Eppie (6 page)

Martha scurried around for
the umpteenth time, balancing platefuls of fruit tarts for her guests. 

She had done her best to
clean the cottage: piled strings of onions in the loft above the cart shed,
stowed smelly trout beside Wakelin’s sack, and put down beer traps for the larder
beetles. She and Wakelin had collected armfuls of ox-eye daisies and purple
marsh orchids to make the cottage gay. He wondered
why she made the
effort. He longed for them to be left alone, to get back to their topsy-turvy
world; there was an order and comfortable familiarity in that.

Though he tried to stop his
mind from wandering back to the christening, it was impossible:

The sounding board above the pulpit amplified the parson’s
voice which had boomed on, interminably.

Inside his head, Wakelin screamed
with guilt. ‘She can’t be christened
Eppie
! That’s not her name!’ He was
sure the parson could sense the battle going on within him. Could see into his
mind. Know the dreadful truth. It was the near silence that brought him back to
reality. 

Parson Lowford made the sign of the cross upon the baby’s
forehead. ‘Be merciful to Euphemia, O God. In the shadow of your wings let her
find protection until the raging storm is over.’

Wakelin was confused. ‘If God’s protecting Eppie, perhaps it
ain’t so bad that I stole her?’ he thought. ‘If I tell God I’m sorry, he’ll
stop me feeling bad. Maybe I ought to tell ma what I’ve done?’ By not confiding
in her he knew his suffering would intensify as the years rolled by. Sneaking a
look at Martha, he saw her gazing adoringly at the baby. Never could he
remember seeing his mother look so content.

In the churchyard, after the christening, Betsy, Sarah, Fay
and Claire, the women who span yarn for his father, stood around, gossiping.
Wakelin listened in.

‘Lady Constance is unable to move in her bed,’ Claire said.
‘It’s unlikely she’ll do so for several months.’

‘My guess is that her ladyship has had a severe strain of
the backbone,’ Betsy said. ‘Birth is such an ordeal. I should know.’ Rudely,
Wakelin mouthed the words he knew she would utter. ‘After all, I’ve born and
raised thirteen children of my own.’

‘Even if her ladyship rises, it’s unlikely that she’ll go
without a stick,’ Sarah, Jacob’s wife, put in. 

‘At worst, she may have to spend the remainder of her days
in an invalid’s chair,’ Fay reflected.

Wakelin went away sniggering
about the clucking hens, about their words of gloom and doom. It was not long
before his dread returned. 

Now, at the christening party, the four women were seated
beside the stream upon his mother’s rough chairs, heads bent and tongues
wagging as though scheming. Wakelin glared suspiciously at them. He felt sure that
Betsy was a witch. ‘Does that meddlesome old hag, Salty, know that I stole
Genevieve?’  he wondered.

‘Your mother informs me that Euphemia was your grandmother’s
name,’ Parson Lowford said. ‘Mrs Dunham clearly favours the atavistic belief in
reincarnation.’ 

‘Yur.’ Irritated, Wakelin thought, ‘I wish ma an’t told me
to talk to the parson. I can’t understand a word he says.’ More than anything
he detested powdery chitchat. He would rather be tearing around the woods,
shooting pigeons. Enviously, he eyed Molly Leiff climbing an elm tree. Other
children squealed as they hopped precariously along the pigsty wall. 

‘It was a wonderful service, parson, although Eppie’s still
crying,’ Martha said, breezing past. ‘Would you care for another slice of pound
cake?’

The parson reached for the biggest slice. ‘I am used to the
ululations of the young, Mrs Dunham.’

Unsure of his meaning, her smile wobbled and she headed into
the orchard.

Her geese, their beaks held high, chests swelling, waddled
regally from beneath the apple trees where they had been grazing in search of
grubs. Wakelin watched them march in single file to the stream. Some daintily
scooped up the cooling waters, whilst others dipped their heads or flapped their
wings. 

The parson was determined to squeeze more than the word
‘yur’ out of Wakelin, if a word, indeed, it was. ‘Your father tells me that you
have been ailing.’

Wakelin glared at Gillow and Henry guzzling from cider
flagons. He could tell by the way his father talked in a loud, jolly voice that
he was proud of Eppie.

No matter how much Wakelin fought against it, the parson
had, for him, a mystical aura, an unnerving authority that made him yearn to
reveal his secret. ‘I must tell him,’ he thought. ‘Get it over with.’ Unaware
of the parson’s gaze fixed upon him, he thrust a thumb stump into his mouth and
gnawed. ‘I’ll do it. Tell him I’m sorry. But I ain’t. I did it for ma. That must
be right by God? To make someone you love happy?’ 

Molly splashed in the stream, swirling waters sloshing
around her bare legs.  Dragging his gaze away from her, Wakelin spat onto the
grass, missed, and hit the parson’s shiny, buckled shoes. ‘What you said,’ he
asked, oblivious to the parson’s raised eyebrows. ‘About God wanting to scrub
sins away, do that apply to everyone?’

‘That is correct.’ The parson polished his shoe with his
handkerchief. ‘Christians believe that people, from the moment that they are
born, are affected by the transgressions in the world. It is the accumulated
sins of past generations - fear, hate, greed, envy and pride - that grind
people down and make it hard for them to be good.’

Wakelin was unable to look the parson directly in the eye. ‘What
if someone does summat
really
wicked, ownee they can’t think of no way
o’ changing things back to what they was?’

The parson looked
circumspectly at the back of Wakelin’s head. ‘I would rather think that depends
on what
he
has done wrong. However, if that particular someone comes to
his senses then God will show mercy and let him start again.’

‘Start again?’ Startled, Wakelin
gazed into the parson’s watery eyes. ‘Mr Lowford, parson, sir, there’s … ’  He
took a deep breath. ‘Summat I’ve gorra tell ya.’

‘Wakelin hold your sister;
see if you can peace the child.’ Martha thrust the baby into his arms. ‘I
forgot to give the children them crystallized violets. They’re mushing in the
heat.’

It was the first time that Wakelin
had held the baby, really held her. She gurgled and wafted her fists. At him!

‘Yes. What is it that you
wish to say to me?’ the parson asked, intrigued.

Wakelin rocked the baby.
‘Huh? Oh, nowt o’ nowt.’ He sobbed quietly at first, then so strongly that he
felt he was being torn apart.

Unbeknown to Martha, Eppie had
skipped off again, this time to fish from the river embankment before The Fat
Duck, a favourite place with many of the village children.

Concentrating on roach darting for breadcrumbs, she forgot
Martha’s warning that the stony bank was a treacherous place to play.

Scrambling to her feet, eager to discover the source of a rumbling
noise that came from further along the lane, she slipped. Her arm plunged into
the icy water up to her shoulder. Surging beneath the swift flowing river swept
a ghostly figure, its eyes fixed upon her. Seeing it reach out to grasp her
fingers, Eppie screamed and scrambled to her feet.

Martha rushed down the embankment. ‘If you’ve bumped your
head, you’ve only got yourself to blame; you’re forever throwing off your
pudding cap.’ With her apron, she wiped speckles of blood and smudges of dirt
from Eppie’s grazed chin. ‘Besides, I told you not to come here.’

‘Wakelin does!’

‘He’s old enough to look after himself.’

Eppie stared forlornly into the churning waters. ‘My net’s
drownding!’

Martha pointed in the direction where Miller’s Stream gushed
in a torrent down a ravine. ‘Up there the water’s swirly and will drag you
down. Promise me you’ll never play there.’

‘Why does the water want to hurt me?’

‘It doesn’t, but it would if you fell in. That’s where Talia
du Quesne drowned. I’m not trying to scare you, only make you understand why I
don’t want you coming here alone. Wait ‘til Sunday, when Wakelin’s back from
cropping. He’ll keep an eye on you.’

Wakelin had gone to work as an apprentice lad at a cloth-finishing
shop in Litcombe.

Martha cocked her head. ‘What’s that rumbling noise?’

‘The hills is falling down!’

‘It sounds like wheels.’

Relieved, Eppie put on a brave face. ‘It’s clattery.’

Martha took Eppie into her arms and made her way up the
embankment. Reaching the stocks set before The Fat Duck, Eppie wriggled to be
set down. A strange machine came into view, and she raced towards the advancing
horses.

‘Don’t get too close, young ‘un,’ the man leading the team
warned. ‘Them wheelers is blind and you being no bigger than a horse bot fly
you’ll like as not get stood on by one of them front ‘uns.’

Eppie and Martha joined villagers, following the progression
of the draught horses.

So many cottagers gathered before Miller’s Bridge that the
machine rolled to a halt.  

Jacob abandoned his potato patch. ‘Thar’s a fancy thing, no
mistake.’

Claire wove through the throng to Martha’s side. ‘It’s the new
seed drill. Squire Bulwar recently bought one. Henry says Lord du Quesne doesn’t
want to be outdone.’

Eppie clapped, excited by the festive mood of the crowd.
‘It’s a grasshopper on yellow wheels!’  

Gillow strode up, equally fascinated.

Squealing with delight, children swarmed over the drill. 

Eppie spied ten runnels, each made up of five interlocking metal
tubes. ‘Mammy, look at these pointy hats stuck together.’

Wilbert Hix, who was two years older than Eppie, scrambled
onto the drill. ‘Don’t ya know o’t?  ‘em’s funnels, where the seeds fall.’ 

Eppie was embarrassed about her lack of knowledge. Spotting
a row of what looked like silvery spoons she was dying to know what they were used
for, but kept quiet, afraid of further rebuke.

‘It’ll save a bit of labour,’ Jacob said. ‘Less seeds lost mean
more crops. More crops mean more money for the workers.’ 

‘Our Edmund and Tobias will be better off,’ Sarah added
glowingly, thinking about her sons.

‘Not necessarily,’ Gillow answered. ‘It’s cheaper and more
efficient to use machines than men’s labour. There’s talk that Squire Bulwar’s
keeping his workers on low wages now he’s using his drill.’

‘Of recent there’ve been too many changes,’ Jacob said. ‘First
it was the land enclosures. Then his lordship ploughed up Fleecy Meadow to grow
more corn. Now he wants to rip up our common.’

‘His lordship don’t give a thought to where we’ll keep our
cattle and horses,’ said Winwood, a farm labourer.

In her arms, Fay held her daughter, Sukey, who was about
Eppie’s age. ‘The workers can fight back. That’s what Bill said. The farm labourers
must demand higher wages.’

‘Bill knows as well as any
other labourer that it’s a capital felony for workers to join forces in
pressing their employers for increased wages,’ said Gillow. He counted himself
lucky. At least he could choose his working hours, not like weavers in Malstowe
who toiled in cramped, noisy sheds, never breathing fresh country air.

For the first weeks of March the rain fell steadily. 

Fixing a reed into the loom, Gillow glanced out of the
window and watched Jem Hedges, the ploughman, tramp along the muddy lane. ‘It’s
hinderable weather. The labourers won’t have had much use for that seed drill
yet.’    

Kneeling at the hearth, Martha inverted the three-legged
cauldron over the potatoes to be baked and piled hot embers around the outside.

Perched on the stool, Eppie diligently turned the handle of
the butter firkin, longing for the cream to reach the desired consistency so
that she could give her arm a rest.

‘How’s it going?’ Martha asked. 

‘I want to game in the lane.’

‘It’s too wet,’ Martha replied, not for the first time. She
cast Eppie a tired smile.  ‘Come away. I’ll finish.’

Eppie picked up her doll and hugged it. 

Making a shed in the warp, Gillow worked wefts into a twill
weave. ‘Is that the poppet Alicia Strutt gave you?  What’s it called?’

‘Elizabeth. That was Betsy’s name before she was born an old
lady.’

‘I never knew that!’

Eppie gazed adoringly at the doll’s green eyes, painted onto
the wax-drip head. Its face was the colour of whisked egg white and it had
extremely red cheeks. Hoops were out of fashion, so the dressmaker had given the
doll to Eppie. Eppie loved its beige skirt, shaped like a parasol mushroom. It
had an under gown, a stomacher, and a blue ribbon choker tied in a bow around
its neck. ‘When I grow up I’m going to be rich and wear a dress like this.’

‘Finery ain’t for the likes of working girls,’ Gillow said.

In Litcombe, whilst Martha sold garden produce at her market
pitch beside the butter mart, Eppie had watched a fine lady quit a carriage. ‘I
saw a lady with a wig like Elizabeth’s. Mister Lord’s wig is funny; it’s full
of caterpillars. Does they make his head sweaty?’

‘I should think so, though I imagine that, in the summer,
Lord du Quesne prefers his head to be shaved to keep himself cool. Folk don’t like
paying the guinea tax on wigs. Men who use hair-powder are called guinea pigs.’

Eppie ran her fingers through
Gillow’s wavy, fair locks. ‘I’m glad you wear real hair.’

By next morning, the rain had abated enough for Eppie to
skim over the stream on her swing.

Martha traipsed to the sty with a bucket.  

‘I wanna do it!’ Eppie cried.

‘There’s a half bucket of barley meal in the wring-shed. You
can pour that in with this hotchpotch. Tobias Leiff brought me a bream. I’ll go
and make a pie with it. After market tomorrow we’ll take it to Wakelin. Come
and give me a hand when you’re through.’