Part 22

Fair or foul, the work of the pipe-track never slackened, and Mary was kept busy scraping the caked mud from Abner’s clothes. The rain ceased and the floods fell. There followed a hushed season in which the note of the chiff-chaff was heard sounding faintly, timorously. The trees whispered together in the night. The valley was silent, and yet, beneath the silence, one felt a secret battle of blind forces. Moment by moment, cell by cell, the creatures of earth were breaking free from the heavy lethargy that had sealed them. Even in the dull members of men the slow flame quickened, the numb fibres stirred. As yet on the surface of the earth few changes might be seen. Over the fields flights of peewits wheeled and screamed, with flapping, tumbling wings. Only the bloom of purple on the hedgerows flushed to a warmer brown, only tassels of elm-blossom in bud softened the stark outline of their branches: only, on the fringe of the woodland, the green of dog-mercury appeared.

Then, with a sudden fervour unknown in more temperate climes, spring came. The sloes were sprayed with light; the hue of hawthorn twigs paled; in the space of a single week the whole earth broke in a green flame. Nor was it only green things that were born. White lambs appeared as by magic in the fields, seeming as little dependent on the agency of men as the white daisies. At evening, when Abner came home from work, they leapt into the air and twisted their heads sideways in the leap. The valley was full of tender bleatings. He laughed at them, striding homewards. His mates laughed and whistled at their work. Even the sad, disfigured face of Munn grew blandly, childishly happy.

Gladys and Morgan knew that spring had come—indeed they had known of its coming long before Abner suspected it. They made great plans to go out into the fields with Spider and see the lambs at play; they cried when bedtime came, for very excess of life. ‘But it ban’t dark, mam,’ they said, coaxing Mary to let them play a little longer. She could not refuse them, for she herself loved to sit sewing in the doorway, hearing their voices echoed from the warming walls of the house while the swallows darted to and fro under the eaves above her. She would sit there talking lazily to old Drew, who now began to be busy with his garden. When she inquired how his rheumatism was, he would straighten his back with a smile, and tell her that he felt like a man of thirty. When rain came he would stand on his step gazing at the garden fondly, as though he expected to see his seeds pushing above the finely-tilled soil.

During all these days they heard nothing of George. The three months of silence that the law imposes on a prisoner in jail were now over. Mick Connor, that specialist in all the details of a criminal’s life, informed Abner that when this time was over, the convict was usually allowed the privilege of writing one letter a month, and, if his conduct were good enough, he might even receive one visitor of his choice. But no letter came to Wolfpits. One day at his work Abner overheard a conversation between two of his mates from which he gathered that Mrs Malpas had made a journey to Shrewsbury and seen her son. ‘He’s looking up fine, by all accounts,’ said one of them, ‘and the old woman’s pleased as anything he hasn’t sent for his missus.’

Abner experienced a sudden feeling of anger for Mary’s sake. He felt the slight almost as much as if it had been pointed against himself; but on the way home he decided that it would be better not to tell her. Probably she imagined that a prisoner was shut off from all communication with the outer world for the term of his sentence; and, if this were so, it was better that she should remain in ignorance. Who would be George’s next visitor? The woman from Lesswardine?

A drowsiness fell on the valley, a deep drowsiness of growth and heavy green. Cuckoos began to call at dawn: even in the heat of the day they called, flying from hedge to hedge. The monotony of their song lulled the valley to sleep. Twilights lengthened. Abner was now so settled in his life at Wolfpits that his friends would come up and see him there, sitting in the garden through the evening, talking to him and playing with the children. Munn, who had never yet shaken himself free from the toils of his unhappy childhood, came shyly, and was self-conscious in their company, particularly when Mary joined them; but Mick Connor, who had never been shy in his life and loved children, as most Irishmen do, made his visit to Wolfpits almost a daily custom. In this happy, languid season, he had no more serious business in hand. He even viewed Badger indulgently. Badger might shoot as many foxes, might hatch, rear, and put down as many young pheasants in the woods as he liked—the more the better! For the present Mick was content to take his ease.

Mary liked him . . . she couldn’t help liking him, for he made her laugh, and was so kind to the children. Morgan, in particular, looked forward to Mick’s coming, for his young animal instinct had discovered that the poacher’s pocket in the skirts of the Irishman’s coat sometimes contained bananas, a fruit to which Morgan would devote himself to the degree of suffering. Mick could never make Gladys forsake her Abner’s knee for his; but Morgan’s stomach always got the better of filial love when his new friend appeared.

‘Is there aught in your pocket, Mis’r Connor, to-night?’ he would say coaxingly.

‘Morgan, you mustn’t be rude!’ Mary would protest.

‘Mayn’t I ask him, mam?’

Mick would wink at him: ‘And how would I know what’s in there? Come and be looking, for yourself.’ He would take Morgan up on his knee and then, half awed by warnings that something might bite him, the child would slip his hand into the deep pocket and pull out the fruit with a chuckle of delight.

‘Mr Connor spoils you, and that’s the truth!’ Mary would reply.

Sometimes the pocket was empty, and at such times Mick was put to an elaborate explanation of what had happened, embracing the origin of this mysterious fruit.

‘Wait an’ I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘Last night, when I looked in my box where the leprechaun puts it, there was a beautiful lot of fruit there. Oranges and grapes and apples and the rest, more’n I could lift in the both of my hands.’

‘Not any bananas?’ Morgan asked anxiously.

‘Bananners? Ah, don’t be talkun! Three beautiful bunches of them fresh from the tree, with the juice runnun’ out of the stalks of them, they was that ripe. “So,” says I, “I’ll put them all in my pocket, I will, and go out and ate one or two of them.” His voice sank to an awed, confidential level. ‘So, when I was after leaving Mainstone, and got out on the turnpike, I walked quick along the cemetery wall, for you never know what you mightn’t see in a place the likes of that. An’ then I heard a sound of wheels behind me and the hoofs of horses trottun’ up to the corner. An’ I thought, “Who would be driving after me at that time of night, an’ not a star showun’. Houly saints, I thought, what can it be?”’

‘I know what it was,’ said Morgan grimly, for he had heard of this adventure before.

‘Is that a fact?’ said Mick, with impressive surprise.

‘It was the dead-coach, mam,’ said Morgan in a whisper.

‘And so it was,’ replied Mick, slapping his thigh. ‘The dead-coach—and on the box of ut two men in long black coats with the faces blacked on them and hair like our ass. When they see me they pulls up sudden, and these black pair jumps off of the box and takes hould on me and puts their hands in my pocket, the way my shirt stuck to my back for fright, and stole all the fruit on me and drove off without a word.’

The sensation of this adventure was almost enough to compensate Morgan for the loss of his fruit. It was Morgan’s favourite story. But Gladys was Abner’s girl, and would rather sit on his knee listening with wide eyes. On Abner’s knee she felt quite safe.

Sometimes Abner, Mick, and the two children would leave Mary busy with her sewing and walk down together to the bridge over the Folly Brook, or to the meadows where thickets of hazel and shy companies of birches stood along the stream. Mick always carried a catapult with him. Ever since his boyhood he had been a deadly shot with this weapon, and could ‘knock the head off of a wran,’ as he put it, at a range of thirty yards. He made Morgan a catapult with which the child blackened his thumb-nails, and carried in his pocket small round pebbles that he picked from the bed of the stream, now shrunken to a thread of gin-clear water.

Although he could never resist killing birds when he had the chance, Mick loved every feather on them, and indeed he knew them well: their nestings, their flight, their song, and their quick cries of alarm. He showed Morgan all the birds of that mountain valley: the tree pipits that sprang upward like a stone tossed into the air and then planed downwards with spread tails twittering like mechanical toys: the sandpipers that called plaintively from spits of sand: the black dippers that fled upstream under the arching alders; the water-ouzel that made in echoing, stony combes a noise that he imitated by tapping two pebbles together: the redstarts that fluttered their bright tails near the walls in whose crevices they nested. And they would stand still, this little group of four, listening to the warble of the blackcap safely hidden in impenetrable thickets, or lift their heads, under the high shade of larches to hear the hissing note of the wood-wren, coming home tired in the twilight, the children’s hands hot with the green smell of moth-like cuckoo-flowers that they had gathered in the meadows.

While the light faded the two men would smoke their pipes on the bridge, where the big black trout that inhabited the pool hung gorged with mayfly and held the stream with faintly quivering fins. Mick loved to watch them quietly, telling, in his slow, hypnotic tones, of the great cannibal trout of the Barrow, so strong that they could pull a child into the water after them. When they turned to go home Morgan would beg to shoot at the trout with his catapult. He never hit one, but when the stone reached the water they could see the dark streaks of the fishes vanishing under the shadows of the bridge.

Often Mick would talk of great days in Ireland, the days of country race-meetings and fairs, and round these events also a legend arose. When Morgan was shooting with his catapult the Irishman would encourage him with the patter of the man who kept a shooting gallery, reeling off long strings of words that meant nothing to the child, and standing up with bright eyes and flushed cheeks as though the hum of the fair were still in his ears.

‘Now then, walk up, walk up. . . . Fire, my rattler, fire! Six more shots a penny! Right through the hardware shop—and very near winning the silver cane! Fire, my bold American, fire. Pass along to the next caravan: your halfpenny is no more!’

He told them of the maggie-man, a live Aunt Sally, who stood up in his tub with tangled hair and fierce beard warding off the flights of sticks that were hurled at his head, and of that great mystery, the Live Lion Stuffed with Straw. Morgan drank it all in eagerly.

‘Why bain’t there no fairs in these parts?’ he said.

In a weak moment his mother told him that there were fairs in Shropshire, and above all, the great fair of Brampton Bryan, held every year in June. She told him how her father had taken her there many years ago, when she was a little girl, and how she had eaten the cakes which are made on purpose for this festival. ‘Bron cakes, they call them,’ she said.

The fact that eating was added to these other delights inflamed Morgan’s imagination.

‘Will they have Bron cakes this time?’ he asked.

‘Of course they will. They always have Bron cakes.’

‘Can’t we go, mam?’

‘It’s a long way away,’ she told him.

‘But granfer took _you_ . . .’

‘Granfer had a horse and trap.’

‘Grandma Malpas has a pony,’ Morgan persisted.

‘Some day, when you’re a big boy, you shall go,’ said Mary.

The subject dropped from their conversation, but not from Morgan’s mind. The child knew better than to pester his mother about it, but as the time of the fair grew nearer, he talked to every one else that he met, to Mick, to Abner, to Mrs Mamble, and even to old Drew. The thought of Bron Fair obsessed him and even found its way into his dreams. The week before the event he became so persistent and showed so keen a disappointment at the thought of missing it, that Abner began to take him seriously.

‘Why shouldn’t we take ’em along?’ he said to Mary, when the children were in bed.

‘It’s too far away,’ she said. ‘Much too far.’

‘It’s not that far over the hills. Some of our chaps is going to walk there.’

‘You can’t drag children up hill and down dale.’

‘Well, there’s the train from Llandwlas.’

She shook her head. ‘You can’t get back the same day,’ she said.

‘You could put in the night at Redlake. There’s a station there.’

She said nothing. ‘It’s a shame to disappoint them,’ he added.

Her interest in the children’s happiness was her weak point, and in the end Abner had his way. He settled with the Gunner that he should leave work early on the Thursday afternoon and return on Saturday morning. He met Mary and the children on the platform at Llandwlas in the afternoon. Morgan had never travelled in a train before, and stood excitedly at the window, next to his mother. Gladys sat quietly by the side of Abner, who carried the brown paper parcel in which their clothes and provisions were packed. He was not quite comfortable, for it seemed to him even now that Mary had undertaken the expedition under protest. This was unreasonable, for he had enough money to carry them through, and it was no use going on an expedition like this unless she were determined to enjoy it. But Mary was thinking of her last journey from Llandwlas in the morning train to Shrewsbury. Perhaps she was thinking also of George.

A fit of train-sickness put a stop to Morgan’s enthusiasms for a time. In the cool of the evening they reached the station of Redlake, a small village which stands on a little river that is a torrent in winter but in summer no more than a trickle of water. From there a road, hung with heavy trees, runs straight to Brampton Bryan, three or four miles away. The train was crowded, and as they approached Redlake Mary grew uneasy, for she guessed that most of the travellers were bound for the same place and with the same purpose and began to wonder if they could find a lodging in so small a village. She whispered her fears to Abner, and they hurried from the station into the sloping street. The first inn that they came to was already full.

‘You might get a room at the Harley Arms, if you’re quick,’ a flustered landlord told them. They went straight on. Abner walked too quickly for them, and Mary almost had to run, dragging the children behind her. At the Harley Arms a fat woman eyed them suspiciously.

‘It’s the worst day of the whole year,’ she said. ‘I don’t see how I can do it. If you’d come in by the next train you wouldn’t have found a bed in the whole of Redlake.’

‘You can’t turn the children out,’ said Abner. ‘The little boy’s been sick in the train.’

Morgan’s face was still patched yellow and white at the corners of the mouth. The landlady, against all her intentions, softened. ‘Poor little soul!’ she said. She tied another knot in the string of the blue striped apron that she wore, as though her hands must be doing something to contribute to the general atmosphere of haste and flurry. ‘Poor little soul! Well, now, what can I do? What with the pies and one thing and another! The only thing I can do is to put the man in the front room along with Mr Prowse at the back; but I must say I don’t like disturbing Mr Prowse, the number of fairs he’s been with me. Comes regular, he does . . . you can look for him like the swallows. Still, he’s a nice man: a very nice man, and if I told him all about it I don’t think he’d stand in your way. Come along, my dear!’

The last words were addressed to Mary, whose hand Morgan was clutching convulsively as though he still felt the train swinging under his feet. They all entered a room on the left of the doorway. In it were two long tables spread with coarse linen cloths of a gleaming whiteness and laden with a series of boiled hams crisped with golden bread-crumbs, and gigantic pies whose crusts were of the same rich hue. Loaves of white bread stood between them, and at the head of each table a leaning tower of plates. At the other end of the room a barrel of cider had been propped upon two bottle-boxes.

Even Morgan’s revolted stomach could not resist the inspiration of seeing so much food. In a hushed voice he asked Mary what was inside the pies.

‘Inside of them, my love?’ cooed the landlady. ‘There’s bunny rabbits inside of them, and lovely pieces of bacon in a jelly that would stand by itself. You’ll see what’s inside of them soon!’ She laughed happily and then, tying another knot in her apron-string, explained to Mary that the rabbit pies of the Harley Arms were an institution on the eve of Bron Fair. ‘We used to make as many as thirty of them,’ she said, ‘but the fair’s not what it was in those days. Still, they must have their pies. They’d drop down dead if they came into the room and never see them! There they are, waiting ready for them: pies and ham and bread and cider, and they helps themselves. We’re too busy to look after them. They takes what they want, and pays the same whether its much or little. That’s the custom, you see.’

By this time the concentration of rich smells had overcome Morgan’s interest. ‘I want to lie down, mam,’ he said, and Mary stopped the landlady in a flood of reminiscence to inquire again about their room before disaster came.

‘Well, now,’ she said in a more kindly, mysterious voice. ‘I’ll tell you what do. I’ll put you in Mr Prowse’s room without asking him. That’s the best way. If you’re there, you’re there, and that’s the end of it. You can put the little girl on the sofa and the little boy can sleep in between the two of you. ’Tis a fine, old-fashioned bed. A family bed, as the saying is.’

Abner saw Mary go red. He came quickly to the rescue.

‘We’re not man and wife, missus,’ he said.

‘What! You’re not a married couple? That’s different altogether,’ said the landlady, her tone hardening.

‘This young man only came along with me to help me with the children,’ Mary explained.

‘I’ve kept this place respectable all my life, and I don’t intend to start anything different,’ said the landlady severely. ‘I think you’d better look somewhere else.’

Mary, half shocked, half frightened, would have taken the children away at once. ‘Come along, Abner,’ she said. But Abner would not be beaten.

‘Look here, missus,’ he said to the landlady. ‘If we wasn’t respectable, we could have took you in, and you been none the wiser. I’m here looking after this young woman. There’s nothing else between us. If there was I should have codded you we was married.’

‘Don’t, Abner!’ said Mary.

The landlady looked from one to the other of this strange couple. Morgan began to whimper, and the sight of the child’s tiredness melted her heart.

‘You’d better come on upstairs,’ she said to Mary, and then, with a defiant glance at Abner: ‘But the young man will have to look out for himself. There’s no bed here I can give him. My husband and the boys’ll have to sleep in the loft as it is. I oughtn’t to take you in, by rights, and that’s the truth.’

‘Never you mind me,’ said Abner. ‘It won’t hurt me to sleep rough.’

She took Mary and the children upstairs. Abner stayed on in the long room alone, listening to the busy clatter of the house. The landlord, his sons, and a couple of village girls, who had been brought in to deal with the rush of business, went running up and down stairs and stone passages and in and out of the bar as quickly and apparently as aimlessly as the inhabitants of a disturbed ants’ nest. The sun dipped behind the mountains. A train arrived from the north, then another from the south, and each time the street was flooded with a crowd of excitable men knocking at door after door in search of lodging for the night. Abner heard the landlord in the bar refusing them one after another. With the second train arrived the important Mr Prowse, a tall, lumbering man in cord breeches and black leggings covered with the red dust of the Black Mountain, from the slopes of which he came. He wore a close red beard, and spoke in a high sing-song, for part of his mountain pasturage was in Wales. He had already drunk too freely at the Craven Arms station buffet to be much worried by the idea of a sleeping companion.

‘What is it you’re after this fair, Mr Prowse?’ asked the landlord.

‘Draught horses,’ said the farmer. ‘They’re very scarce down our way, and a price that would frighten you.’

‘Then you and me are going to have a field day, Mr Prowse,’ said a fat, asthmatical Cardiff Jew, who had just arrived in the doorway.

‘Ah, Mr Myers, how is it then?’ said the farmer. ‘Mr May says he’s put you and me to sleep in the same room. There’s a young woman in the front.’

‘A young woman?’ growled Myers. ‘What’s a young woman doing here at this time?’

‘The more of them the better!’ said the farmer, with a laugh.

‘No. . . . I’ve got over all that,’ said the Jew, shaking his head.

‘Now, what are you two gentlemen taking with me?’ asked the landlord.

They all settled down to talk about horses. Abner was getting more and more hungry and wondering when Mary would come downstairs. The sight of that magnificent array of food whetted his appetite, but he did not want to be the first to begin. He drew himself a mug of cider from the cask: a dry, half bitter product of the Hereford orchards. He drank a pint of it, and the alcohol, taken on an empty stomach, made him happy and confident. He no longer felt uneasy that Mary was so long away.

Now he had not long to wait for his supper, for Prowse and Myers came in from the bar, and in a few moments other men arrived. They all carved for themselves huge segments of pie and rich slices of ham with knives that were whetted thin with use. Abner took his place among them. Nobody spoke to him, for he seemed to be the only stranger in the company. Many of them had not seen their friends for a whole year, since their last meeting in the same place. Twilight came, and the lamps were lit. The buyers sat on talking and drinking at the tables, running with one accord to door or window when the hoofs of some horse that had been brought to the fair for sale were heard trotting down the road.

‘Jenkins wants to sell that there cob to-night rather than take him to Bron,’ said Myers.

‘Never buy a horse you don’t see by daylight,’ Prowse replied, shaking his clay pipe to mark the words.

‘I don’t,’ said Myers, with a wink. ‘I heard a fellow from Brum offer him forty, and he’s a fool if he don’t take it.’

‘There’s high prices going this fair,’ said Prowse. ‘There’s a great scarcity down our way. Jenkins is a chap as knows his business.’

‘And so do I,’ said the Jew. ‘So do I.’