Turf or Stone
Authors: Margiad Evans
MARGIAD EVANS
OF
WALES
It is my pleasure to introduce this book to you. Beware; it is a rough read, a demanding journey, an amazing, fantastical, invigorating experience. And what more can you want as a reader? Margiad Evans’ warm, eloquent voice, her unequivocal exploration of the extremes of human behaviour, of cruelty, lust and ultimate redemption, her stunning evocations of the natural world, may well leave you unsatisfied with anything less in other writers.
I sat down to read one rainy weekend. Immediately I was tipped into a strange world. It’s a freezing morning. A cart lumbers along a country lane driven by a one-armed man (a very Margiad detail) who is oblivious to the elements. I was unsure which century we were in; the snow-salted fields gave no clue. It occurred to me this could be medieval England, or even a Grimm brothers’ fairytale. There are a few huddled people about, three yews under a net in the back of the cart. And a lone woman limping wearily along the track. A woman who is elegantly dressed and obviously deeply troubled. Not entirely beaten down however. We read she responds contemptuously to a friendly drover’s enquiries, whilst favouring the carter with a gentle gaze; she needs him, or at least his cart, to get to her destination. So we meet Mary Bicknor, the book’s not entirely likeable heroine.
Mary has been a cosseted quasi-servant to an old lady. During her stay in the big house this old lady had ‘spoiled
and petted her, dressed her expensively… and easily persuaded her to give up all thought of marriage with her own natural equals.’ Mary ‘…used to carry herself very proudly’ and ‘snort at callers…’ It is a shock, then, to read the throwaway line: ‘Then one day Mary confessed to her mistress she was pregnant.’ And to take in the fact that Mary has fallen from grace. A hasty marriage is arranged to Easter, a groom, the father of the child she carries. This is obviously a union that Mary believes is beneath her. And the story proper begins.
This story, told many times over the centuries, is a narrative that could only start to change with the advent of the contraceptive pill. Here we have the haughty beauty, unmarried, cast out when pregnant, humiliated and impoverished, forced into a marriage she detests for the sake of convention. It would not be many years before other narratives take over. Margiad Evans is on the cusp of change. Even so, the book encompasses divorce, or at least separation, and the possibility of a new life for Mary – an outcome almost unheard of for someone of Mary’s class before the twentieth century. This duality between the ancient and the modern, between the unchanging countryside and the teashop and magistrates’ court, kept me alert. I had to continually reappraise what I knew and understood about the story. Patterns that seemed familiar – the woman brought low, a ruffian for a husband, the upper-class lover – are subverted by Margiad Evans; twisted and squeezed to extract a fresh, startling newness.
Throughout the book we see Mary through the eyes of the men she encounters. The carter examines her bowed head and takes in her ‘fresh lips’ with their ‘hint of a
voluptuous pout suggesting a caress… and red hair which showed… beneath her hat.’ A little later, asleep in her new husband’s bed, he surreptitiously observes ‘…her naked shoulder’ whose ‘blooming flesh shone with pearly lustre against the harsh white sheet’. Thirty pages on, Matt, the disaffected squire, sees Mary for the first time. In his room later he recalls ‘…Mary’s eyes, her long neck, her hollow cheeks, her mouth, tempting yet severe’. So far so predictable, you might say.
But Mary is more than the stereotypical tempting woman. She is her own person: awkward, ungrateful sometimes, a character who grabs new experiences unwisely and wholeheartedly. The disquieting relationship she has with her cruel, enigmatic husband Easter is mysterious and engaging. She is no pallid victim, even though at times she breaks down under the onslaught of his sadism. His behaviour, whilst she never welcomes it, is understandable to her. His passion awakes similar reactions in her. Despite herself she responds to his physicality because it matches her own.
There are issues arising from this almost entirely external appraisal of the main female character, I think. Because she is largely unknowable – and what we do know about her character is not always appealing – we may not connect with her experiences in a way that Margiad Evans would like us to. We have no idea about her upbringing. No clue about her early dreams and struggles. Yet Easter has several poignant passages in which we see him as a ragamuffin, tagging along with the gypsies. His mother dies when he is sixteen and he is almost feral. He grows up famished, full of energy, and
constantly abandoned by the people he should be able to rely on.
On the night of their comically disastrous wedding Easter watches Mary while she sleeps. We are told how he examines her underclothes, amazed at their delicacy; ‘…feeling the silk with his hard, dirty fingers’. He is thrown back in time and remembers his mother hanging things like these out to dry. ‘He used to carry the empty basket back to the kitchen along a path between blackcurrant bushes.’ He recalls ‘…the little daisies under (his mother’s) feet’. And along with this early domestic memory comes a desire for ‘…tenderness, he wanted to be soothed, he longed for (Mary) to caress him, to be his entirely’. Of course, Mary wakes and vehemently squashes his advances – and who can blame her? He’d grudgingly taken a ring off his own finger for the vicar to use in the ceremony, snatched it back, pinched her arm and pushed her over into the frozen mud, then promptly hopped on a bus and left her to find her own way home.
Yes, Easter Probert is a vile, ungovernable man whose behaviour is reprehensible, but because we are given so much information about the workings of his damaged mind, and supplied with such lyrical details about his neglected childhood, we understand him. We consider his inarticulate yearning for warmth, and subsequently we may care about him in a way we can’t about the cold, snobbish Mary. We know he will never be able to obtain what he craves – he is too warped – but we can’t help but sympathise with his utter aloneness. And this ambivalence also touches the way we feel about his appearance. He is like a ‘goblin’, ‘a panther’, but he has ‘…beautifully sound
teeth’, ‘hair growing back from broad temples’, ‘deep-set eyes’ and is ‘graceful and rakish’. There is more than a touch of Heathcliff or Rochester about him. The subconscious ambivalence that permeates the book, this blurry, uncertain mix of messages, adds depth and richness. It challenges the reader.
The marital struggles of Easter and Mary, horrifying, pathetic and childish as they can be, are mirrored more subtly and alluringly in the relationship Easter has with the squire’s intense older daughter Phoebe. She is the pure, serious, unworldly maiden in this quasi-fairytale. And it is her developing, barely-there connection with Easter that Margiad Evans does so well. The first time I read the book (I read it three times in all, each time it became more rich and strange and believable to me) I did not understand why Phoebe was given so much attention early on. I interpreted the imbalance in the text as a lack of discipline on the writer’s part, an inability to control her obviously teeming ideas. But on reflection, it is clear that Phoebe is crucial to the story; we need to know her obsessive, striving character to understand her selfless act at the dénouement.
There is a psychological truth also in her confused feelings for Easter. When she is a girl of fifteen she is exposed to a grotesque vision of Easter as he peers through a tiny window in an attempt to gain access to a serving girl. This encounter; ‘…the odd tinge to his skin …the upper teeth were showing and a large spider’s web… seemed …to be hanging from his mouth’ doesn’t frighten Phoebe as one might expect. She wonders about him, and from that time on cannot be near him without
shrinking. When he looks at her it is with ‘…the long, knowing stare that made her feel so uncomfortable’. He has awakened feelings in her that she is ashamed of and fascinated by. In her journal she writes ‘Yes, I’m haunted. Else why should strangers look at me with Easter’s eyes?’
It is the strength of this reciprocated, unconsummated attraction and the way that it mimics the book’s other male-female relationships – Matt and his lazy, luxurious wife, Dorothy; Mary and the greedy, consuming passion she shares with Matt – which breathes clear, fresh air through the pages. Quite early on in the narrative Phoebe modifies Easter’s behaviour by merely leaping up and casting him a look both ‘…courageous and imploring. In response ‘He averted his eyes and his expression changed…’ She has the power to calm his temper. In every other encounter he is driven to fits of cruelty and viciousness that border on madness. Later on in the book he touchingly ties her dropped handkerchief around his wrist like a knight who takes the favour of his lady into battle. Most importantly, it is because of his connection with Phoebe that Easter performs his one truly altruistic act, and finds a grubby, hard-won kind of redemption.
Turf or Stone
is wonderful. I have not touched on the shining passages of nature writing in the book, such as the description of an expedition to the river that Phoebe and her sister, Rosamund, take one hot summer day. It is perfect. They play in ‘…a slowly turning pool curved into the red clay, overhung by fresh young alders thick with leaves whose dipping branches swept the water’. The girls swim in the gleaming river, careful Phoebe ‘swam froggily… her head far too high’. No-nonsense Rosamund
has ‘…nerve, and a passionate love of flinging herself into water’. At other times the countryside turns threatening, or gloomy and thunderous, often lashed with rain. Always the descriptions seem true. Margiad Evans has rightly been called a consummate nature writer.
It is also true to say that sometimes she may
overe-mbellish
, as if she is unable to resist the impulse to decorate each surface with grotesque detail. No mean roof is without its quota of fungi and weeds; no bit-character is without a smattering of hideous warts, or ‘…skin that resembled wet clay’, and even, on one occasion, an extracted glass eye whose ‘…blue stare (is smothered) in a handkerchief…’ But this embellishment is essential to the success of the book. Yes, it is extreme, elemental, nightmarish even in its uncompromising intensity, and that is as it should be. The reader is constantly pushed and pulled, drawn in and repelled, but never, ever bored.
Deborah Kay Davies
Early one February morning a tip cart, which was plastered with dried mud and driven by a man with one arm, turned out of a lane some eight miles from Salus, and journeyed slowly along the main road towards the town.
Heavy clouds retarded the progress of day, but at length the man pulled up, sprang to the ground, and opening the lamps, extinguished them with two vigorous puffs. He then mounted once more, settling himself on the front, his feet on the shaft.
The cart contained under a net three ewes, whose breath rose steamily in the cold air. The man,
bare-headed
, broad-shouldered, sat easily swaying to the movement of the shaft, expanding his chest though the east wind was blowing. He seemed indifferent, durable, hard as the cart itself. It was freezing again; there was dust on the grey road. The few people who were about
walked with their heads bent, huddling their shoulders. From his seat the man could see the rounded frostbitten fields over the hedges and the vague encompassing hills patchy with lingering snow.
An hour later, when it was still three miles from Salus, the cart overtook a flock of sheep, and was obliged to come to a stand close to the path while the drover cleared a way for it. The carter noticed a young woman walking past, and struck by her weary air – she limped – called out to know whether she would be too proud to take a lift on the front with him.
The woman who was jaded in spirit rather than in fact, and whose painful meditations were the true brake on her steps, was about to answer him haughtily. She raised her eyes, hesitated, and suited her reply to the gentle gaze which met her own.
‘Thank you,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘I should be glad enough, but I haven’t far to go now.’
‘How far, miss?’
‘Fown Mill.’
‘Get up… it’ll be a bit of a rest.’
Leaning forward he extended his one hand. Darting a contemptuous look at the smiling drover, she put her hand in the carter’s. He swung her up: she sat beside him silently. He examined her sideways without turning his head. She was an elegant woman with a sombre expression, whose long neck shone warmly white against a dark fur. Her face was thin, without colour, her nose inclined to a downward curve, the wide nostrils nervously dilated. Her fresh lips protruded slightly, and this hint of a voluptuous pout suggesting a caress, lent her hollow countenance
fascination. She had red hair which showed on one side beneath her hat. In her hands she held a prayer book and a clean white handkerchief. She wore a loose grey coat almost like a cloak which flowed over the rail. Her crossed feet in high-heeled shoes hung some inches above the shaft.
The carter saw that she had been crying, and he felt sorry for her. But he did not speak to her because she was a stranger and he admired her.
They proceeded thus the best part of a mile, until they reached a broad tarred lane branching off to the left. A granite war memorial, in the shape of a bleak grey cross, stood on the corner, garnished with a tattered laurel wreath. There she asked to be set down, thanked him, and drew away, wrapping her coat tightly across her as the wind whisked round the corner.
The carter slapped the reins on the horse’s back and it broke into a clumsy trot, jerking the cart backwards; balancing himself he gave a long sigh of relief which yet had in it some regret. It was not until he reached Salus, that he discovered the prayer book inside the cart where it had fallen and been trodden on by the frightened ewes. She must have let it fall when she turned round to get down.
He opened it: there was a name written on the flyleaf.
‘Mary Bicknor,’ he read, and then he remembered he had heard about her.
She was half servant, half companion, to an old eccentric lady who within the last year had taken a house at Buck Castle, a small hamlet on the outskirts of Fown Mill parish where she was a complete stranger. The old lady, whose name was Tressan, spoiled and petted her,
dressed her expensively, even submitted to her dominance, and easily persuaded her to give up all thoughts of marriage with her own natural equals. Without actually saying as much, she really expected Mary to remain single. Mary used to carry herself very proudly, snort at callers, regulate Miss Tressan’s friendships from her own front door. Indeed, they were both very foolish and everybody laughed at them…. Then one day Mary confessed to her mistress that she was pregnant. The old lady did not desert her, but she instantly withdrew her affection, nor did she at all approve of the hastily arranged marriage. She thought it a calamity with a preposterous ending, and as well as she could she ignored it. The vicar of Fown Mill brought the couple together. He took great credit to himself for this.
The carter recollected some of these circumstances. They were wasted on him. Being no gossip he was generally regarded as a shy, taciturn fellow without a great deal to say for himself. He went to the market carrying the white prayer book in his pocket.
* * *
Mary did not discover the loss of her prayer book until she reached the church. She was thinking of her mistress, whom she had left lying in bed.
When she took up the tea as usual, at eight o’clock, she saw Miss Tressan regarding her mournfully and steadily over the bed clothes. She pulled up the blinds, keeping her back to the bed.
They did not know what to say to each other. At last,
as Mary was closing the window, the old lady stammered:
‘Is it a fine day?’
She had asked this question first thing every morning for fifteen years, and no other words seemed possible. Mary told her it was freezing. She drew the sheet tight under her chin and shut her eyes: ‘I’ll have the fire and stay in bed today,’ she said resolutely.
‘Shall I light it?’
‘No… no… keep your hands clean this morning. There, go along, and shut the door.’
But as Mary passed the bed with averted face, she suddenly sat up, tendering her an envelope. Her lips trembled.
‘Take this. You must. I insist.’
‘No, no, I can’t.’
‘You must… I insist.’ She repeated like a feeble cry.
Mary felt the envelope pushed into her hand and Miss Tressan’s fingers close over her wrist for a moment in a loose clasp. Then she drew away her arm suddenly and lay back again, shutting her eyes.
‘Goodbye,’ she said bitterly.
Mary dropped the envelope on the floor.
‘That’s no use, no help at all.’
She looked around the room at the silk curtains, the cushions, the pictures, the soft carpet, the emaciated figure flat on the bed, and having looked, with a kind of sick disgust, went out and dressed for her marriage to a groom. She wept.
Descending the steep hill to the church, she met two women carrying baskets to market. She pulled herself together, she had cried for hours before she left the house,
and her eyes were swollen. The women stared at her. The heavy baskets packed with butter and eggs had made them tired – they had missed the bus. One ejaculated loudly: ‘Some people have no shame,’ and the other cast down her eyes.
Mary cried: ‘What have I done to you?’
Before misfortune had overtaken her she would not have spoken to them.
They threw up their chins and trudged on up the hill, exchanging glances.
Mary could not understand herself: it seemed as if she wished to descend as far as possible, to roll in the mud.
Rounding the bend, the church came into view, a small, renovated edifice with a Saxon tower. A straight walk, shaded by cut yews, led up to the porch, where the man she was about to marry stood talking to the vicar. She approached them nervously and the bridegroom, Easter Probert, came towards her swinging his arms.
He was peculiar in appearance. He did not look like a man who had ever had anything to do with horses except in a thieving, gypsyish, wayside kind of way. He might very easily have been a travelling kettle-mender. He was small; his skin shone faintly, through a yellow-brown tan, and his large black eyes protruded from the sockets, although they were set deep in the skull. His
square-seamed
forehead was marked by strong brows a shade lighter than the hair, which grew stiffly and tuftily back from the broad temples. The features were harsh, the cheekbones prominent, the mouth sunken. A mauve scar, triangular in shape, showed clearly a little below the right eye. When he talked or laughed his upper lip lifted at the
corner, exposing beautifully sound teeth. A strange wary face, alert, hungry, malicious, subtly mournful. His movements, as he went to meet Mary, were very graceful, but suggested insolence; for a short man he took long strides, which lent him a rakish, high cockalorum air.
The same odd individuality marked his clothes: he wore a greenish coat, brown trousers, old and dirty, and a thick, twisted, silver ring on a little finger. It was said that his mother had been a gypsy, but of this no one could be certain, as he was a love child and she was dead.
He strode towards Mary and took her hand as he turned to walk beside her. They walked so to the door, where the vicar stood pulling his lips and staring at them dimly.
The vicar, an old man of seventy-odd, recalled some corrupt, degenerate idol which had decayed in a jungle. Fat, bloated, yet withered, he stood, his legs shaking visibly beneath the cassock, his head sunk between shoulders which had lost their outline and become mere pads of flesh. He wore a smile. Having attained his object he felt ready to be affable; he wished to speak kindly, but Easter’s expression was so ferocious, Mary’s so defiant, that a doubt crept into his negligible mind: ‘Surely this is wrong and cruel! These people do not love each other,’ he said to himself.
Then he thought of the child.
‘No, it is too late. But God help them,’ he concluded his momentary reflection.
He held out his hand. Mary took it, let it go, and drew a pair of clean gloves from her pocket. As she began to put them on she noticed the loss of her prayer book which Miss Tressan had given her years ago on her confirmation.
Tears again rose to her eyes. The vicar saw them. In spite of himself he pitied her profoundly, following them into the dark church.
She lifted a prayer book from the shelf. ‘You will not need that,’ the vicar informed her. She dropped it again in a confused and hasty manner.
The verger, sniffing, stepped from a pew under the pulpit, where he had been sitting half asleep, and the clerk who was to be the other witness, came out of the vestry with an impatient air. He cast a hurried glance through the open door as he passed it, for he had tied his dog to a tombstone, and feared that it might howl. But it was lying quietly asleep on the grass.
Fown Mill church stands on the road, and there is a short cut to Salus through the churchyard. Being market day the parish was astir, so that throughout the service people were continually passing. Their conversation could be clearly overheard, and one or two looked in at the door. A small boy stood for some time by the font with his cap on, while the clerk made energetic signs to him to remove it. He grimaced, swung on his heel, and walked out, screwing up his nose. The clerk boiled with futile anger.
When the time came for Easter to fit the ring on Mary’s finger it was discovered that he was without one. She turned paler, bit her lips, stared stonily at the altar. The service paused. Easter suddenly drew off the silver ring and slipped it on her finger. She was obliged to shut her hand to prevent it from falling to the ground. The ceremony concluded without the vicar taking the couple to the altar. This he had determined he would not do. When Mary took a step forward he shook his head, folding his
lips tightly and moved resolutely towards the vestry; the clerk and the verger, who were prepared, followed the couple ungraciously. The church had not been heated. Mary trembled visibly with the cold, her very heart beat languidly and her hands shook so that she could hardly sign the register.
The verger had built up a fire in the vestry, a weak, smoky slack fire which smelt acrid. The smoke blew out and tasted bitter in their mouths. She dropped on her knees before it, holding out her hands. Seeing the ring she began to cry again, bending her head to hide her face from the men.
‘Don’t cry,’ said the vicar in a low consoling murmur. He leant forward and touched her shoulder.
‘Why are you crying? Come on, let’s go,’ Easter suggested, stepping restlessly to the vestry door. He looked at the east window, pretentious painted glass, purple, blue, and red, with no depths to the colours, at the varnished pews roped off with red cords for the important families, the arrogant brass eagle beating the open Bible, the pale pulpit, the snowdrops on the altar. Mary wept and wept, heedless of whispers and sympathetic glances. He wished he were outside in the wind.
‘Let’s go,’ he repeated impatiently. The vicar glanced at him reproachfully, rolling his dull eyes under which showed livid smears. ‘Can’t you wait a little until your
wife
is better?’
Easter spoke harshly: ‘Give over, Mary.’
She took no notice. His voice was affliction. Lifting his eyes he caught sight of the thick bell ropes which hung temptingly near his hand. He seized one in both hands and
gave it a strong pull. Above their heads an unseen bell vibrated like a huge gong. It made Easter think of his master’s, hanging in the hall, a bland brass circle between two foxes’ masks with pointed teeth…. ‘Dinner!’ he shouted.
The verger clutched his shoulder, the vicar was scandalised, but Easter laughed aloud as he shook himself free. Again he tugged – he’d give them something to remember! This time the bell rang out full and true.
‘What are you doing?’ the clerk stammered, shocked. A fantastic humour possessed Easter and gleamed in his puckered eyes. He felt it glowing, he felt he wanted to outrage and distract these stuffy people who had tied him up to that crouching woman: they stank, like the church itself they reeked of damp cold stone and the clammy tombs of dead institutions. Again he pulled the gay red and white bell-rope, interspersing himself between the verger who reached out to grab his wrists. The verger retreated.
‘I’ll ring my own wedding peal!’