Lark Rise to Candleford (73 page)

Though not without a sense of the dignity due to his official
position, he was a kindly and good-tempered man; yet nobody seemed to like him,
and he and his wife led a somewhat isolated life, in the village but not entirely
of the village. Law-abiding as most country people were in those days, and few
as were those who had any personal reason for fearing the police, the village
constable was still regarded by many as a potential enemy, set to spy upon them
by the authorities. In Laura's childhood, she knew a woman who declared that
she 'went all fainty, like' at the sight of a policeman's uniform, just as some
other sensitive people are supposed to do when they smell a rose, or if a cat enters
the room. And small boys had a catch which at that time they shouted from
behind hedges at a respectful distance after a policeman had passed them:

There goes the bobby with his black shiny hat And his belly
full of fat And a pancake tied to his nose,

a relic, it is to be supposed, from the days before policemen
wore helmets.

Of those other offences which do not come within the scope of
the law and yet may destroy the peace of a village, Candleford Green had its share.
In those days, when countrywomen read little and the cinema had yet to be
invented, the thrills which human nature appears to demand had to be extracted
from real life. This demand was abundantly met by the gossips. Candleford Green
had several of these talented women who could take some trifling event and so
expand, distort, and embroider it that by the time a story had made the round
of the village, gathering a little in the way of circumstantial detail here and
there, and came at last to the ears of the persons concerned, it would bear so
little resemblance to the facts of the case that it was indignantly repudiated.

And, indeed, it was annoying to a proud housewife to be told
that people were saying that on a certain day last month she had been compelled
to raise money by selling her one easy chair, or that a hire-purchase firm had
taken it away in default, when what had really happened was that the easy chair
had been carried away to be reupholstered, and, far from being penniless, its
possessor had the money saved up and actually in her pocket at that moment to
pay for the renovation. And it was still more annoying for a young man to have
his sweetheart's recent coldness accounted for by the story going the rounds
that he had been seen going into the house of a fascinating young widow. Which
he had, not as a victim to her fascination, but to investigate the cause of a
smoking chimney which his employer, who was also her landlord, had asked him to
see to.

Such stories did no great harm. Those concerned who happened
to possess a sense of humour would laugh at them as a pack of lies invented by
a few gossiping old women who would have been better employed mending the holes
in their stockings. Others would go from house to house trying to track down
the originator of the gossip. They never succeeded, though most of those they
interviewed were in some measure guilty; but the pursuit served to take off the
edge of their indignation.

But every few years at Candleford Green, and no doubt in
other such villages, stories no more true to fact were circulated which did definite
harm. One such was that a young girl, at home for a time from her place in
service, was pregnant. There was no truth whatever in the story. She was
anaemic and run down and her kindly employers had sent her home for a few
weeks' rest and country air, but soon, not only her supposed condition, but
also the name of her seducer, was common talk. She was a modest, sensitive girl
and in her then weak condition suffered greatly.

Another outlet for the few who had venomous minds was the
sending of so-called comic valentines addressed in disguised handwriting. The custom
of sending daintily printed and lace-bedecked valentines by friends and lovers
had by that time died out. Laura was born too late ever to receive a genuine
valentine. But what were known as comic valentines were still popular in
country districts. These were crude coloured prints on flimsy paper representing
hideous forms and faces intended to be more or less applicable to the
recipient. A valentine could be obtained suitable to be sent to one of any
trade, calling, or tendency, with words, always insulting and often obscene,
calculated to wound, and these, usually unstamped, passed through the village
post offices in surprising numbers every St. Valentine's Eve.

Laura once took one out of the posting-box addressed to
herself, with the picture of a hideous female handing out penny stamps and some
printed doggerel which began:

You think yourself so lad-di-da And get yourself up so grand

and went on to advise her always to wear a thick veil when
she went out, or her face would frighten the cows. Underneath the verse was
scrawled in pencil: 'Wat you reely wants is a mask.' She thrust it into the
fire and told nobody, but for some time all pleasure in her own appearance was
spoiled and the knowledge that she had an enemy rankled.

But scandalous gossip and the sending of anonymous valentines
was but the work of a few of the evil-minded people such as may always be found
in any place. The majority of Candleford Green dwellers were kindly, as majorities
always are. Education had already done something for village life. The old dark
superstitions had gone. Poor, ugly, old lone-living women were no longer
suspected of witchcraft, although there was one man still living in the village
who firmly believed that he had known a witch in his childhood and that she had
caused by her magic all manner of misfortunes. Under the influence of her evil
eye children had pined and died, horses had gone lame, cows had slipped their
calves, and fires had broken out in rickyards.

A disease known locally as the 'scab' had at that time
ravaged the sheepfolds and ruined farmers, and, as old Nanny had been known to collect
the scraps of wool torn from the sheeps' backs by the bushes, probably to warm
her poor old body in some way, the villagers had held her responsible. They
said she burned the wool by night, they had smelt it sizzling when passing her
cottage; and, as the wool shrivelled, the sheep upon whose backs it had grown
developed the scab. Women who offended old Nanny speedily lost their looks, and
sometimes their husbands' affections, or their crockery fell from the shelves
and got broken. In fact, as one of his hearers once said, old Nanny seemed to have
played the very devil with the place. But that was all long before Laura's
time, before her father or mother were born. In the eighteen-nineties in that
part of the country ordinary people either disbelieved altogether in
witchcraft, or thought it one of the old unhappy things of the past, like the
gibbet and transportation.

A few innocent charms and superstitious practices were all
that remained of magic. Warts were still charmed away by binding a large black
slug upon the wart for a night and a day. Then the sufferer would go by night to
the nearest crossroads and, by flinging the slug over the left shoulder, hope
to get rid of the wart. Fried mice were still given to children as a specific
for bed-wetting. The children were told the mouse was meat and ate it without
protest, but with what result is unknown. No one would at table spoon salt on
to another person's plate, for 'Help you to salt, help you to sorrow'. After
Michaelmas blackberries were unfit for food because on Michaelmas Day the devil
dragged his tail over them. If a girl began to whistle a tune, those near her
would clap their hands over her mouth, for 'A whistling maid and a crowing hen
is no good either to gods nor men'. On the other hand, as far as Laura ever
heard, one might walk under a ladder with impunity, for the absence of which inhibition
she had cause to be thankful in after years, when the risk of a spattering of
paint on one's clothing was a trifle compared to that of stepping off the curb
and being run over by the traffic.

The funerals of the country poor were at that time a deeply
moving sight. At Laura's home the farmer lent one of his farm wagons, freshly painted
in bright reds and blues and yellows, or newly scrubbed, to carry the coffin.
Clean straw was spread on the bed of the wagon to prevent jolting, and the
tired labourer rode to his last rest as he had during his lifetime so many
times ridden home from the harvest field. At Candleford Green the coffin was
carried on a wheeled hand-bier propelled by friends. Both were what was called
'walking funerals', the mourners following the coffin on foot. Sometimes there
would be but three or four mourners, perhaps a widow supported by her
half-grown children. In other instances the procession was quite a long one,
especially if the dead had been aged, when sons and daughters and
grandchildren, down to the youngest who could toddle, would follow the coffin,
the women in decent if shabby and unfashionable mourning, often borrowed in
parts from neighbours, and the men with black crape bands round their hats and sleeves.
The village carpenter, who had made the coffin, acted as undertaker, and the
cost of the funeral, but £3 or £4, was covered by life insurance. Flowers were
often placed inside the coffin, but there were seldom wreaths; the fashion for
those came later.

The extravagant expenditure on funerals by those who could
least afford it was never a feature of country life. A meal to follow the
funeral was certainly provided, and the food then consumed was the best the
bereaved could obtain. Those funeral meals of the poor have been much misunderstood
and misrepresented. By the country poor and probably by the majority of the
poor in towns they were not provided in any spirit of ostentation, but because
it was an urgent necessity that a meal should be partaken of by the mourners as
soon as possible after a funeral. Very little food would be eaten in a tiny
cottage while the dead remained there; evidences of human mortality would be
too near and too pervasive. Married children and other relatives coming from a distance
might have eaten nothing since breakfast. So a ham, or part of a ham, was
provided, not in order to be able to boast, 'We buried 'im with 'am', but
because it was a ready-prepared dish which was both easily obtained and
appetizing.

Those funeral meals have appeared to some more pathetic than
amusing. The return of the mourners after the final parting and their immediate
outbursts of pent-up grief. Then, as they grew calmer, the gentle persuasion of
those less afflicted that the widow or widower or the bereaved parents, for the
sake of the living still left to them, should take some nourishment. Then their
gradual revival as they ate and drank. Tears would still be wiped away
furtively, but a few sad smiles would break through, until, at the table, a
sober cheerfulness would prevail. They had, as they told themselves and others
told them, to go on living, and what greater restoratives have we poor mortals
than a good meal taken in the company of loving friends? It is possible that
the sherry and biscuits provided in more prosperous households after the
funerals of that day were sometimes partaken of by sincere and simple-minded people
as a much-needed restorative, and not always in order to provide an opportunity
for some Victorian father to utter pompous platitudes while he warmed his
hinderparts before the fire.

Ghost stories and stories of haunted houses were still repeated.
A few of the more simple people may have believed they were literally true. Others
enjoyed them for the sake of the thrill, as we now enjoy reading mystery
stories. The more educated scoffed at them as old women's tales. It was an age
of materialism, and those in any measure in touch with current ideas believed
in nothing they could not feel, or see, or smell.

Laura's mother was the only person she knew at that time who
had an open mind on the subject of the supernatural, and she leaned rather to the
side of unbelief. She told her children that she had in her time been told many
ghost stories, some of which had almost convinced her that there was something
outside the range of ordinary earthly life, but, she would say, there was
always some little loophole for doubt. Still, nobody on earth knew everything;
ghosts might have appeared and might appear again, though, she thought, it was
doubtful if any happy spirit would wish to leave the glories of Heaven to
wander on the earth on dark, cold, winter nights, and as to those who had gone
to the bad place, they would not be given the opportunity.

She was never convinced, one way or the other. Yet she was
the one person Laura ever came into close touch with and for whose absolute integrity
she could vouch who had had an experience which could only be explained by
taking into consideration the possibility of the supernatural. It concerned not
the dead, but the dying. Laura had a family of cousins on her mother's side,
one of whom had married and lived at that time in a neighbouring village, near
her old home. Another sister, also married, lived in yet another village, the
two, with Laura's home hamlet, arranged like the three points of a triangle.

One of the sisters, Lily, was at the time very ill, and, for
a week or more, the other sister, Patience, had been going daily by a direct
route which did not pass Laura's home to help with the nursing, returning at night
to her own home duties. But on the morning in question, when about to set out,
she had the sudden idea of passing by Laura's home in order to collect the rent
of a cottage they owned in the hamlet. The tenant was a reliable one, and it
had been decided the night before that the rent-collection could wait. But
money is always needed at such times and she probably wished to take some
little extra luxury or comfort to her sister. No one knew that she was thus
going out of her way and she met no one on the quiet country road between the
two places.

She collected the rent, then, having to pass her aunt's cottage,
looked in at the door upon her. She found her busy with her weekly ironing and alone
in the house except for the small baby in the cradle, her husband being at work
and her elder children at school for the day. In reply to her aunt's anxious
inquiry, Patience said sadly: 'Very, very, ill. It is only a matter of days
now, I'm afraid. She may even go to-day.'