The Ballad of John Clare (21 page)

“Whoaaa!”

The Bullocks set off at a trot, drawing their rattling burden through the village street, shouting and whooping with the Witches dancing and staggering alongside waving their besoms and ladles in the air. And Richard Royce followed behind, waving his whip and swearing with drunken abandon at any face he recognised: elderly spinsters, farmers or their wives, parson, pauper, constable.

All the world is turned upside down this one day of the year.

It’s a day when doors are locked and bolted and few venture out into the streets. When those waiting in their houses hear a knocking at their doors they will pull back the pins and give ale or bread and cheese, for they know well enough that there’s a penalty to be paid if the Plough Team isn’t kept happy. Shoe scrapers will be pulled up. Gate posts will be pulled out. Even it has been known for a share to be fitted to the plough and a front lawn churned and turned over as though it was a field.

Yesterday was the same as any. All but the young stayed indoors. All decency and decorum disappeared in a rough, drunken circus of Bullocks and Witches, with Richard Royce like the Devil himself whipping his imps to mischief. Anyone who strayed from home on any errand was chased the length of the street and smeared with grease from the ladles. Any who wandered too close to the Bullocks was charged. Only the children ventured freely abroad, pelting the team with snow-balls and wearing their grease marks proudly like battle scars. The air was full of their hoarse, shrill shouting and the roaring of the Ploughboys.

By the time morning turned to afternoon the Plough Bullocks were so drunk they could barely stand. They stopped at the Bluebell, leaving the plough in the street outside, and spent their pennies on pies that had been baked in expectation of their visit.

As they were eating and warming themselves there came a shouting from outside. A snowball smashed against the window and cracked the glass. Little Tom Dolby came running into the inn, his face and clothes smeared with grease and soot. He was dancing from foot to foot with outrage and excitement:

“It’s the Glinton Ploughboys. It’s the bloody Glinton boys! They’ve took your plough!”

Richard Royce stuffed the last of his pie into his mouth. He bellowed:

“Fuckers!”

He ran outside with all the Helpston Bullocks and Witches behind him and there followed such a battle in Heath Road, such a hurling of snowballs, such a wrestling and fist-fighting, such a smearing of grease, such a shouting of profanities that even the stout-hearted were obliged to sit behind their locked doors with fingers to their ears, resolved, as ever, to draw up a petition that would put an end to these Plough Monday antics for good and all.

By the time honour had been restored and the Helpston Plough Bullocks were back in their team with their Ploughman behind them between his stilts, and the Glinton Ploughboys staggering home shouting insults over their shoulders, the afternoon was darkening to evening. A thin scattering of snowflakes was fluttering down from the heavens. They found themselves, with no very clear idea of how they had got there, in John Close’s yard.

*******

All through the Christmas season Betsy Jackson has worked in the Close’s kitchen, sweating over the roasting, the baking, the steaming, the broiling of all that was served upstairs at their table. This weekend past they’ve given her three days off to go home and see her people in Stamford. Early on Saturday morning she mounted the coach, handsome in her starched cottons, with baskets of pastries and pies on either arm.

On Monday afternoon she returned. She found a lift to Helpston in a tradesman’s cart. As dusk settled she made her way to John Close’s farm with her empty baskets. As she drew close she heard the shouting of Richard Royce and the Plough Bullocks. Knowing which day it was and not wanting her best cottons and shawl to be smeared with sooty grease from a Witch’s ladle, she followed the fence and then walked behind the stables so that she could slip un-noticed through the kitchen door.

Out in the yard the Plough-boys had drunk John Close’s ale. It was the last call of the day. The Bullocks put down their pole and Richard Royce stepped out from between the stilts. He put his hands to his mouth and bellowed up at the house:

“Give us a bloody rope will ye!”

Inside the drawing room Mr and Mrs Close were sitting with their two daughters. Mrs Close lifted her fingers to her ears:

“Oh that horrid man, however did he get chosen as King of the Harvest.”

“Because,” said John Close, “he’ll do twice the work of any other. He’s strong as an ox. No one can match him.”

He called down to the kitchen:

“Give them a length of cart-rope!”

Mrs Close shuddered as though all her sensibilities had been offended.

Outside in the yard Richard Royce was enjoying himself.

“We’ll finish the day with a tug o’ war! Witches against Bullocks.”

A rope was thrown out into the snowy yard.

“Come on! Stand to!”

Befuddled with John Close’s strong ale, the Bullocks staggered to one end of the rope and lifted it. At the other end the Witches were throwing down besoms and ladles and conferring, there was a shout of laughter. Then they lifted their end.

Richard Royce unfastened the handkerchief from his throat and tied it to the middle of the rope. He scraped two lines into the snow with his heel.

“There …pull it across your line and you’ve won.”

He raised his arm:

“Take the strain!”

The rope tightened between the two teams.

“Heave!”

The tug began. Iron-shod heels dug through the snow into the frozen muck of the yard below. Every man was leaning his weight against the other team, but the handkerchief was moving slow and steady towards the Witch’s line.

Richard Royce turned to the Bullocks:

“Heave you useless sods!”

The handkerchief was almost over the line when Richard seized the rope and joined the Bullocks. He leaned backwards and grunted. The handkerchief began to move the other way. The Witches were being pulled forwards and slowly, inch by inch, the handkerchief drew close to the Bullocks’ line.

“Heave …heave …heave …”

The team was working to Richard’s rhythm.

Then Jem Johnson whistled and all the Witches opened their hands and let go of the rope.

The Bullocks staggered backwards across the yard. Richard Royce crashed into the iron pump and fell senseless to the ground. The others collapsed in drunken heaps. The Witches, laughing, pelted them with snowballs.

John Clare, holding his balance longer than most, was loosed like a stone from a sling. He staggered backwards across the yard into the shadows by the stable wall.

There was a woman’s voice:

“Careful!”

Then he was aware of colliding with something and falling into a softness that was warmer than snow. He was on his back, laughing, and tangled up with another. His head was against the stiff cotton of a woman’s lap. He opened his eyes and looked up at her.

Betsy Jackson had pulled herself up into a sitting position, her baskets half buried in the snow to either side of her. She peered down into the Plough-Bullock’s face, smeared with soot and grease, and in the moment she would have pushed him aside and cursed him for his drunken antics she recognised him.

“John Clare!”

Before John had time to answer her lips were soft and warm against his mouth.

“How does that feel John?”

John was filled with a drunkard’s oblivion to all but the sensation of the moment. He smiled up at her and she kissed him again, loosening the buttons of her coat and blouse and lifting his hand to one of her breasts. John could feel her nipple between his fingers. She recoiled and then relaxed at the sudden coldness of his touch. She kissed him again, more urgent, and John was lost to all but the prompting of his blood and the sweetness of sensation … for he had never run his hand across a woman’s naked skin before. She whispered:

“Come with me!”

She scrambled to her feet, took his hand and pulled him upright.

“This way.”

Unseen by any she pushed open the door of the stable. They went inside. It was dark. The air was full of the sweet, musky smell of horses and hay, and the sound of snorting and the scraping of hooves against the stone floor. She led him to the corner of the stable where some coarse woollen blankets had been thrown across a heap of hay. She threw herself down onto them.

“John …”

She pulled his hand and he fell down against her. Their lips met again. As they kissed she reached down and unbuckled his belt. She reached inside.

“How does that feel, John Clare?”

She did not need to hear his answer for she could feel in her hand how he wanted her now. With her other hand she pushed his fingers against her breast and for a long moment their mouths were pressed together, drinking thirstily and gasping against each other.

Then she hitched her petticoats up to her waist and drew him atop of her.

“John …”

But he silenced her mouth with his kisses, and for that little while that seems to be both an eternity and but a few short heartbeats they clung to one another as though all life depended upon it, as though all else before and after was lost in some faint mist that could only be dispelled by the quickness of their breath. And then with a sudden shudder and a cry she lifted her knees and drew him to her, and he lowered his mouth to her neck and folded against her, and she held him in her arms like a child.

Outside the Helpston Ploughboys were still shouting. Betsy lay back under John’s weight and listened. As time passed the voices began to grow fainter. One by one they were leaving the farmyard and making their way home through the snow. John had fallen asleep. She eased him gently onto his side and pulled away from him. She folded a blanket over him. She climbed down from the hay-pile and brushed down her petticoat and gown. She buttoned up her blouse and coat. She made her way across the stable and pushed open the door. The night air was cold against her face. She picked up her two baskets and shook out the snow. The last of the Ploughboys was staggering out of the yard. She crossed quietly to the kitchen door, lifted the latch and pushed it open.

Elizabeth Close was standing in front of the fire pouring hot water from the kettle into a china pot.

“Oh Betsy, good, you’re back at last …”

Then she gasped:

“Oh Betsy! Those horrid Plough Witches! They have smeared your face all over with their awful filth.”

She put down the pot, poured hot water onto a cloth, ran across and dabbed Betsy’s cheeks with it.

“There should be a law! Mother says so and I agree with her. It is a barbarous custom.”

Betsy sat down on one of the wooden kitchen stools. Her body felt alive with a sleepy, triumphant song. She enjoyed the busy sensation of the cloth against her face. She smiled:

“’Tis an old custom, Miss Elizabeth …and I have never seen any great harm in it.”

Snow has given way to rain again and everywhere is mud. In the fields the men at their ploughs, or hedging and ditching, curse the cold wet that lashes their faces and the cloying mud that clogs their boots and drags them to a standstill. The shepherds set their backs to the wind as the winter lambing begins. The enclosure teams, at their fence-setting and stone-breaking, listen for the chiming of the church clock and count the hours until dusk when spades and hammers can be dropped and forgotten. The women, hurrying from dairy to coop, from kitchen to midden, lift their gowns and scold the wet that soaks their feet and the puddles that stain and bedraggle the hems of their petticoats. They curse the splashing horses and carts that throw up their stinking mud from the street. Only the ducks and geese in the yard-ponds rejoice at the wetness of the world.

Under the trees in the skirts of Oxey Wood and Royce Wood and beneath the blackthorn bushes on the commons the nodding snowdrops are come, that with the first crying lambs signal that the winter season is beginning to slacken its hold.

John Clare has told no soul his secret. In the weeks since Plough Monday maybe those who know him best – Dick Turnill, Parker, Ann, Sophie, Sam Billings, Mary Joyce – maybe they have noticed some slight, subtle shift, some new turbulence in his inner weather that they cannot put a name to.

He cannot lie down to sleep at night without his thoughts turning to Betsy. He knows it would take only a word, a sign, a note slipped into her hand after the village band had played, and she would meet him, and all that had happened before would happen again. His body aches with desire for her, every drop of blood urges him to creep out of the cottage to John Close's yard and throw a stone at her window, if only he knew which window it was.

And then he remembers Mary.

Then he remembers Mary Joyce and his heart wakes up and his head sinks back against the pillow. He remembers her in every detail: her lovely, wild spirit; her tender, funny, kindly ways; her trusting, soft, bold kisses. And he hates every part of himself that could entertain the thought of betraying her.

Every Sunday John and Betsy have played together in the church band, without any word or glance being exchanged between them. As John is often silent and will stare at his boots rather than speak his thoughts, little notice is taken of his reticence by the rest of the band. And Betsy does not let John's silences keep her tongue from its cheerful chatter that gives away little of her thought.

On the third Sunday of this new year of our Lord that is 1812 she lingered in the church porch and waited for John, who himself had hung behind, hoping she was gone ahead. As he came out of the church door she called to him:

“John.”

He blushed and carried on walking towards the church gate, his fiddle under his arm. She stood and walked swiftly to catch him up. The congregation was dispersed, the parson was still in church.

“John …Have you forgot me?”

The echo of his words to Mary when first he'd seen her at Snow Common made him blush deeper. They also served to harden his resolve.