Lark Rise to Candleford (40 page)

'You must never come here alone,' she would say. 'I once knew
a little boy who was drowned in a well like this.' Then, of course, they wanted
to know where and when and why he was drowned, although they had heard the
story as long as they could remember. 'Where was his mother?' 'Why was the well
lid left open?' 'How did they get him out?' and 'Was he quite, quite dead? As
dead as the mole we saw under the hedge one day?'

Beyond their garden in summer were fields of wheat and barley
and oats which sighed and rustled and filled the air with sleepy pollen and
earth scents. These fields were large and flat and stretched away to a distant
line of trees set in the hedgerows. To the children at that time these trees
marked the boundary of their world. Tall trees and smaller trees and one big
bushy squat tree like a crouching animal—they knew the outline of each one by
heart and looked upon them as children in more hilly districts look upon the
peaks of distant, unvisited, but familiar mountains.

Beyond their world, enclosed by the trees, there was, they
were told, a wider world, with other hamlets and villages and towns and the
sea, and, beyond that, other countries where the people spoke languages
different from their own. Their father had told them so. But, until they
learned to read, they had no mental picture of these, they were but ideas,
unrealized; whereas, in their own little world within the tree boundary,
everything appeared to them more than life-size and more richly coloured.

They knew every slight rise in the fields and the moist lower
places where the young wheat grew taller and greener, and the bank where the
white violets grew, and the speciality of every hedgerow—honeysuckle, crab
apples, misty purple sloes, or long trails of white bryony berries through
which the sun shone crimson as it did through the window at church: '
But you
must not even touch one or your hand will poison your food
.'

And they knew the sounds of the different seasons, the skylarks
singing high up out of sight over the green corn; the loud, metallic chirring
of the mechanical reaper, the cheerful 'Who-o-as' and 'Werts up' of the
ploughmen to their teams, and the rush of wings as the starlings wheeled in
flocks over the stripped stubble.

There were other shadows than those of chasing clouds and
wheeling bird flocks over those fields. Ghost stories and stories of witchcraft
lingered and were half believed. No one cared to go after dark to the cross
roads where Dickie Bracknell, the suicide, was buried with a stake through his
entrails, or to approach the barn out in the fields where he had hung himself
some time at the beginning of the century. Bobbing lights were said to have
been seen and gurgling sounds heard there.

Far out in the fields by the side of a wood was a pool which
was said to be bottomless and haunted by a monster. No one could say exactly
what the monster was like, for no one living had seen it, but the general idea
was that it resembled a large newt, perhaps as big as a bullock. Among the
children this pool was known as 'the beast's pond' and none of them ever went
near it. Few people went that way, for the pond was cut off from the fields by
a piece of uncultivated waste, and there was no path anywhere near it. Some
fathers and mothers did not believe there was a pond there. It was just a silly
old tale, they said, that folks used at one time to frighten themselves with.
But there was a pond, for, towards the end of their schooldays, Edmund and
Laura plodded over several ploughed fields and scrambled through as many hedges
and pushed their way through a waste of dried thistles and ragwort and stood at
last by a dark, still, tree-shadowed pool. No monster was there, only dark
water, dark trees and a darkening sky and a silence so deep they could hear
their own hearts pounding.

Nearer home, beside the brook, was an old elder tree which
was said to bleed human blood when cut, and that was because it was no ordinary
tree, but a witch. Men and boys of a former generation had caught her listening
outside the window of a neighbour's cottage and chased her with pitchforks
until she reached the brook. Then, being a witch, she could not cross running
water, so had turned herself into an elder tree on the bank.

She must have turned herself back again, for, the next
morning, she was seen fetching water from the well as usual, a poor, ugly,
disagreeable old woman who denied having been outside her own door the night
before. But the tree, which hitherto no one had noticed, still stood beside the
brook and was still standing there fifty years later. Edmund and Laura once
took a table knife, intending to cut it, but their courage failed them. 'What
if it should really bleed? And what if the witch came out of it and ran after
us?'

'Mother,' asked Laura one day, 'are there any witches now?'
and her mother answered seriously, 'No. They seem to have all died out. There
haven't been any in my time; but when I was your age there were plenty of old
people alive who had known or even been ill-wished by one. And, of course,' she
added as an afterthought, 'we know there were witches. We read about them in
the Bible.' That settled it. Anything the Bible said must be true.

Edmund was at that time a quiet, thoughtful little boy, apt
to ask questions which it puzzled his mother to answer. The neighbours said he
thought too much and ought to be made to play more; but they liked him because
of his good looks and quaint, old-fashioned good manners. Except when he fired
questions at them.

'I shan't tell you,' some one would say when cornered by him.
'If I told you that you'd know as much as I do myself. Besides, what do it
matter to you what makes the thunder and lightning. You sees it and hears it
and are lucky if you're not struck dead by it, and that ought to be enough for
you.' Others, more kindly disposed, or more talkative, would tell him that the
thunder was the voice of God. Somebody had been wicked, perhaps Edmund himself,
and God was angry; or that thunder was caused by the clouds knocking together;
or warn him to keep away from trees during a thunderstorm because they had
known a man who was struck dead while sheltering and the watch in his pocket
had melted and run like quicksilver down his legs. Others would quote:

Under oak there comes a stroke,

Under elm there comes a calm,

And under ash there comes a crash,

and Edmund would retire into himself to sort out this
information.

He was a tall, slender child with blue eyes and regular
features. When she had dressed him for their afternoon walk, his mother would
kiss him and exclaim: 'I do declare he might be anybody's child. I can't see
any difference between him and a young lord, and as for intelligence, he's too
intelligent!'

Setting out on these walks, Laura must have looked a prim,
old-fashioned little thing in her stiffly starched frock, with a white silk
scarf tied in a bow under her chin and a couple of inches of knicker frill
showing. 'Odd', the neighbours called her when discussing her in her presence,
for she had dark eyes and pale yellow hair, and they did not approve of the
mixture. 'Pity she ain't got your eyes,' they would say to her mother whose own
eyes were blue; 'or even if she had dark hair like her father, 'twouldn't be so
bad, but, as 'tis, she ain't neither one thing nor t'other. Cross-grained, they
say them folks is whose eyes and hair don't match. But'—turning to Laura—'never
you mind, my poppet. Good looks ain't everything, and you can't help it if you
did happen to be behind the door when they were being given out. And, after all'—comfortingly
to her mother—'she don't hurt, really. She's got a nice bit of colour in her
cheeks.'

'You're all right. Always keep yourself clean and neat and
try to have a pleasant, good-tempered expression, and you'll pass in a crowd,'
her mother told her.

But that did not satisfy Laura. She was bent on improvement.
She could not alter her eyes, but she tried to darken her hair with ink, put on
in streaks with her father's new toothbrush. That only resulted in a sore
bottom and lying in bed by daylight with her newly washed hair in tiny tight
plaits which hurt her head. However, to her great joy, her hair soon began to
darken naturally, and, after many false alarms, one of which was the fear it
was turning red, it became a respectable brown, quite unnoticeable.

Other memories of those early years remained with her as
little pictures, without background, and unrelated to anything which went
before or came after. One was of walking over frosty fields with her father,
her small knitted-gloved hand reaching up to his big knitted-gloved hand and
the stubble beneath their feet clinking with little icicles until they came to
a pinewood and crept under a rail and walked on deep, soft earth beneath tall,
dark trees.

The wood was so dark and silent at first that it was almost
frightening; but, soon, they heard the sounds of axes and saws at work and came
out into a clearing where men were felling trees. They had built themselves a
little house of pine branches and before it a fire was burning. The air was
full of the sharp, piny scent of the smoke which drifted across the clearing in
blue whorls and lay in sheets about the boughs of the unfelled trees beyond.
Laura and her father sat on a tree-trunk before the fire and drank hot tea,
which was poured for them from a tin can. Then her father filled the sack he
had brought with logs and Laura's little basket was piled with shiny brown
pine-cones and they went home. They must have gone home, although no trace of
memory remained of the backward journey: only the joy of drinking hot tea so
far from a house and the loveliness of shooting flames and blue smoke against
blue-green pine boughs survived.

Another memory was of a big girl, with red hair, in a bright
blue frock billowing over a green field, looking for mushrooms, and a man at
the gate taking his clay pipe from his mouth to whisper behind his hand to a
companion: 'That gal'll tumble to bits before they get her to church if they
don't look sharp.'

'Patty tumble to bits? Tumble to bits? How could she?'
Laura's mother looked rather taken aback when asked, and told her little
daughter she must never, never listen to men talking. It was naughty to do
that. Then she explained, rather lamely for her, that Patty must have done
something wrong. Perhaps she'd told a lie, and Mr. Arliss was afraid she might
be struck dead, like the man and woman in the Bible. 'You remember them? I told
you about them when you said you saw a ghost coming out of the clothes closet
upstairs.'

That reference to her own misdeed sent Laura out to creep under
the gooseberry bushes in the garden, where she thought it would puzzle even God
to find her; but she was not satisfied. Why should Mr. Arliss mind if Patty had
told a lie? Plenty of people told them and no one, so far, had been struck dead
at Lark Rise.

Forty years after, her mother laughed when reminded of this.
'Poor old Pat!' she said. 'She was a regular harum-scarum and no mistake. But
they did just manage to get her to church, although it was said at the time
they had to give her a sup of brandy in the porch. Howsoever, she recovered
enough to dance at the wedding, I heard, and a fine sight she must have looked
in a white frock with blue bows all down the front. I think that was the last
time I ever heard of taking round the hat to collect for the cradle at a
wedding. It used to be quite the usual thing with that class of people at one
time.'

Then there was the picture of a man lying on straw at the
bottom of a farm cart with a white cloth over his face. The cart had halted
outside one of the houses and apparently the news of its arrival had not got
round, for, at first, only Laura was standing by. The tailboard of the cart had
been removed and she could see the man plainly, lying so still, so terribly
still, that she thought he was dead. It seemed a long time to her before his
wife rushed out, climbed into the cart, and calling, 'My dear one! My poor old
man!' took the cloth from his face, revealing a face almost as white, excepting
for one long dark gash from lips to one ear. Then he groaned and Laura's heart
began beating again.

The neighbours gathered round and the story spread. He was a
stockman and had been feeding his fattening beasts when one of them had
accidentally caught a horn in his mouth and torn his cheek open. He was taken
at once to the Cottage Hospital in the market town and his wound soon healed.

An especially vivid memory was of an April evening when Laura
was about three. Her mother had told her that the next day was May Day and that
Alice Shaw was going to be May Queen and wear a daisy crown. 'I should like to
be May Queen and wear a daisy crown. Can't I have one, too, Mother?' asked
Laura.

'So you shall,' her mother replied. 'You run down to the play
place and pick some daisies and I'll make you a crown. You shall be our May
Queen.'

Off she ran with her little basket, but by the time she
reached the plot of rough grass where the hamlet children played their country
games it was too late; the sun had set, and the daisies were all asleep. There
were thousands and thousands of them, but all screwed up, like tightly shut
eyes. Laura was so disappointed that she sat down in the midst of them and
cried. Only a few tears and very soon dried, then she began to look about her.
The long grass in which she sat was a little wet, perhaps with dew, or perhaps
from an April shower, and the pink-tipped daisy buds were a little wet, too,
like eyes that had gone to sleep crying. The sky, where the sun had set, was
all pink and purple and primrose. There was no one in sight and no sound but
the birds singing and, suddenly, Laura realized that it was nice to be there,
out of doors by herself, deep in the long grass, with the birds and the
sleeping daisies.

A little later in her life came the evening after a
pig-killing when she stood alone in the pantry where the dead animal hung
suspended from a hook in the ceiling. Her mother was only a few feet away. She
could hear her talking cheerfully to Mary Ann, the girl who fetched their milk
from the farm and took the children for walks when their mother was busy.
Through the thin wooden partition she could hear her distinctive giggle as she
poured water from a jug into the long, slippery lengths of chitterlings her
mother was manipulating. Out there in the wash-house they were busy and
cheerful, but in the pantry where Laura stood was a dead, cold silence.