Lark Rise, Flora Thompson [most life changing books .TXT] 📗

>politely from son to son. Unless a farmer’s gig or a tradesman’s trap

happened to pull up at the inn gate during the performance, the beer was

their only reward for the entertainment. They did not take their

collecting bag round to the women and children who had gathered to

listen, for they knew from experience there were no stray halfpence for

German bands in a farm labourer’s wife’s pocket. So after shaking the

saliva from their brass instruments, they bowed, clicked their heels,

and marched off up the dusty road to the mother village. It was good

beer and they were hot and thirsty, so perhaps the reward was

sufficient.

 

The only other travelling entertainment which came there was known as

the dancing dolls. These, alas! did not dance in the open, but in a

cottage to which a penny admission was charged, and, as the cottage was

not of the cleanest, Laura was never allowed to witness this

performance. Those who had seen them said the dolls were on wires and

that the man who exhibited them said the words for them, so it must have

been some kind of marionette show.

 

Once, very early in their school life, the end house children met a man

with a dancing bear. The man, apparently a foreigner, saw that the

children were afraid to pass, and, to reassure them, set his bear

dancing. With a long pole balanced across its front paws, it waltzed

heavily to the tune hummed by its master, then shouldered the pole and

did exercises at his word of command. The elders of the hamlet said the

bear had appeared there at long intervals for many years; but that was

its last appearance. Poor Bruin, with his mangy fur and hot, tainted

breath, was never seen in those parts again. Perhaps he died of old age.

 

The greatest thrill of all and the one longest remembered in the hamlet,

was provided by the visit of a cheap-jack about half-way through the

decade. One autumn evening, just before dusk, he arrived with his

cartload of crockery and tinware and set out his stock on the grass by

the roadside before a back-cloth painted with icebergs and penguins and

polar bears. Soon he had his naphtha lamps flaring and was clashing his

basins together like bells and calling: ‘Come buy! Come buy!’

 

It was the first visit of a cheap-jack to the hamlet and there was great

excitement. Men, women, and children rushed from the houses and crowded

around in the circle of light to listen to his patter and admire his

wares. And what bargains he had! The tea-service decorated with fat,

full-blown pink roses: twenty-one pieces and not a flaw in any one of

them. The Queen had purchased its fellow set for Buckingham Palace, it

appeared. The teapots, the trays, the nests of dishes and basins, and

the set of bedroom china which made every one blush when he selected the

most intimate utensil to rap with his knuckles to show it rang true.

 

‘Two bob!’ he shouted. ‘Only two bob for this handsome set of jugs.

Here’s one for your beer and one for your milk and another in case you

break one of the other two. Nobody willing to speculate? Then what about

this here set of trays, straight from Japan and the peonies

hand-painted; or this lot of basins, exact replicas of the one the

Princess of Wales supped her gruel from when Prince George was born. Why

damme, they cost me more n’r that. I could get twice the price I’m

asking in Banbury to-morrow; but I’ll give ‘em to you, for you can’t

call it selling, because I like your faces and me load’s heavy for me

‘oss. Alarming bargains! Tremendous sacrifices! Come buy! Come buy!’

 

But there were scarcely any offers. A woman here and there would give

threepence for a large pudding-basin or sixpence for a tin saucepan. The

children’s mother bought a penny nutmeg-grater and a set of wooden

spoons for cooking; the innkeeper’s wife ran to a dozen tumblers and a

ball of string; then there was a long pause during which the vendor kept

up a continual stream of jokes and anecdotes which sent his audience

into fits of laughter. Once he broke into song:

 

There was a man in his garden walked

And cut his throat with a lump of chalk;

His wife, she knew not what she did,

She strangled herself with the saucepan lid.

There was a man and a fine young fellow

Who poisoned himself with an umbrella.

Even Joey in his cradle shot himself dead with a silver ladle.

When you hear this horrible tale

It makes your faces all turn pale,

Your eyes go green, you’re overcome,

So tweedle, tweedle, tweedle twum.

 

All very fine entertainment; but it brought him no money and he began to

suspect that he would draw a blank at Lark Rise.

 

‘Never let it be said,’ he implored, ‘that this is the

poverty-strickenist place on God’s earth. Buy something, if only for

your own credit’s sake. Here!’ snatching up a pile of odd plates. ‘Good

dinner-plates for you. Every one a left-over from a first-class service.

Buy one of these and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’re

eating off the same ware as lords and dukes. Only three-halfpence each.

Who’ll buy? Who’ll buy?’

 

There was a scramble for the plates, for nearly every one could muster

three-halfpence; but every time anything more costly was produced there

was dead silence. Some of the women began to feel uncomfortable. ‘Don’t

be poor and look poor, too’ was their motto, and here they were looking

poor indeed, for who, with money in their pockets, could have resisted

such wonderful bargains.

 

Then the glorious unexpected happened. The man had brought the pink rose

tea-service forward again and was handing one of the cups round. ‘You

just look at the light through it—and you, ma’am—and you. Ain’t it

lovely china, thin as an eggshell, practically transparent, and with

every one of them roses hand-painted with a brush? You can’t let a set

like that go out of the place, now can you? I can see all your mouths

a-watering. You run home, my dears, and bring out them stockings from

under the mattress and the first one to get back shall have it for

twelve bob.’

 

Each woman in turn handled the cup lovingly, then shook her head and

passed it on. None of them had stockings of savings hidden away. But,

just as the man was receiving back the cup, a little roughly, for he was

getting discouraged, a voice spoke up in the background.

 

‘How much did you say, mister? Twelve bob? I’ll give you ten.’ It was

John Price, who, only the night before, had returned from his soldiering

in India. A very ordinary sort of chap at most times, for he was a

teetotaller and stood no drinks at the inn, as a returned soldier should

have done; but now, suddenly, he became important. All eyes were upon

him. The credit of the hamlet was at stake.

 

‘I’ll give you ten bob.’

 

‘Can’t be done, matey. Cost me more nor that. But, look see, tell you

what I will do. You give me eleven and six and I’ll throw in this

handsome silver-gilt vase for your mantelpiece.’

 

‘Done!’ The bargain was concluded; the money changed hands, and the

reputation of the hamlet was rehabilitated. Willing hands helped John

carry the tea-service to his home. Indeed, it was considered an honour

to be trusted with a cup. His bride-to-be was still away in service and

little knew how many were envying her that night. To have such a lovely

service awaiting her return, no cracked or odd pieces, every piece alike

and all so lovely; lucky, lucky, Lucy! But though they could not help

envying her a little, they shared in her triumph, for surely such a

purchase must shed a glow of reflected prosperity on the whole hamlet.

Though it might not be convenient to all of them to buy very much on

that particular night, the man must see there was a bit of money in the

place and folks who knew how to spend it.

 

What came after was anti-climax, and yet very pleasant from the end

house children’s point of view. A set of pretty little dishes, suitable

for holding jam, butter or fruit, according to size, was being

exhibited. The price had gone down from half a crown to a shilling

without response, when once more a voice spoke up in the background.

‘Pass them over, please. I expect my wife can find a use for them,’ and,

behold, it was the children’s father who had halted on his way home from

work to see what the lights and the crowd meant.

 

Perhaps in all the man took a pound that night, which was fifteen

shillings more than any one could have foretold; but it was not

sufficient to tempt him to come again, and thenceforth the year was

dated as ‘that time the cheap-jack came’.

VIII

’The Box’

 

A familiar sight at Lark Rise was that of a young girl—any young girl

between ten and thirteen—pushing one of the two perambulators in the

hamlet round the Rise with a smallish-sized, oak clothes box with black

handles lashed to the seat. Those not already informed who met her would

read the signs and inquire: ‘How is your mother’—or your sister or your

aunt—‘getting on?’ and she, well-primed, would answer demurely, ‘As

well as can be expected under the circumstances, thank you, Mrs.

So-and-So.’

 

She had been to the Rectory for THE BOX, which appeared almost

simultaneously with every new baby, and a gruelling time she would have

had pushing her load the mile and a half and, at the same time, keeping

it from slipping from its narrow perch. But, very soon, such small

drawbacks would be forgotten in the pleasure of seeing it unpacked. It

contained half a dozen of everything—tiny shirts, swathes, long flannel

barrows, nighties, and napkins, made, kept in repair, and lent for every

confinement by the clergyman’s daughter. In addition to the loaned

clothes, it would contain, as a gift, packets of tea and sugar and a tin

of patent groats for making gruel.

 

The box was a popular institution. Any farm labourer’s wife, whether she

attended church or not, was made welcome to the loan of it. It appeared

in most of the cottages at regular intervals and seemed to the children

as much a feature of family life as the new babies. It was so constantly

in demand that it had to have an understudy, known as ‘the second-best

box’, altogether inferior, which fell to the lot of those careless

matrons who had neglected to bespeak the loan the moment they ‘knew

their luck again’.

 

The boxes were supposed to be returned at the end of a month with the

clothes freshly laundered; but, if no one else required them, an

extension could be had, and many mothers were allowed to keep their box

until, at six or seven weeks old, the baby was big enough to be put into

short clothes; so saving them the cost of preparing a layette other than

the one set of clothes got ready for the infant’s arrival. Even that

might be borrowed. The stock at the end house was several times called

for in what, by a polite fiction, passed as an emergency. Other women

had their own baby clothes, beautifully sewn and laundered; but there

was scarcely one who did not require the clothes in the box to

supplement them. For some reason or other, the box was never allowed to

go out until the baby had arrived.

 

The little