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Joanna Godden by Sheila Kaye Smith

S >> Sheila Kaye Smith >> Joanna Godden




"I'm going to show 'em what a wedding's like," she remarked
ominously--"I'm going to do everything in the real, proper, slap-up
style. I'm going to have a white dress and a veil and carriages and
bridesmaids and favours--" this was the old Joanna--"you don't mind, do
you, Martin?" this was the new.

Of course he could not say he minded. She was like an eager child,
anxious for notice and display. He would endure the wedding for her
sake. He also would endure for her sake to live at Ansdore; after a few
weeks he saw that nothing else could happen. It would be ridiculous for
Joanna to uproot herself from her prosperous establishment and settle in
some new place just because in spirit he shrank from becoming "Mr.
Joanna Godden." She had said that "Martin and Joanna Trevor" should be
painted on the scrolled name-boards of her waggons, but he knew that on
the farm and in the market-place they would not be on an equal footing,
whatever they were in the home. As farmer and manager she would outshine
him, whose tastes and interests and experiences were so different. Never
mind--he would have more time to give to the beloved pursuit of
exploring the secret, shy marsh country--he would do all Joanna's
business afield, in the far market towns of New Romney and Dymchurch,
and the farms away in Kent or under the Coast at Ruckinge and Warhorne.

Meanwhile he spent a great deal of his time at Ansdore. He liked the
life of the place with its mixture of extravagance and simplicity,
democracy and tyranny. Fortunately Ellen approved of him--indeed he
sometimes found her patronage excessive. He thought her spoilt and
affected, and might almost have come to dislike her if she had not been
such a pretty, subtle little thing, and if she had not interested and
amused him by her sharp contrasts with her sister. He was now also
amused by the conflicts between the two, which at first had shocked him.
He liked to see Joanna's skin go pink as she faced Ellen in a torment of
loving anger and rattled the fierce words off her tongue, while Ellen
tripped and skipped and evaded and generally triumphed by virtue of a
certain fundamental coolness. "It will be interesting to watch that girl
growing up," he thought.




Sec.15

As the year slid through the fogs into the spring, he persuaded Joanna
to come with him on his rambles on the Marsh. He was astonished to find
how little she knew of her own country, of that dim flat land which was
once under the sea. She knew it only as the hunting ground of her
importance. It was at Yokes Court that she bought her roots, and from
Becket's House her looker had come; Lydd and Rye and Romney were only
market-towns--you did best in cattle at Rye, but the other two were
proper for sheep; Old Honeychild was just a farm where she had bought
some good spades and dibbles at an auction; at Misleham they had once
had foot-and-mouth disease--she had gone to Picknye Bush for the
character of Milly Pump, her chicken-girl....

He told her of the smugglers and owlers who had used the Woolpack as
their headquarters long ago, riding by moonlight to the cross-roads,
with their mouths full of slang--cant talk of "mackerel" and "fencing"
and "hornies" and "Oliver's glim."

"Well, if they talked worse there then than they talk now, they must
have talked very bad indeed," was all Joanna found to say.

He told her of the old monks of Canterbury who had covered the Marsh
with the altars of Thomas a Becket.

"We got shut of 'em all on the fifth of November," said Joanna, "as we
sing around here on bonfire nights--and 'A halfpenny loaf to feed the
Pope, a penn'orth of cheese to choke him,' as we say."

All the same he enjoyed the expeditions that they had together in her
trap, driving out on some windy-skied March day, to fill the hours
snatched from her activities at Ansdore and his muddlings at North
Farthing, with all the sea-green sunny breadth of Walland, and still
more divinely with Walland's secret places--the shelter of tall reeds by
the Yokes Sewer, or of a thorn thicket making a tent of white blossom
and spindled shadows in the midst of the open land.

Sometimes they crossed the Rhee Wall on to Romney Marsh, and he showed
her the great church at Ivychurch, which could have swallowed up in its
nave the two small farms that make the village. He took her into the
church at New Romney and showed her the marks of the Great Flood,
discolouring the pillars for four feet from the ground.

"Doesn't it thrill you?--Doesn't it excite you?" he teased her, as they
stood together in the nave, the church smelling faintly of hearthstones.

"How long ago did it happen?"

"In the year of our Lord twelve hundred and eighty seven the Kentish
river changed his mouth, and after swilling out Romney Sands and
drowning all the marsh from Honeychild to the Wicks, did make himself a
new mouth in Rye Bay, with which mouth he swallowed the fifty taverns
and twelve churches of Broomhill, and--"

"Oh, have done talking that silly way--it's like the Bible, only there's
no good in it."

Her red mouth was close to his in the shadows of the church--he kissed
it....

"Child!"

"Oh, Martin--"

She was faintly shocked because he had kissed her in church, so he drew
her to him, tilting back her chin.

"You mustn't" ... but she had lost the power of gainsaying him now, and
made no effort to release herself. He held her up against the pillar and
gave her mouth another idolatrous kiss before he let her go.

"If it happened all that while back, they might at least have got the
marks off by this time," she said, tucking away her loosened hair.

Martin laughed aloud--her little reactions of common sense after their
passionate moments never failed to amuse and delight him.

"You'd have had it off with your broom, and that's all you think about
it. But look here, child--what if it happened again?"

"It can't."

"How do you know?"

"It can't--I know it."

"But if it happened then it could happen again."

"There ain't been a flood on the Marsh in my day, nor in my poor
father's day, neither. Sometimes in February the White Kemp brims a bit,
but I've never known the roads covered. You're full of old tales. And
now let's go out, for laughing and love-making ain't the way to behave
in church."

"The best way to behave in church is to get married."

She blushed faintly and her eyes filled with tears.

They went out, and had dinner at the New Inn, which held the memory of
their first meal together, in that huge, sag-roofed dining-room, then so
crowded, now empty except for themselves. Joanna was still given to
holding forth on such subjects as harness and spades, and to-day she
gave Martin nearly as much practical advice as on that first occasion.

"Now, don't you waste your money on a driller--we don't give our sheep
turnips on the Marsh. It's an Inland notion. The grass here is worth a
field of roots. You stick to grazing and you'll keep your money in your
pocket and never send coarse mutton to the butcher."

He did not resent her advice, for he was learning humility. Her superior
knowledge and experience of all practical matters was beginning to lose
its sting. She was in his eyes so adorable a creature that he could
forgive her for being dominant. The differences in their natures were
no longer incompatibilities, but gifts which they brought each other--he
brought her gifts of knowledge and imagination and emotion, and she
brought him gifts of stability and simplicity and a certain saving
commonness. And all these gifts were fused in the glow of personality,
in a kind bodily warmth, in a romantic familiarity which sometimes found
its expression in shyness and teasing.

They loved each other.




Sec.16

Martin had always wanted to go out on the cape at Dunge Ness, that
tongue of desolate land which rakes out from Dunge Marsh into the sea,
slowly moving every year twenty feet towards France. Joanna had a
profound contempt of Dunge Ness--"not enough grazing on it for one
sheep"--but Martin's curiosity mastered her indifference and she
promised to drive him out there some day. She had been once before with
her father, on some forgotten errand to the Hope and Anchor inn.

It was an afternoon in May when they set out, bowling through Pedlinge
in the dog cart behind Smiler's jogging heels. Joanna wore her bottle
green driving coat, with a small, close-fitting hat, since Martin, to
her surprise and disappointment, disliked her best hat with the
feathers. He sat by her, unconsciously huddling to her side, with his
hand thrust under her arm and occasionally pressing it--she had told him
that she could suffer that much of a caress without detriment to her
driving.

It was a bright, scented day, heavily coloured with green and gold and
white; for the new grass was up in the pastures, releasing the farmer
from many anxious cares, and the buttercups were thick both on the
grazing lands and on the innings where the young hay stood, still green;
the watercourses were marked with the thick dumpings of the may, walls
of green-teased white streaking here and there across the pastures,
while under the boughs the thick green water lay scummed with white
ranunculus, and edged with a gaudy splashing of yellow irises, torches
among the never silent reeds. Above it all the sky was misty and fall
of shadows, a low soft cloud, occasionally pierced with sunlight.

"It'll rain before night," said Joanna.

"What makes you think that?"

"The way of the wind, and those clouds moving low--and the way you see
Rye Hill all clear with the houses on it--and the way the sheep are
grazing with their heads to leeward."

"Do you think they know?"

"Of course they know. You'd be surprised at the things beasts know,
Martin."

"Well, it won't matter if it does rain--we'll be home before night. I'm
glad we're going down on the Ness--I'm sure it's wonderful."

"It's a tedious hole."

"That's what you think."

"I know--I've been there."

"Then it's very sweet of you to come again with me."

"It'll be different with you."

She was driving him by way of Broomhill, for that was another place
which had fired his imagination, though to her it too was a tedious
hole. Martin could not forget the Broomhill of old days--the glamour of
taverns and churches and streets lay over the few desolate houses and
ugly little new church which huddled under the battered sea-wall. Great
reedy pools still remained from the thirteenth century floods, brackish
on the flat seashore, where the staked keddle nets showed that the
mackerel were beginning to come into Rye Bay.

"Nothing but fisher-folk around here," said Joanna
contemptuously--"you'll see 'em all in the summer, men, women and
children, with heaps of mackerel that they pack in boxes for London and
such places--so much mackerel they get that there's nothing else ate in
the place for the season, and yet if you want fish-guts for manure they
make you pay inland prices, and do your own carting."

"I think it's a delicious place," he retorted, teasing her, "I've a mind
to bring you here for our honeymoon."

"Martin, you'd never I You told me you were taking me to foreign parts,
and I've told Mrs. Southland and Mrs. Furnese and Maudie Vine and half a
dozen more all about my going to Paris and seeing the sights and
hearing French spoken."

"Yes--perhaps it would be better to go abroad; Broomhill is wonderful,
but you in Paris will be more wonderful than Broomhill--even in the days
before the flood."

"I want to see the Eiffel Tower--where they make the lemonade--and I
want to buy myself something really chick in the way of hats."

"Joanna--do you know the hat which suits you best?"

"Which?" she asked eagerly, with some hope for the feathers.

"The straw hat you tie on over your hair when you go out to the chickens
first thing in the morning."

"That old thing I Why I My! Lor! Martin! That's an old basket that I tie
under my chin with a neckerchief of poor father's."

"It suits you better than any hat in the Rue St. Honore--it's brown and
golden like yourself, and your hair comes creeping and curling from
under it, and there's a shadow on your face, over your eyes--the shadow
stops just above your mouth--your mouth is all of your face that I can
see dearly, and it's your mouth that I love most ..."

He suddenly kissed it, ignoring her business with the reins and the
chances of the road, pulling her round in her seat and covering her face
with his, so that his eyelashes stroked her cheek. She drew her hands up
sharply to her breast, and with the jerk the horse stopped.

For a few moments they stayed so, then he released her and they moved
on. Neither of them spoke; the tears were in Joanna's eyes and in her
heart was a devouring tenderness that made it ache. The trap lurched in
the deep ruts of the road, which now had become a mass of shingle and
gravel, skirting the beach. Queer sea plants grew in the ruts, the
little white sea-campions with their fat seed-boxes filled the furrows
of the road as with a foam--it seemed a pity and a shame to crush them,
and one could tell by their fresh growth how long it was since wheels
had passed that way.

At Jury's Gap, a long white-daubed coastguard station marked the end of
the road. Only a foot-track ran out to the Ness. They left the horse and
trap at the station and went afoot.

"I told you it was a tedious place," said Joanna. Like a great many busy
people she did not like walking, which she always looked upon as a waste
of time. Martin could seldom persuade her to come for a long walk.

It was a long walk up the Ness, and the going was bad, owing to the
shingle. The sea-campion grew everywhere, and in sunny corners the
yellow-horned poppy put little spots of colour into a landscape of
pinkish grey. The sea was the same colour as the land, for the sun had
sunk away into the low thick heavens, leaving the sea an unrelieved,
tossed dun waste.

The wind came tearing across Rye Bay with a moan, lifting all the waves
into little sharp bitter crests.

"We'll get the rain," said Joanna sagely.

"I don't care if we do," said Martin.

"You haven't brought your overcoat."

"Never mind that."

"I do mind."

His robust appearance--his broad back and shoulders, thick vigorous neck
and swarthy skin--only magnified his pathos in her eyes. It was pitiful
that this great thing should be so frail.... He could pick her up with
both hands on her waist, and hold her up before him, the big Joanna--and
yet she must take care of him.




Sec.17

An hour's walking brought them to the end of the Ness--to a strange
forsaken country of coastguard stations and lonely taverns and shingle
tracks. The lighthouse stood only a few feet above the sea, at the end
of the point, and immediately before it the water dropped to sinister,
glaucous depths.

"Well, it ain't much to see," said Joanna.

"It's wonderful," said Martin--"it's terrible."

He stood looking out to sea, into the Channel streaked with green and
grey, as if he would draw France out of the southward fogs. He felt
half-way to France ... here on the end of this lonely crane, with water
each side of him and ahead, and behind him the shingle which was the
uttermost of Kent.

"Joanna--don't you feel it, too?"

"Yes--maybe I do. It's queer and lonesome--I'm glad I've got you,
Martin."

She suddenly came close to him and put out her arms, hiding her face
against his heart.

"Child--what is it?"

"I dunno. Maybe it's this place, but I feel scared. Oh, Martin, you'll
never leave me? You'll always be good to me?..."

"I ... oh, my own precious thing."

He held her close to him and they both trembled--she with her first fear
of those undefinable forces and associations which go to make the
mystery of place, he with the passion of his faithfulness, of his vows
of devotion, too fierce and sacrificial even to express.

"Let's go and have tea," she said, suddenly disengaging herself, "I'll
get the creeps if we stop out here on the beach much longer--reckon I've
got 'em now, and I never was the one to be silly like that. I told you
it was a tedious hole."

They went to the Britannia, on the eastern side of the bill. The inn
looked surprised to see them, but agreed to put the kettle on. They sat
together in a little queer, dim room, smelling of tar and fish, and
bright with the flames of wreckwood. Joanna had soon lost her fears--she
talked animatedly, telling him of the progress of her spring wheat; of
the dead owl that had fallen out of the beams of Brenzett church during
morning prayers last Sunday, of the shocking way they had managed their
lambing at Beggar's Bush, of King Edward's Coronation that was coming
off in June.

"I know of something else that's coming off in June," said Martin.

"Our wedding?"

"Surelye."

"I'm going into Folkestone next week, to that shop where I bought my
party gown."

"And I'm going to Mr. Pratt to tell him to put up our banns, or we
shan't have time to be cried three times before the first of June."

"The first!--I told you the twenty-fourth."

"But I'm not going to wait till the twenty-fourth. You promised me
June."

"But I shan't have got in my hay, and the shearers are coming on the
fourteenth--you have to book weeks ahead, and that was the only date
Harmer had free."

"Joanna."

Her name was a summons, almost stern, and she looked up. She was still
sitting at the table, stirring the last of her tea. He sat under the
window on an old sea-chest, and had just lit his pipe.

"Come here, Joanna."

She came obediently, and sat beside him, and he put his arm round her.
The blue and ruddy flicker of the wreckwood lit up the dark day.

"I've been thinking a lot about this, and I know now--there is only one
thing between us, and that's Ansdore."

"How d'you mean? It ain't between us."

"It is--again and again you seem to be putting Ansdore in the place of
our love. What other woman on God's earth would put off her marriage to
fit in with the sheep-shearing?"

"I ain't putting it off. We haven't fixed the day yet, and I'm just
telling you to fix a day that's suitable and convenient."

"You know I always meant to marry you the first week in June."

"And you know as I've told you, that I can't take the time off then."

"The time off! You're not a servant. You can leave Ansdore any day you
choose."

"Not when the shearing's on. You don't understand, Martin--I can't have
all the shearers up and nobody to look after 'em."

"What about your looker?--or Broadhurst? You don't trust anybody but
yourself."

"You're just about right--I don't."

"Don't you trust me?"

"Not to shear sheep."

Martin laughed ruefully.

"You're very sensible, Joanna--unshakably so. But I'm not asking you to
trust me with the sheep, but to trust me with yourself. Don't
misunderstand me, dear. I'm not asking you to marry me at the beginning
of the month just because I haven't the patience to wait till the end.
It isn't that, I swear it. But don't you see that if you fix our
marriage to fit in with the farm-work, it'll simply be beginning things
in the wrong way? As we begin we shall have to go on, and we can't go on
settling and ordering our life according to Ansdore's requirements--it's
a wrong principle. Think, darling," and he drew her close against his
heart, "we shall want to see our children--and will you refuse, just
because that would mean that you would have to lie up and keep quiet and
not go about doing all your own business?"

Joanna shivered.

"Oh, Martin, don't talk of such things."

"Why not?"

She had given him some frank and graphic details about the accouchement
of her favourite cow, and he did not understand that the subject became
different when it was human and personal.

"Because I--because we ain't married yet."

"Joanna, you little prude!"

She saw that he was displeased and drew closer to him, slipping her arms
round his neck, so that he could feel the roughness of her work-worn
hands against it.

"I'm not shocked--only it's so wonderful--I can't abear talking of
it ... Martin, if we had one ... I should just about die of joy ..."

He gripped her to him silently, unable to speak. Somehow it seemed as if
he had just seen deeper into Joanna than during all the rest of his
courtship. He moved his lips over her bright straying hair--her face was
hidden in his sleeve.

"Then we'll stop at Mr. Pratt's on our way home and ask him to put up
the banns at once?"

"Oh no--" lifting herself sharply--"I didn't mean that."

"Why not?"

"Well, it won't make any difference to our marriage, being married three
weeks later--but it'll make an unaccountable difference to my wool
prices if the shearers don't do their job proper--and then there's the
hay."

"On the contrary, child--it will make a difference to our marriage. We
shall have started with Ansdore between us."

"What nonsense."

"Well, I can't argue with you--you must do as you like. My wife is a
very strong-willed person, who will keep her husband in proper order.
But he loves her enough to bear it."

He kissed her gently, and they both stood up. At the same time there was
a sharp scud of rain against the window.




Sec.18

The journey home was quieter and dimmer than the journey out. Their
voices and footsteps were muffled in the roar of the wind, which had
risen from sorrow to anger. The rain beat in their faces as they walked
arm in arm over the shingle. They could not hurry, for at every step
their feet sank.

"I said it was a tedious hole," reiterated Joanna, "and now perhaps
you'll believe me--the folk here walk with boards on their feet, what
they call backstays. Our shoes will be just about ruined."

She was not quite happy, for she felt that Martin was displeased with
her, though he made no reproaches. He did not like her to arrange their
wedding day to fit in with the shearing. But what else could she do? If
she was away when the shearers came, there'd be no end to their goings
on with the girls, and besides, who'd see that the work was done proper
and the tegs not scared out of their lives?

It was only six o'clock, but a premature darkness was falling as the
clouds dropped over Dunge Marsh, and the rain hung like a curtain over
Rye Bay, blotting out all distances, showing them nothing but the
crumbling, uncertain track. In half an hour they were both wet through
to their shoulders, for the rain came down with all the drench of May.
Joanna could see that Martin was beginning to be worried about
himself--he was worried about her too, but he was more preoccupied with
his own health than other men she knew, the only way in which he
occasionally betrayed the weak foundations of his stalwart looks.

"The worst of it is, we'll have to sit for an hour in the dog-cart after
we get to Jury's Gap. You'll catch your death of cold, Joanna."

"Not I! I often say I'm like our Romney sheep--I can stand all winds and
waters. But you're not used to it like I am--you should ought to have
brought your overcoat."

"How was I to know it would turn out like this?"

"I told you it would rain."

"But not till after we'd started."

Joanna said nothing. She accepted Martin's rather unreasonable
displeasure without protest, for she felt guilty about other things. Was
he right, after all, when he said that she was putting Ansdore between
them?... She did not feel that she was, any more than she was putting
Ansdore between herself and Ellen. But she hated him to have the
thought. Should she give in and tell him he could call on Mr. Pratt on
their way home?... No, there was plenty of time to make up her mind
about that. To-day was only Tuesday, and any day up till Saturday would
do for putting in notice of banns ... she must think things over before
committing herself ... it wasn't only the shearers--there was the
hay....

Thus they came, walking apart in their own thoughts, to Jury's Gap. In a
few moments the horse was put to, and they were lurching in the ruts of
the road to Broomhill. The air was full of the sound of hissing rain, as
it fell on the shingle and in the sea and on the great brackish pools of
the old flood. Round the pools were thick beds of reeds, shivering and
moaning, while along the dykes the willows tossed their branches and the
thorn-trees rattled.

"It'll freshen up the grass," said Joanna, trying to cheer Martin.

"I was a fool not to bring my overcoat," he grumbled.

Then suddenly her heart went out to him more than ever, because he was
fractious and fretting about himself. She took one hand off the reins
and pressed his as it lay warm between her arm and her side.

"Reckon you're my own silly child," she said in a low voice.

"I'm sorry, Jo," he replied humbly, "I know I'm being a beast and
worrying you. But I'm worried about you too--you're as wet as I am."

"No, I'm not. I've got my coat. I'm not at all worried about myself--nor
about you, neither." She could not conceive of a man taking cold through
a wetting.

She had planned for him to come back to supper with her at Ansdore, but
with that fussiness which seemed so strange and pathetic, he insisted on
going straight back to North Farthing to change his clothes.

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

William Morris - "Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough"

Various - "Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70"

Various - "Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know"

R. M. Ballantyne - "Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader"