The Country Child

by Alison Uttley

  Winter was the reign of moonlight and candles. Everyone had either one or the other to light them about the house and farm. Lamps were friends, but candles were jolly little comrades. A candle took Susan to bed, a white petticoated candle in a grey pewter candlestick with a rim of beads round the edge and an extinguisher hooked on the side. Her shadow ran up the stairs, and into the bedroom, where it played among the long pointed shadows of the bed.

  Little hot drops of wax fell on her fingers and she rolled them into tiny balls and ranged them round the candlestick. A black stranger sat in the flame and she pushed him away. A winding sheet unfolded in stiffly starched ripples, and she hurriedly broke it off. A tiny puff of smoke fluttered off alone, and she knew she would have a surprise. A little red letter lay on the wick, but it would not be hers, the postman never brought a letter for Susan, it must be for her mother.

  Upstairs, downstairs, in pantry, parlours, and dairy, ran little candles all the winter evenings, like glow-worms in the dark. They even went out of doors, sheltered in curving hands, when Becky went to the trough or Dan fetched the milk. When the lanterns were blown out, after milking, candles were used for everything, except when the moon was out to do his share of work.

  The house was so high the moon had a good view of everything. He could stare in and run his fingers over the cupboards and china, and look at the pictures and laugh at and enjoy the things he saw.

  He fetched Susan out of bed, right out to the lawn one night. She could not sleep. She heard the bolts shot and the locks turned and the soft thud of stockinged feet coming upstairs. Then bedroom doors shut and little lights flickered out through the windows. In a few minutes the house was quiet.

  She crept from her bed and looked out of the window. A soft radiance flooded the fields making them white as snow. She shivered and got back to the warmth, but it was no good, she could feel the moon pulling her as it pulled the earth.

  Down the creaking stairs she went, step by step, with her hand clutching the banister and her eyes wide as she met the glassy stare of the stuffed fox on the landing, alive and vigilant in the moonbeams.

  She glided by her parents’ door and heard a murmur of voices. She reached the hall and hesitated.

  Should she go out by the front door or by the homely kitchen? She chose the front door, but the lock was too stiff for her fingers, and she slipped into the kitchen.

  Mice scurried as she opened the door, and the room gasped with surprise. A glowing coal in the fire showed her the bull’s-eye glass in the clock winking and alive. It understood and would come too if it could lift its heavy foot.

  A feeling of a presence came upon her, as if the ghosts of all the Garlands who had lived there had been sitting chatting round the hearth, and now they stopped, surprised and breathless. She had nearly caught them this time, they said, as they leaned back waiting for her to go. The air trembled with their movements, and she waited for it to be still before she crossed the room and climbed on a chair to pull the long bolts and turn the heavy lock.

  Then she stepped out under the sky. She ran down the little path to the wicket gate and lifted up her face.

  ‘Here I am,’ she whispered eagerly, and she thought of the infant Samuel. But no God was there, only the bright face of the moon, very near the earth; she felt she could touch him if she had a ladder.

  She went out into the lawn and stood with cold bare feet on the wet grass. The moon moved too, and stopped when she stopped.

  Something rustled in the ivy bushes, perhaps a bird, moving in his sleep, tucking his head afresh under his wing. But she kept her eyes on the moon as if she were caught in a web hanging through the air, dipping down and up again, thinking of nothing, unconscious of time, surrendering herself to the flood of light. A great peace floated round her and happiness wrapped her.

  She felt the earth swimming through space, as she had felt it before, swinging past the stars, on through the dark sky, and the moon came too. Never would she be lonely, even when she was quite old, she would have the moon, who would go with her. Even when she was dead, and she shot up, a shooting star, the moon would be up there too.

  The quietness of the night became intense, she could hear her heart beating and she thought it was the earth’s. She knew now that the earth was alive, the rocks were living beings, immortals were around her. So that was what the moon wanted to tell her.

  The old house behind her seemed to stir and try to speak to her. She turned to it and stretched out a hand.

  The moon slipped into a cloud like a fish into a net, and a shadow fell over the earth.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she whispered, ‘everything,’ and she went through the door into the dark house again.

  She fastened the locks and bolts and crept, tired out, with eyes tightly shut, up the stairs. Her fingers traced the way, round corners to her high attic, where, with eyes still fast closed to keep in the secrets, she climbed into bed and fell asleep.

  There were days of rain, when long slanting spears came stabbing through the air, beating down the grass, crashing against the windows. The farm was lost in the clouds, the men staggered through rushing streams, and wild winds blew them off their feet. Doors banged and windows rattled as if a devil were shaking their teeth out. The horses went about their work with streaming sides and bent heads, and Joshua and Tom walked sideways to the gale with sacks on their heads and shoulders.

  Becky and Margaret wrapped themselves in cloaks when they went to the troughs or farm buildings, for umbrellas were useless in the hills. The passages were awash with rain carried in on drenched clothes.

  Susan walked home with her feet little lumps of ice, dragged along by two bones. Her nose was a pink button, and her hair rat-tails. She was late and bedraggled because she could scarcely get through the pools in the wood, the trees had lashed and scratched her face. The matches were damp and she had no light, so she floundered along, bumping into outstretched boughs, tripping over stones and into wide pools.

  She was undressed by the fire and wrapped up in a rug. She squatted on a three-legged, scarlet stool by the settle with her toes on the sanded hearth, and ate her plate of hot meat and vegetables, whilst the rain banged on the shutters like someone trying to get in.

  ‘Hark, hark!’ cried Becky with uplifted hand. ‘They are outside, knocking. They want to come in. Hark!’

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Susan with wide-open eyes.

  ‘It’s the bad ones, as is dead,’ whispered Becky in awed tones, and Susan crept nearer the oven door and was glad she was safe. The wind battered against the strong walls of the house, or prowled round corners, howling like a wolf waiting to leap when the door was opened.

  There were thunderstorms and green lightning, which lit up the hills and woods, and made the men run for shelter. Tom warned them thunder was about, and soon it crashed with a thousand echoes. Susan enjoyed the brilliant lights and the rolling thunder which shook the wood and frightened all the evil things away. She walked slowly in order to see a thunderbolt drop like a ball of fire on the ground, or the trees split asunder over her head. But her mother was white with fear when she got in, and clasped her as if she were newly returned from the dead.

  ‘It’s God talking,’ said Becky. ‘He’s angry with somebody.’ But Susan’s conscience was clear, and she had no qualms that she was the cause of the thunder and lightning. Her heart was hard again, hell had lost its terrors for a time, and she was filled with Pagan delight and love for the earth.

  11

  December

  December was a wonderful month. Jack Frost painted ferns and tropical trees with starry skies over the windows, hidden behind the shutters to surprise Becky when she came down in the morning.

  ‘Look at the trees and stars he’s made with his fingers,’ she called to Susan, who ran from the kitchen to the parlour, and into the south parlour and dairy to see the sights. It really was kind of him to take all that trouble, and she saw him, a tall thin man with pointed face and ears, running round th
e outside of the house, dipping his long fingers in a pointed bag to paint on the glass those delicate pictures.

  ‘Look at the feathers the Old Woman is dropping from the sky,’ cried Becky, as she opened the door and looked out on a world of snow.

  ‘They are not feathers, it’s snow,’ explained Susan impatiently. Really Becky didn’t know everything. ‘And what is snow but feathers,’ returned Becky triumphantly. ‘It’s the Old Woman plucking a goose.’

  Susan accepted it and gazed up to see the Old Woman, wide and spreading across the sky, with a goose as big as the world across her knees.

  ‘Hark to the poor souls moaning,’ Becky cried when the wind called sadly and piped through the cracks of the doors. ‘That’s the poor dead souls, crying there,’ and she shivered whilst Susan stared out with grieved eyes, trying to pierce the air and see the shadowy forms wringing their hands and weeping for their lost firesides and warm blankets as they floated over the icy woods.

  But at Christmas the wind ceased to moan. Snow lay thick on the fields and the woods cast blue shadows across it. The fir trees were like sparkling, gem-laden Christmas trees, the only ones Susan had ever seen. The orchard, with the lacy old boughs outlined with snow, was a grove of fairy trees. The woods were enchanted, exquisite, the trees were holy, and anything harmful had shrunken to a thin wisp and had retreated into the depths.

  The fields lay with their unevennesses gone and paths obliterated, smooth white slopes criss-crossed by black lines running up to the woods. More than ever the farm seemed under a spell, like a toy in the forest, with little wooden animals and men; a brown horse led by a stiff little red-scarfed man to a yellow stable door; round, white, woolly sheep clustering round a blue trough of orange mangolds; red cows drinking from a square, white trough, and returning to a painted cow-house.

  Footprints were everywhere on the snow, rabbits and foxes, blackbirds, pheasants and partridges, trails of small paws, the mark of a brush, and the long feet of the cock pheasant and the tip-mark of his tail.

  A jay flew out of the wood like a blue flashing diamond and came to the grass plot for bread. A robin entered the house and hopped under the table while Susan sat very still and her father sprinkled crumbs on the floor.

  Rats crouched outside the window, peeping out of the walls with gleaming eyes, seizing the birds’ crumbs and scraps, and slowly lolloping back again.

  Red squirrels ran along the walls to the back door, close to the window to eat the crumbs on the bench where the milk cans froze. Every wild animal felt that a truce had come with the snow, and they visited the house where there was food in plenty, and sat with paws uplifted and noses twitching.

  For the granaries were full, it had been a prosperous year, and there was food for everyone. Not like the year before when there was so little hay that Tom had to buy a stack in February. Three large haystacks as big as houses stood in the stackyard, thatched evenly and straight by Job Fletcher, who was the best thatcher for many a mile. Great mounds showed where the roots were buried. The brick-lined pit was filled with grains and in the barns were stores of corn.

  The old brewhouse was full of logs of wood, piled high against the walls, cut from trees which the wind had blown down. The coalhouse with its strong ivied walls, part of the old fortress, had been stored with coal brought many a mile in the blaze of summer; twenty tons lay under the snow.

  On the kitchen walls hung the sides of bacon and from hooks in the ceiling dangled great hams and shoulders. Bunches of onions were twisted in the pantry and barn, and an empty cow-house was stored with potatoes for immediate use.

  The floor of the apple chamber was covered with apples, rosy apples, little yellow ones, like cowslip balls, wizenedy apples with withered, wrinkled cheeks, fat, well-fed, smooth-faced apples, and immense green cookers, pointed like a house, which would burst in the oven and pour out a thick cream of the very essence of apples.

  Even the cheese chamber had its cheeses this year, for there had been too much milk for the milkman, and the cheese presses had been put into use again. Some of them were Christmas cheese, with layers of sage running through the middles like green ribbons.

  Stone jars like those in which the forty thieves hid stood on the pantry floor, filled with white lard, and balls of fat tied up in bladders hung from the hooks. Along the broad shelves round the walls were pots of jam, blackberry and apple, from the woods and orchard, Victoria plum from the trees on house and barn, black currant from the garden, and red currant jelly, damson cheese from the half-wild ancient trees which grew everywhere, leaning over walls, dropping their blue fruit on paths and walls, in pigsty and orchard, in field and water trough, so that Susan thought they were wild as hips and haws.

  Pickles and spices filled old brown pots decorated with crosses and flowers, like the pitchers and crocks of Will Shakespeare’s time.

  In the little dark wine chamber under the stairs were bottles of elderberry wine, purple, thick, and sweet, and golden cowslip wine, and hot ginger, some of them many years old, waiting for the winter festivities.

  There were dishes piled with mince pies on the shelves of the larder, and a row of plum puddings with their white calico caps, and strings of sausages, and round pats of butter, with swans and cows and wheat-ears printed upon them.

  Everyone who called at the farm had to eat and drink at Christmastide.

  A few days before Christmas Tom Garland and Dan took a bill-hook and knife and went into the woods to cut branches of scarlet-berried holly. They tied them together with ropes and dragged them down over the fields, to the barn. Tom cut a bough of mistletoe from the ancient hollow hawthorn which leaned over the wall by the orchard, and thick clumps of dark-berried ivy from the walls.

  Indoors Mrs Garland and Susan and Becky polished and rubbed and cleaned the furniture and brasses, so that everything glowed and glittered. They decorated every room, from the kitchen where every lustre jug had its sprig in its mouth, every brass candlestick had its chaplet, every copper saucepan and preserving-pan had its wreath of shining berries and leaves, through the hall, which was a bower of green, to the two parlours which were festooned and hung with holly and boughs of fir, and ivy berries dipped in red raddle, left over from sheep marking.

  Holly decked every picture and ornament. Sprays hung over the bacon and twisted round the hams and herb bunches. The clock carried a crown on his head, and every dish cover had a little sprig. Susan kept an eye on the lonely forgotten humble things, the jelly moulds and colanders and nutmeg-graters, and made them happy with glossy leaves. Everything seemed to speak, to ask for its morsel of greenery, and she tried to leave out nothing.

  On Christmas Eve fires blazed in the kitchen and parlour and even in the bedrooms. Becky ran from room to room with the red-hot salamander which she stuck between the bars to make a blaze, and Margaret took the copper warming-pan filled with glowing cinders from the kitchen fire and rubbed it between the sheets of all the beds. Susan had come down to her cosy tiny room with thick curtains at the window, and a fire in the big fireplace. Flames roared up the chimneys as Dan carried in the logs and Becky piled them on the blaze. The wind came back and tried to get in, howling at the keyholes, but all the shutters were cottered and the doors shut. The horses and mares stood in the stables, warm and happy, with nodding heads. The cows slept in the cow-houses, the sheep in the open sheds. Only Roger stood at the door of his kennel, staring up at the sky, howling to the dog in the moon, and then he, too, turned and lay down in his straw.

  In the middle of the kitchen ceiling there hung the kissing-bunch, the best and brightest pieces of holly made in the shape of a large ball which dangled from the hook. Silver and gilt drops, crimson bells, blue glass trumpets, bright oranges and red polished apples, peeped and glittered through the glossy leaves. Little flags of all nations, but chiefly Turkish for some unknown reason, stuck out like quills on a hedgehog. The lamp hung near, and every little berry, every leaf, every pretty ball and apple had a tiny yellow flame reflect
ed in its heart.

  Twisted candles hung down, yellow, red, and blue, unlighted but gay, and on either side was a string of paper lanterns.

  Margaret climbed on a stool and nailed on the wall the Christmas texts, ‘God bless our Home’, ‘God is Love’, ‘Peace be on this House’, ‘A Happy Christmas and a Bright New Year’.

  Scarlet-breasted robins, holly, mistletoe and gay flowers decorated them, and the letters were red and blue on a black ground. Never had Susan seen such lovely pictures, she thought, as she strained up and counted the number of letters in each text to see which was the luckiest one.

  Joshua sat by the fire, warming his old wrinkled hands, and stooping forward to stir the mugs of mulled ale which warmed on the hob. The annual Christmas game was about to begin, but he was too old to join in it, and he watched with laughing eyes, and cracked a joke with anyone who would listen.

  Margaret fetched a mask from the hall, a pink face with small slits for eyes through which no one could see. Then Becky put it on Dan’s stout red face and took him to the end of the room, with his back to the others. Susan bobbed up and down with excitement and a tiny queer feeling that it wasn’t Dan but somebody else, a stranger who had slipped in with the wind, or a ghost that had come out of the cobwebbed interior of the clock to join in the fun. She never quite liked it, but she would not have missed the excitement for anything.

  Dan stood with his head nearly touching the low ceiling. His hair brushed against bunches of thyme and sage, and he scratched his face against the kissing-bunch, to Joshua’s immense satisfaction and glee.

  Becky and Susan and Margaret stood with their backs to the fire, and Tom lay back on the settle to see fair play.

  ‘Jack, Jack, your supper’s ready,’ they called in chorus, chuckling and laughing to each other.