Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis Read online

  At Michaelmas the pigs were killed, salted and jointed and hung in clean muslin from the beams in the kitchen. Strong beer was brewed, in an enormous copper, from home-grown barley, and provided a nourishing drink for the men. There was milk in abundance, and butter was made once a week, Mary herself turning the churn more often than not. All the bread, the massive pies and puddings, were made from home-ground wheaten flour. Vegetables and fruit were picked fresh each day from the garden, and the farmhouse kitchen seemed always to be filled with the fragrance and the clatter of cooking.

  Only when night came and the oil lamp glowed on the kitchen table, a round pearl of light in its milk-white globe, did the bustle die down. Then the single men, who lived on the premises, and the farmer and his wife, with Mary, quiet as a mouse in the corner, would settle round the fire or at the table, and read or talk or take out the mending basket, until the yawning and nodding began. Then the young men would say their good-nights before stamping across the cobbled yard to their bothy above the stables, and Mary would climb up the creaking stairs, candle in hand, to her windy little room under the roof. Finally, the farmer and his wife would rake through the fire, put up the massive fire guard, shoot the heavy bolts on the doors and make their way to bed. By ten o'clock on a winter's night the farmhouse would be wrapped in silent darkness, and the only sounds to be heard would be the snort and stamp of a horse beneath the bothy, or the croak of a startled pheasant from the spinney.

  All too soon, it seemed to young Mary, the morning would come, and she would hear the carters taking their horses across the yard, the rumble of heavy wheels and the rhythmic squeak from the pump handle in the yard as the farm hands set about their work. Soon, she too would have to clamber from her truckle bed to rekindle the great kitchen fire, the first of many jobs.

  The days were long and busy. Mary learnt how to keep a house clean, to cook and to sew. The farmer and his wife were childless and treated Mary with affection. She was a docile girl, willing to learn and fond of her employers. Life at the farm was hard but happy, and no doubt she would have been content to stay there for many years had Francis Clare not crossed her path.

  He was twenty years of age when first she saw him. He came in the early autumn, with his father, to thatch the six great ricks of wheat and barley which stood majestically in a nearby field. His hair glinted as brightly as the straw among which he stood and his blue eyes appraised Mary as she carried an earthenware jug of beer to the thatchers. The two men were at work there for a week, and Francis made no secret of his interest in Mary.

  Later that autumn he came again, this rime alone, to repair the thatch on one of the barns. He appeared so often at the kitchen door, and Mary seemed to have so many occasions to cross the yard to the barn during his stay, that she was sorely teased. The farmer and his wife liked young Francis. He and his father were known for miles around as respectable and honest workers. There was no reason in the world why Mary should not welcome the young man's advances. There would always be work for a thatcher, they told each other, and they could not keep a good girl like Mary, now almost twenty and as pretty as ever she would be, on a lonely farm for ever.

  By Christmas it was generally understood that Francis, and Mary were 'keeping company'. Now Mary's needlework was for her trousseau and her bottom drawer. The farmer's wife, when sorting out her linen or her crockery would say:

  'Here, my dear, put that aside with your things. 'Tis a bit shabby, maybe, but it'll prove useful, I don't doubt.' Later, Mary was to count these casual gifts amongst her dearest possessions.

  On Michaelmas Day in the following year Mary was married to Francis and the young couple went to live in the little house on the outskirts of Caxley. They paid a rent of two shillings a week to the baker in Caxley who owned the property. Francis had ten pounds in savings, and Mary had five new golden sovereigns, a wedding present from the farmer and his wife. There was plenty of work to be had. Francis owned a fine set of thatching tools and had abundant strength and skill to use them. Queen Victoria had reigned for almost fifty years, England was beginning to enjoy prosperity, and Francis and Mary, young and in love, prepared to be as happy as larks as the year 1885 drew to its close.

  ***

  Mary Clare's first home was one of a pair of cottages close to the road which ran northwards from Caxley. Francis's own home lay less than a mile away, and his parents were frequent visitors.

  A narrow strip of garden lay between the road and the front door, and the little brick path was edged with large white stones. This tiny patch Mary claimed for her own and busily planted pinks and columbines and a great clump of old-fashioned purple iris to flower the next year. A moss-rose already flourished by the gate, and still bore a late bloom or two when Mary arrived at the house as a bride.

  The front door led directly into the main living-room of the house, and behind this was a small scullery. A box staircase led from the living-room to the main bedroom at the front of the house, and a narrow slip room, above the scullery, which was really nothing more than an extension of the minute landing, constituted the second bedroom.

  It was a small house, but enough for the young couple, and they arranged their few pieces of furniture to the best advantage and were well content. Mary's taste was good. Her own home, a farm labourer's cottage, had been humble but beautifully clean and neat, and at the farmhouse she was accustomed to seeing solid pieces of well-made furniture, and well-designed utensils of copper and wood in daily use.

  She spread the scrubbed deal table with a red serge cloth in the afternoons, when the midday meal was done, and enjoyed the sight of a white geranium in a pot set squarely upon it. Round the edge ran fringed bobbles which were to delight her little daughters in the years to come. On the mantelpiece stood bright tins containing sugar, currants, tea and salt. The rag rug before the hearth was of her own making, and the fender and fire-irons of steel were polished first thing every morning with a small square of emery paper, until they shone as brightly as silver.

  Their only regret was the smallness of the garden. Only a few yards of light soil stretched beyond the back doors of the two cottages.

  'Not enough to keep us in potatoes,' said Francis, 'let alone a bit of green stuff.'

  He planted onions, carrots and a row of cottagers' kale, and set down some old flagstones near the back door for Mary's wood and iron mangle to stand upon. This done, there was no room for anything else in the garden.

  To have to buy vegetables seemed shocking to the young couple, and certainly an unnecessary expense. As the first few months went by Mary was appalled to find how much it cost to run even such a modest establishment as their own.

  Not only vegetables, but meat, eggs, flour and fruit, which had been so abundant at the farm, and which she had hitherto taken for granted, now had to be bought at the shops in Caxley High Street or at the market. Despite her care, Mary found that she frequently had to ask Francis for more housekeeping money, and she began to dread the look of anxiety that crossed his face when she told him that she had no money left in her shabby purse.

  For the truth of the matter was that Francis was even more discomfited by the cost of married life than his wife. Although there was always thatching to be done, yet it tended to be seasonal work. After harvest, when the ricks needed to be thatched, the money came in well; but in the winter time when bad weather made work impossible, a thatcher might go for weeks with no earnings.

  Francis was beginning to find, too, that the customers who had employed both his father and himself now tended to ask his father alone to do their work. It had been agreed between them, at the time of Francis's marriage, that they would set up separately, and it was only natural that the older man should be asked first to undertake those jobs which he had done for many years. There was no doubt, too, that Francis was not as skilful or as quick as his father. He began to find that he had a serious rival here, and though they were outwardly as devoted as ever, yet Francis could not help feeling that his own trade
was decreasing steadily while his father's prospered.

  He took to going further afield for work, and set out very early to any job he had been lucky enough to get. Clad in thick clothes, wearing heavy hob-nailed boots and leather leggings, he trudged off, before daybreak during the first winter, along the muddy lanes to the north and west of Caxley. He had built himself a little handcart in which he pushed the tools of his trade, his shears, roofing knife, eaves knife, twine, and the bundles of short hazel strips, called sprays in those parts, which were bent in two and used as staples to hold down the thatch.

  There were many hazel thickets on the chalky slopes around Caxley, and Francis had permission to cut from several of them. Mary used to enjoy these outings to collect the hazel sticks, and never came back without a few flowers or berries from the woods to decorate the window sill. Later she used to help Francis to slice the sticks and to sharpen each end so that the straw would be pierced easily.

  Despite the pinch of poverty, the two were happy, although neither of them enjoyed living so near to a town, and Mary missed the boisterous friendliness of the farmhouse. Although she did not admit it to her husband, she found life in the cottage lonely. Her immediate neighbours were an aged couple, both deaf and quarrelsome, who had rebuffed her innocent country-bred advances when she first arrived. She was too timid to do more, and knew no one of her own age in Caxley.

  Consequently, she was obliged to fall back upon her own resources during the long days when Francis was away from home. She scoured and scrubbed, cooked and sewed in the little house, and worried constantly about making ends meet. She was determined not to lower her standards and become like 'that marsh lot' who lived within a mile of her own doorstep. She had lost her way among those dank streets one day when she was exploring the town, and had been distressed and frightened by the dirt and violence she saw there. In the first few months of married life Mary adopted an attitude of proud respectability which was to remain for the rest of her life.

  In the summer of 1886 their first child was born. The baby arrived during one of the hottest spells in August, a small, compact child, fair like her father, and as neat and beautiful as a doll. Francis and Mary were delighted. She was christened Ada Mary and throve from the first.

  'But it's to be a boy next time,' said Francis, bouncing his little daughter on his knee. 'Must have another thatcher in the family, or who's to carry on when I'm past it?'

  'I'll see what I can do,' promised Mary.

  But it was not to be. When Ada was rising two, a fat toddler already tugging the fringed bobbles from the red tablecloth, a second daughter arrived.

  It was an April day. This second birth was more complicated than the first, and Mary had paced the little bedroom all day, watching the showers sweeping across the window and drenching the primroses in the tiny front garden.

  It was early evening when the baby was born. The showers suddenly stopped, and the sinking sun lit up the room with golden brilliance.

  'Open the window,' whispered the mother to the old woman who acted as midwife.

  The cool breeze carried with it the fragrance of wet earth and spring flowers. On the glistening rose-bush a thrush sang his heart out, welcoming the sun after the storm.

  ''Tis a good omen,' pronounced the old crone, returning to the bedside. 'That'll be a lucky baby, just you wait and see.'

  'But it's a girl!' cried Mary, tears of weakness springing to her eyes at the thought of Francis's disappointment when the news should reach him.

  'That don't matter,' replied the old woman sturdily. 'That child be blessed, I tell you, boy or girl. And the day will come when you'll remember what I told you.'

  Mary need not have worried. Francis welcomed this second little girl as warmly as the first. Although she had not the beauty, nor the lusty strength of Ada, she was equally fair, and very much quieter in temperament.

  One Sunday afternoon in May, when all the lilac was in flower and Mary's clump of irises hung out their purple flags, the Clare family, dressed in their best clothes, carried the baby to the parish church. She wore the same long christening robe which Ada had worn, a garment of fine white lawn, made by Mary, covered with innumerable tucks and edged with handmade crochet work.

  Mary felt a glow of pride as she handed this elegant bundle to the vicar at the font.

  'I name this child Dorothy Annie,' intoned the vicar sonorously, and dipped his finger in the water.

  CHAPTER 3

  MEMORIES of her first home crowded back to Miss Clare as she cleared her breakfast table in the kitchen at Beech Green. To be sure, she thought, the things that one would have expected to see most clearly escaped her. The faces of her mother and father, the aspect of the home outside and the simple geography of its interior, the view of the lane seen through the wooden palings of the gate, and even the appearance of her sister Ada at that time, evaded her memory.

  And yet there were other things, objects of no particular merit or beauty, whose feel and smell—and taste, too, in some cases—she recalled with a thrilling clarity after all these years. The white stone nearest the wooden front gate, the first of the row leading to the door, was particularly beloved by little Dolly. It rose to a substantial knob, large enough for a small foot to balance on, and so afforded her a better view of the world outside the front garden. At the foot of the knob was a hole, about two inches across, which held rainwater to the depth of a child's finger. It glittered in the whiteness like a grey eye in a pale face, and gave the stone its individuality. Sometimes the child propped a flower in this natural vase, a daisy or a violet, and once she had dropped in one of the scurrying wood lice which lived beneath the shelter of the stone. The pathetic attempts of the creature to climb out, and her own remorse when it died in the hollow of her palm, were never forgotten.

  There was, too, a certain knot in the wood of the back door whose satin smoothness Miss Clare could still feel on her finger tip. Below it a drop of resin had exuded, sticky and aromatic. These two fascinating lumps, one cold and hard, the other warm and soft, within an inch of each other, were a source of wonder and joy to the child. Nearby was the handle of her mother's heavy mangle, white as a bone with drenchings of soap and water, and split here and there so deeply that a child could insert tiny leaves and twigs and make believe that she was posting letters.

  Other memories were as fresh. Miss Clare recalled the slippery coldness of the steel fire-irons beneath her small hand, the delicious stuffy secrecy of hiding beneath the table, and the sight of the red bobbles quivering at the edge of the tablecloth. She could still feel the mingled love and terror which shook her when her father held her high above his head near to the oillamp that swung from the ceiling, and the roughness of his coat and the prickliness of his cheek.

  But clearer than any of these early memories was that of Emily the doll. Heavy, ungainly, battered, but ineffably dear, the look, smell, feel and taste of her rag doll flashed back across the years to Miss Clare. Her home and her family might be hidden by the mists of time, but the image of Emily shone still, as splendid as a star.

  ***

  With the arrival of her second child Mary Clare found her life busier than ever. Throughout the summer of 1888 she struggled against an overpowering weariness. As was the custom at that time, the young mother had fed her first baby for over a year, and prepared to do the same with the second. But poor diet and the constant nagging worry of making ends meet had taken their toll. Little Dolly's progress was slower than her lusty sister's had been, and Mary faced the unpleasant fact that she would have to stop feeding the child herself and undertake the expense of buying milk for its consumption. It was a bitter blow.

  With the coming of autumn Mary's spirits sank still further. Now came the added expense of coal, oil and candles, winter boots for Francis and warmer clothes for the children. She spoke despairingly to her husband, and he did his best to cheer her. His was a resilient nature, the open air blew away his cares, and he had no idea of the intensity of his wife's
misery cooped up in the little house with her babies and with nothing to deflect her mind from the cares around her.

  'You let me do the worrying, gal,' he told her with rough affection. 'I guaranteed to look after you when we was wed, and I'll do it, never you fear!'

  He gazed round the lamp-lit room, at the firelight glinting on the polished fender and the black pot which bubbled on the hob sending out wafts of boiling bacon. Upstairs his daughters lay asleep, bonny and beautiful. He could see no reason why Mary fretted so.

  'We may be a bit short—but that's only natural. We're in no debt, and now the harvest's in there's work aplenty for me. We'll be able to put something by this winter, for sure, then one day we'll be able to get somewhere further out in the country to live. Be better for you up on the downs, I reckon. 'Tis lowering to the spirits, living near the marsh here.'

  Mary did her best to be comforted. She had not the energy to point out the drawbacks of the little house, nor did she want to appear dissatisfied with the home that Francis had provided. Compared with 'the marsh lot' they were superbly housed, but the autumn gales had lifted several slates from the roof and had driven rain into the bedroom through the gaps. The window frames had shrunk with age and fitted poorly, and many a keen draught whistled through the rooms. There was no damp course, and the walls of the scullery glistened with moisture. The strip of matting which Mary spread on the flag-stoned floor there was dank and smelt musty.