Lark Rise to Candleford (60 page)

Tea was not considered a substantial meal. It was for the
workmen, as Miss Lane counted time, an innovation. She could remember when
bread and cheese and beer were at that hour taken to the forge for the men to consume
standing. 'Afternoon bavour', they had called it. Now a well-covered table
awaited them indoors. Each man's plate was stacked with slices of bread and
butter, and what was called 'a relish' was provided. 'What can we give the men
for a relish at tea-time?' was an almost daily question in that household.
Sometimes a blue-and-white basin of boiled new-laid eggs would be placed on the
table. Three eggs per man was the standard allowance, but two or three extra
were usually cooked 'in case', and at the end of the meal the basin was always
empty. On other afternoons there would be brawn, known locally as 'collared head',
or soused herrings, or a pork pie, or cold sausages.

As the clock struck five the scraping of iron-tipped boots
would be heard and the men, with leather aprons wound up around their waists,
and their faces, still moist from their visit to the pump in the yard, looking
preternaturally clean against their work-soiled clothes, would troop into the
kitchen. While they ate they would talk of the horses they had been shoeing.
'That new grey o' Squire's wer' as near as dammit to nippin' my ear. A groom
ought'r stand by and hold th' young devil', or 'Poor old Whitefoot! About time
he wer' pensioned off. Went to sleep an' nearly fell down top of me to-day, he
did. Let's see, how old is he now, do you reckon?' 'Twenty, if he's a day. Mus'
Elliott's father used to ride him to hounds and he's bin dead this ten 'ears.
But you leave old Whitefoot alone. He'll drag that station cart for another
five 'ears. What's he got to cart? Only young Jim, and he's a seven-stunner, if
that, and maybe a bit of fish and a parcel or two. No, you take my word for't,
old Whitefoot ain't going to die while he can see anybody else alive.' Or they
would talk about the weather or the crops or some new arrival in the place,
extracting the last grain of interest from every trifling event, while,
separated from them by only a closed door, the new activities of a more
sophisticated day were beginning.

On her first day in the office, Laura stood awkwardly by Miss
Lane, longing to show her willingness to help, but not knowing how to begin. Once,
when there was a brisk demand for penny stamps and the telegraph bell was
ringing, she tried timidly to sell one, but she was pushed gently aside, and
afterwards it was explained to her that she must not so much as handle a letter
or sell a stamp until she had been through some mysterious initiation ceremony
which Miss Lane called being 'sworn in'. This had to take place before a
justice of the Peace, and it had been arranged that she should go the next
morning to one of the great houses in the locality for that purpose. And she
would have to go alone, for until she herself had qualified, Miss Lane could
not leave home during office hours, and she feared she would not know which
doorbell to ring or what to say when she came into the great man's presence. Oh
dear! this new life seemed very complicated.

The dread of this interview haunted her until, at Miss Lane's
suggestion, she went out for a turn in the garden, where, she was told, she
might always go for a breath of fresh air between busy times in the office. She
had been in that garden before, but never in May, with the apple-blossom out
and the wallflowers filling the air with their fragrance.

Narrow paths between high, built-up banks supporting flower
borders, crowded with jonquils, auriculas, forget-me-nots and other spring flowers,
led from one part of the garden to another. One winding path led to the earth
closet in its bower of nut-trees halfway down the garden, another to the
vegetable garden and on to the rough grass plot before the beehives. Between
each section were thick groves of bushes with ferns and capers and Solomon's
seal, so closed in that the long, rough grass there was always damp. Wasted
ground, a good gardener might have said, but delightful in its cool, green
shadiness.

Nearer the house was a portion given up entirely to flowers,
not growing in beds or borders, but crammed together in an irregular square,
where they bloomed in half-wild profusion. There were rose bushes there and lavender
and rosemary and a bush apple-tree which bore little red and yellow-streaked
apples in later summer, and Michaelmas daisies and red-hot pokers and
old-fashioned pompom dahlias in autumn and peonies and pinks already budding.

An old man in the village came one day a week to till the
vegetable garden, but the flower garden was no one's especial business. Miss
Lane herself would occasionally pull on a pair of wash-leather gloves and transplant
a few seedlings: Matthew would pull up a weed or stake a plant as he passed,
and the smiths, once a year, turned out of the shop to dig between the roots
and cut down dead canes. Betweenwhiles the flowers grew just as they would in
crowded masses, perfect in their imperfection.

Laura, who came from a district often short of water, was
amazed to find no less than three wells in the garden. There was the well
beneath the pump near the back door which supplied the house with water; a
middle well outside the inner smithy door used only for trade purposes, and what
was called the 'bottom well' near the beehives. The bottom well was kept
padlocked. Moss grew on its lid and nettles around it. At one time it had
supplied the house with drinking water, but that was a long time ago.

Every one in any way connected with the place knew the story
of the wells. No one had suspected the existence of the one near the house until,
one day, while Miss Lane was still a small child, a visitor who had come to tea
was on her way to what was still known as 'the little house' half way down the
garden. When she had gone a few yards from the back door a flagstone on the
path gave way beneath her feet and she found herself slipping into a chasm.
Fortunately, she was a substantially built woman and, by flinging out her arms,
she was able to support her upper part above ground while her legs dangled in
space. Her screams soon brought assistance and she was hauled to safety, and,
the modern treatment of bed and hot-water bottles for shock being as yet undiscovered,
Miss Lane's mother did what she could by well lacing the patient's tea with
rum, which remedy acted so well that, when passing her cup a third time, she
actually giggled and said: 'This tastes a lot better than that old well water'd
have done!'

When or why the well had been abandoned and not properly
filled in no one ever knew. Miss Lane's grandparents had had no knowledge of
it, and they had come to live there early in the century and both they and her parents
and herself as a child had walked gaily over it thousands of times, little
suspecting the danger that lurked below. However, all ended well. After the
well had been thoroughly cleansed and the water tested, it provided an
excellent supply close at hand for the house.

When Laura went to bed that night in her new little bedroom
with its pink-washed walls, faded chintz curtains, and chest of drawers all for
her own use, she was too tired to write more in her new journal than: 'Came to
live at Candleford Green to-day, Monday.' After she was in bed she heard Zillah
call the cat, then plod, flat-footed, upstairs. Then the men came up,
pad-padding in their stockinged feet, and, last of all, Miss Lane, tap-tapping
on her high heels.

Laura sat up in bed and drew aside the window curtain. Not a
light to be seen, only darkness, thick and moist and charged with the scent of
damp grass and cottage garden flowers. All was silent except for the sharp, sudden
swish of a breeze in the smithy tree, and so it would be all night unless the
hoof-sounds of a galloping horse rang out, followed by the pealing of the
doctor's bell. There was no ordinary night traffic on country roads in those
days.

The interview next morning did not turn out so terrifying as
Laura had expected. Sir Timothy smiled very kindly upon her when the footman ushered
her into his Justice Room, saying: 'The young person from the Post Office,
please, Sir Timothy.'

'What have you been up to? Poaching, rick-burning, or petty
larceny?' he asked when the footman had gone. 'If you're as innocent as you
look, I shan't give you a long sentence. So come along,' and he drew her by the
elbow to the side of his chair. Laura smiled dutifully, for she knew by the
twinkle of his keen blue eyes beneath their shaggy white eyebrows that Sir Timothy
was joking.

As she leaned forward to take up a pen with which to sign the
thick blue official document he was unfolding, she sensed the atmosphere of jollity,
good sense, and good nature, together with the smell of tobacco, stables, and
country tweeds he carried around like an aura.

'But read it! Read!' he cried in a shocked voice. 'Never put
your name to anything before you have read it or you'll be signing your own
death warrant one of these days.' And Laura read out, as clearly as her shyness
permitted, the Declaration which even the most humble candidate for Her
Majesty's Service had in those serious days to sign before a magistrate.

'I do solemnly promise and declare that I will not open or
delay or cause or suffer to be opened or delayed any letter or anything sent by
the post', it began, and went on to promise secrecy in all things.

When she had read it through, she signed her name. Sir
Timothy signed his, then folded the document neatly for her to carry back to
Miss Lane, who would send it on to the higher authorities.

Sir Timothy could not have been very busy that morning, for
he kept her talking a long time, asking her age and where she came from and how
many brothers and sisters she had and what she had learnt at school and if she
thought she would like the post office business. 'You've been well brought up,'
he said at last, as weightily as if pronouncing sentence in Court. 'And you
should do well. Miss Lane is an excellent woman—most efficient, and kind, too,
to those of whom she approves, though I should not like to offend her myself.
By gad! I should not! I remember one day when she was a girl—but perhaps I had
better not tell you that story. Now, I expect you would be glad of some
refreshment. Ask Purchase, or Robert, to show you the way to the housekeeper's
room. There's sure to be tea or coffee or something going there at this time,'
and Laura dropped a little curtsy as she said 'No, thank you, Sir Timothy. No, thank
you,' and passed through the door which he courteously held open and down the
long, resounding stone passage which led to the side door, and was very glad
that she saw no one, for when she arrived the footman had teasingly pulled her
hair and asked for a kiss.

Out in the park, she turned and looked back at the long,
white, battlemented façade of the mansion, with its terraces, fountains, and flower-beds,
and thought: 'Thank goodness that's over. I don't suppose I shall ever see this
place again.' But she erred in her supposition. She was to cross the park, come
clanging through the iron swing gate, and pass beneath the tall, rook-noisy
elms to the mansion every morning in all weathers for nearly three years.

For the first few days Laura feared she would never learn her
new duties. Even in that small country Post Office there was in use what seemed
to her a bewildering number and variety of official forms, to all of which Miss
Lane who loved to make a mystery of her work referred by number, not name. But
soon, in actual practice, 'A/B35', 'K.21', 'X.Y.13', or what not became 'The
blue Savings Bank Form', 'The Postal Order Abstract', 'The Cash Account Sheet',
and so on, and Laura found herself flicking them out of their pigeonholes and
carrying them without a moment's hesitation to where Miss Lane sat doing her
accounts at the kitchen table.

Then the stamps! The 1d. and ½d. ones she already knew by
sight were in 10s. and 5s. sheets which hot, nervous hands were inclined to
tear, and those of higher value, neatly hinged in a cardboard-leaved book,
ready to be sold for parcels and telegrams, had to be detached just so, working
up from the left-hand bottom corner. And the cash drawer, with its three wooden
bowls for gold, silver, and copper, and all three bowls at least half full,
even the one for sovereigns and half-sovereigns! What a lot of money there must
be in the world! Laura would run her fingers through the shining gold coins
when the cash was counted at night and placed in the black japanned box ready
to be taken upstairs, wrapped in an old woolly shawl as disguise, and stood on
the top shelf of Miss Lane's clothes cupboard. Occasionally there was a
banknote in the japanned box, but no Treasury notes, for there were none
issued; there was plenty of gold to serve as currency in those days. Gold in plenty
flowed through the country in a stream, but a stream to which only the
fortunate had access. One poor half-sovereign was doled out on Saturday night
to the lowest-paid workers; men who had a trade might get a whole sovereign and
a few pieces of silver.

At first, when giving change, Laura boggled and hesitated and
counted again, but although she had learned little arithmetic at school she was
naturally quick at figures, and that part of her work soon became easy to her.
And she liked seeing and speaking and being spoken to by the post office
customers, especially the poorer ones, who would tell her about their affairs
and sometimes ask her advice. The more important at first would ignore her if
Miss Lane was present, or, if she was absent, would ask to see her; but they
soon got used to seeing a new face there, and once, when Laura had gone indoors
to tea, a gentleman farmer from a neighbouring hamlet actually inquired what
had become of 'that charmin' young gal you've got now'. That set the seal of
acceptance upon her and, fortunately, it was the only compliment so definitely
expressed. Further inquiries of the kind might not have pleased Miss Lane. She
liked Laura and was glad to find she was giving satisfaction, but naturally
expected to stand first in her customers' regards.