The Land Endures (The Apple Tree Saga Book 4) Page 8

  ‘I’m selling sweets,’ Emma said. ‘The shop is still open, if you want anything.’

  ‘Have you got a licence for running a shop?’ Chris enquired, with a solemn frown. ‘You’ll get into trouble with the police if you haven’t got a licence, you know.’

  ‘It’s only pretending,’ Emma said.

  Chris, with a nudge, drew his brother’s attention to one of Emma’s price-tickets: ‘Penny each or two for twopence.’ The two boys rocked on their heels at this. Emma surveyed them uneasily.

  ‘Have I got the spelling wrong?’

  ‘No, not the spelling,’ Jamesy said.

  ‘Why are you laughing, then?’ she asked.

  ‘Because you’re a cough-drop,’ Jamesy said. ‘Got any cough-drops by the way?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Emma said. ‘I’m expecting them in any day.’

  ‘What about bulls’ eyes?’ Jamesy asked, and took a round pebble from a dish. He put it into his mouth, sucked it noisily for a while and then, apparently, swallowed it. ‘Went down like a stone!’ he said to Chris.

  Emma looked at him in dismay.

  ‘It was a stone! You know it was!’

  ‘I thought you said it was a sweet?’

  ‘Only pretending,’ Emma said.

  ‘Oh, cripes, I shall die!’ Jamesy said. He clutched at his throat and gave a cough, turning despairingly to Chris. ‘Do something, quick, or it’s all up with me! I’ve swallowed a stone! I shall die! I shall die!’ His eyes were bulging hideously. He gave a horrible choking gasp. ‘Too late! I’m sinking!’ he said with a moan.

  Suddenly Emma burst into tears. The boys were all contrition at once. Jamesy stopped acting and spat the pebble into his hand. He held it out for her to see.

  ‘I didn’t really swallow it!’ he said. ‘Laws, what a goose you are, to be sure! There, there, I’m not going to die. No need for weeping or gnashing of teeth.’

  ‘Tell you what, Emma!’ Chris exclaimed. ‘We won our match like billy-oh! Two hundred and eight to their ninety-six. What do you think of that, eh?’

  ‘Chris made forty,’ Jamesy said.

  ‘Jamesy made twenty-three. Aren’t you proud of your brothers, eh?’

  Emma nodded. Her tears were gone. She straightened the bowl on her ‘weighing-machine’ and flicked a beetle from her counter.

  ‘I knew he hadn’t really swallowed it.’

  ‘Of course you did. So did I.’

  ‘Jolly good sweetshop you’ve got here. I must come and buy your bulls’ eyes again.’

  ‘Penny each or two for twopence!’

  Spluttering with laughter, the boys went in. The joke would last them a good many days. Emma, left alone, dismantled her shop. She returned the glass dishes to the kitchen cupboard, and threw the price-tickets into the stove.

  ‘Where’s your shop?’ demanded Aunt Doe. ‘I was coming to buy some sweets.’

  ‘It’s closed for today,’ Emma said.

  One day the children came home from school and found the hay in the Long Meadow cut, lying in its curving swaths, wave upon wave of dark sea-green rippling over the light bright green of the aftermath. They knew at once that the hay had been cut, for the smell of it came to them on the warm wind as they toiled homeward up the track. They ran to the meadow, drawn by the scent, and were just in time to see the machine, driven by Trennam in his haymaking hat, cut through the last long strip of grass and lay it sideways on the ground, completing the last long rainbow curve.

  ‘You started without us!’ Chris exclaimed. ‘What a dirty rotten trick!’

  Chris was fourteen in July that year. He was tall, square-shouldered, sturdily built: ‘every inch the young farmer,’ as Aunt Doe said; and Chris had no fault to find with that. The farm was his passion, first and last. School had become irksome to him. If only his father would let him leave!

  ‘At fourteen years old?’ Stephen said. He would not hear of such a thing. ‘There are all sorts of careers open to you. You could take your pick, the headmaster says.’

  ‘Farming’s the only career I want.’

  ‘You’re too young to decide that yet. You may change your mind in a year or two.’

  ‘I shan’t,’ Chris said. ‘I know I shan’t.’

  ‘Yes, well, we’ll wait and see.’

  Haymaking days were the longest days. The sun seemed reluctant to leave the sky. Field after field of mowing-grass fell to the blades of the mowing-machine; grass became hay in the wind and the sun; and was carted home, swaying and creaking, to be built into stacks or stored in the barn.

  All through the busy haymaking days, in the fields around the green corn grew tall, rustling dryly in the wind, the wheat striving upwards, spearlike, erect; the barley bowing its feathered heads; the oatsprays dangling, never still. The greenness faded under the sun, and a luminous pallor took its place. The pallor went and colour came, deepening to a dusty gold.

  But where was the wisdom, Stephen thought, in growing so many acres of corn? At market now, as he well knew, prices were falling all the time. His harvest that year was going to be good, but afterwards, when he threshed his grain, what price would it fetch in the market-place, competing against imported corn? He knew that cuts would have to be made. The men’s wages, reduced once, would have to be reduced again, and one of the women, Agnes or Mrs Bessemer, would have to go. It would not be easy, even then, to pay his mortgage, tithes, and costs.

  It was Aunt Doe’s idea that one of the two women should go, and Stephen gratefully agreed.

  ‘Which one will you keep? Agnes, I suppose?’

  ‘No, Mrs Bessemer,’ Aunt Doe said. ‘It seems her Bert is losing his job when harvest is over at Outlands this year. Agnes’s menfolk are all in work.’

  So Agnes Mayle left and Mrs Bessemer remained. There was more work than ever for Aunt Doe, and Stephen, talking things over with his children, won a solemn pledge from them that they would help her whenever they could: in the house; the dairy; the poultry yard. He talked to them on equal terms and explained the need for economy.

  ‘You could say I made a hash of things, taking up farming when I did. It’s not going to be easy in the next few years, and I thought I ought to let you know. There won’t be much money for luxuries. On the other hand, if I were to give up the farm and go back to practising the law.’

  ‘But you can’t do that! You simply can’t!’

  They were appalled. They cried out against it with all their heart. They would sooner go hungry all their days than think of leaving Holland Farm.

  ‘It won’t come to that, I hope,’ he said, turning the matter off with a smile. ‘There’s always plenty to eat on a farm.’

  ‘If I could leave school,’ Chris said.

  ‘Next year, perhaps, but not before.’

  ‘Think of the money you’d save on my fees.’

  ‘Why, would you work for nothing, then?’

  ‘Anything to keep the farm!’

  So Stephen knew that, whatever his folly in buying Holland Farm, his children at least would never reproach him. They would sooner remain on the farm, poor, than live in riches anywhere else.

  ‘You have your answer,’ Aunt Doe said.

  ‘So it seems,’ Stephen said.

  It was puzzling for them, even so, with the wealth of the growing corn around them, to understand the difficulties. At harvest time, when they helped in the fields, Joanna took up a sheaf of wheat and examined the fat, round, plumped-up grain. She took it to Tupper, building the stooks.

  ‘Is it good, the corn we grow?’

  ‘Best in the world,’ Tupper said.

  ‘Then why doesn’t it fetch a good price?’

  ‘There’s corn coming in from abroad, that’s why, selling cheaper than what we grow. Canada, America, places like that.’

  ‘Why is it cheaper?’ Joanna asked.

  ‘On account of the way it’s grown out there. Thousands and thousands of acres of it, and great big machines to harvest it. Don’t ask me how or why, Miss
Jo. I dunno. It’s a mystery to me.’

  ‘There’s something wrong somewhere,’ Joanna said.

  ‘I reckon there is,’ Tupper said.

  ‘What is it, exactly, do you think?’

  ‘If I knew that ‒’ Tupper said.

  ‘Yes?’ said Joanna. ‘What would you do?’

  ‘I’d write a letter to The Times!’

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong!’ Chris said, having listened impatiently while his sister displayed her ignorance. ‘It’s this blasted government! That’s what’s wrong!’

  ‘Ah,’ said Tupper, shaking his head. ‘You may be right, Master Chris. Though speaking as one man to another ‒’

  ‘Yes?’ said Chris suspiciously.

  ‘‒ there ent much to choose between none of them!’

  ‘Mrs Bessemer pulling her weight, is she?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘Oh, we get done, eventually!’ And Aunt Doe added, with her keen blue glance: ‘You can see to read a book in the brasswork when Mrs Bessemer’s finished with it!’

  Aunt Doe herself was tireless. She kept on the move from morn to night. But she always made light of the housework and the gardenwork, and never wasted a moment of time. If she had to go from one part of the big roomy house to another, she would take a feather duster with her, to flick at the cobwebs on the way; and whenever she had to cross the garden, she would pull up a handful of weeds on the way or nip the dead heads from the daffodils.

  No job dismayed her, however unpleasant. When Mrs Bessemer refused to clean out the kitchen drain, Aunt Doe did it herself, plunging her arm in up to the elbow until it was coated with black greasy sludge.

  ‘Oh! The smell!’ Mrs Bessemer said, but Aunt Doe retorted, with a curl of her lip: ‘I’ve smelt worse than that in Ranjiloor!’

  One day, alone in the house, she fired Stephen’s shotgun up the chimney, to bring down the soot. She then went, with a blackened face, to answer a knock at the back door. A red-faced farmer stood there. Behind him, in the yard, stood a sweating black mare.

  ‘I hear you’ve got an entire,’ he said.

  ‘An entire what?’ Aunt Doe enquired.

  ‘An entire horse!’ the farmer said. His face grew more red than it had been before.

  ‘Oh, you mean the stallion?’ Aunt Doe said. ‘Certainly. Follow me.’

  She led the way to the stable yard and the farmer followed, bringing his mare. Aunt Doe was quite without fear or prudishness. She led the stallion out of his stall. The farmer, however, kept hanging back, although pulled about by his eager mare.

  ‘Ent there a man about the place?’

  ‘Oh, yes, there are plenty of those!’

  She perceived the farmer’s embarrassment, and tethered Lucifer to the fence. She went off in search of Bob Tupper. But over her shoulder she gave vent to her scorn.

  ‘I’ve seen worse than that in Ranjiloor!’

  One day towards the end of September, Stephen called the men together and warned them that their wages would have to be cut, from forty shillings to thirty-five.

  ‘We knew that was coming!’ said Morton George. ‘It’s one damned reduction after another, ent it, now that the Wages Board is gone?’

  ‘You see the papers,’ Stephen said. ‘I’ve got no choice as you well know.’

  ‘Seems to me we’ve done pretty well,’ Tupper said, in his quiet voice. ‘Wages been down a month or more on some of the other farms around. What can’t be altered has got to be borne.’

  Stephen nodded and walked away. Morton George rounded on Tupper.

  ‘Sucking up as usual? The old battalion? Toeing the line?’

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ Tupper said. ‘If you was at Outlands instead of here, you’d have a lot more to skike about. There’s men been turned off up there, you know, and it’s much the same on other farms.’

  ‘The farmers need to be shown what’s what. At the union meeting the other night ‒’

  ‘What can the union do to them?’

  ‘Sweet bloody nothing! I know that. There’s not enough membership, that’s why! Take all you lot here for a start.’

  ‘Here we go!’ Hopson said. ‘The music goes round and round, ooh-ooh-ooh-oh, and it comes out here! For God’s sake let’s get back to work!’

  ‘Ah! Sweating our guts out!’ George exclaimed. ‘And all for thirty-five bob a week!’

  ‘Sweating?’ said Tupper. ‘What, you? That’s against the union rules, ent it?’

  As harvest that year came to an end, and the first teams were out, ploughing the stubbles, Stephen discussed with Bob Tupper what sowings they would make that year. Less corn than hitherto, more grass and clover leys, more grey peas, more beans, more rape; and twenty acres of sugar beet, a crop much promoted by the government. Stephen also talked to his shepherd, walking with him in Long Gains. Sheep were a safer investment at times like this, and Stephen planned to increase his flock.

  ‘It’s always the way,’ Goodshaw said. ‘When farming is high, it’s nothing but corn wherever you look. But when things is low, as they are now, grass comes back into fashion again and the shepherd is Somebody all of a sudden. Still, I ent complaining. Oh, no, not me!’

  ‘Can you manage another hundred ewes?’ Stephen asked in a tentative way.

  ‘Is that all you’re getting?’ Goodshaw asked.

  The other men were inclined to resent the growth in the number of sheep on the farm. When the first batch arrived, driven up the track by Goodshaw and his two collie dogs, the men stood watching over the fence. Hopson, in a voice loud enough for Goodshaw to hear, spoke to Reg Starling, at his side.

  ‘Which do you dislike the most, Reg, sheep or shepherds?’

  ‘Which is which?’ Starling asked.

  One day Challoner came over for his customary chat. He walked with Stephen about the fields, and noted the changes everywhere.

  ‘What about this sugar beet they’re telling us to grow now?’

  ‘I mean to try it, in the spring. Twenty acres. That field up there. And you?’

  ‘I’m not so sure. I had enough of that in the war, the government telling me what to do. But if you’re going to try it up here ‒’

  ‘Don’t go by me, for God’s sake. You’ve been farming all your life. I’ve been at it for three years.’

  ‘You made a mistake, giving up the law to try farming, eh?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Stephen said.

  ‘What, all the money solicitors make, and you mean to say you’ve no regrets?’

  ‘No, no regrets,’ Stephen said.

  They walked in silence for a while, picking their way through a field of swedes.

  ‘You know, Wayman,’ Challoner said, ‘it’s time you thought of marrying again.’

  Stephen said nothing. He looked away. Gwen had been dead less than eighteen months.

  ‘You’re a young man,’ Challoner said. ‘Thirty-six is no age at all. It’s no good trying to live in the past. You take my advice and look for a wife. I’d do the same, given the chance, but it’s not so easy at my age. The market gets tricky when you’re pushing on.’

  Stephen came to a sudden halt and turned to look Challoner in the eye. The man’s coarseness offended him. The big handsome face, with its ready smile, was quite suddenly loathsome to him. He felt he could strike it with his fist.

  ‘Am I speaking out of turn?’

  ‘Yes,’ Stephen said, ‘I think you are.’

  ‘I know exactly how you feel. When my wife died, six years ago, I said I’d never marry again. I had my two boys John and Gerald, and for their sake I carried on. John’s in a farm of his own now. Gerald will take over Outlands one day. They’re good boys, both of them, and Gerald is company for me. But a man gets lonely all the same. Once you’ve been married, it’s just no good. The loneliness gets into your bones.’

  Stephen felt guilty. His rage had gone. Challoner, whatever his faults, was just an ordinary feeling man.

  ‘Supposing we talk of other things?’ He resumed his
walk down the edge of the field, to the pasture where Goodshaw was marking his ewes. ‘You can tell me what you think of my new flock.’

  One Saturday morning, during the winter, the children turned out in their oldest clothes to whitewash the inner walls and roofs of the farm buildings. Tupper showed them how to mix the lime into a wash, with a lump of fat floating in it to give it an extra stickiness, and, armed with big brushes, they transformed cowstalls, stables, piggeries, sheds, into dazzling white palaces, sweet-smelling and pure. They took pride in their work and Chris especially was a perfectionist. The lime must be scrubbed very thoroughly into every grain in the wood, into every crevice and pore of the ancient brickwork.

  ‘The whitewash is meant to cleanse,’ he said. ‘It’s no good leaving little cracks for the dirt and vermin to collect in.’

  Emma, wearing a clean white smock, stood watching Chris at work in the byre.

  ‘Why can’t I do the whitewashing too?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You’re too small.’

  ‘I want to try it,’ Emma said.

  ‘Well, you can’t, and that’s flat!’ Chris said. ‘You’ll splash the lime into your eyes and that’ll burn you and make you cry.’

  Emma, driven out of the byre, took refuge in the stables instead. Joanna and Jamesy were working there. Their stiff-bristled brushes went splish-splash, splish-splash, and Emma took care to sit out of reach, perched on the ladder leading up to the loft. Sitting there, she plaited her straws. She was making a workbasket for Aunt Doe. And all the time, as her fingers worked, she sang to herself, in a monotone, the hymn she had learnt from Mrs Bessemer.

  ‘Jesus loves me, this I know,

  For the bible tells me so ‒’

  Splish-splosh, splish-splosh, went the whitewash brushes on the wall, and Emma, above, plaiting her straws, returned for the umpteenth time that day to the chorus of her favourite hymn.

  ‘Yes! Jesus loves me!

  Yes! Jesus loves me!

  Yes! Jesus loves me!

  The bible tells me so!’

  Jamesy, with a scowl, looked up at her, whitewash brush poised in his hand. He was sensitive to sound.