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

she had cooked and dished up in

other days. But, except for a few small innovations, such as a regular

Sunday joint, roasted before the fire if no oven were available, and an

Irish stew once in the week, they mostly reverted to the old hamlet

dishes and style of cooking them. The square of bacon was cut, the

roly-poly made, and the black cooking-pot was slung over the fire at

four o’clock; for wages still stood at ten shillings a week and they

knew that their mothers’ way was the only way to nourish their husbands

and children on so small a sum.

 

In decorating their homes and managing their housework, they were able

to let themselves go a little more. There were fancy touches, hitherto

unknown in the hamlet. Cosy corners were built of old boxes and covered

with cretonne; gridirons were covered with pink wool and tinsel and hung

up to serve as letter racks; Japanese fans appeared above picture frames

and window curtains were tied back with ribbon bows. Blue or pink ribbon

bows figured largely in these new decorative schemes. There were bows on

the curtains, on the corners of cushion covers, on the cloth that

covered the chest of drawers, and sometimes even on photograph frames.

Some of the older men used to say that one bride, an outstanding example

of the new refinement, had actually put blue ribbon bows on the handle

of her bedroom utensil. Another joke concerned the vase of flowers the

same girl placed on her table at mealtimes. Her father-in-law, it was

said, being entertained to tea at the new home, exclaimed, ‘Hemmed if

I’ve ever heard of eatin’ flowers before!’ and the mother-in-law passed

the vase to her son, saying, ‘Here, Georgie. Have a mouthful of sweet

peas.’ But the brides only laughed and tossed their heads at such

ignorance. The old hamlet ways were all very well, some of them; but

they had seen the world and knew how things were done. It was their day

now.

 

Changing ideas in the outer world were also reflected in the

relationship between husband and wife. Marriage was becoming more of a

partnership. The man of the house was no longer absolved of all further

responsibility when he had brought his week’s wages home; he was made to

feel that he had an interest in the management of the home and the

bringing up of the children. A good, steady husband who could be

depended upon was encouraged to keep part of his wages, out of which he

paid the rent, bought the pig’s food, and often the family footwear. He

would chop the wood, sweep the path and fetch water from the well.

 

‘So you be takin’ a turn at ‘ooman’s work?’ the older men would say

teasingly, and the older women had plenty to say about the lazy,

good-for-nothing wenches of these days; but the good example was not

lost; the better-natured among the older men began to do odd jobs about

their homes, and though, at first, their wives would tell them to ‘keep

out o’ th’ road’, and say that they could do it themselves in half the

time, they soon learned to appreciate, then to expect it.

 

Then the young wives, unused to never having a penny of their own and

sorely tried by their straitened housekeeping, began to look round for

some way of adding to the family income. One, with the remains of her

savings, bought a few fowls and fowl-houses and sold the eggs to the

grocer in the market town. Another who was clever with her needle made

frocks for the servants at the neighbouring farmhouses; another left

her only child with her mother and did the Rectory charring twice a

week. The old country tradition of self-help was reviving; but, although

there was a little extra money and there were fewer mouths to feed, the

income was still woefully inadequate. Whichever way the young housewife

turned, she was, as she said, ‘up against it’. ‘If only we had more

money!’ was still the cry.

 

Early in the ‘nineties some measure of relief came, for then the weekly

wage was raised to fifteen shillings; but rising prices and new

requirements soon absorbed this rise and it took a world war to obtain

for them anything like a living wage.

XI

School

 

School began at nine o’clock, but the hamlet children set out on their

mile-and-a-half walk there as soon as possible after their seven o’clock

breakfast, partly because they liked plenty of time to play on the road

and partly because their mothers wanted them out of the way before

house-cleaning began.

 

Up the long, straight road they straggled, in twos and threes and in

gangs, their flat, rush dinner-baskets over their shoulders and their

shabby little coats on their arms against rain. In cold weather some of

them carried two hot potatoes which had been in the oven, or in the

ashes, all night, to warm their hands on the way and to serve as a light

lunch on arrival.

 

They were strong, lusty children, let loose from control; and there was

plenty of shouting, quarrelling, and often fighting among them. In more

peaceful moments they would squat in the dust of the road and play

marbles, or sit on a stone heap and play dibs with pebbles, or climb

into the hedges after birds’ nests or blackberries, or to pull long

trails of bryony to wreathe round their hats. In winter they would slide

on the ice on the puddles, or make snowballs—soft ones for their

friends, and hard ones with a stone inside for their enemies.

 

After the first mile or so the dinner-baskets would be raided; or they

would creep through the bars of the padlocked field gates for turnips to

pare with the teeth and munch, or for handfuls of green pea shucks, or

ears of wheat, to rub out the sweet, milky grain between the hands and

devour. In spring they ate the young green from the hawthorn hedges,

which they called ‘bread and cheese’, and sorrel leaves from the

wayside, which they called ‘sour grass’, and in autumn there was an

abundance of haws and blackberries and sloes and crabapples for them to

feast upon. There was always something to eat, and they ate, not so much

because they were hungry as from habit and relish of the wild food.

 

At that early hour there was little traffic upon the road. Sometimes, in

winter, the children would hear the pounding of galloping hoofs and a

string of hunters, blanketed up to the ears and ridden and led by

grooms, would loom up out of the mist and thunder past on the grass

verges. At other times the steady tramp and jingle of the teams going

afield would approach, and, as they passed, fathers would pretend to

flick their offspring with whips, saying, ‘There! that’s for that time

you deserved it an’ didn’t get it’; while elder brothers, themselves at

school only a few months before, would look patronizingly down from the

horses’ backs and call: ‘Get out o’ th’ way, you kids!’

 

Going home in the afternoon there was more to be seen. A farmer’s gig,

on the way home from market, would stir up the dust; or the miller’s van

or the brewer’s dray, drawn by four immense, hairy-legged, satin-backed

carthorses. More exciting was the rare sight of Squire Harrison’s

four-in-hand, with ladies in bright, summer dresses, like a garden of

flowers, on the top of the coach, and Squire himself, pink-cheeked and

white-hatted, handling the four greys. When the four-in-hand passed, the

children drew back and saluted, the Squire would gravely touch the brim

of his hat with his whip, and the ladies would lean from their high

seats to smile on the curtseying children.

 

A more familiar sight was the lady on a white horse who rode slowly on

the same grass verge in the same direction every Monday and Thursday. It

was whispered among the children that she was engaged to a farmer living

at a distance, and that they met half-way between their two homes. If

so, it must have been a long engagement, for she rode past at exactly

the same hour twice a week throughout Laura’s schooldays, her face

getting whiter and her figure getting fuller and her old white horse

also putting on weight.

 

It has been said that every child is born a little savage and has to be

civilized. The process of civilization had not gone very far with some

of the hamlet children; although one civilization had them in hand at

home and another at school, they were able to throw off both on the road

between the two places and revert to a state of Nature. A favourite

amusement with these was to fall in a body upon some unoffending

companion, usually a small girl in a clean frock, and to ‘run her’, as

they called it. This meant chasing her until they caught her, then

dragging her down and sitting upon her, tearing her clothes, smudging

her face, and tousling her hair in the process. She might scream and cry

and say she would ‘tell on’ them; they took no notice until, tiring of

the sport, they would run whooping off, leaving her sobbing and

exhausted.

 

The persecuted one never ‘told on’ them, even when reproved by the

schoolmistress for her dishevelled condition, for she knew that, if she

had, there would have been a worse ‘running’ to endure on the way home,

and one that went to the tune of:

 

Tell-tale tit!

Cut her tongue a-slit,

And every little puppy-dog shall have a little bit!

 

It was no good telling the mothers either, for it was the rule of the

hamlet never to interfere in the children’s quarrels. ‘Let ‘em fight it

out among theirselves,’ the women would say; and if a child complained

the only response would be: ‘You must’ve been doin’ summat to them. If

you’d’ve left them alone, they’d’ve left you alone; so don’t come

bringing your tales home to me!’ It was harsh schooling; but the

majority seemed to thrive upon it, and the few quieter and more

sensitive children soon learned either to start early and get to school

first, or to linger behind, dipping under bushes and lurking inside

field gates until the main body had passed.

 

When Edmund was about to start school, Laura was afraid for him. He was

such a quiet, gentle little boy, inclined to sit gazing into space,

thinking his own thoughts and dreaming his own dreams. What would he do

among the rough, noisy crowd? In imagination she saw him struggling in

the dust with the runners sitting on his small, slender body, while she

stood by, powerless to help.

 

At first she took him to school by a field path, a mile or more round;

but bad weather and growing crops soon put an end to that and the day

came when they had to take the road with the other children. But, beyond

snatching his cap and flinging it into the hedge as they passed, the

bigger boys paid no attention to him, while the younger ones were

definitely friendly, especially when he invited them to have a blow each

on the whistle which hung on a white cord from the neck of his sailor

suit. They accepted him, in fact, as one of themselves, allowing him to

join in their games and saluting him with a grunted ‘Hello, Ted,’ when

they passed.

 

When the clash came at last and a quarrel arose, and Laura, looking

back, saw Edmund in the thick of a struggling group and heard his voice

shouting loudly and rudely, not gentle at all, ‘I shan’t! I won’t! Stop

it, I