The Ballad of John Clare

by Hugh Lupton

  “Be careful though Miss Mary. Wrap up warm. We don’t want you catching your death this day of all days.”

  “I have my father’s constitution Kate, who has never seen a day’s sickness in his life …but don’t worry, I’ll wrap up in cloak and scarf and bonnet.”

  Mary and Kate slipped out of the pantry door and crossed the yard to the stable. Together they saddled the little dappled cob. Kate helped Mary up.

  “God bless you Mary. Good luck. I shall be thinking of ye!”

  Mary leaned down:

  “Tell no one I’m gone. If they ask I’m abed with a sore head.”

  “Ay. We’re only scrubbing the copper for tomorrow’s brewing. You shall not be missed.”

  Mary waved and rode out of the yard. The sky overhead was blue with high white clouds and the road beneath the cob’s hooves was awash with puddles that reflected the heavens so that it seemed to Mary that she rode between sky and sky.

  She rode out of Glinton and along the new road to Helpston. At the edge of the village she tethered the horse to a fence-post. The parish was astir. The labourers leading their horses out to the fields took little notice of her, nor did the enclosure teams. She walked the last half mile to the church. The clock was striking the half hour after eight as she chose a high headstone close to the church porch. She brushed the water away from the wet grass. She had a piece of leather to sit on. She spread it out and sat down with her back to the stone. She drew up her knees and looked towards the churchyard wall where the skeps stand. She pulled a hunk of bread from her pocket and munched it, rehearsing in her mind the words of the pledge that she had composed. In the February sunshine that came and went some sleepy bees were stirring. One of them settled on her cloak. She watched it picking its careful way across the woven threads as though they carried a promise of sweetness.

  *******

  John Clare woke earlier than Mary and lit a candle. He read the pledge that he has revised so many times these last days that it is become a mess of cross-hatchings and words writ over words so that the page is more black than white. He seemed to be satisfied. He climbed out of bed, dressed, kissed it and pushed it into the pocket of his breeches. His Sunday shirt was hanging over the chair. He pulled it over his head. He tied a handkerchief about his throat. When he came downstairs Parker, Ann and Sophie were up and about and making ready to go to work. His parents looked at John with raised eyebrows to see him dressed so fine on a workday like any other.

  “Where are ye going John?”

  John would not be drawn:

  “Here and there.”

  Was all the answer he would give. Then he added:

  “Tell Will Mash that I shall be late this morning and shall make up my time at dusk.”

  Parker grunted:

  “He will not like it.”

  “He shall have to like it.”

  It was Sophie, of course, who read John’s intention.

  “I know where he’s going.”

  “Where?”

  “To meet with his sweet-heart of course. ‘Tis the fourteenth of February after all.”

  John blushed. Parker sighed and pushed open the door:

  “Well, don’t be over-long with your sweet nothings or you’ll have a sweet nothing of a job.”

  Ann kissed John:

  “He has forgot, John, the Valentines he used to bring me when we were courting.”

  She followed Parker out of the door. Sophie looked at John most intent. She studied his shirt and neckerchief:

  “You’re got up most particular smart John Clare.”

  She pinched his neckerchief between finger and thumb and tilted her head to one side:

  “You ain’t goin’ to propose to Mary Joyce are ye?”

  She exploded with laughter.

  “Are ye?”

  From outside Ann’s voice came, most exasperated:

  “Come on Soph’ we shall be late again.”

  She looked at him over her shoulder with an expression of great merriment and disappeared through the door.

  John was left alone. He sat down and cut himself a piece of bread, wondering at Sophie’s acuteness. He shook his head, sighed, smiled, and ate the bread. He pulled out the piece of paper and read through his pledge again. He listened to the chiming of the quarters. His feet were fidgeting, tapping the hard earth of the floor. At last it struck a quarter to nine.

  He pushed open the cottage door and made his way past Butter Cross to the churchyard gate. He looked across towards the porch. Mary was not there. He followed the path. He entered the porch. He pushed open the church door and peered inside. There was no sign of her. He came out again and looked to left and right. He was early. He would sit in the porch and wait for her.

  Behind the headstone Mary Joyce was pinching her nose to hold in her laughter. She turned and peered over the top of it. She could see John’s feet tapping the stone floor.

  John read through his pledge yet again. He pushed it back into his pocket. He stood and scanned the churchyard. He took a few paces towards the gate and peered beyond it. He turned back to the porch. He sat down. The church clock struck nine. He closed his eyes. Surely she would come …

  Then he heard the churchyard gate click. He heard footsteps approaching. He jumped to his feet.

  “John?”

  It was Betsy Jackson’s voice.

  “John. I thought I caught a glimpse of you as I was passing.”

  John looked at her dumbfounded.

  “I have been wanting to speak to you alone. We are alone ain’t we?”

  Her face had lost its habitual rosy-red glow. There was a wanness to her cheek and her voice trembled.

  John looked to left and right and to his relief could see no one. He whispered:

  “Betsy, I have told you before …”

  “John, listen to me …”

  She reached and took his arm. He pulled it away from her:

  “Go away! Leave me alone.”

  “John, you have managed in one night what my husband did not in fifteen years.”

  She put her hand to her belly:

  “I am quick John. I am with child.”

  John said nothing. For a full minute he spoke no word. Then:

  “How do you know?”

  “A woman knows. I have not bled. I am terrible sick of a morning. I know.”

  John’s head was empty of all thought but Mary. He looked across towards the street. There was no sign of her.

  “It is mine? You are sure?”

  “It could only be yours.”

  She looked into his face, her blue eyes candid and swollen with tears.

  John looked at her and was lost for any word. She seemed to have become some monstrous thing, some breasted Annis standing between him and his happiness. She took a step towards him.

  “My husband always mocked me and called me barren John, and I believed him. But it must have been he who had the damp powder …for now we have made a baby, you and me.”

  She pressed her face down to John’s shoulder.

  “Marry me John. I will make you happy.”

  John’s body tensed. And then he was filled with a cold white rage. He pushed her fiercely away. She stumbled backwards and tripped on the grass verge beside the churchyard path.

  “Never …I will never marry you …never.”

  Tears were streaming down his cheeks.

  “I have told you and showed you that I love another. Leave me alone.”

  She had fallen onto the wet grass between two headstones. Slowly she sat up and pulled herself to her feet. As she did so she saw that the two of them had not been alone after all. She saw behind one of the headstones, curled over in the wet grass someone else had been party to their conversation. She looked long enough through her own tears to recognise her. It was John’s sweet-heart. It was Farmer Joyce’s Mary. She was lying, in her thick cloak and dress of primrose yellow, like some crumpled thing that had been crushed in someone’s hand and cast aside.
<
br />   His voice was hardening and lifting in strength against her like a fist.

  “Never.”

  Betsy stood. She said nothing. She took a deep breath and turned away from him. She gathered herself against his words, against all the world and its condemnation.

  “Never Betsy.”

  She made her way along the path and with a sharp click she closed the churchyard gate behind her and was gone.

  John sat down on the stone bench in the church porch with his face in his hands. He lifted the corner of his neckerchief and wiped his eyes. He was trembling and there was a terrible cold emptiness in the pit of his belly. He got up again, went outside and looked up at the church clock. It was only ten past nine. He sat down again. The clock struck the quarter. She did not come.

  When the clock struck the half hour he was still sitting, staring at the stone floor. He could not believe that Mary had not come. He was thinking that if she would only come he would make it all right between them and the whole world would slip into rightness around them. But she did not come.

  It was just before the clock struck ten that Mrs Bullimore from the shop roused him. She was carrying a change of altar flowers in her hand.

  “John Clare, here you are, I’ve had your father asking whether I’ve clapped eyes on you this last hour, and Will Mash cussing the day you was born. You’d best get along or you’ll be in deep water.”

  John pulled himself to his feet and went out into the rain. Anyone who could have read his heart would have seen, writ full clear, that the bright world had begun, one by one, to break its promises.

  15

  Shrove Tuesday

  Now enclosure hurries on apace. The hedges and fences are for the most part in place so that each of the three great fields is divided and divided again according to the award. The farmers: Ralph Wormstall, John Close, Sam Price, Elizabeth Wright, Mr Bull, Farmer Joyce and the rest ride out and survey their entitlements with a complacent eye.

  Lolham Bridge Field, Heath Field and Woodcroft Field are all but gone now, as are the heaths and commons. Where they used to be there is an ordered cross-hatching of squares and rectangles.

  More men have been hired by the Earl of Fitzwilliam to complete the straightening of the dykes and to dig the drains. William Bradford at the Bluebell Inn is prospering as never before. There is nowhere a body can cast its eye but there is activity upon the face of the land.

  And what choice has the landless man but to make hay while the sun shines? John and Parker Clare have been setting fences around Langdyke Bush, for it is to become private grazing for Mr Bull. The fire-pits are still scorched black from the fires of the Boswell crew, but that common will never be a camping ground for gypsies again. With the setting of fences comes a new order.

  Every day Bob Turnill is out on his small entitlement. But he is not surveying it like a squire from the saddle and counting his blessings, he is between the stilts of a plough working from dawn to dusk, stopping only to munch at bread, cheese and onion and cast his eye across a chapter of scripture. And Mrs Turnill labours as hard as he does, whether it’s at the milking, or the feeding, the mucking, the winnowing, the spinning or the baking. And at the end of the day, by candle-light, when their meagre supper is eaten, the Turnills pore over their accounts and pray for clement weather. Dick, whose income is all the money they have, watches helpless as they are drawn into a deeper and deeper exhaustion, and sees his hard earned wage swallowed by creditors as soon as it is laid on the table.

  In Glinton Farmer Joyce has been studying his new-hedged, new-turned fields and wondering whether the soil is ready for the spring sowing. On Friday last, when there was a clear sky and a March sun and a few early larks were spilling their songs across the parish, he rode out with Will Farrell. When they were far out in the fields and out of sight of all, he climbed down from the saddle and picked up a handful of earth. He pinched it. He crumbled it in his hand. He sniffed it. He turned to Will with a sigh:

  “I cannot decide one way or t’other. She seems near enough ready for seed Will …”

  Will climbed down and did the same.

  “Mmmm.”

  “There’s only one thing for it. We shall have to put her to the old test.”

  Both men looked to left and right, and when they were sure that they were quite alone they unbuckled their belts and pulled their breeches down to their knees.

  “’Tis the only way Will.”

  They sat backwards and lowered their white buttocks slowly down to the furrows until their swinging bollocks touched the raw earth. Will sucked in his breath. Farmer Joyce grunted. Then they stood up again and brushed away the crumbs of soil. They pulled up their breeches.

  “What d’ye reckon Will?”

  “I say not yet. There’s a chill upon her still and she needs to dry a little more.”

  “By God, you have read my thoughts. Ten more days of sun like today, and we shall fill your seed-lip with corn and make a start.”

  They rode back to the farm. Farmer Joyce inspected the pig-sties and the cattle, who were still lowing and shuffling on trampled straw in their winter quarters. It was dusk when he came to the kitchen door. As he lifted his boot to the scraper he saw there was a folded paper tucked against it. He lifted it, squinted at it and sighed. He pushed open the door and strode into the kitchen.

  “Mary.”

  She was cutting vegetables with Kate.

  “Mary, here’s another letter from your John Clare.”

  She looked up at him quick and sudden, and then her face froze. It was as though her recollection had overtaken her heart’s first impulse at his name. She put down her knife, came across and took it from his hand. She set it on the mantleshelf.

  “Thank you Papa.”

  “Ain’t you going to read it?”

  She returned to her chopping board and did not answer him. He sized her up shrewdly from beneath his bristling eye-brows:

  “’Tis a few weeks since we last clapped eyes on him.”

  He pulled off his boots and drew a chair to the kitchen fire. He took a clay pipe from the rack and filled it with tobacco. He took an ember in the iron tongs, lifted it to the bowl of the pipe and sucked. The chimney pulled the sweet smoke up into itself.

  There was a silence, broken only by the sound of knives against wood. Kate Dyball looked across at Mary, but she gave no clue as to what thought might be playing in her mind. She chopped until the job was done and then walked across to the kitchen door, she rested her hand lightly on her father’s shoulder as she passed him. She ran light-footed up the stairs to her bed-chamber. It was only when she was alone that she let her countenance fall. She sat on the edge of her bed and stared out of the window. And behind her face hid a wounded thing, a mazed swift with a broken wing that sits in the hand and will take no food, or a shrew that has been a cat’s plaything.

  Later, when the kitchen was empty, she came quietly down. She took the letter from its shelf and threw it, un-opened, into the flames. She prodded it with a poker until it crumbled to black dust.

  *******

  Letters were all John’s hope now.

  On the first Sunday after Valentine’s, when church was finished, he had walked the road to Joyce’s farm, treading the stones he had broken himself. He had knocked at the kitchen door and Kate Dyball had opened. She’d looked at him and called over her shoulder:

  “’Tis John Clare.”

  John could hear the sound of the scraping of a chair and feet hurrying away. Kate had looked at him with solemn eyes and whispered:

  “I don’t know what has passed between you and Miss Mary, but she is become spelled and strange as a changeling. She is but a shadow of herself.”

  Then Farmer Joyce was standing behind her:

  “Ah John Clare, come in, come in if you must.”

  John had followed him to the kitchen table.

  “Sit down …”

  He’d looked about the room. Farmer Joyce had followed his gaze.

/>   “Ah, Mary is gone.”

  John had sat down beside Mary’s half-eaten plate of food. Farmer Joyce had poured him a mug of ale and pushed it across the table. Kate ran upstairs and then returned to the kitchen door.

  “She will not come Mr Joyce, she will not answer.”

  The farmer looked at John and shrugged:

  “That’s the way of it.”

  He went to the foot of the stairs and bellowed:

  “Mary!”

  He turned:

  “It seems she’ll have none of ye. She’ll no more be budged than a spooked horse can be made to jump a stile.”

  John had gulped down his beer, got up to his feet and nodded his leave. Farmer Joyce walked him to the door.

  “A very good afternoon to ye, John Clare.”

  John had trudged away across the yard and the farmer had watched him for a while, then turned back to the kitchen.

  Mary was sitting at the table, eating her food as though she had not been disturbed. Her father sat opposite her and smiled.

  “Good girl, ye’ve seen sense and acted on it.”

  Mary looked up at him like a startled deer. Then she was on her feet and up the stairs again.

  *******

  Since that Sunday John has vowed that he will not return until she’s replied to one of his letters.

  Every day he has worked until the blisters on his hands are calloused into hard skin. He has worked so that his muscles are become taut and all fat is fallen away from him. He has worked each day until the rhythm of mallet to post, of hammer to stone, have so entered his body that all thought is driven out, all aching hurt is forgot. At dusk he trudges home and all the early flowers, that he has ever loved to see, the daisies closing their bright eyes, the retiring primroses clustered on the bank, all seem only to be sharp reminders of Mary. Some evenings he drinks ale at the Bluebell or Bachelors Hall, losing himself in loud talk and song and staggering home to oblivious sleep. Sometimes he sits and scribbles letters by candlelight, throwing them angrily into the fire, or folding them and putting them aside to deliver next day at Mary’s door. On such nights it can be two or three of the morning before he lies down to sleep.