Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis Read online

  CHAPTER 6

  ONE windy March day in 1894 Francis Clare came home from work in a state of high excitement. He blew into the little living-room on a gust of wind that lifted the curtains and caused the fire to belch smoke.

  'Well, Mary,' he cried, dropping his dinner satchel triumphantly on the table, 'I've got a house.'

  'Francis! No! You mean it?'

  'Sure as I'm here.'

  'Where?'

  'Beech Green.'

  'But you've never been to Beech Green today?' queried Mary, still bewildered. The two little girls, playing with Emily on the rag hearthrug, gazed up at him as open-mouthed as their mother.

  'No, no. I've been at Springbourne all day, like I said, thatching Jesse Miller's cow shed. He come up while I was working and says: "You the young fellow as near killed 'isself a year or two back and had a ride home in my cart?"

  'I told him I was. He's getting forgetful-like now he's old—kept calling me by my father's name, but it appears one of his chaps told him we was looking for a cottage, and he's got an empty one we can have.

  '"'Tisn't a palace," he said, "two up and two down, but a pump inside and good cupboards. Take a look at it, and tell me what you think. Two shillings a week rent old Bob used to pay me before he left me to go to work in Caxley. That suits me if it suits you." And he threw the key up to me, and off he goes.'

  'Well!' said Mary, flabbergasted. 'And what's it like?'

  'Nice little place. Next door to Hundred Acre Field. Good bit of garden and handy for the school. I reckon you'll like it. We'll go over Sunday and you shall see it. Ma'll have the girls, I don't doubt, and we can walk it easy in just over an hour.'

  It was the most amazing news, and the family could hardly eat for excitement. By the next Sunday, when Mary had seen it and pronounced it perfect, all that remained to be done was to give a week's notice to their landlord and accept Jesse Miller's offer of a cart to carry the furniture from the Caxley home to the new one.

  They were to move on Lady Day, which gave them about a fortnight in which to attend to the multitude of domestic details involved in moving house. For the last few days the Caxley home was almost unrecognisable. Curtains had been taken down, cupboards cleared, boxes stood, roped and massive, in the most awkward places, and chaos reigned.

  But for all the bustle and confusion, Mary and Francis smiled. At last, they were leaving Caxley. At last, they were on their way to the open country where their hearts had always been.

  Hearing their mother sing, as she washed china and stored it in a box stuffed with their father's thatching straw, the two little girls exchanged secret smiles. Beech Green might be unknown to them, but obviously there was no need for apprehension. Beech Green, it seemed, was the Promised Land.

  The day of the move dawned still and cloudless. The Clare family was up betimes and the front door was propped open so that the coming of the farm cart could be instantly seen.

  Breakfast was a picnic meal that day, of bread and cold bacon cut into neat cubes placed on a meat dish on the bare table, for such refinements as cooking pots, plates and tablecloths were all packed up.

  It had been arranged that Mary and the children should travel on the cart with the furniture, while Francis stayed behind to lock up and return the key to the landlord.

  'Jim's going to give us a hand putting our traps in at Beech Green,' said Francis, naming the carter who was to transport them, 'and I should be with you soon after you gets there. We'll be straight afore dark, my love, curtains up and all, you'll see.'

  Outside, the early sunshine lit the tiny garden and shone through the open door upon the bare wall of the living-room. Perched on the budding rose bush, a speckled thrush sang his heart out, as if in farewell. It was strange, thought Mary suddenly, that she felt no pangs at parting from this her first home. Here the two babies had been born, and she and Francis had known happiness and misfortune. She had come across that uneven threshold as a bride, and was to leave as a wife and mother, but despite its associations, the house meant little to her. She would be glad to leave it.

  There was a distant rumbling, which grew as they listened. Then came the sound of heavy hooves, and Jim's voice.

  'Whoa there, old gal. Whoa, Bella!'

  'He's come!' squeaked the two little girls, flying to the gate. The adventure had begun.

  For the next hour or two Francis and Mary went back and forth from the house to the farm cart, helped by Jim who was almost as strong as the massive mare between the shafts. The children tore up and down in a state of wild excitement, getting in everyone's way, until Francis could stand it no longer.

  'You two keep out o' this,' he said firmly. 'Play out the back or upstairs where we've done. We'll all be wore out before we starts.'

  Ada skipped out through the back door, but Dolly made her way up the echoing shaky stairs to her empty bedroom. It was queer to see its bareness. There were dusky lines along the walls where the bed, the chest of drawers, and the cane-bottomed chair had stood. A blue bead glinted in a crack between two floor boards, and Dolly squatted down to prize it out.

  Near her, where the skirting board joined the floor, was a small jagged hole where a mouse lived. Her mother had set a trap many times, but no mouse was ever caught. Dolly sometimes wondered if this were in answer to her fervent, but silent, prayers on these occasions. Each night, kneeling on the hard floor with her face muffled in the side of the white counterpane, she had chanted:

  God bless Mummy,

  God bless Daddy,

  Aunties and Uncles,

  And all kind friends,

  And make me a GOOD girl,

  For Jesus Christ's sake

  Amen.

  On the nights when the trap was set, she added fiercely and silently:

  'And PLEASE DON'T let the mouse get caught,' before leaping into bed beside Ada, and drawing up the clothes.

  Now, she thought, the mouse could have the whole house to live in, and would never see a trap again.

  She wandered to the window and looked out into the back garden. Ada was trying to stand on her hands, supporting her legs against the fence. It was strange to think she would never do that again here. Dolly turned to look at the room again. It seemed to be waiting, it was so quiet and eerie. She felt as if she were intruding, as if the place she stood in were no longer hers.

  Soon she heard her parents calling.

  'Come on, Ada and Dolly! It's all ready now. Let's get you dressed.'

  Within half an hour they were off.

  Nearly seventy years later, the details of that amazing journey still remained clear in Miss Clare's memory. There had been an iron step, she remembered, to climb on in order to get into the cart. It was shiny with a hundred boot-scrapings, and had a crescent-shaped hole in it through which one had a terrifying glimpse of the road below.

  Jim, Mary and the two children squeezed together on the plank seat that ran across the cart. Dolly felt most unsafe, for her feet would not reach the floor. Emily was tucked by her, but Jim said she had better be put in the back.

  'Ain't no room for us to breathe, let alone your dolly,' said Jim cheerfully. 'Give 'er 'ere.'

  He clambered down again and Dolly reluctantly handed Emily, in her red cape, into his huge knobbly hand. He went to the rear of the cart and propped Emily up in a chair.

  'There she be,' called Jim. 'Now 'er's got a clear view of the road.'

  Satisfied, Dolly settled down to present delights. The horse's massive brown haunches, moving just below her, fascinated the child. Leather squeaked, brass jingled, wooden wheels rumbled, and die whole cart seemed alive with movement and noises.

  A gentle climb, from the river valley where Caxley lay, occupied the first mile or so of the journey. The sun was high now, and from her lofty seat Dolly could see over the hedges into the meadows. They steamed gently in the growing heat, for they were wet from overnight rain.

  About half a mile before it entered the village of Beech Green the road plunged down
a short steep bill between high banks topped with massive beech trees. It was the first time that the child had seen great roots writhing out of the soil like underground branches. It seemed to make this new world even more strange and foreign.

  'Nearly there,' said her mother, putting a steadying arm round Dolly, so that she did not slide forward on to Belle's great back. 'You'll see your new home soon.'

  They emerged from the tunnel of trees and began to rumble through the scattered village. Ada noticed the school standing back from the road. A few children, playing in the dinner hour, watched their progress, and one Child waved. Ada waved back energetically, but Dolly was too timid.

  Their own house lay half a mile or so further, on the outskirts of Beech Green. Three miles further still lay the village of Fairacre where so much of little Dolly's life was to be spent.

  Dolly's spirits rose with every turn of the wheel that took her further from Caxley. The light breeze stirred her hair, hanging now, almost to her shoulders, in blessed holiday freedom. The inevitable had happened at the Caxley school. The propinquity of Maud's auburn tangles had soon led to Dolly's head scratching, her mother's shocked discoveries, and the tight tying-back of poor Dolly's locks on school days. The feeling of wind in her hair enhanced the delights of the day as the child kept a look-out for the new cottage.

  At last a bend in the road revealed it—a snug, thatched, tight little beauty of a house, set behind a thick hedge just quickening to green. The cart slurred to a stop, the noises ceased, and the full quiet harmony of the wide countryside became apparent.

  Jim lifted the two children down. He and Mary began to busy themselves with the load, helped by the vociferous Ada. Dolly, as if in a trance, pushed open the small gate and wandered past the cottage to the end of the garden. She had never realised that the world was so big.

  Before her, beyond the garden hedge, sloped the gentle flanks of the downs with Hundred Acre Field at the base, and their tops, hazy in the distance, fading into the blue of the sky. Birds sang in the hedges, in the trees, and far above her in the blue and white sky. The happiness which had warmed Dolly in the flower-lit meadow on her way to her grandmother's returned to her with renewed strength.

  She felt as a minnow, long held captive in a jam jar, must feel on being released into a brook; or as a bird set free from a cage into the limitless air. This was her element. These crisscross currents of scent-laden air, spangled with bird-song, splashed with sunshine, flowed around her, lifting her spirits and quickening her senses.

  Dolly Clare had come home.

  Now, a lifetime later, white-haired Miss Clare stood in the same garden, gazing at the same view and drawing from it the same comfort and strength which it had always given. Her hands were full of roses. Some would stand in the small sitting room, but the choicest would be put beside Emily Davis's bed in the spare bedroom.

  The thought of Emily reminded Miss Clare again of the lost doll. It was dusk, she recalled, before the first Emily had been missed. Distressed though she was, little Dolly had been less upset than her parents feared, for the enchantment of the day still possessed her.

  'I'll see Jim tomorrow,' promised Francis. 'He'll have her safe, never fear.'

  But Emily was not with Jim. She had fallen from the back of the cart and lay face downward at the side of the lane between Caxley and Beech Green. A ten-year-old boy, who had spent the morning rattling two stones in a tin to scare the birds from his master's crop, found her as he went home to dinner. He turned her over with the broken toe-cap of his boot, and snorted with scorn.

  'Some kid's old dolly!' he shouted to the wind, and booted it, in a magnificent arc, over the hedge.

  It was a week before she was found, and Dolly had shed many tears of mourning. A man, cutting back the hedge, had discovered the sodden doll and taken it to the local shop, where Francis later collected it.

  'There, my dear,' he said to Dolly, 'now you can be happy again.'

  Dolly took the long-lost doll into her arms, but never completely into her heart again.

  Emily looked so different. She had the pale remote air of one who has been ill for a long time. One eye had gone, and though Mary sewed two white linen shirt buttons in place of her former eyes, this only added to the strangeness of the doll in her young mistress's eyes. She cared for her as zealously as she had always done, putting her to bed, tying on the red cloak before taking her into the garden, and propping a cushion behind her back when she sat at table. But the glory was gone.

  It may have been that the new living Emily had taken her place. Certainly she had become very dear to young Dolly.

  'And still is,' said old Miss Clare, stirring herself from her reminiscences.

  The clock struck twelve inside the house, and from the distant village school Miss Clare heard the shouts of children released from bondage.

  'I've done nothing but day-dream,' Miss Clare told herself, returning from the noonday blaze to the shade of the kitchen. 'Emily will be here before I'm ready for her. But then that's one of the pleasures of growing old,' she comforted herself.

  Singing softly, roses in hand, she mounted the stairs to the waiting room.

  Part Two: Beech Green

  CHAPTER 7

  LIFE at Beech Green was an exhilarating affair, after the confines of Caxley, and made all the richer by the friendship with Emily Davis.

  She was a mischievous, high-spirited child, the middle one of seven children. All nine of the Davises lived, as snug and gay as a nestful of wrens, in a tiny cottage at the end of a row of four.

  Dolly found her way there before she had lived a week at her new home. There was a happy-go-lucky atmosphere about the Davises' house which enchanted the little girl who had been more primly brought up. She tumbled in and out of their home, revelling in the games, the nonsense and the carefree coming and going of the seven children and their numerous friends.

  Emily's father was a gardener at the manor house at Beech Green. He was a giant of a man, with a face as brown and wrinkled as a walnut. Two bright blue eyes blazed from his weatherbeaten countenance, and his laugh shook the cottage.

  'My husband's a very larky man,' Mrs Davis would say proudly. 'Likes his joke, and that.'

  She was barely five feet high, with a figure so neat and child-like that it seemed impossible that she could be the mother of such a large and boisterous brood. Her energy was boundless. She scrubbed and polished the little house, cooked massive meals, washed mountains of linen, and then knitted and sewed, or tended her flower garden, as a relaxation. Throughout it all she laughed and sang, finding time to play with her children, cuffing them good-naturedly when they needed correction, and seeming, at the end of the day, to be as fresh as when she rose at five-thirty.

  Dolly loved Mrs Davis dearly. Her warm and casual friendliness made her feel part of the family, and her self-assurance grew.

  In the corner of the cottage living-room sat old Mr Davis, Emily's grandfather. He had been a carter, but now, unable to work regularly, he made a few pence by mending pots and pans for the neighbours. His right hand was encased in a black kid glove, which fascinated young Dolly.

  One day, soon after her arrival at Beech Green, the old man caught the child's eyes fixed upon his hand. A soldering iron was heating in the open fire, and between his knees old Mr Davis held an upturned kettle.

  'You be wondering why I keeps me glove on, I'll wager,' he grunted.

  Dolly smiled shyly.

  'Well, I ain't agoing to take it off to show you, me little maid, or you'd 'ave a fright. I ain't got much of me fingers left, if the truth be told.'

  He bent forward, breathless with the effort, and removed the red-hot iron from the fire. Dolly, with a thrill of horror, saw how he held it gripped in the palm of his hand. He dipped the iron in a little tin on the fender, and a hot pungent smoke rose from the sizzling liquid.

  'I was out in that of snowstorm for two days,' said the old man. 'Afore you was born or thought of, that was. In 1881—getting
on for fourteen year ago. I'd taken a load of hay over to Springbourne that day, and it was snowing pretty lively as I went. But how the Hanover I got back as fur as I did that afternoon, I never could tell. Just this side of the downs I 'ad to give in. I cut the horses loose and said: "Git on 'ome, you two, while you can." I felt fair lonely watching them slipping and sliding down the hill, up to their bellies in snow, leaving me on me own.'

  'You should have sat on one,' said Dolly gravely.

  'Easier said than done,' grunted Mr Davis, applying his soldering iron to the kettle. There was silence while he surveyed his handiwork for a minute or two, and then he resumed.

  'The snow was that thick, and swirling around so, them two horses vanished pretty quick. I could 'ear 'em snorting with fright and shaking their heads. They 'adn't seen nothing like it, you see. Nor me, for that matter.

  'There I was, and I couldn't make up me mind to stop in the cart or try and plod on home and risk it.'

  'What did you do?' asked Dolly.

  'Risked it,' said the old man laconically. 'Risked it, and fell in a dam' ditch I never knew was there, and 'ad to stop there two days. I ain't seen nothing like that blizzard before or since. If it 'adn't a been for the two horses getting back I reckon I'd a been there still. They never got home till next day, and it took four chaps searching in turn to find me, it was that cruel.'

  'Did you shout?' asked Dolly.

  'I was past shouting after the first 'alf-hour,' answered Mr Davis, holding the kettle to the light and squinting inside it. 'By the time they dug me out I was as stiff as this 'ere iron. Stayed in bed a week, I did, and 'ad to 'ave three fingers and two toes plucked orf. The frost-bite, you see.'

  Dolly nodded, appalled.

  'I shan't forget 1881 in a 'urry,' said the old man, and thrust the soldering iron back into the red heart of the coals with a deft thrust of his maimed hand.