their grease and put away until the autumn draws its dark hours in again. It seemed to John that he had set foot in the land of Cockayne, where the rivers run with buttermilk and the barns are thatched with bacon.
At seven o’clock the household sat down to breakfast. Nathan Cushion and the milk-maids came in from the milking shed shaking the straw from their shoes. Will Farrell left his stable boots at the door and sat down. John Fell and his dog came in from shepherding by the fen. Mary sat down beside John, wearing the yellow dress that he had first seen at Rogation.
When Will saw John with Mary beside him he raised his eyebrows in surprise but knew better than to speak his mind. Then Farmer Joyce returned from his early morning inspection of the stables.
“Well, well, good morning, the horses are well brushed Will, they will not disgrace us. What time did ye feed ‘em?”
Will Farrell got up to his feet:
“The clock had not long struck five.”
“Good, good. Sit down Will for God’s sake.”
Farmer Joyce was dressed in holiday attire, blue frock coat and yellow swansdown waistcoat, his breeches tucked into top-boots. He sat at the table and cut himself a lump of bread from the loaf. No sooner had he lifted food to mouth than all the household set to eating. Then he became aware of John. He looked across at him with the shrewd, quizzical air of a farmer at market.
“Mary, you’ve brought your sweet throated throstle in from the garden I see.”
Will Farrell and the milk-maids chortled into their cups. Farmer Joyce continued:
“Ay, and you’re welcome at this table John Clare, for Mary’s often talked of thee.”
He held out his hand and John shook it readily.
“I remember she said as you was the best scholar in old Merrishaw’s class.”
John shrugged and reddened.
“Yes, you were John,” said Mary, “he was always holding up some page of yours as an example to the rest of us.”
Farmer Joyce poured himself a mug of small ale.
“Well, book-learning’s all very well as far as it goes.”
He looked along his own table, spread with bread, butter, cheese, conserves, ham, hard-boiled eggs, a plate of steaming bacon and jugs of whey and ale, as though it was itself a tidily writ page. For a moment it seemed he would say more, but then he stopped his mouth with cheese and bacon. But his thoughts, for all they were unspoken, were clear enough. He was weighing, as a chandler in some corn-hall, his precious daughter’s happiness this May holiday against the prospects of a Helpston lad without land or trade. But, for all his rumination, he ate with relish enough, pausing from time to time to mop the corners of his mouth with a handkerchief. All the household ate with him and for a while no word was spoken. Then he rapped the table hard with his knuckles.
“Away to Helpston Fair with the pair of you, for we’re only young once and John Clare is as good a lad as any, for all he owns no more in this world than his breeches and a brain-pan full of Merrishaw’s clap-trap!”
He had swapped his scruples for Mary’s bright face as she jumped to her feet, ran round the table, put her arms about his shoulders and kissed his cheek. And it seemed to him a fair trade.
Later he watched them through the open door as they set off across the farmyard. With his inner eye he was watching his own courtship twenty years since. It seemed to him, for a moment, that the two of them were ghosts as they walked between the gateposts and made their way side by side along the lane, John’s garland across Mary’s shoulder. Then they entered the churchyard and disappeared from sight.
He turned back to the table, lifted his mug and tipped the last of the small beer down his throat. He strode out of the house and across the yard to the stable.
*******
All day John Clare and Mary Joyce were swept up in the rigs and the jigs of Helpston Fair as though they were part of some fevered dream that had been conjured by