The Land Endures (The Apple Tree Saga Book 4) Page 9
‘Jesus doesn’t love you!’ he said. ‘Nobody loves you when you make that noise!’
After the whitewashing of the sheds, there were the farm implements to be painted. The boys set to work with loving zeal; a pot of blue paint, a pot of vermilion; and hay-turner, horse-rake, reapers, ploughs, were made to look as good as new. But Chris was not content merely to smarten the implements up: he wanted to know how everything worked; every tool and every machine must yield its secrets up to him, and he must learn to master them all.
And so it was with the tasks of the farm. He would talk to Tupper, Goodshaw, Rye, and pick their brains without shame. But he also read a great deal and kept up with new developments. The farm was his life. He wanted no career but that. He was determined to prove to his father in every way that this was not a boyish craze, but a man’s decision, made for good.
Jamesy, on the other hand, though he loved the farm, had set his sights on a different future. He wanted to be an architect. Already, although only twelve, drawing was not just a hobby with him, but a thing that possessed him heart and soul. He saw everything in terms of design. Whatever he was talking about, he was sure to reach for a pencil and paper. ‘Here, I’ll show you,’ he would say, and the mystery, whatever it was, would be resolved in a diagram.
‘Even a cow chewing the cud!’ Chris said to Joanna once. ‘Ask Jamesy how it works, and he’ll do you a drawing, exactly to scale!’
Jamesy made drawings of all the great buildings in Chepsworth: the cathedral, the guildhall, the market cross; exteriors and interiors; exact in detail and true to scale. He made drawings of every building on Holland Farm: the house, the barns, the cottages; and when Hopson’s cottage was renovated, and a lean-to extension was built on, Jamesy drew up the plans for it, and Mr Hake, the Huntlip builder, used them with only one or two minor alterations.
‘So you want to be an architect, building houses and such, eh?’
‘What I’d really like to do is to build a cathedral,’ Jamesy said.
Mr Hake stared. He gave a laugh.
‘Well, if I hear of anyone wanting a cathedral putting up, I shall be sure to mention your name.’
‘Oh, I shan’t build cathedrals until I’m old!’
‘How old is old, if I might ask?’
‘When I’m forty,’ Jamesy said.
The two boys, then, had already settled where their futures lay. But what of Joanna, now thirteen? Joanna varied with the wind. Doctor; dancer; courtesan; the model in a painting by Augustus John: Joanna yearned to spread her wings.
Early in 1923 a gipsy woman called at the farm and sold Aunt Doe a dozen pegs.
‘There are children in this house, I know, and one of them has a gift for music.’
‘Is that a fact?’ said Aunt Doe.
‘A great gift for music. You mark my words.’
She had no doubt looked in at the parlour window and seen the piano against the wall. Aunt Doe told the tale to the family as a joke, but Joanna, on hearing of the gipsy’s words, felt sure that they referred to her. She resumed her piano lessons at school and practised assiduously at home. Everything else was quite forgotten. Music was the only thing. She saw herself, in her mind’s eye, on the concert platforms of the world. She would always wear crimson, she told herself, for her school-friend, Elaine, said it suited her.
Often during the dark winter evenings Aunt Doe would get out her violin, and, riffling through her music, brown with age, would find some piece that she and Joanna could play together. The family enjoyed these times. Stephen was very proud of his daughter, and the two boys, although they teased, were impressed by the progress their sister had made.
But one Sunday evening in late March, when she and Aunt Doe were playing together, Joanna suddenly heard herself as though for the first time. It was the Bach Minuet, a piece they had played as a duo before, but she heard with sudden clarity that Aunt Doe, on the violin, was carrying her and bearing her up. There was nothing there, in her own performance. She played the right notes and that was all. The music was coming from Aunt Doe.
‘It’s no good, is it?’ she said at the end, swinging round on the music-stool, and, although there were tears in her eyes, she was laughing at the same time. ‘I shall never really be any good! That gipsy was talking through her hat!’
‘Come, now, Joanna,’ Stephen said, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.’
Joanna still looked towards Aunt Doe.
‘Tell me what you honestly think.’
‘It all depends what you want to do. Your music will always give you a lot of pleasure.’
‘But as a career! Have I got what it takes?’
‘What does your teacher say at school?’
‘My teacher says the same as you.’
‘Well, you’re surely not going to give it up?’
‘Oh, I shall play just the same, of course. But I know I shall never do great things.’ Joanna was perfectly matter-of-fact. She folded her music and rose from the stool. ‘Whoever it is in the family who has a great gift for music,’ she said, ‘it certainly isn’t going to be me.’
‘Well, don’t look at me,’ Chris said.
‘No, nor me,’ Jamesy said.
There was a silence in the room.
‘Perhaps it’s me,’ Emma said.
Such a shout of laughter came from Joanna and the boys that Emma stared in frowning surprise. She had been sitting crocheting. The piece of work was in her hands, and the bright green wool was round the hook. Now she bent over it again and counted the stitches along the edge. ‘Emma ‒ musical!’ Chris exclaimed.
‘Now I’ve heard everything!’ Jamesy declared.
‘Poor little Emma,’ Stephen said. He drew her close to him, on the settee. ‘How do we know she’s not musical? She may be. We shall have to see.’
Emma resisted him, drawing away. She was trying to rescue a slipping stitch.
‘I don’t care if I am or not! Silly old music!’ she said to him.
‘Emma singing!’ Jamesy said.
‘Emma playing the snake-charmer’s pipe!’ Joanna said, with a grimace.
‘That’s enough!’ said Aunt Doe, putting away her violin. ‘Emma is very fond of music. She may surprise you all yet.’
One afternoon, when Aunt Doe went into the parlour, Emma sat at the old piano, frowning at the music on its stand. The keyboard was open, as it always was ‒ the ivories would turn yellow otherwise ‒ and Emma’s hands hovered over the keys. But she snatched them away when Aunt Doe came in and folded them in her lap instead.
‘You could have piano lessons if you like, you know, and learn to play as Joanna does.’
‘No, I don’t want to,’ Emma said.
‘I could start you off at home.’
‘No,’ Emma said. She shook her head.
‘What about the fiddle, then? Would you prefer to learn that?’
Emma was fond of the violin. The sound of it, when Aunt Doe played, would always bring her into the room. And now, as Aunt Doe took it out of its case and played a few bars of ‘Annie Laurie’, there was a gleam in the child’s dark eyes.
‘Here,’ said Aunt Doe. ‘You have a try. I’ll help you to hold it while you start.’
‘Shall I be able to play a tune?’
‘Not straight away. That takes time. But you’ll soon learn, if I show you how.’
‘No, I don’t want to,’ Emma said.
‘Why won’t you try it?’ Aunt Doe asked. ‘There’s no one around to hear you try. The others are all out in the fields.’
‘I don’t care if they are or not. I just don’t want to, that’s all.’
‘Very well,’ Aunt Doe said.
She laid the instrument back in its case, but left the lid open, invitingly. She went out of the room and closed the door. Emma slid from the music stool and went to look at the violin. She put out a hand and touched the strings, and a little tremor broke the air, causing a shiver in her skin. She drew her finger, delicately, over the warm
red varnished wood; she touched the bow where it lay in its clips; she felt the satin that lined the case. Then, suddenly, reaching up, she brought down the lid with a sharp little click.
Out in the dairy, scouring pans, Aunt Doe saw Emma leaving the house; running across the stable yard, skipping and dancing in the wind.
‘Where are you off to?’ she called from the door.
But Emma pretended not to hear.
Chapter Five
Emma was very small for her age. Chris could carry her for miles; it was nothing to him, being so strong. He would run with her at high speed, pretending that he was a galloping horse, and Emma would bob up and down on his shoulders, shrieking with laughter when he neighed.
‘You’re just like a little doll,’ he would say. ‘I forget you’re up there until you yell.’
Emma at seven was so small she could scarcely reach the snecks of the doors. She had to stretch herself, up on her toes, and this was a joke to the other three.
‘Poor Little Tich!’ Jamesy would say. ‘Let me open the door for you.’
They would reach things down for her from high shelves and would unscrew difficult jars for her. They would lift her when crossing a ditch on the farm.
‘No! I can jump it! Leave me alone!’
‘All right, let’s see you,’ Jamesy said.
‘She’s bound to fall in,’ Joanna warned.
‘Oh no I shan’t!’ Emma said.
‘Very well. Go ahead and jump. But don’t blame us, you silly thing, when you get yourself all black with mud.’
Emma retreated a few yards and prepared to make a little run. But the ditch seemed wider, suddenly, and somehow the spring went out of her feet.
‘There! You can’t do it!’ Jamesy said.
‘Yes, I can. I’ve done it before.’
‘Then why don’t you do it and not so much fuss?’
‘Because you’re watching,’ Emma said.
‘Oh, all right, we’ll look away.’
But it made no difference whether they looked away or not. So long as they stood there, close by the ditch, Emma knew she would surely fall in, and the knowledge paralysed her legs.
‘Come along, little un!’ Chris said to her. ‘You may as well let me give you a hand.’
And Emma, yielding herself to him, was swung across to the other side.
She could jump the ditch, when she was alone, but they would never believe that.
Sometimes Aunt Doe was cross with them, because of the things they did for Emma. When Jamesy fastened her shoes for her, or Joanna offered to cut up her meat, or Chris completed her jig-saw puzzle, Aunt Doe reproved them, severely displeased.
‘Emma is not a baby now. It’s time you allowed her to grow up.’
They only laughed at the idea. To think of Emma growing up! The sight of this tiny sister of theirs, coming behind the herd of cows, tapping her little stick on the ground and calling out, ‘Get over, old cow!’ made them feel protective to her. She was so tiny; such a doll. They felt very big and strong beside her, and Chris especially, hoisting her up to sit on his shoulders, felt himself a man of great power.
‘Emma’s our mascot,’ he said once.
‘That she is not!’ declared Aunt Doe. ‘Emma’s a person, the same as you.’
‘Are you a person?’ Chris teased the child.
‘Yes,’ Emma said, ‘you know I am.’
‘First person singular, I suppose?’
The older children enjoyed the joke, but Emma herself was unsure, glancing at each of them in turn, and saying nothing.
‘Take no notice of them,’ said Aunt Doe. ‘They’re not so smart as they think they are.’
‘Who’s not so smart?’ Stephen asked, coming into the room just then.
‘These three children of yours,’ she said.
‘I thought I had four,’ Stephen said.
He, according to Aunt Doe, was just as bad as the rest of them. Emma was still a baby to him. He spoilt her and made a pet of her, for she was the one who was most like Gwen.
‘There’s plenty of time for growing up,’ he said, with his hand on Emma’s hair.
At Easter, during the holidays, Chris spoke to his father again on the subject of his leaving school.
‘If I’m to leave at the end of next term, we need to tell the headmaster soon.’
‘Are you sure it’s what you want?’
‘Absolutely. A hundred-per-cent.’
‘You’re still very young,’ Stephen said, ‘to decide the course your life will take.’
‘Hang it all. I’ll be fifteen by then. Gerald’s been farming for nearly a year. So have Jeff Twill and David Mapp.’ Stephen was not much impressed by this. He did not care for Challoner’s son, nor for the other two sprigs thus named, and just lately, as he knew, Chris had been much in their company.
‘I don’t need to tell you that farming is in a bad way. There’s not much scope for ambitious men.’
‘It’ll get better in time. It must.’
‘I don’t see much hope in the next few years. You’ll get little joy but the work itself.’
‘It’s still what I want. Honestly.’
‘Very well,’ Stephen said. ‘I’ll write to Mr Priestman immediately.’
‘Thanks, Dad!’ Chris exclaimed. Jubilant, he shook Stephen’s hand. ‘You won’t regret it, I give you my word.’
‘I hope you won’t. That’s the main thing.’
‘I shan’t,’ said Chris. ‘I know I shan’t!’
The decision was taken; the headmaster informed. Chris would leave school at the end of July. Stephen still worried, all the same. He talked about it to Aunt Doe.
‘I hope I’m doing the right thing.’
‘Chris knows his own mind. His heart is in farming, there’s no doubt of that.’
‘I hope his heart won’t be broken by it. Older men’s have been, these past two years.’
‘Why not look on the bright side? Four lots of school fees are a drain. Be thankful you’ll soon be saving one.’
‘It will be a saving, certainly.’
A few days later he heard that Miss Protheroe’s Little School, which Emma attended, was to close down at the end of the summer term. Emma would have to go elsewhere.
‘Why not send her to the village school? You’d be saving two lots of school fees then.’
‘Is Emma’s education to suffer, merely to save me a few paltry pounds?’
‘I don’t see why it should suffer at all. What does she learn at Miss Protheroe’s that she wouldn’t learn at the village school?’
‘What would she learn at the village school that was better not learnt?’ Stephen said.
‘I’ve always heard it’s a particularly good school.’
‘Yes. It is. Or so I believe.’
‘You ought to know. You are on the board of managers.’
‘It has a high standard, certainly. In fact it has the reputation of being one of the five best village schools in the three counties.’
‘In that case, I don’t see what you’ve got against it.’
‘I’ve got nothing against it,’ Stephen said.
But the idea was new, and new ideas were hard to digest. His little Emma at Huntlip school, in the rough-and-tumble of that noisy playground, with labourers’ boisterous daughters and sons? Cold-shouldered, perhaps, because she was different from themselves. If she had gone there from the first …
‘She’ll soon get used to it,’ Aunt Doe said.
‘But will she be happy?’ Stephen asked.
‘She’s made no friends at Miss Protheroe’s. Perhaps she’ll do better, nearer home.’
‘Labourers’ children?’ Stephen said.
‘She talks to the labourers on the farm. Why not to their children, for goodness’ sake?’
‘I’m not being snobbish, you understand.’
‘No, of course not,’ Aunt Doe said. There was a dryness in her tone.
‘I only want what’s best for Emma.’
‘Isn’t it possible?’ Stephen said.
‘That Miss Izzard, the mistress-in-charge … I was talking to her at the jumble sale the other day. She doesn’t strike me as being rough.’
‘Of course she’s not,’ Stephen said.
‘She’s a reasonably well-educated woman, isn’t she?’
‘I can see where you’re leading me, you know.’
‘An intelligent woman, would you say?’
‘Intelligent, yes, certainly.’
‘Yet she is a product of that village school, I understand.’
‘Very well. You’ve made your point. I shall think about it, I promise you.’
So in time yet another decision was taken. Stephen went down to the village school and arranged that Emma should begin to attend there in September. As to the wisdom of the decision, only time would tell on that, but Emma herself was well pleased. She thought of the village school as her father’s school, because it stood below the farm, and because the children who went there were allowed to play their summer games in her father’s meadow, just behind.
‘When am I going to Daddy’s school? Will they ring the bell for me? Shall I go down across the fields?’
As far as Emma was concerned, September could not come soon enough.
The flocks on the two farms were too big now to be shorn together on the same day. The two lots of shearers banded together as usual, but on different days, first at Outlands and then Holland Farm. And that, as Billy Rye remarked, meant two shearing-feasts instead of one.
‘Shearing-feasts!’ said Morton George. ‘They starve us all through the bloody year and give us a feast at shearing time! Are we supposed to be grateful for that?’
Wages were cut again that year. They were down to thirty shillings now. This was in accordance with the recommendations of the local ‘Conciliation Committee’, set up to deal with such matters, but there was resentment all the same, and it showed in the faces of the men when, on a Saturday in July, they came to the office to be paid.
‘Is that all I’m worth to you, Mr Wayman? Thirty shillings?’ Nate Hopson said.
‘The slump hits all of us,’ Stephen said. ‘We’ve all got to make economies.’