Chapter 8

Robert Backfield was a member of Peasmarsh choir. He had a good, ringing bass voice, which had attracted the clerk's notice, and though Reuben disapproved of his son's having any interests outside Odiam, he realised that as a good Tory he ought to support the Church—especially as the hours of the practices did not clash with Robert's more important engagements.

Peasmarsh choir consisted of about eighteen boys and girls, with an accompaniment of cornets, flutes, and a bass viol—the last played by an immensely aged drover from Coldblow, who, having only three fingers on his left hand, had to compromise, not always tunefully, with the score. The singing was erratic. Eighteen fresh young voices could not fail to give a certain pleasure, but various members had idiosyncrasies which did not make for the common weal—such as young Ditch, who never knew till he had begun to sing whether his voice would be bass or alto, all intermediary pitches being somehow unattainable—or Rosie Hubble from Barline, who was always four bars behind the rest—or[Pg 141] even young Robert himself, who in crises of enthusiasm was wont to sing so loud that his voice drowned everyone else's, or in a wild game of follow-my-leader led the whole anthem to destruction.

Robert loved these choir practices and church singings. Though he never complained of his hard work, he was unconsciously glad of a change from the materialism of Odiam. The psalms with their outbreathings of a clearer life did much to purge even his uncultured soul of its muddlings, the hymns with their sentimental farawayness opened views into which he would gaze enchanted as into a promised land. He would come in tired and throbbing from the fields, scrape as much mud as possible off his boots, put on his Sunday coat, and tramp through the dusk to the clerk's house ... the little golden window gleaming to him across Peasmarsh street and pond was the foretaste of the evening's sweetness.

The practices were held in the clerk's kitchen, into which the choristers would crush and huddle. On full attendance nights all elbows touched, and occasionally old Spodgram's bow would be jolted out of his hand, or someone would complain that Leacher was blowing his trumpet down his neck. Afterwards the choristers would wander home in clusters through the fields; the clusters generally split into small groups, and then the groups into couples. The couples would scatter widely, and vex their homes with late returnings.

Robert was first of all part of a cluster which included young Coalbran from Doozes, Tom Sheane from Dinglesden, the two Morfees from Edzell, Emily Ditch, and Bessie Lamb from Eggs Hole. Then in time the company reduced itself to Robert, Emily, and Bessie—and one wonderful night he found himself with Bessie alone. How they had chosen each other he could not say. All he knew was that for sometime she had become woven with the music into his thoughts. She[Pg 142] was a poor labourer's daughter, living in a crumbled, rickety cottage on Eggs Hole Farm, helping her mother look after eight young children. She was only seventeen herself, sturdy yet soft, with a mass of hay-coloured hair, and rather a broad face with wistful eyes. Robert thought she was beautiful—but Robert thought that old Spodgram's playing and the choir's singing were beautiful.

Though they were technically a Couple, they never spoke of love. They never even kissed or held each other's hands, however tenderly the velvet darkness called. He told her about his work at Odiam—about the little calf that was born that day, or the trouble he had had, patching the rent in the pigsty, or how the poultry had not taken well to their new food, but preferred something with more sharps in it. She in her turn would tell him how she had washed little Georgie's shirt—taking advantage of a warm day when he could run about naked—how her mother had lamentable hard pains all down her back, how her father had got drunk at the harvest supper and tried to beat her.

Sometimes they looked in the hedges for birds' nests, or watched the rabbits skipping in the dusk. They would gape up at the stars together and call the constellations by names of their own—Orion was "the gurt tree," and Cassiopeia was "the sheep trough," and Pegasus was "the square meadow."

It was all very wonderful and sweet to Robert, and when at last he crept under the sheets in the apple-smelling garret he would dream of him and Bessie wandering in the Peasmarsh fields—or sometimes in those starry meadows where the hedges shone and twinkled with the fruit of constellations, and Charles drove his waggon along a golden road, and sheep ate from a flickering trough under a great tree of lamps.