The Farm by the Lake

Chapter 8

Friday, Flo had been warned, was baking day. She thought of her mother’s modest baking and wondered why it should be worth naming a day for it. But as soon as the morning porridge was done out she was taken to the end of the yard away from the road into a small outhouse which she had never gone into before. The wash-boiler, she recognized at once, but alongside was what looked somewhat like a child’s wash-boiler. There was the same raised fire-hole beneath, but the brickwork instead of being square, made a round funnel three feet high; and instead of there being a boiler inside, all she found was a flat iron plate a foot below the open top.

She lit a fire beneath the plate without being able to guess what its use was. She was told to make a big fire, which would go together into a good redness. When she got back to the kitchen Mrs. Nadin had her sleeves up and was standing on a wooden stool nearly hidden from her waist up in a tremendous wide-mouthed earthenware crock, which she called a “panchion”. She mixed energetically and was too busy to nag anybody. All that she appeared to have in the panchion was oatmeal to which she kept adding a little milk and more water till it mixed into a thinnish paste.

“That’s the stuff to put guts into you,” she said, stepping down.

It wasn’t clear to Flo whether she referred to the exercise of mixing, or to eating the oatmeal. She told Flo to carry the panchion, and Flo got hold, but could scarcely move it. Mrs. Nadin laughed and told her to fetch one of the boys. Clem was just pouring milk into the sieve outside the shippon and seemed glad enough to leave his bucket. Flo waited to see what happened. Mrs. Nadin dipped up a big spoonful of the mixture and dropped it on the hot plate where it quickly spread thinly and evenly. After a very short time she adroitly turned it over with a flat wooden shovel, like a butter pat twelve inches across. When a moment or two later she lifted it out of the open top of the “oven” it was a flat cake a quarter of an inch thick and twelve inches or more in diameter.

“If you’ve never had ’em hot off a griddle, you’ve missed summat good,” announced Mrs. Nadin. “Fetch a dinner plate.”

She dropped the next one like a pancake on the plate and told Flo to spread it with honey. The oaty flavour and the rich brown honey, which was from heather, were new to Flo, and she thought that she had never tasted anything nicer. On getting back to the wash-house she was surprised to see how the stack of oat-cakes was growing. When eventually Mrs. Nadin finished it was nearly two feet high.

“Are we going to eat all those?” asked Flo.

“All be gone by Tuesday, dunna worry,” said Mrs. Nadin.

After breakfast she began another baking, which to Flo was equally surprising. The panchion was nearly filled with flour into which lard was rubbed. Flo had never seen this done, and she stared fascinated, but she was sent to the attic, where she was tantalized by warm, sweetened smells that seemed to arrive in waves. When at last she went into the kitchen again the table was covered with pastries, some ready for the oven, some already crisped and browned. There were four dinner-plate pies, six dinner-plate jam tarts decorated with criss-crossed strips; and, to Flo most surprising of all, a pasty which covered the bread board and looked as if it would scarcely fit into the oven. Mrs. Nadin balanced the oven shelf on the fender and carefully shovelled the pasty on to it and in it went.

“Whatever’s in it?” asked Flo, unable to keep quiet.

“Currants an’ raisins . . . dunna you like them?” asked Mrs. Nadin, wiping back a finger of hair, leaving a flour smear over her left eye.

“My!” exclaimed Flo. “But do we eat all this?”

“Be gone by Tuesday. Appetites like wolves, they ’ave. If you gave ’em dry bread an’ water, they’d starve theirsel’s; but give ’em summat as’ll tickle their fancy an’ they gutses themsel’s till they welly bust.”

Flo got only the gist of this, but she was afraid to ask more because obviously the stooping and heat were curdling Mrs, Nadin’s temper. Last thing before dinner she mixed another panchion of flour, punching and kneading it, and left it with a white cloth over on the fender. Immediately the meal was done she told Flo to go with Dot and clean out “the cabin”. “An’ dunna be making friends wi’ the spiders; kill ’em,” she ordered briskly.

Dot went out by the front door. Here, there was a straight flagged path to a gritstone wall as at the back, but the gate opened into the mowing field and Flo could not think where they could be going with their brushes and scrubbers and buckets of hot water. Then for the first time she noticed twenty yards down the green bank a tarred wooden shed. A faint track went to a door in the centre of the end which was towards the house. There was a padlock which Dot opened, and Flo stared into a room fifteen feet wide and twenty-five feet long, going up to a peak twelve feet high. All the inside was stained a very light brown. Against the wall on the left just inside was a table, and down the centre was a much longer table covered with white damask-patterned American cloth fastened along the edges with brass-capped carpet nails. A score of simple wooden chairs, also stained light brown, stood to the long table or against the walls. There were two windows only, both in the same side, but these were towards the lake, which Flo had not really noticed as she walked down. In the sallow willows there was a wide gap which seemed to have been opened purposely, so that Flo saw a small green bay, where tiny waves were spilling on a beach of brown-grey sand and green-grey stones. At the left end of the bay a dock ran in between deep banks to an open boat-house, the greater part of the tarred felt roof of which was hidden by the sprawling arms of three old hawthorns and a tall ash. In the motionless dark water of this dock three rowing boats lay side by side with a crude punt half as broad as it was long, all its sides perpendicular, exactly like a very big drawer without a handle.

“Boats,” exclaimed Flo. “Whatever for?”

“Sailing in . . . what d’you think?” answered Dot coldly. “Give the place a thorough clean out. Mother will inspect it, so you know . . .,” and out she went. Flo saw her pass the windows and go somewhere behind the boat-house. Later Dot appeared walking down the beach two hundred yards beyond, where there were no willows but only open grass with a few stunted hawthorns above what Flo supposed would be high-water level. There Dot paused and looked across to where on the far side there were taller, thicker trees, alders and oaks and a few ash.

Dabbling close in there were two black birds which Dot appeared to be idly watching. Then she strolled on out of sight once more behind the hawthorn bushes. Flo felt envious, and a sudden longing came over her to see the lake properly, to go exploring. She stopped pushing the long brush and impulsively let it fall against the table. After a careful stare towards the house she slipped hastily round the cabin corner. There she was hidden, but being in the open she still felt visible and ran down the bank, only slowing when she was almost at the boathouse. A path was worn along the side and she went on and round the back and was startled to find an open door.

“Hello?” came an inquiring voice. She stopped, trapped, and had half turned to run back when Bert Nadin’s close-shaved head and lean face came out. “Oh, it’s you.” He straightened and leaned against the doorpost unhurriedly. Lying up the grassy bank that closed them in, Flo noticed half a dozen oars.

“How d’you think you’ll like this part of the world?” he asked conversationally.

“I don’t know,” she muttered, still worried about her truancy.

“There’s water where you come from, isna there?” he went on. “You’ll know how ta manage a boat?”

“There’s the channel; but I’ve hardly been on it, though I’ve been in a boat at . . . at . . . I forget where,” she finished weakly.

“Oh, so you don’t know anything about fishing,” he said as if regretfully, “or wild-fowling?”

“No,” said Flo. “I’m supposed to be working; I didn’t know you were here.”

“Didn’t you?” He smiled and she felt much more relieved and was curious to know what he had been doing. Her glance sought into the darkness past the doorway, but all that she could see was a glassy deep-green water reflection.

“I’d better get back,” she said, unwilling.

“What’s the worry?” he asked. “There’ll be nobody till tea.”

“But missis’ll grumble . . .”

“Well, you don’t let that worry you? She’ll grouse whatever you do. Our Dot’s supposed to be with you, I bet. If the old woman says anything, tell her Dot went mooning down the lake.”

“I don’t know,” said Flo uncomfortably. “Whatever do you do with all these?” meaning the oars.

“Row. Did you think they were butter-pats?” he asked, quizzing.

“But why so many?”

“Ta row with.” He smiled tantalisingly. “Like a sail?” Straightening, he half turned to go back in. Flo took a step and saw just inside a narrow wooden stage with three boats afloat and motionless beside it. Past them, as from a cave, she saw the boats and the punt that she had first seen, and beyond was the steel-blue expanse of the lake. She felt an unusual pleasant sense of intimateness with the water as she stood there on the wooden stage. In the shadow the water was green and threw up a faint moving light, like marbling, on the walls and low roof; and there was a constant tiny jabble and suck of ripples talking as it were in whispers to the boats. This feeling of intimateness was somehow akin to the feeling she had known in glass-roofed Barrow market among the flowers and vegetables and quiet murmuring people in that time that all at once seemed a terribly long way off. She was stricken with a choking homesickness that made tears start in her eyes with such unexpectedness that she could not blink them away. She smudged them off hurriedly with the cuff of her blue working frock. Bert Nadin was bending to pull in the slack of the rope to the nearest boat, and she was sure that he had not noticed. She coughed, trying to clear herself, but she could not speak. The boat began to slip towards them, starting V-shaped flutings on either side, and causing the faint green marblings all round to run and mingle as at play.

“This is Swallow, the best of ’em,” Bert was saying.

“Oh, but I can’t, I can’t,” exclaimed Flo.

“Why not; feart o’ being seasick?” he asked, glancing up so that she saw his profile lit by the light from the door and against the dark water.

“No, no; I must go,” and she stepped backward and turned and ran.

Why, she did not know; except that she wanted to get away to where she could get the choking out of her throat and the smart out of her eyes. She ran up the bank and stumbled into the cabin and dropped her elbows on the long table and sobbed. She wanted her mother; she wanted to feel her mother’s arms about her shoulders, to have her comfort. Flo let herself sob wildly, till all at once she was afraid and looked up, as alert and tense as an animal, staring between fingers still curved about her face. At the window was Bert. His hand was held to shade the glass from refraction, and for several seconds he looked in intently; then he turned and went away. She watched him to the boat-house. Her paroxysm was over. What would he think? The one fact that was a bit of solace was that it had not been Clem. She felt that Clem would certainly have taken advantage; but perhaps Bert wouldn’t say anything. Abruptly she got up and looked round the unfamiliar place and wondered what it was for. They were all preparing for something . . . Mrs. Nadin, Bert, and herself . . . but for what? This question helped her. The intense depression which had overwhelmed her lifted as she brushed and dusted and washed the American cloth. She was surprised when Dot passed the window; she had forgotten her.

“Finished?” asked Dot, looking about pryingly. “Whatever have you been doing?”

“How d’you mean? Working,” said Flo, in no mood to be put on.

“Your face,” Dot took her unawares. “Have you been crying?”

“Crying? No . . . why . . . why should I?” stammered Flo, feeling her cheeks going hotter.

“Huh, crying for your mammy and you’ve only just come. You know you’ve got to stick here?”

“I didn’t say I’d been crying,” said Flo, feeling murderous. “I haven’t. I’ve been working. You should have been helpin’ . . . leaving me to it all. I . . . I . . .”

“Now then, remember who you’re talking to,” broke in Dot in a higher, harsh voice somewhat like her mother’s. “I won’t be spoken to like that by any pauper’s brat, you . . . you pimply little tarnach.”

“I’ll speak to who I like. I’m not going to be treated like . . .”

“You’ll be treated how I like; you’ll see how you’ll be treated. How long are you going to be? I’ll tell her you’ll be coming in an hour or two,” she finished sarcastically, and abruptly she picked up the long brush and marched out.

Flo was tempted to shout after her, but all at once her spirit ended its flare and she felt a return of her choking homesickness, so that instead of running to the door she turned to the window. There the lake was being touched by a peculiar light almost to pure white, as if it were a paper sheet; and in the sallows there was gold, the glow of thousands of open ball-flowers. Instantly Flo forgot all else and a strange solace seemed to come from the beauty. White and gold . . . the combination lasted richly for seconds only. As she stared the whiteness was sullied by shadow till it became grey, and the gold faded and left only the dark mesh of branches. But the effect remained with her. As she gathered the cleaning things she remembered the wild daffodils that Mrs. Mawson had given her . . . white and gold . . . and home, which she had thought so far off, somehow seemed to come nearer again. She went towards the house slowly, laden with strange mixed feelings, dreams and fears, hopes and hesitations, and a faint half-knowledge that she was growing richer with experience of many things.