Seedtime and Harvest (The Apple Tree Saga Book 5) Page 5

  Out of the five shillings he had left he paid for his own tobacco and drinks, making two ounces of twist last a week and, when he went to the Fox and Cubs, making a pint last an hour.

  ‘Gentleman of leisure now, eh, Jack?’ Fred Oakes said to him.

  ‘Ah, that’s me,’ Jack agreed. ‘I’ve left my carriage and pair outside.’

  One evening when he was at the bar, drinking his beer and talking to Linn, Fred came in from the back of the house and put his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘You been drawing your dad a free pint? Well, that’s all right, I don’t mind. ‒ Just so long as it’s only one!’

  Jack, his face like a thundercloud, drank the last of his old-and-mild and set the empty glass on the bar.

  ‘I always pay for the drinks I have. I always have done, all my life. When I can’t pay, I go without.’

  He turned on his heel and walked out and Fred gave a little awkward laugh.

  ‘Laws, he’s a funny chap, your dad, taking me up so sharp,’ he said. ‘I only meant it in fun, you know.’

  ‘Did you?’ Linn said. She moved away from his circling arm. ‘Dad won’t see it like that, I’m afraid. I doubt if he’ll come in here again.’

  ‘Can’t the old fellow take a joke?’

  ‘No, nor insults, either,’ she said.

  The incident rankled with her all the evening and at closing-time, when Fred locked the door, she told him that she wanted to leave.

  ‘Just ’cos of what I said to your dad?’

  ‘Partly that, I must admit. But there is another reason as well.’

  ‘What other reason, for God’s sake?’

  ‘A personal one,’ she said, with reserve.

  Fred regarded her narrowly, enlightenment dawning in his face.

  ‘Have you told old Charlie?’ he asked with a grin.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said primly.

  ‘You surely don’t need to worry yet? It can’t be soon, by the look of you.’

  ‘I’d like to leave next week all the same.’

  ‘Oh, very well, if you insist.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’ve made up my mind.’

  She had never liked working at the Fox and Cubs and when, at the end of the following week, she left the place for the last time, it was without a trace of regret, except for the money she would lose.

  ‘Never mind that,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m earning good wages, aren’t I? I can surely afford the odd baby now and then!’

  ‘It’s only going to be one, I hope.’

  ‘Well, one at a time, anyway.’

  Ever since her pregnancy had been confirmed, Charlie had been in a state of excitement, unable to think of anything else. One day he went into Overbridge and came back with a beautiful cot, bought at Johnson’s furniture store. It was a delicate shade of blue, with pink and white daisies painted on the panels, and with one side that slid up and down. He had also bought the bedding for it: a soft-padded mattress, pink and white; a tiny pink pillow, edged with lace; two blankets, two sheets, and a pink satin quilt.

  Linn was upset when she heard how much these things had cost. She scolded him for his extravagance.

  ‘Damn it all!’ Charlie said. ‘I don’t have a baby every day and I reckon it deserves the best.’

  ‘Yes, but this is ridiculous! All your savings gone in a flash!’

  ‘I’ll soon make it up when I get my rise.’

  ‘And when will that be, I’d like to know? Clew’s been promising it to you for months but there’s not much sign of it as yet.’

  ‘Well, he’s got his kiddy to think about now.’

  ‘Clew takes advantage of you,’ Linn said. ‘He always has done. He’s that sort.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. Clew’s always been a good friend to me ‒’

  ‘All the hours you put in for him, so he should be a good friend to you! That garage would never pay so well if it wasn’t for all the work you do there.’

  Linn placed the bedding in the cot, arranging the pillow, the blankets, the quilt. Although worried about the expense, she couldn’t resist their prettiness, and Charlie said teasingly:

  ‘Am I to take them back to the shop and say I don’t want them after all?’

  ‘You!’ she exclaimed, rounding on him. ‘Hopeless spendthrift that you are!’ She leant away from him, held by his arms, and beat at his chest with both her hands. ‘Our baby will think we’re millionaires!’

  But when he left her to go back to work, she was stooping over the cot again, raising and lowering the side panel to see how the lock and ratchet worked.

  Linn had known so much poverty, especially in the past few years, that the fear of it was with her still, and now that there was a baby coming, the future caused her anxiety.

  ‘Have you got that rise yet?’ she would ask Charlie week after week.

  ‘No, not yet. Next month, Clew says.’

  ‘If you were to work in a garage in town, you could earn more than you do at Clew’s.’

  ‘And spend it on bus fares, to and fro? I don’t see much sense in doing that.’

  ‘You’d still be better off, even so. Haven’t you any ambition at all?’

  ‘No,’ Charlie said, ‘I don’t think I have.’

  ‘Not even for my sake, and the sake of our baby when it comes?’

  ‘It’s no good wheedling me like that. We’ve had this out a dozen times.’ Charlie would do a great many things to please her, but in this he remained adamant. ‘I’m quite happy where I am. The wages I get are not too bad. And I shouldn’t care to work in the town.’

  Clew’s garage suited him fine. He could come and go pretty well as he pleased and arrange his hours to suit himself.

  ‘So long as the work gets done,’ Clew would say, ‘that’s all I ever worry about.’

  And the work always was done; Clew knew that; Charlie never let him down. ‘Agricultural repairs a speciality,’ Clew’s signboard announced boastfully and Charlie, of course, was the specialist. He was rather possessive about it. Any work that came in from the farms always had to be left for him.

  ‘That Sammy Cooper’s elevator? I’ll see to that!’ he would say.

  ‘Ah, but when?’ Clew would ask. ‘You’re up to your eyebrows as it is.’

  ‘Some time tonight. You leave it to me.’

  The garage light would burn until all hours; sometimes until after midnight; but although it was Charlie who worked so late, it was Clew who yawned throughout the day.

  ‘Teething! Wind! We’re getting it all. You’ll know what it’s like yourself pretty soon.’

  ‘Bloody Norah’ had now been joined by ‘the blinking nuisance’: a baby weighing, according to Clew, ten and a half pounds at birth.

  ‘What are you calling him?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘We’re calling him Oby,’ Clew replied, and as Charlie stared, nonplussed, he explained: ‘Oby-quiet-you-little-sod!’

  Babies’ names were on Charlie’s mind. He talked about them constantly.

  ‘What do you favour?’ he asked Linn. ‘Surely you must have some ideas?’

  But Linn was always busy these days and on this particular Sunday afternoon she had a skirt spread out on the table and was busy removing the waist-band so that she could let out the pleats.

  ‘Don’t talk to me now, I’m busy,’ she said. Nail-scissors poised between her fingers, she looked at him with a little frown. ‘Haven’t you got anything to do?’

  ‘Oh, yes, there’s plenty to do.’

  ‘Then why not do it, for goodness’ sake, instead of hanging about round me?’

  Robert, coming into the room at that moment, overheard these sharp words. He crept behind his mother’s chair and took his boots out of the hearth.

  ‘Must you jog my arm like that?’ Linn demanded pettishly. ‘Look how you’ve made me cut the cloth!’

  Robert had scarcely touched her at all. He stared at her with indignant eyes.

  ‘Come on, young Rob,’ Charlie said. ‘Th
is is no place for us men. You can come and give me a hand outside.’

  He and the boy went out together and spent the rest of the afternoon creosoting the garden fence.

  ‘You mustn’t mind if your mother snaps. It’s a difficult time for women, you know, when there’s a baby on the way.’

  ‘Will she be like that all the time, right up until the baby comes?’

  ‘I don’t suppose so,’ Charlie said. ‘I was going on at her about the baby’s name, you see, and it got on her nerves.’

  ‘What names do you favour?’ Robert asked.

  ‘Well, now you ask me,’ Charlie said, ‘I think Sally’s a pretty name … So’s Priscilla … So is Jane …’ He paused and dipped his brush in the pail. ‘But only if it’s a girl, of course.’

  Robert turned from painting the fence and laughter bubbled up in him. He and Charlie enjoyed many a quiet joke together. Charlie could always make fun of himself and the boy felt drawn to him by this.

  ‘You want it to be a girl, don’t you? You’ve set your heart on it?’ he said.

  ‘How did you guess?’ Charlie said.

  Towards the end of April, Jack was taken on again at Bellhouse Farm.

  ‘There, what did I tell you?’ Linn exclaimed. ‘I said Mr Lawn would take you back as soon as spring came round again.’

  She was overjoyed for him. His life had its proper purpose again. And it was a truly remarkable thing to see the upright way he walked now that he had a job to go to and money he felt he could call his own. But there was one thing that angered her: he immediately stopped drawing his pension.

  ‘You’re not earning such a lot that you can afford to throw ten shillings down the drain! It’s your pension. You’re entitled to it.’

  ‘If it’s mine,’ Jack said, ‘I can do what I like with it, and what I like is to leave it alone.’

  Nothing she said would change his mind. He was immovable, like a rock.

  ‘They’d probably stop it, anyway, once they knew I was earning again.’

  There was another thing that caused her vexation at this time. Robert was now eleven and a half and she wanted him to sit the exam that might mean a place at the Grammar School. His headmaster at Ryerley thought he stood a good chance of passing, if only he put his mind to it, but Robert himself would have none of it. All he wanted was to go on a farm. The Grammar School was nothing to him.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to get on in the world? Education is a very fine thing and if you do well at the Grammar School all sorts of careers might be open to you.’

  ‘God Almighty!’ her father muttered. ‘When shall we hear the last of that?’

  It was late one Sunday evening. Jack and Charlie were playing cards. Robert had been on his way to bed, but Linn had detained him for over an hour, doing her best to win him round. She leant forward, out of her chair, and laid a coaxing hand on his arm.

  ‘Won’t you do it, to please me? It would mean such a lot if you said yes.’

  The boy was unhappy. He hung his head. He hated to deny her anything, especially when she looked like that, in that soft, beseeching way she had, with a hint of sadness in her eyes.

  ‘I’d never pass, anyway, even if I did sit the exam.’

  ‘Mr Maitland thinks you would.’

  ‘He’s off his hinges,’ Robert said.

  ‘Well, why not try and see for yourself? Then, if you fail, that’s an end to it. There’s surely no harm in just sitting the exam?’

  ‘I ent so tarnal sure of that! I shouldn’t care to sit and fail.’

  ‘Then how would you feel if you sat and passed?’ Linn’s eyes were alight with triumph. She felt she had him within her grasp. ‘How would you feel? You tell me that!’

  ‘I’d feel a bit proud of myself, I suppose.’

  ‘Of course you would! And so should I!’

  ‘But I don’t want to go to the Grammar School! It means I’d be stuck there for years and years.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t, not necessarily. You needn’t go if you feel like that. Just sit the exam and see what happens.’

  ‘What, win a place and not take it up?’

  ‘At least we’ll have seen what you can do. That’s all I ask, just to see, that’s all.’

  Robert was silent, hesitating. He looked at her in a searching way.

  ‘I dunno,’ he said at last. ‘If I pass and get a place, you’ll start on me to take it up.’

  ‘No, I shan’t. I give you my word. Honour bright and cross my heart.’

  There was silence in the room. Jack and Charlie were listening, and their game of cribbage had come to a halt. The boy, in his stillness, stood like a post, until Linn, with a gentle tug at his arm, brought him to himself again. ‘Won’t you, Robert, just to please me?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, wavering.

  ‘It’s surely not too much to ask, just to sit an exam?’ she said. ‘Just to show me what you can do?’

  Suddenly her father spoke, harshly and impatiently. ‘For God’s sake leave the boy alone, instead of nagging him all the time! He’s told you what he wants to do. Leave him alone, let him choose for hisself.’

  ‘And be a labourer all his life?’

  ‘I’ve been a labourer all my life. I dunno that it’s done me much harm.’

  ‘It certainly hasn’t done you much good!’

  Linn’s tone was suddenly tart and Robert, disliking it, moved away. He had been about to yield to her but her words to his granddad had altered that. Linn saw it plainly in his face. She knew she had lost her hold on him. ‘Goodnight, mother. I’m going to bed.’

  ‘Is that all you have to say to me?’

  ‘I don’t care to be tricked,’ he said, ‘and that’s what you’d got in the back of your mind.’

  ‘Won’t you even hear me out?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and she let him go.

  Afterwards she turned on her father.

  ‘Did you have to butt in like that? I’d very nearly persuaded him ‒’

  ‘You’re too fond of persuading people. You should let them alone for a change.’

  ‘Jack’s in the right of it,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s no good trying to cajole young Rob. He’d hold it against you later on.’

  ‘I thought you at least would be on my side. You went to a good school. You know what a great advantage it is.’

  ‘What did it do for me?’ he said. ‘I’m a mechanic, that’s all.’

  ‘But you know so much about so many things! You can talk to anyone, anywhere, about anything under the sun!’ she said.

  ‘Young Rob’ll make his way all right. He knows his own mind and it’s clear as a bell. I doubt if the Grammar School would do much for him.’

  ‘We’ll never know, shall we?’ she said. ‘He will have thrown the chance away.’

  Later that year, in July, the scholarship winners were named in the local newspaper. There were two boys from the Herricks among them and later still, when the winter term started, they could be seen at Herrick Cross, smart in their dark green blazers and caps, waiting for the bus into Overbridge.

  ‘You could have been one of them,’ Linn said to her son. She had yearned for it with all her heart. ‘I’m sure you’re as clever as that Barton boy.’

  But although she reproached him from time to time, there was no real discord between him and her: they were much too close for that; and she was content to take pride in him for what he was, putting out of her mind what he might have been. He was her darling, and a good son to her. He considered her in every way.

  At holiday times he worked on the farms, to earn a few shillings for himself, but he never spent his money on ice-cream or sweets; instead he bought toothpaste and soap and socks; things that he knew would help her out. He rarely spent money on childish things but that year, as the autumn passed, and he thought of the winter coming again, he began to long for the ice-skates seen in the shop in Overbridge, price twenty-five shillings.

  So every evening after school and all day on Saturdays h
e worked spreading muck at Brooky Farm. The farmer, Hedley Sharp, had promised him the sum of sixpence an hour but the money would only be paid, he said, when the whole twenty acres had been spread. It was heavy work for a young boy; the muck-heaps, in rows up and down the field, seemed to have set like heaps of cement; his arms ached, lifting the stuff, and his hands were soon covered in blisters.

  ‘That Hedley Sharp!’ Linn complained. ‘He’s got no right to work you so hard! You’re not to go down to Brooky again. I simply won’t have it, do you hear?’

  ‘I ent stopping now,’ Robert said. ‘I’ve got money owing to me and I mean to have it, every groat. I’m saving up to buy my skates.’

  ‘I could give you those skates for your birthday next month. I’ve got a bit of money put by.’

  But Robert would not hear of it.

  ‘That money’s put by for the baby,’ he said, ‘to buy the extra things you’ll need.’ He was stubborn and would not be moved. ‘Besides,’ he said, with a jut of his jaw, ‘I want to buy them for myself.’

  In time the last of the muck was spread and Sharp pronounced himself satisfied. He paid Robert for twenty hours’ work and gave him a bonus of eighteen pence.

  ‘You’re a sticker. I will say that. Are you willing to come again and do some jobs around my yard?’

  Robert nodded. He was quite game. He needed another thirteen-and-six.

  Linn in these months was suffering. The burden she carried was crippling her, giving her dreadful pain in her back, and although there were only two months to go, it seemed the time would never pass.

  ‘Isn’t there anything to be done?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘No, there’s nothing. I asked the nurse. Just to rest every day, she said.’

  He could not bear to see her in pain and to know that he was responsible. The knowledge filled him with terrible guilt and sometimes at night when she groaned and cried out he suffered with her to such a degree that the perspiration poured from his face.

  ‘Surely there’s something I can do?’

  ‘Yes, you can put your hand on my back.’

  ‘Here?’ he said.

  ‘No, here, lower down.’

  The touch of his hand brought some relief, even if only for a while. He closed his eyes in agony, trying to draw the hot throbbing pain out of her body, into his hands. God! The trouble men brought to their wives! Was it love that brought this about? No, he thought, hating himself, love was the name men gave to lust, to explain themselves and absolve them of blame. Love was something altogether different. Love was what he felt for her now, when he would have given half his life to undo the harm he had wrought in her.