A whispered incantation to summon the past
Croft. Croft Head. Headland Dale.
Hovland. Potland.
Cross Beck Meadow.
Little Cross Beck Meadow.
Langside. Mere Gill. Mere Gill Pasture.
Joshua, James, Joseph, John Mossop and John Fearon farmed all but one of those fields, one hundred and eighty years ago. Headland Dale (I’m turning left at Headland Dale to walk an ancient path) was owned by Jane. But Jane rented the field to her friend Esther, married to farmer and innholder, John.
I’d been looking for a way into Esther’s story for an age when, while walking this path two years ago, I saw her clearly for the first time. It was the first day of February. Imbolc. In the old languages “in the womb’s belly,” or “in milk,” referring to the start of lactation in ewes and cows prior to birthing.
Here’s my diary entry from that day.
There’s Esther, standing in profile a little way ahead, a month or two into her pregnancy, needing a moment away from the work of the farm. She’s looking towards the Solway, singing the words that Patrick McElvaney sang at the inn Saturday last. Patrick McElvaney. He can barely read or write, but sings what he calls an air in such a thoughtful way, full of a crow’s age of hungering and believing and loving.
“Over the mountains and under the waves, under the fountains and under the graves, under floods that are deepest which Neptune obeys, over rocks that are steepest love will find out the way.”
Esther stops there, thinks her singing sounds too much like a hymn. And what would Patrick McElvaney, what would John have thought, if Esther fessed she’d no time for the church. Esther’s mother, too. Esther’s mother would say: “Your unborn needs your prayers now, Esther.”
“Be merciful to thy beast,” said Reverend Parsable that morning in church, all those years earlier. That same day in the afternoon, there was John and Esther’s daughter, Jane. Jane was riding the jenny that normally carried the water from the well, but the jenny would foal soon. Jane kicked that jenny, and kicked it some more and Esther said: “Jane, Jane, come off her now!” And then the Jenny threw Jane and she pitched on her head.
“She’d have been sixteen this year,” says Esther to no one.
The year before, at Candelmas, John went on business to Carlisle. Esther remembers him atop their cart, swarthy hands on the reins, his beloved best hat and his father’s neckerchief. He wore the striped waistcoat with four pockets and mother o’pearl buttons she’d made him, a fustian shooting jacket, and a broadcloth coat.
“My big man made bigger,” she’d said.
“I’ll keep warm, lass.”
When he came home two days later, he’d Patrick McElvaney at his side from the hirings.
“I offered three,” John said to Esther that night. “The lad laughed and said seven. Seven. Ha. He’s strong, though. We shook on five anyhow, and he’s with us till Whit.”
Whitsun came and went, and now it’s Candlemas and Patrick McElvaney is still here, seventeen or eighteen years of age. He’s respected. That wasn’t always the case. John had made himself and Patrick McElvaney unpopular when there were local folk John could’ve hired.
John has taken badly. This morning Patrick McElvaney was regaling tales to her youngest to cheer them.
“Back in County Kildare, we made crosses and dolls out of green rushes for Brid’s Day. Imagine that now, all the little Brid’s that there were through the land. Oh and there were walks through the streets, candles aglow. And did you know, Lizzy and Skelton, that Brid’s love of all the farm animals and farming was so great, she’s the saint of tillage?”
“And her cows made enough milk to fill the sea,” said Lizzy. “Patrick McElvaney, tell our mam about the wretched dog.”
Patrick McElvaney hesitated and Esther put down her account book, nodded.
“Brid had the meat on the stove for her da when the wretched dog came in. She gave it some meat, but he looked at her with his eyes, still famished as he was. Before you know it, there was no meat for Brid’s da and Brid’s da was calling for his food. Brid was sure she’d done right by that dog, the Christian thing. And what happened next, Lizzy?”
“She covered her father’s plate and made the sign of the cross,” said Lizzy.
“She did. And when Brid’s da lifted his plate?”
Lizzy skipped around and around the table. “There was father’s meat!”
John died that summer. Esther’s friend Agnes sat with him at the end, wetting his lips, holding his hand. It was Agnes who put her mark on John’s death certificate.
John had been bedfast for a week, had not been fashed with his work before he took badly. He’d become confused and forgetful. It was something like a wearing, Agnes said, which caused his death, but Esther thinks it was one wrestling match too many. Esther did not say as much, because of the rules concerning fighting. John had been a member of the friendly society, they gave Esther three pounds when he died, towards a respectable funeral though they did not say that was what the money was for. And they need not have worried because Esther put away sixpence a week all the time they were married. Esther had put the three pounds from the friendly society in the tin under the boards in the parlour. She’d buy the kind of horse John had always wanted, at next year’s Rosley Fair.
In March, the following year, Esther’s baby, Jane, dies of Scarlet Fever. She was sixteen months old. While comforted by Patrick, Esther says she never sees the Fearon children these days.
“Eight of them made orphans. The year our Skelton were born.” Esther wipes her face, blows her nose. “There’s no time to waste. No time at all.”
When I learned of baby Jane’s death, ordered her death certificate, held it in my hands, put the words into Esther’s mouth about the Fearon orphans, it was my heart going out to her in her longing for something she couldn’t have.
Ez tells me he never wants children. I resist saying he has years, that he might change his mind when he falls in love again. I feel sad thinking of my life without grandchildren. But then, there have been so many times when I’ve imagined life without Ez.
I reel Esther in from the mizzle of the morning. She’s standing in the stack yard behind the inn. I can see the clart of Headland Dale on her boots and dress, her breath in the air, the down above her mouth. Time cannot stop on a farm. The rigours of Esther’s days help but death and grief undo her. She cannot comfort others in their losses. She cannot come across a dead bird without feeling raw.
Patrick McElvaney is the only person who sees her. He puts his hand on her shoulder. “Time,” he says, “isn’t always tender.”
This is beautiful, Bee.