After he had gone, I brought the poultice dish over to her and
said crossly, ‘What did you say that for, Mum? You know you need more rest.’
She did not reply, but lowered the sheet and unbuttoned her nightgown so that I could spread the poultice on her chest.
I blew across the top of the dish. It is a tricky thing to apply a beeswax poultice. It must be cool enough not to scald a person but not so cold as to thicken before it is spread.
She closed her eyes. I spread it on her with the wooden spatula, then laid brown paper over the top so she could button her nightdress over it.
‘This will do the trick, I’m sure,’ she said.
I sat by her for a while, holding her hand. I thought perhaps she was falling asleep. Then, without opening her eyes, she said, ‘Why do you never speak when Mr Childer is in the room? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you speak when he is nearby.’
I was twelve. I did not know how to answer. Now, I know the reason. I know it was because I hated him for looking down on my mother, for accepting her gratitude as his due – for looking at her and seeing no more than his third wife, when she was everything to me.
And I hated her a little bit too, sometimes, because I could not understand why she seemed to think so little of herself. Girls of twelve can’t understand that of their mothers. They only learn that women should think little of themselves when they are older.
My mother fell asleep shortly, and I watched her face in the candlelight and saw how much older and more lined it seemed – and still I did not have the sense to be afraid.
*
She got up the next morning, of course. The poultice hadn’t made the slightest bit of difference and her thin body shook with the coughing as I helped her dress. She went out in the cold and damp and weeded the vegetable patch. That afternoon, she took to her bed again and two days later it was obvious even to my stepfather
that a doctor must be sent for and he came and gave her pills and they made no difference either.
She was in bed another three days before she went.
*
And that’s how come I ended up living on a farm far from where I grew up, with a stepfather I hated and stepbrothers who hated me. Well, two of them hated me: Horace because he hated everybody, and the youngest, Henry, because my mother had replaced his. The middle one, William was kind enough. When he saw how grief stricken I was, I think it eased his own sorrow a little. He gave me a handkerchief at her funeral. The next day I laundered it, and when I returned it to him, pressed and folded, he said he would like me to keep it as a sign of how sorry he was.
Farmer Childer did not marry again after my mother’s death. I would like to be charitable and say he could not bring himself to – but I think the truth was, he didn’t need to. I was twelve, old enough to take over the cooking and cleaning and the hens and the vegetable patch. What did he need another wife for, after all, with an almost-grown stepdaughter in the house?
T
he Travellers came every year. Funny now to think Elijah and I might have passed each other on the way to the water pump when we were children and not known each other.
I don’t remember first seeing them or thinking them strange – on the contrary. It was a little bit of the outside world coming to our farm. Suddenly, there was noise in the fields, and other children my own age, although I was not allowed to play with them, of course.
I finished my schooling the year my mother died. There was too much for me to do on the farm for my stepfather to allow me to continue. One of my duties was to go collecting the rent from the wagons, at the summer and autumn harvests. They rented the field from us, whether they were working our harvest or not, and sometimes some of them stayed on after harvest was done. There was often other work locally, which suited them and suited us as we rotated their campsite each year so the fallow fields brought in a little income, which was always welcome.
I was thirteen the first time I went rent collecting, and I can still remember how important it made me feel, with my little notebook in my hand and big leather satchel slung across my chest. The children of the camp would stop and stare at me as I passed and I did not mind the hostility in their gazes for their mothers were most polite to me and treated me like a little queen. The only time I felt bad was once when I was leaving the camp and a boy halfway up a tree called down to me. He was pulling faces at me. Come to think of it, it was probably Elijah.
*
One day, when I was about fourteen, a piglet got out of our pen behind the farmhouse. It was my fault. I had been pouring feed in the trough and was leaning over and my leg had nudged the gate, which was not properly latched. Out shot the little so-and-so, like a bullet. I saw it happen and would have had him but as I turned I slipped on some damp straw and ended up on my knees in the yard while the piglet disappeared behind the cart shed. I knew there was no time to be lost, so I jumped to my feet, pulled the pigsty gate firmly closed and ran after, scattering hens like nobody’s business as I ran.
As I rounded the cart shed, I saw the piglet scoot across the field. I scrambled over the fence and headed after him but I reckon that piglet was bewitched as it ran pell-mell across the field, into the next and across it too, and straight into the Traveller camp. It disappeared in there and I stopped and burst into tears. I knew how much trouble I would be in if I could not find it and for all I knew it had been kidnapped already and would be roasted that very night if I did not save it.
One of the men was striding out of the camp on his way somewhere. He saw me wiping my face with my apron and asked me what was up. When I told him he said, not to worry, he would find the piglet for me, and off he went back into the camp.
While I waited for him, two girls around my age came past.
They were both carrying babies, and I smiled at the babies. They stopped and came over and gave me the babies to hold. I didn’t know if they were boy babies or girl babies but they were such sweet, swaddled dumplings that I forgot about the piglet for a bit. One started to cry, and I jiggled it up and down a bit. The girls laughed at me when they saw I didn’t know how to hold it properly but they weren’t unkind about it. They showed me how to put the baby in the crook of my neck and let it nestle there and were astonished when I said it was the first time I had done it. When I told them I was only fourteen they declared it was time I got a move on and had some of my own.
After they left, I hung around a bit more, but the afternoon was getting late. I gave up on the man who said he would find my piglet and went back to the farmhouse with my head down, hoping that at least nobody would notice the piglet was missing that day and I might have time to go looking for it the following morning.
My stepfather was waiting for me in the kitchen. Where had I been? he wanted to know. I told him I had been collecting worms for the chickens. Where were the worms? He wanted to know that too. I burst into tears, such a poor liar was I. He gave me three strokes on my arm for lying to him and six strokes for losing a piglet; then another six for wasting time talking to
gipos
and another three to remind me never to do it again. Each stroke was weighed and measured. He never beat me in a temper, I’ll say that for him.
I went outside afterwards, to cry and find a dock leaf to rub on my sore arm. William came over and said the piglet was safe and sound. The man had found it while I was talking to the girls and, thinking I would have returned to the farmhouse by then, had brought it back directly, swaddled in a blanket and tucked under his arm. Father had given him a shilling for his trouble.
I took care not to befriend any of the Traveller children after
that, although I looked out for the girls my age and their babies and was pleased each year when they came back. The children grew, and more babies were added, and depending on which field they were camped in and the direction of the wind, I could sometimes lean out of my window in the evening and hear the shouts and cries from the camp, the playing and running around.
Was
Elijah the boy who sneered at me from the tree? I have sometimes wondered. It doesn’t seem important now.
*
Elijah Smith was firmly on the ground the first time I remember setting eyes on him. It was several summers later. We were both full grown.
It was a pleasant evening, warm and sunny. We had had a lot of rain that month but that day had been fine and things were drying out nicely. We were midway through a goodly cherry harvest and the camp was large that year. I enjoyed my Friday evening walks over there – as I approached, the smells would float toward me: wood smoke, the cooking of onions and potatoes, tobacco from their pipes.
As I neared that evening, I saw that a new wagon had pulled up on the edge of the camp, an elaborate green and gold one with gilt porch lamps. I pulled my notebook and pencil from my satchel and turned to the last page, to make a note of it. I saw that a young man was sitting on the step, and had time to think it unusual that I was about to speak to him, as it was normally the wives I dealt with.
I stopped in front of him.
He looked up at me.
The sun was full on his face, which was wrinkled for a youngish man – weather beaten, I suppose. His eyes had a look in them, both childish and knowing. His teeth were crooked. He looked like a friendly dog, sitting there, a dog looking for someone to adore. He was dressed in a leather waistcoat with fancy buttons, I remember noticing that, and on his head he had a brown felt hat. Just
showing beneath the brim of the hat was an oiled kiss-curl that curved across his forehead. There was something in the vanity of that kiss-curl that pleased me, for I lived with four men who never looked in a mirror from one week to the next. He was working at a piece of wood with a knife and, as I glanced down at it, I noticed how clean his hands were. I looked at his face again and saw he was smiling at me.
We did not speak.
We smiled at each other.
What was strange was that it was just as if we were having a conversation, all the things that were said with our smiles. We held each other’s gazes for so long that there could be no mistaking our smiles for mere politeness. I felt a feeling I had never felt before, as if the solid core of me had melted away and inside there was nothing but air. I was eighteen years old and a great lummox of a girl by then, but I felt suddenly as if I was light enough to float up in the sky, if I wanted, to rise above the field and the wagons and the farm and the muddy old Ouse and everything that kept me tethered to the Fens.
Then I noticed a tiny, dark-skinned woman who was standing next to the wagon. Her hair was drawn back into a headscarf and her apron reached almost to the ground, making her seem quite doll-like, although the expression on her face was not at all the friendly, open gaze of a child’s toy. Quite the contrary. Her brow was furrowed and her mouth tightly pursed. She stared at me with pin-prick eyes. She reached into her apron pocket and drew out a small cloth purse, then stepped forward and handed me some coins.
I took them and opened my hand.
She said, sharply, ‘You’ll find it is the exact amount.’
I did not like the insolence of her tone and made a point of continuing to stare at the coins as if I was counting them, although I had seen at once that the money was indeed correct.
The young man sitting on the step watched the two of us.
I put the money away, opened my notebook and ticked next to where I had written:
Green
and
gold
wagon,
gilt
porch
lamps.
Rent was due by the wagon, as we never knew who or how many stayed in each one from one night to the next. I would always write little descriptions of each wagon in my notebook so’s I knew who had paid up, although sometimes when I arrived they would have been moved around, to confuse me, I think, in the hope I would not bother to count up and maybe miss one. I have a good memory for colours and patterns, however, and I don’t believe I was ever fooled.
I hesitated for a moment. I wanted to speak, to assert myself somehow, but I could think of nothing to say. I nodded, without really looking at either of them, and turned away.
As I walked off towards the other wagons, I was dying to look round to see if he was watching me go but knew I must not, for fear of the humiliation if he wasn’t.
On my way back to the farmhouse, I fiddled with my hair ribbon and inwardly bemoaned the unruliness of my dry locks. George Rawson the greengrocer might not have given me his name or any acknowledgement, but he must have had red hair somewhere in his family as I had inherited my horrid frizz from somewhere. My mother’s hair was sleek and dark. I cursed the father I had never known, that day, and wondered a little desperately whether, if I oiled my hair every night between now and the following Friday, I might be able to fashion proper ringlets.
*
When I got back, I pulled my notebook and money-bag out of my satchel immediately and sat down at the kitchen table. Horace was at the other end, slumped back in his chair and drinking tea. Father must be out, I thought, otherwise Horace wouldn’t be drinking tea when he should be checking the irrigation ditches.
As I took out my pencil and turned the pages of my notebook, I
thought of how thirsty I was. I promised myself a drink of water as soon as I had added the first column. Horace would have gone by then, hopefully.
William came and stood in the doorway with his boots still on and said, ‘Rose, have you seen Henry? He said he’d help me with the sow. He said he’d be back by now.’ We had a bad sow at that time. She bit when you tried to pen her.
Before I could reply, Horace snarled at William, ‘She’s just this minute come in and she’s got to add up before Father gets back.’
William left without a word.
I glanced at Horace, surprised. He had never shown concern about me finishing my duties before now, not if he wanted something to eat or a collar starching. Everything had to be done straightaway for Horace. I looked after William, frowning slightly, and wondered whether to go and help him with the sow myself, for I knew he was afraid of her and I was not. Sows are like dogs, only more so. They can smell fear.
When I looked back, I saw that Horace was leaning forward on his elbows and staring at me. He was a bulky man, like his father, dark haired and red faced, with lumpen features. There was no kindness in him, not a drop – that much I knew after eight years on the farm.
‘Have you ever given thought …’ he said, as if we had been in the middle of a conversation when William had interrupted us, ‘… as to what might happen when Father passes on?’
It was such an extraordinary remark that I made no reply.
He rose, swaying slightly, to his feet. I wondered if he had been drinking. He walked casually round to my end of the table. He stood next to me, and looked down at me.
‘No?’ he said. He was standing very close to me. I was aware of the strain on his belt buckle. He was on the last hole of the belt and the leather was giving. His stomach moved in and out a little with each breath and for some reason he seemed to be breathing hard.
He smelled of turned earth and dried sweat, of River Farm and the brown Great Ouse.
He put a hand on my shoulder and leaned his weight on me. He lowered his face to mine and murmured, ‘Perhaps it is time that you did.’ He squeezed my shoulder once, hard, then turned and strode outside.
I returned to my column of figures but as I looked up and down I was unable to add one digit to the next, for too many other things were adding up inside my head: my stepfather’s age; the way Horace was more and more in charge these days; the growing antagonism between him and William. When I put these thoughts together, the sum total was large and unpleasant.
I had always assumed I would leave the farm one day, when I was fully of age. It was not my home, after all, and never had been. I was little more than a servant. I had not thought of what I would do or where I would go to, but I had never once seen myself slaving away and growing old there.
Now I saw that, in the absence of my making any firm plans for my future, plans were being made by others, on my behalf.
*
Friday evenings were my favourite part of the week. I saved my sewing until then, which meant a whole evening sitting down. Once I had cleared away the supper table, I would go up to the linen cupboard outside my room and take down the mending that had piled up since the previous Friday. There was always a great deal of it, as farm working men collect a fair amount of wear and tear on their things. I should have really done a little of it every evening but I liked to save it all up. It would not have been acceptable for me to sit down for two or three hours at a stretch for any other reason, but even my stepfather knew that sewing had to be done.
The summer evenings were best of all, for I did not have to do it by candlelight. I would take my favourite seat in the kitchen, by the
open door, and sew until dusk fell and I was forced to move inside. Lately, William had taken to joining me with a book. His father asked him once what he was reading and he said, ‘An analysis of Fen drainage patterns, Father,’ although I do believe I once caught him reading a novel.