The Ballad of John Clare

by Hugh Lupton

  “Deux …two …two sheeeling.”

  “Two shillings,” said a soldier. “But it’s yours, today, for the knock-down price of one silver florin.”

  It was more than John could spare, but he had the last of his harvest fee in his pocket, along with all that was left of his advance. He pulled the coins from his pocket and counted them out onto his palm.

  “Here you are.”

  He handed four sixpences across the table.

  “Merci.”

  The prisoner looked up at John and Mary and his eyes misted for a moment with tenderness. Then he winked.

  “Un moment.”

  He picked up a sharp little knife and started scratching words onto the wooden ground at the feet of the little woman in beautiful, curling, tilted script. He lifted the wood to his lips and, as though he was kissing it, blew away the dust.

  “Bon.”

  The other two prisoners peered across at it.

  John took it from him and showed it to Mary. She read aloud:

  “AMOR VINCIT OMNIA. I have enough of Merrishaw’s Latin to understand that.”

  She looked at the Frenchman and smiled such a sweet smile that for a moment he glimpsed a memory of sunlight through the endless cloud of English imprisonment. Then she whispered shyly:

  “Love conquers all.”

  The prisoner jumped to his feet and bowed setting the iron shackles rattling and clanking beneath the table. The other prisoners laughed, but he turned to them and raised both his hands:

  “C’est vrai …c’est vrai!”

  He took the carving from her, wrapped it up with a great display of tenderness and tied it with string. He gave it back to Mary.

  John and Mary turned from the stall and walked away arm in arm. They bought a bag of apples, found a quiet place and sat down on the grass. Mary rested her cheek on John’s shoulder and munched an apple as he untied the string and unfolded the coloured cloth that wrapped the carving. He pulled his new knife from his pocket and with the point of it scratched into the ground beneath the feet of the little bone man, in letters more crude of manner than the Frenchman’s flourishes: JCMARY1811

  “There.”

  He passed it to her.

  “’Tis for thee, Mary.”

  She wrapped it up and put it carefully into the little bag that hung from her shoulder.

  “I shall keep it always.”

  She kissed his cheek.

  “And now I must find my father.”

  “And I must find mine.”

  She kissed him and turned, he caught her hand, pulled her towards himself and they kissed again. She laughed:

  “Click clack.”

  She ran into the crowd and quickly disappeared.

  John walked towards the bridge. He was thinking to himself that from that vantage he would be able to look down on the mass of people and maybe catch a glimpse of Parker, Ann and Sophie. He climbed the slope of the bridge, leaned on the stone parapet and looked back at the jostling crowd with its myriad shifting colours. He listened to the strains of fiddles and pipes, the shouts and the deep murmur of babbling talk, the whinnying of horses and the lowing of prize bulls, the shrieks of children and the flapping of canvas. All the sounds mingled in John’s ears and became a strange music that he both longed to be a part of, and at the same time longed to be far away from – deep in his own sweet solitudes. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the tugging contradiction of his secret heart, basking also in the thought that somewhere in the swirl of sound was Mary’s voice.

  Suddenly his reverie was broken by his own name:

  “John Clare!”

  He turned and saw Betsy Jackson tripping up the bridge behind him. She was dressed for the Fair with her fitted jacket drawn tight about the waist so that her breasts – under their striped neckerchief – swelled above it, and her hips – under their white petticoats – swelled ripe and rounded below. Her curls spilled out from under a lace cap. She was a little unsteady on her feet. She drew closer to John than good manners would allow on any other day of the year. Her voice was loud:

  “I’ve been celebrating with the girls John, for John Close has took us all on for another year and has added five shillings to my wage.”

  John could smell the gin on her breath. She reached out and steadied herself on the parapet of the bridge with her strong, working hand.

  “Was that your little sister I saw you with just now?”

  John shook his head, innocent of her design.

  “No, that was Mary Joyce.”

  Then he added with a certain note of pride for he had never spoke it aloud before:

  “She is my sweetheart.”

  “Oh, but she seemed such a little shrimp of a thing John. And now she is run back to her Papa.”

  Betsy reached forward and stroked John’s coat with the back of her hand.

  “And you are left here all alone John …as am I.”

  John shrugged.

  “And it don’t do, John, to be on your own at Bridge Fair … it don’t do at all.”

  John’s heart was so full of Mary he still did not read her. She leaned forward and whispered:

  “Walk me home John, walk me home to Helpston.”

  “We shall all be walking home in a while Betsy …me and my family …and you are welcome to walk along with us on the road.”

  She looked at him, her head tilted on one side, as a parent might look a little disappointed at a child, but there was such a lack of guile on John’s face, and his heart shone out of his eyes so clear that she suddenly laughed out loud:

  “Ay, you go with them John Clare. I shall no doubt find company …”

  She turned on her heel and walked back down the bridge towards the Fair.

  *******

  It was late afternoon when the Clares walked home. The red of the sinking sun drew the redness out of the stubble fields, the soil, the ricks, the bricks, the turning leaves …so that half the world seemed to glow as though it was made of flesh and blood. And across the fields the piled heaps of dung that waited on the plough steamed quietly in the autumn air.

  They had been walking silently for a while when Parker turned to John:

  “Give us a page of your new book John, something to shorten the road.”

  “Oh, go on John!” Said Sophie.

  John pulled the battered volume from his pocket.

  “Ay, all right then …though it might not be altogether to your liking.”

  “Spit it out boy, ‘twill pass the time one way or t’other.”

  John opened it and read aloud:

  “Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet

  With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun

  When first on this delightful land he spreads

  His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flow’r,

  Glist’ring with dew; fragrant the fertile earth

  After soft showers; and sweet the coming on

  Of grateful ev’ning mild, then silent night

  With this her solemn bird and this fair moon,

  And these the gems of heav’n, her starry train …”

  John paused, as if for a moment a sharp draught of some strong liquor had warmed his blood. Then he said:

  “’Tis Eden see …I heard something of it from Merrishaw.”

  “Ay,” said Parker. “’Tis fine enough writ, though a little gentlemanly for my taste. I doubt he’s ever blistered his fingers with a spade.”

  10

  All Hallows’ Eve

  There is a big bowl that Ann Clare has been keeping beside the fire since September, covered in a muslin cloth that is stained with dark red splashes. Beneath the muslin there has been such a bubbling and frothing as has filled the cottage with a yeasty savour. Her elderberry wine is her pride and the toast of the neighbourhood. Last week she strained it and poured it into earthenware jars where it will stand until Christmas when, with ginger and cloves and mulling irons, its moment will come.

  There has
been a fermentation too in the mind of John Clare, a fever almost, a frenzy of scribbling. Since first he learned his ABCs he has scratched with his nib at whatever scrap of paper he could lay his hands upon. Most have been scrunched in his fist and thrown into the fire. Some he has folded most careful into the pages of his few precious books. But since Bridge Fair he has writ as one possessed. Whether it was that tattered volume that woke in him something that had long been slumbering. Or whether it is to sharpen and sweeten his tongue for Mary. Or whether it is merely to take his mind off poor Wisdom, who languishes still in the Bishop’s gaol waiting on the convict ship that’ll take him to New Holland. Whatever his reason, when he’s not labouring he is either dipping his pen into ink or hunched over one of his volumes muttering the words aloud to himself as though it was a book of devotions. If he was an earthenware pot he would have long since popped his cork.

  Each morning, along with the bread and cheese in his dinner bag, he must carry his paper and pencil stub. When the other men rest from their fencing or hedge-setting or stone-breaking and settle down for their baggin he sits apart and sets down the rhymes he has whispered to himself as he laboured. There are those that mock, and those that shrug, and those that say ‘Good luck to ye’, but John is indifferent to them all. He is in an amaze of words that will not let him be, they come spilling and rhyming from his tongue and he delights in the pictures they summon. And then, when a poem is done, he will doubt it also. And there’s many a verse as has served no higher purpose than to wipe his arse behind a hedge.

  And now October is gone and November gathers her dark skirts and the bracken on the heath flattens beneath her feet.

  Five days ago John and Parker came home soaked to the skin by the cold rain. Ann had been sweating since before first light in John Close’s kitchen. She’d brought home a cut of salt bacon and she’d boiled some potatoes, which they all ate with relish. When food was done Parker threw some twists of whin onto the fire so that it blazed. John took one of his books from its cubby hole and leaned over it, devouring the words. Ann was spinning thread with her rockie, from the pile of combed wool on her knee. Parker dozed. Sophie, wrapped in a blanket at her mother’s feet, talked idly of this and that, snatches of gossip she had garnered from the dairy. Suddenly Parker woke with a start and turned to John:

  “All the world has been watching thee John, worrying pen to paper as though you’d ease an itch …but no one’s heard a word of it. Read us something, one of your poems, if poems they be, for I’ve always had a taste for such.”

  “Ay John”, said Ann kindly. “It would be a treat for us.”

  John looked up from his book, reluctant. He pulled a piece of paper from between the pages of it and unfolded it slowly. He is shy of any audience but the nodding of Ann and Parker urged him on and gave him courage.

  “My mind has been turning on the Boswell crew of late and I penned this with them in mind:

  To me how wildly pleasing is that scene

  Which does present in evening’s dusky hour

  A group of gypsies center’d on the green

  In some warm nook where Boreas has no power

  Where sudden starts the quivering blaze behind

  Short shrubby bushes nibbl’d by the sheep

  That always on these shortsward pastures keep

  Now lost now shines now bending with the wind

  And now the swarthy sybil kneels reclin’d

  With proggling stick she still renews the blaze

  Forcing bright sparks to twinkle from the flaze

  When this I view the all attentive mind

  Will oft exclaim (so strong the scene pervades)

  ‘Grant me this life, thou spirit of the shades!’ ”

  There was a pause, then:

  “’Tis well enough,” said Parker. “’Tis well enough writ and tidily rhymed John, though to tell you the honest truth, it will never do.”

  “Ay,” said Ann. “’Twas prettily spoke John, but not so as any but us would give it the time o’ day.”

  John’s heart was sinking to be kickshawed so harsh.

  “The trouble of it is,” said Parker, “you do too much ape the gentleman in your words, they do not speak true as a ballad speaks true.”

  “Ay,” said Sophie. “And why say sib …sub …”

  “Sybil.” Said John.

  “Sybil,” said Sophie. “When all the world knows you mean Lettuce Boswell …though I saw her clear enough John, worriting the fire.”

  “And what’s wrong with wind, John, for the love of God, it’s a word as has served our fathers well enough, and their fathers before ‘em. These fancy words are like dancing monkeys at a fair, that bow and scrape with little tri-corn hats and silken breeches. Speak common speech or not at all.”

  John folded up the page and tucked it back into the book. All his malingering doubts seemed now to be well-founded.

  “Now read us something from one of your books John, so we can hear how such a job o’ work is truly done and set ‘prentice against master.”

  John shrugged and leafed through the book, it fell open at a place where he’d tucked a piece of paper between the pages earlier in the year.

  “Now grey ey’d hazy eve’s begun

  To shed her balmy dew –

  Insects no longer fear the sun

  But come in open view

  Now buzzing with unwelcome din

  The heedless beetle bangs

  Agen the cow-boys dinner tin

  That o’er his shoulder hangs

  Now from each hedgerow fearless peep

  The slowly pacing snails

  Betraying their meandering creep

  In silver slimy trails

  The owls mope out & scouting bats

  Begin their giddy rounds

  While countless swarms of dancing gnats

  Each water pudge surrounds.”

  “By God, that is the real thing,” said Parker. “That’s what ye should be aiming for John, though I doubt you’ll ever hit the target so fair on the bulls-eye as our man here.”

  “Ay John,” said Ann with a sigh, “keep trying and who knows but one day you shall be ranked alongside such a one as this …what is his name?”

  John closed the book and pointed to the stained spine:

  “Poems by Robert Burns.”

  His parents nodded.

  And it was only a short while later that John climbed the stairs to his bed. Soon he was beneath the blankets hugging himself and chuckling into the darkness at his deception, and at the thought that even them as cannot read are held in thrall to the printed page.

  *******

  November is come. The church bells have rung for All Hallows.

  Although the fences are not yet up for the enclosure, the land is being farmed as though they were. Charles Knight’s allocation at the eastern edge of Helpston parish is being ploughed by his men. Each pair of horses lower their shaggy heads as the iron blades lift the turf and the mouldering yellow stubble of the baulk gives way to the long lines of dark turned earth, dipping and rising with the folds of the land above the fen, where once the patchwork of furlongs met side to side.

  All along the old track there are teams of men digging ditches, planting hedges, breaking and setting stones for what will one day be the Helpston-Glinton Road.

  Mary rode Dobbie along the track and watched the seagulls following the ploughs and plundering the soil for riches. As she drew close to the village she saw there was a team of twenty Helpston men working together on the new road. John Clare was amongst them.

  “John!”

  She called aloud and John looked up, as did nineteen other men.

  One of them whispered:

  “Now I understand his scribblin’ an’ scratchin’ by God … damned if he ain’t pennin’ sweet nothings to old Joyce’s Mary.”

  “As would I if I had the gift and ‘twould make her wriggle out of that riding jacket and settle down upon my knee!”

  John str
aightened and wiped the dirt from his hands against his smock. He walked towards her and she climbed down from the saddle with her basket on her arm.

  The foreman, Will Mash, winked at the men:

  “Ye’ve two minutes John Clare, afore I starts dockin’ your wage.”

  Mary thrust the basket into John’s hands:

  “Here’s liver and onions John, for you and your family. We’ve more than we can manage.”

  As John took the basket she pressed his hand:

  “And shall I see you on Sunday?”

  “Of course you shall!”

  And she was up-saddle and away.

  John, red-faced, turned back to his spade, he put the basket down on the verge and was just setting to work when Jem Johnson broke the quiet. He looked at John most solemn:

  “Tomorrow, John Clare, I shall speak and you shall be advised and scratch it down upon the page word for word like a magistrate’s clerk.”

  He put his finger to his palm and made as if to write:

  “Dear Mary,” he said. “Meet me tonight at Langley Bush.”

  Someone else shouted:

  “In one of them hollow trees …”

  “In your nightdress …”

  “At midnight …”

  “And there you shall make the acquaintance of Mr John Thomas …upstanding gentleman of this parish …”

  And Jem, who has got the measure of John more than most, raised his eyebrows then:

  “And together, Mary, we shall hunt the cuckoo’s nest.”

  And there was laughter then, even Will Mash guffawed, and poor John stood and grinned and stared at his boots most discomfited. Then Jem began to sing:

  “Give me a girl as’ll wriggle and’ll twist …”

  And all the rest joined in:

  “At the bottom of the belly lies the cuckoo’s nest.”

  “All right, all right, back to work.” Shouted Will Mash.

  John filled his spade with soil and flung it at Jem, who clapped him on the shoulder.

  *******

  It had long been dark when John got home with one cut of liver in Mary’s basket.