A Traveller in Time (10 page)

There on the left was a cupboard where the bread-oven had been and I opened the door and looked inside. It was filled with flat-irons and crimping irons of many sizes and weights.

“Penelope! You mustn't open Aunt Tissie's cupboards like that,” cried Alison, but Aunt Tissie turned from the fire, her old face crimson with heat, the little white tucker in her dress all creased and crumpled.

“That was the bread-oven once, Penelope, in old days. Even in my grandfather's time we made our bread in it, but now we cook in the ordinary oven. Times have changed but they say bread is never as sweet now as it was when they baked it by charcoal.”

She took some herbs from the table and dropped them in a brass pan on the fire. Then she called us to the table.

“Dinner's ready, my dears. Blow the whistle for Jess. He's out with the sheep. I hope you've got good appetites with your riding, for I've got something very nice, and you'll never guess what it is. Fresh trout from the Darrand! A gentleman staying at Bramble Hall caught them this morning, and their servant-lad brought some down for me, seeing as I have visitors from London who don't get trout every day of the week, I'm sure.”

That night we sat round the great oak table in the kitchen at Thackers with Uncle Barnabas and Aunt Tissie in their high-backed chairs, and played dominoes. Even Jess joined us, for he scrubbed himself very clean and damped his hair and put on a Sunday coat in our honour. We each built a wall with our store and put out the dominoes from our black-and-white ramparts into the circle of lamp-light. When the game was over we asked riddles, and Uncle Barnabas posed many an ancient riddle to puzzle our London wits.

and the answer to that is “A heart”.

Then Alison asked me to bring down my sketching book to show my aunt and uncle the drawings I had made at the Zoo. With my lighted candle, which Aunt Tissie called:

I went through the door. I didn't much care to leave the warm fireside to go up the dark staircase where there was never a glimmer except the pale ghostly ray on the landing from the window which overlooked the church. I kept glancing about at the shadows which came out of the corners and moved alongside me, and I thought a voice might call or a hand stay me. I opened our bedroom door and found the sketch book lying in front of the mirror, and as I picked it up I saw again the reflection of my pale face. I had changed my dress for my green tussore with long, full sleeves, and I wore my coral necklace. I always felt proud of this dress, for Mother had made it for me. As I peered into the dim, smoky glass I wished those people, wherever they were, could see me. Then I leaned from the window and looked out at the dark church tower with its broken shields and the great door with the plaited stone rim. In the yard I saw the lamplight from the house fall in regular pattern upon the grassplat, I could hear the stamp of hooves in the stable, and from the field came the snuffling grunt of a grazing mare. Moths flew in and fluttered round the candle-flame, and then the draught caught the little yellow flag and tore it away, and I was left in the darkness.

I never could get used to candles, I told myself in a panic as I fumbled my way across the room. In the faint light of the landing I thought I saw the doors drift out of obscurity. Dare I open one of them? I asked myself. Dare I? From down the narrow stair came Ian's laugh and then the deep voice of Uncle Barnabas. The safe world was there, and I had only to turn away, but I longed to enter that hidden timeless world where the hours and seconds were crystallized into one transparent drop, round and clear.

I put out a hand and lifted the shadowy latch, and stood on the threshold, not venturing to take a step, held breathless by what I saw. There in the room, brooding in the firelight which dappled the walls in pointed flames, was a young man. His gloomy handsome face was in the shade, his hands clasped round his knees. His hair was flaxen, curled and shining like fine gold in the light, his chin had a little beard, pointed and downy. His clothes were rich but stained and splashed with mud, his doublet open at the neck, where he wore a narrow lace collar. His leather thigh-boots stood wrinkled and drooping in the corner, and on his feet he had soft scarlet shoes with slashed toes. I stood still as a dream, watching him, hearing his sigh, seeing his breast rise and fall, and his fingers move convulsively. Suddenly he spun round and uttered a cry as he saw me.

“'S blood! Who's there? Who are you? Speak!” he commanded, and his brilliant blue eyes flashed as he clutched the arms of his great chair and I saw the firelight gleam on a jewel which hung from a gold chain round his neck.

Quickly I shut the door, but I heard him mutter: “A ghost! Or a wench, but a lovely little wench!”

Breathlessly I ran downstairs, stumbling headlong into the kitchen.

“You look as if you'd seen a boggart,” said Uncle Barnabas dryly. “Is 'owt amiss?”

I was trembling with excitement, and elated because I had gone there again, and seen him—Anthony—but I was silent.

Aunt Tissie went to the cupboard and took out a bottle of cordial and a little fluted glass.

“Drink this, my chuck,” said she. “You've had a tiring day, and the excitement of Betty has been too much for you. Now show your pictures quietly and then you must go to bed, for you look flushed and your eyes are over-bright. I'll run the warming-pan over your sheets and bring a posset up to you.”

As Alison and I lay in our beds Aunt Tissie entered with the hot drink in a two-handled cup.

“Here's a sup that will do you good and make you sleep,” said she. “We always have this same one, and always have done, right-away back.” I tasted the honey and balm, and I thought of the herb posset I had seen Aunt Cicely make for Mistress Babington. It had the same sweet smell, and as Aunt Tissie leaned over to kiss me, there seemed little difference, so that I scarcely knew in which time I was living. Or was it that time never existed, that we all lived between two worlds which I had been privileged to enter?

Days passed in country delights, and for some time I did not see anything of those other inhabitants of Thackers. The mornings began with a ride over the hills to the station, before seven when the dew was heavy and the sun sent long fingers pointing the way to birds and beasts. The flowers raised their heads and drank that heavenly moisture, the pheasants ran across our path with quickly tripping feet, the fox walked unhurrying and secure. We passed through two villages along the riverside and all the way the milk churns jangled with loud music and I bumped about among them. I walked on the platform and watched the folk, the farmers with their fine sticks going to market, the cattle-drovers with cudgels, the boys and girls going to a grammar school. Some nodded to me and others asked after my uncle, for I was accepted as belonging to the place. The train came puffing in with as much importance as if it were a London train. The guard and I exchanged buttonholes, for I always took a Thackers posy in my coat and the guard had a nice little greenhouse at home he told me. Then we waited till the green flag waved, the engine-driver leaned from his cab, and away went the slow old train.

I had my own farm work at Thackers. I was the hen-wife, and I helped to feed the family of pigs. It was my delight to hang over the pig-cote door and watch the fourteen piglings nuzzle their mother, pushing each other out of the way, so that there were always one or two vainly trying to edge their snouts to the milk. Alison refused to join me, she couldn't get used to the smell of pigs, and when I came back carrying my cans she insisted on sprinkling eau-de-Cologne on my apron, to Uncle Barny's amusement.

“Penelope'll be the farmer's boy, not Alison,” said he. “Penelope's my little wench,” and I felt proud of that.

Sometimes we all drove out with Uncle and Aunt in the old-fashioned pony-cart. We trundled along the lanes, and walked up the hills, pushing behind to help the horse, and walked down the hills, pulling to act as extra brakes, while motor-cars roared past us, “all in a tarnation hurry to get somewhere and save a minute”, Uncle Barnabas said.

Whether we went up to little villages of stone cottages, or down to the valleys where ivy-covered farmhouses nestled in the trees, where my uncle talked of the prospects of harvest, and the poorness of grassland, or my aunt compared her hens and ducklings, I thought of those bygone days, when other people rode along those same narrow lanes and perhaps tasted the butter and begged for a receipt for syllabub or pigeon-pie, and children in long, stiff clothes played whip and top like the boys and girls I saw.

I asked many questions about Thackers, trying to piece together the life there, but my aunt could not tell me much. Her own grandmother had been born there and many a one before that. Her family had lived on the farm in the time of the great people, the Babington family, who loved this little manor house more than any of their possessions. Their beloved home was Thackers, the nest in the hidden valley, with its church and farmstead, and lands compact and secure from marauding bands of soldiers and heresy hunters. There all the children were born, and there our own ancestors had lived, fitting into those other lives, serving them, faithful to them, linked to them by strong ties of duty and love. She herself felt it was only the other day they had died, and the land been sold, although it was many a year agone.

“But ask me no more,” she sighed. “I've had no larning. Me and Uncle Barnabas, we've kept things going and had no time for books. I dunno when it happened, the great tragedy, but 'twas a long time ago. Over a hunnerd years, or more maybe. Aye, it must have been more, for Grandmother Penelope Taberner lived here nigh on a hunnerd years ago.”

“Are you talking about Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots, Aunt Tissie?” asked Alison, in her cool, clear voice, and I felt annoyed with her for the superiority of her tone.

“That's her. The Queen of Scotland. Her that was so bonny and wrecked our Master Anthony's life, and had her own head cut off,” said my aunt in her simple way.

“Only three hundred and twenty years ago,” said Alison with faint sarcasm.

“Three hunnerd! Over three hunnerd! Well, how time flies! I never thought it would be as long ago as that. Well, well.” Aunt Tissie sighed and I felt downright cross with my sister.

murmured Aunt Tissie. “That's what we sing at church, and it's true. They're all forgot.”

“I don't forget,” I cried indignantly. “I remember them always.”

“Oh, you! You! Penelope's fey,” laughed Alison to Aunt Tissie. “You go and help Jess feed the pigs my dear, or they'll think they are forgotten too.”

But I didn't go to the pigs. I found Uncle Barny and slipped my arm in his and walked across the fields to see the lambs at play and view the growing corn. I longed to visit that great kitchen again, to listen to Dame Cicely, to be scolded by Tabitha, and perhaps to share that warm, intimate comradeship of the family who lived there.

One day I stood on the landing, and I saw the iron latchet and the dark outline of the lost door. A sudden stillness came over the little sounds of the house, I felt strangely light as if I were treading on air. Walls disappeared or stretched out before me in the gable of Thackers. I lifted the latch and stepped down the little stairway into the corridor of time. It was quiet in the passage and I tiptoed along it, but my feet made no sound. Gradually I became accustomed to other scents and the atmosphere of the other time. I was elated and filled with curiosity about the house. I softly lifted the latch of the first room and saw it was only a wardrobe, filled with clothes hanging from wooden pegs, faded farthingales and kirtles of taffeta and rusty silk, petticoats and velvet cloaks, and much-boned corsets which must have belonged to Mistress Foljambe and her daughters. Nothing was ever wasted in a country family, as I knew from my Aunt Tissie's store of clothing.

The next door was open and I peered inside. Tabitha was standing at the window looking out across the garden, engrossed by the view of Tom Snowball. I went into the room, conscious that I was now making a noise, that I was attuned to the atmosphere around me, but Tabitha was too much absorbed to notice me. There was a carved bed with grape-vines down the posts and dark curtains drawn back. It stood against a wall, and the sheets and embroidered bedcover lay heaped on the floor. A boy's plum-coloured jacket with slashed sleeves was thrown on a low chest together with a pair of trunk hose, and a leather jacket, pinked all over with tiny cut flowers and buttoned with many leather buttons down the front. On a chair was a collection of arrows, a knife, and some goose feathers. There were pegs in the wall and upon them hung a cloak and feathered hat, and a pair of muddy thigh-boots stood by the door. I moved across the room to see a book which lay open on a table, but Tabitha turned back to toss the feather-bed and tidy the room.