NO MAN’S GARDEN
For a mile, alongside a bright high-road, runs a twelve-foot strip of
grass and clover and buttercups, with cinquefoil’s golden embroidery in
the turf at the edge. Little circular heaps of silver wood ash mark the
cold fires of tramps, here and there. Here also they sleep in the sun,
in summer and autumn, and in winter lean in the dense hedge that keeps
the north wind away. The hedge is rich and high, of thorn overgrown
by traveller’s joy and bryony; and at its feet, stitchwort, campions,
vetchlings and bird’s-foot trefoil grow luxuriantly.
This is no man’s garden. Every one who is nobody sits there with a
special satisfaction, watching the swift, addle-faced motorist, the
horseman, the farmer, the tradesman, the publican, go by; for here he
is secure as in the grave, and even as there free--if he can--to laugh
or scoff or wonder or weep at the world.
As I was trying to persuade some buoyant bryony strands with snaky
heads to return to the hedge from which they had wandered into danger,
a tramp came up.
“Have you seen my old woman?” he asked.
“Not know her? She is the cursedest, foulest-mouthed old woman in the
country, fond of too much drink, and she has just been spending the
winter in prison--she prefers it to the workhouse which I have just
left. But she just suits me. There is no one like her. They often tell
me to take another instead of her, but I never will....
“I don’t know that you would like to see her. She is not a beauty, and
she is not dressed up well. She is as crooked as an oak branch, and she
has one leg longer than the other, and as to her face I could make a
better one myself with a handful of dirt. She drags as she walks, what
with keeping up with me all these years. You may know her, because she
is always smoking. She cannot eat; she lives on tobacco and beer....
“Oh, I see you are one of these antiquarian gents. If you would really
like to see her....
“Well, if you are curious, how would you like to hear of the murder I
did twenty years ago? I tell it to everybody, and they don’t seem to
believe me, so I will tell it to you....
“I spent a night in the workhouse and when I got out in the afternoon
I was so hungry that I could have eaten the master, if he hadn’t been
the ugliest fellow I ever saw, like a fancy potato. Walking didn’t
cure my appetite, and all that day and night I didn’t have a bite.
Perhaps I got a bit queer and I went on walking until I got near to
Binoll in Wiltshire where I was born. That is a fine country. My old
woman and I have slept in violets there many a time in April. When I
got there early in the morning on the second day I thought I would
go into a copse I knew and pick some bluebells there, partly for old
remembrance sake and partly to make a penny or two in Swindon, but I
didn’t much care what. Well, as I was picking them--God! how everything
did smell and I felt like a little boy, I was enjoying it so, and
putting my hand into all the nests and feeling the warm eggs--Lord!
what a fool I be--I thought I would go to sleep. There was such a nice
bit of moon in the sky, with the rim of the cup of it uppermost, which
means that it keeps the rain from falling, but if it is upside down it
lets the water out and you may know it will rain. There was a regular
old-fashioned English thrush saying: ‘Bit, bit, slingdirt, slingdirt,
belcher, belcher, belcher,’ and I went on picking the flowers. All of
a sudden I saw two fellows sitting just outside the wood with their
backs to me. One of them was a big fellow and we passed the time of day
and he said he had done a job lately and was not in a hurry to do any
more. The other was a little white-faced man such as I can’t away with,
and he said he was looking for a job and trying to get his strength up
a bit. The big fellow motioned to me, meaning that the other had got
money about him; so I agreed, and nodded, and he stepped back and hit
the little fellow a good blow on the head. I threw away the flowers
and we dragged him into the wood. He had ten shillings on him and we
took half each. He looked very bad, so the other fellow said: ‘We had
better put him away,’ and I said; ‘Yes, he may be in awful pain, such
a white-faced fellow as he is.’ So we knocked the life out of him, and
the other fellow went off Marlborough way and I went into Swindon and
had such a dinner as I hadn’t had for weeks, rabbit and new potatoes
and a bit of curry.... Did you ever hear about that?
“Get on my mind? Why, I never meant the fellow any harm and I filled my
belly.
“Can you tell me where there is a lone road where I can make a bit of
fire? I don’t like the dust and noise of these motor cars.” ...
Away he went, halting a little, and yet, from behind, having an absurd
resemblance to a child, which his cheerfulness reinforced.
Later in the evening, I found him just awakened from his first sleep,
near a dead fire that had been no bigger than a pigeon’s nest.
“What a country this is,” he said indignantly, but with good humour.
“There are not enough sticks in this wood to warm the only man who
wants them. I suppose they use all the firing to keep the pheasants
warm. Hark at them! If I was a rich man I wouldn’t keep such birds....
“England is not such a place as it was when I was a young man. It is
not half the size for one thing. Why, when I was a young man, you
could go up a lane with a long dog or two and pick up a bit of supper
and firing and nothing said. The country seemed to belong to me in
those days, but now I might as well be in Africa. I am worse off than
the labourers now, except that I have got more sense than they have,
singing their silly old songs, like this.” Then he sang with perhaps
mock sentimentality a frail little peasant song, full of the smallness
of lonely, small lives:--
“Mary, come into the field
To work along of I,
Digging up mangold wurzels,
For they be a-growing high.
Dig ’em up by the roots,
Dig ’em up by the roots,
Put in your spade,
Don’t be afraid,
Dig ’em up by the roots.
Our master is a hard one,
He pays us very small;
And if we stop a moment
We hear his voice to call--
‘Dig ’em up by the roots,’ etc.
We work all day together,
Till all the light is past;
And only going homewards
Do we join hands at last.
‘Dig ’em up by the roots,’ etc.
For many years we’ve been sweethearts
And worked the fields along,
And sometimes even now
Mary will sing the old song--
‘Dig ’em up by the roots,’ etc.
“What is that to the song about ‘the swift and silly doe’ my old father
used to sing to us, or about ‘Gentle Jenny’ the mare that threw the
fellow that wasn’t going to pay for her hire. No, there is no room
in England now for toe-rags like me and you; if you wanted to, you
couldn’t sleep on Bearsted Green to-night.”
Later in the year, on August Bank holiday, I found him at an inn, where
a farm bailiff was treating the labourers to much ale. The landlord had
a young relative down from London, who sang a song in the bar about a
skylark who was to take a message to his mother in heaven. At this the
tramp melted a little: the pale face of the singer and the high shrill
voice made an entrance somewhere, and he tried to join in the song. But
towards evening he was to be found sticking pins through his cheek and
ears and into his arms, and offering, for a small sum, to stick them
into any part whatsoever; or, lying on his back and twisting his head
back--the muscles in his throat croaking all the time like frogs--to
pick up with his teeth a penny that lay on the floor. The bailiff had
caught him. He did odd jobs about the farm, and lived in a forgotten
cottage, too far away from anywhere to keep pigs in. But he slept in
the cottage only on one or two nights in the seven. During the rest of
the week he was to be found at night under the edge of a copse, beside
a little fire, reminding himself of the old, roomy England which he
used to know.