#4 - Bell

Hamfast is 59, Hamson 20, Halfred 19, Daisy 13, May 9, Sam 6 and Marigold has just turned 2 (about 38, 13, 10, 8, 6, 3 and 15 mo. in Man years)

Foreyule 1385 SR
 

The rainfall was soft and light, but steady. After a day of the cold weather, Hobbiton was drenched in the replenishing water and the roads and lanes were turned to mud and brown puddles. At the end of the long workday, hobbits were gathered around the hearths inside their homes and smials, to spend the chilled night in comfort and good company.

The Gamgees had a fire built high in the parlor hearth and candles lit for extra light. Gaffer sat on his rocking chair, with Sammy on his right knee and Marigold cradled in the crook of his left arm. Daisy and May sat before the chair, looking up with eager faces, and before the hearth, sprawled across the worn and faded rug, were Hamson and Halfred.

“Tell us a story,” Daisy requested.

“What kind of story you be wanting?” Gaffer asked.

The children started shouting out their favorite stories, but Sam had the best vantage point. “Tell us about Mama, Gaffy,” he said.

Hamfast nodded and looked down the narrow tunnel to the front, and only, door. Beyond its round wooden shield was the weather of winter and springtime, light drizzling rain and cool soft breezes. The door shut out all sound and sight of it, but Gaffer nodded his head toward it anyway. “I met your ma on a day like this,” he started, and the other children settled in to listen to one of their favorite stories. They loved all stories concerning their mother naturally, especially this one, the one when their parents fell in love.

“Just like today?” Fred asked, for he was always the one to ask.

Gaffer nodded again and sighed at the memory. “Aye, very much like today,” he went on.

“But it wasn’t really your first time a meeting her, was it Dad?” asked Daisy next, right on cue.

“Nay, I’d known her afore I left Tighfield to be prenticed to your Cousin Holman, truth be told,” Gaffer said. “But I wasn’t more’n fourteen at the time, and didn’t think much about lasses. I had two sisters of my own, and they were all as I needed to know. Bell, now, she wasn’t more’n eight when I left, and hardly left her ma’s side in the kitchen.”

Gaffer settled into the tale, a small smile continually on the corners of his lips as he went on.

“I’d go up to visit every Yule, of course. Mr. Bilbo wouldn’t hear of me working over the holiday, once he got back and settled from his traveling. I’d spend a good two weeks visiting and helping my own dad with this or that, so I never caught more’n a glimpse of your ma, until another fifteen years had passed. That’s the year your Uncle Andy broke his collar bone and Cousin Holman and Mr. Bilbo was to spare me for the spring so as I could help him out, seeing as there weren’t no one else to be doing it.

“I was about twenty-eight at the time, and thought rather a lot of myself. Couldn’t help it none, being at that age and all, and what with the lasses carrying on as they can at times. Never knew what it was any of them saw in me, but as they were seeing it, I wasn’t complaining! But I wasn’t settling none neither. I was a hard one to pin down, truth be told, and I rather welcomed the chance to get away for a bit.

“So’s up I went to Tighfield, to stay at Andy’s and do for him what I could, and it turned out the first thing I could do for him was go into town and get feed for the chickens, and other such things as he was needing. He was in a might desperate pinch for it too, so even though it was raining like the dickens, I hitched up the pony trap and rode into town.”

“Weren’t you cold?” asked Sammy.

Gaffer nodded. “Chilled to the bone by the time I got to town. Didn’t have a hat, nor a coat, nor aught else as any sensible hobbit should have in such weather. My teeth near shattered out of my head, I was a shivering so much.”

“But you got to town all right?” asked Fred.

“That I did,” Gaffer continued. “I got to town and got my business done quick as I could be managing it.”

“And that’s when you saw her,” May sighed dreamily.

Gaffer hummed, remembering. “I was coming out of the feed mill, with three sacks of chicken feed slung over my shoulder. I plopped them into the trap and was setting to get back to Andy’s lickety-split, when up I looked across the courtyard, and there she was.”

“And there she was,” echoed Daisy.

“She wasn’t more’n twenty-two herself, and whatever she was a doing standing there that day, I never did find out. But there she was, standing in the middle of the yard with no proper cover from the rain, a parasol hanging uselessly at her side, and her face turned up to the rain, her tongue held out to catch the drops. And she were laughing. I could hear it even from where I stood, and it was the loveliest sound, like morning dew on new spring grass, sparkled with sunlight.”

Ham and Fred snickered, but Daisy and May sighed wistfully. Sammy just looked up at his father, studying the lines of the old hobbit’s face, which had gone soft and made his father look ten years younger. Goldie yawned.

“Was she the same as she was afore, when you first knew her?” Ham asked now.

“No, and yes,” Gaffer said. “She was still a scrap of a thing, but she were growing into her own and no mistake.”

“Like a rose bud about to blossom?” Fred cut in with a snicker before his father could say as much. Daisy reached over and slugged her brother with a pillow. He laughed and went back to listening to the story.

“Aye, just like that,” Gaffer agreed, with a small shake of disapproval at his daughter. “She was a beauty even then, growing out of the pretty lass she’d always been. Chestnut curls, dimples in her cheeks and a sparkle of light in hazel her eyes. That was Bell Goodchild afore and that was her then. Only, as I said, she was growing up. She was taller for one, a bit thinner here, a little rounder there. But still a child by all accounts. Hadn’t the slightest clue that all the lads turned their heads when she walked by, and if she knew they turned them, she didn’t know why. She still liked to play a bit, else she’d not be standing out in the rain like she was.”

“Did she see you?” Ham asked.

“Not at first,” Gaffer continued, smiling fondly with a sparkle in his own eyes now. He seemed to be looking off faraway and long ago, and didn’t seem to notice the small, cozy room in which he sat. Still, he shifted Goldie, who had fallen asleep, and gave Sammy more room to stretch out. Sammy cuddled into his father’s chest, to listen to the rumble of his voice and the steady, soothing beat of his heart as Gaffer continued his story.

“I don’t know how long I’d been standing there afore the shopkeeper come out to see what the problem was. Got me startled enough back to my wits to realize it was still raining and I was still dripping wet – and getting wetter by the second.

“I got myself back into the trap and set the pony to pulling. I steered slowly though and when I pulled abreast of your ma, she looked up at me and smiled all the wider, and I knew then, in that moment, that I was gonna marry me that lass.

“I tipped my hat to her, or I would of, had I had one. ‘Good day Bell,’ I says, trying to act calm-like for all I felt I’d burst right there and then. ‘Good day Ham,’ she says back and laughs up at me. She closed up her parasol with a snap and tossed it up at me. I grabbed it afore I knew what was to, and she says, ‘Looks as you be needing that more’n I do.’ ‘Thank ‘ee,’ I manage to say back and she curtsied, easy as you please. Then she turned about and ran up the road, back to her own home.”

“Then what happened?” asked Sammy, not lifting his ear from his father’s chest. He yawned and tried to keep his eyes open.

“Well, I went back to your Uncle Andy’s naturally,” Gaffer replied. “I’d a job to do, though I have to say I wasn’t much help to ole Andy that day.

“Took about a week afore I had the excuse of going into town again for more supplies and stop by the Goodchild’s house and beg leave to speak with Bell. I had to return her parasol, you see. But she was too young yet to be asking her out to court, so’s I made friends with her brother Bill instead. I’d known him well enough aforehand, and he didn’t mind me coming around to spend time with his sister.

“Course, Bell didn’t think much on me at the time; she was still too young to think on such things. But the years went by and I visited your Uncle Andy as much as I could and made myself a presence in the Goodchild house even more’n that.

“With each year, she grew more beautiful, till I almost thought myself not good enough for her. Every lad within ten miles were attempting to court her by the time I came of age, and I was worrit I’d come calling one day to find she’d been swept up by one of them, seeing as they were about all the year long and I wasn’t.”

“But that didn’t happen,” Daisy stated.

Gaffer shook his head. “Time came that I came of age. Bell was twenty-seven then and more’n ready to let the lads know she was finally starting to notice them back. Next time I come to visit, she came up to me and says, ‘Well, Ham, you’ve been hanging about the dell the last few years and I know it can’t be for me brother’s dull company. Is there aught you be wanting to ask me?’ I goggled at her a bit and she smiled at me cheekily. I could never think too clear-like when she smiled at me so, and I was as near to coming undone that day as I’d ever been. It took me a good bit to get me wits about me again. Then I says, ‘Well, Bell, I reckon I do want to asking you somewhat. I was wondering if you’d be agreeable to marrying me?’ And to me continuing astonishment, she said yes. She could of had any lad of her choosing, and she chose me.”

“And she never regretted it?” Fred said with a grin.

“Oh, I’m sure she regretted it plenty,” Gaffer laughed, “but she put up with me anyway. Remember that lads, when you start courting. Romance and passion are all well and good, but if you want to be happy into your elder years, you’d be better off marrying a lass as can tolerate you. Adoration only goes so far.”

“Well, so much for you, Fred,” Ham said with a grin. “You’ll not find a lass who’ll put up with you, much less adore you.”

“Good,” Fred said, scrunching up his nose. “I’ve no interest in lasses.”

“You’ll change your mind,” Gaffer said with a knowing nod. “Just you wait.”

“I won’t,” Fred insisted before turning to his brother. “And same goes for you. Why’d any lass want to put up with you and your smelly feet.”

“Because I’m charming,” Hamson said, still grinning. No one could deny that.

“What about us, Gaffy?” May asked.

“For you lasses, I tell you this: find a lad who’ll do everything he can to make you happy, even if he ain’t always successful.”

Against his chest, Sammy yawned and fell asleep at last. Ham and Fred took their youngest siblings to their beds and the lasses took out their knitting. Hamfast looked on them sadly, but fondly. They were the spitting image of his Bell, lovely and graceful, and they knew what they wanted. He’d have a time of it when they came into their own and started courting, a headache for which he was not quite prepared. But they also had his Bell’s good sense and that was saying something.

He looked up at the caricature hanging over the mantle, a young Bell Goodchild smiling eternally down at him, and remembered again the lass he had fallen in love with on a rainy afternoon thirty years ago. Even after all these years, if he closed his eyes while outside in the rain and concentrated hard enough, he could almost think he was back in that long ago day, looking down at his Bell as she smiled up at him, reaching out to catch her parasol that, even to this day, leaned against the wall beside the chair in his bedroom, just in case he needed it.

End of this ficlet.
 

GF 12/11/05