The Ballad of John Clare

by Hugh Lupton

  “Meet Mrs Betsy Jackson, who is recently come from Stamford as cook to John Close.”

  Betsy smiled. John remembered his mother speaking of her. Her husband had been a cobbler, had died of consumption and left her penniless. But though she is a widow and had been married for some fifteen years, she is scarcely two and thirty years of age. John saw a plump, well-featured woman, good natured with full cheeks and eyes that liked to laugh and did not dwell upon the past. She was wearing her Sunday clothes: a printed gown, a white apron, and a linen cap edged with lace and tied about with a pink ribbon. Her brown curls spilled out beneath it. There seemed to be something untroubled about her that in turn lifted John from his turmoil. He shook her hand.

  “What do you play?”

  She reached down and picked up an oboe that lay between the feet of her chair. She waved it in the air.

  “I blow upon the horse’s leg!”

  She laughed a peal of shrill, easy laughter. Jonathan nodded his head up and down in appreciation.

  “Very good, very good.”

  Dick Turnill untied the ribbon from the parson’s sheaf of manuscript papers with the tunes pricked out upon them and laid them on a table. The band gathered round, adjusted themselves so that they were ready to play.

  Sam Billings beat the time:

  “One two three and ….”

  They began in a ragged way. First they struck up ‘Morning Trumpet’, then ‘Thy Soul-cheering Presence’, then ‘Come all ye Faithful Christians’, ‘Windham’ and ‘Idumea’. And though it was but the tunes they played, in John’s mind the words of the hymns shouted their admonitions and certainties into his trembling thoughts.

  He found his fingers suddenly sticky with sweat so that he was scarce able to play. And then he looked up and saw Betsy Jackson’s face, red from blowing, with cheeks puffed out and her breasts rising and falling, looking like the wind in the corner of a mariner’s map. He saw Sam Billings beating time on the drum that rested on his belly, lifting each stick with a flourish as though he played for a battalion on the march. He saw Jonathan Burbridge’s studied frown as he played with all of his art, his fingers trembling on the cello’s neck as though he’d been brought before the crowned heads of Europe. And John found himself suddenly smiling, and all his fear was, for a little while, eased by the comfortable, familiar world of the farm-house parlour.

  They were mid-way through ‘Sound, Sound your Instruments of Joy’ when Old Otter appeared at the farm-house door. Mr Turnill was still reading from the Bible. The strains of the hymn tune could be faintly heard from the back of the house. Otter threw a hare onto the table in front of the Bible.

  “Kitty sends this with her kind regards.”

  Mr Turnill looked up from his text:

  “They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh …”

  Otter has long since, as far as Bob Turnill is concerned, thrown in his lot with the Devil.

  “And they that are after the Spirit do mind the things of the Spirit …Ye’d do well to ponder upon that Otter …I didn’t expect to hear you playing hymns upon the Sabbath, but I welcome it with all my heart.”

  “A tune’s a tune Bob, and my fingers was itchin’ to play.”

  Mr Turnill picked the hare up by its hind legs. He looked it up and down.

  “I hope and pray as Kitty hasn’t been labouring on the Sabbath.”

  Old Otter grinned, his eyes bright between the white thatch of his hair and the white tangle of his beard.

  “She set the trap yesterday eve, though whether Wat here was at his labours and sprung it before or after midnight I couldn’t tell ‘ee.”

  Mrs Turnill laughed. She reached across and patted the hare’s head.

  “If he was transgressing then he has been punished for it, and we are beholden to ye both.”

  She took it from her husband and carried it through to the dairy. She put it in the cool shadow under a stone table.

  “And he’s a beauty, Otter.”

  Old Otter nodded and made his way through to the parlour. Sam Billings raised both sticks above his head and drummed a roll.

  “Here’s Old Father Time!”

  Otter shook Betsy’s hand, and they played the tunes through to him so that he could learn them. And then he pulled his battered fiddle from under his jerkin and they played them again together, filling the pantry with fiddles, oboe, flute, cello, drum. And they played with such a full accord, with such a rhythm, that even Mr Turnill in the kitchen found himself beating time with his feet as he read, so that they were as good as dancing under the table. His wife put her hand on his knee and whispered:

  “It is not proper, Bob.”

  When they’d played the tunes over and over and they were lodged in their memories, Old Otter put his fiddle down onto the table.

  “Call me an old sinner if ye will …” He said.

  “You old sinner!” said Sam Billings and clapped him on the shoulder.

  “ …But it seems to me that the one that Parson Mossop has called ‘Thy Soul Cheering Presence’ is only a whisker away from ‘Rosin the Bow’.”

  He lifted his fiddle to his chin and played.

  “See!”

  He played again, and instinctively the others joined in.

  In the kitchen Mr Turnill’s feet started dancing again under the table, more vigorous than before.

  Mrs Turnill seized his arm.

  “Bob! Listen!”

  In the pantry the musicians played and played, lost in the rise and fall, the twists and turns of the tune, oblivious to all but the pleasure of playing.

  Suddenly the door crashed open.

  Mr Turnill stood framed in it, shaking with rage.

  “How dare ye? On the Sabbath, under my roof!”

  They stopped and stared at him, as if woken from a dream.

  “What! D’ye mistake my parlour for the snug at the Bluebell? Away with ye! Go on, out with the lot of ye!”

  He waved his arms at the village band until they gathered themselves, pulling on coats and picking up instruments. They hurried out of the parlour, through the kitchen, where Mrs Turnill was standing, her hands on her hips, glaring at them, and out into the damp evening. Only poor Dick was left behind.

  “And Dick! We bring ye up godly and for what? For old Otter to lead ye down to damnation!”

  The rain had eased now, there were distant rumbles and grumbles of thunder somewhere beyond the orison. When the band reached West Street it was Old Otter who broke the silence:

  “Where’s the damage in a little tune that never done harm to man nor beast?”

  Sam Billings, a little breathless from their hurried departure, nodded:

  “There’s them as wear their Sabbath breeches too tight.”

  Jonathan Burbridge, with his cello in its canvas bag slung across his back, turned his attention to Betsy.

  “Too tight by half …Well, I’m away now to tuck old grandma up for the night.”

  He reached behind himself and patted the cello. Then he bowed to her:

  “’Twas a pleasure to meet you Betsy, if I may call you such, and to hear you play …we’ll meet again on Sunday next …if not before.”

  Betsy Jackson, with her oboe in one hand and the other lifting up her Sabbath gown so that the hem stayed clear of the puddles in the road, smiled:

  “Elizabeth, Elspeth, Betsy or Beth, ‘tis one and the same to me …anything save Widow Jackson for that won’t do at all.”

  She laughed then, and there was in the rise and fall of her laughter the note of one who has learned to put good humour over the ill-usages of fortune.

  “A very good evening to ye all.”

  She splashed away towards John Close’s farm.

  Old Otter turned to the rest:

  “’Tis a grand tune is ‘Rosin the Bow’, but I felt the lack of young Wisdom, he’d ha given it a lift that’d have had Bob Turnill and his missus capering on the kitchen flags, Sabbath or no Sabbath.”

  S
am Billings nodded

  “Ay, there’s no arguing with that.”

  And the village band went their different ways. Sam winked at Jonathan. Old Otter waved his fiddle in the air and strode down Crossberry Lane. John nodded his farewells but said no word.

  *******

  John was not the only one to fall asleep troubled last night. Will Bloodworth came back to Milton Hall soaked from waist to foot from the dripping grass of the estate. It was two hours short of the dawn when he climbed the steps to his little garret room beside the great chimney above the kitchen. He lit a candle, took off his sodden clothes and spread them out as best he could against the warm brick. He rubbed himself dry and pulled a night-shirt over his head. He lay down and pulled a blanket over himself. But though he was dog-tired he could not sleep.

  Will Bloodworth knows that he has lied. And he knows with equal certitude that he cannot renege upon that lie. And so there is a part of him that lies to himself about the lie and would have it truth. And there is a part of him that knows that by doing so he locks himself in a double falsehood. There is a part of him that would gladly see the gypsy swing. And there is a part of him that shrinks from having blood on his hands. Contrary thoughts trouble him and give him no peace, writhing in his mind like maggots in a wound. And deep beneath them all he harbours a terror that he is damned.

  Few would read these troubles in his features during the day-time though. Will’s narrow, clean-shaved and freckled face with its brushed side-whiskers is given to smiling often, but not so that it can be read in his eyes. He moves briskly from task to task and has won the respect of many, but is loved by none. And though he is five and thirty years old, he is a bachelor yet.

  7

  Harvest (The Assize)

  It was the day before the September assize, Thursday last. All through August John has felt a growing weight of forboding. Five times he has walked to Peterborough and tried to get some account of Wisdom from the turn-keys at the Bishop’s Gaol, but all to no avail. He knows the torment that a stone ceiling would afford to one who has lived his life beneath the sky. And in his mind’s eye he has seen all too clearly the rank straw, the stinking flea-ridden blankets, the overflowing bucket of piss and shit that spills its slops onto the floor.

  All these were preying on his dreams when he was woke at first light by a shrill note.

  ‘Paaaaaaaarp. Paaaaaaaaarp.’

  Richard Royce has been chosen as this year’s Lord of the Harvest. He was making his dawn circuit from street to street, blowing the harvesters awake with his hollow hemlock horn.

  Soon enough the sound of the stirring of every household and farm filled the air. John got dressed. He and Parker ate a chunk of rye bread apiece and washed them down with water. Ann and Sophie packed their baggin. They walked to Close’s Farm to collect their scythes. They slung them over their shoulders, put their whet-stones in their pockets and set off, tramping the stony track towards John Close’s furlongs on Lolham Bridge Field like foot-soldiers. His were the last furlongs still standing upon the great field. The rest was stubble now.

  The rhythm and hard labour of these harvest days have been a sweet relief to John. They have rendered him too tired to think. All morning the team of men, in smocks and wide-brimmed hats of rush or straw, worked together. They swung their curved blades in the easy accord that their health depends upon, for to be out of rhythm is to cut flesh to bone of the man alongside. From time to time they stopped to sharpen their blades, drawing the whet-stones along the curved blades, two strokes below and one above. The scythes rang out like cutlasses. Then they’d return to their harvest, Richard Royce leading, the others falling in behind, like fiddlers in a band with their bows rising and falling in perfect time.

  The women followed, Ann Clare and Betsy Jackson amongst them. They gathered the fallen swathes of wheat in their arms and lifted them up, as though tending the fallen. They tied each sheaf with twisted straw. They leaned the sheaves together, six at a time, into stooks. Behind them row upon row of lifted stooks stood, each like a cluster of tousle-headed prisoners of war bound together back to back. Overhead a fierce September sun beat down upon bent backs.

  On the other side of Lolham Bridge Field, where Mr Bull’s and Bob Turnill’s stooks had stood three weeks in bright sunshine, two great carts had been drawn to the edge of their furlongs. One man stood in each and built the load, six more forked the sheaves up to them as they worked. The waiting horses stamped in the heat.

  Beyond them, where the stooks had all been taken, Kitty Otter, Sophie Clare and a gaggle of other girls, old women and village paupers were gleaning the stubble for spilt grain.

  When mid-day came, it was to the shade of those two carts, piled high now, that the men retired. They crawled between the high wooden iron-shod wheels and patted down the sharp stubble. Some lit pipes, some unwrapped their baggin. All of them filled mugs from the harvest barrel that had been lifted onto a corner of the cart. They washed the dust from their throats. John and Parker shared the bread and cheese and apples that had been wrapped for them. When they had eaten they stretched out in the shadow of the load and rested.

  The women ate apart. They went down to the willows that leaned over Green Dyke at the edge of the field and settled there. They dipped their feet into the cool water and brushed away the flies with withies as they talked.

  When the hour was over and Richard Royce called them back to work the men made their slow way across the field to their scythes that lay alongside the uncut corn. As John was drawing the first stroke of his whet-stone against the blade he heard his name being called:

  “John Clare.”

  He turned and saw Betsy Jackson. She was with the other women, coming back from the stream’s edge. Her face was in shadow under her wide brimmed straw bonnet, but he could see she was smiling at him. She beckoned.

  “Come here John!”

  He put down his scythe and wandered across to her.

  “Us musicianers must stick together John, so I’ve made ye something special.”

  She fished beneath the cotton cloth that covered her basket. He could see the yellow stains of dried sweat under the arms of her cotton blouse.

  “I’ve made ye a mutton pasty.”

  She pulled out a golden brown pastry with pinched edges and handed it to him.

  “You’ll enjoy that I reckon.”

  John thanked her most civil and took it. He went back to where the men were waiting, broke it in half and shared it with his father. Parker turned and waved at Betsy, he touched his lips with his fingers then opened his hand. She laughed and waved. But it was John she watched as he sharpened his blade and set to work with the reaping team. It was John she watched, and then, as though she had thrown water into her own face, she shook herself so that her brown curls bobbed, and hurried forwards to catch up with the other women.

  And John, oblivious of her scrutiny, bent his back to his work and tried not to think what tomorrow morning might hold in store.

  *******

  At the same time, under the same bright sun, Farmer Joyce was overseeing the reapers at work on his furlongs in Glinton parish. They had stopped to whet their blades for the third time when he heard a horse approaching across the stubble. He turned and saw Ben Price, the bailiff.

  Farmer Joyce raised his hand:

  “A fine harvesting day Ben, and the dew gone from the ground by six o’clock.”

  Ben Price reined in his horse and climbed down from the saddle. The two men shook hands.

  “Ay, John.”

  He reached down and broke an ear from one of the stalks of wheat. He rubbed it between his hands, blew away the chaff and tipped the grains into his mouth. He chewed in a slow and considered manner, the flicker at the edge of his mouth giving his milling rumination something of a pained air.

  “Good,” he said, “’tis a good grain John.”

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “But ‘twas not to discuss grain that I have
ridden out this afternoon. The Earl’s secretary has pressed me most urgent to put this into your hands.”

  He opened his jacket and reached into the pocket. He pulled out a letter sealed with wax.

  “I am told to tell you to give it your most considered attention.”

  Farmer Joyce took the letter. Ben Price climbed up into the saddle, reined his horse around and set off at a trot across the dusty stubble. As soon as he was gone Farmer Joyce broke the seal and unfolded the letter. He read it once and then he read it again.

  “Damn him.”

  He stuffed it into his pocket.

  “Damn him to hell.”

  He strode across the field to where his mare was tethered in the shade of a stand of sycamores. He untied her and rode to the village. When he came to his yard he handed the horse to Will Farrell and strode into the sudden dark shade of the house.

  “Mary!”

  She was in the bake-house with Kate Dyball.

  “Mary, where are ye?”

  She came running into the parlour where her father was pacing up and down. She ran forward to him.

  “What’s amiss?”

  “Mary, I cannot stand witness at the assize …”

  “But you promised that you would ….”

  “Read this.”

  He pulled the letter from his pocket and thrust it angrily into her hand. She unfolded it and read aloud.

  Sir

  It has come to the attention of the Earl of Fitzwilliam that you intend to stand witness in favour of one against whom the Earl presses charges for affront to his Property, Game and the very Life of one of his most trusted Keepers. He wishes you to know that should you continue in your Folly no cheese, ham or husbandry will assuage his displeasure. He wishes also to remind you that your Land and Living, your Rents, Privileges and Entitlements are entirely at his Discretion.

  Yours

  Robert Smethwick

  Secretary to the Earl of Fitzwilliam

  Mary looked at her father:

  “You must stand true to your conscience.”

  He shook his head.