear and then t’other. When he came back we were sitting in rows as though we had not shifted.

‘Now then John Clare,’ says he, ‘as you were saying.’ And he lifts the trumpet to his ear once more, and you stood up and shouted the answer so that he jumped clean into the air, but said no word thinking as he’d cleaned his ears of all obstruction.”

And John laughed and nodded and delighted in her as she was this day, sitting beside him. And he delighted in memories of how she had been. And in his mind he was forming a design on how things might be one day between them, though he could not bring any word to his tongue to express it.

Her talk turned first one way and then another.

And then, suddenly, it was interrupted.

“A word if you’d be so kind.”

They looked up and Will Bloodworth was standing above them, swaying a little, for the farmers had been sweetening their small ale with a flask of French brandy. His pipe was smouldering in his left hand and his right was drawn tight into a fist. His voice was raised, as one who has drunk over the odds, and on hearing him the congregation quietened.

His sister, sensing trouble, called out to him.

“Come and sit down Will.”

He paid her no heed.

“I want a word with our gypsy friend.”

Wisdom got up to his feet as though nothing in the world would hurry him. He met Will’s gaze with a wry lop-sided smile, with nothing in it of fear or servitude. If Will had been master and Wisdom apprentice, that smile would have been rewarded with a wallop for its cock-sure cheek. Will whispered:

“What’s your bloody name?”

“Will! Sit down!”

Wisdom’s brown eyes looked steady into Will’s.

“Wisdom Boswell.”

Will raised his voice:

“Ah. One of them as camps out on Emmonsales and helps himself regular to what ain’t his.”

There were muffled grunts of assent from all sides. Wisdom said nothing. And Will, grown bold with the ready sympathy of the crowd, carried on:

“Well I’ve heard as you ‘Gyptians, for all you’re a pack of thieves, can read the future in tea leaves or the lines on a body’s hand. If I was to give you sixpence what could you read of me?”

There was laughter and old Miss Nelly Farrar shouted out:

“Ay, and ain’t I still waiting for that handsome devil I paid Lettuce Boswell thruppence for?”

Will smiled with his mouth, though there was little of a smile in his eyes. He uncurled his fist and held out his hand palm upwards, there was a silver sixpence lying on it.

“Come on Wisdom Boswell, unravel for me all that is writ in the stars.”

It was clear he meant to make a mock of Wisdom. And every face was on the two of them now as Wisdom reached across and took Will’s hand into his own. He picked up the coin and pocketed it.

“It’s the women as usually do the dukkering, but I’ll tell you what I can.”

He stroked the palm tenderly with his thumb and looked down upon it with a great attention. Will Bloodworth turned to the crowd and raised his eyebrows.

“It ain’t often I hold hands with a damned gypsy.”

There were titters of laughter again.

The children did not laugh though, for since the riddy stone Wisdom was as a native chief to them, and they his tribe. Nor did Sam Billings, who watched Wisdom with a bright, shrewd eye, knowing more of the Boswell crew than most.

Wisdom traced the lines on the palm with the tip of a finger. Then he spoke in a whisper, loud enough for all to hear and filled with portent, his face fixed as though staring beyond Will’s hand into some world no one else could see.

“I see rivals in love. I see two as both nurse a tender affection for thee in their secret hearts.”

Will turned and winked at the crowd.

“Two you say?”

“Ay, two there are, and each would have thee to husband. And if they knew as they was rivals in love there would be such a scratching and a shrieking as would shame a cage of cats.”

Will made as if to yawn:

“And both of them beauties I’ve little doubt. One dark perhaps? One fair?”

He threw his pipe onto the grass and thrust his other hand under Wisdom’s nose so the blunt fingertips caught his chin.

“Come on sir, be plain!”

The crowd’s mocking laughter echoed Will’s mocking grin, but Wisdom did not change his tune.

“Ay, one is dark right enough,” he whispered, “But no stranger to you Will Bloodworth, for she has rolled you in her arms full many’s the time.”

“Tell me more!”