Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis Page 8

  He presented the little girls with a Union Jack made by their grandmother so that they could hang it from the porch on Jubilee Day. On this occasion he had not brought his wife, for he had pedalled over on his old penny-farthing cycle, an archaic vehicle to which he was much attached. Dolly and Ada watched him remount after tea, and waved the flag vigorously after his retreating figure.

  The day itself dawned clear and shining. 'Real Queen's weather again,' people cried to each other as they bustled about. Household chores were done quickly that day to leave time for the preparations for the afternoon fun. In the grounds at the manor long trestle tables were spread with new lengths of unbleached calico for tablecloths, and on these were dozens of dishes of buns and lardy cakes, sandwiches and pies. Maids fluttered back and forth from the house bearing great trays of cups and saucers, tea urns, jugs, spoons and all the paraphernalia of rural junketings.

  Dolly and Ada were beside themselves with excitement. All the schools had a holiday, and it was a thrill to wear one's best white frock with one's best black stockings and nailed boots. Their pink and blue sashes were freshly pressed, and Mary had tied hair ribbons to match upon her daughters' curls.

  Dolly felt very sorry for one family who sat opposite her at the long tea table. They had recently lost their mother, and all the four children, even the youngest who could scarcely toddle, were clad in deepest black. From the crepe bows which decorated their black hats to the toecaps of their heavy boots the gloom was unrelieved. Even their hands were encased in black cotton gloves which they did not remove even when eating. Under the brilliant blue sky, among the laughter and sunshine, they perched like four little black crows in a row, silent, and suffering the heat in stolid endurance.

  After a colossal tea, one of the daughters of the house sang patriotic songs, accompanied by her sister, at the piano which had been wheeled out upon the grass from the drawing-room. Applause was polite but not very enthusiastic, and everyone, including the Misses Evans, was relieved when the real festivities began with the sports.

  The Clare family did well, for Francis won the men's wheelbarrow race with the eldest Davis boy in the barrow whilst he did the pushing, and later still, Ada tore splendidly across the field in the girls' hundred yards, sash flying, nailed boots pounding, to win by a short head from the butcher's daughter. Dolly came second in the obstacle race, but was beaten by Emily Davis whose wiry skinniness negotiated ladder rungs and wriggled under tarpaulins with amazing dexterity.

  Francis received half a crown, but Ada was delighted to have six yards of the unbleached calico which had recently covered the tea tables. It made stout pillow cases for the family which lasted for many years, and was considered by all to be a practical and most welcome prize.

  At the end of the long golden day the little family made its way home. Young Frank slept in his wicker perambulator, and across the bottom was lodged the roll of calico. The lane was warm and scented with honeysuckle from the sun-baked hedges, and the smell of hay, lying ready to be turned when the labourers returned to the fields next day after the holiday, mingled with the other summer scents.

  Tired Dolly, clinging to the pram for support, thought she would never forget such a wonderful day. 'Nothing ever happens in Beech Green,' she had heard people say. No one could say that now, was Dolly's last thought, as her dizzy head burrowed into the pillow beside Ada's. It was the most splendid thing that had ever happened in her young life.

  Although Dolly, at nine years of age, was unconscious of the importance of the Jubilee and its times upon her outlook, yet looking back, as an old woman, she began to realise how deeply events and national movements had influenced even such a quiet life as her own. The Queen's celebrations had brought unaccustomed vivacity and loquacity to the country folk around her. Dolly, unusually excited by the stir, learnt more then about England's place in the world, her great men, her victories abroad and the reforms needed at home, than she had ever done before.

  From Mr Finch she learnt of the vast areas of the world ruled over by their own Queen. From him she learnt of the Empire, following his pointer as it leapt from one red splash to another across the map of the world hung over the easel. She was told of the courage and military persistence of those who had subjugated the natives of those parts, and the benevolence of the great Queen whose laws now ruled them. She was not told of the feelings of those subjugated, but supposed that they were as happy to be in the Empire family as she was herself. Certainly the most splendid photographs of African chiefs, Indian princes, and the nobility of many far-flung territories taking part in the Diamond Jubilee celebrations, were cut from the newspapers and pinned up on the schoolroom wall where they were much admired by Queen Victoria's young subjects.

  From the newspapers too, Dolly and Emily, both becoming avid readers, soon recognised the modern hero. He was a man of action, willing to tear up his roots and leave his country to explore unknown lands, to seek his fortune—in gold, maybe, in diamonds perhaps—to fight bravely, to dominate and to carry the British way of life to the unenlightened. He was a hero likely to be acceptable to boys as well as girls, for he was a colourful figure of wealth and power to those living amidst the pinching poverty of rural England at that time. The lot of the agricultural labourer grew worse weekly. The trek to find work in the towns continued. More and more white-collar workers struggled along in increasingly drab surroundings. It was small wonder that they craved colour and sensation to add excitement to their lives. The accounts of England's conquests overseas and the blaze of publicity which illuminated her leaders fired many a young man to join the army or to emigrate to those colonies whose exotic representatives marched in the Queen's processions.

  The nineties needed sensation. The Diamond Jubilee was an occasion for national rejoicing, not only in the Queen, but in the nation's image as personified by her, proud, beloved, and a world-ruler. It was an image of Britain's greatness which was to remain with Dolly and her contemporaries. It gave them a deep sense of pride which would be needed to sustain them through many a change and the tragedy of two world wars. It gave them too a stability and a faith in ultimate victory which a later generation was to marvel at, deride, but secretly envy.

  Later, Miss Clare was to see the follies and mistakes that had accompanied Britain's imperial policy during the nineties, but on that June night, after a shining day of rustic rejoicing, everything seemed wonderful to the little girl, with God in his heaven, the Queen on the throne, and the glory of an Empire everywhere around.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE friendship between Emily and Dolly deepened with time. They shared a passion for flowers, reading and little children, and were lucky enough to find plenty of each to keep them happy.

  The woods on the hill to Springbourne, a neighbouring village on the other side of the downs, were their hunting ground for flowers almost all the year round. They found wild snowdrops, violets, anemones, primroses and nodding catkins while the year was yet young. Later, bluebells and curling bracken fronds delighted them. Foxgloves and campion followed, and then, in the autumn, they had the joy of collecting hazel nuts and blackberries, as busily as the red squirrels that darted airily across the frail twigs high above their heads. Even in winter the wood offered treasures for those who cared to seek, and the two little girls would return carrying orange toadstools or lichen-covered branches in their cold hands.

  Both children were fortunate too in having parents enlightened enough to give them a small patch of garden for their own cultivation. Most cottage gardens at this time were given over exclusively to the growing of vegetables for the family, and there was real need for this. Consequently, very few children had anywhere to play on their own territory, and fewer still were able to count a yard or two as their very own. Dolly and Ada shared a patch, and Emily had a much smaller one in her own garden. Here the children planted any seeds they could beg, and slips of plants given them by indulgent grown-up gardeners. The result was gay and unusual. Radishes and marigolds riot
ed together, a cabbage sheltered a clump of yellow pansies, and double daisies tossed their fringes beside mustard and cress.

  They were lucky too with reading matter. Mr Finch, for all his pomposity and strictness, was a good teacher, and fostered any talent and interest that he saw. Books from the school library shelf could be borrowed, if brown paper covers were made for them and they were returned within a week. Often he lent a book from his own house, and this was greatly treasured. In this way Emily and Dolly were able to read more recent fiction than the Marryats, Mrs Ewings, and Kingsleys on the school shelf. Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle and Kipling were some of the new authors that the little girls met for the first time, and though there was much that escaped their understanding, the excitement of the stories swept them along in a fever of anticipation and made them long for the chance to see the strange foreign places there portrayed. Young though they were, they too had caught the fever for adventure which quickened their elders at this time, and they mourned the fact that they were female, and so never likely to have the opportunities of Allan Quatermain. Dolly's greatest moment came when Mr Finch presented her with a copy of Three Men in a Boat, which remained a favourite of hers for many years, though at its first reading she skipped all the moralising bits and the descriptions.

  There were plenty of children, in their own families and their neighbours', to satisfy their interests, and mothers were glad to trust their toddlers to two girls who were so unusually sensible. Their sorties to the woods were usually in the company of Frank and another toddler or two straggling happily along behind them, or stuffed in an old pushchair and rattling over the uneven path.

  'Fresh air's free,' the mothers used to tell them; 'you get as much of it as you can.' And out the children would be bundled, while cottage floors were swept and scrubbed, and the steel fenders and fire irons were polished with emery paper, and everything 'put to rights', as they said, in the few snatched minutes of freedom from their offspring. Consequently, there were always plenty of young children ready to join in games, or to be petted and admired by the older girls.

  Looking back, Miss Clare saw how valuable all this unconscious training had been to her work as a teacher. The love of flowers and reading she passed on to many a country child, and her own response to young children, protective and warm-hearted, never failed her.

  Friendship with Emily meant less dependence on Ada, and now that the two sisters were growing older, the differences in temperament became even more marked. Ada grew more handsome as the years passed, and her boundless vivacity made her attractive to the boys at Beech Green school as well as the girls. Fearless and athletic, she could climb a tree or vault a fence, despite her hampering skirts, as bravely as the boys, and Ada Clare was known as 'a good sport'.

  Francis Clare adored all his children, but his bonny Ada became increasingly dear to him. Mary looked in some doubt upon her firstborn. There were times when she was headstrong and disobedient, and Mary foresaw a difficult time ahead when young men would enter Ada's life.

  Sometimes Dolly was frightened by Ada's bold disobedience of her mother; at other times she was grateful for some small rebellion which proved successful and benefited them both. The weekly dosing was a case in point.

  As was the custom at that time in almost all households, the Clare children were given a mild purgative, usually on Saturday evening. Francis had been brought up to expect a teaspoonful of a home-made concoction with nauseating regularity. His mother chopped prunes, raisins, figs and dates, plentifully sprinkled them with powdered senna pods and a little medicinal paraffin oil and mixed it together to form a glutinous and efficient purge. It had the advantage of being reasonably palatable and wholesome, but Mary considered 'Grandma's jollop', as the children called it, very old-fashioned, and substituted castor-oil, which she disguised in hot lemonade.

  It was Ada who called Dolly's attention to the suspicious oily rings floating on the top.

  'Don't you drink it,' she warned the younger child, in her mother's absence. Mary was at first persuasive, then unsuccessfully authoritative, and finally plain cross, as the two little girls flatly refused to drink the brew.

  Francis only laughed when she told him.

  'Give 'em Grandma's jollop then,' he suggested. 'They like that, so they say.'

  But Mary tried another stratagem. On the following Saturday a plate of dates was offered to the children.

  'This one hasn't got a stone in it,' said Dolly with surprise.

  Her mother, busy ostensibly with darning, said briskly:

  'Maybe it's got some grey powder inside instead.'

  'That's right. It has,' agreed Dolly.

  'You get some dates like that,' said Mary complacently. 'Some has stones and some has grey powder.'

  They ate them unprotesting, thrilled to have such a treat as dates; but Ada discovered the trick before the next Saturday. Other children had grey powder administered in this form, she heard from her schoolfellows.

  Fruit laxative tablets, called optimistically by Mary 'nice pink sweets', were tried next. Dolly and Ada held them in their mouths, pretended to swallow them, and then removed them when their mother was out of the room.

  'Put 'em under the table ledge, quick!' whispered Ada, and there for several weeks a collection of sucked tablets grew, on a narrow ledge under the table top, well hidden by the red tablecloth.

  At last came the day of open rebellion. Ada refused to take any form of medicine again.

  'You'll be ill,' warned her mother. 'It's only taking these pills regular that's kept you and Dolly so fit and well. Your mother knows best now.'

  'That she don't,' said Ada defiantly, tossing her bright hair. 'If you looks under the table ledge you'll see what we've done with 'em all this time. And we ain't come to no harm!'

  The pink tablets were discovered, the two little girls sent to bed in disgrace, and Francis told all when he returned.

  He hugged his vexed wife and restored her spirits.

  'Well, she've told the truth. Their insides works all right without a lot of oiling, it seems. Let 'em off, my dear, and save a mint of money, and temper too.'

  Thus Ada's battle, and Dolly's too, was won. These things happened when Frank was too young to be included in the ritual, but as soon as he was old enough he was told by his sisters just how fortunate he was to have escaped such horrors, and how thankful he should be to those who had smoothed the path before him.

  If Mary had a favourite among her three children (and she stoutly maintained that she had not), then it was little Frank. He was darker in colouring than the two girls, who took after Francis. The dark bright hazel eyes that shone so lovingly upon his mother were the same colour as her own, and his hair grew as crisply. More open in his affection than her daughters, Frank charmed Mary by his frequent hugs and kisses, and many a smack was left unadministered because the knowing young rogue disarmed his mother with his blandishments.

  'Make the most of him while he's yours,' observed Francis, watching the toddler on his mother's lap. 'He'll break plenty of hearts, I reckon, before he goes off to settle down and leave you.'

  'You won't leave your mum, will you, my love?' said Mary, dancing him up and down.

  Although she had learnt of the advent of the baby with mixed feelings, the joy which she felt in this boy lay largely in the feeling of future security which he brought, although Mary herself was unconscious of this. The girls would, marry, Francis might die first: a son was an insurance against want and loneliness, a joy to her now and a comfort for her old age.

  When, in the autumn of 1899, the Boer War broke out, she looked upon her three-year-old and gave thanks that he was so young. Several young men from Beech Green had joined the army to escape from hard times and to seek adventure. Some were now in South Africa and Mary knew the anxiety which gnawed at the hearts of their mothers. She prayed that her Frank would never have to endure the dangers of war, nor she the heartbreak of those who wait for news.

  Christmas that year w
as a sad one, overshadowed by the reverses of the army in South Africa. At the manor, the Evans family were dressed in heavy mourning for the eldest son, who had been shot from Iris horse whilst attempting to relieve Ladysmith with General Buller's forces. The village was stunned. This seemed to bring the war very near, and people concerned themselves with the direction of the hostilities with real anxiety. Should General Buller have suggested to White that he surrendered Ladysmith? It seemed a terrible tiling for an Englishman to think of giving in. But then look at the loss of lives? Look at poor Algy Evans and the Willett boy from Fairacre and the Brown twins from Caxley! So the tongues wagged, and wagged still faster when they heard that Buller had been replaced by Lord Roberts who had lost his only son in the same battle that took their own Algy Evans.

  Queen Victoria was reported as saying at this time: 'Please understand that there is no one depressed in this house. We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat: they do not exist.' These brave words were heartening, but did not completely quell the fears that shook her less heroic subjects' hearts.

  When Dolly visited the Davis' cottage one day, just after Christmas in 1899, she found it clamorous with dismay. Albert, the eldest son, had just announced that his New Year resolution was to join the army. Some of the family took his part, but his mother hotly attacked him. Dolly watched amazed the change in this smiling little Jenny-wren of a woman to a blazing fury.