Lark Rise - Flora Thompson (read more books .TXT) 📗

it! She still did a

bit to keep her hand in. One or two old ladies still used it to trim

their shifts, and it was handy to give as presents to such as the

children’s mother; but, as for living by it, no, those days were over.

So it emerged from her talk that there had been a second period in the

hamlet more prosperous than the present. Perhaps the women’s earnings at

lacemaking had helped to tide them over the Hungry ‘Forties, for no one

seemed to remember that time of general hardship in country villages;

but memories were short there, and it may have been that life had always

been such a struggle they had noticed no difference in those lean years.

 

Queenie’s ideal of happiness was to have a pound a week coming in. ‘If I

had a pound a week,’ she would say, ‘I ‘udn’t care if it rained hatchets

and hammers.’ Laura’s mother longed for thirty shillings a week, and

would say, ‘If I could depend on thirty shillings, regular, I could keep

you all so nice and tidy, and keep such a table!’

 

Queenie’s income fell far short of even half of the pound a week she

dreamed of, for her husband, Twister, was what was known in the hamlet

as ‘a slack-twisted sort o’ chap’, one who ‘whatever he died on, ‘uldn’t

kill hisself wi’ hard work’. He was fond of a bit of sport and always

managed to get taken on as a beater at shoots, and took care never to

have a job on hand when hounds were meeting in the neighbourhood. Best

of all, he liked to go round with one of the brewers’ travellers,

perched precariously on the back seat of the high dogcart, to open and

shut the gates they had to pass through and to hold the horse outside

public houses. But, although he had retired from regular farm labour on

account of age and chronic rheumatism, he still went to the farm and

lent a hand when he had nothing more exciting to do. The farmer must

have liked him, for he had given orders that whenever Twister was

working about the farmstead he was to have a daily half-pint on demand.

That half-pint was the salvation of Queenie’s housekeeping, for, in

spite of his varied interests, there were many days when Twister must

either work or thirst.

 

He was a small, thin-legged, jackdaw-eyed old fellow, and dressed in an

old velveteen coat that had once belonged to a gamekeeper, with a

peacock’s feather stuck in the band of his battered old bowler and a

red-and-yellow neckerchief knotted under one ear. The neckerchief was a

relic of the days when he had taken baskets of nuts to fairs, and,

taking up his stand among the booths and roundabouts, had shouted:

‘Bassalonies big as ponies!’ until his throat felt dry. Then he had

adjourned to the nearest public house and spent his takings and

distributed the rest of his stock, gratis. That venture soon came to an

end for want of capital.

 

To serve his own purposes, Twister would sometimes pose as a half-wit;

but, as the children’s father said, he was no fool where his own

interests were concerned. He was ready at any time to clown in public

for the sake of a pint of beer; but at home he was morose—one of those

people who ‘hang their fiddle up at the door when they go home’, as the

saying went there.

 

But in old age Queenie had him well in hand. He knew that he had to

produce at least a few shillings on Saturday night, or, when Sunday

dinner-time came, Queenie would spread the bare cloth on the table and

they would just have to sit down and look at each other; there would be

no food.

 

Forty-five years before she had served him with a dish even less to his

taste. He had got drunk and beaten her cruelly with the strap with which

he used to keep up his trousers. Poor Queenie had gone to bed sobbing;

but she was not too overcome to think, and she decided to try an old

country cure for such offences.

 

The next morning when he came to dress, his strap was missing. Probably

already ashamed of himself, he said nothing, but hitched up his trousers

with string and slunk off to work, leaving Queenie apparently still

asleep.

 

At night, when he came home to tea, a handsome pie was placed before

him, baked a beautiful golden-brown and with a pastry tulip on the top;

such a pie as must have seemed to him to illustrate the old saying: ‘_A

woman, a dog and a walnut tree, the more you beat ‘em the better they

be_.’

 

‘You cut it, Tom,’ said a smiling Queenie. ‘I made it a-purpose for you.

Come, don’t ‘ee be afraid on it. ‘Tis all for you.’ And she turned her

back and pretended to be hunting for something in the cupboard.

 

Tom cut it; then recoiled, for, curled up inside, was the leather strap

with which he had beaten his wife. ‘A just went as white as a ghoo-ost,

an’ got up an’ went out,’ said Queenie all those years later. ‘But it

cured ‘en, it cured ‘en, for’s not so much as laid a finger on me from

that day to this!’

 

Perhaps Twister’s clowning was not all affected; for, in later years, he

became a little mad and took to walking about talking to himself, with a

large, open clasp-knife in his hand. Nobody thought of getting a doctor

to examine him; but everybody in the hamlet suddenly became very polite

to him.

 

It was at this time he gave the children’s mother the fright of her

life. She had gone out to hang out some clothes in the garden, leaving

one of her younger children alone, asleep in his cradle. When she came

back, Twister was stooping over the child with his head inside the hood

of the cradle, completely hiding the babe from her sight. As she rushed

forward, fearing the worst, the poor, silly old man looked up at her

with his eyes full of tears. ‘Ain’t ‘ee like little Jesus? Ain’t ‘ee

just like little Jesus?’ he said, and the little baby of two months woke

up at that moment and smiled. It was the first time he had been known to

smile.

 

But Twister’s exploits did not always end as happily. He had begun to

torture animals and was showing an inclination to turn nudist, and

people were telling Queenie he ought to be ‘put away’ when the great

snowstorm came. For days the hamlet was cut off from the outer world by

great drifts which filled the narrow hamlet road to the tops of the

hedges in places. In digging a way out they found a cart with the horse

still between the shafts and still alive; but there was no trace of the

boy who was known to have been in charge. Men, women, and children

turned out to dig, expecting to find a dead body, and Twister was one of

the foremost amongst them. They said he worked then as he had never

worked before in his life; his strength and energy were marvellous. They

did not find the boy, alive or dead, for the very good reason that he

had, at the height of the storm, deserted the cart, forgotten the horse,

and scrambled across country to his home in another village; but poor

old Twister got pneumonia and was dead within a fortnight.

 

On the evening of the day he died, Edmund was round at the back of the

end house banking up his rabbit-hutches with straw for the night, when

he saw Queenie come out of her door and go towards her beehives. For

some reason or other, Edmund followed her. She tapped on the roof of

each hive in turn, like knocking at a door, and said, ‘_Bees, bees, your

master’s dead, an’ now you must work for your missis_.’ Then, seeing the

little boy, she explained: ‘I ‘ad to tell ‘em, you know, or they’d

all’ve died, poor craturs.’ So Edmund really heard bees seriously told

of a death.

 

Afterwards, with parish relief and a little help here and there from her

children and friends, Queenie managed to live. Her chief difficulty was

to get her ounce of snuff a week, and that was the one thing she could

not do without; it was as necessary to her as tobacco is to a smoker.

 

All the women over fifty took snuff. It was the one luxury in their hard

lives. ‘I couldn’t do wi’out my pinch o’ snuff,’ they used to say. “Tis

meat an’ drink to me,’ and, tapping the sides of their snuffboxes, ”Ave

a pinch, me dear.’

 

Most of the younger women pulled a face of disgust as they refused the

invitation, for snuff-taking had gone out of fashion and was looked upon

as a dirty habit; but Laura’s mother would dip her thumb and forefinger

into the box and sniff at them delicately, ‘for manners’ sake’, as she

said. Queenie’s snuffbox had a picture of Queen Victoria and the Prince

Consort on the lid. Sometimes, when every grain of the powder was gone,

she would sniff at the empty box and say, ‘Ah! That’s better. The ghost

o’ good snuff’s better nor nothin’.’

 

She still had one great day every year, when, every autumn, the dealer

came to purchase the produce of her beehives. Then, in her pantry

doorway, a large muslin bag was suspended to drain the honey from the

broken pieces of comb into a large, red pan which stood beneath, while,

on her doorstep, the end house children waited to see ‘the honeyman’

carry out and weigh the whole combs. One year—one never-to-be-forgotten

year—he had handed to each of them a rich, dripping fragment of comb.

He never did it again; but they always waited, for the hope was almost

as sweet as the honey.

 

There had been, when Laura was small, one bachelor’s establishment near

her home. This had belonged to ‘the Major’, who, as his nickname

denoted, had been in the Army. He had served in many lands and then

returned to his native place to set up house and do for himself in a

neat, orderly, soldier-like manner. All went well until he became old

and feeble. Even then, for some years, he struggled on alone in his

little home, for he had a small pension. Then he was ill and spent some

weeks in Oxford Infirmary. Before he went there, as he had no relatives

or special friends, Laura’s mother nursed him and helped him to get

together the few necessities he had to take with him. She would have

visited him at the hospital had it been possible; but money was scarce

and her children were too young to be left, so she wrote him a few

letters and sent him the newspaper every week. It was, as she said, ‘the

least anybody could do for the poor old fellow’. But the Major had seen

the world and knew its ways and he did not take such small kindnesses as

a matter of course.

 

He came home from the hospital late one Saturday night, after the

children were in bed, and, next morning, Laura, waking at early dawn,

thought she saw some strange object on her pillow. She dozed and woke

again. It was still there. A small wooden box. She sat up in bed and

opened it. Inside was a set of doll’s dishes with painted wax food upon

them—chops and green peas and new potatoes, and a jam tart with

criss-cross pastry. Where could it have come from? It was