opening up the ground then the mullas, the ghosts, would be getting up and walking abroad? He thought it wasn’t good for me to see it in my condition. My unborn child would be cursed.
But the next time we heard the creak of the gate and the turn of the wheels on the gravel, we still went to the door to watch, peering in the dark. I know it sounds peculiar, but I found something comforting in it. I thought it was good that these poor little children should not be put in the cold earth by themselves but should rest in the arms of someone, even if it was a stranger. And maybe it wasnice for the folk already in their graves, lying there alone for all eternity, to be joined by a little girl or boy who would keep them company. I thought it a nice thing.
I can’t rightly think what it was made me think of that story. I was about to start telling you of her.
*
We were picking sour cherries. It was fine work. It was a huge estate we were on, owned by a farmer who went by the name of Childer. He always used Travellers to pick his cherries so we saw the same folk year in year out and whole families would go out together. You would go and take your basket from the shed with a strap to put over and then when it was filled you would go and get it weighed. Some people would complain about the cherry picking, about what hot work it was and how the strap across your shoulders would chafe and your hip would ache once the basket started getting full. But I liked it. I liked the freshness of it. I liked the staining of the fingers and the testing of a fruit, a small tug to see if it was ripe enough. Even the darkest ones were not ready sometimes and resisted, and I liked the way that everyone knew to leave a not-ready fruit undamaged so that in a day or two someone else would get the benefit of it.
And, of course, there was no danger that sour cherries would get eaten up the way sometimes happened with apples or strawberries. It would be a man and a half ate more than a fistful of sour cherries. The most I ever managed was one, at dawn. The picking started at first light and a single sour cherry would always wake me up. You could eat a box of lemons easier.
Sour cherries. That is how came she came into our lives.
*
Rose Childer. She was the farmer’s stepdaughter. I found out she was only a stepdaughter later on, of course. At the time, all we knew’d is that every Friday evening the farmer’s daughter came around the wagons collecting the rent. She did it then as we had alljust been paid. She had a leather bag slung over her shoulder, and everyone knew this big farmer’s girl as she had bright red hair like a cloud about her head. She tied it back in a velvet ribbon, but it was that soft, frizzing sort of hair that would not stay tied and floated round her.
We was all right nice to her, of course. We knew’d which side our bread was buttered. She would come along of a summer evening and go from vardo to vardo and it was always the women who would deal with her, straightening from their fires and wiping their hands on their aprons. ‘Why it’s young Miss Rose …’ they would say with great, beamy smiles. ‘Will you stop and have a cup of tea with us?’
Mostly she would say, ‘Thank you kindly, but no, I must get round,’ or some such, but once in a while someone would persuade her to stop and then out would come the china teacup which would only be given to a gorjer guest and the children would come and stand around with fingers in their mouths. Once, I even saw her pull a Boswell boy onto her lap and tickle him until he ran off. And most of the other women fell for it right enough and said, ‘That farmer’s daughter is decent enough for a gorjer girl.’ As if they were forgetting we were all so nice to her because we wanted to stay the right side of Childer.
The men would always make themselves scarce, of course. No man who ever stared at a gorjer girl would find himself forgiven by his wife, so they took their
But the next time we heard the creak of the gate and the turn of the wheels on the gravel, we still went to the door to watch, peering in the dark. I know it sounds peculiar, but I found something comforting in it. I thought it was good that these poor little children should not be put in the cold earth by themselves but should rest in the arms of someone, even if it was a stranger. And maybe it wasnice for the folk already in their graves, lying there alone for all eternity, to be joined by a little girl or boy who would keep them company. I thought it a nice thing.
I can’t rightly think what it was made me think of that story. I was about to start telling you of her.
*
We were picking sour cherries. It was fine work. It was a huge estate we were on, owned by a farmer who went by the name of Childer. He always used Travellers to pick his cherries so we saw the same folk year in year out and whole families would go out together. You would go and take your basket from the shed with a strap to put over and then when it was filled you would go and get it weighed. Some people would complain about the cherry picking, about what hot work it was and how the strap across your shoulders would chafe and your hip would ache once the basket started getting full. But I liked it. I liked the freshness of it. I liked the staining of the fingers and the testing of a fruit, a small tug to see if it was ripe enough. Even the darkest ones were not ready sometimes and resisted, and I liked the way that everyone knew to leave a not-ready fruit undamaged so that in a day or two someone else would get the benefit of it.
And, of course, there was no danger that sour cherries would get eaten up the way sometimes happened with apples or strawberries. It would be a man and a half ate more than a fistful of sour cherries. The most I ever managed was one, at dawn. The picking started at first light and a single sour cherry would always wake me up. You could eat a box of lemons easier.
Sour cherries. That is how came she came into our lives.
*
Rose Childer. She was the farmer’s stepdaughter. I found out she was only a stepdaughter later on, of course. At the time, all we knew’d is that every Friday evening the farmer’s daughter came around the wagons collecting the rent. She did it then as we had alljust been paid. She had a leather bag slung over her shoulder, and everyone knew this big farmer’s girl as she had bright red hair like a cloud about her head. She tied it back in a velvet ribbon, but it was that soft, frizzing sort of hair that would not stay tied and floated round her.
We was all right nice to her, of course. We knew’d which side our bread was buttered. She would come along of a summer evening and go from vardo to vardo and it was always the women who would deal with her, straightening from their fires and wiping their hands on their aprons. ‘Why it’s young Miss Rose …’ they would say with great, beamy smiles. ‘Will you stop and have a cup of tea with us?’
Mostly she would say, ‘Thank you kindly, but no, I must get round,’ or some such, but once in a while someone would persuade her to stop and then out would come the china teacup which would only be given to a gorjer guest and the children would come and stand around with fingers in their mouths. Once, I even saw her pull a Boswell boy onto her lap and tickle him until he ran off. And most of the other women fell for it right enough and said, ‘That farmer’s daughter is decent enough for a gorjer girl.’ As if they were forgetting we were all so nice to her because we wanted to stay the right side of Childer.
The men would always make themselves scarce, of course. No man who ever stared at a gorjer girl would find himself forgiven by his wife, so they took their
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