Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis Read online

  Francis was a handy man and cheerfully undertook household repairs. It was as well that he did, for the baker landlord in Caxley took no interest in his property at all. He knew, though his tenants did not, that the pair of cottages was to be demolished within a year or two to make way for an extension of the railway line already being prepared from Caxley to the northern part of the county. He did not intend to spend another penny on his houses, and told Francis so flatly when the young man timidly approached him.

  'What d'you expect for two shilluns a week?' growled the baker. 'A palace? And how far d'you reckon two shilluns is going to go when it comes to putting a new set of slates on the roof? You wants to come down to earth, me boy. If that ain't grand enough for you, you knows the answer.'

  After this encounter, Francis was even more determined to move house as soon as he could find somewhere that he could afford. Meanwhile he and Mary stuffed the cracks with folded paper, and Francis borrowed a ladder and did a little rough thatching here and there among the slates of the rickety roof, to keep the worst of the weather out.

  Mary stuffed long strips of sacking with more straw, and put these sausages along the foot of the outside doors which let in the fiercest draughts. They were makeshift measures, but they helped to make the little house more habitable, and gave the young couple a comfortable glow of self-reliance, despite their poverty.

  'Where there's a will there's a way!' quoted Mary, ramming a draught-stopper hard against the lintel.

  'We'll find somewhere by the spring,' promised Francis, glad to see a momentary return of her spirits.

  But his brave hopes were doomed to be dashed. The winter of 1888 still lay ahead, and worse troubles than poverty were to visit the Clares' home during those bitter months.

  One November morning, soon after his encounter with the landlord, Francis Clare was at work for another landlord, more zealous than his own.

  His employer on this occasion was a man called Jesse Miller, who farmed several hundred acres of land lying between Beech Green and Springbourne. He was reckoned to be a hard man of business but a good master to his men. He had more conscience than many of his fellow farmers at that time, and saw to it that his men were housed well. To be hired by Jesse Miller at the Michaelmas hiring fair in Caxley meant hard work but above average living conditions, as the local workers knew well.

  Francis was busy thatching a long row of four cottages, and expected to finish the work by the end of that particular week. The day in question was clear and sparkling, and from his lofty perch Francis had a fine view of the distant downs, a soft blue hump against the bluer sky. A clump of elm trees at the edge of Hundred Acre Field had turned a vivid yellow, and reminded Francis of the sprigs of cauliflower, stained with turmeric, that were to be found in his wife's home-made piccalilli.

  The sun was overhead, and his stomach told him that it was dinner time long before the clock on Beech Green church struck twelve. He descended the ladder and fetched his satchel from the handcart.

  Seated on a bank, at the rear of the cottages, he enjoyed the warm sunshine on his face. He undid the knot of the red and white spotted handkerchief that held his meal and took out a generous cube of fat boiled bacon, the heel of a cottage loaf, and a small raw onion.

  He ate slowly, paring the food into small pieces with his old worn clasp-knife. A tame bantam sidled closer as the meal progressed, looking with a sharp speculative eye at the feast. Now and again Francis tossed her a crumb which she pecked up swiftly, and afterwards she would emit little hoarse cooing noises, half purr and half croak, in the hope of further largesse.

  He heard the click of a gate at the front of the cottages and guessed that one of the men was coming in for his midday meal. The appetising smell of rabbit stew from the end cottage had tickled his nostrils most of the morning. Only one other cottage was occupied that day, by an old lady whose son was working on a distant quarter of the farm. Two younger women from the other two cottages had gone together by the carrier's cart to Caxley market.

  Although Francis Clare knew pretty well all that was going on in the houses upon which he was engaged, he made it a rule to be as unobtrusive as possible. His father had taught him the wisdom of such conduct many years before.

  'People don't want you prying into their affairs,' the old man had said. 'You be enough nuisance anyway, sitting atop their roof days on end. And there's another side to it. Say you gets chatting one day, come the next the women'll come chatting to you when you wants to get on—or, worse still, asking you to chop 'em a bit of firing or mend the clothes line. You keep yourself to yourself, my boy, and get on with your own job.'

  It had been good advice, thought Francis, putting the last piece of bread in his mouth, and leaning back for a brief rest. He closed his eyes against the dazzle of the sun. The food made him content and drowsy, and for two pins, he told himself, he could doze off. But the days were short, there were still a few yards of roof to thatch, and he must get back to the job. He stood up briskly, brushing the crumbs from his thick corduroy trousers, observed the while by the attentive bantam.

  He was halfway up the ladder, emerging from the shadow of the cottage into the bright sunlight on the roof, when the accident happened. His heavy boot slipped on a rung, he lunged sideways to catch at the roof, missed his hold, and crashed to the ground, with one leg trapped in the ladder which fell across him.

  The noise brought the labourer and his wife running from their back door, and the old crone, who lived next door, hobbling after them. They found Francis, with his eyes closed, blood oozing from a gash at the temple, and his left leg bent at an unusual angle, and still threaded through the ladder.

  ''E be dead!' said the old woman flatly. She took off her apron calmly and began to spread it over the unconscious face of Francis.

  With some exasperation her neighbour twitched it off.

  'Give 'im time,' begged John Arnold roughly. ''E's winded, that's all. Cut back and get a drop of water, gal,' he commanded his wife.

  Francis Clare came round to feel the sting of cold water upon his forehead, the blue sky above him, and an overpowering smell of rabbit stew blowing upon his face from the anxious countenances that bent over him.

  'Take it easy, mate,' said John Arnold kindly. 'You bin and done a bit of damage to your leg. We'll lift you inside.'

  'You looked dead to me,' quavered the old lady. She sounded disappointed. 'Cut down like grass, you was. White as a shroud. I said to John 'ere: '"E's dead!" Didn't I then, John? I thought you was, you see,' she explained, her silver head nodding and shaking like a poplar leaf.

  The journey from the hard earth to the rickety sofa in John Arnold's living-room seemed the longest one of Francis's life. He lay there with sweat running down his ashen face, listening to the three making plans for him.

  'I'll run up to Mr Miller. He'll know what's best, and meantime you get on up to Doctor's and see if he be home to his dinner,' said John, taking command. 'And you, granny, bide here with the poor chap and see he don't move. Come 'e do, he'll have them bone ends ground together or set all ways. That wants setting straight again in a splint, but us'll do more harm than good to meddle.'

  He turned to Francis and patted his shoulder encouragingly.

  'Don't fear now. We'll be back afore you knows where you are.'

  'But you haven't had your dinner!' protested Francis weakly, looking at the plates which steamed upon the table.

  'That don't matter,' said John heartily, and disappeared through the door, followed by his wife who tugged on her coat as she ran.

  Francis heard their hurrying footsteps fade away and thought how good people were to each other. John must be hungry, his wife had spent all the morning preparing that savoury dish, yet not a nicker of reproach had crossed their faces at this interruption. Their only concern was for his comfort.

  The old lady had turned a chair sideways to the table and sat with one elbow on the scrubbed top, gazing at him with dark beady eyes.

 
Francis smiled weakly at her, but his bead throbbed so violently and he felt so giddy that he was unable to talk to her. He closed his eyes and listened to the whisper of the fire in the kitchen range and the rhythmic wheezing of the old woman's breathing. Within two minutes he had fallen asleep.

  The doctor could not be found. He was still out on his rounds, rattling along the country lanes in his gig, and not likely to be back until well after dark, his wife said.

  Francis was carried back to his home in one of Jesse Miller's carts. A bed of straw and sacks lessened the jolting, but the deeply rutted road caused many a sickening lurch and Francis could have wept with relief when the cart stopped at his gate and John Arnold went in to break the news to Mary.

  For almost three months Francis was unable to go to work, growing more anxious and dispirited as December made way for January and the weather grew more bitter. It was now Mary's turn to comfort, and this she did as well as she could.

  Lack of money was their immediate problem, for with the bread winner useless nothing came into the house. Francis's father came forward at once and insisted on doing his son's outstanding work as well as Ids own, handing over the money to Francis and waving his thanks aside. Francis and Mary never forgot their debt to his parents, and the two couples were more closely knit by this misfortune than ever before.

  The kindly farmer and his wife, from whose house Mary had been married, heard of her plight and sent a bundle of mending for Mary to do weekly, and paid her for it very generously. The carrier's cart brought the mending, and a big basket of vegetables, eggs and butter as well, and such kindnesses warmed their sad hearts during that cold winter.

  Sometimes, in his blackest moods of inaction, Francis would brood on the unjust state of affairs which cast a man still further into despair when he needed help most. He was grateful to his father, to his friends and neighbours, but he did not want charity. Somehow or other he ought to be able to ensure that a certain amount of money came into his home to keep his wife and babies while he was off work. People talked about it, he knew. It was to be a long time before such theories were put into practice, and meanwhile Francis and his wife had to endure hard times.

  In later years Dolly Clare was to hear her parents talk of that black winter, the first of her life, as the time when they had been driven to the verge of despair.

  But time passed, the spring came, and Francis limped about again, burning to get back to work. Mary's spirits rose, Ada played once more in the little garden, and the baby lay there too in its wicker bassinet, gazing at this bright new world and finding it good.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE baby's first birthday was celebrated by a family picnic in the woods which bordered an expanse of common land north of Caxley.

  After the bitter winter, spring was doubly welcome. It was unusually warm. Primroses and anemones starred the leafy mould underfoot, and early bluebells, still knotted in bud, were already to be seen. Mary and Francis breathed in the woodland scents hungrily as they rested on a mossy bank with their backs against the rough comfort of a beech tree.

  The battered baby carriage was drawn up nearby, its occupant deep in sleep. But Ada, rosy and sturdy, scrambled joyfully over tree roots, plucking the heads from flowers and gathering twigs, feathers, acorn cups, pebbles and any other fascinating object which caught her excited eye.

  'Wouldn't it be lovely,' said Mary dreamily, observing the child's happiness, 'to have a little house of our own in this wood. Or better still, just on the edge of it, on the common.'

  Francis smiled at her fancies.

  'We'd soon be hustled off, I knows,' he told her. 'No better'n gipsies, we'd be thought. But you take heart, my dear, one of these fine days you shall have a little house away from Caxley and the throng.'

  With the sun above him, the warm air lifting his bright hair, and his family closely about him, Francis felt his strength renewed. He had been back at work for some weeks, and although his injured leg was still weak he found that he could get through a day's work steadily. Although money was scarce, to be busy again raised the young man's spirits. In a month's time, he told himself, his leg would be as good as new. In fact, it was never to be quite as strong as its fellow, and Francis walked with a slight limp for the rest of his life.

  Mary stirred from her day-dreaming and began to unpack the food from the basket. Ada, breathless with her exertions, came up to this interesting object, and flung herself down beside her mother.

  'I wonder where we'll all be this time next year,' said Mary, holding a loaf to her chest and looking across its crusty top to the distant common. 'D'you reckon we'll have that little house by the time our Dolly's two years old?'

  'That we will!' promised her husband stoutly. 'Just you wait and see!'

  But Mary was to wait for another five years before hope of a country cottage came her way, and little Dolly was to celebrate several birthdays at Caxley before making her home in the Beech Green cottage which would shelter her for the rest of her long life.

  ***

  It was in Caxley, therefore, that Dolly Clare spent the first formative years of her life. The lane outside the cottage gate was dusty in summer and clogged with mud in the winter. The child watched the carts and waggons, the carriages of the gentry and the tradesmen's vans, rumble and rattle on their way, raising dust or churning mud, as they travelled to and from the town. The diversity of the horses fascinated her. Ada loved best the shiny high-stepping carriage horses that trotted proudly past, and would call excitedly to her little sister when she saw them approaching:

  'Come quick, Doll! Quick, you'll miss 'em!'

  But Dolly's favourites were the slow-moving patient great cart horses whose shaggy hooves stirred vast clouds of dust as they plodded towards the market town with the farm waggons thundering behind them. There was a humility and a nobility about these powerful monsters which tore at the young child's heart in a way which she could not express, but which was to remain with her always.

  The two little girls reacted differently to many things. To go shopping in the High Street or in the market square was a delight to the volatile Ada. To the quieter Dolly it was sheer misery.

  'Ada! Dolly!' The urgent summons from the house in their mother's voice would be the prelude to this ordeal.

  First they had to endure a brisk rubbing of hands and faces with a soapy flannel wrung out in cold water. Then came swift and painful combing of hair with a steel comb which seemed to find out every sensitive spot on little Dolly's scalp. Both children had curly hair. Ada's sprang crisply from her head, but Dolly's was softer and fell in loose curls, later to form ringlets. Ada endured the hair-tugging stoically, chattering the while about what she would see and what she wanted her mother to buy.

  'Hold still, child!' Mary would command. 'And hush your tongue! Us'll be lucky to get a good dinner from the shops, let alone sweeties and dollies and picture books!'

  Dolly's eyes filled with tears of pain during the combing, despite Mary's endeavour to handle her gently. She knew it was no pleasure for the younger child to go shopping, but there was no one to mind her and the two must perforce accompany their mother everywhere.

  At last they set out. Sometimes Dolly was pushed in the rickety perambulator, but its days were numbered, and more often than not she would struggle along beside her mother's long heavy skirt, clutching it with one desperate hand, or holding on to the stout shopping basket which her mother held. Never for a moment did she let go. The thought of being parted from her mother was too terrifying to be borne.

  Ada, on the other side, leapt and gambolled as gaily as a young goat, greeting friends, pointing out anything which caught her eye—a lady's pink parasol, a gleaming carriage door with a crest on it, or a pig squealing in a cart, covered with a stout net, and resenting every minute of its journey to the market.

  Caxley High Street was always busy. It was a thriving town which served a large area, and the shops always had far too many hurrying people in them for little Dolly's
liking. Customers pressed up to the counters to be served, assistants scurried back and forth filling baskets, weighing out sugar, fetching lumps of yellow butter on wooden pats, and slapping them feverishly into shape on the marble slab behind the counter.

  Important customers usually waited in their carriages outside the shop while their menservants bustled to and fro carrying parcels, and the proprietor of the business himself fetched and carried too, leaving his premises to pay his respects at the carriage side. Sometimes a horseman, not wishing to dismount, would shout his order to someone in the shop. Out would race the shop boy at top speed, the parcel would be stuffed into a jacket pocket, coins would jingle, and the horse would clop-clop off down the street again.

  The bustle was the breath of life to Ada. She scrambled up on the high round-seated chair by each counter, bouncing with such zest that her lofty ill-balanced perch frequently tipped over. From here she watched, with eyes as bright and round as a squirrel's. She loved to see the butter patted, and its final adornment with a swan or a crown from the heavy wooden butter-stamp. She delighted in the scooping of currants from deep drawers with a shiny shovel, and the see-sawing of the gold-bright scales and weights.

  But Dolly, crouched between the counter and her mother's skirt, was in no mood to relish these joys. Bewildered by the noise, hustled to one side if she ventured forth, and half-suffocated by the people who pressed and towered around her, she longed for the time when her mother replaced her purse in the deep petticoat pocket beneath her voluminous skirts and they could make their way out into the street again.