Lark Rise to Candleford (26 page)

In decorating their homes and managing their housework, they
were able to let themselves go a little more. There were fancy touches,
hitherto unknown in the hamlet. Cosy corners were built of old boxes and
covered with cretonne; gridirons were covered with pink wool and tinsel and
hung up to serve as letter racks; Japanese fans appeared above picture frames and
window curtains were tied back with ribbon bows. Blue or pink ribbon bows
figured largely in these new decorative schemes. There were bows on the
curtains, on the corners of cushion covers, on the cloth that covered the chest
of drawers, and sometimes even on photograph frames. Some of the older men used
to say that one bride, an outstanding example of the new refinement, had
actually put blue ribbon bows on the handle of her bedroom utensil. Another
joke concerned the vase of flowers the same girl placed on her table at mealtimes.
Her father-in-law, it was said, being entertained to tea at the new home,
exclaimed, 'Hemmed if I've ever heard of eatin' flowers before!' and the
mother-in-law passed the vase to her son, saying, 'Here, Georgie. Have a
mouthful of sweet peas.' But the brides only laughed and tossed their heads at such
ignorance. The old hamlet ways were all very well, some of them; but they had
seen the world and knew how things were done. It was their day now.

Changing ideas in the outer world were also reflected in the relationship
between husband and wife. Marriage was becoming more of a partnership. The man
of the house was no longer absolved of all further responsibility when he had
brought his week's wages home; he was made to feel that he had an interest in
the management of the home and the bringing up of the children. A good, steady
husband who could be depended upon was encouraged to keep part of his wages,
out of which he paid the rent, bought the pig's food, and often the family
footwear. He would chop the wood, sweep the path and fetch water from the well.

'So you be takin' a turn at 'ooman's work?' the older men
would say teasingly, and the older women had plenty to say about the lazy, good-for-nothing
wenches of these days; but the good example was not lost; the better-natured
among the older men began to do odd jobs about their homes, and though, at
first, their wives would tell them to 'keep out o' th' road', and say that they
could do it themselves in half the time, they soon learned to appreciate, then
to expect it.

Then the young wives, unused to never having a penny of their
own and sorely tried by their straitened housekeeping, began to look round for some
way of adding to the family income. One, with the remains of her savings,
bought a few fowls and fowl-houses and sold the eggs to the grocer in the market
town. Another who was clever with her needle made frocks for the servants at
the neighbouring farm-houses; another left her only child with her mother and
did the Rectory charring twice a week. The old country tradition of self-help
was reviving; but, although there was a little extra money and there were fewer
mouths to feed, the income was still woefully inadequate. Whichever way the
young housewife turned, she was, as she said, 'up against it'. 'If only we had
more money!' was still the cry.

Early in the 'nineties some measure of relief came, for then
the weekly wage was raised to fifteen shillings; but rising prices and new requirements
soon absorbed this rise and it took a world war to obtain for them anything
like a living wage.

School began at nine o'clock, but the hamlet children set out
on their mile-and-a-half walk there as soon as possible after their seven
o'clock breakfast, partly because they liked plenty of time to play on the road
and partly because their mothers wanted them out of the way before house-cleaning
began.

Up the long, straight road they straggled, in twos and threes
and in gangs, their flat, rush dinner-baskets over their shoulders and their shabby
little coats on their arms against rain. In cold weather some of them carried
two hot potatoes which had been in the oven, or in the ashes, all night, to
warm their hands on the way and to serve as a light lunch on arrival.

They were strong, lusty children, let loose from control; and
there was plenty of shouting, quarrelling, and often fighting among them. In
more peaceful moments they would squat in the dust of the road and play marbles,
or sit on a stone heap and play dibs with pebbles, or climb into the hedges
after birds' nests or blackberries, or to pull long trails of bryony to wreathe
round their hats. In winter they would slide on the ice on the puddles, or make
snowballs—soft ones for their friends, and hard ones with a stone inside for
their enemies.

After the first mile or so the dinner-baskets would be raided;
or they would creep through the bars of the padlocked field gates for turnips
to pare with the teeth and munch, or for handfuls of green pea shucks, or ears
of wheat, to rub out the sweet, milky grain between the hands and devour. In
spring they ate the young green from the hawthorn hedges, which they called
'bread and cheese', and sorrel leaves from the wayside, which they called 'sour
grass', and in autumn there was an abundance of haws and blackberries and sloes
and crabapples for them to feast upon. There was always something to eat, and
they ate, not so much because they were hungry as from habit and relish of the
wild food.

At that early hour there was little traffic upon the road.
Sometimes, in winter, the children would hear the pounding of galloping hoofs
and a string of hunters, blanketed up to the ears and ridden and led by grooms,
would loom up out of the mist and thunder past on the grass verges. At other
times the steady tramp and jingle of the teams going afield would approach,
and, as they passed, fathers would pretend to flick their offspring with whips,
saying, 'There! that's for that time you deserved it an' didn't get it'; while
elder brothers, themselves at school only a few months before, would look
patronizingly down from the horses' backs and call: 'Get out o' th' way, you
kids!'

Going home in the afternoon there was more to be seen. A
farmer's gig, on the way home from market, would stir up the dust; or the
miller's van or the brewer's dray, drawn by four immense, hairy-legged, satin-backed
carthorses. More exciting was the rare sight of Squire Harrison's four-in-hand,
with ladies in bright, summer dresses, like a garden of flowers, on the top of
the coach, and Squire himself, pink-cheeked and white-hatted, handling the four
greys. When the four-in-hand passed, the children drew back and saluted, the
Squire would gravely touch the brim of his hat with his whip, and the ladies
would lean from their high seats to smile on the curtseying children.

A more familiar sight was the lady on a white horse who rode
slowly on the same grass verge in the same direction every Monday and Thursday.
It was whispered among the children that she was engaged to a farmer living at
a distance, and that they met half-way between their two homes. If so, it must
have been a long engagement, for she rode past at exactly the same hour twice a
week throughout Laura's schooldays, her face getting whiter and her figure
getting fuller and her old white horse also putting on weight.

It has been said that every child is born a little savage and
has to be civilized. The process of civilization had not gone very far with
some of the hamlet children; although one civilization had them in hand at home
and another at school, they were able to throw off both on the road between the
two places and revert to a state of Nature. A favourite amusement with these
was to fall in a body upon some unoffending companion, usually a small girl in
a clean frock, and to 'run her', as they called it. This meant chasing her
until they caught her, then dragging her down and sitting upon her, tearing her
clothes, smudging her face, and tousling her hair in the process. She might
scream and cry and say she would 'tell on' them; they took no notice until,
tiring of the sport, they would run whooping off, leaving her sobbing and exhausted.

The persecuted one never 'told on' them, even when reproved
by the schoolmistress for her dishevelled condition, for she knew that, if she had,
there would have been a worse 'running' to endure on the way home, and one that
went to the tune of:

Tell-tale tit!

Cut her tongue a-slit,

And every little puppy-dog shall have a little bit!

It was no good telling the mothers either, for it was the
rule of the hamlet never to interfere in the children's quarrels. 'Let 'em
fight it out among theirselves,' the women would say; and if a child complained
the only response would be: 'You must've been doin' summat to them. If you'd've
left them alone, they'd've left you alone; so don't come bringing your tales
home to me!' It was harsh schooling; but the majority seemed to thrive upon it,
and the few quieter and more sensitive children soon learned either to start
early and get to school first, or to linger behind, dipping under bushes and
lurking inside field gates until the main body had passed.

When Edmund was about to start school, Laura was afraid for
him. He was such a quiet, gentle little boy, inclined to sit gazing into space,
thinking his own thoughts and dreaming his own dreams. What would he do among
the rough, noisy crowd? In imagination she saw him struggling in the dust with
the runners sitting on his small, slender body, while she stood by, powerless
to help.

At first she took him to school by a field path, a mile or
more round; but bad weather and growing crops soon put an end to that and the
day came when they had to take the road with the other children. But, beyond snatching
his cap and flinging it into the hedge as they passed, the bigger boys paid no
attention to him, while the younger ones were definitely friendly, especially
when he invited them to have a blow each on the whistle which hung on a white
cord from the neck of his sailor suit. They accepted him, in fact, as one of
themselves, allowing him to join in their games and saluting him with a grunted
'Hello, Ted,' when they passed.

When the clash came at last and a quarrel arose, and Laura,
looking back, saw Edmund in the thick of a struggling group and heard his voice
shouting loudly and rudely, not gentle at all, 'I shan't! I won't! Stop it, I
tell you!' and rushed back, if not to rescue, to be near him, she found Edmund,
her gentle little Edmund, with face as red as a turkey-cock, hitting out with
clenched fists at such a rate that some of the bigger boys, standing near,
started applauding.

So Edmund was not a coward, like she was! Edmund could fight!
Though where and how he had learned to do so was a mystery. Perhaps, being a boy,
it came to him naturally. At any rate, fight he did, so often and so well that
soon no one near his own age risked offending him. His elders gave him an
occasional cuff, just to keep him in his place; but in scuffles with others
they took his part, perhaps because they knew he was likely to win. So all was
well with Edmund. He was accepted inside the circle, and the only drawback,
from Laura's point of view, was that she was still outside.

Although they started to school so early, the hamlet children
took so much time on the way that the last quarter of a mile was always a race,
and they would rush, panting and dishevelled, into school just as the bell
stopped, and the other children, spick and span, fresh from their mothers'
hands, would eye them sourly. 'That gipsy lot from Lark Rise!' they would
murmur.

Fordlow National School was a small grey one-storied
building, standing at the cross-roads at the entrance to the village. The one
large classroom which served all purposes was well lighted with several windows,
including the large one which filled the end of the building which faced the
road. Beside, and joined on to the school, was a tiny two-roomed cottage for
the schoolmistress, and beyond that a playground with birch trees and turf,
bald in places, the whole being enclosed within pointed, white-painted palings.

The only other building in sight was a row of model cottages
occupied by the shepherd, the blacksmith, and other superior farm-workers. The school
had probably been built at the same time as the houses and by the same model
landlord; for, though it would seem a hovel compared to a modern council
school, it must at that time have been fairly up-to-date. It had a lobby with
pegs for clothes, boys' and girls' earth-closets, and a backyard with fixed
wash-basins, although there was no water laid on. The water supply was contained
in a small bucket, filled every morning by the old woman who cleaned the schoolroom,
and every morning she grumbled because the children had been so extravagant
that she had to 'fill 'un again'.

The average attendance was about forty-five. Ten or twelve of
the children lived near the school, a few others came from cottages in the fields,
and the rest were the Lark Rise children. Even then, to an outsider, it would
have appeared a quaint, old-fashioned little gathering; the girls in their
ankle-length frocks and long, straight pinafores, with their hair strained back
from their brows and secured on their crowns by a ribbon or black tape or a
bootlace; the bigger boys in corduroys and hobnailed boots, and the smaller
ones in home-made sailor suits or, until they were six or seven, in petticoats.

Baptismal names were such as the children's parents and
grandparents had borne. The fashion in Christian names was changing; babies
were being christened Mabel and Gladys and Doreen and Percy and Stanley; but
the change was too recent to have affected the names of the older children. Mary
Ann, Sarah Ann, Eliza, Martha, Annie, Jane, Amy, and Rose were favourite girls'
names. There was a Mary Ann in almost every family, and Eliza was nearly as
popular. But none of them were called by their proper names. Mary Ann and Sarah
Ann were contracted to Mar'ann and Sar'ann. Mary, apart from Ann, had, by
stages, descended through Molly and Polly to Poll. Eliza had become Liza, then
Tiza, then Tize; Martha was Mat or Pat; Jane was Jin; and every Amy had at
least one 'Aim' in life, of which she had constant reminder. The few more
uncommon names were also distorted. Two sisters named at the font Beatrice and
Agnes, went through life as Beat and Agg, Laura was Lor, or Low, and Edmund was
Ned or Ted.