by Jean Stubbs
‘When they’re harvested, eh?’ he said, nodding his head wisely. ‘We may as well hitch up them horses and start ploughing!’
Penitently she kissed his cheek and cuddled his arm.
‘Aye, you’re sweet as sugar-cane when you’ve got your own road,’ he said, knowing her. ‘Right you are, Dorcas. I’ll get the two lads to clear the stones, and we’ll try Sluther first. It’s none so steep as Breakneck, and we can get the feel of it with our Will’s plough. But it’ll be new-broke ground, and that means three or four furrowings. Then again, it’s been natural grass for as long as I’ve known it, so you won’t be able to use it for owt fancy — like wheat!’ he added, watching her closely. ‘You can make your mind up to ‘taters, else turnips, to clean it up. And go easy on it for a year or two while it settles.’
‘Such good rich soil,’ said Dorcas, passing over the mention of wheat, for she could argue that point later. ‘And so sheltered. Yet the sun comes upon it early and stays late. I have often noticed.’
‘Aye, I’ll bet you have, my lass. I’m none so daft as I look!’
*
The following Sunday William brought his family over, to dine early on roast sirloin of beef and baked rice pudding; while Caleb dined late with Charlotte on fried soles, a brace of partridges, and damson pie.
These visits were an especial joy to Dorcas, for William always brought the latest news and fresh ideas, Zelah confided small domestic problems and asked her advice, and the little girls delighted the entire household.
‘How’s my two pennorth o’ copper then?’ cried Ned, as Tabitha ran to him, and Catherine staggered four paces and suddenly foundered. ‘Come on up!’ Lifting them both tenderly. ‘They musn’t have any more babies at your house, I’ve nobbut got two arms to hold them! What shall us see first? Chickens or horses? Shall us see the new shire-horses? Punch and Judy, your Aunt Lottie calls them. She’s allus got a fancy name for everything has your Aunt Charlotte! Aye, we’ll take Punch and Judy a carrot apiece, and a morsel of sugar from the loaf. Oh, by the way, Will, I’m trying out that new-fangled plough-share of yours on untilled ground, one day next week. Your mother’s having them limestone fields off me, for cropping!’
‘We knew she would, in the end,’ William commented, unsurprised. ‘Let me know how it handles, Father, and in particular how the edge wears. We are trying out a new process at Belbrook, chilling the bottom face of the share in a metal mould so that it sets harder and lasts longer.’
‘I’ll tell thee what I think to it, lad. And to the shire-horses, and all. Billy’s had them so far.’
‘Now there you have the finest draught-horses in the country, Father. Take my word for it.’
‘I’ve got nowt against your word,’ Ned replied, grinning, ‘but I’d sooner give you mine. I’ve allus ploughed with oxen. They’re easier to train and cheaper to feed, and they can shift heavier loads. But your mother says as I’m not to stand in the way of progress. So I’ll give them shires a try. They’re good horses, I’ll say that for them.’
‘Will thee not look at the plans for the garden, Father?’ Zelah asked, as William began to unroll the sheets which nowadays accompanied him almost everywhere. ‘Mr Field hath found us a fine landscape gardener.’
‘Show them to Dorcas,’ he said, hoisting the little girls to his shoulders, ‘while I keep these two out of mischief. Dorcas knows better than me. She’ll tell me all about it when you’ve gone.’ For he was not really interested. ‘Now then, Tibby and Kitty, hold tight like I showed thee and we’ll have a gallop to t’stables. That’s capital! Now say “Hup! Dobbin!” and off we go. And if I’m galloping too fast for you, you say “Whoa!” Right? Hup, Dobbin! Off we go!’
And off they went, little hands clutching his neck, silver heads bobbing to his motion, silent and smiling in delight.
‘Oh, how elegant!’ cried Dorcas, putting on her steel-rimmed spectacles.
She became a girl again in her enthusiasm. William watched her, smiling. For she echoed his moods more clearly than Zelah did, and many were the small harmless plots they hatched together.
‘All the trees are to be felled from here to here,’ he explained, ‘just leaving a screen of them to shelter us against the prevailing winds, and to offset the house. We have had many difficulties, owing to the slope of the land. Some can be levelled, but if one builds a house upon a hill — then a hill one has to contend with! In this instance Mr Stirling has shown great ingenuity, setting aside the conventional plan and creating something far less formal, and yet in keeping with the house and precincts … ’
She noticed, as he pointed out detail, that his hands and nails were now well-kept. They no longer marked the craftsman, they were a part of the administrator. She was at once pleased and saddened by this discovery. He was moving so quickly out of their knowledge of him.
‘ … lawns, paths and shrubs — thus contrasting with the rougher, nobler aspect of the woods behind … ’
‘But what is this delightful nonsense in the corner? And why these empty circles?’
‘That nonsense, Mamma, is an ornamental summer-house. Those circles will house statuary, but we have not yet decided what. I am for iron, but Zelah wants stone.’
‘It will be even grander than Somer Court,’ said Zelah, laughing, and was half-afraid of such splendour.
Dorcas whipped off her spectacles in her excitement, and scanned the garden closer by holding them like a magnifying glass over the paper. Then she smiled up at her handsome son.
‘Oh, I could not be happier for you — for you both!’ she cried. ‘It is exactly what I should have wished. Only I could not have imagined anything half so fine. Oh, how I wish poor Phoebe could have lived to see it. Her godson building such a house! And poor Agnes, always so proud of you … ’
‘And my great-aunt Wilde, and Aaron Helm, and Mr Jarrett!’ said William, teasing her away from melancholy.
Dorcas laughed, and wiped her eyes, and called herself a fool.
‘And what does dear Zelah think to all this?’ she asked, mindful of her quiet daughter-in-law.
‘Why, what should dear Zelah think?’ William answered, embracing his wife, speaking for her as usual. ‘She will come home again in Kingswood Hall, though something grander as she says. She was born at sunrise, and the sun shone on her face and hair, so I am told. The sun shines upon Zelah, and for her, and always will.’
‘You look a little pale, nevertheless, my dear child,’ said Dorcas, observing a pensiveness in her countenance.
‘We cannot be certain,’ said Zelah, smiling, ‘but we hope to be five in the spring. God willing.’
‘Oh, you always bring such splendid news to us!’ cried Dorcas, ringing the bell. ‘You must rest upon the sofa until dinner, Zelah. Susan, a glass of cordial for Mrs Howarth, if you please. William, fetch a cushion for Zelah. And Susan, how long shall we be until dinner?’
‘Now do not fuss, Mrs Dorcas!’ said Zelah, laughing, mocking.
‘Oh, let her fuss,’ said William lovingly, ‘since she enjoys it so much.’
Master, mistress, guests and servants, all stood round the long table in the front parlour, and bowed their heads as Ned spoke his own form of Grace.
‘Lord, we thank thee for this good meat and drink. Help us to remember them as has none. Bless our food this day, and us in thy service. For Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.’
‘Amen,’ they cried reverently.
Then there was a great scraping of chairs and stools as they sat down. Ned sharpened the carving-knife until it became a formidable weapon. A vast sirloin of beef was put before him. Two small maids, fresh from Garth village, and overcome by their new gowns and aprons, stood by to hand the vegetables.
‘About that plough of yours, Will,’ Ned began, slicing with the expertise born of long practice. ‘Billy tells me it handles on the heavy side. I’ve a mind to thong a leather strap to t’handles and run it over one shoulder, to give it a bit of leverage. What do you think to that?’
/> ‘But Billy will plough Sluther, surely, Ned,’ Dorcas interposed.
‘Dorcas! Let me be, my lass.’
‘The plough is larger and heavier than the one you have been used to, certainly,’ said William, considering the matter, ‘and should be kept stable on such an incline as Sluther. But a strap over one shoulder may tend to unbalance it upon the turns, I should have thought.’
‘Well, round my back, then,’ said Ned, somewhat testily. ‘To take the weight a bit.’
‘A third horse?’ William enquired, smiling.
‘But why not let Billy do it, my dear?’ asked Dorcas earnestly.
He was exasperated with the pair of them.
‘Because I want to do it myself; my lass. And I’m better by a long road wi’ horses — even three of them!’ Glaring at his son. ‘Billy’s used to ploughing wi’ oxen. I don’t fancy him using them shire-horses on Sluther. They’ll take a bit of coaxing and handling — and so will that plough!’
‘Well, Father,’ said Dick, who spoke as little as Ned and always to the purpose, ‘you tell me I’m as good wi’ horses as you are. And I can plough as well. And I’m younger than thee. Let me have a go at Sluther.’
Ned said, ‘No!’ and struck the table with the handle of the carving-knife.
Dorcas and William and Dick looked meaningfully at one another. Something underlay Ned’s determination: a refusal to admit encroaching age, curiosity about this new ploughing system, a quixotic gesture to please his wife with a gift of his own making, perhaps even the need to stress that the land was his and he must be the first to cultivate it.
‘Any road,’ said Ned obstinately, ‘I’m ploughing Sluther!’
‘So am I!’ cried three-year-old Tibby, and banged her spoon in sympathy.
‘So my!’ Bitty echoed.
And in an effort to outshine the others she turned her dinner-plate upside down upon her head.
The argument was lost in laughter.
*
On that November early morning, Garth was a dream floating through the valley below, its chimney-tops barely clearing the mist. But up on the fells the air sparkled in the rising sun, and rills of water ran cold and sweet between red banks of bracken. Underfoot, the harsh grass was crisp. A man might lose all earthly cares in that space between moor and sky: hearing nothing but the call of a peewit, the bark of a dog on a lone farm, or the wind worrying the hollows. A man might lift his eyes unto the hills and be thankful for such a day as this: to the autumnal hills, sitting in judgement like old gods.
Such a man was moving slowly against the landscape behind his heavy plough, acting out an ancient rite, becoming part of this time and this place. Ahead of him the big brown horses, seventeen hands high, plodded a deliberate course, led by a little lad whose father and grandfather had trodden the same patient path. In their wake the earth had been turned by the chilled blade into a sea of furrows.
The man had removed his battered hat, stained by age and weather, to allow a slight breeze to ruffle his white hair. He was working out of habit, out of love. This was his land they tilled, and would be offered up to his wife to be made fruitful. The labour was hard. To take the weight of the iron machine he had wound a strong strap about his wrists and shoulders, thus harnessing himself to the wooden shafts. Man, boy and beasts toiled from side to side of the steep field, and on each turn the man lifted the dark metal coulter from the earth, suspending it at the curve until it drove into the land again, to draw another clean deep fold. From the farm below, the ribboned field could be seen emerging. order brought from green anarchy.
He had left his woman abed, as he always did at that hour, seeing in the first light her hair upon the pillow, her linen corset on the chair. For nearly forty years it had been so. He could not remember the years before her, except in the context of a long reverie. His humility, and his capacity for love, had brought him this richness in marriage. He reaped what he had sown. Another man could have used her virtues without regarding them, or made much of her faults. Because, to him, her faults were peculiar virtues, and her virtues faultless, he had possessed her wholly. And since, each day, love must be earned, on this November morning he ploughed Sluther for her.
‘We’ll take another turn,’ he shouted to the little lad, ‘and then stop for a sup of ale.’
‘Right you are, Mr Howarth,’ said young Amos Bowker, and confided in the towering horses.
‘A good pull and a long ‘un,’ he said, ‘and you can rest you for a bit.’
Slowly they wheeled in a half-arc, fetching the plough with them. And the man took the weight, eyes like cracks in his weathered face, lips damped, heart straining at the load. The massive coulter swung clear, the ponderous plough hung suspended on the curve, the mighty horses pulled, and an imbalance threatened both man and machine. Unknowing, the boy urged the beasts on. The finest draught-horses in the country, William had said, and he was right. Against both plough and ploughman they set their great shoulders, their powerful haunches and monumental limbs.
‘Steady!’ Ned shouted urgently, harnessed as he was, a puppet in the midst of this impedimenta.
But in the moment that his set teeth chopped at the word he knew that he was lost. That the freed word would float unheeded. That the boy would drive mindlessly on, that the driven steeds would respond, the machine heel over, the strap bind tighter, the whole mass tumble and roll down the steep fell flank.
On me! he knew. But his sense of urgency was done. For after all he must die. The surprise was immense. The event, small and familiar, seen from a great distance, permitted him both to observe and take part. Perhaps he had been through it before.
‘You daft buggers!’ he shouted, into oblivion, spinning.
The earth in his stopped mouth, the crushed amazement, neck snapped like a twig. No pain. Too quick for pain, or so much pain that the mind rejected it. Falling, slowly, gracefully. Falling away. Fallen. Over. Done. With his cheek at last cold against the cold soil. On this fine November morning, in the year of our Lord 1799.
The lad stood silent, hands over his mouth, tears trickling down his cheeks: aware that though the horses could be fetched round and calmed, the plough righted, the man brought out, he was alone in the landscape. Alone, he crept back to look. Alone, he brushed the dirt from that astonished face, felt for the still heart, cried the name into deaf ears. Then ran, shrilly calling, down the hillside.
The great shire-horses ceased to snort and plunge. Their size soothed them. They stood quietly, heads bent. Then, dragging plough and ploughman stealthily behind them, they found a patch of untilled earth, and grazed thoughtfully, waiting for someone to come to them.
Taking Leave
Nineteen
Susan had lit the parlour fire and helped her mistress to dress. Nellie had made her breakfast, and closed the parlour door firmly upon her. The death was an hour old.
Dorcas knew that they wanted her to stay here while they made arrangements; and though she could not swallow she poured the tea, and sat obediently before the toast. She had been rendered powerless, but so long and so well had she ordered her household that it could move on without her for a time. The day was clouding over, the mist rose from the valley and covered the hill slopes, she could scarcely see the wall of the kitchen garden from her grey window.
Sounds were translated into sights which would have distressed her to watch, but provided needful information. A clattering of hooves out of the cobbled yard meant that the stable-lad was off to Garth, Snape, Belbrook and Millbridge with his dark news. The hammering and-sawing of hurried carpentry told her they were nailing a rough stretcher together, to carry the body down from Sluther. The front door, not opened since William’s wedding four years since, was being tried stealthily and its hinges oiled with goose-grease. The wedding recalled Zelah to mind, and Dorcas started up hurriedly to ring the bell.
‘Nellie! They must break the news carefully to my daughter-in-law. She is with child, you know.’
‘Don’t
you fret, ma’am. Mr William’ll see to everything. Sit you down and drink your tea, ma’am, do.’
The door dosed. She sat before the tray again. The tea had gone cold.
*
The stable-lad reined in at the wheelwright’s shop in Garth, and leaned from his saddle.
‘Mr Burscough!’ he called into the dim shop. ‘Mr Burscough, they’ll be wanting you up at Kit’s Hill. It’s Mr Howarth. He’s dead.’
Joe Burscough paused in the act of planing wood, blew the soft feathers from his tool, and set it on end.
‘Nay, never,’ he said in disbelief. ‘Ned Howarth? However did that happen?’
‘He broke his neck, Mr Burscough. Ploughing Sluther. Broke his neck.’
The lad’s mouth trembled. He dug his heels into the bay mare.
‘I’ve got to go, Mr Burscough. There’s a mort of messages to take.’
And he was off to the vicarage.
‘Did you hear that, Jem?’ said Joe Burscough. ‘Ned Howarth’s dead. Would you believe it? Here, take over, wilts? I’ll walk up. Oh, and look out that seasoned oak at the back of the shop, wilts? They’ll want the best for him.’
Margery Cheetham, who dealt with the beginning and the end of life in the village, wrapped herself in her old shawl and knocked at her neighbour’s door.
‘Nast heard t’news? Ned Howarth’s dead! Aye, I’m off to lay him out. If anybody wants me tell them I’ll be back after dinner.’
The sexton, Zachary Sidebottom, spat on his hands and grasped the bell-rope. The traditional nine tellers, for the death of a man, were followed by four-and-seventy solemn tolls for the years of his age. ‘It’s a good age!’ thought Zachary. The parson donned a clean collar, that he might comfort the widow in a seemly fashion. The grave-digger shouldered his spade. Garth was abuzz with the news that would travel from end to end of the valley: interrupting such homely actions as the lifting of a pint-pot, the milking of a cow, the baking of bread.
