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

best clothes must be brushed and put away for them; their shirts

must be specially well ironed, and tit-bits must always be saved for

their luncheon afield. No wonder the fathers were jealous at times and

exclaimed, ‘Our Mum, she do make a reg’lar fool o’ that boo-oy!’

 

A few of the girls were engaged to youths at home, and, after several

years of courtship, mostly conducted by letter, for they seldom met

except during the girl’s summer holiday, they would marry and settle in

or near the hamlet. Others married and settled away. Butchers and

milkmen were favoured as husbands, perhaps because these were frequent

callers at the houses where the girls were employed. A hamlet girl would

marry a milkman or a butcher’s roundsman in London, or some other

distant part of the country, and, after a few years, the couple would

acquire a business of their own and become quite prosperous. One married

a butler and with him set up an apartment house on the East Coast;

another married a shopkeeper and, with astonishing want of tact, brought

a nursemaid to help look after her children when she visited her

parents. The nursemaid was invited into most of the cottages and well

pumped for information about the home life; but Susie herself was eyed

coldly; she had departed from the normal. The girls who had married away

remained faithful to the old custom of spending a summer fortnight with

their parents, and the outward and visible signs of their prosperity

must have been trying to those who had married farm labourers and

returned to the old style of living.

 

With the girls away, the young men of the hamlet would have had a dull

time had there not been other girls from other homes in service within

walking distance. On Sunday afternoons, those who were free would be

off, dressed in their best, with their boots well polished and a flower

stuck in the band of their Sunday hats, to court the dairymaids at

neighbouring farms or the under-servants at the big country houses.

Those who were pledged would go upstairs to write their weekly

love-letter, and a face might often be seen at an upper window, chewing

a pen-holder and gazing sadly out at what must have appeared an empty

world.

 

There were then no dances at village halls and no cinemas or cheap

excursions to lead to the picking up of casual acquaintances; but, from

time to time, one or other of the engaged youths would shock public

opinion by walking out with another girl while his sweetheart was away.

When taxed with not being ‘true to Nell’, he would declare it was only

friendship or only a bit of fun; but Nell’s mother and his mother would

think otherwise and upbraid him until the meetings were dropped or grew

furtive.

 

But such sideslips were never mentioned when, at last, Nellie herself

came home for her holiday. Then, every evening, neighbours peeping from

behind window-curtains would see the couple come out of their respective

homes and stroll in the same direction, but not together as yet, for

that would have been thought too brazen. As soon as they were out of

sight of the windows, they would link up, arm in arm, and saunter along

field-paths between the ripening corn, or stand at stiles, whispering

and kissing and making love until the dusk deepened and it was time for

the girl to go home, for no respectable girl was supposed to be out

after ten. Only fourteen nights of such bliss, and all the other nights

of the year blank, and this not for one year, but for six or seven or

eight. Poor lovers!

 

Mistresses used to say—and probably those who are fortunate enough to

keep their maids from year to year still say—that the girls are sullen

and absent-minded for the first few days after they return to their

duties. No doubt they are, for their thoughts must still be with the

dear ones left behind and the coming months must stretch out, an endless

seeming blank, before they will see them again. That is the time for a

little extra patience and a little human sympathy to help them to adjust

themselves, and if this is forthcoming, as it still is in many homes, in

spite of newspaper correspondence, the young mind will soon turn from

memories of the past to hopes for the future.

 

The hamlet children saw little of such love-making. Had they attempted

to follow or watch such couples, the young man would have threatened

them with what he would have called ‘a good sock on the ear’ole’; but

there was always a country courtship on view if they felt curious to

witness it. This was that of an elderly pair called Chokey and Bess, who

had at that time been walking out together for ten or twelve years and

still had another five or six to go before they were married. Bessie,

then about forty, was supposed not to be strong enough for service and

lived at home, doing the housework for her mother, who was the last of

the lacemakers. Chokey was a farm labourer, a great lumbering fellow who

could lift a sack of wheat with ease, but was supposed to be ‘a bit soft

in the upper storey’. He lived in a neighbouring village and came over

every Sunday.

 

Bessie’s mother sat at the window with her lace-pillow all day long; but

her earnings must have been small, for, although her husband received

the same wages as the men who had families and they had only Bess, they

were terribly poor. It was said that when the two women fried a rasher

for their midday meal, the father being away at work, they took it in

turn to have the rasher, the other one dipping her bread in the fat, day

and day about. When they went out, they wore clothes of a bygone

fashion, shawls and bonnets, instead of coats and hats, and short skirts

and white stockings, when the rest of the hamlet world wore black

stockings and skirts touching the ground. To see them set off to the

market town for their Saturday shopping always raised a smile among the

beholders; the mother carrying an old green gig umbrella and Bessie a

double-lidded marketing basket over her arm. They were both long-faced

and pale, and the mother lifted her feet high and touched earth with her

umbrella at every step, while Bess trailed along a little in the rear

with the point of her shawl dangling below her skirt at the back. ‘For

all the world like an old white mare an’ her foal,’ as the hamlet funny

man said.

 

Every Sunday evening, Chokey and Bess would appear, he in his best pale

grey suit and pink tie, with a geranium, rose, or dahlia stuck in his

hat. She in her Paisley shawl and little black bonnet with velvet

strings tied in a bow under her chin. They were not shy. It was arm in

arm with them from the door, and often a pale grey arm round the Paisley

shawl before they were out of sight of the windows; although, to be

sure, nobody took the trouble to watch, the sight was too familiar.

 

They always made for the turnpike and strolled a certain distance along

it, then turned back and went to Bessie’s home. They seldom walked

unattended; a little band of hamlet children usually accompanied them,

walking about a dozen paces behind, stopping when they stopped and

walking on when they walked on. ‘Going with Chokey and Bess’ was a

favourite Sunday evening diversion. As one batch of children grew up,

another took its place; though what amusement they found in following

them was a mystery, for the lovers would walk a mile without exchanging

a remark, and when they did it would only be: ‘Seems to me there’s rain

in the air’, or ‘My! ain’t it hot!’ They did not seem to resent being

followed. They would sometimes address a friendly remark to one of the

children, or Chokey would say as he shut the garden gate on setting out,

‘Comin’ our way to-night?’

 

At last came their funny little wedding, with Bess still in the Paisley

shawl, and only her father and mother to follow them on foot through the

allotments and over the stile to church. After a wedding breakfast of

sausages, they went to live in a funny little house with a thatched roof

and a magpie in a wicker cage hanging beside the door.

 

The up-to-date lovers asked more of life than did Chokey and his Bess.

More than their own parents had done.

 

There was a local saying, ‘Nobody ever dies at Lark Rise and nobody goes

away.’ Had this been exact, there would have been no new homes in the

hamlet; but, although no building had been done there for many years and

there was no migration of families, a few aged people died, and from

time to time a cottage was left vacant. It did not stand empty long, for

there was always at least one young man waiting to get married and the

joyful news of a house to let brought his bride-to-be home from service

as soon as the requisite month’s notice to her employer had expired.

 

The homes of these newly married couples illustrated a new phase in the

hamlet’s history. The furniture to be found in them might lack the

solidity and comeliness of that belonging to their grandparents; but it

showed a marked improvement on their parents’ possessions.

 

It had become the custom for the bride to buy the bulk of the furniture

with her savings in service, while the bridegroom redecorated the

interior of the house, planted the vegetable garden, and put a pig, or a

couple of pigs, in the sty. When the bride bought the furniture, she

would try to obtain things as nearly as possible like those in the

houses in which she had been employed. Instead of the hard windsor

chairs of her childhood’s home, she would have small ‘parlour’ chairs

with round backs and seats covered with horsehair or American cloth. The

deal centre table would be covered with a brightly coloured woollen

cloth between meals and cookery operations. On the chest of drawers

which served as a sideboard, her wedding presents from her employers and

fellow servants would be displayed—a best tea-service, a shaded lamp, a

case of silver tea-spoons with the lid propped open, or a pair of owl

pepper-boxes with green-glass eyes and holes at the top of the head for

the pepper to come through. Somewhere in the room would be seen a few

books and a vase or two of flowers. The two wicker armchairs by the

hearth would have cushions and antimacassars of the bride’s own working.

 

Except in a few cases, and those growing fewer, where the first child of

a marriage followed immediately on the ceremony, the babies did not pour

so quickly into these new homes as into the older ones. Often more than

a year would elapse before the first child appeared, to be followed at

reasonable intervals by four or five more. Families were beginning to be

reckoned in half-dozens rather than dozens.

 

Those belonging to this new generation of housewives were well-trained

in household work. Many of them were highly skilled in one or other of

its branches. The young woman laying her own simple dinner table with

knives and forks only could have told just how many knives, forks,

spoons, and glasses were proper to each place at a dinner party and the

order in which they should be placed. Another, blowing on her

finger-tips to cool them as she unswathed the inevitable roly-poly, must

have thought of the seven-course dinners