Midsummer's Eve (4 page)

“Did your granny kill Jemima and Mrs. Cherry’s baby?” I asked him.

He just pursed his lips and looked secretive.

“She can do anything,” he boasted.

“My father says people shouldn’t say such things.”

He just swung himself up onto a tree and sat there laughing at me. He put his two forefingers to the side of his head, pretending he had horns.

I could not stop thinking of poor Mrs. Cherry and the mare which had to be shot. I ran home as quickly as I could.

Talk went on about Mother Ginny and then it ceased to be the main topic of conversation and I forgot about it.

One morning when I went down to breakfast I knew something had happened. My parents were in deep conversation.

“I must go at once,” my mother was saying. “You do see that, Jake.”

“Yes, yes,” said my father.

“Even now I may not be in time. I know it’s hard for you to get away just now.”

“You don’t think I’d let you go alone.”

“I didn’t think so. But I ought to leave today.”

“Why not?”

“Oh Jake … thank you.”

I cried: “What’s happening? What are you talking about?”

“It’s your Grandfather Dickon,” my mother explained. “He’s very ill. They think …”

“You mean … he’s dying …”

My mother turned away. I knew she had been especially fond of her father, as I was of mine.

My father took my arm. “He’s very old, you know,” he said. “It had to come. The miracle is that he has lived so long. Your mother and I will be leaving today.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No. You and Jacco will stay behind. We have to get there without delay.”

“Well, we won’t delay you.”

“No,” he said firmly. “Your mother and I are going alone. We shall be back before you’ve had time to realize we have gone.”

I tried to persuade them to take me with them, but they were quite firm. They were going alone and later that day they left.

A few days after they had gone, the rain started—just a gentle shower at first and then it went on and on.

“Seems like there’s no stopping it,” said Mrs. Penlock. “It be like a curse on us, that it do. My kitchen garden be that sodden everything in it will be well nigh drowned.”

There were floods in the fields; the rain found the weak spots in cottage roofs. Every day there was some fresh tale of woe.

Then the rumours started.

“You know who be doing this, don’t ’ee, my dear.” A whispered word. A look. “It be her no less.”

Jenny Bordon’s warts which had been cured by Mother Ginny a year before came back. The Jennings’ baby caught the whooping cough and it spread like wildfire. Tom Cooper, doing a bit of thatching, fell off a ladder and broke his leg.

Something was wrong in the neighbourhood and the general idea was growing that we did not have to look far to discover the source of these misfortunes.

In the inns where the men sat over their pints of ale, among the women at their cottage doors or in their kitchens, the main topic of conversation was Mother Ginny.

Digory did not help matters. When Jenny Bordon—suffering from her new crop of warts—called after him “Witch’s Varmint,” he just stuck out his tongue and put his forefingers to his head in a gesture of which I knew he was very fond and declared he would put a spell on her.

“You can’t,” she called back. “You’re only the Varmint.”

“My Granny can,” was his retort.

Yes, agreed the people, so she could; and so she had. She had put an evil curse on them all.

I was aware of mounting tension. I spoke to Jacco about it but he was too full of his own affairs to give much thought to what I was saying. On the other hand I was beginning to experience a certain alarm because of all I overheard. One of the men said: “Something’s got to be done.”

I tried to discuss it with Miss Caster but she was uncommunicative, though even she must have been aware of the rising animosity against Mother Ginny. She did not believe in spells. She was far too educated for that, and she certainly thought the Wars of the Roses were more important than bad weather and the mishaps which had befallen the neighbourhood.

“They are getting so angry about it, Miss Caster,” I insisted. “They talk of nothing else.”

“These people have nothing better to think about. We have. Let us get back to the Temple gardens where the red and white roses were growing.”

“I wish my father were here. He would talk to them. I do wonder what is happening at Eversleigh. I wish they had taken me with them. I can’t understand why they wouldn’t.”

“Your parents know what is best,” was Miss Caster’s comment.

The weeks passed and there was no news from my parents. Grandfather was taking a long time to die. He must be very ill or they would come home.

June had arrived. The rain stopped and summer burst upon us. At first it was warmly welcomed but as we woke up each morning to a brilliant sun which showed itself all day, and the temperature soared into the eighties, there were more complaints from the farmers.

My father used to say: “Farmers are never content. Give them sun and they want rain, and when the rain comes they complain of the floods. You can’t please a farmer weatherwise.” So it was only natural that now they complained.

I enjoyed the heat. I liked to lie in the garden in a shady spot listening to the grasshoppers and the bees. That seemed to me utter contentment. Moreover Miss Caster was a little lethargic and never wanted to prolong lessons—a habit she had in cooler weather. I think Jacco rejoiced in the same state of affairs at the vicarage where Mr. Belling, the curate, attended to his scholastic education.

We rode together—galloping along the beach. We went out onto the moors where we would tether our horses and lie in the long grass looking down on the tin mine which was a source of income to so many people thereabouts. Our community consisted mostly of miners or fishermen and those farmers on the Cador estate.

So one long summer day passed into another and the sun seemed to shine more brightly every day.

People grew irritable.

“Get out of my kitchen, Miss Annora,” said Mrs. Penlock. “You be forever under my feet, that you do.” And I was never given a cake or a scone fresh from the oven as I’d been accustomed to. It was too hot for baking in any case.

I hated to be banished from the kitchen because there was more talk than ever at this time about Mother Ginny.

We were approaching Midsummer’s Eve. This was always a special occasion. Rolf, who had been away, returned from visiting one of his college friends in Bodmin who shared his interest in antiquity. He talked to me enthusiastically about some stones they had discovered on Bodmin Moor. I mentioned to him that there was a growing feeling in the community against Mother Ginny.

“It’s natural,” he said. “The Cornish are very superstitious. They cling to old customs more than is done in other parts of the country. It is probably the Celtic streak. The Celts are certainly different from the Anglo Saxons who inhabit the main part of our island.”

“I suppose I’m only part Celtic through my father.”

“And I pure Anglo Saxon if you can call such a mixture pure.”

I knew, of course, that Rolf’s parents had come to Cornwall when he was five years old. He had been born in the Midlands. But he knew a great deal more about the Cornish than they seemed to themselves; and perhaps he was able to study them more dispassionately because he was not really one of them.

There were fascinating talks about old customs. He told me how most cottagers even now crossed the firehook and prong on their hearths when they went out, which was supposed to keep evil spirits away during their absence, and how the miners left what they called a didjan—a piece of their lunch—for the knackers in the mines. The knackers were supposed to be the spirits of those who had crucified Christ. “Though how there could have been enough people at the Crucifixion to populate all the mines of Cornwall, I can’t imagine,” said Rolf. There were the black dogs and white hares which were supposed to appear at the mineheads when there was to be a disaster. No fisherman would mention a rabbit or hare when at sea; and if they saw a parson on their way to the boats they would turn back and not go to sea that day. If they had to mention church they could call it the Cleeta, which meant a bell house—to say the word “church” being unlucky.

“How do these things come about?” I asked.

“I suppose something unfortunate happens after they have seen dogs or hares or have met a parson when they were setting out for the boats. Then it becomes a superstition.”

“How very foolish.”

“People often are foolish,” he told me with a smile. “Of course there are a good many customs they practise which go back to pre-Christian days. Midsummer’s Eve activities for instance.”

“I know. Mrs. Penlock would say, ‘’Tas always been done and reckon it always will be.’”

I loved to listen when he talked of these Cornish customs.

For as long as I could remember we had always been taken by our parents to see the bonfire on the moors. My father would drive us out, and Jacco and I, with our parents, would watch the fires spring up, for if it was a clear night we could see them for miles along the coast.

For days before, the preparations would be made. Barrels were tarred and thrown onto the pile of wood and shavings, and a thrill of anticipation ran through the neighbourhood. There would be dancing, singing and general rejoicing.

Rolf had told me that it was said to be St. John’s Festival but it really had its origins in the old pagan days; and people practised the rites without knowing what the original intentions had been.

Dancing round the fire, he said, was a precaution against witchcraft; and it was something to do with fertility rites which people often practised in the old days. To leap through the fire and get one’s clothes singed meant that one was immune from the evil eye for a whole year, when, I presumed, the act must be performed again. There had been accidents and there had been one girl who had been badly burned. That was said to be a triumph for witchcraft; and it was after that when my father had said there was to be no more leaping over the flames.

It had always been a great treat for Jacco and me to stay up late and set out for the moors with our parents, my father driving the two big greys. I still remember the thrill when the torch was flung into the piled-up wood and the cry of triumph which went up as the flames burst forth.

We used to watch people dancing round the fire. No one attempted to leap over while we were there. I sometimes wondered whether they did when my father was no longer watching.

About half an hour after midnight we would drive home.

“I hope they’ll be home for Midsummer’s Eve,” I said to Jacco.

We had ridden out to the moors and were lying in the rough grass sheltered by a boulder.

He put on his bravado look. “If not we’ll go by ourselves. We can ride out.”

“What! At midnight!”

“Afraid?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why not?”

I realized that he had just thought of that and no doubt said it hastily; now his jaw was set and that indicated determination.

“We’re not supposed to,” I reminded him.

“Who said so?”

“Mama … Papa …”

“They’re not here to say. We haven’t been
told
not to.”

“No. Because nobody thought of it.”

“If you’re afraid to come I’ll go by myself.”

“If you go I’m going with you.”

He plucked a blade of grass and started to chew on it. I could see he was already making plans for Midsummer’s Eve.

Thinking of it brought Mother Ginny to mind. I said: “Jacco, do you believe Mother Ginny is a real witch?”

“I expect so.”

“Do you think she is ill-wishing people here?”

“She could be.”

“There was the mare and Mrs. Cherry’s baby and everything going wrong. I’d like to know.”

He agreed that he would too.

“They are all getting scared,” he said. “I heard Bob Gill telling young Jack Barker not to forget to leave a didjan for the knackers before he went down the mine. It’s Jack’s first week there and he looked really scared.”

“Rolf says they’re scared because theirs is a dangerous job. Like the fishermen. They never know when something awful will happen underground or when the sea will turn rough.”

Jacco was silent, still brooding on our coming adventure. “We’ll have to be careful,” he said. “You don’t want Miss Caster to interfere.”

I nodded. Then I said: “It’s time for tea.”

“Let’s go.”

We mounted our horses and left the moor behind us. As we came down to the harbour we were immediately aware that there was more than the usual activity.

People all seemed to be talking at once.

“What’s happened?” called Jacco.

I was always interested in the manner in which the people treated Jacco. He was only a boy—two years older than I was in fact—but he was the heir of Cador and would be the squire one day. They wavered between contempt for his youth and respect for the power which would one day be his.

Some of them looked away but Jeff Mills said to him: “There be trouble with one of the boats, Master Jacco.”

“What trouble?”

“Her started letting in water seemingly. They had to rescue her crew.”

“Are they all safe?”

“Aye. But boat be lost. This will be real bad luck for the Poldeans.”

“My father will be home soon.”

“Oh aye. Reckon he’ll see to it. That’s what I do tell Jim Poldean.”

Jacco turned to me. “Come on. There’s nothing we can do.”

“It’s odd,” I said. “We were talking about the dangers of the sea only a little while ago.”

“Just think. They’ve lost their boat. That’s their living.”

“But our father will help them to get a new one,” I said complacently. I was very proud of him and especially at times like this when I saw how much people relied on him.

We were late for tea which did not please Miss Caster or Mrs. Penlock.

“These lardy cakes should be eaten hot from the oven,” said Mrs. Penlock.

I explained that we were late because when we had come to the quay there were crowds there.