Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis (2 page)

Emily's face at seventy was far more difficult for her to recall than that seven-year-old's which flashed so vividly upon her inward eye. As for the earlier Emily, who had shared the first six years of her life, why, Miss Clare could see her more clearly still. She could see the brown painted curls, the wide painted eyes and the dented nose which had suffered much banging on floors and chairs. She could smell the stout calico of which she was made, and see the quilted bodice and green-striped long-legged drawers painted upon it; and she could feel even now the delicious scrunch of the hard-packed wood shavings with which she had been stuffed. The sharply indented waist could be spanned by little Dolly's two joined hands, and
the legs and arms were prickly at the ends where the calico had worn thin. There was something infinitely reassuring about the smell and weight of Emily as she leant drunkenly against her. No possible harm could befall anyone, thought young Dolly, if Emily were there.

For Emily was the good spirit of the home and, young Dolly felt sure, her blessing embraced Father, Mother, Ada and every living thing in the little house at Caxley where it had all begun so long ago.

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1888, the year of Dolly Clare's birth, Caxley was a compact, thriving market town. Its broad main thoroughfare was lined with lime trees and behind these stood shops and private houses built mainly of good rosy brick and weathered tiles.

Here and there, a Georgian front was decorated with grizzled grey bricks known locally as 'vuzz-fired' or 'gorsefired'. There were several handsome doorways, some hooded, some with elegant fanlights above the well-kept paintwork, and the general impression was one of solid prosperity. Travellers from London, journeying westwards, had paused at Caxley to change horses, or to eat or to sleep, for countless generations and had gone on their way refreshed. There was warmth and beauty in the rose-red aspect of the town and a bustling hospitality among its prosperous tradespeople which won the affection of many a stranger.

The broad High Street narrowed to a stone-built bridge at its western end and crossed a river which wound its placid way to join the Thames. Beyond that, on rising ground to the north, a few cottages constituted the outskirts of the market town, and among these was the four-roomed house belonging to Francis Clare and his young wife.

What the hurrying stranger did not see as he took the highway beyond the handsome bridge was the poorer part of Caxley. The river made its way round the southern part of the town in a series of wide loops. Here was an area of marshland dotted with a few ancient cottages. As the town grew during the nineteenth century, several mean streets were built also on this marshy wasteland by speculators. They were slums within ten years of their building, liable to flooding in the spring and damp from the rising mists for the rest of the year. 'That marsh lot', as the townspeople called them, were scorned, pitied or feared by their more prosperous neighbours, and children from respectable homes were warned against venturing into those narrow streets after dark.

Here lived the humblest of Caxley's citizens. From these dank dwellings, very early each morning, issued the old crones who cleaned steps or scrubbed out shops, the labourers on nearby farms, and those employed in digging a new way for a branch line of the local railway. More often than not there were children left behind in the homes to get what poor breakfast they could before setting out to school. The Education Act of 1870 meant compulsory schooling, and the pennies to pay for it were hard to come by in many a marsh home, and handed over grudgingly on a Monday morning.

But though poverty and hunger, aches and pains were common in these mean streets, conditions were not as stark as in the industrial towns further north and west. Very few children went barefoot and very few older people were callously neglected. Caxley was small enough to know its people, and a rough and ready charity did much to mitigate real need. Though little was organised officially for the relief of the poor
in the town, yet shop-keepers, the local gentry and the more prosperous citizens were generous to those in their employ or who were brought to their notice as being in want. This casual and spasmodic generosity had something to commend it in a small community, for the feckless and improvident had small chance of waxing fat at others' expense, while those truly in need were given help. It would take some years before the conscience of the town as a whole was roused by the sight of 'the marsh lot' and their dwellings, but meanwhile they were accepted as 'the poor man at the gate', and an inevitable part of the social structure of any town at that time.

The marsh people themselves frequently said how lucky they were. The parents of some of them had taken part in the bitter riots earlier in the century. The marsh dwellers knew all too well true tales of the starving farm labourers who had marched to demand a wage of half a crown a day, in the winter of 1830. The fate of these unfortunates at their trial, when sentence of death was recorded against many and others were transported as convicts to Australia, was fresh in their memory. Consequently, although their own conditions were deplorable, they considered themselves more fortunate than their predecessors, sharing, to a small extent, the growing prosperity of the latter part of Queen Victoria's long reign.

Perhaps those who felt the pinch most at this time were the small tradesmen, the clerks and the shop assistants, too proud to seek charity, and keeping up an air of respectability with precious little to maintain it. There was a great company of such people in Caxley at that time, dressed in neat, dark attire, much-darned and much-pressed, whose pale faces spoke of long hours and poor nourishment, and whose main anxiety was not so much the serious difficulty of living on their small wages as concealing their difficulties from those about them.

Francis Clare and his wife were of this company. To be sure, Francis's round face was not pale, for his outdoor occupation gave him a weatherbeaten aspect, but Mary's wore a pinched and sallow look. It was she who bore the major part of their poverty, making each penny do the work of two, and depriving herself so that Francis and the two little girls should benefit.

She had been in good service before her marriage, employed as a general maid in a farmhouse some miles west of Caxley. The farmer and his wife were hard-working and kindly. Despite the low conditions of agriculture at that time, and the recent disastrous harvest of 1870, yet there was wholesome food for all the household produced there. Outside, the logs were stacked in hundreds, sawn up by the farm hands when the weather was too cruel for fieldwork. Coal was cheap and was bought by the truck load. The farm carts trundled to Caxley station once a year bearing sacks of corn, and brought back enough coal for the winter instead.

At Michaelmas the pigs were killed, salted and jointed and hung in clean muslin from the beams in the kitchen. Strong beer was brewed, in an enormous copper, from home-grown barley, and provided a nourishing drink for the men. There was milk in abundance, and butter was made once a week, Mary herself turning the churn more often than not. All the bread, the massive pies and puddings, were made from home-ground wheaten flour. Vegetables and fruit were picked fresh each day from the garden, and the farmhouse kitchen seemed always to be filled with the fragrance and the clatter of cooking.

Only when night came and the oil lamp glowed on the kitchen table, a round pearl of light in its milk-white globe, did the bustle die down. Then the single men, who lived on the premises, and the farmer and his wife, with Mary, quiet as a mouse in the corner, would settle round the fire or at the table, and read or talk or take out the mending basket, until the yawning and nodding began. Then the young men would say their good-nights before stamping across the cobbled yard to their bothy above the stables, and Mary would climb up the creaking stairs, candle in hand, to her windy little room under the roof. Finally, the farmer and his wife would rake through the fire, put up the massive fire guard, shoot the heavy bolts on the doors and make their way to bed. By ten o'clock on a winter's night the farmhouse would be wrapped in silent darkness, and the only sounds to be heard would be the snort and stamp of a horse beneath the bothy, or the croak of a startled pheasant from the spinney.

All too soon, it seemed to young Mary, the morning would come, and she would hear the carters taking their horses across the yard, the rumble of heavy wheels and the rhythmic squeak from the pump handle in the yard as the farm hands set about their work. Soon, she too would have to clamber from her truckle bed to rekindle the great kitchen fire, the first of many jobs.

The days were long and busy. Mary learnt how to keep a house clean, to cook and to sew. The farmer and his wife were childless and treated Mary with affection. She was a docile girl, willing to learn and fond of her employers. Life at the farm was hard but happy, and no doubt she would have been content to stay there for many years had Francis Clare not crossed her path.

He was twenty years of age when first she saw him. He came in the early autumn, with his father, to thatch the six great ricks of wheat and barley which stood majestically in a nearby field. His hair glinted as brightly as the straw among which he stood and his blue eyes appraised Mary as she carried an earthenware jug of beer to the thatchers. The two men were at work there for a week, and Francis made no secret of his interest in Mary.

Later that autumn he came again, this rime alone, to repair the thatch on one of the barns. He appeared so often at the kitchen door, and Mary seemed to have so many occasions to cross the yard to the barn during his stay, that she was sorely teased. The farmer and his wife liked young Francis. He and his father were known for miles around as respectable and honest workers. There was no reason in the world why Mary should not welcome the young man's advances. There would always be work for a thatcher, they told each other, and they could not keep a good girl like Mary, now almost twenty and as pretty as ever she would be, on a lonely farm for ever.

By Christmas it was generally understood that Francis, and Mary were 'keeping company'. Now Mary's needlework was for her trousseau and her bottom drawer. The farmer's wife, when sorting out her linen or her crockery would say:

'Here, my dear, put that aside with your things. 'Tis a bit shabby, maybe, but it'll prove useful, I don't doubt.' Later, Mary was to count these casual gifts amongst her dearest possessions.

On Michaelmas Day in the following year Mary was married to Francis and the young couple went to live in the little house on the outskirts of Caxley. They paid a rent of two shillings a week to the baker in Caxley who owned the property. Francis had ten pounds in savings, and Mary had five new golden sovereigns, a wedding present from the farmer and his wife. There was plenty of work to be had. Francis owned a fine set of thatching tools and had abundant strength and skill to use them. Queen Victoria had reigned for almost fifty years, England was beginning to enjoy prosperity, and Francis and Mary, young and in love, prepared to be as happy as larks as the year 1885 drew to its close.

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Mary Clare's first home was one of a pair of cottages close to the road which ran northwards from Caxley. Francis's own home lay less than a mile away, and his parents were frequent visitors.

A narrow strip of garden lay between the road and the front door, and the little brick path was edged with large white stones. This tiny patch Mary claimed for her own and busily planted pinks and columbines and a great clump of old-fashioned purple iris to flower the next year. A moss-rose already flourished by the gate, and still bore a late bloom or two when Mary arrived at the house as a bride.

The front door led directly into the main living-room of the house, and behind this was a small scullery. A box staircase led from the living-room to the main bedroom at the front of the house, and a narrow slip room, above the scullery, which was really nothing more than an extension of the minute landing, constituted the second bedroom.

It was a small house, but enough for the young couple, and they arranged their few pieces of furniture to the best advantage and were well content. Mary's taste was good. Her own home, a farm labourer's cottage, had been humble but beautifully clean and neat, and at the farmhouse she was accustomed to seeing solid pieces of well-made furniture, and well-designed utensils of copper and wood in daily use.

She spread the scrubbed deal table with a red serge cloth in the afternoons, when the midday meal was done, and enjoyed the sight of a white geranium in a pot set squarely upon it. Round the edge ran fringed bobbles which were to delight her little daughters in the years to come. On the mantelpiece stood bright tins containing sugar, currants, tea and salt. The rag rug before the hearth was of her own making, and the fender and fire-irons of steel were polished first thing every morning with a small square of emery paper, until they shone as brightly as silver.

Their only regret was the smallness of the garden. Only a few yards of light soil stretched beyond the back doors of the two cottages.