Chapter 5 #2
Some people, I am told, find churches to be places of peace and succour.
I had ever found them steeped in anxiety, for as a child I had often been punished for looking bored or not appearing to attend to the service, though in fact I had listened to every word.
Now, of course, I must perform said service for persons who were judging me and likely finding me dull.
The parish church at Hunsford was therefore, for me, a place of tension, besides being rather cold and damp even in the summertime.
The interior was plain white plaster, Lady Catherine’s ancestors having had no truck with popery.
Also, I had, on my induction, employed a man to scrape the mould from the walls of the chancel and to cover it in fresh whitewash.
The church’s sole adornment was a pair of tablets with the Ten Commandments inscribed upon them, which hung on the eastern wall.
The bareness made me feel very exposed when I mounted the three-decker pulpit, there being but little to distract the attention of the flock away from me.
Of course, that was the point, but nonetheless I often wished the church boasted some decorative stained glass or a carved rood screen as I had seen in other churches during my curacies in Sussex and in London.
However, after the first few services, with Jem making no remarks afterwards about my performances and treating me no differently than before, I more or less forgot he was there and concentrated simply on reading the services, and my sermons, as loudly as I could, as usual.
* * *
O ne sweltering evening in August, Jem said he had something to show me.
There was an eagerness to his manner that led me to the conjecture that it was something special.
It had been a long hot day and I felt I had said the wrong thing to Mr Butler when I had met him in the lane as he had been quite curt with me.
I was tired and cross with myself and therefore with everything.
I was disinclined to linger in the heat, even with Jem, but I could not disappoint him.
He led me out of the garden and into the back paddock, round the back of the barn and across to the snicket gate set into what George called a carvet, being a hedgerow of some age and thickness.
The gate was not much used as it led nowhere but the wilderness; a thicket that sloped down to various sedges and willows that grew about a small brook.
Some of my ill temper fell away. We had seen a peregrine of late, perhaps Jem had found its nest?
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Jem glanced over his shoulder and smiled. “Not far.”
He led me unerringly into the wilderness, through some sweet chestnuts, around a hawthorn, under a curtain of ivy and down, towards the brook.
As I scrambled after him, I noticed, here and there, freshly cut branches which told me he had cleared a path.
All the same, we must pick our way, and the exertion and the closeness of the trees caused my head to pound and the sweat to pour down my face and my back.
A musical trickling drifted towards us. A gleam came through the trees, the sound of water grew louder and we found ourselves on the edge of the brook.
It was narrow at this point and had no name that I knew, though it was a tributary of the Gadway, since it curved, eventually, around the far side of my western pasture and thence beneath a low bridge in the road.
It meandered through Butler’s coppice to join the Gadway proper, which flowed through Hunsford.
At the brook, Jem turned left and continued picking his way through brambles and ferns. If we walked far enough, we should get to Rosings Park. I said as much.
“Ain’t going that far. Fact, we’re nearly there.” He paused and turned to me. “Close your eyes.”
“But why?”
“You’ll see.”
I greatly disliked surprises. I preferred the earliest apprehension of facts so I had time to consider them and decide upon the most appropriate response. But Jem was smiling and holding out his hand. I would not have done it for anyone else in the world, but for him I closed my eyes and reached.
His hand was huge and hot and hard as horn.
My own lay damp within it so it felt we were joined by a melting ball of wax.
The sensation was such that I wanted both to pull away and to have him hold me like that forever, but he led me but half a dozen paces and let go, saying, “Now just you take a glim at thissen.”
A slender pool lay at our feet, four or five yards across at the widest point and perhaps half as deep.
A huge old willow grew upstream and in narrowing to flow around this giant, the water had carved out this trough for itself before flowing on.
All was in shade but for a dappling of gold and a single ray of sunlight which passed through the willow’s branches and pierced the water like a coppery sword.
“Why, it’s beautiful.” My voice was hushed for this felt a secret place. “I never knew there was a pool here.”
“Don’t nobody know, excepting a fox and a little old urchin. Saw a deer once.”
The water flowed with barely a murmur, its movement betrayed only by dimples and swirls, and the occasional submerged leaf gliding by. Sweat dripped down my forehead and I wiped it with my handkerchief. I longed to take off my shoes and stockings and bathe my hot feet.
“Could we sit down, do you think?” I said.
“Your land. Reckon we may do as we please.”
I found a fallen tree that lay a few feet back from the poolside and perched upon it. Jem threw himself down into the undergrowth, grinning at me from its depths, fern fronds dancing about his face. Above us, the sky was a lattice of gold and green and blue.
“‘Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense’,” I said. “And a ‘well of living waters’ too.”
“Living waters, aye.”
“Song of Solomon. Four fourteen. And a bit of four fifteen.”
“Aye. Ain’t twigged yet, have you?”
“Haven’t…what?”
“Why I brung you here.”
“You wanted to show me the pool.”
“Aye.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Guess again.”
“You…something about irrigation for the garden? We could dig channels. I don’t know though, Jem. It’s quite low-lying. We’d need a pump.”
“Go on with you!” He gave a short laugh. “Brought you here to bathe.”
“Bathe?” I felt my eyes grow round. The pool was large enough, just about, but surely a score of farmers’ wives and their daughters could be thronging the thicket even now. I glanced about. Of course, there was no one. Just the trees. “I can’t bathe.”
“Why not?” Jem asked. “Always used in summertime.”
“We were children. Boys.”
He looked at me steadily. “Ain’t deep. Won’t drown.”
“It’s not that. I’m the rector .”
“Parsons don’t bathe?” He lifted his eyebrows in obvious disbelief.
“Someone might see.”
“Who?” He looked around, making it clear there was no one. “Excepting maybe old Master Tod.”
“You mean the fox?”
“Aye, the fox. And he don’t tell no tales, the rascal.”
“I…I just can’t.”
Something made small ripples on the surface of the pond.
There must be fish. Sticklebacks, perhaps.
I craned forwards. Maybe it was newts. At the far side of the pond, the water grew deeper, the colour of ale.
The water would be refreshing, but not icy.
I could wash away all the sweat and stink and strain of the day.
And afterwards, when I had dressed, my skin would feel cool, as if it carried within it the memory of the water.
“Maybe you ain’t rector down here.” Jem had put his arm over his face. “Not in this little old wilderness where no one ever comes. Down here, maybe you’re just plain Master Willie as was?”
I stared, glad he wasn’t looking at me, for his words were causing strange feelings to course through me, as though the current of the stream had risen up and was washing something away.
It would be like calling on Trafford, only the other way around, because this time, I would be calling on myself.
Or, myself as I once had been: Master Willie: Young, hungry, lonely, solemn, terrified of doing the wrong thing.
And yet, somehow, also able to splash about with Jem in the eel pond at Branley Chase on hot summer afternoons.
“I don’t know,” I said.
He began to smile. “Know you want to.”
“What if someone comes? Mrs Fowke, or Milly.”
“They don’t come down here.” He lifted his arm, glanced at me. “I’ll keep watch though, if you like. Downstream.”
“Maybe I could bathe my feet.” That was something even Trafford might do since it was true there were no ladies about, nor likely to be any.
“Aye. Ease into it, like.”
I removed my shoes and stockings and bathed my feet, and presently Jem said he was just going downstream a little way and pointed out a branch that grew at a good angle for hanging my clothes over.
But as he turned away, I was seized with sudden fear, almost panic.
It was not of being left alone, exactly, for it was a beautiful place and on my own glebe land.
I had a right to be here. I could not explain why my heart pounded, nor why his leaving should feel so unacceptable.
“Jem?”
He half-turned, eyebrows raised.
“Don’t go.”
“Will I not keep watch?”
“No. You should bathe too.” I had not known that was the reason until I said it, but of course that was what was wrong with him leaving. In the past we had always bathed together. “You want to, don’t you?”
“Well.” He looked at me, head cocked to the side. “Won’t deny I’m all of a muck sweat.”
“I’ll go in if you will.”
He smiled, for it was what I always used to say, and said, “Aye, all right then.”