A Country Marriage by Sandra Jane Goddard

a dressing down! Some stiff fellow wearing a starched apron shot out from nowhere and asked me what I thought I was doing round that side of the house and waved at me all a-frenzy to go back. I hadn’t the least idea who he was but by the time I got back to my work, the foreman already knew where I’d been and told me that if I wanted to last more than a single day, I shouldn’t go snooping about.’
    ‘But it wasn’t snooping about if you were lost.’
    ‘I don’t think he much cared.’
    ‘So who was he; the man in the apron? Someone important?’
    ‘Important? Him? Not a bit of it, although he most likely thinks he is. Someone told me he’s head gardener. By all accounts he’s not much liked and best kept away from since he’s well in with the bailey. And bailey does the hiring.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘Anyway, oh Mary, you should ha’ seen it.’
    She frowned back at him.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Well, I count it was the kitchen garden but as big as Top Pasture, bigger even and brimming with vegetables; row upon row of them, all standing hale and hearty. And fruit, too; scores of bushes in long lines and more still, trained along the walls. And one of them glass house things. One lad told me how they grows peaches in them and some other fancy fruit called pineapples and how they cut rhubarb as tall as a man and sometimes as early as February .’
    ‘Lord. Sounds a real sight.’
    ‘Aye, it was a sight all right and all of it just for the squire, to boot. No chance of turmit broth for him . Aye, I reckon there was enough food in that one garden to feed the entire village right through this coming winter.’
    ‘My word.’ With the morning’s upset still fresh in her mind, she would be circumspect this time with her answers, especially since she could see that the fire was back in his eyes again.
    ‘See, there’s always been talk, especially among… certain folk… up at The Stag, about how landowners should pay better wages so folk can feed themselves proper but none of it meant much to me, other than maybe to see Pa’s side of it as a farmer and know the struggle it was for him to make ends meet. Well, I never thought to see it any other way. But what I didn’t understand until today, was how Summerleas ain’t the least like gentry’s farms; farms where the owners grow fat an’ rich off the backs of other men with no concern that their families are starving. I never seen first-hand the likes of the estate before, and now that I have, it grieves me greatly to think how I’ve been sheltered all these years by the comfort of not needing to bring home a wage. Blind to it, that’s what I was. And those brothers of mine still are; don’t know they’re born.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Maybe the time’s coming to open their eyes, though.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Still,’ he continued, spooning the dregs of his stew into his mouth, ‘it’d serve me to remember that a beggar who chooses is a beggar still. And that at least by the strength of my own body, earning some of the squire’s coin will pay the rent and put clothes on our backs. And then maybe, come Lady Day there might be summat better somewhere else.’
    ‘Aye.’ Although a lot of what he had just said did indeed seem like a shame, to her mind, the greatest shame of all was that someone with his farming skills should be reduced to common labouring. Nevertheless, there were only so many things she could fret about and the reality was that at the moment, she had enough mysteries and problems of her own to worry too much on his behalf. But since at that very moment he seemed both tired and preoccupied, it occurred to her that it might be just the moment to ask him something; something that as an idea had been gaining importance as the day had worn on. ‘George, do you think that on Sunday, we might go over an’ visit with my Ma?’
    *
    ‘Mary! Mary! Ma, ’tis Mary and George!’ It was Mary’s little sister, Beth, shrieking and jumping about as she spotted them