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Joanna Godden by Sheila Kaye Smith

S >> Sheila Kaye Smith >> Joanna Godden







Sec.5

Joanna rather enjoyed being the centre of discussion. She had none of
the modest shrinking from being talked about which might have affected
some young women. She was glad when Martha Tilden or another of the
girls brought her any overheard scraps. "Oh, that's what they say, is
it?" and she would laugh a big jolly laugh like a boy's.

So far she had enjoyed being "Maeaster" of Little Ansdore. It meant a lot
of work and a lot of thought and a lot of talking and interference, but
Joanna shrank from none of these things. She was healthy and vigorous
and intelligent, and was, moreover, quite unhampered by any diffidence
about teaching their work to people who had been busy at it before she
was born.

Still it was scarcely more than a fortnight since she had taken on the
government, and time had probably much to show her yet. She had a
moment of depression one morning, rising early as she always must, and
pulling aside the flowered curtain that covered her window. The prospect
was certainly not one to cheer; even in sunshine the horizons of the
marsh were discouraging with their gospel of universal flatness, and
this morning the sun was not yet up, and a pale mist was drifting
through the willows, thick and congealed above the watercourses, thinner
on the grazing lands between them, so that one could see the dim shapes
of the sheep moving through it. Even in clear weather only one other
dwelling was visible from Little Ansdore, and that was its fellow of
Great Ansdore, about half a mile away seawards. The sight of it never
failed to make Joanna contemptuous--for Great Ansdore had but fifty
acres of land compared with the three hundred of its Little neighbour.
Its Greatness was merely a matter of name and tradition, and had only
one material aspect in the presentation to the living of
Brodnyx-with-Pedlinge, which had been with Great Ansdore since the
passing of the monks of Canterbury.

To-day Great Ansdore was only a patch of grey rather denser than its
surroundings, and failed to inspire Joanna with her usual sense of
gloating. Her eyes were almost sad as she stared out at it, her chin
propped on her hands. The window was shut, as every window in every farm
and cottage on the marsh was shut at night, though the ague was now
little more than a name on the lips of grandfathers. Therefore the room
in which two people had slept was rather stuffy, though this in itself
would hardly account for Joanna's heaviness, since it was what she
naturally expected a bedroom to be in the morning. Such vague sorrow was
perplexing and disturbing to her practical emotions; she hurriedly
attributed it to "poor father," and the propriety of the sentiment
allowed her the relief of a few tears.

Turning back into the room she unbuttoned her turkey-red dressing-gown,
preparatory to the business of washing and dressing. Then her eye fell
on Ellen still asleep in her little iron bedstead in the corner, and a
glow of tenderness passed like a lamp over her face. She went across to
where her sister slept, and laid her face for a moment beside hers on
the pillow. Ellen's breath came regularly from parted lips--she looked
adorable cuddled there, with her red cheeks, like an apple in snow.
Joanna, unable to resist the temptation, kissed her and woke her.

"Hullo, Jo--what time is it?" mumbled Ellen sleepily.

"Not time to get up yet. I'm not dressed."

She sat on the edge of the bed, stooping over her sister, and her big
rough plaits dangled in the child's face.

"Hullo, Jo--hullo, old Jo," continued the drowsy murmur.

"Go to sleep, you bad girl," said Joanna, forgetting that she herself
had roused her.

Ellen was not wide enough awake to have any conflicting views on the
subject, and she nestled down again with a deep sigh. For the next ten
minutes the room was full of small sounds--the splashing of cold water
in the basin, the shuffle of coarse linen, the click of fastening stays,
the rhythmic swish of a hair brush. Then came two silent minutes, while
Joanna knelt with closed eyes and folded hands beside her big, tumbled
bed, and said the prayers that her mother had taught her eighteen years
ago--word for word as she had said them when she was five, even to the
"make me a good girl" at the end. Then she jumped up briskly and tore
the sheet off the bed, throwing it with the pillows on the floor, so
that Grace Wickens the servant should have no chance of making the bed
without stripping it, as was the way of her kind.

Grace was not up yet, of course. Joanna hit her door a resounding thump
as she passed it on her way to the kitchen. Here the dead ashes had been
raked out overnight, and the fire laid according to custom. She lit the
fire and put the kettle on to boil; she did not consider it beneath her
to perform these menial offices. She knew that every hand was needed for
the early morning work of a farm. By the time she had finished both
Grace and Martha were in the room, yawning and rubbing their eyes.

"That'll burn up nicely now," said Joanna, surveying the fire. "You'd
better put the fish-kettle on too, in case Broadhurst wants hot water
for a mash. Bring me out a cup of tea as soon as you can get it
ready--I'll be somewhere in the yard."

She put on an old coat of her father's over her black dress, and went
out, her nailed boots clattering on the cobble-stones. The men were
up--they should have been up an hour now--but no sounds of activity came
from the barns. The yard was in stillness, a little mist floating
against the walls, and the pervading greyness of the morning seemed to
be lit up by the huge blotches of yellow lichen that covered the slated
roofs of barns and dwelling--the roofs were all new, having only for a
year or two superseded the old roofs of osier thatch, but that queer
golden rust had almost hidden their substance, covering them as it
covered everything that was left exposed to the salt-thick marsh air.

Joanna stood in the middle of the yard looking keenly round her like a
cat, then like a cat she pounced. The interior of the latest built barn
was dimly lit by a couple of windows under the roof--the light was just
enough to show inside the doorway five motionless figures, seated about
on the root-pile and the root-slicing machine. They were Joanna's five
farm-men, apparently wrapped in a trance, from which her voice
unpleasantly awoke them.

"Here, you--what d'you think you're doing?"

The five figures stiffened with perceptible indignation, but they did
not rise from their sitting posture as their mistress advanced--or
rather swooped--into their midst. Joanna did not expect this. She paid a
man fifteen shillings a week for his labour and made no impossible
demands of his prejudices and private habits.

"I've been up an hour," she said, looking round on them, "and here I
find all of you sitting like a lot of sacks."

"It's two hours since I've bin out o' my warm bed," said old Stuppeny
reproachfully.

"You'd be as much use in it as out, if this is how you spend your time.
No one's been to the pigs yet, and it wants but half an hour to
milking."

"We wur setting around for Grace Wickens to bring us out our tea," said
Broadhurst.

"You thought maybe she wouldn't know her way across the yard if you was
on the other side of it? The tea ain't ready yet--I tell you I haven't
had any. It's a fine sight to see a lot of strong, upstanding men
lolling around waiting for a cup of tea."

The scorn in Joanna's voice was withering, and a resentful grumble
arose, amidst which old Stuppeny's dedication of himself to a new sphere
was hoarsely discernible. However the men scrambled to their feet and
tramped off in various directions; Joanna stopped Fuller, the shepherd,
as he went by.

"You'll be taking the wethers to Lydd this morning?"

"Surelye."

"How many are you taking?"

"Maybe two score."

"You can take the lot. It'll save us their grazing money this winter,
and we can start fattening the tegs in the spring."

"There's but two score wethers fit for market."

"How d'you mean?"

"The others aeun't fatted praeaperly."

"Nonsense--you know we never give 'em cake or turnips, so what does it
matter?"

"They aeun't fit."

"I tell you they'll do well enough. I don't expect to get such prices
for them as for that lot you've kept down in the New Innings, but they
won't fetch much under, for I declare they're good meat. If we keep them
over the winter we'll have to send them inland and pay no end for their
grazing--and then maybe the price of mutton ull go down in the Spring."

"It ud be a fool's job to taeake them."

"You say that because you don't want to have to fetch them up from the
Salt Innings. I tell you you're getting lazy, Fuller."

"My old maeaster never called me that."

"Well, you work as well for me as you did for him, and I won't call you
lazy, neither."

She gave him a conciliatory grin, but Fuller had been too deeply wounded
for such easy balm. He turned and walked away, a whole speech written in
the rebellious hunch of his shoulders.

"You'll get them beasts," she called after him.

"Surelye"--came in a protesting drawl. Then "Yup!--Yup!" to the two
sheep dogs couched on the doorstep.




Sec.6

What with supervising the work and herding slackers, getting her
breakfast and packing off Ellen to the little school she went to at Rye,
Joanna found all too soon that the market hour was upon her. It did not
strike her to shirk this part of a farmer's duty--she would drive into
Rye and into Lydd and into Romney as her father had always driven,
inspecting beasts and watching prices. Soon after ten o'clock she ran
upstairs to make herself splendid, as the occasion required.

By this time the morning had lifted itself out of the mist. Great sheets
of blue covered the sky and were mirrored in the dykes--there was a soft
golden glow about the marsh, for the vivid green of the pastures was
filmed over with the brown of the withering seed-grasses, and the big
clumps of trees that protected every dwelling were richly toned to rust
through scales of flame. Already there were signs that the day would be
hot, and Joanna sighed to think that approaching winter had demanded
that her new best black should be made of thick materials. She hated
black, too, and grimaced at her sombre frills, which the mourning brooch
and chain of jet beads could only embellish, never lighten. But she
would as soon have thought of jumping out of the window as of discarding
her mourning a day before the traditions of the Marsh decreed. She
decided not to wear her brooch and chain--the chain might swing and
catch in the beasts' horns as she inspected them, besides her values
demanded that she should be slightly more splendid in church than at
market, so her ornaments were reserved as a crowning decoration, all
except her mourning ring made of a lock of her father's hair.

It was the first time she had been to market since his death, and she
knew that folks would stare, so she might as well give them something to
stare at. Outside the front door, in the drive, old Stuppeny was
holding the head of Foxy, her mare, harnessed to the neat trap that
Thomas Godden had bought early the same year.

"Hullo, Stuppeny--you ain't coming along like that!" and Joanna's eye
swept fiercely up and down his manure-caked trousers.

"I never knew as I wur coming along anywheres, Miss Joanna."

"You're coming along of me to the market. Surely you don't expect a lady
to drive by herself?"

Old Stuppeny muttered something unintelligible.

"You go and put on your black coat," continued Joanna.

"My Sunday coat!" shrieked Stuppeny.

"Yes--quick! I can't wait here all day."

"But I can't put on my good coat wudout cleaning myself, and it'll taeake
me the best part o' the marnun to do that."

Joanna saw the reasonableness of his objection.

"Oh, well, you can leave it this once, but another time you remember and
look decent. To-day it'll do if you go into the kitchen and ask Grace to
take a brush to your trousers--and listen here!" she called after him as
he shambled off--"if she's making cocoa you can ask her to give you a
cup."

Grace evidently was making cocoa--a habit she had whenever her
mistress's back was turned--for Stuppeny did not return for nearly a
quarter of an hour. He looked slightly more presentable as he climbed
into the back of the trap. It struck Joanna that she might be able to
get him a suit of livery secondhand.

"There isn't much he's good for on the farm now at his age, so he may as
well be the one to come along of me. Broadhurst or Luck ud look a bit
smarter, but it ud be hard to spare them.... Stuppeny ud look different
in a livery coat with brass buttons.... I'll look around for one if I've
time this afternoon."

It was nearly seven miles from Ansdore to Lydd, passing the Woolpack,
and the ragged gable of Midley Chapel--a reproachful ruin among the
reeds of the Wheelsgate Sewer. Foxy went smartly, but every now and then
they had to slow down as they overtook and passed flocks of sheep and
cattle being herded along the road by drovers and shepherds in dusty
boots, and dogs with red, lolling tongues. It was after midday when the
big elm wood which had been their horizon for the last two miles
suddenly turned, as if by an enchanter's wand, into a fair-sized town of
red roofs and walls, with a great church tower raking above the trees.

Joanna drove straight to the Crown, where Thomas Godden had "put up"
every market day for twenty years. She ordered her dinner--boiled beef
and carrots, and jam roll--and walked into the crowded coffee room,
where farmers from every corner of the three marshes were already at
work with knife and fork. Some of them knew her by sight and stared,
others knew her by acquaintance and greeted her, while Arthur Alce
jumped out of his chair, dropping his knife and sweeping his neighbour's
bread off the table. He was a little shocked and alarmed to see Joanna
the only woman in the room; he suggested that she should have her dinner
in the landlady's parlour--"you'd be quieter like, in there."

"I don't want to be quiet, thank you," said Joanna.

She felt thankful that none of the few empty chairs was next Alce's--she
could never abide his fussing. She sat down between Cobb of Slinches and
a farmer from Snargate way, and opened the conversation pleasantly on
the subject of liver fluke in sheep.

When she had brought her meal to a close with a cup of tea, she found
Alce waiting for her in the hotel entrance.

"I never thought you'd come to market, Joanna."

"And why not, pray?"

The correct answer was--"Because you don't know enough about beasts,"
but Alce had the sense to find a substitute.

"Because it ain't safe or seemly for a woman to come alone and deal with
men."

"And why not, again? Are all you men going to swindle me if you get the
chance?"

Joanna's laugh always had a disintegrating effect on Alce, with its loud
warm tones and its revelation of her pretty teeth--which were so white
and even, except the small pointed canines. When she laughed she opened
her mouth wide and threw back her head on her short white neck. Alce
gropingly put out a hairy hand towards her, which was his nearest
approach to a caress. Joanna flicked it away.

"Now a-done do, Arthur Alce"--dropping in her merriment into the lower
idiom of the Marsh--"a-done do with your croaking and your stroking
both. Let me go my own ways, for I know 'em better than you can."

"But these chaps--I don't like it--maybe, seeing you like this amongst
them, they'll get bold with you."

"Not they! How can you mention such a thing? There was Mr. Cobb and Mr.
Godfrey at dinner, talking to me as respectful as churchwardens, all
about liver fluke and then by way of rot in the oats, passing on natural
and civil to the Isle of Wight disease in potatoes--if you see anything
bold in _that_ ... well then you're an old woman as sure as I ain't."

A repetition of her laugh completed his disruption, and he found himself
there on the steps of the Crown begging her to let him take over her
market day discussions as her husband and deputy.

"Why should you go talking to farmers about Isle of Wight disease and
liver fluke, when you might be talking to their wives about making
puddings and stuffing mattresses and such-like women's subjects."

"I talk about them too," said Joanna, "and I can't see as I'd be any
better for talking of nothing else."

What Alce had meant to convey to her was that he would much rather hear
her discussing the ailments of her children than of her potatoes, but he
was far too delicate-minded to state this. He only looked at her sadly.

Joanna had not even troubled to refuse his proposal--any more than a
mother troubles to give a definite and reasoned refusal to the child who
asks for the moon. Finding him silent, and feeling rather sorry for him,
she suggested that he should come round with her to the shops and carry
some of her parcels.




Sec.7

She went first of all to a firm of house-painters, for she meant to
brighten up Ansdore. She disliked seeing the place with no colour or
ornament save that which the marsh wind gave it of gold and rust. She
would have the eaves and the pipes painted a nice green, such as would
show up well at a distance. There was plenty of money, so why should
everything be drab? Alce discouraged her as well as he was able--it was
the wrong time of year for painting, and the old paint was still quite
good. Joanna treated his objections as she had treated his
proposal--with good-humoured, almost tender, indifference. She let him
make his moan at the house-painter's, then carelessly bore him on to the
furnishers', where she bought brightly-flowered stuff for new curtains.
Then he stood by while at an outfitter's she inspected coats for
Stuppeny, and finally bought one of a fine mulberry colour with brass
buttons all down the front.

She now returned to the market-place, and sought out two farmers from
the Iden district, with whom she made arrangements for the winter keep
of her lambs. Owing to the scanty and salt pastures of winter, it had
always been the custom on the marsh to send the young sheep for grazing
on upland farms, and fetch them back in the spring as tegs. Joanna
disposed of her young flock between Relf of Baron's Grange and Noakes of
Mockbeggar, then, still accompanied by Alce, strolled down to inspect
the wethers she had brought to the market.

On her way she met the farmer of Picknye Bush.

"Good day, Miss Godden--I've just come from buying some tegs of yourn."

"My looker's settled with you, has he?"

"He said he had the power to sell as he thought proper--otherways I was
going to ask for you."

An angry flush drowned the freckles on Joanna's cheek.

"That's Fuller, the obstinate, thick-headed old man...."

Bates's round face fell a little.

"I'm sorry if there's bin any mistaeake. After all, I aeun't got the
beasts yet--thirty shillings a head is the price he asked and I paid. I
call it a fair price, seeing the time of year and the state of the meat
market But if your looker's bin presuming and you aeun't pleased, then I
woean't call it a deal."

"I'm pleased enough to sell you my beasts, and thirty shillings is a
fairish price. But I won't have Fuller fixing things up over my head
like this, and I'll tell him so. How many of 'em did you buy, Mr.
Bates?"

"I bought the lot--two score."

Joanna made a choking sound. Without another word, she turned and walked
off in the direction of the hurdles where her sheep were penned, Bates
and Alce following her after one disconcerted look at each other. Fuller
stood beside the wethers, his two shaggy dogs couched at his feet--he
started when he suddenly saw his mistress burst through the crowd, her
black feathers nodding above her angry face.

"Fuller!" she shouted, so loud that those who were standing near turned
round to see--"How many wether-tegs have you brought to Lydd?"

"Two score."

"How many did I tell you to bring?"

"The others wurn't fit, surelye."

"But didn't I tell you to bring them?"

"You did, but they wurn't fit."

"I said you were to bring them, no matter if you thought 'em fit or
not."

"They wurn't fit to be sold as meat."

"I tell you they were."

"No one shall say as Tom Fuller doean't bring fit meat to market."

"You're an obstinate old fool. I tell you they were first-class meat."

Men were pressing round, farmers and graziers and butchers, drawn by the
spectacle of Joanna Godden at war with her looker in the middle of Lydd
market. Alce touched her arm appealingly--

"Come away, Joanna," he murmured.

She flung round at him.

"Keep dear--leave me to settle my own man."

There was a titter in the crowd.

"I know bad meat from good, surelye," continued Fuller, feeling that
popular sentiment was on his side--"I should ought to, seeing as I wur
your father's looker before you wur your father's daughter."

"You were my father's looker, but after this you shan't be looker of
mine. Since you won't mind what I say or take orders from me, you can
leave my service this day month."

There was a horror-stricken silence in the crowd--even the lowest
journeyman butcher realized the solemnity of the occasion.

"You understand me?" said Joanna.

"Yes, ma'am," came from Fuller in a crushed voice.




Sec.8

By the same evening the news was all over Lydd market, by the next it
was all over the Three Marshes. Everyone was repeating to everyone else
how Joanna Godden of Little Ansdore had got shut of her looker after
twenty-eight years' service, and her father not been dead a month.
"Enough to make him rise out of his grave," said the Marsh.

The actual reasons for the turning away were variously given--"Just
because he spuck up and told her as her pore father wudn't hold wud her
goings on," was the doctrine promulgated by the Woolpack; but the
general council sitting in the bar of the Crown decreed that the trouble
had arisen out of Fuller's spirited refusal to sell some lambs that had
tic. Other pronouncements were that she had sassed Fuller because he
knew more about sheep than she did--or that Fuller had sassed her for
the same reason--that it wasn't Joanna who had dismissed him, but he who
had been regretfully obliged to give notice, owing to her meddling--that
all the hands at Ansdore were leaving on account of her temper.

"He'll never get another plaeace agaeun, will pore old Fuller--he'll end
in the Union and be an everlasting shame to her."

There was almost a feeling of disappointment when it became known that
Fuller--who was only forty-two, having started his career at an early
age--had been given a most satisfactory job at Arpinge Farm inland, and
something like consternation when it was further said and confirmed by
Fuller himself that Joanna had given him an excellent character.

"She'll never get another looker," became the changed burden of the
Marsh.

But here again prophecy failed, for hardly had Joanna's advertisement
appeared simultaneously in the _Rye Observer_ and the _Kentish Express_
than she had half a dozen applications from likely men. Martha Tilden
brought the news to Godfrey's Stores, the general shop in Brodnyx.

"There she is, setting in her chair, talking to a young chap what's come
from Botolph's Bridge, and there's three more waiting in the
passage--she told Grace to give them each a cup of cocoa when she was
making it. And what d'you think? Their looker's come over from Old
Honeychild, asking for the place, though he was sitting in the Crown at
Lydd only yesterday, as Sam Broadhurst told me, saying as it was a shame
to get shut of Fuller like that, and as how Joanna deserved never to see
another looker again in her life."

"Which of the lot d'you think she'll take?" asked Godfrey.

"I dunno. How should I say? Peter Relf from Old Honeychild is a stout
feller, and one of the other men told me he'd got a character that made
him blush, it was that fine and flowery. But you never know with Joanna
Godden--maybe she'd sooner have a looker as knew nothing, and then she
could teach him. Ha! Ha!"

Meanwhile Joanna sat very erect in her kitchen chair, interviewing the
young chap from Botolph's Bridge.

"You've only got a year's character from Mr. Gain?"

"Yes, missus ..." a long pause during which some mental process took
place clumsily behind this low, sunburnt forehead ... "but I've got
these."

He handed Joanna one or two dirty scraps of paper on which were written
"characters" from earlier employers.

Joanna read them. None was for longer than two years, but they all spoke
well of the young man before her.

"Then you've never been on the Marsh before you came to Botolph's
Bridge?"

"No, missus."

"Sheep on the Marsh is very different from sheep inland."

"I know, missus."

"But you think you're up to the job."

"Yes, missus."

Joanna stared at him critically. He was a fine young fellow--slightly
bowed already though he had given his age as twenty-five, for the earth
begins her work early in a man's frame, and has power over the green
tree as well as the dry. But this stoop did not conceal his height and
strength and breadth, and somehow his bigness, combined with his
simplicity, his slow thought and slow tongue, appealed to Joanna,
stirred something within her that was almost tender. She handed him back
his dirty "characters."

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