A Country Marriage (24 page)

‘Aye, most likely they were.’

‘One more,’ Ellen announced, ‘and then I’m done giving voice to such malcontents.’

‘Is there anything from around here?’ he asked, anxious not to miss out on something involving anyone he knew.

‘I most certainly hope not,’ she announced, scanning the columns again. ‘Here, this is close enough, though.
On
Friday
evening
a
barn
and
two
hundred
trusses
of
straw
on
the
farm
of
Mr
Gearey
at
Priorswell
were
burnt
,
it
being
only
a
fortnight
since
he
had
a
store
of
faggots
destroyed
by
similar
means
.’ At the mention of faggots, George burst into laughter. ‘Well I’m glad you find such wanton destruction amusing,’ Ellen said, snatching up the paper and screwing it into a ball.

‘Well, you got to admit,’ George replied, trying to straighten his face, ‘that even in the middle of the night, ʼtis hard to mistake a few bundles of faggots for two hundred trusses of straw, since I can’t believe anyone would risk life and limb to set light to a pile of firewood!’

‘No,’ Ellen agreed with a reluctant smile, ‘I suppose it do seem a bit daft, don’t it?’

*

By the time Saturday morning dawned lightly overcast again, the harvest had made good progress.

‘Well, I reckon to be done by four o’clock, if not afore,’ Thomas Strong announced after breakfast had been taken.

‘Then in that case, later, when they’ve finished nammet and we’ve cleared up afterwards, what say we all go down the field and lend a hand with the last of the sheaves?’ Ellen suggested to Mary and Lottie working alongside her.

‘I ain’t ever been part of a harvest before,’ Mary said. ‘It looks like real hard work.’

‘It is. But if I show you how to tie a sheaf, then we’ll at least feel as though we’ve done something towards it.’

‘Ain’t we done that here?’ she wanted to know. It certainly felt as though they had been working twice as hard as usual.

‘Course we have. But working in the field feels different, somehow. It’s hard to explain but come down with me later and you’ll see for yourself.’

‘An’ there was me thinking that work was work.’

But later that afternoon, at Ellen’s pressing, she accompanied the others down the lane towards Alder Field and the sound of singing. Seeing the others lifting the hems of their skirts she did likewise and followed them as they picked their way over the sharp stubble of Bottom Field – where the sheaves had long since been carted to the yardstack – to reach Alder Field, where it was straight away apparent that only a small patch of uncut wheat now remained. There, under the watchful eye of Thomas leaning on his scythe, Tom and Will were still reaping while the others were loading sheaves onto the cart, their singing loud and boisterous,

‘
We cheated the parson, we’ll cheat him again;

For why should the vicar have one in ten?

One in ten! One in ten!

For why should the vicar have one in ten?
’

‘This is the best part of the whole harvest,’ Ellen shouted above the song’s rollicking chorus, indicating that they should join the row of village girls – their hair tied back in colourful scarves and their skirts engrained with dust – where she bent down to gather a handful of the loose cut wheat. ‘This makes a binder,’ she said, and showed her how to twist the stems together into a sort of rope. ‘Now, gather me up an armful.’ She glanced at the other women for some idea of how much to gather but as she bent down and scooped it up, the smooth stalks seemed to slip in all directions and slide back to the ground. Frowning at her clumsiness, she tried again, faring only slightly better.

‘Oh why ain’t I no good?’ she cried with a despairing laugh, wrestling with her armful of straw.

‘Just needs a bit of practice, that’s all. I wasn’t much good at it either when I first tried but after a while you get the hang of it. Look, watch me,’ she said, bending to gather the straw and then rest it against her body to tie it with the binder. ‘Take it over to that last stook there and we’ll do another.’

As Mary dragged the sheaf across the stubble to where Ellen had gestured, further over she could see Tom and Will standing up and straightening their backs to look at each other over the last remaining stand to be cut.

‘You do it,’ she heard Tom say to his brother. ‘I finished up… last year.’

Panting, Will nodded.

‘Fair enough then.’

Intrigued, she watched as Tom stretched himself upright and arching his chest, called hoarsely across, ‘Ellen! Will’s cuttin’ the sheaf for the doll,’ and as he stood back, a single sweep of his brother’s scythe felled the last stand and the workers encircling him rose up in a cheer.

Making a place for herself among them, she watched, fascinated, as gathering a handful of wheat and kneeling in the straw, Ellen bent, twisted and plaited the stems to produce the shape of the corn maiden peculiar to Summerleas. And when she seemed satisfied with it, she took the twine of Withywind trumpets that Annie was holding out to her and wove it through the stems. And then as Will scrambled to the top of the final cartload to place the doll on the last of the sheaves, another cheer rang out. With Robert coaxing the horse across the field, the laden cart began to rock its way over the stubble, making the small boys clinging precariously to the top laugh and shriek. Ellen was right, she mused, following wearily behind: there was certainly something about the harvest – and since all of that effort could hardly be described as fun, she was also right to say that it was hard to say why.

Up ahead, the dusty helpers were still singing,

‘
Come, Roger and Nell,

Come, Simpkin and Bell,

Each lad with his lass hither come;

With singing and dancing,

And pleasure advancing,

To celebrate harvest home!’

With the song continuing through several verses, she saw the cart eventually turn into the yard and the villagers head in the opposite direction towards home. And then her eyes suddenly fell on a shirtless figure standing at the side of the lane, the curl of a smile on his lips. Francis Troke. Hastily she looked back down, a rush of embarrassment reddening her face as it became apparent that she was the object of his gaze. But when, several paces later, she dared herself to look back up, it was with a confusing mix of relief and disappointment that she found that he was no longer there.

*

‘Well,’ Tom said, leaning on George’s shoulder as they arrived back in the yard, ‘I’m grateful not to be doing
that
again for another year.’

‘Aye, me too,’ George agreed.

‘You’re a proper feeble pair.’ Together, they turned to see their father shaking his head. ‘Just try an’ picture what it was like for me, then. When
I
was your age, we harvested with a
sickle
. We had no scythes and I tell you now that being bent double for four an’ five days or more was
real
hard work.’

‘Aye but like you say,’ Tom replied with a wink that George didn’t miss, ‘we’re weaklings in comparison to the men in your day, Pa.’

Pretending to take a swipe at his eldest son, Thomas stood for a moment, his face thoughtful.

‘Well, howsoever you look at it, it pleases me greatly to see that the outcome’s the same either way and that by the fruits of our labours, tonight we can enjoy a right old randy knowing we’ve another harvest safely in.’

‘Aye, and that’s a lot more than can be said for many,’ George remarked to no one in particular as he father turned back towards the barn.

‘But just think how much
more
there’d be if those bent on lawlessness and destruction didn’t go about burning ricks,’ was his brother’s apparently idle observation.

‘And pray tell me, what would
you
know about it?’ he asked, swivelling towards Tom’s slack-mouthed grin.

‘Enough to see the same as anyone with a mind to, which is that no master in the land is going to give in to menace from mere
labourers
. I mean, stop for a moment and think about it proper, George; masters are masters for a reason and that’s to keep in check those who know no better. And that’s how it
should
be, since the truth of the matter is that these so-called
protestors
are nothing more than thugs, with whom it seems you share a worrying affiliation.’

Oh how he loathed his brother’s pompous attitude!

‘So you don’t count yourself a labourer then?’

‘Me? Not even for one moment, brother. Not even for one moment.’

‘Then you delude yourself, although no, with further thought on the point, you could be right because to be called a labourer would require you to do some work.’

‘Oh wit now, is it? Well I’ll tell you this; even with these… these mythical leaders riding about the countryside whipping up discontent, mere labourers will never succeed in rising up against their betters.’ The force of Tom’s finger jabbing into his shoulder momentarily pushed him off balance, but somehow he resisted the urge to swipe him away. ‘No, when it comes down to it, they’ll have no stomach for it; they may not like it but they
need
their employment
and
their homes far too much to risk losing them. And even if workers like them
weren’t
ten a-penny, their demands still wouldn’t ever be met. It’s not the way of things. It never has been and it ain’t about to change any day soon. And that, George, is because ’tis plainly a case of once a labourer, always a labourer.’

Incensed now that his brother should intend him such a personal slight – especially as they had laboured alongside each other in common endeavour these last four days – his hand shot up from his side – but just as he felt it forming into a fist, he caught sight of his father coming out of the barn.

‘Come on then, get in here you pair of
girls
an’ give your brothers a hand with they trestles,’ he called, apparently oblivious to the animosity that had flared only moments earlier.

*

Back in the kitchen, talk from the women kept returning to their exhaustion, almost as though by voicing their desire for enjoyment, they felt they were tempting fate to deny it them.

‘Oh, what I’d give for a sit down.’

‘Aye, I don’t know so much about dancing; my poor feet’s killing me already.’

‘Mine too. I’m already beyond fit to drop.’

‘Honestly, you lot,’ Hannah interjected, ‘if truth be told, you can none of you wait to get across there and dance until you fall down!’

‘Aye,’ Annie was quick to agree, ‘but tonight that could be a lot sooner than we’d like.’

Anticipation, though, wasn’t confined to the women; in the yard, Tom and Will were lighting pitch-torches, while in the barn, where the lanterns were already aglow, the musicians were warming up with snatches of tunes; and as the villagers who had helped with the harvest started to arrive with their families, their added eagerness seemed to make the excitement almost tangible, shining from every pair of eyes and spilling out from every set of lips.

Standing among them, her satisfaction evident in her stance, Hannah cast her eyes over the tables laid ready with food.

‘Well,’ she remarked to Mary, ‘generous though it seems, it’ll be gone in minutes. But though I say so as one who shouldn’t, I defy anyone to find fault.’

‘It feels like we’ve been baking for days,’ she agreed, ‘but George has told me so much about harvest home that I been looking forward to this for ages.’

‘Aye, fair warms my heart to see the place come alive again,’ she heard Hannah saying with a sigh. ‘There don’t seem so many of the big occasions nowadays, you know, but then maybe ’tis just me gettin’ old. Time plays some cruel tricks with a person’s memory.’

Back indoors, Ellen had already announced that she was too worn out to fuss and bother with changing her clothes but in contrast, Annie and Tabitha had long since disappeared upstairs to wash and dress. For her part, Mary had changed into a clean skirt – although to her mind it looked much like the one she had been wearing all day – and put on the only pretty blouse she possessed. Running her finger along the satiny ribbon at the neckline, she remembered George telling her once that when it shimmered in the light it made her look sweet; and, smiling at the memory, she was just making her way back to the kitchen when she saw Annie coming along the hallway; the sight of such self-assurance bringing her to a sudden halt. Wearing what Mary recognised as the white ruffled blouse from Christmas and the same gold chain about her neck, she was fastening gold-coloured earrings, and as she wafted past, her expression distant, she could hear the rustle of petticoats beneath her skirt. And left standing in a cloud of something that smelled like the scent of roses, she felt her spirits plummet. Why was it that, faced with Annie’s composure, she always felt plain and girlish; like a daughter rather than a wife? Still, she reminded herself, this evening was supposed to be about enjoyment, not about impressing everyone. But even while she was thinking it, she knew there could be no disguising the fact that when it came to womanliness, Annie was always going to make her feel entirely inadequate.