The Rebels

IV

IV

T

he

garden was a greater joy to me than the house, though it too brings back a sort of sadness to me when I think about it now. Its high wall started immediately behind the house and continued in a great square or rectangle, cutting us off from the road at its farther end and from our neighbours on either side. All round the wall tall trees were growing, laburnum, lilac, and at the front where the big green gates led on to the road, a thick cluster of red may and white may, which hung over the cobblestones of the street and gave shelter to the lovers who congregated there before returning to their own homes at night.

When I was small, I would often sit below that wall, in our garden, just to hear these folk talking to each other, to wonder at the strange sounds of tenderness that came from mouths coarsened by daytime into the snarl of beasts. Yet how sweet these voices made themselves by the time evening had come! I did not then know that I was perhaps doing wrong in listening to strange people’s voices. I was a child and I was curious. But once our Phyllis caught me—I think that she had been out there that night—and boxed my ears and told Tom about me; and for a few days I felt so guilty that I could not look my brother or my sister in the eye; though I did not know why I felt so guilty. Perhaps it was because their expressions had been those of hatred for a moment as they stormed at me and that made me feel unclean.

The lower end of the garden near the road contained a stable in which our plump chestnut horse, Bonny, lived among the straw and the harness-pegs. And beside her stable there was a wooden structure which we always referred to as the coach-house, but which only housed our big black-painted wagonette. This was the family vehicle which transported us to Sutton Park or Pelsall, or when Bonny was feeling extra-strong to Tettenhall or even to Kinver. Below the wagonette was a rack on which we carried our broad flat wicker luncheon-basket. Oh, they were delirious days of sun and the clopping of Bonny’s hooves, and home-made ginger-beer in stone bottles, that we bought from old ladies in linen sunbonnets who sat outside their whitewashed cottages and smiled and called to passers-by. It was nectar! You cut the strings of the bottle and the cork shot up into the air and out of sight behind the wagonette as we bowled along the tree-lined roads and over the shallow water-splashes into Paradise . . . Glorious lion-coloured days that never seemed to end—until they did, so suddenly, leaving us all sad and deadened and a different family.

But though they were such happy days and though as I sit here below the sheltering wall with my knitting I recall them with a great and tearful pleasure, yet I can remember very little about them in detail, apart from the general impression of sunshine and blue skies and tall grasses and the sound of Bonny’s feet on the hard roads. It is as though it all happened during one long afternoon called childhood, and that the season was always summer . . .

Yet I do remember one incident clearly, perhaps because it was not the happiest of occasions, perhaps because it was a new step forward in my understanding of my family. We were sitting on the grass below a church tower and the rooks were calling above our heads. It was late afternoon and the smoke was already rising from the chimneys of the farmhouse to our right, and the shadows were long across the little meadow where we rested. Tom and Phyllis were sitting together, apart from the others, while Elijah had roamed off to search among the outlying farm-buildings to see if he could find a hen-nest that the farmer’s wife had overlooked. Enoch was sitting on mother’s lap, playing with her Whitby jet beads and singing to himself. I can still recall his light golden head, like that of an angel, set against the stiff black of mother’s bodice . . .

I was nearer my father than I was to anyone else, trying to make a daisy-chain and finding that I could not split the stems for I bit my finger-nails in those days, despite constant slappings from mother and Phyllis, and that awful Bitter Aloes which they painted on my fingers every night when I went to bed!

Then suddenly the ganders came, stretching their long necks and hissing, running towards us in hate. Tom and Phyllis got up and began to flap their serviettes and to laugh at the stupid anger of the birds. I do not think I should have been frightened at all but I saw mother look round in alarm, clasp Enoch to her and begin to run towards the gate.

Then the ganders left her and seemed to come for me in a body and I tried to get up and run away too; but my ankle failed me when I had almost risen and sent me sprawling about in the long grass like a shot partridge. I whirled round before I fell and saw that Tom and Phyllis were still laughing and waving their napkins. And then I was suddenly very frightened for the creatures clustered about me and began to drive at me with their wicked beaks.

I think I must have screamed out in my terror for I saw my father beating away at the birds with his yachting cap and kicking at them in a way that I had never seen him behave before. Even his face was different, so changed that it looked almost cruel as he slashed at the outstretched irate necks. I thought my father was fine then, like a conquering hero, for the birds scattered on either side of him, coming back to attack him from a new angle but each time being harshly repulsed by foot or by hand.

Then suddenly he bent over me and the next I knew I was swung up in his arms, out of their reach; and as he carried me to the fence he kicked out again and again, knocking the feathers from the brave brutes and actually sending some of them limping away with hurt legs or damaged wings, which they trailed behind them so piteously that for a moment I could have wept for them too!

But I had something else to think about. The hand which was nearest my face had been deeply gashed by a beak, so that the blood ran on to my white pinafore; and I bent my head so that I could kiss it. And the salt of my tears and of his blood mixed on my lips and I said, “Father, I love you; I love you; I love you!”

He smiled at me and I saw then that he had bitten his lips in his anxiety till they bled too. “Lass, I’d do anything for you,” he said almost in a whisper, and then he turned his head away as though he were ashamed of having declared his feelings so openly.

Safe by the fence Tom said, “Father, it looks as though you have hurt one of those birds. He can scarcely hobble. What if the farmer objects?”

My father glared at my elder brother as though he might strike him, and then with his customary tolerance towards his first born he said, “Tom, my boy, and if he objects I will do the same to him!”

After that we fell silent for it did not seem like our father to speak in this lawless way. Even I who had suddenly realised the strength of my love for my father felt ashamed, embarrassed that he should talk like an ordinary common man of the forges and rolling-mills. But all the same, on the way home I sat at his feet as he drove the wagonette, although the floorboards were hard and uncomfortable, and rested my head on his hard knee. And from time to time he would put his hand down and smooth my hair and smile at me. Then I almost thanked God for giving me such an ankle as would let me know my father’s love for me.

But Tom and Phyllis sat at the far end of the vehicle and talked in whispers to one another, sometimes fixing me with their eyes as though they were jealous—which was a silly thing, if they were, for they were the great ones of the family and not I. I knew that only too well and thought it foolish that they did not remember it too. But even great ones, powerful ones, are sometimes very childlike and simple, and I think that for the first time in my life on that late afternoon I sensed that Tom and Phyllis were after all flesh and blood like me, with the same childish weaknesses and fears. Yet they had no need to fear me; I was harmless enough at that time.