‘Hurry up with that ale!’ a loud voice bellowed
as Lizzie side-stepped a groping hand and accidentally-on-purpose trod hard
on the man’s instep, making him howl. Behind her a guffaw went up from his
friends, but she ignored that too as she swept on, the heavy ale-jug held
aloft. How she detested the boorish, drunken oafs who frequented the Swan,
their loud voices, their red faces, their horny, insolent hands. Was this
all that life held for her?
When the races were on at Epsom, or the horse fair brought folk
passing through Mitcham in droves, the ancient Swan Inn was extra busy.
Lately Sam Beckett had started to complain that the opening of the railway
had robbed him of a good deal of his former custom, but he still called on
his oldest daughter to act as extra barmaid at frequent intervals. Lizzie’s
own mother, a staunch Methodist, hadn’t wanted her to get involved with work
at the inn – Anne Beckett had dreamed of a better future for her only
daughter – but Lizzie’s step-mother scorned what she called ‘fancy notions’:
‘There’s no shame in work, nor in waitin’ on other folk. ‘Sides, family
should help out, it’s what you’re born for.’
So here was Lizzie that humid August evening, passing to and fro
among the customers both inside the smoky, stifling inn and outside among
the trestle tables and benches set under spreading chestnut trees. The
harvest breeze was warm and brisk, filling the air with tiny bits of chaff
that prickled in your clothes and clung to sweaty skin. Lizzie felt hot and
flustered, ill-used and snappish. She was in no mood to be taken in by the
boasts of the loud-mouthed stranger who claimed to be a famous
‘horse-whisperer’.
Most of the inn’s customers were gathered about the man, fascinated
by his smile that showed a gold tooth among the white of his grin, by his
fancy waistcoat and jaunty bowler hat and his strange drawling way of
talking. He sat on one of the benches outside the inn, with a crowd of men
and one or two bold-eyed women gathered round him (Lizzie’s mother had hated
those women, some of them gypsies, most of them no better than they should
be). All of them seemed mesmerized by Bob Diggle’s fanciful tales of his
mastery over horses.
Egged on to do it, he had started demonstrating his skills by
causing Farmer Hancock’s old hack to lie down and refuse to get up. Next he
had made a barking dog back away, start to whine, and suddenly turn and
speed off with its tail between its legs, yelping as if the devil were after
it. And then, after Lord Quinton and three friends arrived in a sturdy
travelling-carriage, and went into the inn for refreshment while their groom
and coachman changed the horses, Bob Diggle claimed he could prevent the
gentlemen from going on their way until he gave them leave. Anyone want to
bet that he couldn’t?
That was when Lizzie’s curiosity had started to itch. Her eye had
lit on Bob Diggle’s companion, called on to hold the purse for the wager. He
was a big, taciturn young man, with a shock of fairish hair and a thick
gingerish beard through which his white, even teeth showed in a wry grin.
Broad shoulders strained inside a collarless corduroy shirt, which he wore
with a spotted kerchief knotted round his thick neck, a black leather
waistcoat decked with silver buttons, and moleskin trousers that clung to
muscular buttocks and calves. Lizzie noted all these things admiringly, but
what mostly made her stomach run liquid was his voice – a deep, dark,
molasses-sweet bass with a strange accent that marked him as an exotic
foreigner in Mitcham.
Bob Diggle talked that way, too, though he had a lighter voice. You
had to strain to catch the gist rather than understanding every word:
‘That’ll wholly ‘stonish your eyes when them dickies ‘on’t go. Do that
coachman whip ‘em and sole ‘em, rant and rave how he care to, they ‘on’t go
‘less I gives the word. En’t that right, lad?’
The brawny young man shook his head and grinned, saying in that
rumbling bass, ‘I’ve seen thee do some queer things, Bob, but to jade four
hosses all at once... that do seem altogether onlikely.’
This hint of doubt – especially when it was voiced by a close
friend of the witchman – naturally drew even more folk to place bets. Some
fools risked as much as a shilling, a whole day’s pay for a labourer.
After harnessing a fresh team of four, the Quinton coachman and
groom wandered off, to get a drink for themselves, or maybe to pay a call at
the privy behind the inn. They gave one of the boys a penny to watch the
coach. That was when Bob Diggle took up his horseman’s whip and sauntered
over to where the four horses waited patiently, the lead one tied to a
hitching post under the swaying trees. By that time the sun was going down,
sending shafts of gold along the lane where chaff glinted gold, corn midges
danced in clouds and swallows went swooping and calling after them, dipping
and diving along the lane and around the eaves of the big old half-timbered
inn. The horses responded with restlessly twitching ears and tails, swishing
the flies away, ignoring the talk and laughter that grew louder as the drink
sank in. But when Bob Diggle walked up to them, bold as brass, patted each
one and whispered in its ear, each horse in turn nodded, shook out its mane
and blew down its nose as if acknowledging the man’s words.
A murmur of anticipation ran through the crowd. It was a good show.
So far.
As sunset edged the clouds with scarlet and gold, Lizzie was in and
out serving customers, aware of a growing sense of anticipation among the
watchers. News of the bet had spread. More men came to chance their luck and
add to the purse held by the horse-whisperer’s burly, bashfully smiling
companion. When at last Lord Quinton and his friends emerged from the inn in
high good humour, the common bar emptied as its clientele went to see the
marvel. Or not. Most of them didn’t believe it would happen.
The coachman was back in his seat by then. A groom opened the door
and the carriage swayed as the four gentlemen climbed in. Then the groom
climbed up to his seat beside the driver, the whip cracked, the coachman
cried, ‘Goo-oo on!’ And the horses quivered. Their ears twitched, their
coats shimmered over rippling muscle, their hooves stamped and shuffled. But
their shoulders didn’t bunch against the harness, they didn’t move forward
by so much as a step. The coach remained where it was, under the swaying
trees.
What a to-do there was! The coachman yelled and swore. The whip
cracked. That made the horses twitch and stamp, but instead of geeing up
they started to back off and a big bough cracked against the coach’s roof.
Lord Quinton poked his head out to demand what the devil his coachman was
playing at. And the crowd started to hoot and laugh and slap each other
round the shoulders in great glee.
Finally, when half the village – children, dogs and all – had
turned out to see what was causing the commotion, Bob Diggle donned his
battered bowler hat at a rakish angle, got up from the bench, and went to
stroll across the front of the equipage, trailing his own whip along the
ground and speaking to the horses in soft words that no one present
understood. No one but the horses, apparently. For as Bob Diggle paused on
the far side of the road, bowing like the Lord Mayor of London, and saying,
‘What’s now akeepin’ you, coachmaster?’, the fuming coachman cracked his
whip again, cried, ‘Giddup, you damned mules!’ and the horses shot forward
with leaps and bounds, breaking into a gallop that sent two of their
passengers flying into the laps of the other two, with a flurry of top hats
and tail coats. Well-bred voices could be heard uttering ungentlemanlike
words as the coach hurtled off through the dusk, scattering stones and dust,
leaving the crowd outside the Swan jeering and howling with laughter.
So Bob Diggle won his bet. He used the money to buy everybody
another round of drinks, and still had some to put away in a leather pouch
that he tucked inside his fancy waist-coat. The good folk of Mitcham talked
about that night for years.
It was a night Lizzie never forgot, either.
While most of the inn’s customers gathered round the now-famous
horse-whisperer, her glance kept being drawn to the younger man by his side.
He didn’t say much, only supped his ale from a pewter mug, now and then
wiping foam from his moustache with the back of a hefty hand, smiling behind
his beard and clearly enjoying his friend’s new-found notoriety. He seemed
oblivious to Lizzie’s admiring sidelong looks.
Bob Diggle it was whose sharp, knowing glance observed her distant
yearning. He caught her eye and grinned and, just before she turned away,
she saw him nudge his young friend’s arm and nod towards her. After that,
every time she looked his way (every few seconds, she couldn’t help
herself), she found the young man watching her from his eye corner. He
seemed painfully shy. Bob Diggle’s sly remarks made a scarlet flush start
above the mat of hair that curled thickly inside the throat of the
collarless shirt, and run up his thick neck and under his beard to spread
across his ruddy cheeks and make his eyes look extra bright. Hazel eyes,
Lizzie fancied. She wondered if he was hairy all over, and then felt hot at
the boldness of the thought.
As the dusk deepened and the harvest moon rose full and yellow over
the trees, Lizzie emerged from the inn with a fresh jug of ale and found the
young man standing right outside the door. She stumbled on the step and
might have gone headlong if he hadn’t caught her arm and saved her, and
after that it seemed natural to exchange a smile and a word or two with him,
in between serving other customers.
Before long, she had told him that her father was landlord of
the Swan and that she had been born there, but now she lived with her aunt
and would be walking home when her work was done. Somehow it was understood
that he would walk with her, to see her safe -- as if she needed a guardian
just to cross the lavender field to Oakapple Farm. Nevertheless, she agreed
to his offer and could hardly wait for her dad to tell her she could go
home. She was so nervous she even sneaked a sip or two of gin when no one
was looking.
By the time the inn was ready for closing, the moon had
climbed high in the sky, shining clear and silver like a friendly face
watching over the world. Lizzie loved the moonlight, as taught by her aunt,
the wise witch. Sadie Beckett liked to walk by night at full moon, to pick
some of her special herbs and mutter her special rhymes, dancing slow
measures to appease the earth sprites who might object at her culling their
sacred plants (that was how Sadie explained it, anyway).
Lizzie mentioned this to her companion and might have gone on to
say more, but he said, ‘Sounds heathen to me,’ so she desisted.
‘Where do you come from?’ she asked him.
'Norfolk,’ said he. ‘It’s a long way. Far on the other side of
London Town.’
‘Where in Norfolk?’
‘Ayle.’ In her head, Lizzie spelled it Ale and only found out
the truth much later. She was more aware of the fizzy feeling inside her,
more tingling than a glass of sarsaparilla. His voice, even speaking those
single-word answers to her bright enquiries, sent shivers to places Lizzie
had hardly known she possessed.
‘What’s your name, then?’
‘Hal.’
‘Just that?’ She dared to tease him a little, feeling light-headed
and daring.
As if stung to it, he suddenly announced his full name, with
pride: ‘George Edward Hallam Flowerdew.’
‘Hallam?’
‘It’s my grandmother’s family name.’
‘And that’s what they call you?’
‘They call me all sorts. I like Hal best.’
So she, of course, would think of him as Hal. ‘Like the prince in
Shakespeare.’
‘What?’
‘Prince Hal. He became Henry the Fifth. Didn’t you learn
Shakespeare in school?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t you read?’
‘Not much. Better things to do.’
'Me, too. Best of all I love to sew. And make things with the
lavender. My family have been lavender growers for ages. They own all these
fields hereabouts.’ It was a slight exaggeration, but close enough for now.
‘Look, here’s one of our fields. We’ve just cut the last of it. Just today.
I’ve got the calluses to prove it. You can still smell it, can’t you? Sweet
lavender...’
This tale was inspired by the history of lavender growing, especially as it relates to Norfolk. In Victorian days the plant was grown and the lavender-water distilled in fields to the south of London, much of it around Mitcham in Surrey, but a disease ruined many of those original fields. In Norfolk, a man named Linn Chilvers, whose father owned a nursery and grew lavender, became interested in its cultivation and eventually founded the present firm of Norfolk Lavender.
I was privileged one Easter to have access to the history archive at Norfolk Lavender and from that this story grew. It has taken a back seat behind other more pressing writing projects, but some day I may get back to it and finish it.
As you may have guessed, Lizzie is obliged to move to Norfolk and leave her beloved lavender fields behind. She will not have a happy time, but she finds a spot to plant some lavender and nurturing it proves to be her salvation and her comfort.
The plot continues through the twentieth century, following the fortunes of Lizzie's children and their descendants as the lavender business develops, through two world wars and beyond.
Is the book worth completing? What do you think?