The Ballad of John Clare (27 page)

“What about Otter and Kitty?” Said Dick.

Sam shrugged.

“Gone, I reckon. They’ve took what they could and flitted … the pair of ‘em …God knows where.”

He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

John Clare stood and stared and, wordless, took inside himself the pitiless devastation of it all.

Sam Billings turned his back on John and Dick and trudged back to the cart. They couldn’t see how his round cheeks were wet with an impotent and sorrowful fury. They trailed behind him. By the time they climbed up beside him on the cart every teardrop had been mopped away.

“Go on Billy!”

He shook the reins.

“Good boy!”

Then he whispered, half to himself, half to John and Dick:

“The law will hang the man or woman

Who takes a goose from off the common,

But lets the greater thief go loose

Who takes the common from the goose.”

Sam Billings sighed:

“Ay.”

And then he whistled the same tune over and over to his horse as they rattled back to Helpston. And there was little else exchanged between the three of them but the mindless rise and fall of ‘Begone Dull Care’.

Three nights ago John came home unsteady with ale from the Bluebell. He was chastised by Parker and Ann for frittering his wages away, and with good reason for he has little to show for his winter’s work save a new coat. He pulled a stool to the fire and nodded and waited for their thorny admonishments to cease their echoing clatter and exhaust themselves into stillness.

“Ay, think on it John,” said Ann. “It’s been an easy winter for you with the enclosure work, but it won’t last far beyond the spring, and then it’ll be back to the old story. You need to keep something for the hard times.”

“And think about a trade son,” said Parker, “you’ve a head for letters and figures. There must be a job out there somewhere … you take care or you’ll find yourself like me, threshing for farthings when you’re stiff and creaking with age.”

He got up and cut John a slice of bread. He put it onto a wooden platter and dropped it onto John’s knee.

“Get that down ye boy, it’ll lend ballast to the ale.”

He ruffled John’s hair with his hand.

“I know you’ve had a peck of sorrow these months John … but you’re young and the world beckons.”

He lit his pipe. Ann picked up her knitting needles.

John ate and then put his platter onto the floor. He sighed and said nothing. He went across to his cubby-hole and reached inside. He pulled out the battered volume he’d bought at Bridge Fair. One of its loose pages fluttered onto the floor.

Sophie was sitting by the fire hugging her knees. John’s unhappiness seemed an affront to all her sound advice. Now she jumped to her feet and ran across the room. She picked up the piece of paper and thrust it into John’s hand. She leaned forwards and whispered fiercely into his ear:

“If only you’d listened to me, John, things would have been otherwise.”

He looked at her untroubled face that still had more of child than woman upon its smooth features. He squeezed her hand and whispered back:

“That’s as maybe, Soph’.”

There was a sharp knock at the door. Parker got stiffly to his feet. He crossed the room, pulled back the bolt and lifted the latch. At first there seemed to be no one there, there was nothing but the scrubbed doorstep before his eyes. But then, all of a sudden, a figure stepped out of the shadows to one side of the doorway and slipped into the cottage with a rustle of skirts.

“Gracious sakes,” cried Ann Clare, “’Tis Lettuce Boswell!”

Lettuce put her finger to her lips:

“Shhhhh. Don’t speak my name. There’s no haven for any Boswell these days, for all are tarred by one brush.”

“You can’t stay here.”

“I ain’t asking to.”

She pulled a stool to the fire and settled herself with her big basket between her feet. She pushed the black hair from her craggy face and pulled a pipe from her pocket. Parker offered her a fill of tobacco. Ann frowned at him and shook her head but he took little notice.

“Thank you kindly.”

She pulled a spill from her pocket and held it to a candle. She put the flame to the pipe bowl and filled her mouth with smoke.

“Where are ye staying?”

She gestured with her pipe stem:

“Out beyond Bainton. On the Heath.”

Parker nodded.

“Ay I know it …You’ve heard they’ve fenced off Landyke Bush?”

“So they tell me, but you won’t be seein’ the Boswell crew in Helpston no more.”

Then Parker put the question that was forming in all of their minds:

“But you ain’t all at Bainton? Not the whole crew?”

She threw back her head and cackled with laughter.

“With every hok-hornie-mush with his nose to our scent! Lord have mercy we are not. ‘Tis only me and little Liskey Smith. The rest are gone across the boro pawnee …ay, an we hope to be joining them afore too long.”

And John, who had been listening to every word and hoping for some news of Wisdom leaned forwards then:

“Over the water? Where are they gone?”

“They took a big bero John, two months since. They are gone to Americay. And I pray that they are safe landed for Boneyparte is still playing skittles upon land and sea, and bolder they say than ever …and that’s why I’ve come this night …for I won’t be this-aways no more …I’ve something for thee, chal …Wisdom give it to me to pass on to thee. He found someone as knows his letters as has writ down his words to thee.”

She rummaged in her basket and pulled out a scrap of grey folded paper. She pressed it into John’s hand.

He held it to the candle-light and read aloud:

“Farewell my brother who I shall not ever forget.”

Lettuce Boswell nodded and got to her feet.

“Ay chal, that’s the way of it, and your tears say all as needs to be said.”

She picked up her basket and turned towards the door.

“I’ll bid ye’all farewell.”

She put her hand to the latch, then turned again.

“Oh, and I was forgetting, one thing more. We was sitting by the fire at Bainton one evening a few weeks since, and who should come a-stepping between the bushes but old white-beard and his missus as used to squat on the common.”

“Old Otter and Kitty!”

“Ay, the very same, and we could not help but laugh. Each had a pole across their shoulders as a yoke, and clinkin’ and clankin’ from it there was pots and pans and kettles and baskets and all sorts tied with twine. And following behind them a flock of white geese stepping in a line as solemn as goslings behind a gander and his goose. Our dogs went wild, but those geese stretched out their necks and hissed and’d take no nonsense.”

“Are they there yet?”

“No, we welcomed them to our fires, and they stayed one night, but were gone next morn.”

She pushed open the door, turned into the shadows and disappeared.

*******

Yesterday morning was the Rogation walk. John slung his battered fiddle under his arm and made his way with Parker, Ann and Sophie to Butter Cross. The village was gathered. The bells were ringing. Sam, Dick, Jonathan and Betsy were standing on the steps of the cross clutching their instruments of music and stamping the damp chill from their feet. John joined them.

Parson Mossop nodded to the churchwardens who rapped the steps with the foot of the processional cross. Sam Billings walloped his drum and the procession set off along West Street as ever it has done.

Betsy Jackson took Jonathan Burbridge’s arm. They walked close so that their hips touched and touched again. John and Dick Turnill walked side by side, a little apart from the crowd. John told Dick in whispered tones of Lettuce Boswell’s visit. Dick whistled through his teeth.

“Americay …there’s a journey. Maybe I shall follow him one day.”

He looked around at the bustling villagers before and behind them and sighed.

“Everything has changed John, since last year, everything and nothing.”

John nodded:

“Ay, there’s Wisdom and the Boswells gone …and Old Otter and Kitty …and Will Bloodworth …and only this morning they’ve found Charlie Turner dead, and poor Isabel trying to shake him awake.”

“I hadn’t heard …and then there’s Mary.”

John kicked a stone.

“Ay, Mary too …not to speak of the enclosure.”

“And soon you shall add my name to your list, John.”

John turned to him sharp.

“Yours?”

Dick swallowed hard:

“Father’s selling.”

He nodded to Bob and Maria Turnill, who were walking ahead of them and keeping their counsel. He lowered his voice again:

“Mr Bull pressed his offer, and father was so deep in debt he could not refuse it …deeper than ever I’d guessed.”

“Where will ye go?”

“They are crying out for labour in the North. Father talks of Matlock, where my uncle Ned is foreman at a mill …and him most vehement in his worship.”

“And you’re determined to go with them?”

“For a little while John …but, like you, I’m still at my books. Though more of numbers than words. I have ambitions …”

“I shall miss you Dick.”

John took his friend’s arm and kissed him on the cheek, and though there is much of prickling stubble to John’s lips, and Dick’s cheek is still downy soft, it was a moment that Dick has stored away and will carry with him to the end of his days.

When the crowd drew close to King Street the children began their race for the first of the meer-stones. Tom Dolby, Lucy Bain and Henry Snow led the way, running full tilt, their mouths drinking the air. Tom, running bare-foot, stubbed his toe and fell, so it was little Lucy who was the first to strike her head to the stone. Mrs Bullimore came waddling forward with her bag of sugared plums. But someone else was striding ahead of her.

“You little devils!”

Thomas Bellar swung out with his cane and struck Lucy a crack on the side of her head. He aimed at Henry Snow, but Henry ducked. He caught him by the scruff of the shoulder and gave him a thwack on the backs of the legs. Both children began to cry.

“Look what you little devils have done to my new-set hedge!”

He was shaking with anger. The meer-stone was a few paces inside his allocation. The children had trodden down his hawthorn seedlings in their eagerness to reach the stone.

Mrs Bullimore came forwards and the children ran across to her. They pressed their faces into her dress.

“There, there …really Mr Bellar, what are you thinking, ‘tis only once in the year.”

“Then it’s once in the year too often …you’re married to the constable …can’t you see this is criminal damage, criminal damage I say.”

Then James Bain came pushing out of the crowd.

“Nobody strikes my daughter with a cane.”

The blacksmith seized Thomas Bellar by the lapels of his Sunday coat and shook him until the silver-topped cane fell from his hand. He picked it up and broke it over his knee. He flung the two halves into the green spring wheat.

“There …and don’t come knocking at my door when your horses need shoeing.”

There was a silence as the two men glared at one another.

Then Parson Mossop came forwards. He stretched out his arms and urged the people to step back into the road.

“Brothers, sisters, please …stand this side of the hedge. We will have the first reading.”

He thumbed through his Bible to the book of Joel. Mrs Bullimore pressed sugar plums into Lucy and Henry’s mouths and peace was restored. After the reading came the psalm, and then the crowd moved on in its ragged procession.

Thomas Bellar turned from the crowd. He strode into his field and paced backwards and forwards until he’d found the two halves of his cane. A peewit flapped about him, rising and dipping and calling out its alarum until he was gone through the gate and striding homewards cursing all the way. Writ in his face was a determination to pull the wretched meer-stone like a rotten tooth from its socket and break it to shards before the year was out.

Tom Dolby, limping and running, caught up with the procession. Jonathan Burbridge, with Betsy on his arm, turned to him.

“Tom …”

“Ay.”

“I’ve a place for a ‘prentice …and you have the look of a bright lad …what’d you say to taking a trade and becoming a carpenter?”

Mrs Dolby, walking ahead, overheard and turned, and in her careworn features grown suddenly bright was all the answer Jonathan needed.

“Oh, we would be so obliged Mr Burbridge, but he’s a handful I warn ye, and don’t mind to give him the strap when he gets too wild …”

The crowd continued along the edge of Thomas Bellar’s allocation, past John Close’s fences to Lolham Bridge. They walked from stone to stone. They followed the land that has been give to Mr Bull, and to Millicent Clark, and to Ralph Wormstall. They crossed the straightened drains, that had used to be Green Dyke and Rhyme Dyke, and threw sweets into the muddy water, then followed the edge of Elizabeth Wright’s award to Snow Common.

Mrs Elizabeth Wright, still in her mourning black, made a great show of unlocking the gates to Snow Common, her new entitlement, and welcoming the parson. She invited the farmers to settle on tussocks and take their ease.

The rest of the village pushed in behind.

John and Dick sat down together and sniffed the air. The smell of burning had all but disappeared.

The cattle gathered at a distance and watched the noisy gathering with a slow, uneasy gaze.

Soon enough the crowd heard the eager-awaited sound of iron-shod wheels and clip-clopping along the lane. John stood up and peered over the fence. He could see Farmer Joyce high on the seat of the farm cart with the reins loose and easy between his fingers. Piled behind him were baskets and hampers and barrels and jugs, and beside him was a woman. She was young and slight, her bonneted face turned away from him. She was looking across the fields towards Helpston church. John ran forwards. He vaulted the fence and sprang down into the lane. His heart was pounding like Sam Billing’s drum.

Farmer Joyce raised a hand:

“A good day to ye John Clare.”