The Ballad of John Clare

by Hugh Lupton

  Parson Mossop nodded to the churchwardens who rapped the steps with the foot of the processional cross. Sam Billings walloped his drum and the procession set off along West Street as ever it has done.

  Betsy Jackson took Jonathan Burbridge’s arm. They walked close so that their hips touched and touched again. John and Dick Turnill walked side by side, a little apart from the crowd. John told Dick in whispered tones of Lettuce Boswell’s visit. Dick whistled through his teeth.

  “Americay …there’s a journey. Maybe I shall follow him one day.”

  He looked around at the bustling villagers before and behind them and sighed.

  “Everything has changed John, since last year, everything and nothing.”

  John nodded:

  “Ay, there’s Wisdom and the Boswells gone …and Old Otter and Kitty …and Will Bloodworth …and only this morning they’ve found Charlie Turner dead, and poor Isabel trying to shake him awake.”

  “I hadn’t heard …and then there’s Mary.”

  John kicked a stone.

  “Ay, Mary too …not to speak of the enclosure.”

  “And soon you shall add my name to your list, John.”

  John turned to him sharp.

  “Yours?”

  Dick swallowed hard:

  “Father’s selling.”

  He nodded to Bob and Maria Turnill, who were walking ahead of them and keeping their counsel. He lowered his voice again:

  “Mr Bull pressed his offer, and father was so deep in debt he could not refuse it …deeper than ever I’d guessed.”

  “Where will ye go?”

  “They are crying out for labour in the North. Father talks of Matlock, where my uncle Ned is foreman at a mill …and him most vehement in his worship.”

  “And you’re determined to go with them?”

  “For a little while John …but, like you, I’m still at my books. Though more of numbers than words. I have ambitions …”

  “I shall miss you Dick.”

  John took his friend’s arm and kissed him on the cheek, and though there is much of prickling stubble to John’s lips, and Dick’s cheek is still downy soft, it was a moment that Dick has stored away and will carry with him to the end of his days.

  When the crowd drew close to King Street the children began their race for the first of the meer-stones. Tom Dolby, Lucy Bain and Henry Snow led the way, running full tilt, their mouths drinking the air. Tom, running bare-foot, stubbed his toe and fell, so it was little Lucy who was the first to strike her head to the stone. Mrs Bullimore came waddling forward with her bag of sugared plums. But someone else was striding ahead of her.

  “You little devils!”

  Thomas Bellar swung out with his cane and struck Lucy a crack on the side of her head. He aimed at Henry Snow, but Henry ducked. He caught him by the scruff of the shoulder and gave him a thwack on the backs of the legs. Both children began to cry.

  “Look what you little devils have done to my new-set hedge!”

  He was shaking with anger. The meer-stone was a few paces inside his allocation. The children had trodden down his hawthorn seedlings in their eagerness to reach the stone.

  Mrs Bullimore came forwards and the children ran across to her. They pressed their faces into her dress.

  “There, there …really Mr Bellar, what are you thinking, ‘tis only once in the year.”

  “Then it’s once in the year too often …you’re married to the constable …can’t you see this is criminal damage, criminal damage I say.”

  Then James Bain came pushing out of the crowd.

  “Nobody strikes my daughter with a cane.”

  The blacksmith seized Thomas Bellar by the lapels of his Sunday coat and shook him until the silver-topped cane fell from his hand. He picked it up and broke it over his knee. He flung the two halves into the green spring wheat.

  “There …and don’t come knocking at my door when your horses need shoeing.”

  There was a silence as the two men glared at one another.

  Then Parson Mossop came forwards. He stretched out his arms and urged the people to step back into the road.

  “Brothers, sisters, please …stand this side of the hedge. We will have the first reading.”

  He thumbed through his Bible to the book of Joel. Mrs Bullimore pressed sugar plums into Lucy and Henry’s mouths and peace was restored. After the reading came the psalm, and then the crowd moved on in its ragged procession.

  Thomas Bellar turned from the crowd. He strode into his field and paced backwards and forwards until he’d found the two halves of his cane. A peewit flapped about him, rising and dipping and calling out its alarum until he was gone through the gate and striding homewards cursing all the way. Writ in his face was a determination to pull the wretched meer-stone like a rotten tooth from its socket and break it to shards before the year was out.

  Tom Dolby, limping and running, caught up with the procession. Jonathan Burbridge, with Betsy on his arm, turned to him.

  “Tom …”

  “Ay.”

  “I’ve a place for a ‘prentice …and you have the look of a bright lad …what’d you say to taking a trade and becoming a carpenter?”

  Mrs Dolby, walking ahead, overheard and turned, and in her careworn features grown suddenly bright was all the answer Jonathan needed.

  “Oh, we would be so obliged Mr Burbridge, but he’s a handful I warn ye, and don’t mind to give him the strap when he gets too wild …”

  The crowd continued along the edge of Thomas Bellar’s allocation, past John Close’s fences to Lolham Bridge. They walked from stone to stone. They followed the land that has been give to Mr Bull, and to Millicent Clark, and to Ralph Wormstall. They crossed the straightened drains, that had used to be Green Dyke and Rhyme Dyke, and threw sweets into the muddy water, then followed the edge of Elizabeth Wright’s award to Snow Common.

  Mrs Elizabeth Wright, still in her mourning black, made a great show of unlocking the gates to Snow Common, her new entitlement, and welcoming the parson. She invited the farmers to settle on tussocks and take their ease.

  The rest of the village pushed in behind.

  John and Dick sat down together and sniffed the air. The smell of burning had all but disappeared.

  The cattle gathered at a distance and watched the noisy gathering with a slow, uneasy gaze.

  Soon enough the crowd heard the eager-awaited sound of iron-shod wheels and clip-clopping along the lane. John stood up and peered over the fence. He could see Farmer Joyce high on the seat of the farm cart with the reins loose and easy between his fingers. Piled behind him were baskets and hampers and barrels and jugs, and beside him was a woman. She was young and slight, her bonneted face turned away from him. She was looking across the fields towards Helpston church. John ran forwards. He vaulted the fence and sprang down into the lane. His heart was pounding like Sam Billing’s drum.

  Farmer Joyce raised a hand:

  “A good day to ye John Clare.”

  The woman turned and John saw her face, her round, ruddy good-natured face with its little piggy eyes with their pale lashes. It was Kate Dyball.

  His voice gave no indication of his sinking heart.

  “Good day.”

  He remembered Mary in her yellow gown, her lace cap, her straw hat, her ringlets, her lovely, quick eyes … and as he looked at Kate’s worn, patched cotton he wondered how he could ever have mistaken her.

  “Easy …easy Bessie, good girl!”

  Farmer Joyce reined the mare to a halt.

  John came forward and offered Kate his hand. She took it and stepped down into the lane. She smiled:

  “Thank you John.”

  Farmer Joyce swung down on the other side. He shouted over the horse:

  “I’ve brought Kate to help with the ale and vittles.”

  Parson Mossop came forward. He opened his Bible, tapped the iron-shod wheel of the cart with his cane and read the familiar words:

  “Blessed shall be t
he fruit of thy ground and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.”

  “Amen,” said the village with one voice and fell upon the food.

  John sat down on his own at the edge of the lane. He had but little appetite. Kate was wandering this way and that with two big pewter-banded wooden jugs, refilling pots and tankards. When she had emptied both she came across and sat down beside him, puffing and panting. She drew up her knees and rested her arms upon them.

  “Those jugs weigh terrible heavy. I shall have two aching shoulders come tomorrow.”

  She sighed.

  “Still it’ll be Glinton’s turn next week.”

  John turned to her:

  “How is Mary?”

  Kate looked down at the grass.

  “She puts a cheerful face upon the world, John. But she is terrible changed …and there’s not a soul can read her …I reckon only you could do that, and she won’t abide even the sound of your name.”

  “Do you know why she didn’t come, Kate?”

  “What d’you mean ‘didn’t come’?”

  “On Valentines, we’d agreed to meet, and she never came.”

  Kate Dyball stood up and stared at John.

  “Oh but she did. She did come in her yellow dress and looking as lovely as ever you please …and her father knew nothing of it.”

  “No she didn’t! I never clapped eyes on her.”

  “Did she not spring out at ye from behind a tomb-stone, for that was her fancy, to hide until the clock had struck the quarter hour and you’d begun to despair of her …and then to jump out and surprise you?”

  John got up to his feet. He looked at her as though he’d seen a ghost. He put his hands to his face.

  “Oh Kate …”

  “And since she come home that day, not a word will she speak, to me or any other, of what happened …”

  But John Clare heard no more.

  He turned and ran down Maxhams Green Lane, leaving fiddle and bow behind.

  His world had fallen away from him, and he had fallen from it. Though all around him the squared fields and hedges, dressed and decked in their spring array, sang out in linnet and lark more constant and true than any churching hymn, his ears and eyes knew only loss. Every hawthorn hedge and fence was become an angel with a blazing sword that would not allow him his Eden. He ran down Torpel Way, he clambered over gates and fences, he passed Snip Green and Round Oak Waters. He ran through Royce’s Wood, and the song in his blood, in his pounding heart and torn breath, was one of self-recriminating sorrow.

  *******

  In Joyce’s Farm Mary sat in her bed-chamber, her legs hanging over the edge of her quilted counterpane. Her eyes were closed. All her attention was on the chiming of the church clock. She sat and listened to it striking its quarters. She sat so still you could have thought her asleep. From noon through all the divisions of the hour to one o’clock she listened. She listened to the quarter after one, and then the half. When the half hour chime had faded into silence she nodded to herself and slipped down from the bed.

  “All is closed and finished now.”

  She walked across to the chest of drawers beneath the window.

  “’Tis a year to the minute, John Clare, since you struck my eye.”

  She pulled open a drawer and lifted the little package tied with string. She could feel the carved bone figures bending to her touch under the cloth, but she did not unwrap them.

  “And now your enchantment is broken.”

  She pushed open the bedroom door. She stepped quietly down the stairs and made her way out to the garden. She followed the yew hedge to the little wicker garden gate. She pushed it open and went through.

  “Here’s where you kissed me first.”

  She knelt down on the ground and tugged up a grassy turf with her hand. She dug with her fingers, but the ground was hard and stony. She ran and fetched a trowel. She dug a hole in the ground, throwing the loose soil into a heap. When it was arm deep she dropped the bundle to the bottom of it. The carved bones rattled as they fell. She scraped the earth on top of it and stamped the turf back into place with her foot.

  “There. It is finished and you are quite forgot.”

  *******

  This evening, when all were returned from the Rogation procession, Sam Billings had set his drum in its corner and was laying sticks for a fire, when there came a knocking at the door of Bachelor’s Hall.

  “Come in, come in!”

  The door opened and Jonathan Burbridge’s thin, bearded face peered into the room.

  “’Tis only me, Sam.”

  “Ah Jonathan, come in, come in. Sit yourself down.”

  Jonathan pulled a chair to the hearthstone.

  “Will ye take a mug of ale?”

  “Thank you Sam.”

  When they were both settled with mugs in hand, Jonathan said:

  “I minds when I was ‘prenticed, Sam, to a ship-builder in Lynn.”

  “You mean back in the olden days,” said Sam, “before King Charlie Wag lost his noddle.”

  Jonathan grinned.

  “Before Georgie lost his any-road …when I was little more than a boy …there was this fellow in Lynn by the name of Forby, Tom Forby, who used to carve the figure-heads for the prows. By God he was a craftsman, Sam. He’d take a piece of oak and turn it into a woman …he’d paint them too, and when they was done they’d be pegged in place at the bow of the ship …”

  Jonathan took a sup of his ale.

  “Anyway, there was this one ship …we’d worked on her for the best part of a year, she was called the Margarita, and Tom Forby fashioned a figure-head for her …”

  Jonathan whistled through his teeth.

  “You’d only to look at her, Sam, to go hard as a bone. She had a creamy-white bosom as rounded and firm as ripe apples that you longed to reach for. And her hair swept back in ringlets behind her …and her blue eyes and plump cheeks and her lips parted as if to say ‘yes, yes please’.”

  “Now, now, Jonathan, easy …”

  “It was the first time I fell in love, and I weren’t the only one.”

  Jonathan supped again.

  “Anyway, Sam, the reason I’m telling you this is that a year ago to the very day we was sitting here, and I was saying I’d a mind to take a wife, and you was acting the fool as ever, and dropped a plank into my lap.”

  “Ay, and I near enough had old Mossop reading the banns.”

  “Well it ain’t no plank I’m to wed Sam, ‘tis that very figure-head, ‘tis Margarita with the life breathed into her.”

  He emptied his mug.

  “The first time I set eyes on Betsy Jackson I knew she was familiar, and then it come to me: Margarita. My first sweetheart come to life and breathing before my very eyes.”

  Sam Billings clapped Jonathan upon the shoulder and shook him by the hand.

  “And now you’re to take her as wife! Well good luck to ye, but it don’t come as a huge surprise Jonathan!”

  “Mind, it’s taken me the best part of the year to reel her in Sam. She was awful diffident and demur to start with …but I persevered and today she said she’d have me.”

  “Today was it?”

  “Ay. I put the question at Langdyke Bush and by Swordy Well she’d said yes. And Mossop’ll start the banns next Sunday.”

  “And within the year I warrant you’ll be rocking the cradle! Well Jonathan this calls for a celebration.”

  Sam Billings went out of the room. He came back with the piece of broken shelf.

  “First of all I reckon we’d better break the news to your jilted sweet-heart.”

  He snapped the plank across his knee and threw a piece of it into the fire.

  “She was riddled with the worm Jonathan, ye made the right choice!”

  Then he pushed his chair back from the hearthstone.

  “And if you’d give me a hand just lifting this stone. Ay …push your chai
r back, and …see that dip beneath the floorboards, if you take hold of it there …and I lift here …one, two, three lift.”

  As they lifted the stone Jonathan Burbridge saw for the first time what he had often suspected.

  “Sam Billings! For the love of God!”

  There was a deep cavity where the hearthstone had been and it was filled with row upon row of dusty bottles.

  They propped the stone against the fire-place. Sam reached down and lifted a bottle. He blew away the dust.

  “The very best French brandy!”

  “Sam I didn’t know you was a …”

  “Shhhhh.”

  “You old rascal.”

  “How else d’ye think I could keep myself watered and fed …”

  He patted his belly.

  “In these troubled times.”

  “You’ve kept it close to your chest!”

  Sam put the bottle on the table.

  “And how else d’you think Mossop and Close and Bellar and Wright and Joyce and Wormstall spend their guineas and take their succour and solace. Even Robert Smethwick and the Earl of Fitzwilliam have sucked upon these paps and taken their ease …Ay, the carting’s as good a cover as any …Now, if ye’d be kind enough to help me lower the stone we could drink to a long life, a full cradle, a welcoming bed and an end to all sweet liberty …and not give o’er ‘til the bottle is hollow …Oh, and one last thing Jonathan, any word of my little secret and I’ll let it be known across the parish as Mrs Betsy Burbridge was once an acorn.”

  *******

  Parker and Ann Clare came home carrying John’s fiddle. There was no sign of him in the cottage.

  “He’ll be at the Bluebell.”

  “Ay, something’s upset him, he’ll be tempering his sorrows with ale again.” Ann sighed. “If only he’d take a trade then his spirits would be lifted …”

  “’Twill have been the sight of Joyce and little Kate Dyball …” said Parker, “poor John, I can’t get to the bottom of it …him and Mary seemed so …”

  “It’s simple enough by my reckoning,” said Ann, sharp as a blade. “It all comes down to pounds and pennies.”

  “No Ann, there’s more to it …but I’m damned if I can unriddle it.”