The Land Endures (The Apple Tree Saga Book 4) Page 2

  ‘That’s my Bert’s favourite drink. He’d drink it all day, given a chance. He says nobody makes gingerade like me.’

  ‘It’s not the only thing your Bert drinks,’ Agnes muttered, under her breath.

  Mrs Bessemer’s husband, Bert, was invoked every day at Holland Farm. His word was law, and it seemed he held very strong ideas.

  ‘My Bert don’t like me peeling onions. We never have them at home ourselves. He don’t like me cleaning your silver by rights, on account of it spoiling my hands, and that’s why I have to wear them gloves. He don’t like me spoiling my hands. They’re a woman’s best feature, he always says.’

  Gwen wondered about this fastidious man.

  ‘What does your Bert do?’ she asked, and before Mrs Bessemer could reply, Agnes gave a snort and said: ‘He’s a cowman at Outlands, same as my dad!’

  ‘Second cowman,’ Mrs Bessemer said.

  Gwen was careful not to smile.

  ‘How is it that you both work here, instead of at Outlands, then?’ she asked. ‘I’ve heard Mr Challoner say more than once that he needs someone to help in the house.’

  ‘My Bert wouldn’t like me working there. Mr Challoner’s a widower, as you know, and must be sixty if he’s a day, but he’s got a sweet tooth as the saying is. It’d never do, my going there. Agnes will tell you. She knows what he is.’

  Agnes, by her silence, seemed to concur, but Gwen, to avoid further gossip concerning a neighbour, began to talk of other things. She mentioned it to Stephen, however, later that day, and he was not in the least surprised.

  ‘Challoner ought to marry again. The trouble is, he’s gone up in the world, now that farming is prospering, and there’s no woman in the district worthy of the honour he could bestow.’

  ‘I thought you liked him,’ Gwen said.

  ‘He’s been a good neighbour to me so far. I’ve got no reason to complain. But as for the people who work for him, that’s a different matter, I’m afraid. He talks of his men as though they were dirt.’

  ‘I’m disappointed,’ Gwen said. ‘I thought he was rather a nice man.’

  But, as Stephen said, he himself got on well enough with Challoner, and that was something to be thankful for.

  At its central point, for a hundred yards or so, Challoner’s land ran with Stephen’s; but a lane came down from Puppet Hill, passed through the yard at Outlands Farm, and continued on down to the village; so for two thirds of the way down, the two farms were thus divided. This in itself brought problems sometimes, especially at harvest time, when a loaded waggon from Holland Farm, going down, might meet an empty one from Outlands coming up. But a friendly agreement already existed between the two farms when Stephen arrived, and, by talking things over beforehand, it was easy to avoid serious trouble.

  When the men from Outlands did meet the men from Holland Farm, there was a great deal of swearing and argument between them, before one or the other gave way. But it was only a ritual and was much enjoyed on both sides. There were two tractors at Outlands; there were only horses at Holland Farm; and this meant a certain rivalry.

  ‘When are you going to get mechanized?’ Johnny Marsh would ask, jeering, and Bob Tupper as often would say: ‘When that there trattor drops a foal!’

  Challoner himself often chaffed Stephen on this score. ‘Even old Gould had a tractor, you know, and you’re a young man of thirty-five. I’d have thought you’d be bang up to date, making us older ones open our eyes.’

  ‘I can’t afford to buy tractors yet,’ Stephen said. ‘I want to get my mortgage paid. And I’m happy enough, using horses.’

  There were eight mares at Holland Farm; he meant to breed from them if he could; and one of the first things he did was to buy a Shire stallion at Capleton Mop. There were no good stallions in the neighbourhood, so it seemed a good idea to keep his own, even if it was something of an extravagance.

  ‘Besides which,’ as he said to Gwen, ‘I’ve already had a few enquiries from farmers round about, who’ve got brood mares, so Lucifer will not only be earning his keep but making a profit on the side.’

  When the stallion arrived and Bob Tupper inspected him, he remained silent a long time. It looked as though he disapproved. The stallion’s face was light grey: ‘white as moonlight,’ Gwen had said: but his neck and body were dappled and dark, and his hind quarters were iron-black.

  ‘Well?’ Stephen said, impatiently.

  ‘Strikes me he’s a different horse in front from what he is behind,’ said Bob.

  ‘But what do you think of him?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘I suppose he’ll do,’ Bob said.

  He was not much in favour of keeping a stallion on the farm. It meant a lot of extra work, and who had time for coddling a horse that ate its head off, day in, day out, got the odd mare into trouble now and then, and never did a hand’s turn in front of the plough?

  ‘If that’s all that’s worrying you,’ Stephen said, ‘I’m quite happy to look after Lucifer myself.’

  But that was not right, either, and Bob gave a series of little grunts.

  ‘I daresay I’ll manage to fit it in.’

  And manage it he did, for Lucifer was always in tip-top condition, beautiful in every respect, and he soon had an excellent reputation with farmers who bred from their own mares. When the stud fees came in they were kept in a cashbox of their own, and every six months or so Stephen would give half the money to Bob Tupper, for him to divide among the men.

  ‘Have a few drinks at The Rose and Crown ‒ Lucifer’s paying!’ he used to say.

  Stephen and Challoner both kept sheep and it was the custom, already established many years, for the two farms to share their shearing, both flocks being done at Outlands one year, Holland Farm the next.

  That year it was Challoner’s turn, and on a fine morning in May, the flocks were herded together at Outlands, and shearing platforms were set up in the big barn. The doors at both sides were open wide and a warm wind blew gustily through, bringing, now and then, a skitter of rain. One doorway had a row of hurdles across it, made to open like a gate; the ewes were let in, a few at a time, delivered into the hands of the shearers, and let out naked the other side, to join their bleating lambs in the fold. Stephen’s shepherd, Henry Goodshaw, got on well with the Outlands shepherd, Arthur Thorne, and to see these two experts handling their clippers, sending the fleeces rippling back, was something that made the children stare. Chris, especially, watched by the hour, and Challoner’s younger son, Gerald, older than Chris by eighteen months, brought him a ewe and some clippers to try.

  ‘Go on, I’ll hold her. Try your hand.’

  Chris wanted to try but he was afraid. Supposing he were to cut the ewe? Reluctantly he shook his head and watched as Gerald displayed his skill.

  ‘Nothing to it!’ Gerald said. ‘Any fool can shear a sheep!’

  The two boys went to the same school, King Edward’s in Chepsworth, but they were at home for Whitsuntide. All the children were on holiday and ran to and fro among the shearers. The older ones helped to tie up the fleeces, and little Emma pottered about, gathering up stray wisps of wool or stirring the warm tar in its pot.

  ‘Come out of that!’ said Morton George. ‘D’you want to get it on your pinny?’

  Emma stared at him in surprise. Nobody ever spoke to her like that. She turned away without a word and walked to the far end of the barn, to swing on a rope that hung from the rafters. But after a while, feeling herself no longer observed, she slipped away out of the barn, into the house in search of her mother.

  Gwen and Mrs Bessemer were busy in the kitchen with Kitty Cox, preparing luncheon for the shearers. Kitty was the stockman’s wife and worked in the house six days a week. She was strong, cheerful, sturdy and rough, and stood no nonsense from anyone. She put a biscuit into Emma’s hand and sent her out to the garden to play.

  Gwen was surprised, knowing John Challoner’s passion for improvements on the farm, to find they did not extend to the house. Admittedly t
here were carpets in the best rooms and velvet curtains at the windows, but there was no piped water supply and no adequate sanitation. Water for the house came from a hand-pump outside the door, and the privy was merely a filthy latrine in a tumbledown shed next to the dairy. The kitchen range was very old and the stovepipe so rusted that it constantly smoked, yet Kitty was expected to produce a feast for the hungry shearers, and by some miracle, produce it she did.

  Baked ham, boiled beef, and three pressed ox-tongues were carried out to the smaller barn and set on the trestle table there. Pork pies, mutton pasties, and jellied brawn, with bowls of potatoes, beans, and green peas, were carried out and set down there. Spotted dick puddings, apple tarts, jam turnovers and egg custards: all these were carried out; and, last but not least, a whole cheese was set on the board.

  ‘I wish their damned union could see them now!’ Challoner remarked to Gwen. ‘Stuffing themselves at my expense!’

  They were a merry party at the table that day. The two groups of workmen got on well and the barrel of beer loosened their tongues. They returned to work in high good humour and as the shearing recommenced the jokes were still flying from mouth to mouth.

  ‘I ent got room for a ewe in my lap. My belly’s too full with all that good food.’

  ‘It’s the Chepsworth ale that’s done me in. This ewe of mine has got six legs!’

  ‘Anybody want a trim?’ Tupper asked. His clippers went snip-snip in the air. ‘Short back and sides? Or maybe a bob?’

  ‘Bobbed by Bob,’ said Billy Rye, and there was laughter all round as the men settled down to work again.

  Later, however, towards the end, a quarrel blew up suddenly between Morton George on the one hand and an Outlands man named Jack Mercybright on the other.

  ‘Call that shearing?’ Mercybright said. ‘The moths could do a better job than that!’

  Indeed the ewe was a sorry sight. She tottered away from Morton George with ridges of wool left on her sides and blood seeping from three or four cuts.

  ‘It’s these damned clippers, that’s what it is! I never used such duddy things!’

  ‘It’s a bad workman that blames his tools.’

  ‘Supposing we swap, then, you and me? You take my clippers and I’ll take yours.’

  ‘Supposing you deal with that ewe of yours before the flies get wind of her?’

  ‘Don’t you tell me what to do!’

  George snatched up the pot of tar and angrily dabbed at the ewe’s wounds. He sent her, with a kick, to join the rest. The two shepherds, Goodshaw and Thorne, watched and listened while they worked, but neither of them spoke a word. The other shearers were silent too. Mercybright was an elderly man with thick grey hair and a grey beard, and was tall enough, when he stood erect, to look down his nose at Morton George.

  ‘Now what? You gone on strike?’

  ‘Maybe I have. I’ve a good cause. Shearing ent my proper work. Why should I shear the bloody sheep?’

  ‘It’s everyone’s work when it’s there to be done.’

  ‘It’s shepherd’s work. It ent mine. Why should we help to do their work?’

  ‘They help in the fields at harvest time. What’s the odds for God’s sake?’

  ‘The shepherd gets a lot more pay. Lambing money, for a start. Ask them two just what they earn!’

  Outside in the yard, loading fleeces into a cart, Stephen and Challoner heard most of this. Challoner swore and leapt down. Stephen followed him into the barn.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Challoner bawled, but the two participants turned away, each seizing a ewe from the man at the gate and stooping to the work in hand. Challoner, after a glance round, led the way outside again.

  ‘You need to watch that fellow George. He’s a union man, he stirs things up. I’ve got three of them here, you know, and the first chance I get they’ll be out on their necks.’

  ‘I agree with what you say about George. The man’s a slacker, I know that. But why shouldn’t they belong to a union? We belong to the N.F.U.’

  ‘That’s different,’ Challoner said, but was unable to explain why.

  That evening, when the shearing was done, Stephen and Gwen and the four children walked back home across the fields. The pockets of Emma’s pinafore were stuffed with bits of sheep’s wool and she carried a lamb’s tail in her hand. Her small legs were soon tired, and Stephen offered her a pick-a-back ride.

  ‘I’ll carry her,’ Chris said. He crouched for his sister to climb on his back. Gwen had told her eldest son that his father must be saved from exertion whenever possible, owing to the pains in his chest and side, and Chris had taken the lesson to heart. ‘Hold tight, Emma! We’re off!’ he cried, and galloped across the fields towards home, leaving the others well behind.

  ‘My hands are all soft with handling the fleeces,’ Joanna said, marvelling.

  ‘So are mine,’ Stephen said.

  ‘And mine! Have a feel!’ Jamesy said, and they all had to feel one another’s hands, to marvel at the softness of their skin.

  ‘It’s the lanolin,’ Stephen said.

  ‘What’s lanolin?’ Jamesy asked.

  ‘It’s the natural grease in sheep’s wool. It’s used in the making of ointments for our skin.’

  ‘Is it good for freckles?’ Joanna asked.

  ‘It won’t rub them out, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘What a pity. I wish it would.’

  ‘Silly thing,’ Jamesy said.

  Over their heads, their parents smiled. The business of watching their children grow up was a strange thing full of queer little quirks. They knew each one so intimately; the physical bond was so very close, every thought and feeling could be divined; yet what could they know of the people these children would one day become? Each one so different, moved by an unknown force within, yet all bearing a common likeness. Not just the likeness of face and form, but the affinity created by small daily experiences shared, stored up as though in a bank, from which they could draw at will.

  The four children would grow apart. As adults they might be scattered about the world. But the memory of this particular day, for instance, would always be shared by all of them, and however briefly they might meet, a word would be enough to bring it back. The warm gusty day with its little showers; the smells of sheep muck and wool and tar; the magical softness of their hands: the day would be one they would remember always, in future times, when they were old; and the sharing of such memories was a thing they could only experience together, as members of the same family.

  ‘It’s a queer thing, being a parent,’ Stephen said, and Gwen, laughing, took his arm, knowing how much he had left unsaid.

  They walked on with Jamesy and Joanna, and soon saw that Chris, arriving first, had already been at work. Smoke rose from the kitchen chimney. The kettle would be on for tea.

  It was a wet summer that year. Haymaking spun itself out and was not finished until late July. Stephen had other worries, too, for the government was regretting its policy on corn prices and was threatening to remove the guarantee. His harvest that year was good enough, considering the wet season, but in November, when he sold his corn, prices were already beginning to fall, giving warning of what was to come.

  Just before Christmas Morton George came to him and asked for a rise of ten shillings.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Stephen said. ‘You know what the present situation is.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m putting in now, before it gets worse. The union’s behind me in asking for this rise. They gave it out at the meeting last night.’

  ‘The union needs to face facts.’

  ‘I’ve seen the corn prices in The Gazette. The farmers ent all that badly hit.’

  ‘I’ve got to look ahead,’ Stephen said. ‘The good days for farming are petering out. We’ve all got to face that fact and pull in our horns.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me!’ George exclaimed. ‘It’s what our speaker said last night. There’s dark days in front of us, I know that, and
who’s going to suffer? ‒ Men like me!’

  Stephen knew that it was true.

  Chapter Two

  Just after Christmas that year, the mare, Nancy, gave birth to Lucifer’s first foal. Emma, the youngest of the Wayman children, was allowed to choose the foal’s name, and the name she chose was Phoebe.

  ‘I bet you can’t spell it!’ Jamesy said, and all three older children rocked with mirth.

  ‘Emma’s quite good at spelling,’ said Gwen. ‘Miss Protheroe is pleased with her.’

  Emma, being only five, went to Miss Protheroe’s ‘Little School’, in the cathedral close in Chepsworth. It was the older children’s task to call and collect her at four o’clock every day, and because of its tiny tables and chairs they scornfully called it the ‘Dolly School’.

  ‘Phoebe’s a good name,’ Stephen said. ‘Emma has chosen very well.’

  Later, in March, at the Mare and Foal Show in Chepsworth, Nancy and Phoebe won first prize. Stephen lifted Emma up so that she could pin the red rosette on Nancy’s headstall. Then Emma was put onto Nancy’s back and with Stephen leading her by the rein, and with Chris leading the foal nearby, the whole family walked back home.

  ‘My! But you must be tired!’ Mrs Bessemer said to them. ‘You must be nearly ready to drop.’

  ‘I’m not tired,’ Emma said.

  ‘You’ve been riding,’ Joanna said.

  The spring was a dry and sunny one; the driest, it was said, for sixty-three years; and yet the nights were bitterly cold. Often during the Easter holidays, the children awoke to a world white with frost, and yet the days were bright and warm.

  They were never at a loss how to fill their time. The farm’s secrets were known to them now, and they went in a kind of ritual from one marvel to the next, willing to share them with one another but guarding them fiercely from outside eyes. There were crabapple trees out in blossom along the hedges in Long Gains, and the moorhen had chicks on Copsey Pond, but few people were allowed to know. Cowslip places and bluebell places; squirrels’ nests and foxes’ earths; catkin bushes and wild cherry trees and the thrush that built in the pony’s stall: only their parents and Agnes Mayle were allowed to know about these things; everyone else was kept in the dark.