The Ballad of John Clare (28 page)

The woman turned and John saw her face, her round, ruddy good-natured face with its little piggy eyes with their pale lashes. It was Kate Dyball.

His voice gave no indication of his sinking heart.

“Good day.”

He remembered Mary in her yellow gown, her lace cap, her straw hat, her ringlets, her lovely, quick eyes … and as he looked at Kate’s worn, patched cotton he wondered how he could ever have mistaken her.

“Easy …easy Bessie, good girl!”

Farmer Joyce reined the mare to a halt.

John came forward and offered Kate his hand. She took it and stepped down into the lane. She smiled:

“Thank you John.”

Farmer Joyce swung down on the other side. He shouted over the horse:

“I’ve brought Kate to help with the ale and vittles.”

Parson Mossop came forward. He opened his Bible, tapped the iron-shod wheel of the cart with his cane and read the familiar words:

“Blessed shall be the fruit of thy ground and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.”

“Amen,” said the village with one voice and fell upon the food.

John sat down on his own at the edge of the lane. He had but little appetite. Kate was wandering this way and that with two big pewter-banded wooden jugs, refilling pots and tankards. When she had emptied both she came across and sat down beside him, puffing and panting. She drew up her knees and rested her arms upon them.

“Those jugs weigh terrible heavy. I shall have two aching shoulders come tomorrow.”

She sighed.

“Still it’ll be Glinton’s turn next week.”

John turned to her:

“How is Mary?”

Kate looked down at the grass.

“She puts a cheerful face upon the world, John. But she is terrible changed …and there’s not a soul can read her …I reckon only you could do that, and she won’t abide even the sound of your name.”

“Do you know why she didn’t come, Kate?”

“What d’you mean ‘didn’t come’?”

“On Valentines, we’d agreed to meet, and she never came.”

Kate Dyball stood up and stared at John.

“Oh but she did. She did come in her yellow dress and looking as lovely as ever you please …and her father knew nothing of it.”

“No she didn’t! I never clapped eyes on her.”

“Did she not spring out at ye from behind a tomb-stone, for that was her fancy, to hide until the clock had struck the quarter hour and you’d begun to despair of her …and then to jump out and surprise you?”

John got up to his feet. He looked at her as though he’d seen a ghost. He put his hands to his face.

“Oh Kate …”

“And since she come home that day, not a word will she speak, to me or any other, of what happened …”

But John Clare heard no more.

He turned and ran down Maxhams Green Lane, leaving fiddle and bow behind.

His world had fallen away from him, and he had fallen from it. Though all around him the squared fields and hedges, dressed and decked in their spring array, sang out in linnet and lark more constant and true than any churching hymn, his ears and eyes knew only loss. Every hawthorn hedge and fence was become an angel with a blazing sword that would not allow him his Eden. He ran down Torpel Way, he clambered over gates and fences, he passed Snip Green and Round Oak Waters. He ran through Royce’s Wood, and the song in his blood, in his pounding heart and torn breath, was one of self-recriminating sorrow.

*******

In Joyce’s Farm Mary sat in her bed-chamber, her legs hanging over the edge of her quilted counterpane. Her eyes were closed. All her attention was on the chiming of the church clock. She sat and listened to it striking its quarters. She sat so still you could have thought her asleep. From noon through all the divisions of the hour to one o’clock she listened. She listened to the quarter after one, and then the half. When the half hour chime had faded into silence she nodded to herself and slipped down from the bed.

“All is closed and finished now.”

She walked across to the chest of drawers beneath the window.

“’Tis a year to the minute, John Clare, since you struck my eye.”

She pulled open a drawer and lifted the little package tied with string. She could feel the carved bone figures bending to her touch under the cloth, but she did not unwrap them.

“And now your enchantment is broken.”

She pushed open the bedroom door. She stepped quietly down the stairs and made her way out to the garden. She followed the yew hedge to the little wicker garden gate. She pushed it open and went through.

“Here’s where you kissed me first.”

She knelt down on the ground and tugged up a grassy turf with her hand. She dug with her fingers, but the ground was hard and stony. She ran and fetched a trowel. She dug a hole in the ground, throwing the loose soil into a heap. When it was arm deep she dropped the bundle to the bottom of it. The carved bones rattled as they fell. She scraped the earth on top of it and stamped the turf back into place with her foot.

“There. It is finished and you are quite forgot.”

*******

This evening, when all were returned from the Rogation procession, Sam Billings had set his drum in its corner and was laying sticks for a fire, when there came a knocking at the door of Bachelor’s Hall.

“Come in, come in!”

The door opened and Jonathan Burbridge’s thin, bearded face peered into the room.

“’Tis only me, Sam.”

“Ah Jonathan, come in, come in. Sit yourself down.”

Jonathan pulled a chair to the hearthstone.

“Will ye take a mug of ale?”

“Thank you Sam.”

When they were both settled with mugs in hand, Jonathan said:

“I minds when I was ‘prenticed, Sam, to a ship-builder in Lynn.”

“You mean back in the olden days,” said Sam, “before King Charlie Wag lost his noddle.”

Jonathan grinned.

“Before Georgie lost his any-road …when I was little more than a boy …there was this fellow in Lynn by the name of Forby, Tom Forby, who used to carve the figure-heads for the prows. By God he was a craftsman, Sam. He’d take a piece of oak and turn it into a woman …he’d paint them too, and when they was done they’d be pegged in place at the bow of the ship …”

Jonathan took a sup of his ale.

“Anyway, there was this one ship …we’d worked on her for the best part of a year, she was called the Margarita, and Tom Forby fashioned a figure-head for her …”

Jonathan whistled through his teeth.

“You’d only to look at her, Sam, to go hard as a bone. She had a creamy-white bosom as rounded and firm as ripe apples that you longed to reach for. And her hair swept back in ringlets behind her …and her blue eyes and plump cheeks and her lips parted as if to say ‘yes, yes please’.”

“Now, now, Jonathan, easy …”

“It was the first time I fell in love, and I weren’t the only one.”

Jonathan supped again.

“Anyway, Sam, the reason I’m telling you this is that a year ago to the very day we was sitting here, and I was saying I’d a mind to take a wife, and you was acting the fool as ever, and dropped a plank into my lap.”

“Ay, and I near enough had old Mossop reading the banns.”

“Well it ain’t no plank I’m to wed Sam, ‘tis that very figure-head, ‘tis Margarita with the life breathed into her.”

He emptied his mug.

“The first time I set eyes on Betsy Jackson I knew she was familiar, and then it come to me: Margarita. My first sweetheart come to life and breathing before my very eyes.”

Sam Billings clapped Jonathan upon the shoulder and shook him by the hand.

“And now you’re to take her as wife! Well good luck to ye, but it don’t come as a huge surprise Jonathan!”

“Mind, it’s taken me the best part of the year to reel her in Sam. She was awful diffident and demur to start with …but I persevered and today she said she’d have me.”

“Today was it?”

“Ay. I put the question at Langdyke Bush and by Swordy Well she’d said yes. And Mossop’ll start the banns next Sunday.”

“And within the year I warrant you’ll be rocking the cradle! Well Jonathan this calls for a celebration.”

Sam Billings went out of the room. He came back with the piece of broken shelf.

“First of all I reckon we’d better break the news to your jilted sweet-heart.”

He snapped the plank across his knee and threw a piece of it into the fire.

“She was riddled with the worm Jonathan, ye made the right choice!”

Then he pushed his chair back from the hearthstone.

“And if you’d give me a hand just lifting this stone. Ay …push your chair back, and …see that dip beneath the floorboards, if you take hold of it there …and I lift here …one, two, three lift.”

As they lifted the stone Jonathan Burbridge saw for the first time what he had often suspected.

“Sam Billings! For the love of God!”

There was a deep cavity where the hearthstone had been and it was filled with row upon row of dusty bottles.

They propped the stone against the fire-place. Sam reached down and lifted a bottle. He blew away the dust.

“The very best French brandy!”

“Sam I didn’t know you was a …”

“Shhhhh.”

“You old rascal.”

“How else d’ye think I could keep myself watered and fed …”

He patted his belly.

“In these troubled times.”

“You’ve kept it close to your chest!”

Sam put the bottle on the table.

“And how else d’you think Mossop and Close and Bellar and Wright and Joyce and Wormstall spend their guineas and take their succour and solace. Even Robert Smethwick and the Earl of Fitzwilliam have sucked upon these paps and taken their ease …Ay, the carting’s as good a cover as any …Now, if ye’d be kind enough to help me lower the stone we could drink to a long life, a full cradle, a welcoming bed and an end to all sweet liberty …and not give o’er ‘til the bottle is hollow …Oh, and one last thing Jonathan, any word of my little secret and I’ll let it be known across the parish as Mrs Betsy Burbridge was once an acorn.”

*******

Parker and Ann Clare came home carrying John’s fiddle. There was no sign of him in the cottage.

“He’ll be at the Bluebell.”

“Ay, something’s upset him, he’ll be tempering his sorrows with ale again.” Ann sighed. “If only he’d take a trade then his spirits would be lifted …”

“’Twill have been the sight of Joyce and little Kate Dyball …” said Parker, “poor John, I can’t get to the bottom of it …him and Mary seemed so …”

“It’s simple enough by my reckoning,” said Ann, sharp as a blade. “It all comes down to pounds and pennies.”

“No Ann, there’s more to it …but I’m damned if I can unriddle it.”

Sophie came home. They ate their supper. Parker tended his garden until nightfall. Still there was no John.

It was when Sophie climbed the steps for bed that she saw that John’s blankets were gone. She shouted down.

“Come and look. John’s flitted. His bed’s stripped bare.”

They climbed and saw, by the light of the flickering candle, nothing but the flattened straw-stuffed mattress. Ann lifted the lid of his box.

“All his spare clothes are here.”

Sophie seized her father’s arm:

“Should we raise an alarum? Shall I run to Constable Bullimore’s?”

Parker shook his head.

“No, no. Leave him be. He won’t have gone far. John’ll be back soon enough Sophie …and he can fend for himself.”

*******

John had followed the Marholm road to the edge of Hayes Wood. He’d pushed through blackthorn and hazel until he came to his quiet place. He’d crawled through brambles until he found the rotted whitethorn stulps. And, even as Parker and Sophie stared at his stripped bed, he was lying on his back amongst the dead leaves, wrapped up in his blankets, and staring through the quickening branches at the sky as it filled with stars.

All night he lay wakeful and watched until the day broke into song and his hair was wet with dew. He watched as I watch. And all day his watch continued until hunger and thirst got the better of him.

It was night-fall when he rolled up his blankets and crawled back to the road. He brushed away the dead leaves and set off for home.

And now John has climbed the cottage stairs and has fallen into deep sleep at last. And I look down at him in tenderness and remember the time when we was tucked up together and it seemed there was no harm in the world could touch us.

I slip behind his closed lids and find a way through to him.

In his dream he knows me instantly and remembers me, though he does not recognise me, for I am become a young woman with eyes that seem to John to speak more of beauty than the earth inherits. I seem to him to be an angel.

I take him by the hand and together we climb Maple Hill. From the top we look down and there is an immense crowd gathered at Hilly Wood and Swordy Well.

Soldiers on horse-back are exercising and ladies in their finery are gliding this way and that. Drovers are goading their cattle into pens. Gypsies are hawking, fiddlers playing, tradesmen calling out their wares. Milling throngs surge this way and that as though driven by a shared thought, like the shoals of little fishes under Lolham Bridge. Everywhere tents and stalls and diversions glitter with bright promise.

He turns to me and asks:

“Why am I brought here, when all that my heart desires is to be alone and to myself?”

And I reply to him:

“Of all this crowd – it is you shall be remembered.”

And I lead him down and through all the swirling confusion of the Fair. Here is a stall that is selling books. I take him inside and there are shelves and shelves that are stacked with volumes, leather-bound and gilt-lettered.

John follows me, a little reluctant, to the counter where the book-man stands. I lean forwards and whisper into his ear. The book-man turns to John and bows. He stands aside and points with his finger. There, on the shelf behind him, is a row of volumes inscribed with John’s own name. John leans forward, astonished. He reaches and touches them with the tip of his finger.

Then he turns to me …but I am gone and he is awake in his bed with such a strong and happy recollection that he cannot doubt me, though he does not know me for his lost Bessie.