What lies beyond

It was pleasant in the early morning as Mrs May Prentice made her way through the village; something she did occasionally to escape the mould-shaping of those around her. The call of a curlew and the graceful swoop of swallows greeted her as she stepped lightly through the soft wet grass skirting the village green. In a cottage off to her right, someone coughed, the muted sound jarring a little in her ears, out of keeping with the clear freshness of the open air.

Leaving the centre of Girton village behind her, the pillar of a time-aged milestone pointed in the direction of Cambridge, a mere 15 miles away; a place she’d heard about since she was a child and found it frustrating that though it wasn’t far away, it seemed impossible she’d ever get there. The stage coach that passed through Cambridge came to Girton village regularly, stopping at the village inn for the comfort of its passengers. She’d seen them arriving, watched them checking their baggage and saying their farewells before stepping into the coach, and as it drove away, saw them settling back in their seats, off and away to a world she imagined to be far different than hers.

She’d stood and watched it one day and her mind began thinking about travelling on the coach herself. She imagined what it would be like to climb on board, take a seat and turn to look out at the faces of those she’d be leaving behind, and as the coach started to move, she imagined them standing back, gazing in wonder at her as she left. The hardest part was trying to imagine what she’d see beyond the confines of the village; the journey itself; and then arriving at Cambridge. She was never successful but it did spur her to continue her efforts to leave, for it came with the thought that the faces she’d leave behind, along with their individual and collective thinking, were controlled and limited by less than a handful of other faces.

That thought was there again as she turned and began to retrace her steps, pulling her shawl up from below her shoulders, feeling its reassuring warmth flow up and around her neck; an action multiplied many times a day by other village women, reminding her that there were some things about life there that were homely, natural and good. As she walked up the slight hill further along she came in sight of the church with the graveyard alongside. Anyone watching her at that moment would have seen her come to a sudden stop, held there as if by some invisible force. It had never happened before; and there she stood—looking—with all kinds of thoughts, ideas and impressions swirling around in her head. She struggled with mixed emotions trying to comprehend it all. The rest of the world had ceased to exist, her whole body aglow with the strange excitement of it all.

Gradually a cool stillness in the air came and wrapped itself around her, as if to calm her spirit; followed shortly after by a slight breeze caressing her face and ruffling her hair and dress. It grew stronger as it passed, disturbing the thin spirals of chimney smoke and swirling through the surrounding countryside; and then as if it had all been caused by a door opening and closing, it was gone, all was still and she was free to move again.
Nothing had happened, and yet something had happened; May felt different. Whatever force had blocked her path, had gone; she was freer, and more a person in her own right than she was before; she was very sure about that. In a deliberate move, she turned slowly and looked back at where she’d been; continuing until she’d completed a full circle. As her eyes took in the church and its graveyard again, she thought on something she’d heard there: ‘I have set the bounds of their habitation…’ and those words coupled with the sight of the gravestones silhouetted against the skyline, seemed to be saying: ‘Forget your high-minded dreams, May Prentice, this far, and no further, for you’. Yet in the midst of all this, somewhere deep inside she knew differently. Knew, and how she knew she couldn’t tell, but she knew those words did not apply to her.

Over the next few days and weeks, the village sensed it too, as the news drifted out above the thatched cottages, over the heads of cattle browsing in the fields and through the swaying tree tops to the surrounding hamlets and villages. The warning, for that’s what she had taken it to mean, was picked up by one self-elected, self-deceiving guardian of village life. One who’d met and dealt with the likes of May Prentice before, and while May welcomed the stimulation of the freeing of her mind to imagine, question and change the way things could be, Grandma Esther was determined to curb May’s unwilling spirit to conform.

The first bright rays of the early sun were disappearing above the low clouds as May continued on her way to work one morning. The clouds seemed to have arrived from nowhere and now formed a grey blanket spreading quickly in every direction, serving to remind May, that certain duties required her to be in the kitchen preparing breakfast for the family in the big house. She met no one, the only movement being the low spirals of smoke, the occasional flight of birds and the stirring of cattle around the countryside. If anyone was aware of her being up and about so early, it did not concern her. It was unusual, but the reason brought a smile to her face, she would not know for some years that a claim had been staked on her secret from the moment it had been spawned inside her just a month ago.

Then, in some seven and a half months’ time, she would become a mother. Some of the women she met read the signs well before they’d stopped to talk to her. ‘Hello there May. Now aren’t you the one looking pleased with yourself today? Can I guess the reason?’ James would be pleased, she hadn’t told her husband yet, but they’d manage somehow, if things went well. Ruth Gantley, the woman a few of them went to for advice, had been a comfort. She knew the way of things, what with caring for animals and knowing about herbs and their uses. Yes, May thought, I’ll be all right with Ruth to care for me.

Later that morning, May pulled the shawl around her shoulders in a defiant gesture as she saw Grandma Esther cross the street to intercept her. They’d clashed before when a friend of May’s, an expectant mother with three children and herself in excellent health, had a visit from Grandma Esther. May was horrified at the advice she’d been given and told her so, suggesting she ignore it. The poor woman tried but Grandma Esther had too strong a hold on the way things were done, with only a handful of people like May, prepared to stand against her. Her friend lost the child and her own health as well. Since then, Grandma Esther had seen that May was named as one to avoid.

With her lips thin and pressed tightly together, Grandma Esther’s face black with anger as they drew level, spat out, ‘Don’t expect to raise the brat inside you! If it lives to see the light of day, it will be dead within six months!’ It took all of May’s will-power not to reply; she merely gave a slight shake of her head in dismissal and walked by, leaving Esther fuming all the more.

The customs and ways of Girton village had dominated many women in its past through such as Grandma Esther’s various influences tugging this way and that; witnessed the soul-destroying curbing of potential each one had contained. Yet somehow May Prentice would arrive to cause trouble trying to change things. So, future prospects for her looked anything but promising; she could go nowhere far beyond the physical confines of the village but she eventually learned to slip from the trap using reason, observation and common sense, stirring the backward thinking ways of such as Grandma Esther.

Again did the implications of the past, present and future avail themselves for this solitary figure to consider, standing still, once more, lost in thought. This moment would return at various stages of her life to remind her of the decision she’d made that day by the gravestones. She determined again, then that the village would not see her through all the stages of life, imprisoned within its small environs, ending like the rest of its inhabitants in the graveyard at the church. She would make her own way, and her child would survive.

Dennis Crompton © 1996
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)