Seedtime and Harvest (The Apple Tree Saga Book 5) Read online

  Linn gave a little startled laugh.

  ‘Am I such a wretch as that?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. Ask yourself.’

  ‘I’m just being cautious,’ she said. ‘I’m weighing all the pros and cons. It’s a bigger place than I had in mind so a lot depends on how much it costs. If they’re willing to climb down a bit ‒’

  ‘You should let Charlie handle that. He’s had experience in the past.’

  ‘So have you,’ Linn said.

  ‘Not on the business side, I ent. But Charlie knows what he’s about. He’s got his head screwed on all right, and he is a farmer’s son, after all.’

  ‘As though I could ever forget it!’ Laughing, she took her father’s arm. ‘Let’s go round the place again. I want another look at the barn and sheds.’

  By the time Charlie and Robert returned, she had decided to buy the place. She went to meet them and tell them the news and Jack, looking over the farmyard wall, saw them join hands and dance in a ring, watched by a group of astonished bullocks.

  ‘I knew she’d come round to it!’ Charlie said. ‘I knew it was just the place for us!’ And as they drove down the steep bumpy track, he kept glancing back at the little farm. ‘My wife a landowner! What a lark!’

  On the way into Mingleton to see the agent and make an offer, Charlie stopped at the garage in Scampton and got out to speak to a sandy-haired man who was tinkering with a break-down truck.

  ‘Frank Fleming?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  ‘I heard you were wanting a skilled mechanic.’

  ‘You’ve left it a bit late, chum. The job’s been filled a month or more.’

  ‘Oh!’ Charlie said. ‘Just my luck!’

  He turned and walked back to the van and Frank Fleming followed him. The man’s eyes seemed never still, but roved about over the van; over the people sitting inside; over Charlie himself, his clothes, his walk.

  ‘As a matter of fact, my new chap is not much good. I doubt if he’ll be stopping long.’

  ‘Oh?’ Charlie said. ‘What then?’

  ‘How much experience have you had?’

  ‘Nine years in a garage at Herrick Cross. My boss there will give me a reference.’

  ‘What about wages?’ Fleming said.

  ‘At the moment I’m getting three-pound-fifteen.’

  ‘That’s more than I pay the chap I’ve got.’

  ‘But he’s not much of a mucher, you said.’

  ‘No, that’s right, he’s n.b.g.. That’s why he won’t be stopping long.’

  ‘Sounds like you are offering me his job?’

  ‘You bring your reference with you next time. Then we’ll talk about it again.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Charlie said, ‘I’ll think about it, anyway.’ He got into the van and drove on towards Mingleton. ‘What a shabby old garage,’ Linn remarked.

  ‘Aren’t they all these days?’ he said.

  Chapter Seven

  They moved to Stant Farm on October the seventh and two days later Jack began ploughing the eight acre field on the other side of the track from the house. The weather was open and work went ahead at such a pace that the field was ploughed, harrowed, and sown with oats, all within the space of a fortnight; and by the first week in November there was a green haze on the ground as the tender blades came pushing up.

  They were all proud of this first field of corn. Charlie had helped with the harrowing and Robert had helped with drilling the seed, so when they looked out on the gentle greenness, the triumph was shared by all three. But Jack, of course, had done most of the work, for Robert was at school all day and Charlie was working at the garage in Scampton.

  ‘You’re our full-time man,’ Charlie said. ‘Rob and me, we’re just casuals.’

  Jack worked with horses and tackle borrowed from Slipfields, the farm next door, and the oatseed had been bought from there. Sam and Jane Trigg were glad to see Stant occupied again and they wanted to help in every way.

  ‘You may as well use our horses. They’re not overworked up here with us. The missus and me, we’re getting on. We don’t do more work than we can help.’

  The Triggs sold them their first stock: two Redpoll cows, each yielding two gallons a day, and two Redpoll heifers ‘guaranteed’ to be in calf.

  ‘Guaranteed?’ Charlie asked with a grin.

  ‘Well,’ said Sam, ‘they’ve been to the bull.’

  ‘There’s no guarantee till the calf starts to kick.’

  ‘My missus is the best guarantee. She says she can tell by the look in their eyes.’

  ‘Get away, you old scoundrel, you!’

  But both heifers were indeed in calf and one of them even came into milk fully two months before she calved; and when in due course the calves were born and both turned out to be heifers, it seemed that fortune was smiling on them.

  As soon as the pig-sties had been repaired, they bought two young sows, and these also came from Slipfields. Linn at first had her doubts about buying stock from the Triggs. She wanted to look round the market first.

  ‘Sam breeds good stock,’ Charlie said. ‘Why waste time looking elsewhere?’

  ‘We get it no cheaper, buying from him.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Charlie said. ‘He’s got to live, the same as us. But we do save a bit on transport costs.’

  ‘Yes, I hadn’t thought of that.’

  So Linn, always anxious to save money, bought her first pigs from Sam Trigg. Stocking the farm was a costly business and she was dismayed, over the months, to see her bank-balance dwindling so small. Whenever she went to the poultry sales, she would be drawn to the cheaper birds, but her father insisted she should buy the best.

  ‘Cheap always comes dearer in the end.’

  ‘Those brown pullets look all right to me.’

  ‘D’you want to throw money down the drain?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Of course I don’t.’

  ‘Then buy good stock. It’s the golden rule.’

  Always, after some argument, she allowed herself to be guided by him. He was experienced; he must surely know best; and she knew she had a lot to learn.

  ‘So many things to buy!’ she said. ‘I do nothing but pay out all the time!’

  But she was proud of the little farm coming to life before her eyes; of the poultry and geese in the orchard-field; of the sows with their piglets in the paddock; of the four beautiful Redpolls who would hang their faces over the wall and watch while she worked in the garden. The barn was packed with feeding-stuffs stored away in shiny new bins; there was plenty of hay and some bought straw; and, in the sheds, all manner of tools.

  ‘So many tools!’ she would say. ‘Yet there’s always something we haven’t got!’

  ‘You don’t need to buy a pruning-saw. Sam says we can borrow his.’

  Sometimes in the evenings Sam would saunter down to Stant to see how things were progressing there and always, on a Friday night, he would go with them to the pub in Scampton.

  ‘How’re you getting on at the garage? Is Fleming treating you pretty fair?’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ Charlie said.

  ‘He’s a bit of a cadger, from what I’ve heard. You want to watch out for him on that score.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning,’ Charlie said.

  He had not been keen to work at Frank Fleming’s garage, since it meant taking another man’s job, but Linn had swept his scruples aside.

  ‘You’ve got to put yourself first. You’ll never get anywhere if you don’t.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Charlie said.

  But when he had called at the garage again, Fleming had persuaded him.

  ‘I’m sacking this chap, anyway, as soon as I find a better man, so it might as well be you as any other.’

  Certainly the garage was convenient for Charlie: by taking the path across Piggotts Farm, he could be there in ten minutes or so; and when Linn began supplying eggs to the grocer in Scampton, Charlie was able to deliver them o
n his way to work in the morning.

  The garage was a busy one; busier than Clew’s at Herrick Cross; for Scampton was a large village and straddled the main road from Baxtry to Kitchinghampton.

  Fleming employed two other men besides Charlie: Jerry Jackson, a young apprentice, and George Cressy, in his late twenties, who did odd jobs about the place. George, as Charlie soon discovered, was not quite right in the head. He told everyone that he was a Red Indian. Strangely enough he looked like one, for he had a coarse ruddy complexion and a hawklike face with prominent cheekbones, and wore his hair cropped very short, revealing a large strong bumpy skull.

  ‘Don’t stand any nonsense from him,’ Fleming said, on Charlie’s first day. ‘He’s here to work, like anyone else, whether he’s touched in the head or not.’

  Cressy was within earshot when this was said. He was busy sweeping the garage floor and when Fleming had gone out the apprentice, Jerry, spoke to him.

  ‘Did you hear what the boss said about you?’

  ‘Yes, I heard. I’ll get him one day.’

  ‘What’ll you do? Scalp him, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, and you!’ Cressy said.

  Jerry looked at Charlie and grinned but Charlie turned away from him. He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered one to George Cressy. George looked at him in surprise.

  ‘Gold Flake, is it? Thanks a lot. You’re a pal and no mistake.’ George handled his cigarette as though it might have been gold itself. ‘I won’t smoke it now, I’ll keep it,’ he said. He tucked it away behind his ears.

  As he moved on, sweeping the floor, Jerry Jackson met Charlie’s eye.

  ‘George doesn’t smoke. He never has. He’ll give it back to you one of these days.’

  George was supposed to work in the mornings only: that was all Fleming paid him for; but in fact he hung about the garage until it closed in the evening.

  ‘I’ve got nothing else to do and it keeps me out of mischief,’ he said. He had once been in trouble with the police, after a fight with a man in a pub, and had seen the inside of Gloucester gaol. ‘I shan’t make that mistake again. I’m keeping out of trouble now.’

  Robert loved the little farm. Somehow the place had got hold of him. The grey stone house and the way it stood, looking out over the valley; the smooth soft greenness of the fields, especially in the morning light; the warm sweet smells when he entered the barn, of hay and straw and barley-meal and apples sweating in the loft: All these things somehow worked on him and sometimes he would stand transfixed, trying to fathom what it was that made Stant Farm a place apart.

  ‘I suppose it’s because it’s our own,’ he said, talking to Charlie one day. ‘There’s something about it … Oh, I dunno … It’s as though I’ve lived here all my life.’

  He went to school in Mingleton now. It seemed a terrible waste of time, having to go to a new school just for one term, but the months were passing quickly enough and at Christmastime he would be free to take his place in the grown-up world.

  As the longed-for day drew nearer, however, it brought a problem to vex his mind, for his mother by now had made it clear that she expected him to work at Stant. She talked about it all the time. The subject was very dear to her heart.

  ‘Your own farm to work on, just think of that! You’ll be your own master, here at Stant, and you’ll never be laid off in bad weather as you would if you worked for someone else.’

  But although he loved Stant Farm, he had no wish to work there. He looked towards the bigger farms, Piggotts or Innings or World’s End, where he could learn to do everything and be the kind of all-round man his grandfather had been in his prime. He knew he should tell his mother this but it was a difficult thing to do and the longer he shirked telling her the more difficult it became. Instead he talked to Charlie and Jack one Sunday morning when they were out mending a gap in the paddock fence.

  ‘You’ll have to tell her straight,’ Jack said. ‘It’s your own life and you’ll soon be a man. You should start as you mean to go on.’

  ‘But what on earth is she going to say?’

  ‘She won’t like it. There’ll be a great fuss. But you mustn’t be ruled by your womenfolk or you won’t have a soul to call your own.’

  Robert felt the truth of this. He knew he ought to strike out for himself. But the prospect of spoiling his mother’s bright dream caused a sinking in his heart and Charlie, reading it all in his face, came to his rescue with a suggestion.

  ‘Have you tried for a job yet?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Then why not leave it for a while? You’re only fourteen and there’s bags of time. Why not do as your mother wants and work here at Stant for a little while? Give it a year, say, just to please her?’

  ‘A year!’ Robert said. It seemed like an age.

  ‘A year’s not long,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s only twelve months, after all.’ Putting a pointed stake in a hole, he held it while Jack hammered it in. ‘Your mother’s so bucked about getting this place, it’d be a pity to spoil it for her, but she’ll have got on her feet by then and it won’t be such a blow to her when you tell her you want to work somewhere else.’

  Robert stared into the distance. Suddenly he made up his mind.

  ‘All right! I’ll give it a year! It seems only fair, till the farm’s on its feet.’

  It was a great relief to him that the problem had been resolved like this. How very simple it all was, with Charlie on hand to point the way! Smiling, he turned to Jack again.

  ‘Charlie’s got all the answers!’ he said. ‘I should’ve come to him before.’

  ‘So long as you’re satisfied,’ Jack said.

  ‘Well,’ Robert said, sheepishly. ‘It’s like Charlie says ‒ a year’s not long.’

  And so it happened that when he left school and began working at Stant Farm his mother had no reason to suspect that his joy in it was less than her own.

  In fact he was happy enough for a time, for his first job as a working-man was helping Jack to cut and lay the overgrown hedges, and this was work that he enjoyed.

  The boy did his best to follow his grandfather’s skilled example, cutting so far through the stem of each thorn, bending it over into the hedge, and, with a quick sharp upward stroke of his billhook, severing the spike that stuck up from the base. Then the split stakes, at intervals, hammered well into the ground, and lastly the tight-woven hazel-rods, the ‘etherings’ as his grandfather called them, twisted all along the tops to prevent the newly bended stems from springing upright again in the hedge.

  Mitten, billhook, rubbing-stone: Robert enjoyed the use of these things; but would he ever have his grandfather’s knack of turning the billhook after a cut so that, in a single up-and-down movement, two stems were cut instead of one? Would his wrists ever harden and grow strong instead of aching, burning-hot, as they did now at the end of each day? Yes, the skill and the strength would come: he was determined that they should; and he worked on, diligently, trying to match the good clean strokes that his grandfather managed so easily.

  There was much useful timber cut from the hedges; pea-sticks, bean-sticks, hedging-stakes; and enough kindling to light their fires for twelve or eighteen months to come. At the end of it all the rubbish was burnt and they watched the great heaps crackling up, the red sparks flying in the dusk of the day, and the smoke with its acrid breath-catching smell drifting across the darkening fields.

  The winter days were cold and dry: just the right weather for hedging and ditching; and by late March it was almost all done. How neat and tidy the hedgerows were now, and how much more light was let into the fields, now the tall timber had been removed. Charlie, whenever he walked round the farm, was full of praise for Jack and Robert, because of the work they were doing there. Every day there was something new: a ditch cleaned out or a gate repaired; mole-hills rolled out in the pastures; fences painted with creosote: there were improvements everywhere.

  ‘Aren’t you proud,’ he said to Linn, �
�at owning such a place as this?’

  ‘Oh!’ she said. She could not find the words. ‘Sometimes it all seems too good to be true!’

  Linn’s pride in her ownership was equalled only by her pleasure and pride in seeing her father and her son working together in the fields. She had provided them with that work and it was like a miracle. On Friday evenings, after supper, she paid them their wages for the week. Account-book and cashbox were brought to the table; money was carefully counted out; and the figures were entered into the book.

  She kept her accounts most beautifully. Charlie had shown her how it was done and she had proved an apt pupil. The farm was a serious thing to her; she meant to see that it paid its way; and she watched every penny that came and went in every single business transaction. Her husband, her father, and her son looked on in some astonishment as this shrewd and capable woman-of-business developed so swiftly under their eyes.

  ‘Where do you get it from?’ Charlie asked. ‘How come you know how to handle it all when you’ve only been in it five minutes or so?’

  ‘I’ve got good teachers in you and Dad. I would never have had the nerve to start if it wasn’t for you two backing me up.’

  And of course it was true. She was the repository of all their wisdom and experience. Jack could tell her ‘within three grains’ how much corn the poultry should have and Charlie, after a visit to Mingleton, could tell her which corn-merchant she would do best to trade with. In all these things she learned quickly. Backed by her grasp of facts and figures, she could drive a hard bargain with any salesman who called at the farm, and she had a flair, when selling her produce, for scenting out buyers everywhere.

  That was on the business side: no man could beat her there, Charlie said; but on the farm itself, it was a different story, and sometimes her quickness led her astray.

  One day in spring, when she looked out of the kitchen window, she saw that Sam Trigg’s cattle had got into the field where the oats were coming on so handsomely. The cattle were spread all over the field, eating the corn and trampling it down, and Robert, talking to Sam nearby, seemed not to see what was happening.