Jim suddenly turned to the door.
‘I’ll think about it and let you know.’
Chapter Six
Once again Jim needed to think and this time, driven by some primitive instinct, he climbed the slopes of Luton Camp; first the gently sweeping slopes, divided roughly into fields; then the higher, steeper slopes, where the turf was worn away in places, revealing the pale stone beneath, which crumbled under his feet as he climbed.
When he got to the top of the hill he sat on a low grassy mound, underneath a hawthorn tree, and looked down on the valley below. He could see almost everything from this height and everything he saw was dear to him, so that the thought of leaving it caused an angry ache in his heart. In the confusion of his mind it was impossible for him to tell which caused him the most pain: his banishment or the reason behind it; because both these things were so twisted together that contemplation of the one only magnified the hurt of the other.
His sense of betrayal filled him completely, for fate had struck him a two-fold blow and the knowledge that he had no rights in the matter only increased his bitterness. Of course, John Sutton was right: he would certainly not want to stay at Peele; but his lack of choice made him squirm all the same, inducing a fierce rebelliousness in him, and it was this aspect of things ‒ the fact that the whole of his future life was being thus decided out of hand ‒ that made him reject Sutton’s plan for sending him to Ontario.
This rejection cleared his mind. The feeling that he was a helpless pawn in a game being played by other men was thus removed at a single stroke leaving room for his rebellion to grow. He saw that although his plans had been spoilt, his life was nevertheless his own to direct and govern as he chose. And as he sat looking down on the valley, comparing the rich, productive lands of Peele, so neat and well cared for, just below, with the rough, neglected, tumbledown sprawl of Godsakes over on the other side, he saw that he could use his life in a way that would not only further his own ambitions but defeat the Suttons in one of theirs.
The idea came to him not in a flash but quietly, almost cunningly, as though it had lain in his mind for some time, developing there, secretly, until it had grown to be part of himself and only awaited recognition. For it came to him whole, this idea of his, and brought with it such a sense of purpose that his pain and anger were transmuted at once into strength and energy. The destructive force in him, that wanted to smash and annihilate, was replaced by a creative force that wanted to mend, restore, rebuild. And as he examined this idea, with all its many implications, he was filled with a subtle kind of excitement. Something immense was growing in him and he made it welcome, allowing it to take possession of his heart and his mind.
He had lost something of himself that day, on learning that Jane was playing him false in a way that took no account of his feelings for her, or of his pride. But now he had found another self, harder, tougher than the first, and he felt the stirrings of a fierce impatience, wanting to put this new self to the test and show the world what it could do.
Impatience brought him to his feet and he set off quickly down the hill, slithering over the loose, broken stones and sending them rattling down the slope until, reaching the regular path, he forced himself to a steadier pace. His plan as yet needed much careful thought and there were details to be worked out before he reached Godsakes Farm.
Morris Riddler had been served with an official County Court notice, three days before, informing him that an Order of Possession had been granted against the property known as Godsakes Farm in favour of Messrs Martin and Moore, bankers, of Missenham, in the county of Gloucester, and that the said property would, in default of payment of certain debts and dues, set out in detail below, be put up for sale by Public Auction on Monday 27 September 1858.
On being served the notice, he had first read it, then torn it up, telling the officer who had delivered it that ‘anyone who comes here trying to put my farm up for sale will get a skitter of shot in his backside.’ There was little or no work to do on the farm at this time because the only remaining stock consisted of two cows, one of them dry, and some two or three dozen hens. The labourers, Lovell and Smith, had been laid off all through the summer, though they still occupied their cottages, and Riddler’s whole day was now spent patrolling the farm, on the alert for marauders.
He had seen Jim coming from a long way off and was at the gate, waiting for him, shotgun nestling in the crook of his arm, suspicion written across his face.
‘What do you want?’ he asked with a growl.
‘I’ve got a proposition to put to you.’
‘If the Suttons sent you, you can go to hell.’
‘This is nothing to do with the Suttons. This is business of my own. They don’t know I’ve come.’
‘Since when have you had business that wasn’t connected with the Suttons?’
‘Since today,’ Jim replied.
Riddler cocked an eyebrow at him, giving him a long, hard look.
‘Something wrong between you and them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe I can guess what it is. I hear the gossip, you know, now and then. And rumour reached me recently that you and Philip Sutton were both after the same girl.’
‘In that case you knew before I did myself.’
‘Well, since you’ve fallen out with the Suttons and haven’t come on their behalf, I don’t mind hearing what you have to say.’ Riddler opened the ramshackle gate. ‘You’d better come into the house,’ he said.
The farmhouse kitchen was very bare. A table, three chairs, and a Welsh dresser were the only furniture in the room, and these were shabby to a degree. But Jim was not surprised at this for it was common knowledge in the district that every saleable thing at Godsakes had been sold to pay Riddler’s debts.
Kirren, who was cleaning the stone-flagged floor with a broom dipped into a bucket of water, stopped and looked up in surprise at seeing Riddler enter with Jim. She leant on her broom, frowning at him, and, sharing her father’s first suspicions, only barely answered his nod. Riddler stood his gun in a corner, clumped over the wet flags, and sat down in a chair at the table, motioning Jim to do the same.
‘You know my daughter, Kirren?’ he said, and, over his shoulder, to Kirren herself: ‘This is Jim Lundy from Peele.’
‘I know perfectly well who it is.’
‘You needn’t take that tone with him. He hasn’t come to turn us out. Or so he assures me, anyway.’ Riddler, sitting sideways in his chair, one arm resting on the table, looked at Jim sitting opposite. ‘A proposition, I think you said?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Well, fire away.’
‘I’ll make no bones about it,’ Jim said. ‘You’re done-for here. We both know that. And it’s only a matter of two or three weeks before the farm is sold over your head. Your loan at the bank still stands at a little over six hundred pounds ‒ you can guess how I come by that information ‒ but it is your payments on the loan, and a few other debts elsewhere, that are your most pressing problem, and if you could only settle them you would be in the clear again.’
‘Two hundred pounds! That’s all I need! And because I can’t find it they’ll sell me up!’ Riddler exclaimed bitterly. But he was narrowly watching Jim and in his small, screwed-up eyes there was already a gleam of hope. ‘But maybe you’ve come along with some miraculous solution such as I’ve been praying for?’
‘I’ve come to offer to pay your debts.’
‘Have you, by God?’ Riddler breathed, and turned his head to glance at Kirren, who, still holding her broom, was standing in silence nearby. ‘And in return ‒ what do you want?’
‘A share in the farm.’
‘What sort of a share?’
‘A partnership. Half and half.’
‘Just for paying off my debts?’
‘No, there’s more to it than that,’ Jim said. ‘I’ve got twelve hundred pounds in the bank, my savings over thirteen years. I’ve also got my flock, as you know,
worth perhaps eighty pounds. I propose using my money to pay off your debts and re-stock the farm, keeping a certain amount back to cover all the running expenses, such as the men’s wages and so on. We then work together to build it up, and in return, when that is achieved, a half share of the farm will be mine, plus a half share of the profits, of course.’
Jim, sitting upright in his chair, turned and half looked at Riddler’s daughter, not to win any comment from her but because he was irritated by the way she stood just out of sight behind him. He then turned to face Riddler again.
‘That’s my proposition,’ he said. ‘Details would have to be worked out, of course, and some kind of legal agreement drawn up. But, in a nutshell, that’s about it.’
‘You don’t expect much, do you, by God, in exchange for your twelve hundred pounds? Have you any idea, I wonder, how much it cost me to buy this place?’
‘Yes, it cost you three thousand pounds, plus the interest on your loan. But you wouldn’t get half that sum for it now, being so run-down as it is, and if my twelve hundred pounds is enough to put you into production again, it’s surely worth more to you than just its value, counted as coin? Anyway, I propose earning the rest of my share by working and putting the farm to rights, and as that will take a good many years ‒’
‘All right, all right, you’ve made your point! But I don’t much fancy sharing a farm that I’ve had to myself for thirty-six years.’
‘In that case you’ll lose it altogether,’ Jim said. ‘You can’t fight the law for ever, even with a shotgun, and when the sale takes place, the farm will go to the highest bidder. And that, as you know, will be John Sutton.’
‘Yes, you’ve got me there, haven’t you? Because you know damned well I’d do just about anything rather than see him get my farm. But go on with your proposition. There’s one or two things to account for yet. What happens, for instance, when I die? My share of the farm will be Kirren’s then. Do you propose being partners with her?’
‘By that time, all being well, the farm will be on its feet again and I shall be able to buy her out.’
There was a silence in the room; a silence that lasted a long time; and throughout it Riddler’s keen, bright gaze remained fixed on Jim’s face. At last, however, he stirred in his chair, twisting round to look at Kirren.
‘What do you think about it?’ he asked.
Kirren shrugged. ‘It seems a good enough plan,’ she said, ‘up to the point where I get turned out.’
‘Bought out, not turned out,’ Jim said.
‘It means the same thing, doesn’t it? I still lose my home.’
Her words surprised him. Gave him pause. Until today, he had never met the girl face to face. He had only seen her in the distance, at haymaking time in the meadows, perhaps, or trudging along the road in to town, taking her produce to the market. But he knew what her life had been like on this farm and he had assumed that she would welcome a plan that offered some chance of escape.
‘Does the place mean so much to you, then?’
‘I’m not sure what it means to me. I’ve never thought about it till now. But this is the only home I’ve ever known and God knows I’ve worked hard enough for it, helping my father keep hold of it.’
‘You’ll be repaid for that work in the end because when I buy your share of the farm you’ll be able to rent a cottage somewhere and probably have enough money to make you independent for life.’
‘On the other hand,’ she said, ‘if everything goes as well as you think, and the farm begins making money again, I could in the end buy you out instead.’
‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t want that!’ Jim said, emphatically. ‘I would want the farm for myself.’
Riddler, having listened intently to this exchange, now spoke again. ‘Why should you want the farm so much? To spite John Sutton and his son? To show that girl at Hide House what a prize she’s lost in jilting you?’
‘I don’t think my reasons matter,’ Jim said, ‘but certainly I would want the farm.’
‘Seems we all want it,’ Riddler said. ‘We are united in that at least. But there is one problem in your plan. Supposing I was to drop dead before the farm was paying its way? You wouldn’t be able to buy Kirren’s share then. You’d both have to stick it out here together and that wouldn’t do at all. It wouldn’t be decent. Folk would talk.’
Jim became silent. He was badly put out. It seemed to him unbelievable that such a foolish, irrelevant problem should threaten the working-out of his plan. But before he could frame any kind of answer, Morris Riddler was speaking again.
‘Your plan is fine as far as it goes but you haven’t thought it through to the end. I reckon the best way of making it work is for you and Kirren to get married. That way you get hold of the farm without having to turn her out and it does away with any need for complicated legal arrangements. The lawyers have had enough money out of me in the past. I’m damned if I’ll let them have any more.’
Jim and Kirren both stared at him.
‘You’re surely not serious?’ Jim said.
‘Oh, yes, I am.’
‘Then I’m afraid you must think again, because marriage is quite out of the question. It doesn’t come into my plans at all.’
‘Nor mine,’ Kirren said. ‘I thought I’d made that plain enough.’
‘You be quiet,’ Riddler said, ‘and listen to what I have to say.’
‘I don’t care what you’ve got to say! I’ve heard it often enough before. I am not going to marry anyone ‒ neither this man here nor any other ‒ just to please you and keep the farm.’
‘Please me be damned!’ Riddler said. ‘It’s you I’m thinking of, not myself.’
‘I can’t think why,’ Kirren said. ‘You never have done in the past.’
‘I’m talking about the future now ‒ when I’m dead and in my grave and you’re left with no one to take care of you.’
‘I can take care of myself.’
‘I doubt if you’ll get another chance of a husband falling into your lap ‒’
‘How many times do I have to tell you that a husband is the last thing I want?’ Kirren, with angry impatience, dipped her broom into the bucket and began brushing the flagstones again, sweeping the water towards the door. ‘To saddle myself with the kind of life my mother endured with you all those years? Oh dear me no! I’d sooner be dead!’
The violence of Kirren’s outburst had a strange effect on Jim. It gave him a stab of perverse pleasure, enhancing, in a peculiar way, his own dark disillusionment. And, looking at her more closely now, he saw her as though for the first time. Riddler, catching this look of his, shrewdly waited a while in silence, guessing the nature of the young man’s thoughts. Then, judging his moment, he said:
‘Well, I don’t know, I’m sure! But seeing you’re both so set against marriage it seems to me you’re ideally suited. Made for each other! The perfect match! So why not look on it as a business arrangement, purely for the sake of the farm, without any strings on either side? You say you would want the whole farm for yourself but if you bought Kirren out you’d only have to get someone else to cook and clean and keep house for you. Now you may not think it to look at her but Kirren is a very good housekeeper and you couldn’t do better than keep her on.’
‘High praise indeed!’ Kirren said, speaking as though to the broom in her hands.
‘And one thing about a wife is, you don’t have to pay her a wage,’ Riddler said.
‘Ah,’ Kirren said, with a little nod, ‘and there we come to the heart of it!’
But she had stopped sweeping again and was now looking directly at Jim. Their eyes met in a straight, steady stare; with a curious kind of hostile reserve; but this hostility, in a strange way, somehow formed a bond between them, perhaps because its cause lay, not in their two separate selves, but in the person of Morris Riddler. They had known each other by sight for years but they met today for the first time. They were strangers, the pair of them, and while they frankly appraised each
other, both understood perfectly that strangers was how they wished to remain.
Quietly, cautiously, Jim spoke to her.
‘Purely as a business arrangement, exactly as your father suggests, would you be willing to consider it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kirren said. ‘Would you?’
‘A formality only? Just a marriage in name? It does seem to make some sense, I think, and there’s no doubt it would simplify matters when it comes to joint ownership of the farm.’
‘Oh, it would simplify matters most beautifully,’ Kirren said in a dry tone, ‘for a wife has almost no rights whatever in matters concerning property.’
‘Yes, well, I suppose that’s true. But a wife does have rights of a kind, after all. For one thing she is entitled to expect that her husband will always do well by her. And that, even in a marriage of convenience, is a duty I would most certainly fulfil.’
‘No strings attached, as my father suggests?’
‘None whatever,’ Jim said. ‘I would make no demands on you as a husband. In fact, where our personal lives are concerned, we should be scarcely more to each other than we are now.’
Kirren, it seemed, still had her doubts.
‘How do I know I can trust you?’
‘You don’t,’ he said bluntly, meeting her gaze. ‘But it is scarcely the kind of matter on which I can swear an affidavit, is it?’
Riddler, watching Kirren’s face, gave a cynical laugh.
‘You can always lock your door, girl. That’s simple enough, surely?’ he said. ‘And if Jim is worried on the same score, he can lock his!’
‘Your daughter needs time to think,’ Jim said, ‘and so, for that matter, do I.’
‘All right,’ Riddler said. ‘But that’s my condition ‒ no marriage, no deal.’
‘You are hardly in a position to make conditions.’
‘No, maybe not,’ Riddler said. ‘But I’m making this one all the same. And if you want this farm as badly as I think you do, then you’re in no position to turn it down. Now come with me and I’ll show you round. You’ll see what you will be taking on and Kirren will have time to think.’
The Two Farms: A moving family saga set in a Victorian farming community Page 8
