Instead I went to Mam and from time to time pestered her with questions. Who was my father? How had she met him? Why had he not married her and lived with us like other fathers? Was he still living or was he looking down on us from Heaven?
In those early years Mam was not direct with me and would often say one thing and then another. My father had been a soldier but was killed fighting the Spanish, who were threatening the Queen’s realm. How I liked the sound of that phrase,
the Queen’s realm!
I had no idea where Mam found it, most likely from a storybook, for it didn’t sound in the least like her. Then some weeks later, I would ask again and she would have forgotten her story about the soldier and launch a tale in which my father was a seaman who had sailed with Drake against the Armada in the very year I was born, and had died later in a shipwreck off the Canaries. Making up such stories was of a piece with Mam’s oddness. As I would learn in time, she was seen by others not only as an unwed mother who sewed in her brother’s shop, but also as a woman who kept to herself. Mam believed in all manner of fanciful things: imps and fairies, changelings and hobgoblins. As a child I would watch her tap a forefinger three times against the side of her nose at the sight of a pied-coloured horse, or upon hearing the first clap of thunder from an oncoming storm. Not that unusual among country people, you might think, but with Mam it was like a religion, a way of seeing into the world. At the same time she was a believing Christian. But she could not resist the enchantment she found in the natural world. Walking in the woods and meadows on the edge of the village she talked sometimes to birds and hedgehogs, voles and coneys; she
sought the whereabouts of the little people near the roots of oak trees or under toadstools. In all its phases, the moon was both everlasting mystery and companion.
When I was very young and walked along beside her, I myself thought these things quite wondrous and asked endless questions about the pixies and fairy folk. But as I grew older I began to see it all as nonsense. Yet Mam persisted in believing in the efficacy of spells and magic, and she was conversant about trees and flowers. It is little wonder that she loved
A Midsummer-Night’s Dream
and had me read it to her six times during the final year of her life. She told me that the sixth reading was a good omen, six being the double of three, which itself, she said, is a number possessed of magical properties. I was twelve years old then and, as she said, twelve is the double of six, another good sign that she might recover. But nothing, neither simples nor signs, could change her wasting away that awful year.
I have an image of my mother which I will carry to my own deathbed. I could not have been four years old and she had taken me with her to visit Goody Figgs, an old woman who lived in a hut in the woods near the river where she drew water each day for her potions. I was frightened of her and on my only visit stood at the doorway of her dark little home, peering in at the plants and herbs hanging from the rafters, the small fire in the grate, the hides of animals drying on benches. I would go no farther and Mam could
not persuade me otherwise. Many accounted Goody Figgs a witch, though others found her useful, especially unmarried women whose courses had run dry. Years later, Goody’s hut was burned to the ground by young men drunk on May Day ale and bravado. I have always believed they were inflamed by the sermons of Obadiah Littlejohn, the rector of St. Cuthbert’s at the time. Fortunately, the old woman was not at home. She vanished into the woods, never to be seen in the neighbourhood again. Some said later she was living in the Royal Park at Woodstock, but I always doubted the story, as I never believed the gamekeepers would allow it. But Mam was fascinated by Goody Figgs, and on the day I went with her, I played alone and watched them together on the edge of a wood gathering simples, a pretty woman and an old hag. I remember my mother rising from the grass now and then to stretch her back, and holding her hand to shield her eyes against the sunlight as she looked for me. Then she would wave and I would wave back. A warm-hearted creature, Mam, but innocent in the ways of the world and far too trusting.
She called me Aerlene, a name no one in the village, including my aunt and uncle, had ever heard. Mam told me she got the name from an old book of Anglo-Saxon tales which she had read as a child. Aerlene means
elf-like
and she called me so because at birth I was early and small with a large head covered with black hair. “You reminded me of
a little elf as soon as I saw you,” she said. Apparently my birth had been more than the usual ordeal for new mothers. “What a time I had bringing you into this world,” Mam used to say. And more than once, especially when she was vexed with me, “That head of yours nearly tore me apart. I could have perished from the pain.” As if it were my fault!
She told this story so many times that I grew weary of it and said to her once—I might have been six at the time—“I don’t know why you bother to put
little
in front of
elf.
Are not all elves little by their very nature?”
“Oh,” she said, “haven’t we become a smarty boots?”
“And what if I have?” I said. “Have you not made me so with words and reading?”
She laughed at that, for she was never angry long. Mam herself seldom read anything; she merely encouraged it in me because she thought I was plain and unlikely to find a mate. When she first taught me my letters, she was quick to tell me why. “You will never be a beauty, little elf,” she said, “and so you must learn, and reading books will help you.” What a thing to say to a child! And I thought as much even then. Like many handsome people, Mam lacked discernment regarding the feelings of those less favoured by nature in appearance. And, of course, she had long forgotten my little lesson in redundancy.
But it is true that my head is large and my brow imposing, which some claim betokens intelligence. When I was in
my fifteenth year and first laid eyes upon my father on Silver Street in London, I took note at once of the brow I had inherited, though in fairness I must say that it suited a grown man’s countenance better than a young girl’s. As a child I was often mocked. Not only for being a bastard, but also for my appearance. But I soon learned to give as good as I received. When other children out of spite hurled stones at me, I sprayed them with words I found in little books Aunt Sarah bought from peddlers with titles such as
News Out of Heaven, A Potation for Lent, The Sick Man’s Salve.
Words were my weapons and they sometimes discouraged jeering. Children called me Little Miss Big Tongue. So childhood—those years the elderly mistakenly recall most fondly—seemed to me only a time to pass through as quickly as possible.
At the beginning of my twelfth year, Mam promised to unfold the truth about my father but said I must wait for my birthday, for by then I would be old enough to understand. An entire year! I thought. How cruel. And I think I must have sulked a good deal in the ensuing months. I had always been an inward-looking child interested only in words on a page, though by then I was tired of reading accounts of Protestants roasted to death by Queen Mary’s Papists, or tracts promoting wholesome habits that would ensure an afterlife. So my sulking and ill humour that year often led to encounters with Aunt Sarah, who had always despaired of my salvation. And these led to thrashings, mostly when Mam was away at my
uncle’s shop. I never mentioned them to her and I took particular pride in enduring those leather-strap beatings without tears. I was a hard little nut to crack and no mistake.
At the same time, I was worried about my mother, and that may have contributed to my surliness. There was something wrong with her that summer. It was not easily discernible; you had to look for it, and I was looking for it, observing with the passing weeks a thinning out of colour in her face, a sharpening of her features. One morning on her way to work she suddenly fell to the ground in a faint there on the flagstone pathway from the front door. I saw the collapse, her head narrowly missing a stone when she fell. Uncle Jack carried her indoors and upstairs to bed. She soon recovered and made a fuss about not wanting a doctor, laughing away her clumsiness. That evening, I overheard my aunt telling Uncle Jack that his sister’s problems were merely vaporous; she had reached that time when the parts are undergoing change in accordance with God’s design for women in this life. Perhaps so, I thought, for Mam at the time was about forty years in age.
Then, a fortnight before my twelfth birthday, a Saturday in July, Mam returned with Uncle Jack from Oxford. It was my uncle’s habit to visit Oxford market every other Saturday to inspect the linen goods on display and enjoy the gossip of his trade with fellow vendors. He always took Mam along; he saw it, I suppose, as an outing for his sister.
While my uncle had a pint of ale with friends in the Hounds and Hare, Mam was free to roam about, perhaps attending to an errand for my aunt or looking for a trinket for me. On her return that Saturday, however, her gaunt face was flushed; she seemed agitated, but pleasantly so, and eagerly drawing me aside, she whispered that we should go to the stone bench in the garden, where we talked often together safely out of Aunt Sarah’s hearing.
There she told me about wandering in Oxford market and happening upon the bookstalls—and what did I think she saw there? I told her perhaps a storybook that might please me, but she only smiled and took my hands and briefly held them.
“Your twelfth birthday is only a fortnight off,” she said, “so there is no good reason now to wait, for truly I cannot keep this to myself another minute.” And with that she withdrew from beneath her apron a copy of
A Midsummer-Night’s Dream
by William Shakespeare. I read those very words on the title page.
“A storybook, then?” I asked. “Or poems?”
“A playbook,” said Mam, “already enacted in a London playhouse. The bookseller told me it’s only lately printed. And this play was written by your father, Aerlene.”
I believe that at the time I was as puzzled as I was pleased. “But how would you come to know a man who writes plays?” I asked.
“He was only young when I knew him,” Mam said. “An apprentice player living in London. In a place called Shoreditch. A country person like myself. He always said he wanted to write poetry. I will tell you how we came to meet in good time. But look now, I have another by him.” And she showed me a copy of
Romeo and Juliet.
“But his name is not on this,” I said. “How do you know he wrote it?”
“The bookseller told me,” she said. “A kind man and a great reader of poetry by the sound of him. He told me this
Romeo and Juliet
is a good tale, if a sad one, with fine verses in it. Mr. Shakespeare, he said, has written many plays. The bookseller hasn’t seen them performed on the stage, but he has read them and he said I would enjoy this
Romeo and Juliet
as well as
A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,
because Mr. Shakespeare is now accounted the finest playwright in London. His plays, he believed, have even been performed before the Queen. I got both plays for ten pence, for the
Romeo and Juliet
has been used, but
A Midsummer-Night’s Dream
is new. I scanned it at the bookstall. It takes place in a forest with fairy folk and lovers and fine descriptions of flowers. We used to talk about the countryside, your father and I. He was homesick for it then, poor fellow. And now a gentleman and poet. I am so happy for him.”
“Calm yourself, Mam,” I said. “Your face is on fire.”
“Well, what of that?” she said, squeezing my hand.
“This is your father’s work, Aerlene. Your father was no idle porter. No, nor ploughman neither, though many hereabouts believe so.” And drawing nearer she said, “But listen to me, child. These books must be our secret. If your aunt finds out there’ll be the devil to pay, for she accounts such books wicked and she will not have them in her house. In London, I recall your father saying how the Puritans were always trying to close down the playhouses. Will—your father—used to make sport of their long faces and sombre dress.”
My father, a poet and a gentleman? Was that not worth waiting for all those years? I wanted to know more about him, but Mam said, “I’m tired, Aerlene. All that traipsing about this morning and now this news. I should lie down for a bit. We’ll read these plays, you and I. I like the sound of
A Midsummer-Night’s Dream
and you can read the other. And then we’ll exchange. I know you’ll read yours half again as fast as I will mine, so be patient with me. And keep your copy well hidden from your aunt. You must promise me.”
And so I have done until now, some eight and fifty years.
A
T LAST WE HAVE
begun. On Saturday afternoon Charlotte returned from Oxford and yesterday following church she told me that she was ready to begin today. And so she has, sitting at the escritoire this morning dipping quill into inkhorn and transcribing my words, as alert and attentive as I could hope for. Since returning from Oxford, Charlotte has been exceedingly good-humoured, and I think I know the cause of her cheer.
After we finished this morning, she told me she had met the new rector of St. Cuthbert’s, Mr. Thwaites, at a gathering in Oxford which she attended with her friend, who seems to have a wide circle of acquaintanceship there. I would let Charlotte go no further without an inquiry about her poor friend’s broken engagement, but she only smiled brightly. “Oh, that’s quite mended now, Linny.”
I told her I was relieved to hear it, but she was too eager
to talk about Mr. Thwaites to notice my admittedly regrettable snideness.
“We had a most pleasant conversation, Mr. Thwaites and I,” she said. “He is no Puritan, Linny, but a fine-tempered man and well educated too. His college was St. John’s. We spoke together a full hour. He said at one point that he had noticed me at his first service at St. Cuthbert’s.” And with that she blushed, which I thought becoming.
“You should come to service to hear him, Linny. His homilies are moderate and well argued. He is no Littlejohn.” So at least she remembered Obadiah Littlejohn, who had delivered his stormy admonitions across the pulpit of St. Cuthbert’s for fifty years—a hate-filled gospeller who called Mam a fornicator and would not deliver her funeral rites in the church. I was in my thirteenth year, and though I would continue to attend church for some years thereafter, I paid little heed to the preacher’s words. LittleJohn’s successor, Hainsworth, was another firebrand, but now we have Mr. Thwaites, who according to Charlotte is a vast improvement. Perhaps—but it is of no interest to me, beyond my observing the new rector’s effect on Charlotte. It struck me listening to her this morning that she may be taken with him. Then, just as I was absorbing that notion, she said something that truly made me start.