The Ballad of John Clare (4 page)

“You wouldn’t dare!”

She jumped out of bed and made towards the stairwell.

John seized the hem of her shift and pulled her back towards the bed.

“All right.”

She climbed under the blankets. John bent down and whispered in her ear. She peered at him with the doubtful look of a craftsman who is about to send some new apprentice out upon a task, and wonders whether he has the gumption to see it through.

“You’ll need to wear your yellow scarf, and is your shirt washed? And money enough for the May fair. And she’ll want to hear gentlemanly talk, John, and don’t sweeten your breath with onions because look here, I’ve got something as I took from Farmer Close’s kitchen when I was helping mother, for I had a notion you was courting.”

She pressed a little screw of paper into John’s hand.

“Chew these John, cloves.”

She lowered her voice to a tiny whisper:

“Then your mouth’ll be sweet for kissing.”

She began to laugh and pushed the blanket into her mouth to quieten herself.

John cuffed her gently and bade her sweet dreams. He dropped the cloves into his pocket and went downstairs.

He’d not been down for long when Parker Clare lifted the latch and came in through the garden door. He’d been shutting up the chickens for the night. He put his hand to John’s shoulder:

“That’ll win her John, whoever she is! Though I’d sooner you hadn’t broke those blossoms from the pear.”

John sighed. There is little privacy to be had in either cottage or parish. He picked up a candle and reached into his cubby hole. There his precious volumes lean side by side: Thomson’s
Seasons
, Watts’
Hymns and Spiritual Songs
, Abercrombie’s
Every Man his own Gardener
, Burns’
Poems
. Alongside them his chap-books are stacked:
Robin Hood’s Garland
,
Tom Hickathrift
,
The Seven Sleepers
,
The King and the Cobbler
,
Old Moore’s Almanack
. And tucked into all of them are his own precious scribblings on shop paper and pages torn from old copy books.

He pulled one out and settled down with it.

*******

This Mayday morning John was up and dressed in clean linen shirt and yellow scarf before the church clock had struck four. He ate a hunk of bread and washed it down with water. He took his garland from the shed and slung it across his shoulder. Then he made his way out of the village and across Woodcroft field towards Glinton, following the stony track between the furlongs. The sky was bright with spring stars. The young beans stuck their dark green heads out of the tilth and seemed to glister with all the silver dews of Eden. The knee-high barley brushed his breeches and soaked them through.

The first light of morning etched Glinton steeple against the sky and the cockerels of both villages began to call out their clarion. A barn-owl, quartering the field, shrieked close and sudden and John’s heart raced, for he is easy frit. When he came to Glinton he cut through the churchyard and along the street to Joyce’s Farm.

He came between the gateposts into Farmer Joyce’s yard, that is always swept clean. The last of the ricks loomed high above him. In the kitchen garden to one side all the birds were singing now, pigeon, robin, starnel, sparrow, finch, the shrieking swifts were swooping low across the yard and the rasp-throated rooks busy about their nests high in the elms. The chickens were scratching outside the barns, and inside the stables he could hear the horses snorting and shifting in their stalls.

Then the mastiffs in their kennel began to bark at John and alerted Will Farrell, Joyce’s stockman and groom. He pushed open the stable door and came sauntering across the yard, his breeches tucked into his boots, his grubby smock tied at the waist with a piece of twine, his bald head seeming to mirror the sky. For even though it is a holiday the master’s horses must be fed, and they must shine at the fair too, combed and brushed and sleek as chestnuts. Will looked John up and down with a knowing smile.

“What do you want?”

John reached into his pocket.

“Two pennyworth of ale, Will, if you’ll tell me which is Mary’s bedroom window.”

Will looked at the Mayday garland and laughed:

“Here comes John Clare sniffing at Mary Joyce’s door like a dog that scents a bitch on heat. You’re wasting your time boy, she’ll never give ye the time of day, she’s way above your station.”

John rubbed the two coins together and Will shrugged.

“It’ll do you no good.”

He took the two pennies and dropped them into the pocket of his breeches.

“’Tis the casement window above the front door Johnny, but you won’t thank me for telling ye.”

John went round to the front of the farm house. Its barnack stone glowed yellow-gold with the first rays of the sun and the windows on the easterly side blazed with reflected light. He hung the garland from the iron knocker on the front door and, thinking it was a little early yet, sat down on a mounting block and waited. He could hear the clatter of milk pails as they were carried out to the barns swinging on their yokes. He could hear the ‘Whoaaaa’ and ‘Get along there’ as Nathan Cushion drove the milk cows along the lane and into the yard. Downstairs Kate Dyball was pulling the shutters back from the windows. The church clock was striking the half hour after five when John reckoned his moment had come. He picked up a handful of gravel from the path beside the lawn and threw it at the window above the front door. And then he launched into the old song:

“I’ve been rambling all this night

And the first part of the day,”

He flung up another fistful of stones.

“And now I’m come to your own front door

To make you the Queen of the May.”

Above his head John could hear the sound of the shutters being pulled apart. And then the casement window was thrown open. John shouted:

“Will you be my Queen of the May?”

“The Devil I will John Clare.”

John looked up and saw Farmer Joyce’s head, bleary-eyed, unshaven, the nightcap dangling over one ear, squinting down at him.

“And I’ll thank you not to come caterwauling at my front door before the church clock has struck six of the morning on this or any other cussed day of the year.”

The window slammed shut. And from the corner of the yard John heard what seemed to him at first to be a sneeze. He turned and saw Will Farrell and a couple of milkmaids peering round the side of the house with their fists in their mouths, rocking with stifled laughter.

Then from behind him came another sound. A peal of clear laughter that he recognised at once, laughter that seemed to spring out like a rill from behind the yew hedge.

“John!”

This was too much for him, to be the mockery and laughing stock of all Glinton. He lowered his head and walked towards the gate vowing, in that moment, never again to show his face at Joyce’s farm.

Mary, in her nightdress with a blanket tucked about her shoulders, ran after him. She stood in front of him her head tilted in mock reproach.

“What John Clare, are you come to black my other eye?”

He could see she still bore a purple stain where he had struck her. He looked at her dumb-founded. Mary tugged at his arm and pulled him back towards the farmhouse.

“I was up for the dawn John, washing my face in the dew, and I saw you come round to the front door, and I hid behind the hedge, and you sat and so I sat …. and then you sang your song to father ….”

And she filled the air again with her clear laughter so that John was part mortified and part filled with exaltation. She led him back to the lawn, then broke away and ran along the gravel path to the front door. She lifted the garland in her hands and studied it carefully.

“Here’s pear for fair, and a sprig of yew …”

Then she turned to him, her face suddenly solemn:

“Yes John, I’ll be your May Queen. I’ll be your Queen of the May today.”

And soon afterwards John found himself sitting at the great table in the farm-house kitchen. Mary had run into the dairy and fetched a jug of whey. She’d poured him a cupful.

“Wait here, while I dress myself for the fair!”

He’d sat and supped while Kate Dyball, Lizzie Tucker and Hope Farrell bustled about the kitchen and put food upon the table. They were full of high spirits, for as soon as breakfast was done they would be free to take their holiday. The great iron skillet over the kitchen fire sizzled with ham. The pewter plates on the shelves against the wall glistered in the flickering light like so many battered moons. Above them, on the top shelf, the rows of brass candle-sticks stood, cleaned of their grease and put away until the autumn draws its dark hours in again. It seemed to John that he had set foot in the land of Cockayne, where the rivers run with buttermilk and the barns are thatched with bacon.

At seven o’clock the household sat down to breakfast. Nathan Cushion and the milk-maids came in from the milking shed shaking the straw from their shoes. Will Farrell left his stable boots at the door and sat down. John Fell and his dog came in from shepherding by the fen. Mary sat down beside John, wearing the yellow dress that he had first seen at Rogation.

When Will saw John with Mary beside him he raised his eyebrows in surprise but knew better than to speak his mind. Then Farmer Joyce returned from his early morning inspection of the stables.

“Well, well, good morning, the horses are well brushed Will, they will not disgrace us. What time did ye feed ‘em?”

Will Farrell got up to his feet:

“The clock had not long struck five.”

“Good, good. Sit down Will for God’s sake.”

Farmer Joyce was dressed in holiday attire, blue frock coat and yellow swansdown waistcoat, his breeches tucked into top-boots. He sat at the table and cut himself a lump of bread from the loaf. No sooner had he lifted food to mouth than all the household set to eating. Then he became aware of John. He looked across at him with the shrewd, quizzical air of a farmer at market.

“Mary, you’ve brought your sweet throated throstle in from the garden I see.”

Will Farrell and the milk-maids chortled into their cups. Farmer Joyce continued:

“Ay, and you’re welcome at this table John Clare, for Mary’s often talked of thee.”

He held out his hand and John shook it readily.

“I remember she said as you was the best scholar in old Merrishaw’s class.”

John shrugged and reddened.

“Yes, you were John,” said Mary, “he was always holding up some page of yours as an example to the rest of us.”

Farmer Joyce poured himself a mug of small ale.

“Well, book-learning’s all very well as far as it goes.”

He looked along his own table, spread with bread, butter, cheese, conserves, ham, hard-boiled eggs, a plate of steaming bacon and jugs of whey and ale, as though it was itself a tidily writ page. For a moment it seemed he would say more, but then he stopped his mouth with cheese and bacon. But his thoughts, for all they were unspoken, were clear enough. He was weighing, as a chandler in some corn-hall, his precious daughter’s happiness this May holiday against the prospects of a Helpston lad without land or trade. But, for all his rumination, he ate with relish enough, pausing from time to time to mop the corners of his mouth with a handkerchief. All the household ate with him and for a while no word was spoken. Then he rapped the table hard with his knuckles.

“Away to Helpston Fair with the pair of you, for we’re only young once and John Clare is as good a lad as any, for all he owns no more in this world than his breeches and a brain-pan full of Merrishaw’s clap-trap!”

He had swapped his scruples for Mary’s bright face as she jumped to her feet, ran round the table, put her arms about his shoulders and kissed his cheek. And it seemed to him a fair trade.

Later he watched them through the open door as they set off across the farmyard. With his inner eye he was watching his own courtship twenty years since. It seemed to him, for a moment, that the two of them were ghosts as they walked between the gateposts and made their way side by side along the lane, John’s garland across Mary’s shoulder. Then they entered the churchyard and disappeared from sight.

He turned back to the table, lifted his mug and tipped the last of the small beer down his throat. He strode out of the house and across the yard to the stable.

*******

All day John Clare and Mary Joyce were swept up in the rigs and the jigs of Helpston Fair as though they were part of some fevered dream that had been conjured by poppy-head tea. They wandered among stalls where children tugged at their mother’s arms or stood solemn-eyed staring at the bright-coloured array of sugar plums, brandy-snaps, barley sugar, candied lemon and gingerbread. They paused among the beer shops and food stalls where farmers laughed loud and bit into hot pies that spilled gravy upon their shirt-fronts, and lean-faced labourers counted out their farthings and weighed a pint pot against a loaf of bread. They haggled with hawkers over ribbons and chapbooks. John dropped a penny into Charlie Turner’s cup where he sat on the roadside. His half-wit daughter rolled her eyes.

Mary flung her garland over the coloured rags of bunting that stretched from eave to eave and John ran to catch it. They danced before the maypole while the village band sawed out the old tunes with their hats set on the pavement for coppers. John waved to them as he passed. He swung Mary so that both her feet were lifted from the ground. And she, in her yellow dress, part woman, part child, laughing and dancing at his side, held him in her thrall.

“We’ll take the long way home.” He said.

With the last of his pennies they bought a gingerbread milk-maid, and a gingerbread coach and horses and nibbled at them until Mary’s milk-maid was one-legged and John’s horses headless, and then giggled as though they were children at Glinton School.

They followed Maxham’s Green Lane towards Snow Common.

“If you weren’t fighting Boney John, and coming back a bold hero to sweep me off my feet, with a star on your breast and a purse-full of prize money for all them galleons you’d sunk, where were you these two years?”