The Ballad of John Clare

by Hugh Lupton

  As he drew close to the cottage he saw there was an unaccustomed light flickering in the window. It was a turnip lantern. Sophie had hollowed it out and cut eyes and teeth and set it on the window-sill with a candle inside. John pushed open the door and showed his mother the basket.

  “The Joyces are pig-killing and have more than they can eat.”

  Parker shook his head and grunted:

  “While others go hungry … ‘tis an old story.”

  John patted his father’s shoulder:

  “Go easy … get off your high horse. I gave a piece to Mrs Dolby. They’ll go to bed with their stomachs full tonight.”

  And Ann carried the liver into the pantry:

  “I’d heard Jo Dolby was gone on the parish … maybe that’ll cure his thirst … but how will he ever feed those boys on a pauper’s pittance? And no doubt Ralph Wormstall has taken him into his employ.”

  “Ay,” said Parker, “like the angel of death.”

  Soon the black cooking pot was hanging from its iron hook in the chimney and the smell of liver and onions mingled with the smell of scorched turnip from the lid of Sophie’s lantern. Ann tapped the pot with her wooden spoon.

  “We shall eat like kings and queens tonight.”

  Parker had his habitual theme like a bit between his teeth and would not stop worrying at it.

  “Joyce, I’ll grant you, has a good enough heart when he ain’t crossed …but look at the rest of ‘em, Wormstall, Close, Wright …lining their nests at the poor man’s expense …And think on poor Wisdom …what d’you suppose he’s sinking his teeth into this evening …no pig’s liver for him I’ll wager.”

  Ann snorted:

  “As if that gypsy hasn’t swallowed enough of our time … he has his life and that’s a blessing …”

  But then her face softened:

  “But I do think of him languishing there …maybe we should keep some meat aside.”

  “Ay,” said Parker, “and give the turn-keys a treat.”

  He spat into the fire.

  “There’s little we can do for Wisdom this side of the law … but there are other laws beside the law of the land, Ann … there’s God’s law …natural law …and the weight of one must be weighed against the weight of another if a man is to rest a-nights with an easy conscience.”

  He pulled a glowing ember from the fire and lit his pipe.

  *******

  When the Clares had eaten their fill of the liver and onion stew and had mopped the gravy from the wooden platters with lumps of bread. And when the platters had been swilled clean beneath the pump, the family settled down again before the fire, all but Parker who walked across to the window, stiff and solemn. He lifted the lid from Sophie’s lantern, and gently blew out the flame.

  Sophie cried out with indignation:

  “Why did you do that?”

  Parker’s voice was little more than a whisper:

  “Sssssh, because all this shrieking Hallowe’en lark of ghouls and ghosties is wrong-headed Sophie. We don’t want to frighten away little Bessie this night o’ the year.”

  Sophie fell silent and lowered her head. John looked into the fire.

  Parker returned to the fireside and sat down again. His eyes were wet. He turned to Ann:

  “Did you bring a jug of cream from Close’s dairy?”

  “Of course I did.”

  She went to the pantry. She poured the cream into a bowl. She cut some honeycomb, dropped it in and stirred it. She cut some fingers of bread from a loaf. She set bowl and bread onto a platter, carried them back and put them down carefully on the hearthstone.

  “There. Sophie, put puss outside! Ay, ‘twas always her favourite, bless her. I can see her now dipping her chubby little fingers into the cream and licking them clean.”

  Parker smiled:

  “Ay, and dipping the crust in and sucking it, and what a mess she’d make o’ herself.”

  There was silence for a while, then John said:

  “Tell me more about Bessie, for I have forgot her.”

  Ann laughed:

  “You and she come sliding an’ slithering an’ yelling an’ kicking out into this world, one a-hind the other like two puppies into a basket. Kitty Otter was there as handywoman, and when you was washed she tucked you up side by side in the one cradle.”

  “And from that first day,” said Parker, “you was never apart, but tugging at your mammy’s bubbies, one to left and one to right, or laying side by side and a-kicking of your legs, and later on crawling and toddling together as though ‘twas an idea shared betwixt and between.”

  “And she was such a bonny thing,” said Ann. “Such soft yellow curls that would lift and fall to the breath of my nostrils … And then come that winter of ninety-six when so many went to pauperdom, and we was a-queuing for a few pitiful pence, and John and little Bessie grew so perishing thin …ay, there was no dipping fingers into cream that winter …and then she took the fever. And how we did dab her forehead and wipe her cheek, and borrowed money for a doctor, and Kitty came as well and done what she could …but all to no avail. We had to lay her in the ground that winter in her little coffin that Jonathan Burbridge made and would take no money for.”

  Parker and Ann were weeping now.

  “And little John so quiet. He shed no tear but was like a lost thing, for a full six month he was in a daze as though he was himself half-gone, and we did fret that he would follow her.”

  Parker put his hand on John’s shoulder:

  “But then the summer came and you did wax like the moon into a sturdy little fellow …and then we was blessed with Sophie …and our sorrows was eclipsed …but never altogether gone, for a soul does not forget.”

  Ann turned the wooden platter on the hearthstone so that the bowl was evenly warmed. She called in a voice that was soft and sad and tender in equal measure:

  “Come little Bessie Clare, on this night when the dead can walk, come and drink your fill.”

  One by one, with no word exchanged they climbed the wooden steps to bed, leaving the food on the hearthstone.

  And this morning, Ann came downstairs early, took the platter outside and set it on the cottage steps while it was still dark. Soon enough puss came winding between her legs and lapped up the cream, then Richard Royce’s dogs chased her away, swallowed the bread and licked it clean a second time. When Parker, John and Sophie came downstairs no word was spoken of the night before. But on her way to John Close’s dairy Sophie gathered a little posey of berries – hip, haw, sloe and early holly – and when she came home at the end of the day she climbed the stairs and laid them tenderly in the little wooden cot where Bessie did use to sleep.

  11

  St Thomas’ Eve

  Christmas draws close. A wet November has given way to frost and all leaves are gone save only the few brown rags that cling to the oak, for he is always the last to let go of summer. The toiling ploughs still churn the earth. Poor Bob Turnill is out every day, alone with his team, working his allocation and praying with every breath to make good his debt with the sweat of his back and the depth of his devotion.

  Charlie Turner’s half-wit daughter Isabel is fallen sick. Every morning he’s in Royce’s Wood gathering wet sticks. He mixes sawdust with flour for the grey scones he bakes in the ashes, and pulls leaves and grass and begs an onion to make her a bowl of thin green soup. Jem Ferrar limes the hedgerows with trembling hands for little birds to give meat to his broth. And Joseph Dolby drinks away his wage and sleeps in one of Ralph Wormstall’s lambing sheds while his wife and boys lift stones in the fields.

  Parker, John, Dick Turnill, Jem Johnson, Will Mash and all the enclosure team, after four weeks cursing the bitter, slanting rain that soaked their clothes and turned the soil to mire; now curse the cold frost that stiffens earth to stone.

  And there is a new sound that echoes and redounds across the parish – the sound of axe to wood. All the streams are to be straightened into dykes and drains, and the willows and
alders and dotterels that border Rhyme Dyke and Green Dyke and Round Oak Spring and Eastwell Spring and all the winding river banks are to be felled. The water must run now to the constraints of the ruled line.

  With every stroke of iron to timber there is a sudden veering in the flight of a bird; a sudden start in the winter-sleep of badger, hedgehog, mole; a sudden shift in the deep droning note of the bees in their skeps against the church wall. The parish is set a-quiver and every fibre trembles. John knows it too, whose strings are tight-tuned to all sensation, though he is asleep to its cause and knows only a hollow ache of sorrow as the felling troubles his ears from across the fields as he works.

  *******

  Last night was St Thomas’ Eve, when every woman who is not wed hopes to catch a glimpse of her true-love.

  In John Close’s farm house there are two suppers. One is eaten in the front dining room, where he and his wife and their two daughters sit down to a mahogany table and pick and click upon china plate as though they were lords and ladies. The other supper is eaten downstairs in the kitchen when all has been cleared away above. All those that have lodging in the farm sit down together and eat and gossip – as much as they dare – about them upstairs.

  Last night it was the same as ever. And when all had been cleared away and ‘good-nights’ had been bid, Betsy Jackson was brushing the crumbs from the table when she heard her name whispered:

  “Betsy.”

  She turned, and there was the elder of the Miss Closes, standing in her nightdress with a flickering candle.

  Betsy curtsied, for the Close girls are strangers in the kitchen:

  “What can I do for ye Miss Elizabeth?”

  “Betsy, peel me an onion.”

  Betsy smiled to herself, remembering suddenly what night it was, remembering the old custom and how she’d done the same herself before she was wed. As she turned to cut a red onion from the string that hung from the kitchen beam she found her cheeks were moist with tender memory. She carefully peeled the onion, put it onto a plate and gave it to Elizabeth Close, wiping the tears from her eyes with her sleeve. Elizabeth took the plate.

  “Don’t tell Papa, he thinks ‘tis only a stupid fancy.”

  Betsy smiled at her and sniffed.

  “I won’t tell.”

  “Are those real tears?”

  “No, just onion tears.”

  Elizabeth walked away.

  “Goodnight.”

  When she had disappeared up the stairs Betsy looked at the string of onions.

  She cut another one and peeled it with quick strong fingers.

  “’Tis only a stupid fancy but …”

  She smiled through her tears, took a last look at the empty kitchen, blew out the candles, crossed the tiled hallway and made her way upstairs to her little cupboard of a room against the chimney. She slipped the onion under her pillow, undressed and climbed beneath the blankets. She had barely closed her eyes when she fell asleep.

  *******

  And now it is St Thomas’ day, when the night’s hold is strongest upon the day. This year it has fallen upon a Sunday.

  At Joyce’s Farm it was only when Mary’s tasks had been finished that John’s Sunday visit could begin in earnest. She put on her coat and woollen hat and scarf. They walked out into the yard and round to the frosty garden. When they were behind the yew hedge and out of sight of the house, John said:

  “Turn around Mary.”

  She turned her back to him. He pulled down her scarf, pressed his nose into her hair and sniffed the back of her head.

  “I smell onions!”

  She turned and looked at him and blushed and smiled:

  “Maybe you do John.”

  “Did you dream?”

  “Maybe I did John.”

  “Of me?”

  She shook her head:

  “No …first ‘twas of old Charlie Turner, for I like a man with no teeth …then I saw Merrishaw, for a scholar needs a wife and I like a man with spaniel breath …and then ‘twas …”

  John put his hand over her mouth and he could feel her soft wet laughter against his palm.

  “Tell me the truth!”

  She pulled his hand away and looked into his face:

  “I saw thee John, as plain as day.”

  She pressed herself against him, tilted her head and they met lip to lip.

  For all that was left of the afternoon they walked and talked, but not for as long as is their custom. When Glinton church clock struck four he said:

  “Now I must go.”

  “Already?”

  “Ay, we practise the Morris play tonight.”

  He pressed a piece of paper into her hand.

  “This is for you. ‘Tis but a trifle …something I wrote.”

  She unfolded it and read aloud:

  “Sweet is the blossomed beans perfume

  By morning breezes shed

  And sweeter still the jonquils bloom

  When evening damps its head

  And perfume sweet of pink and rose

  And violet of the grove

  But oh – how sweeter far than those

  The kiss of her I love.”

  She took his hand so tender then:

  “And I do love thee John Clare.”

  She pressed her lips to his cheek and turned back towards the farm house. Then she stopped and called across the lawn:

  “And sweet the smell of onion juice

  Upon my true love’s hair!”

  She ran through the front door and was lost to sight.

  And John strode the track through Woodcroft Field, warmed against any cold the mid-winter evening might bring.

  12

  Christmas

  It was dusk on Tuesday afternoon when the guisers acted out the Morris Play at Butter Cross. The four of them, in their bright ribbons, stood in a row on the steps of the cross, while John, Dick and Old Otter kept out the cold as best they could with their music.

  Saint George and the Turkish Knight were dressed in smocks that were so festooned and tangled with rags and ribbons that scarce a glimpse of canvas or breech-cloth met the eye. Each wore an ancient tricorn hat on his head that was stuck all over with curled wood-shavings from Jonathan’s workshop and strips of coloured paper that dangled over the eyes. Each had a belt drawn about his waist and a wooden sword thrust into it that reached to the knee; St George’s was straight and the Turkish Knight’s curved as a scimitar.

  The Fool had a hunch between his shoulders that rucked up his ribboned coat at the back. He had a leather tail that dangled behind his legs. He wore a clown’s pointed hat that was wound about with coloured cloth and bright ribbons. Over his shoulder he carried a wooden club, and hanging from the end of it a pig’s bladder, blown up and tied tight, on a twine.

  The Doctor wore a tall hat, a long coat to his ankles bright with rags and ribbons, spectacles of twisted woodbine upon his nose, and in his hand an ancient leather bag.

  All the players, musicians and guisers, had their faces blacked with grease and soot from James Bain’s forge.

  The villagers gathered around them, tapping their feet to the tunes. The four guisers watched them, still and solemn as four rooks upon a fence.

  Then, all of a sudden, the music stopped, the fool stepped forward, and the play began.

  “Gentlemen and Ladies I’m glad to see you here,

  Soon and very soon our actors shall appear …”

  The play followed its accustomed course. St George fought the Turkish Knight with a rattle and a clatter of wooden swords, the fool skipped around them, urging them on, swinging his club and walloping them with his pig’s bladder. The musicians shouted:

  “I am the blade

  That drives no trade

  Most people do adore me.

  I will you heat

  And I shan’t you cheat

  And I’ll drive you all before me …”

  And the old story played itself out. The villagers huddled together in the col
d like a herd of cattle, their breath steaming in the frosty, darkening air. The guisers spoke the familiar lines, in part to entertain the crowd, but in part as a job that must be done, just as wheat must be threshed and fields ploughed. For the Morris play is one of the stations of the year and cannot be neglected.

  When the play was finished the Fool went round with his hat and gathered his thin crop of farthings. Then the company made their way round the bigger houses of the village. They performed for Parson Mossop, for John Close, for Mrs Elizabeth Wright, for Mr Bull and Ralph Wormstall, and were rewarded with ale and food and coppers for the Fool’s hat.

  It was drawing close to midnight when they returned to Bachelor’s Hall to lay out their instruments and costumes ready for Christmas Eve. Sam Billings warmed a pan of water over the fire so that they could wash the black grease from their faces.

  When the musicians had set their instruments beside the guisers costumes, Sam put down a dirty cloth bag with its draw-string tied in a knot:

  “John Clare,” he said, “you’ll bring this an’ all, won’t ye.”

  John reached forward and felt the tight fiddle-strings beneath the cloth. He stroked them so that they sounded, and tapped the hollow wood. He smiled:

  “Ay.”

  When all the company had cleaned themselves as best they could and were wiping their faces with a piece of cloth, Old Otter took Sam Billings by the arm and drew him aside.

  “Kitty sends you this with her kind regards.”

  He pulled a little bottle from his pocket.

  “She says mind her instruction.”

  “Ay, it is not forgot.”

  Then Sam raised his voice to all the company:

  “Tomorrow, at Farmer Joyce’s farm, at two of the clock gentlemen, and not a moment later. And a very good night to ye all.”

  *******

  It was at three o’clock on the afternoon of Christmas Eve that Farmer Joyce’s haywain trundled through the streets of Peterborough towards the Minster Gate. Sam Billings, in Doctor’s coat and hat, held the reins and Joyce’s two great shires lifted their feathered feet and snorted into the frozen air. Huddled in the back, horse blankets drawn about themselves, their faces dark as blackamores, the rest of the Helpston players, musicians and guisers, watched the thronging shops and stalls with pink-rimmed eyes.